Sobriety is for Wimps

Greetings, fellow internettians. After a few months of reading this, I suggested to Neko and Walrus that I might have something to contribute, and get this, the fools believed me. So, story-time with Fizzgig commences now.

Early on in my freshman year at PCU, I still spent evening times with my hallmates more often than not (like ya do). One night in particular, there was a party with a decidedly sexual theme, and these hallmates decided, with inarguable logic, that it would be best to combine this event with alcohol. Now, being not so much a drinker at that point in my life, I had but a little, but one of my hallmates, we'll call him Mr. Potato Head, had quite a bit more. So much more, in fact, that another of my hallmates, we'll call him Yankee, was prompted to begin what would become the most memorable exchange of the evening:

Yankee: Potato, you're looking a little flushed...
Potato: WHaa?
Yankee: Your face is looking a little red.
Potato: /dabs finger on face, licks finger/ Doesn't taste red...

The moral of this story: If it ever starts to seem reasonable to taste your skin to determine color, put down the booze.

Time Travel

An odd thing happened today. When I checked my Facebucket account, I discovered a friend request and message from a woman I've never met... maybe.

As many of you know, my Facebucket is under a name which is not mine; it was an experiment to see if it would work to change my name, and even though it has failed I haven't ever gotten around to changing it back. When combined with my own last name, it is very distinctive; even our Google Overlords (all hail) only know of one person by that name.

The message I received went something like this:

Bonjour! There can't possibly be two people by that name; are you the one I met in Paris in the early 1980s with a mania for punctuation?

Well, as I was born in the early 1980s, it seems to me that this could not be. But I do love both French and punctuation. So I wrote back to this woman, letting her know of the odd coincidence.

But really, what's in a name, or for that matter, a date? The Walrus theorized that, since there are no coincidences, I must have traveled back in time; I haven't met this woman yet- but I will!

Western Spaghetti

Apologies, Dear Readers, for the unscheduled break for... technical difficulties. Right. That was it. It totally wasn't because I was busy and forgot until I was nearly asleep for the last week or so.

In any case, let me tell you of a strange thing which happened today.

Today, as happens every so often, the Walrus' parents came to visit. When they do this, they like to take us out to dinner. A fairly normal problem with this habit is that we can't think of anywhere to go. So tonight, a steak place was suggested, and we decided to ask the giant brain of humanity: the internet.

The internet thought of a couple of places, the closer of which was a restaurant which shall be known as The Corral. Given the name and the many reviews saying that it was good, we had a reasonable expectation of getting some good steak. So off we drove to the Corral.

We entered the Corral and were met with a bizarre sight: a sports bar-like atmosphere at the entrance with Western decor on the brick walls, but bright lights and fancy place settings on the tables. The empty tables. There was one guy at the bar, and one small family in the restaurant itself. Over the speakers came the sounds of a light-rock radio station. But it had gotten good reviews, so we decided to stick it out.

In confusion, we sat and looked at our menus. The menu contained two steak products: steak tips and a sirloin. Instead of the anticipated cow feast, we found ourselves presented with a very typical Italian menu. After much hemming and hawing, we again decided that we would stick it out- we were too hungry to find another place.

Our waitress, although clearly an established member of the small staff, was very inexperienced and slow. There was one other waitress, but she spent all her time chatting with the family that was already seated.

The Walrus brought up the fact that there was a sign outside saying the ownership had recently changed. How long ago were those reviews? Before they decided to have an Italian restaurant in a steak joint, apparently!

Meanwhile, in between getting our appetizers and ordering our main courses (yes), someone hit the jukebox with a country western song. Right over top of the light-rock radio and the hockey game on TV. After a few minutes of acoustic bombardment, we finally caught a waitress and asked her to get one or the other turned off. Eventually it did.

At one point, right behind me, I heard our waitress sing (off key and not in time with the jukebox song anyways), "Rock the beat!"

