new website

not that many people are likely to need the 6 years in the waiting redirection, but my NEW website is as follows: http//:www.jennamariesubjectively.com
see you there!

tales from the city, new york- part three: "searching for serendipity"

living in one of the largest cities in the world is a lesson in loneliness; in isolation. although that may at first seem a bit contradictory, it isn't.

the experience of being constantly surrounded by an incomprehensible number of people does a really bang up job of enforcing the singular aloneness of each and every individual for- if you can't immerse yourself in the masses of humanity within an arms length, amidst this onslaught of commonplace living-well then, what hope have you (one of billions) that it will ever be other than this (one in a billion, now and forever).

rather than attempting to bridge this gap (infinite in scope) the city dwellers, the subway riders, the Individuals (identical in their isolation) withdraw farther within. they close themselves off. to do otherwise is nothing if not impossible for how can you choose among the multitude of faces and personalities surrounding you which to identify with; who to reach out to? how do you pick which one of the endless array of beggars, all needy in comparison with you, to help out? you can't and so you don't. you are overwhelmed by the overwhelming.

nowhere brings this feeling home more poignantly than the new york city subway; a place where everyone is touching and everyone is alone.

riding the subway home from work one morning i watch the commuters on their way to work. i've just finished a 12 hour overnight shift at the bar and look no less worn out and delirious than i feel. settling back into the hard plastic of my seat, hand on the grimy steel pole beside me i look around.

at first i try to be somewhat discreet about it because it seems invasive- this watching when those being watched are so withdrawn; staring, eyes glazed, at some inner thought.

i cast safe, sidelong glances around the train car.
i look outside at the people dejectedly waiting to board.
i watch the reflections in the windows of the passengers i can't actually see from my own vantage point.

i'm on my way home from work. most of them are headed to work from home. the funny thing is- we are indistinguishable in our listless fatigue. we are all the same.

so i watch the commuters, undisturbed in my intrusions. i watch these people that are just like me but are really nothing like me at all and i am alone, just as they are. in this state of abject sleepiness i pass the time and no one meets my eyes and i am glad. and then my own sphere of self closes and i, too shut off.

somewhere along the way, under the labyrinth of streets and tunnels, a girl entered the train and sat down opposite of me. at first i didn't notice her and then i did. and once i noticed it was impossible to take it back. and she was nothing to me but for the span of five minutes she became everything. for those five minutes she was it.

my five minute obsession.

i could describe her to you in detail. what she looked like. what she was wearing. how she moved. her own manner of not looking. i could describe all of this to you but i won't because it wouldn't explain a thing and none of it matters. you wouldn't get it because the girl could have been anyone; was, in fact, anyone. it just so happened that, in this particular moment, that anyone was her.

she became the humanity that i had lost. she became everything (my link) but, the thing is, i chose her for the role. i chose the person just as i chose the role for her to play. the girl herself had nothing to do with any of it. all she had to do was be there on the train sitting across from me.

even so, this girl gave something back to me in my state of skewed delirium. she gave me exactly what i wanted and needed right then in those few minutes. in those few minutes i created her.

moments later she got up from her seat, adjusted her skirt and headphones and, without once looking directly at me, left the train.

less than a minute after that, lost again in my own sleep-deprived thoughts and foregoing further observational attempts, the girl was forgotten. she was gone.

a few weeks later, working at the bar, i handed a man the beer and shot of whiskey that he'd just ordered. opening his wallet, he removed a handful of bills and counted the ones. thirteen ones. he owed me eleven dollars for the drinks plus the standard dollar tip for each drink. thirteen dollars.

smiling, he handed me the money and said, "now if that isn't the definition of serendipity, i don't know what is."

turning away with the money in my hand i thought to myself, "if that man is right, then i want no part of this."

at this moment i felt as far from this man as any two people could be- joined only by our common misunderstanding and isolation.

turning back around to face the bar i was relieved to see that the man had gone. the man left and in his place, i thought of the girl. i thought of her for a moment and then she, too, disappeared.

tales from the city part two: new york- "lessons in stoop sitting"

as many of you know, i'll be leaving the lovely town of athens in approximately 1.5 months for the jungle known as new york city. having lived in both dublin and chicago, i am familiar with the ways of city life. even so, new york is a different beast entirely. or so i'm told.

luckily, the city already comes equipped with a number of my jaded, new york-wizened friends in varying stages of familiarity (and, consequently, degrees of love/hate) with the fair metropolis. these friends from my past have, in turn, introduced me to new friends who have their own unique histories and perspectives on functioning in the city. one of these new friends is a guy named fletcher. now, as i really like fletcher, and he insists that i mention his name as often as possible as it is his mission to build fame and notoriety for himself, i will do what i can to comply.

in any case, i met fletcher back in february when he came to visit athens and had the pleasure of hanging out with fletcher again on a recent trip to new york. i can't say that i know him (fletcher that is) well yet, especially as he seems to be constantly reinventing and cultivating his fletcher persona, but i am thus far intrigued. to give you a little background on the man behind the name, fletcher is in a few bands (and listens exclusively to music written by himself) and he works at a trendy clothing store (and has a policy on fashion summarized by this idea: find one thing that you really like and wear it until it falls off. then replace it with something else that you like and repeat the process ad infinitum. in his own words- "i only care about first impressions. if i meet a chick and she doesn't want to make out with me the first time, she probably isn't going to change her mind later on."). he is also a writer (nothing to add here as of yet except that fletcher and i are planning to start a new writing revolution in brooklyn sans coffee and whiskey as he doesn't drink either. i'm sure i, however, can manage to drink enough of both for the both of us). despite having his finger in so many pies, fletcher frequently (perhaps daily?) makes time for his true occupation: stoop sitting.

i'll admit, when i first met fletcher i was a little leery of this "stoop sitting" business. i pictured a fancy sex in the city manhattan stoop with wide stairs and a cold, austere feel to it. here fletcher would sit, lonely and ignored by the busy new yorkers on their way to wherever it is that new yorkers go. alternatively, i imagined a dirty, littered stoop where passersby glanced into the shadows to see a motionless figure huddled in the corner. not really knowing what to think about his dedication to stoop sitting, i asked fletcher if people ever thought he was homeless and tried to give him money or food. fletcher though about it and admitted that once someone threw a quarter into his cup of coffee and he was irritated because he wasn't done drinking it yet. "that's too bad", i replied, still confused by the situation.

