Artful Scheme of Happiness

If you don't have anything nice to say...

"I would listen to a dog bark for an hour if I thought I could get a credit for it."

I made the above comment after taking a continuing legal education class recently. (We're required to get 15 credits of barkery per year.) This time I listened to a panel of dogs bark for 6.75 hours. Let me tell you, there was nothing educational about it.

posted by art @ 10:51 AM

The strange agony of a beautiful day off

It's a beautiful day here in Seattle, the perfect end to a beautiful weekend. I went to a wedding last night at a hotel on the waterfront that could not have been lovelier. The couple was married just at sunset in a room that was all windows on the water. Candles everywhere, orchids in profusion, the bride looking happy and nervous and excited and as breathtaking as possible. Heaven.

And today has been remarkably productive -- you know how sometimes when you're done with the laundry and the cleaning and even the ironing and it's still the middle of the afternoon, you feel as though your life has been pulled together and all is in order, leaving you to enjoy whatever it is you might most enjoy -- a cup of tea or a nap or a book you've been putting off? That is my afternoon. Sort of.

Ahhh, yes, my landlord. He and a little friend (I no longer bother trying to learn their names) are showering together as I write this. Which I suppose might be fine it it weren't three in the afternoon right now and I weren't sitting in the next room, unhappily listening to every sound they make. They stayed in bed today until well after one, then wandered around the house in their pyjamas, making cookies and generally staring at each other. And now the showering. I've tried and tried, and tried again, to explain to my landlord that this peculiar behavior -- staying up until all hours, making out all over the house, the showering together, all of it -- makes me feel totally unwelcome in my own home. But he doesn't understand it. The only shocking thing, I suppose, is that I somehow, in my own mind, think that he should understand it.

You'll all tell me that I really need to move, and I will tell you that I'm working on it. You'll think I'm stalling, I'll think you're being pushy, and here we are with me living alongside (or in the midst of) the sin and squalor of a mentally unstable landlord. But it's a beautiful day of the sort which will soon disappear for a while, and I have all the rest of it in front of me to do with what I want. Perhaps a walk....

posted by art @ 3:15 PM

Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed
What two hours of sleep will get you

It's been a rather harrowing couple of weeks on ol' Whoraura. Every morning I leave the house at the crack of dawn and most mornings I run smack dab into a Pimps 'n Whores convention on the front lawn. They all just stare at me as though I'm the one who doesn't belong. (Umm, you're standing on MY lawn.) One morning they were all screaming at each other to "get [somebody's] sh*t out of my car!! We only have a few minutes!!" Like the police were going to come roaring in at any second. Yeah.

Roaring in. I actually called the police yesterday because I'm sick and tired of all this. My report? "Well, there's this guy in a car out front -- the car is entirely covered in rust -- and this guy's banging his face into his steering wheel, over and over and over. Some other guy is screaming at him ... oops, he just walked away. And now some woman in the fanciest tube top this side of 1977 is screaming at Rusty. Oh, now they're walking away too, probably to go shoot up in the motel on the corner. And then have sex. I can spot a prostitute from miles away." "We'll send someone right over, sir." Yeah. RIGHT over.

This morning two whores were screeching at each other inside a different beater car, but that was two doors down and I had my own fish to fry. Landlord rolled in last night from a long weekend at Gay Camp -- as far as I can tell it's an orgiastic weekend adventure that allows gay men to finally have the adolescent camp experience (that can only mean sex in the bushes, right?) they'd always wanted. Gay Pervert-Nerd Camp or something. Anyway.

So Landlord brought a new little friend home with him last night and every time I got out of bed, to go to the bathroom, to get a glass of water, to swap out ice packs (oh yeah, I seriously hurt my foot when I fell down Landlord's trick stairs the other day) ... every time I left my room those two were making out in a new place in the house (never in Landlord's bedroom -- that would be too much to ask). Landlord's very serious August boyfriend returned to his home country (Liberia?) a couple of weeks ago and apparently the mourning period is over. Which is fine, I suppose. More power to him (never mind that the house is falling down -- you go to camp). But if, ever again, I have to wake the two of them up so that this or any other new boyfriend can move his car, so that I can go to work (WORK, a word Landlord would never understand) ... well, I'll call the cops and have it towed. The cops, I'm sure, will be right over.

Sigh.

posted by art @ 7:06 AM