By this point, we have decided that we've definitely lost our hats* and run into a surrealist restaurant. Perhaps they should rename it the Frosty Chicken**!



* http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031017
Also, a nod to the spaghetti western tradition of hats taking bullets for the hero.

** See story to come.

Nice Hat

There came a point, not far one direction or the other in time from that fateful September, at which I was returning to this country from studying in Europe. It was summer, and I had needed a large hat in order not to burn horribly while I puttered about the European countryside. This meant that I was wearing the hat while going through customs; large hats are somewhat inconvenient to pack.

At the customs desk at the end of the line, there was a young man in his twenties or so looking bored as bored can be. I handed him my passport with some moderate trepidation (I always feel slightly nervous when dealing in Official Papers). He took it, looking me straight in the eye, then glancing up at the hat, then back to me. He took his stamp, opened the passport to the appropriate page without looking, stamped, and said, "Nice hat," somewhat derisively.

He then handed my passport back and moved on to the next person with equal boredom.

Hurricane

Several years ago, back in my hometown of Hell, a rather large hurricane came through. Everyone was stampeding grocery stores and outdoor goods places like a herd of spooked wildebeest with a penchant for stakeouts. Dutifully (prompted by my mother) I picked up some bottled water and canned food; I then got a couple of plastic tarps and nailed them over the giant windows in my apartment (which I thought was more likely to be useful).

The hurricane was supposed to hit from late afternoon/evening to early the next morning. I went out on the walkways of my second floor apartment during the early afternoon to watch the storm roll in. Then, as the rain started, I went back into my apartment and double checked all the plugs, the pipes, the windows. Then I settled in bed with a good book and read until I finally fell asleep to the sound of pouring rain and lashing winds.

About five in the morning, my cell phone rang. It was still pitch black, and the rain was beating at my windows with greater fury than I had ever seen. I answered the phone groggily.

"Are you all right?!" my mother asked. "It's supposed to be worst where you are!"

I took stock. Myself, undamaged but for interrupted sleep. My windows, intact. My roof, intact. My power, still on, although the clocks were flashing. "Yes, Mom, I'm fine. Are you okay?"

Apparently, about an hour earlier, the tree behind her house had started creaking mightily, and she decided it was safer to hide in the closet than her bedroom, which was rather close to said tree. She'd been up listening to the radio since, and got the idea into her head that I was in terrible danger. After reassuring her a couple more times and making sure she was okay, I went back to sleep.

When the storm cleared, it was obvious that I'd escaped any real damage. I took down the tarps; the windows hadn't cracked. My car was fine; my home was fine; my power was on. The water didn't work, but I'd planned for a day or so of that. As it turns out, I was among 4% of the entire city that still had power, and pretty much the only person I knew in town who hadn't suffered so much as a broken window or a flooded car. My mother's tree fell, but fortunately it fell in the direction it could do the least possible damage: into the pool. I ended up having three (sometimes four) friends over in an extended slumber party to keep them out of the heat.

But the funniest part? I slept through a freaking hurricane. G'night, folks.

Travels and Tribulations

Yesterday, the Walrus and I were taking the train home from a place so far that we were scheduled to be aboard said train for approximately eight hours. We had a very nice vacation; thanks for asking.

The first absolutely ridiculous thing was that the main announcer on the train was a woman who clearly did not know that her microphone was set to 11. The rest of us cringed every time an announcement was made as we tried desperately to not need that analgesic yet again. At one point, the conductor came on at normal volume and said, "Conductor to mid-train, do you read me?" to which the very loud woman replied, "I hear you just fine, but apparently you're not hearing me." The irony was not lost on our poor ringing ears.

About halfway through the trip home, we encountered one of the larger stops along the way. The train stopped just short of the station, and then the very loud woman began again. "Attention all passengers, please clear the aisle; the conductor needs to come through, and the faster he can get by the faster we can get this figured out." A few minutes went by. "Attention all passengers, please take your seats. We will be backing up the train and you must be seated for us to move." The train began to inch slowly backwards.