in reality, fletcher's stoop isn't like either one of my imagined scenarios. it's a normal stoop- small, with broken concrete stairs, situated in a busy, trendy brooklyn neighborhood in front of an insurance company or something. i know because i have now been there. i've seen it and done a little stoop sitting of my own...

after meeting up with fletcher for lunch one afternoon, we headed to his usual spot- "fletcher's stoop". i had seen it earlier that day when a friend pointed it out to me, but this was to be my inaugural stoop sitting experience. fletcher settled into his groove, back up against the railing at what he claimed was the most comfortable angle. an angle that i was unfortunately unable to duplicate as the railing kept digging uncomfortably into my back the entire time. stoop sitting apparently takes some practice and dedication to master. more on that later.

so we sat in our varying degrees of comfort and watched people. and judged them. according to fletcher, that's part of the stoop sitting process- judging passerby. i'm still confused on what exactly fletcher was judging because i know what i was judging, and it was people's fashion sense (or lack thereof). as we've already discussed fletcher's fashion policy, i believe that it's safe to conclude that fashion wasn't what he was judging. well, whatever his judgments entailed, we sat and watched and judged and discussed the art of stoop sitting, among other things of course (like fashion and writing).

looking to my right, i saw another stoop that looked cleaner, more comfortable, and all around more inviting than fletcher's stoop. when i asked him why he chose the particular stoop we were on instead of the one right next to us he replied that the stoop to our right was traditionally occupied by "hush hush", a homeless man who stoop sits and begs for money in a voice so low that no one ever hears him. a quiet voice is an unfortunate handicap if one's occupation is panhandling and, according to fletcher, hush hush's enterprise doesn't usually seem to be a very lucrative one.

it was at about this time that i was truly initiated into stoop sitting. i mean, if stoop sitters had a fraternity, their hazing rituals would most definitely involve this: getting shat on by a pigeon. yes sir. there we were- minding our own business, enjoying the day and stoop sitting to our hearts' content when the magic of the experience was interrupted by a warm splash on the back of my neck. one. then another.

i froze, knowing instantly what it was. moving very slowly so as to avoid any further soiling caused by the mess running down my shirt, i eased my gaze upwards to see a pigeon butt slyly peeking over the edge of the roof about 40 feet above my head. yup. pigeon shit.

eyes wide, i told fletcher the sad news. he shook his head in denial and suggested hopefully that it was just rain or condensation from an air conditioner. no dice. i gestured towards the offending pigeon butt still visible roosting on the roof's edge and he accepted the truth of the situation. i had pigeon shit on me. here is where our new friendship was put to the test. i needed a paper towel, and quick. i, however, was loath to move lest the shit create an even bigger mess. the closest place to get help was at thai thai, a thai restaurant across the street where, according to fletcher, all of the employees hate him because of his habit of getting take-out from them and then proceeding to eat it across the street on his stoop. the judger has been judged in this situation in that they all believe that fletcher would really prefer to eat the food in the restaurant but is just too cheap to tip. obviously unaware of fletcher's stoop sitting duty, they judge him in error. nonetheless, fletcher clearly isn't keen on the idea of running across the street and asking the waiters at thai thai for some paper towels. even so, he senses the urgency in my wide-eyed stare and after a moment's hesitation, dashes to thai thai to return momentarily with the goods.

good guy that fletcher.

that pretty much ended my first stoop sitting experience. i actually found it all to be pretty appropriate and hilarious. lesson one in stoop sitting (not to be taken lightly): do not, repeat, DO NOT stoop sit under any sort of overhang or you will end up with shit on you. lesson learned the hard way thank you very much. i think fletcher may have felt a little bad about it, but the way i see it, my stoop sitting experiences can only go up from there. i hope. afterwards, i did notice that fletcher's chosen side of the stoop was free of any overhanging objects that might be attractive to pigeons. so there is more to choosing your stoop position than mere happenstance.
smart guy that fletcher.

later on in the week, i decided to give it another go. i was by myself and it was nighttime so i figured i would be safe from pigeons and humiliation, if it came in another form, would be witnessed by none besides myself. leaning against the railing on fletcher's side of the stoop (better to be safe in some cases...), i imagined myself in this same spot in less than two months, a legitimate resident of this strange city. homeless still, maybe. poor, definitely. but ready for this anonymity and solitude. for this change. for this. all of it.

the last moa (by request)

the moa (pronounced "mower") were a group of about ten related bird species from new zealand that became extinct after the arrival of homo sapiens (and dogs and rats) between 1100 and 1700ad. large and flightless, the moa varied in size but the largest weighed upwards of 500 pounds. before the arrival of humans, their main predator was a giant eagle. (how awesome is it that there was once an eagle that could take out a five hundred pound bird?) that predator, the harpagornis is, of course, also extinct.


moa belong to a genetically related group of flightless birds known as ratites. living members of this group include emus, ostriches, and kiwi, among others. interestingly, the moa are the only birds that have lost any physical trace that they once had wings and flew. (shit, even whales still have pelvic remnants. but the moa? no skeletal indications of an upper limb at all.)

ratites are an interesting group of animals in that they exhibit reverse sexual dimorphism, meaning that the females are larger (sometimes even twice as big) as their male partners and that the male birds raise the young while the females gallivant about in the forest, eating large quantities of leaves and shrubs to keep up their massive size so that they can compete with each other for the choicest of the little male birds. there is actually an article on the moa entitled:

"Female Moa Bird Liked the Little Guys, Studies Suggest"

the article settled the issue of how the large female moa got it on with the tiny males by explaining that "In ostrich, following prolonged courtship, the female sits before the male jumps on. Presumably, with some maneuvering, such a system may have also functioned in Dinornis."

(hmm. that ridiculous image is possibly why i've never been able to date anyone more than a few inches shorter that me. i guess if i were a moa or an ostrich i might feel differently.)

(ostrich mating dance. the little one is the male. the tall, bitchy one is the female)

there you have it. the moa, in summary.

