Hemlock B Bootsalotta

So a couple of people said they were interested in reading the Adam Clayton story.

I got this story from my uncle, so if you have any quibbles with the details you can take it up with him.

Anyway, my uncle used to be in An Garda Síochána in Dublin. (He retired years ago.) In '89 he picked up Adam Clayton in a club for drugs. He didn't specify at the time what kind of drugs, but the newspapers afterwards all said marijuana. As my uncle put it, they normally wouldn't have cared but he was "playin' big man, passing it around, and being very loud about it". So my uncle brought him into the station.

Now according to my uncle they had an unofficial policy of not really wanting to arrest Very Famous People for minor shit. They didn't want the reporters, or the publicity, and they especially did not want fans showing up to try to get in to see their hero. So normal protocol was to shake a finger, say "Sir, Thou Shalt Chill Henceforth" and the Very Famous Person makes a shamed face says, "Sorry Won't Happen Again." Then everybody goes about their business and the dance starts over the following weekend.

Only what Clayton actually did was to swan into my uncle's office, sit in my uncle's chair, and put his boots up on my uncle's desk. And say, "Do you know who I am?"

So my uncle did what anybody would do - well, what anybody in my family would do - which is to say, "Yes I do. You're my nick". And threw him into a jail cell. And apparently his bosses weren't too happy about it, but once charges were laid they had to follow through.

(When my sister went to visit my family in Dublin, he asked her if she was a U2 fan, and took her into the station to show her the cell.)

So in summary, in 1989 Adam Clayton got charged with possession of marijuana. But he got arrested for sassing my uncle.

I told Axel this story this morning and he couldn't stop laughing so that tells me I should post it here. You probably shouldn't read it if worms or beetles squick you out.

Background Info #1
The thing about having a beardie as a pet is that they like to eat meat. They like it a lot, and sometimes trying to get them to eat anything else is like having a toddler who hates vegetables. Many people feed them crickets, but I have enough experience with those to not want them in the house. There is always one that gets out and hides in your walls and chirps chirps chirps until you are losing your shit trying to find it. A field full of crickets is soothing and romantic. A single cricket is maddening.

So we feed him worms. He gets hornworms or silkworms if we've just been to the pet supply store but they don't seem to survive long in captivity so mealworms are the staple. We always have a big plastic pot of them in the house. We put a few in his food dish and he dives in head first, scattering them everywhere. Then he crunches up as many as he wants and leaves the rest for us to scoop up and throw back into the container.

So the thing is, every once in a while some will get away. And while mealworms won't go through metamorphosis when they're in the pot with all the other worms - something about their sisters eating them while they are in the chrysalis - they will as soon as they can get some privacy. So every once in a while we will see a big black beetle just sauntering through the house. No biggie, we scoop it up and throw it into Carlin's food bowl and he loves them. He considers them a special treat.

Background Info #2
I am not the tidiest of people a massive slob and sometimes when I am crawling into bed I just drop my clothes onto the floor. If I know I'm going to spend the next day getting filthy and sweaty in the basement or yard I will put my dirty clothes back on in the morning and then change into fresh clothes once I've finished up the work for the day and had a shower.

So y'all know where this is going, right?

I get up, I pull dirty clothes on because I'm going to be doing something that involves the basement and dust. I go downstairs to grab coffee. The phone rings, it's my mother. I'm talking to her and my leg itches or tickles or something, so I just absently scratch at it.

I figure out what's causing the itch when it bites me.

Cue me hopping around on one leg yelling "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" while trying to get my pants off while simultaneously trying to wedge the phone under my chin so I can use both hands. I have no idea why I didn't put down the phone - my only excuse is that I hadn't finished my coffee yet and "there is a beetle in my pants" had somehow short-circuited the rest of my thinking functions. Meanwhile my mother is hearing me shouting and crashing into things and she's yelling my name because she's convinced I'm having a stroke right there on the phone with her.

I finally get my pants down far enough to flip the beetle out. Then I spend the next five minutes sitting on the phone with my pants around my ankles because I am trying to convince my mother not to call 911 and no the fact that I can't stop laughing is not because I have suffered irreparable brain injury.

So the moral of the story kids, is always check your pants before you put them on in the morning. I do.

sabotabby gave me the prompt;

The most bizarre adventure you've had.

The problem is I've already written down most of my adventures. And I'm smarter these days - or at least more experienced - so nothing seriously weird has happened to me in a long time.

