Day 3

Happy Birthday to my friend Bernie, with whom I raucously celebrated last evening. We all went out for Cuban food and then to Lula's where I really should learn to behave myself.

This morning I got up and planted about 100-150 of the seeds that I started in February--I'll probably do the rest tomorrow, weather permitting. Good luck, seeds!

Thomas and I watched Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny on Thursday night and I have to say that I love, love, loved it. Jack Black has been so dissapointing lately--I was not impressed with the Holiday, etc. But Tenacious D was hilarious, which is saying a lot, because I usually don't go in for that type of movie. It made me think that Kevin Smith and Jack Black need to team up and make something.

Games People Play

Last night, my friend Bernie came over for dinner and we all got talking about strange games we played as kids and their rules. This occurred because someone farted. I will not say who, but I will say that it wasn't me, because I'm still the kind of girl who goes to the bathroom to fart like a civilized person.

Anyway, Thomas was telling us that when he was a kid, they all played this game called doorknob. When someone farted, if you yelled "doorknob!" you got to beat the shit out of the farter until they reached a doorknob and touched it. Thomas said that many people began forecasting their farts by drifting toward doorknobs in mid conversation. You could also yell "Safety!" before someone yelled "Doorknob!" if you were the farter to escape a beating, however, I supposed that in doing so, you'd be announcing to the general public that it was you who farted, and not, as is commonly believed, that he who smelt it, delt it.

Bernie and I agreed that this seemed like a Southport game and never made it as far as DC (where I grew up) or Texas (Bernie).

We discussed "Jinx," as Bernie felt that if you were jinxed you had to be silent or buy someone a coke, as was shown on The Office. In our version of jinx, if two people said the same thing at the same time and one yelled "jinx!" the other could not speak until someone said his or her name. You could also yell "Personal Jinx!" and in that case only the jinxer could free you by saying your name.

In further discussion, we debated on whether you had to kiss (me) or punch (Thomas and Bernie) someone when calling a one-headlight "padiddle." We also found discrepancy over whether you had to lift your feet, touch the ceiling of the car and make a wish when: a. going over railroad tracks or b. going through a yellow light.

Can anyone vouch for these games or rules?

My New Career

One day, I was explaining to my friend Bryan that I feel compelled to imitate any strange noise or voice that I hear on TV or the radio. It doesn't matter if it's human or electronic, if there's a sudden loud noise, a computer voice saying something, or an animal sound, I'm all over it. Bryan looked at me and said, "Megs, some people call that Tourettes Syndrome." So true, Bryan, so true.

One of my favorite things to imitate is the automatic checkout machine at Harris Teeter. I am a dead ringer for that lady. I can say, "Please place the item in the bag," or, "Do you have any items under your cart?" with the exact same mixture of pleasantness and rebuke. But my tour de force is, "Thank you for shopping at Harris Teeter." I don't know; you've gotta hear me do it. I think there's a career for me in electronic voices. I could do that VIC lady's job, no problem. The telephone banking woman ("please press 3 for more options"), Voicemail...hell, I can even do the AOL, "Welcome. You've got mail." I mean, the world's wide open for me.

One thing I'm particularly enjoying lately is the commercial where the guy is using the automatic check out and it gets stuck on wart remover. I've spent many a happy few minutes saying, "Wart Remover, wart remover, wart, wart, wart." I heard a DJ on the radio imitating that same commercial last night. But she had nothing on me.

Zombie Attacks!

My friend Bernie says, "Zombies are cool."

Of all movie-style monsters, I'm most afraid of zombies. Partly it's their whole cannibalism lifestyle, partly it's how quickly they make more zombies, partly their relentless stupidity...I don't know; they just creep me out.

Anyway if you haven't seen the new Dawn of the Dead, or Sean of the Dead for that matter, you should. Both are excellent additions to the zombie genre. I loved them. But several weeks after seeing Dawn of the Dead, Thomas and I were asleep in bed when our dogs, Gonzo and Gertie, started barking like crazy. They do this sometimes. They are dogs. We waited for them to be quiet, but they went on. Finally, Thomas decided to go see what was wrong. I waited. And waited. Still Thomas was not back. I was beginning to worry and so I called out, "What it is it?" and Thomas said, "It's running."

This was befuddling to me, so I, too, got up and went to the front door to investigate. It was running. Hundreds of people, it seemed, were running down the street, screaming. Take a minute to think about how long this must have taken to happen. The dogs bark long enough to wake us, then long enough to force one of us to the door, then long enough for the other to get worried and go to the door--and still, all this running. All I could think was, "It's ZOMBIES!"

I didn't think the running people were zombies, but I definitely thought they must be running from zombies. My sleep addled mind could come up with no reason that practically the entire city of Wilmington would be running down the street, screaming, at 3 in the morning unless they were running from zombies.

Yeah. A party had gotten busted up over in Town Hall on Castle Street. But still!

Last night at Pub Trivia at the Soapbox, my team was sitting under a red light. For some reason, it made our veins all look very apparent, as if we were human road maps. I yelled out, "Look! I'm a zombie!" Because, apparently, that's my explanation for everything.