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a bird-obsessed friend of mine told me about the moa and said i should look them up. so i did. and then i got to thinking. not about the moa per se, but about extinct animals in general. about what it might be like to be that last one of your kind. what would you do? would the last of the moa have been lonely? would it have known that there were no others left? that it and all of its ancestors amounted to a great big genetic zero? that it was at the end of its line and had nothing to show for it? would the last (had she been female) giant moa have kept searching until the end of her days for her tiny romeo or would she have eventually given up? would her drive to pass on her genetic information to another generation have consumed her being or would she have just been like "fuck it, what's the point?" and gotten it on with some other little male bird? an emu maybe? just for fun? ducks do that interspecies breeding thing. why not the last moa?

i guess i'm projecting too many human qualities onto the moa, but still...

what if you were it? the last representation of a lineage millions of years old. when you died your life would have meant nothing. would have been irrelevant and pointless.

i think that every person i know feels that way about themselves in some sense. maybe that explains why so many people have such a fear of death. why people need religion. need a meaning beyond simply living. we've forgotten that we are part of such a long-spanning and interconnected history and see ourselves as individual and unique species in our own right. individuals whose death will blot out for ever our lives that will have essentially meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. we'll become another big zero, just like the moa and all of the moa that came before. just another nothing in a history of 99.9% zeros. just another ending in this ongoing continuum of genetics and time.

continuum.
continuing.
a true end really makes no sense when we're talking time and genetics.
meaninglessness negates itself in such a perspective.
even for such as the moa (genetic zeros though they are).
and humans (self-absorbed fools that we are).

cultivated isolationism

i left the house the other day in a mood. in a zone.

i put my sunglasses on even before i stepped out of the front door. wanting that extra bit of isolationism offered by the dark lenses that might keep my expression hidden.

i wanted to cultivate my own bit of separation, drag out my sense of being alone. to masochistically enjoy my depression and protect its fragility. from people. from light. from my own emotional flagellations.

in the car i put on my favorite depressive music, guaranteed to further draw out any feelings of sadness that threatened to dissipate or, at the very least, lessen in severity.

there, caught up in an environment of my own creation, i set out on a drive.

egotistically absorbed in my own self, i looked up to see two birds flying high above the highway. two birds flying in perfect synchronization. for one second. maybe two. then their beats became once again unique but for an instant i was witness to perfection in coincidence. to something meaningless acquiring a meaning beyond the simple happenstance, the accidental beauty of the event.

i removed my sunglasses only to realize that the day was completely overcast. gray and sunless.

watching the birds (no longer representations of something larger. now only birds), i put my sunglasses back on.

indecisively removing them once again, i squinted at the sky but then gave up and wore the unnecessary glasses.

it was only later when i noticed that the passing cars had their headlights on that i decided to finally put them away.

even so, in the protective darkness of nighttime i kept looking to the sky.

hating the "HEY!": rip the "hey" man

now, i don't have any confirmation that my one-time neighbor (known to me as the "hey" man) is actually deceased, but once i explain the meaning of his name, you will likely agree with my thought that no one in their right mind would allow the "hey" man to survive as their neighbor for very long. therefore, i am sorry to say that they "hey" man has probably become the unfortunate victim of a violent crime and is no longer with us.

rip the "hey" man.

i mentioned that no one would allow the "hey" man to be their neighbor for very long and yet i then referred to him as my one-time neighbor. confusing? yes, but let me explain. the "hey" man lived at the prince rondaval apartment complex. the only place on the face of the earth that could possibly put up with his idiosyncrasies. and then just barely (i heard quite a few angry words directed towards him but suprisingly never saw any actual violence).

the prince rondaval apartments themselves were unique to say the least. almost as unique as their one-time resident, the "hey" man. almost, but not quite. the origin of this structure remains unknown to me but it looked to be a one-time motel that was built in the late 60's or early 70's and later converted into apartments. very odd apartments. in fact, i don't think the majority of people on the athens board were very fond of them and most quite possibly considered them to be an eyesore. hence it's recent demolition.

rip the prince rondaval apartment complex.

i didn't actually live in the rondavals, but my house was right next door. right next door. so i had the "luck" to be within hearing distance of what went on outside the complex. you know- on the porches and in the parking lot, and, let me tell you, many interesting things went down outside that quirky little apartment building. but none so interesting as the "hey" man who became both the bane of my existence and the humor in it for the 6 months that i lived next to him.

my first introduction to the "hey" man occurred shortly after my move in. i believe that i was unpacking my kitchen supplies and i had the kitchen windows open as it was early summer and a beautiful day. i was listening to music and going about my business and then i heard someone singing opera. or at least trying to approximate operatic singing. i turned my music down to hear better and was greeted with some figaro-type singing that then descended into a tarzan yell and eventually ended with some canine howling. this went on for some time. at first i was amused. that was before i heard his signature "HEY!".

now, i'm going to try hard not to make fun of mr."hey" man because i'm certain that he must have some sort of mental condition (or five, or ten) that was complicated by his unchanging habit of sitting on his front porch, drinking something from a red dixie cup, and yelling at no one and everyone. seriously though, that man came close to driving me insane with his fucking "HEY!". the singing and even the howling i could handle, but there was something so unpredictable and jarring about every one of the thousands of HEY's i had to put up with that i had daydreams and regular dreams and constant fantasies of buying a gun, taking aim from my bedroom window, and... well you know. they were highly illegal fantasies to say the least.

for those of you who never experienced the "hey" man's "HEY!" i probably sound like the crazy one but i swear to you that if i ever go to hell, the worst punishment i could possibly imagine is hearing the "hey" man for all eternity. it would go something like this:

"HEY!...................HEY!..HEY!......HEY!.....HEY!....HEY!

HEY!..............................................HEY!....................HEY!....

................HEY!..................................................................................

.................................................................HEY!HEY..HEY!.............HEY!.....etc..."

as you can see, there is no pattern to the HEY's. no way to predict when the next one would happen, so once he began, i was constantly on edge. waiting for the next "HEY!" but never knowing when it would occur. and even when the "hey" man was blessedly silent i was still on edge because there was also no temporal scheme to his outbursts. no way to prepare for, say, his weekly sunday night "HEY!" session or whatever. sometimes he would "HEY!" on the weekends at 4 in the morning. other times it would be the middle of the day on tuesday. one particular time he started early thursday evening, was still going strong when i got home at 2 am, kept me up until 4, was presumably still going at it as i fitfully slept, and then woke me up again at 7am.

gotta love the "hey" man. his vocal stamina is equal to or greater than that of any barking dog, crying baby, hysterical woman, or ambulance siren i have ever heard. however, as much as i learned to despise the "hey" man, i did worry about his mental health. i mean, when i wasn't wishing an untimely death upon him.

you see, in most ways the "hey" man's outbursts were unpredictable, but he did have certain unchanging habits. like the fact that every time i saw him he would be sitting on his front porch, red cup in hand, wearing nothing but some old jeans and a ratty, tattered, straw cowboy hat. no shirt and no shoes (apparently he wasn't expecting any service). and when i say every time i saw him he was thus attired, i really mean every time. even in the middle of january during an ice storm. seriously. wandering around the parking lot with his trusty red cup, just a'HEYing to his little heart's content. i guess whatever he drank out of that cup must have done something to keep him warm. that and the insanity.

