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I live behind a bar.

There, I said it. Phew, what a load off my mind to finally be out about that.

Oh, wait . . . that’s not right. It was that queer thing I should be worried outing myself about. Good thing I didn’t mention that then, huh?

It’s a pretty respectable bar, as bars go: A sports pub actually, with tons of huge screens for people to drunkenly scream at for no apparent reason, as if the players can actually hear them–or each other for that matter, as loud as it gets over there. Recently renovated, pleasantly arranged, well-lit . .  it’s a friendly looking place in there, from what I can tell. If I actually drank or could fathom sports I might give you a better view of it than through its large shiny windows as I’m passing by each day. But I don’t, much, so there.

The pub is nestled on the ground floor of my comfortably appointed and friendly apartment building, with a lovely courtyard separating it from my cozy little apartment. I’m happy with the arrangement . . . for the most part . . .

Until about 1:00AM.

You’d think I’d be happy that the noise abates around this time of night. But if you know me (i.e., you pay attention to the posting times of these blog entries. No, if you could actually see the posting times of these blog entries), you’d deduce that it’s not really a fly in my bearnaise sauce. You may not deduce the bearnaise sauce bit, actually. But if you did, I’d send you a cookie and a one-way plane ticket to Siberia, because frankly you’re freaking me out.

No, what happens around the wee hours of the morning are conversations. Drunken ones. Directly under my window.

I don’t mind conversations actually. The daytime ones are quite entertaining. I’ve witnessed a plethora of phone calls, debates, arguments, diagnoses, theories, educated and uneducated guesses, prophecies and neural pathway cleaning exercises (otherwise known as self-monologues) beneath my windows that have affected me anywhere along the spectrum of Boredom level 0.2, to Rolling under my desk laughing until my head pops off level 92.8. Although not entirely sane, at least they were relatively sober.

BonNuR1CIAA2UeQ.jpg largeBut at night it gets a little scary. It’s not the slurring or the exclamations about why my building keeps moving that I find so frightening . . .  but the way in which the monumentally drunk are stripped down to their bare essence. Their true colors. Their actual selves.

Most of the participants of these verbal expectorations are male, with a few rare drunk women mixed in to amp up the frighteningness (yes, I’m glaringly guilty of adding “ness” to almost any word, without the actual benefit of feeling guilty. about it . . . because I can). Not to kill your buzz here, but if I were to get a nickel for every misogynistic comment I’ve heard under my window past a certain hour, along with all kinds of premeditated rape-like details, I’d be able to afford installing huge neon lights on the moon that spell out, “Hey guys, WTF?” (I originally had “is wrong with you!” added to the end, but I calculated I’d need another 7 cents per misogynist.

I don’t really want to talk about it, but it looks like I did anyway. I mean someone has to. These guys’ male friends who DO have scruples might want to step up here. Just saying.

I’m kind of hoping this phenomenon is rarer than it seems, though I will clearly not be holding my breath on this point anytime soon. Perhaps it takes a mentality that thinks getting this drunk is actually fun, for that person to also be unclear on the whole human empathy thing. I don’t really know.

Until I find a cure for stupid, I’m thinking the best thing I can probably do is either: A) Learn to sleep like a “normal” person (Side-splitting laugh level 85.3), or B) find another apartment that exhibits a complete lack of bar-ness*.

Anyone know of a modest apartment I can rent in NW Portland?

[ * Yes, I did it again. If Lock Ness or Eliot Ness can do it, so can I. So there. ]

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Four out of five narcissists agree: the human race is an imperfect lot. Even our DNA earns its keep by making errors . . . what we call “evolution”. Like most humans, I carry with me a plethora of dysfunction wherever I go. A few are physical—most are not. They don’t eat much, but they help make me who I am, for better or worse, so I proudly call them my own.

This is their story …

Asparagus, Broccoli & Shellfish—Oh My!

Okay, I admit it. I eat like a five-year-old.

My texture issues followed me like hungry kittens into adulthood: where foods like kiwi or mushrooms or cooked squash are too slimy to be beheld; where my bitterness sensitivity make bell peppers (only the green ones), capers and grape leaves inedible; and where a strange genetic mutation transforms guacamole and sour cream into an inert, tasteless nothingness on my tongue.

But these maladjustments barely scratch the surface of my culinary weirdness …

Shellfish, no matter how gourmet in preparation, smells to me like decomposing garbage. To think of ingesting it as a food is to risk projectile vomiting. I had to type the previous sentence very carefully.