So I picked out the two that I think rate pretty high on the "bizarre" scale and I'm just going to link them here.

The Ballad of Hillard

Holiday in Cambodia

You all can tell me which one you think wins.

Comment here or at the original post if you want to add a suggestion of things to write about.

When I was about 7 or so - which would make my sister 5 at the time - my parents signed us both up to take ballet classes. The class had somewhere between six and 10 kids in it, all girls I'm pretty sure. I remember only that the teacher was a woman and that it took place in the basement of a church near where we lived. I don't remember who's idea it was that we take the classes, but I think I must have thought it was fun enough to keep going. My parents were pretty good about not forcing us to do activities when we didn't want to.

So yeah, long time ago, most of it lost in the fuzzy damp basement part of my memory. I know it must have been one of those "fun things for kids to do" classes rather than a professional organization geared towards churning out actual dancers where they make the kids do exercises until they cry. I do remember running around in a circle with the other girls, waving our arms up and down in time to the music à la Swan Lake. Silly stuff like that.

We'd been doing this for, I think, a little less than a year when one weekend my parents took us both shopping. They had us fitted for shiny pink leotards with sequins on them and matching pink ballet slippers. It was all very exciting. I was going to get to wear an outfit like a proper ballet dancer with a poofy skirt and everything. On the day that the outfits were packed into the car to go to class with us they took us to a hairdresser first, where our hair was pinned up into buns and they put real honest makeup on our faces like grown-ups wear.

No here's the key thing about this story. Our parents swear we knew what was going on. I promise you we had no frikkin' idea. My best guess is that permission slips went home and the teacher just assumed that our parents would read them to us. Meanwhile our parents assumed we had had been told in class. I think I might have had the vague idea that our folks were going to be sitting in on class that day to watch us, but Dee says she didn't even know that much.

So when they had us get dressed line up with the other little girls in a strange hallway instead of our usual church basement we had NO IDEA what came next. They trooped us out onto a stage and we dutifully took up our positions with the rest of the class. Then the curtain went up and we looked out into the audience and a million fucking people were sitting there staring back at us.

I froze.

Dee bolted off the stage like she was on fire.

My brain went into shock and I made it through the entire experience by numbly following what the other kids were doing, which meant Swan Lake featured one awkward ducking stumbling around the circle and waving her arms two beats after everybody else. When it was over I myself be directed around the crowds of kids and parents to be posed for the official photographer. Dee, on the other hand, flatly refused to go anywhere any adults asked her to, and did not hesitate to use tears to emphasise her position. Then we went home and took off the leotards and tiaras and that was the end of dance class for the rest of my entire life.

When I got home from work last night the_axel told me he had put the bedroom screen into the window incorrectly the night before. "I was woken up by a loud crash in the middle of the night. Some animal, probably a squirrel, got in and tore up the bag of birdseed. I must have scared it away when I got up, and I cleaned up the mess this morning."

I laughed and didn't think anything else about it.

We were running around in Guild Wars together later that evening. (Geek dating.) I finally asked him, "What is that noise."

"What noise?"

"That thumping noise. Is it coming from next door? Or outside?"

"I don't hear any noise."

We play for a while longer.

"There! That noise!"

"I swear I don't hear anything."

We play for a while longer.

"There's that thumping again. It sounds like the noise Carlin makes when he falls off something."

"Well, let's go take a look."

So we go upstairs to check on Carlin and the first thing we see is the bag of birdseed spread out all over the floor. We walk up to the window and there is a raccoon peering through the screen at us from where he is sitting on the kitchen roof holding the plastic bag we were using to keep stale bread for the birds. The screen has a big tear in the corner.

I think this is hilarious of course. While I'm laughing Axel closes and locks the window. I turn around to go back downstairs and stop laughing abruptly. "Oh. Hello." Axel turns around as well and we are both facing a raccoon standing on the other side of the room and watching us with a very concerned expression on his face. When he sees us both looking at him he walks behind our bed and pokes just the very top of his head over the top so he keep an eye on us. All I can see of him is his mask and pointy ears.

We open the window, take the screen off and perch on top of the bed. As soon as he realizes there is a clear path in front of him he runs across the room and dives out the window so fast the only clear look I get at him is his fuzzy tail disappearing across the window sill.

So we'll need to get a new screen or fix this one. And keep the window closed until the locals forget that food is likely to be found on the other side of it.