in any case, the "hey" man really added something intangible (and hopefully unrepeatable) to my life in athens that i will likely never forget. even so, i had sort of put him out of my mind until recently when i noticed that the prince rondaval apartment complex was suddenly gone. completely plowed over and erased within the span of a week. sadly, with the loss of the apartments came the loss of the "hey" man. granted, i no longer lived next door to him and i hated his guts (and most especially his vocal cords), but i'm feeling a bit nostalgic about athens as my time here nears its close. for the second time.

so anyway, this is my tribute to the "hey" man even though i really fucking hated that guy. may he rest in peace, or if he is still with us, may god help his poor neighbors.

possums in the attic

the house i currently live in is a cute, wwII-era manufactured home in the normaltown district of athens. despite the fact that it is frigidly cold at the moment and i am writing in the guise of an old woman cowering beneath a multitude of blankets, i enjoy living here.

even so, this house has its quirks. like the mysteriously flickering lights that eventually resulted in freaky power surges that made me think the entire house was either going to burn down or mimic a scene from poltergeist. we were without power for a few days until our landlords finally responded to our many emergency calls and sent someone to check it out. this was especially pleasant as it was the middle of summer. the culprit turned out to be neither a ghost nor faulty wiring but a pesky squirrel that likes to knaw on power lines.

then there was the mysterious odor that presented itself to us as an unpleasant whiff here and there and that gradually grew to an unbearable, odiferous stench. we had, of course, notified our landlords before it got to this point. they sent someone out a week and a half later. the men thought i was crazy since by that time whatever unfortunate animal had made its last dying refuge in the crawl space beneath my home had decomposed to the point where there was no longer a smell of any sort. the heat of an athens summer and the industrious work of our decomposer friends helped out a bit with that one.

maybe you're catching onto a pattern here? my house issues seem to mostly involve interactions with the resident wildlife. and i haven't even mentioned the interesting array of insect species that were drawn to my bathroom light all summer long. i considered starting an insect collection. seriously. i've lived in athens for a while and never seen anything to equal this varietal display of arthropod species. at least not inside.

perhaps my house is a sort of dr.doolittle of buildings. drawing in wildlife and offering them some sort of refuge. or death as the case may be. i can't say that many of those insects ever escaped. although i tried to free the more interesting ones but gave up at some point because there were just too many and they kept coming back. as for the squirrel... well, i can't imagine that chewing on live power lines is a very safe habit to have. which brings me to my new housemate. the opossum.

the suicidal possum i've decided. what wild animal in its right mind decides to take up residence in a home occupied by three people, two large cats, and a 45 pound dog that barks at it?

this possum is crazy i tell you. crazy.

(the following information is courtesy of the peterson field guide to mammals)
didelphis marsupialis: the only north american marsupial. prehensile tail. often seen in beam of auto headlights or dead along highways (or in jenna's house). farming habitats preferred but also found in woodlands or along streams (or in jenna's house). sometimes hunted for sport, especially in the south (hmmm...). occasionally raids poultry yards (often raids jenna's house). the only wildlife species that is considered to be clinically insane (ok, i made that part up).

you get the point.

when first i made the surprised acquaintance of my new roommate, he was just a cute little thing. probably not too many days gone from hanging out on his mom's back with his 13 or so other siblings. our first two encounters went something life this:

5:30 am. scuffling noises in my bedroom. must be one of the cats. shut up cat. back to sleep.
6:15 am. still dark. more noises but no meowing. my cats are loud. this is unusual. whatever, it's 6:15 in the morning. shut up cat. back to sleep.
6:30 am. what the fuck? turn the light on. silence. kitty? nothing. hmm. fall asleep with the light on.
7:00 am. i'm going to kill that damn cat. where the fuck are you? noises coming from the bookcase next to my bed. well, hello little thing. you're not a cat.
not a cat indeed. more like a tiny, 2 pound baby possum hanging out on my bookshelf. trying to catch up on some reading perhaps. i'm sure "the unifying neutral theory of biogeography" is riveting to this possum. it does deal with relevant wildlife issues but... ok, anyway.
so i grab a shirt and pick up the little guy to take it outside. it seems pretty chill about it all. nothing more aggressive than a tiny little hiss and then it just hangs out and looks at me. cute little thing.
so i take it outside and put it on a tree branch. possums live in trees don't they? it flops over and looks dead. i scrutinize it and worry that i somehow hurt it. it is really little after all. and then i realize. it's doing what possums do. playing possum. oh, that little rascal.
7:15 am. finally back to bed.
i tell my roommate the story and she freaks out and thanks the good lord that it was in my room and not hers. i try to tell her how small and babyish and cute it was but she looks at me like i'm crazy.


2 days later:
5:30 am. scuffle. scuffle. no way. can't be. that idiot possum. i'll pretend it's the cats and go back to sleep.
6:00 am. i hate you possum. what kind of fool animal comes back to a house where there are three animals that want to eat it? light on. nothing.
6:30 am. time to get up for work. i know you're in here stupid. stop hiding. no luck. my coercing doesn't convince the possum to come out. i see neither hide nor tail of it and think (hope) i'm just being paranoid but i close the door to my room to trap him there just in case.
5:00 pm. i open my door. my roommate is home and is proceeding to freak out when i tell her that our little friend has come back. she hopes i'm wrong but what's this on my bed? tiny shit. no joke. a present from our guest. on my pillow. kind of like those nice hotel chocolates but not anything like that at all. thanks little buddy. so where is he? curled up in my suitcase among my clothes.


damn he's cute. i tell my roommate and she once again thinks i'm crazy but she comes to look and immediately exclaims over his cuteness and approximation of domesticity. she wants to keep him. sort of. then she worries about his home life. maybe he's an abandoned orphan and is going to die? maybe he's lonely and wants to make friends? i look at her like she's crazy and put him outside.

this all happened in the summer. after those two incidents we made sure to keep our attic door closed and this seems to have done the trick. no more possum in the house. almost. now he lives in the walls.

we weren't sure that it was him until recent evidence confirmed our suspicions:


prior to visual confirmation, we thought that it was perhaps a raccoon, or a large bobcat, or possibly even a bear owing to the loud and disturbing racket that it makes when going about its evening business within our walls.