Asparagus, on the other hand, has nothing more than a bitter aroma to me, but my throat closes up just to be in the same room where it’s cooking. Attempting to eat any of it would be improbable at best. And asparagus has a unique way of taking over the sweat glands of its victims, so if you’ve eaten some of it in the last few days, please don’t be insulted when I move far away from you.

I don’t want to talk about broccoli, other than to warn you: Do not under any circumstances allow me to eat this in your presence . . . unless you wish to be among the crowd running for the hills soon after. If anyone has seen the movie Godzilla and the Smog Monster, you know what I mean. Failing to heed this advice may be construed in some countries as a terrorist act.

You have been warned.

“Foibles” was a creative writing class exercise that went awry. It was meant to brainstorm prompts for future writing projects, but I think my instructor stepped back in fright when she saw how long my list was getting. There’s enough foibles here to fuel a year long blog, but I think I’ll scale it back to a foible or two a week (welcome to Foibles Monday).

I don’t want to take you away from the normal things I usually write about here. ~giggle~

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IMG_0226So I’m walking down the street to the coffee shop where I do all my serious writing (well, I think it’s serious), minding my own business, when I pass this sign outside of one of the restaurants there. I stop. I take two steps back and look again. Yup, that’s what it says.

Anyone who has actually read my “about” page knows I occasionally identify as a dork, so of course my first thought is:

What side would they serve with me?

Other questions soon follow (keep in mind I’m still standing out on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, probably staring all buggly-eyed, thinking these things, while the patrons inside are looking out wondering if I’ve popped a fuse):

  • How do they serve dorks? Do we come with a sauce?
  • Where do they harvest their dorks?
    • Should I run? Like, now?!
  • Should I be insulted I’m only worth $13.50, and with a side?
  • Would I be less upset about this turn of events if I was served with macaroni and cheese, or covered with a dark chocolate sauce?
  • What wine do you serve with a dork (I’m thinking something non-alcoholic).

After I reset my fuse and toddled along to the coffee shop to be prescribed my usual dose of caffeine, I began to wonder if they were in fact serving actual dorks or a dork substitute. Or perhaps they had an unfair opinion of dorks and charged them $13.50 extra (plus a side) if they ate there.

It wasn’t until I started writing this and my girlfriend walked past and saw the picture above that the truth was revealed–and it’s admittedly weirder than even I thought possible. But then this is Portland. So of course I turned to the Urban Dictionary, the fount of all knowledge and wisdom.

Sure enough she was right:

dork
(n)a whale penis
“The blue whale has the biggest dork on earth.”
by Anonymous February 14, 2003

(Source: The Urban Dictionary, accessed 3/1/2015, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Dork)

Well then . . . okay. It makes perfect sense now that this appears on the menu at a place called Dick’s Kitchen.

I’m thinking I don’t want to talk about it. What more could I possibly add to this .. other than:

Bon Appetit!

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It has been brought to my attention that I introduced the idea of writing memoir in my blog . . .  without actually writing any. Uhm . . . Busted!!

Geez, you guys. Make me write, whydon’tcha! ~sigh~

Okay, here goes  . . .

I was born in the mythical kingdom of Koozbeen, the only child of a badly rescued princess and a recently kissed frog, both on their second marriage. Life was good until the Bugblatter Beast of Traal arrived and ate the townsfolk . . .

No, that’s not right. Ugh. You all don’t really want to hear the whole genealogical regurgitation, do you? Yeah, neither do I. We’ll get to that later, when I can think of a way to put a better spin on it. Believe me, it’s not what you think. Unfortunately no townsfolk get eaten in that version–I’m sorry to get your hopes up on that part.

Instead, let’s be all random and start out with a piece I wrote about <sarcasm>my most favorite thing, sports, . . . during my most favorite part of life: high school.</sarcasm>

This was written for a creative writing class and actually read on stage in front of people. I don’t want to talk about it. It goes something like this . . .

Poor Sport

I have a confession to make: I’m a poor sport. It’s not that I lack sportsmanship—winning or losing isn’t a big deal for me.

I just don’t get it. Grown people running back and forth, killing themselves over a round orange or white ball, or a misshapen brown ball, or placing themselves in the path of a hard threaded Frankenstein ball someone just whacked with a big stick. All this excitement and injury over who gets the ball. It’s just silly. And people pay big bucks to watch them do this. It seems to me if they just gave everyone their own ball—whichever color or shape that works for them—they’d all be happy and stop running around jumping on each other.