And I should probably get a proper bird feeder.

Meet the newest resident of the Once and Future Gin Place. He moved in a week ago and has been making himself at home ever since. This picture was taken of him basking in his favourite spot in the house and he will tell you when he thinks it's high time he got to sit there.



All my previous experience is with snakes and I honestly did not expect this guy to be as inquistive, social and engaged as he is. I am utterly charmed. We've spent the week getting to know each other and he seems to be perfectly happy sitting on my lap or climbing me like a tree.

Like snakes he's cold-blooded so I wasn't surprised that he eats a lot less than I would expect from a mammal of the same size. jo had also warned me that it would often take him a full week to getting around to eliminating the ah, processed remains of that food. What did surprise me was just how much more um, pungent it is than snake poop. And that apparently he could get it into his head to roll in it afterwards. At least I think that's what happened given how much of it he managed to get all over himself.

Obviously I figured I was going to need to clean him up. And since Axel is away this weekend that meant cleaning both him and his tank single-handed. No problem, I would bring everything upstairs that I needed to sterilize the tank, then give him a bath and I would be able to clean his house while he was drying in his favourite spot on the windowsill. So I fetched bleach, soap, gloves and a scrubbie and set them up in the upstairs shower. Then I opened the top of his cage and lifted him out.

He promptly scrambled up my arm and settled onto my shoulder.

Keep in mind that he is completely covered in poop.

I tried to get him down but I had made the mistake of wearing a woven shirt that had lots of places for him to tangle his claws into if he didn't want to be budged. Which he didn't. Finally I gave up and just walked down the two flights of stairs to the basement bathroom with him on my shoulder, steadying him in place with one hand on his back.

Once in the bathroom I leaned over slightly to turn on the water in the tub. Carlin immediately took that opportunity to scramble onto my back.

So I'm standing there, bent over, with a poop-covered beardie perched on my back. I can sorta reach him but there is no way I have enough hands to pick him up while simultaneously untangling his claws from my shirt. Finally I figured out that I could solve the whole situation by pulling my shift off over my head - with him in it. Once I had him in front of me I was able to disentangle him from my clothes and put him into the warm water.

We hung out there for about 15 minutes while I gently cleaned him from nose to tail. He didn't seem to mind the water at all. Finally when he was fit for public appearances once again and since the water was starting to cool off I picked him up to take him upstairs to his basking spot.

And that's when he crapped all over me.

Somebody on alt.gothic found the old a.g quotes page. Keep in mind this was ten years ago - long before Deja News, never mind google. And it's still up. That's centuries in internet years.

What made me laugh is that somebody submitted a post I made back when I still used to work in the virology lab.

"I've been working on a new project at work for the last couple of months. The people I'm working with are great, but the project... well, lets just say we don't have very high hopes for it. Too bad really.

In the midst of getting some rather discouraging results from our last set of experiments, I got to order some new lab coats for the four of us. They arrived last week.

The name tags say; "War" "Famine" "Pestilence" and "Death".

Just thought I'd share. ;->"

I had completely forgotten about doing that. Somehow I don't think I could get away with that kind of thing at that bank.

Besides, there are five people in PD Admin.

The Thursday before the pigroast Axel picked up the pig (with Charlie's assistance) and prepped it for the grill; rubbing it with salt, soaking it liberally in the marinade and packing it away in ice. I didn't help him because I work afternoons so I wasn't home when he brought it home from the butcher.

On the Friday morning I did the last bit of clearing things out of the way so the house would have space for all our guests. I was in a hurry to get ready for work and I knew I had an enchilada sitting in the fridge in a tupperware container, so I figured I could just grab that and bring it to work with me for my dinner. I opened the fridge door, spotted the container in question, threw it into my knapsack and hopped on my bike.

Axel and I almost always eat dinner together when I have my break. Then I go back to work and he heads home. On this particular day we went down to the cafeteria the way we always do, and he popped his lunch into one of the microwaves. I took mine out of the bag with the intent to follow suit. I opened the microwave door, took the lid off the container and then just happened to look down.

Wait a minute.

That's not an enchilada.

...

That's a tongue.

...

I think I ended up having pizza for dinner.

I slept on the couch last night. It was kind of weird because the windows are all open and the plastic we have hung all over the place moves in the breeze. I kept waking up because there were unfamiliar sounds going on the next room. At one point I'm sure I heard something scurrying upstairs.