since we cut off his access to the inside of our house we've come to accept his presence. even the animals are accustomed to his nightly forays although they do get a little bit antsy when he's hanging out in the vent and watching what's going on in the living room. his eyes glow. it can be a little creepy. otherwise we're all just one big happy family. until we get our heat turned on and the vents possibly become a little too hot for comfort. my roommate is very concerned about that. in fact, i have a sneaking suspicion that that is why we don't have our heat turned on even though it is really fucking cold. i guess that's what space heaters are for...

americana- part one: walmart and goth don't mix

oh walmart. embraced by america. hated by america. representative of all that is american and all that is wrong with america.

on a recent trip to visit my family in the wonderful land of suburbia i was sent on a mission to acquire curtain rods from walmart. they were for my grandmother so if you are the judging, walmart-despising type you can just hold your tongue because she lived through the depression and is "thrifty" and now we'll just move along with the story.

a few years ago my parents moved farther away from the city of atlanta because roswell, the idyllic, upper middle-class, republican, mind-numbing home of my youth had gotten overrun with strip malls and suv's and soccer moms to the point that even my own parents couldn't take it any more. so they moved. to (ahem) forsyth county. from what i can tell, forsyth is much like north fulton except that the suv's all have four wheel drive and trailer hitches and the strip malls don't necessarily have a starbucks on the corner. not yet anyway. oh, and there are more white people.

in essence, forsyth is like roswell only a little more redneck. more georgia if you will. if you're not from atlanta then you may not realize that atlanta is (for the most part) nothing like the rest of georgia. imagine then what a walmart (not known for it's upscale clientele in even the richest of suburbs) in cumming, georgia (pronounced coming or cuming depending upon how dirty your mind is) might be like. let's just say that a barefoot, pregnant brittney spears would fit right in. on the other hand, goth, a style popularized in the eighties and made mainstream by the likes of robert smith and marilyn manson, does not fit in quite as well. does not fit in at all actually. in fact, even though goth has been around for at least two decades it has never really caught on in forsyth county. or so i gathered form the following interaction i witnessed at the walmart in cumming, ga:

a pale young man with long, dyed black hair and wearing a black trench coat, black shorts, and black combat boots exits walmart accompanied by his pregnant girlfriend? wife? sister? mom? who is similarly attired. (note to reader: in any slightly urban, cultured environment this couple would walk by unnoticed. we can therefore conclude that cumming, ga is completely uncultured. yes, that is a scientifically sound deduction.)

a woman in her mid 40's- mid 50's is walking towards the entrance to walmart with her gangly-limbed teenage son walking a few steps behind and pretending that he isn't with her.

the goth couple and the woman pass by one another.

minsicule pause.

woman to her son with a loud voice as stereotypically redneck as you could hope for: "did ewe say thayt!? thayt mayn had grain nail polish awn. nhat just ahny grain ayther. baybah shit grain!!!" (translation: "did you see that? that man had green nail polish on. not just any green either. baby shit green!!!")

um, ok. personally i find a woman yelling about baby shit to her teenage son in a public setting to be vastly more offensive that some dude with green nail polish. i guess that's just me.

so here's the point and i'm going to try not to sound classist and and offensive myself but fuck it really i'm so goddamn sick of america and its bullshit ideals and the idea that we should and do rule the world with the almighty's blessing that i could scream and rip my passport in two except that would mean that i would have to pay to get another passport made so that i can actually leave this damn country-my home- at some point in the future once i finally give up on the idea that we americans can redeem ourselves.

whew. glad i got that out. anyway, i've always known that there aren't really enough rich, narrow-minded republicans to put george w. in the white house. what i had forgotten is that he appeals to the ignorant, narrow-minded masses of americans also. and while it's not my place to blame anyone that may not have had the educational opportunities that i had, i'm tired of the willful ignorance that plagues this country. the lack of perspective possessed by most americans is appalling and i don't know how to change it. how can you force a world view on someone who has never seen the world- whose world consists of a bunch of people just like them and a walmart?

yes, all that stemmed from a chance encounter at the local walmart. what can i say? i have a tendency to overthink things.

god bless the u. s. of a.!

down-home fascists

maybe i'm just a traitor to my smoking friends, but i'm really happy about this new total smoking ban in athens. for completely selfish reasons of course- i hate the smell of cigarettes. sure, i'm all for personal liberties (some might consider me a libertarian on that issue), but no one is saying that you smokers can't smoke. you just can't do it in public. you can't pee or shit in public either but i haven't heard any complaints about that recently. what's that you say? that's because public defecation is a health issue? exactly. i mean, just because i willingly endanger my liver and up my chances for cirrhosis most nights of the week doesn't mean that i want lung cancer, too. one self-induced mortal illness is enough for me, thanks.

as for the drop in buisness expected by downtown buisness owners, i'll readily admit that i can see a difference in the number of persons patronizing the local bars right now. in fact, i was at the manhattan the other night and there were about 10 people crammed into the tiny outdoor bar space and only two of us inside (well, four if you count the bartenders). room 13 had a similarly low turnout (concentrated outside under a haze of smoke of course). i liked it. sure, the ban might initially be bad for business but, call me crazy, i imagine that most bar flies aren't going to opt to stay home and drink beer all by their lonesomes just so they can wash down each sip with a refreshing puff of tar and nicotine. give it a few weeks and i bet everything will be back to normal at the bars. only less smelly.

of course, in the grand scheme of things, this new resolution isn't really all that important. sure i'm personally happy to wake up after a night out on the town without smelling like a rancid, beer-soaked carton of cigarettes, but that's small change when you think about the state of the world today and where we young, inspired, politically-minded americans should be focusing our energy and anger.

or am i wrong? is this issue what really gets us up in arms? give me a fucking break. and yet the following letter can be found in this week's flagpole magazine:

"I have been an avid smoker for 27 years now, and I am infuriated by the new smoking ban. I agree with the guy who said that this smacks of fascism. I would like to invite all of the smokers out there to engage in a sweeping act of solidarity and commit an act of civil disobedience and meet us in front of the Georgia Theatre on Aug. 13 at 7 p.m. We will meet in front and light up and then form a procession that will march all the way around downtown, stopping off at restaurants and bars along the way, ending up at the courthouse in grand fashion. Feel free to bring your own signs and/ or sandwich boards. Fight for your free choice, Athens!