Of course, my confusion about playing sports may stem from how badly I suck at it—that’s what I meant about being a “poor sport.” It’s not that I didn’t try. Each time I was conscripted to play one of these competitive games in Phys. Ed. class, I’d give it my best. But—except for running—I’m just not built for that sort of thing. Thanks to several bullies I’ve had the enormous pleasure to meet in my life, I can usually outrun most anything. But make me kick or catch a ball along the way and I’m liable to make a dramatic face-plant on the turf, or knock over my fellow players like bowling pins.

20070812-02-01There is one sport I suck at in a particularly awesome way though:

Dodgeball…

Yet another silly game with balls, which I find ironic; but this one involves the biggest, strongest kids throwing stinging hard rubber projectiles at each other, but especially the easily-bruised geeky ones—like me. Someone was feeling particularly sadistic when they came up with this game.

I’m usually the last one picked for any team; but in this game, once I’m out on the polished gym floor, they get a surprise: If there’s one thing about me and pain, I’m good at getting out of its way. I can move! With a dozen of these hard rubber horrors whipping around at once, I can duck, jump, run or simply turn sideways and disappear.

Yes, sometimes that joke is true—at least back in my pre-college days.

Unfortunately, that’s where my talents end. If my team was winning, it was not due to any help from me. My throwing ability then was despicable, and catching a ball to get someone out was not an option.

If my team was losing, my evasive talents simply drew out their imminent death. At this point, the teacher would become impatient, watching my macabre survival dance, and dissolve the “do-not-cross” line between the teams. My assailants would then amass and move in for the kill. All my hard work would lead to circular bruises all over my body, rather than the expected one. You would think I’d figure this out and sacrifice myself early on … but apparently, I don’t have a mind for sports either; and survival is a hard habit to break.

In the end, with all such sports, my performance would amount to a spastic effort to avail, but end in a letdown to beat the lowest of expectations. Looking back now, it seems to make more sense to me, that if the team captains don’t really want to pick the geeky kid—the one trying to make herself invisible behind the climbing rope—and the invisible one doesn’t want to be picked—why not just let them sit out all the silliness and read a book, or play with their new calculator.

If exercise truly is mandatory, then they could be made to run laps around the field. This would’ve worked for me. I could say I ran circles around them all.

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There’s actually two of them. One is in French . . . talk about redundant.

So the thing is, I exhumed and re-animated this blog as the final project for my Women, Writing and Memoir class (or . . . I just started a literate version of the Zombie Apocalypse).

I’m actually earning credit writing this thing! (I KNOW, RIGHT!!)

But it has come to my attention, which is a hard thing to do sometimes, that there isn’t a whole lot of “Me” in my memoir-slash-bloggie-thing. Correction: There’s plenty OF me, but not a whole lot ABOUT me.

~holds hand to forehead, peers into the balcony section and utters a dramatic sigh~

Not getting out of it that easily, huh? (argh)

TARDIS2Well then, I suppose I’ll have to start feeding quarters to the old way-back machine and get it to dredge the channel for Bits of Miki. I hope they haven’t decomposed too much; otherwise I’m liable to get all sappy and serious, which makes me break out in hives.

But first, this message on the medium of “memoir”:

There’s Biography, right? And then there’s Memoir. ~looks closely~ okay, not quite conveying it.

The two are both wonderfully entertaining methods of telling a life’s story, but they are very different critters: Like Dogs and Octopusseses. Dogs will research, finding reliable dates to tell a story as History. Whereas Octopi (wait, an Octopi* is 8 x π, right?) will tell you a story from personal perspective–where the same event will happen slightly differently for each Octopus present based on their emotional focus at that moment. Octopi are all about emotion, where Dogs deal in events. Octopi can write poetically, where Dogs must keep it real. Octopi can be squidgy with the facts, as long as the meaning is authentic. Dogs just walked off in a fit of jealousy and disgust.

I don’t know why animals keep taking over my blog. ~sigh~

Anyway . . . what the octopi was trying to say was: the stories you are about to hear are true; the names, heights, genders, diets, occupations and shoe sizes may have changed to protect the innocent.

Stay tuned and buckle those seat belts . . . because it’s the law. ~giggle~

[ *My mathematician says that Octopi is = 25.13274122871835(…). My biologist seems to think that me and my mathematician are both three steps away from the loony bin. I’m more inclined to side with the math here. I think my biologist is still upset I set her poor cramped pet octopus free to live in nature . . . . how was I to know they can’t survive in the forest. I don’t want to talk about it. ]