I was already in a weird mood. When I walked home last night - about 2 AM - there was a couple having a very loud and obvious fight. They were in a car, and I could hear the guy yelling at the girl. They would zoom off, stop a couple of blocks later, and then the yelling would continue. They did this every half block or so. Eventually I caught up with the girl walking along the street and sobbing.

She was from a completely different part of the city and had no idea where she was. I got her oriented and offered to walk with her to a place where she could catch a cab or a bus. Offered to buy her a coffee if she wanted to sit for a bit. She kept saying no. At one point the boyfriend came back, and when he saw me he basically told me I could take care of her and he fucked off for good. She burst into tears all over again.

Eventually I had to let her go. I didn't want to. But she was a grown woman who didn't want my help.

I still feel kind of shitty about the whole thing.

I was talking to bcholmes today about an incident that happened once and that has had me completely mystified ever since. It's been close to two decades, but something about that "poem" I wrote just knocked it loose to rattle around in my head.

I had a friend - lets call her Sue for the purpose of this blog. Note that she bears no relationship whatsoever with any actual Sue either living or dead. Sue and I used to hang around a lot - we were both single, heavy drinkers and had jobs with sufficient income that we could support all of our bad habits. That's usually a killer combination for me. Anyway most weekends we were out causing some form of mayhem together.

At the same time, I had another friend. Let's call him Bill. Also bearing no relation to any actual Bill living or dead. Sue and I both knew Bill, and thought he was a good guy and enjoyed his company. We didn't really "hang out" per se, but we liked the same bands, drank at the same watering holes, occasionally ended up at the same parties. That kind of thing.

So Bill lived under the poverty line, and it came to pass that he needed to get out of his apartment. And he sent a general message out to his friends asking if anybody could lend him some cash to put towards first and last. Not asking for pity or saying poor me, just "if you could do this it would really help me out".

I didn't know him that well at the time, but it wasn't a huge amount of money that he needed, and I was doing pretty good financially back then. So I offered. So he showed up at my apartment, wrote out a little contract - to my somewhat impressed bemusement - we both signed it and I gave him a cheque. And once a month for the next two years an envelope would appear in my mailbox with a cheque in it, taking another small slice off of the debt. Once - maybe twice - he phoned and said it was a particularly tight month and he couldn't do it, was that ok? And I said yes and the following month another cheque would appear right on schedule.

I never really thought that much more about it. More importantly to the point of this story, I never told anybody about it. Mostly because it was a deal between me and him and it never really occured to me to mention it to anybody at the time. I have no idea if he told anybody or not. But, the fact that he had sent out a call asking people for help was public knowledge, along with the fact that he moved the following month.

So it happened that one night I was sitting around at Sue's place with a handfull of people all sitting around and drinking. And for whatever reason Bill's name came up. And Sue started talking about how she didn't really like him that much, talking about him dismissively in way that indicated that she thought his character was in some way flawed. And then the kicker came. She looked me right in the eye and said, "You know when he moved last year he borrowed a whole bunch of money from people and never paid them back."

In retrospect I probably should have said spoken up given that there were other people there. I did later take a couple of them aside and tell them privately that Sue was full of shit. And in my defense, I haven't noticed that Bill's reputation suffered much as a result.

But what really went on my head at that exact moment is that a little filing drawer marked "Will Make Shit Up About You And Tell Those Lies To Other People When You Are Not Around" opened in my head, Sue dropped neatly into it, and the drawer closed. From that moment on I didn't believe a single word that came out of her mouth. I didn't make a big deal about it, but there were times that it was pretty obvious that I was treating her as an unreliable witness and if anybody asked me why, I told them the truth. And I was supremely unshocked when she finally turned her nasty habit on me and we just stopped interacting altogether.

You know I've never told Bill this story. Maybe I should - I still hang out with him sometimes.

Sue, on the other hand, I haven't seen in well over ten years. She left town at some point, angry and hurt that over the years all her "so-called friends" had abandoned her and I don't know what happened to her afterwards. I hope she managed to get her shit sorted out because I think she was a pretty unhappy person.

But to this day I can not figure out what the entire purpose of that little incident was. Why the fuck would anybody do something that... pointless. It's not even about the lie itself, I just don't get why she would do that when there was absolutely zero profit in it for her. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

You know, some days I wonder if maybe I'd stop getting headaches if I stopped insisting that people make sense.