Edward Holand Athens"

fascism? what? fury? huh? i'm confused. i sincerely hope that this letter is a joke but in case it isn't i would like to say the following:

edward, i understand your desire to express your freedom of choice, but to get all riled up about smoking seems like a waste of breath (cough, cough) and anger. i'm all for civil disobedience as a way to express dissatisfaction with the rule-makers of the world. hell, we could certainly have used some more motivated individuals like yourself prior to the "war on terror". demonstrations and the like can be powerful tools to effect public change but not when that tool is trivialized. i mean, smoking? dude, i don't give a rat's ass if you smoke 2 packs a day for the rest of your shortened lifetime. go for it. it just makes me sad that such a petty issue is what inspires you to take action. think about it. aren't there at least a million other things that your time would be better spent fighting for?

fuck it. now i'm depressed. anyone got a light?

car notes- part one: mistaken identity

i borrowed my dad's car this past week and after going out one night received this note on my windshield:




it freaked me out. until i realized that i'm not dating (much less living with) anyone, that my father is still alive, and that i'm not fucking anyone named mark ("the piece of shit"). then i decided that it was kind of funny that i received this scathing, psychotic note on my car. that someone could flip out over something as simple as seeing a generic vehicle parked downtown and could leave such a ridiculous note without even checking to see if it was even the correct car.

first reaction: freaked out
second reaction: amusement
third reaction: scared as shit for the poor girl this note was intended for. who knows, maybe she is two-timing "j" and he's had enough of it but his instinctive, out of control reaction to seeing a car downtown makes me think that he is possibly a little off his rocker and that he might have a tendency to overreact. greatly overreact. at least he said that he would only "CALL THE POLICE" if she came home and not beat the shit out of her. i'm not trying to be flippant- that stuff happens more than most of us realize. in any case, i hope he cooled down after writing the note and that if he happens across this blog that he feels foolish and doesn't decide to find me and kill me or something.

my advice to "j": take your meds and, if this girl really is so horrible, just leave her and get on with your life. oh, and have a pleasant day.

mountain wildlife

i spent last thursday and friday up at coweeta attempting to do my fieldwork even though i've already quit and am having a difficult time motivating myself. each day the was pretty miserable except for my wildlife encounters.

day one i saw this guy:

hello mr. copperhead. he was very polite and let me come close enough to take his picture. he didn't move a muscle until i rudely poked him with my tripod 3 or 4 times to get him out of the road. then he made his way into the underbrush and i realized that i had directed him into one of my sampling sites. oops. hopefully we won't have any unpleasant confrontations in the future.

on day two i ran into this wild beast:

she was not as well behaved as mr. snake. ms. kitty ran yowling from the woods and scrambled up my jeans and shirt and then perched herself on my shoulder and made it pretty clear that she was not a wild forest kitty and that she would appreciate it if i remedied the situation as soon as possible. so i took her home (my two cats are most displeased), gave her a name (adel- short for adelgis tsugae, the insect species i was/am still somehow suckered into studying for the next month or two), and found her a home (eli will be the best cat owner ever).

so there you have it. i wonder if anyone would have adopted the copperhead if i brought it home? anyone? come on now you guys. he doesn't have enough venom to actually kill you. unless he bites your face or neck or something.

regret and mediocrity

decisions are difficult to make because once you've chosen one option you've automatically rejected at least one other. and what if that other was the "correct" one? how can you know? so you vacillate back and forth and finally settle on something. not because you want to but because you have to.

if you're lucky, you're one of the few individuals with faith in their ability to make the right decision. with the type of personality that doesn't look back and wonder "what if" after the fact. what if you had gone with the other option? would that one have been better? would you not feel that sense of regret?

when i was younger and slightly more optimistic i vowed to make every life decision with the idea that i would never have any regrets. whatever i chose to do, i would chose based upon my innate ability to decipher right from wrong. as if my life were laid out before me in black and white- a single line with the occasional branching point stretched out before me. the correct branch would, of course, be obvious once i reached it and i would follow it unerringly and look back in my old age to a life correctly lived. my own yellow brick road leading me toward fulfillment and away from regret.

now that i'm a bit more mature and less of the idealistic stranger to myself that i was a few years back, i recognize that there is never a correct path. that no matter what decisions you make in your lifetime, you will automatically have to exclude some options that may have been, in a sense, right for you. and you will have regrets. there is no way around it.

regret almost feels like nostalgia to me. bittersweet. it's like looking back at something fondly remembered except that it never actually happened. i think the quality of regret that lends it to nostalgia is that it's very inexistence allows you to idealize what could have been and what will never be- to create a possible reality for your life that never would have existed anyway. but oh if it had! what my life could have been! to think of all of the possible lives i could have lived... nostalgia times fifty. nostalgia times one thousand. infinite nostalgia...

i know i'm not really very old, but sometimes i feel like i am. is my life winding down or just beginning? i can no longer tell. sometimes it seems to me that life is full of mediocrity and failure and that i don't want any part of it because i embody that mediocrity. that meaninglessness. at other times i feel like i will never get enough of the experiences life has to offer. at these times an overwhelming feeling of disappointment (and excitement) that i will never live long enough to experience it all weighs on me and pushes me back out of my everydayness and into the world. i feel frantic and seek change. constant change. constant stimulation. are there other unfound remedies for this restlessness? i certainly hope so.

i can live with regret because i have to. what i can't live with is mediocrity. so i'm still looking for a cure for the commonplace even though i don't really believe that one exists. does this mean that i will have to learn to accept mediocrity in my life just as i now accept regret? hmm, check back with me in five years.

tales from the city part one: new york- "there's a god-wind a-blowin"

immediately after my arrival at the new york, laguardia airport i am struck by the strangeness of people. sure people in athens are pretty strange, but i'm used to all of them. and once you're accustomed to something (or someone) it's no longer strange, now is it?

so new york people- visitors and residents alike- man they're odd. take "david" for example. my friend leslie and i met him on the bus from the airport to the train. the bus was packed with people and most of them had gigantic suitcases with them. suitcases stategically placed to block the aisles and prevent anyone from getting on or off the bus and, in the process, incur the wrath of the bus driver who refused to budge until the aisles were cleared. needless to say we were there a while.

as leslie and i caught up with the happenings in eachother's lives i could see david watching us. waiting for his in. he struck me as strange right off the bat. there was just something a little off, a little contrived, about his carefully cultivated rocker style. he was an attractive guy but his hair was a little too bleached (sun-in maybe?) and carefully messed up. his clothes were a little too urban outfitter-esque to be an expression of his own unique style. his guitar case looked too clean to have put in much time on the road. and his not so subtle, trying-to catch-our eyes coyness was a bit too determined. he appeared to have an agenda. so we ignored him.

unfortunately the bus remained immobile for quite some time and as leslie and i launched into my failed graduate school plans at uga and what i was going to do instead, i made the fatal mistake of mentioning the possibility that i would go to austin. to the university of texas where there is a great ecology program.

oops. texas was the in. how was i to know that? too late to take it back.