About ten minutes of backwards crawl later, the conductor came on. "I'm sorry folks; there's a disabled train ahead of us at the station, and we're backing up to switch to another track. We'll be out of here as soon as we can." Everyone's frowns lessened slightly and we waited some more. About five minutes passed, and yet another voice came on and announced, "It seems there's a disabled train on our track. Thanks for your patience while we back up and switch to another track." Hmm, thought I, the right hand knows not what the left does. Another five minutes of backing, and suddenly the loud woman came on. "I think what's going on is that there's a disabled train at the station. We're backing up to find another track. I repeat, there's a disabled train, and we're backing up to find another track."

Another ten minutes or so went by before we managed, evidently, to switch tracks and get into the station. The ticket takers walked through the train explaining that we had just gotten around a disabled train, and that we would shortly reach the station.

Getting back to our city (an hour late), the Walrus and I then proceeded to get on the local subway. The time there said 12:15. This being clearly wrong, we thought it must have simply been forgotten during the change of DST. We were tired, went home, and collapsed. When I awoke this morning, however, it occurred to me that this could not possibly have been the case; if they had forgotten to switch the time, it would have been 10:15. Some silly station worker must have switched the clocks twice!

Story the Fifth: Lions

A few years ago, my mother and I went on a week-long photo safari in South Africa. There are any number of remarkable events associated with this trip, including the bizarre story of how we came to go on it in the first place. These, however, are stories for another day. Today, we shall speak of lions. We were assigned a group of four other safari-ers, and the resulting group of six was assigned a guide. Our guide, who shall be known as Gerald (needless to say, this is not his name), joined the group for meals to discuss what we wanted to do and see during the day, and would drive the open truck-like vehicle from which we observed the wildlife each day. The 'hotel', for lack of a better term (it was more like a 'motel without cars, but with monkey and attached massive wooden Beowulf-style dining hall'), was located on a massive game reserve - there were no other buildings visible in any direction. Most days, we would drive about on this, at look at zebras, warthogs, giraffes, and rhinocerii. However, it was generally agreed that it would be silly to go on such a trip and not see elephants, and there were very few elephants on this particular reserve, so the chances of seeing one were low. To correct this, we planned a day-long trip the the much larger Hluhlu-Umfoluzi game reserve (this is even harder to say than it is to spell. I've probably done both wrong. Sorry). Elephants there were, in plenty. and Gerald was ebullient. "See!", he cried "You ask for elephants, I find you elephants. What do you want to see now?"
We wanted to see a lion. Even in this larger reserve, however, lions were scarce, and we were prepared to search in vain. We were lucky, however, and got a tip from another truck of tourists that there had been a lioness seen at a particular location earlier in the day. When we arrived there, there was a single large dead tree perhaps a hundred yards from the road, and in it was a lioness. This was fantastic, and we spent perhaps half an hour photographing, filming, and generally being in wonder of the big cat. Careful observation revealed two sets of ears likely belonging to more lions otherwise entirely concealed in the long grass at the base of the tree. It is at this point that things take a turn for the truly bizarre, for at this point Gerald began to climb out of the vehicle. Apparently, he wanted to convince the lion to move for us. When the lofty cat took no notice of him, he tried shouting at it. The lioness, however, was clearly quite satisfied with her location, and simply stared back, no doubt wondering what the silly apes was up to this time. Having failed to produce results by any method still in the general vicinity of sanity, Gerald picked up a rock and hurled it at the lion. I'm going to say that again, because most readers 'weirdness filter' will have prevented them from fully comprehending it. He began throwing rocks at the lion. He had an impressive arm, and the rocks were falling perhaps two thirds of the way to the tree. This was apparently enough to convince the lioness that this was no longer a sufficiently restful sunning spot, so she stood and gracefully and deliberately descended the tree and vanished into the grass.
All I can add to this is the Mythbusters Standard Disclaimer: "Don't try this at home, we're what you call 'experts'."