"TEXAS?" frown. "texas is a terrible place."

of course it is. bush country. rich right-wing republican haven. blah. blah. but nope, that's not what david meant at all. david is from oklahoma and, according to him, there is deep, long-standing hatred between oklahomians ("oklahomians"? did i just make that up?) and texans due, not to political differences, but to a college football rivalry. his fellow travelers nod enthusiastically in heartfelt, heartland solidarity. fascinating. football, my favorite topic.

but david didn't really want to talk football, gosh darn it. he wanted to talk GOD. of course. a christian rocker. how did i not spot it immediately? he was in town from oklahoma with the aisle blockers to "hang out at the park and play some music and talk to people" (read- to "save heathen souls such as mine and leslie's and show them the ways of our lord and savior jesus christ and maybe get laid in the process if that was god's will, amen.")

really, i shouldn't make fun of him too much because he was a nice guy despite his agenda. he wasn't a pusher. he just talked a little bit about what he was doing and asked us about ourselves and just casually mentioned that he was going to be in washington square park on friday night if we wanted to stop by. well, we didn't want to stop by but we acted our part and said that we might just do that (when hell freezes over).

but then fate or coincidence (or GOD?) had a different plan for us and we found ourselves meeting a couple of people at that same park on that same night.

while sitting by the fountain with our friends joseph and ian, leslie and i looked around for david. there was a large gang of "folks" gathered around a few guitar players but our david wasn't with the other rabble-rousers from oklahoma. now, you can blame it on the frame of mind created by the companionable passing of a flask of whiskey among friends, but leslie and i were disappointed. we actually wanted to see good old david. maybe we felt the pull of salvation or maybe we just felt a bit drunk and silly. at any rate, we kept checking back with the christians to see if he would show up.

and then, finally, there he was. david. so we got all excited and pointed him out to joseph and ian who didn't really give a shit. except that when ian saw who we were pointing at he got a funny look on his face. a look that appeared to be a definite mixture of disgust and humor.

i:"that's the guy?"
l and me: "yup."
i: funny facial expression continues.
me: "why? what the hell? do you know him?"
i: "um....no but we were just in the bathroom together and....never mind."
me: "what? just spit it out."
i: "well..." makes a weak, wheezy, singsong farting noise.
me: "what the fuck was that? he farted? if so, that was the most pathetic farting noise ever."
l: "he either farted or sang a really weird song in the bathroom."
i: getting more enthusiastic "dude, he didn't just fart. he let it rip like no one i've ever heard before. it was like he just didn't care who heard him."
me: "that's because god will love him anyway."
j: snorts
me: "did it smell bad?"
i: his expression says it all. i think it's safe to say that it didn't smell like roses.
l: "gross" drinks some whiskey, hands me the flask.
i: "i think i'm ready for a hit off of that flask now." drinks. grimaces.
me: "christians fart, too? it's too bad god can't cure that. if he could i bet a lot of people might suddenly convert to christianity." tilts it back again.
j: "who wants to go see billy graham with me on sunday?"
me: "are you hoping god will cure your farts if you convert?"
j: "i'm already christian."
me: "oh, yeah. i guess it's official then. christianity is not a cure for gas."
j: mean look directed at me

then, as we got up to leave, leslie and i got another surge of desire to converse with david and his crew. as we drew closer to the crowd we hesitated. stopped. and then veered away from them completely. i guess we just weren't feeling god that night. or maybe we were just afraid that we might get caught downwind from david and his pals.

if it was god that tried to bring us together, it must have been a powerful wind indeed that blew us apart.

premature goodbye

new york city. what can i say? i've lived in chicago. i've lived in dublin. i've been to cities all over the u.s. and europe but so far no other place has screamed CITY, has represented what i always imagined a city should be, would be, like new york has. the first time i went to new york i was 21 or 22. since then i've been there 4 or 5 more times and it never changes. that feeling that i am in the one place that defines the word city.

i've never though of myself as a city person. for a time i even thought that i wanted to forsake all society and live in the middle of nowhere away from all people. seriously. but now... i don't know, maybe 3 years in chicago changed me. now it seems that i miss the stimulation of city life. the people-watching alone keeps me endlessly entertained. the culture. the museums. the variety in everything. all things you can't find in athens.

not that i don't love athens. it has it's own charm. it's own draw. living in athens is like living in a comfortable, predictable bubble of like-minded people. easy. simple. but i'm back to the point where easy and simple bore me. i need a challenge. that's not to say that my past two years in athens haven't been difficult. they have and i've learned a lot about myself. i've changed a lot, too. for the better? who knows? i do know that i am a different person than i was when i came back two years ago. essentially the same, but still different somehow.

in any case, sometimes you just know when your time somewhere has been used up. when a place, even one that you love, has nothing left to offer you. or what it does have to offer is no longer enough to make you stick around.

the conundrum that is athens- you feel forced to leave because life here is so easy. too easy. so you must go for the sake of your own self-preservation and in order to salvage what is left of the productivity that you set aside during your athens interlude. at the same time, if you leave you're always trying to resist it's pull- that call back to your comfort zone. somehow athens has become the closest thing to home that you know.

i'll miss athens. especially all of the amazing people that i've met and even what it's taught me about who i am and who i want to be. it has been a necessary stop in my life but it's getting close to time for me to move on. so this is my premature goodbye to athens.

i'm not going to michigan but neither am i staying here. blame it on new york city if you want but it was really only the necessary catalyst that kicked my ass into gear. so i'm going... where? somewhere new. a city? new york? austin? tuscon? san francisco? i don't know just yet but my deadline is january 1st. maybe january will come around and i'll still be in athens and i'll have to eat my words but the way i'm feeling right now i don't think that will be the case. in the meantime i'm going to get my act together and get some shit done. finally. hopefully.

iPod blues

(this is actually bob II's japanese cousin, but the family resemblance is striking and i don't actually have a picture of bob II himself. )

my ipod, bob II (named after my first ipod, bob I) has decided to pull a bob I on me and stop working. damn those wonderful, life-changing gadgets. i have the worst luck with anything electronic. maybe i have some electric force field thing around me that short circuits anything with a microchip or a motor. who knows?

in any case, apple was kind enough to send me a shipping box and now bob II is on his way to get repaired. halleluja and praise the lord!! but what, oh what am i to do in the intervening weeks? if you don't have an ipod then you will not understand , but i have become very codependant on bob II. i now live most moments of my life to a sountrack played through cute, little white headphones and i feel lost without my dear companion! so lost that (confession time) i "borrowed" my roommate's ipod today without asking. i couldn't help it. even though her music is different i needed something to listen to. it's not my fault! ok, maybe it is, but still...

anywho. i'm hungover and my brain isn't feeling up to par so i would like to apologize for the lack of literary merit contained within this post. the main purpose of writing anything is to let you all know that i'm about to blow this town and head up to the big apple. i'll only be gone for a few days but blog fans have a tendancy to be fair-weather about their devotion and i figured that if i didn't squeeze in at least one post before i left that many of you might wander off and forget about me. so i tricked all of you into sticking around with this shitty-ass post. i'm sneaky like that. (eyes shift to the right. then to the left).

well, i'll be back soon. hopefully with some new york-inspired stories. man, that place is nuts.

chow.

michigan?

well, this post is once again just me taking a moment to FREAK OUT! um, ok. i have two weeks to decide if i want to move to ann arbor, michigan in january with my major advisor and continue grad school there. two fucking weeks. here are my four choices:

1: stay in athens for graduate school, find a new advisor, and continue on the project i have already started. unfortunately my current research is very dull. but i am almost guaranteed to finish it within two years.

2: stay in athens but look for a new advisor and a new project to work on. this option is tempting but it might be hard to find someone with funding to support me and it would take me longer to finish school. on the other hand, i could end up working on a project that really interests me (evolution) as opposed to one that doesn't (soil nitrogen dynamics).

3: move to michigan, keep my major advisor (who rules, by the way), and go to grad school up there. this would, of course, require me to uproot my life, start an entirely new research project, make new friends, etc. on the other hand, it gives me a chance to move to a new city and have a guaranteed job (i can feel that driving urge to move on, to keep looking for something new waking up again. i try to ignore it, but i've never been able to do more than temporarily still that restlessness).

4: forget school, leave athens, go somewhere fun, get a useless job, hang out for a year and then go to grad school in the fall of 2006. in ann arbor maybe?

help! two weeks!!!!

outsmarted by a crawdad

so, back before athens had that nice greenway and the current greenway entrance on oconee street was a just crappy old salvation army store, there was a small tributary of the oconee river across the street. it was there that i found my pet crayfish, little guy.

ah, little guy. we had such good times together.

when first i rescued you from your beautiful, free home and forced you to live in a small fishbowl with two dirty old goldfish you were indeed little. but how you grew. catching all of those fish flakes in your claws and biding your time. you had a plan all along to regain your freedom and i had no idea. sneaky little guy.

i didn't think that crayfish were intelligent enough to plan, but i should have realized that something was up when you started stalking the goldfish. waiting on your rock for them to swim by so that you could jump on them and hang onto their tail fins. is that how you did it? it is just a small leap from the back of a fish to the top of the bowl. i wonder...

and still you grew. and plotted your escape. and still i had no clue. feeding you more and more fish food and remarking on how cute you were and how you were getting so much bigger.

then one day, the inevitable- little guy was gone. he disappeared. i still don't know how. i looked everywhere but to no avail. finally, i was forced to come to the sad conclusion that simon the cat had eaten him. poor little guy.

later that night i went out to the manhattan and ran into my friend ben who said that he saw the strangest thing earlier that evening. what did he see? well, he was out walking his dog on milledge avenue and saw a crayfish walking down the street. casually making his way along the gutters of milledge. now i know that it's improbable that the crayfish he saw was actually little guy. milledge avenue is quite a ways from carr street but still... perhaps it was more than just a simple coincidence. perhaps little guy made his break for freedom and headed off to sorority row for some good times before making his way back to the banks of the muddy creek where we first made our acquaintance. i'll never know for sure but i certainly like that version of the story better than the idea of him in simon's stomach.

little guy. the coolest crayfish i've ever known. perhaps because he's the only crayfish i've ever known but anyway, i like to imagine him dropping into the rain gutters of milledge avenue at sunset and spending the rest of his crustaceous life listening to the sounds of bad country music blaring from the frat houses and looking up the skirts of sorority girls as they pass by chatting on their cell phones. hell, i guess it beats living in a damn fish bowl.

*addendum: eli would like me to note that little guy was also his pet. this fact was omitted from the story for the sake of simplicity. i was in no way implying that eli was a bad crayfish owner or that he was not equally invested in the welfare of little guy (rip).

who? what? nitrogen? good lord, i need a beer.

i'm currently up to my eyeballs in papers about hemlocks, nitrogen, invasive species, earthworms, and fatty acids, among other fascinating things. too much to do. too many papers to write, no time for blogging fun. don't give up on me though. soon enough i will post something good. or maybe my brain will be so fried that i will just post the only thing i've written lately. my thesis proposal. let me tell you, it is a page turner. pray that it doesn't come to that.

athens in a nutshell

my fabulous friend leslie m. sent this cartoon to me and i just had to (illegally? i would give the artist credit if i knew who the talented soul was) repost it here. she called this new and apparently popular pasttime "hipster heckling". as those of you who read my blog know, i have been an unfortunate victim of this disturbing hate crime (see previous post entitled "hipster cat fight" from january for many more details than you really need or want).
today, life is cracking me up and i don't know why so i'm just going to go with it.

how to impress a lady...

...with your supreme idiocy and repulsiveness

1. when approaching the woman you are interested in conversing with make sure that you are so completely trashed that you get her attention by drunkenly bumping into her and making her spill her drink.
2. fail to notice your clumsiness because you are so obliterated and interrupt the conversation she is currently engaged in by butting in rudely.
3. when speaking, make sure that every word you say is so slurred as to be completely incomprehensible.
4. have the pleasant combination of stale beer and vomit on your breath.
5. stand as close as possible to the lucky lady and try to grab her arm but miss and hit her instead.
6. have an unidentifiable brown crusty substance (vomit, dried blood, tobacco juice?- all of the options are equally scrumptious) caked on your lips.
7. when she turns her back on you stand behind her and wait for her to suddenly realize that you are indeed the man of her dreams or at least the man she wants to go home with. keep standing there until she walks away.
8. repeat steps 1-7 with every woman at the bar so that each one knows that she has a special place in your heart.
9. when steps 1-8 have been completed roll out the door (strangely alone), jump on your souped-up hog and speed away at a recklessly fast pace kicking up a huge cloud of dirt in the process and causing every bar patron that is standing outside to choke on your dust. very classy. by doing this you have certainly shown all of us ladies what we missed out on.

usually, being a woman rules. occasionally it doesn't.