Thursday, August 27, 2009

Portents of Doom


12:03 am

 After 3 days of non-stop screaming, crying, stomping, and other forms of mild hysteria, I finally got the newspaper to the printer, and it was ready for delivery.  I could finally get some rest! 

 Just as I hit that REM sleep phase that always seems to elude me, the clock turned to this evil combination of numbers, and the sound of glass shattering and a huge thud awoke me.  Naturally when I hear glass breaking at 12:03 am, being the genius I am I jumped out of bed, completely naked, barefoot, and without a weapon to confront whatever was happening in the other room.  Yes, I ran full force, naked and defenseless toward a pile of broken glass and whatever caused it.

 As I rounded the corner, I was bewildered to find absolutely nothing.  There was no glass that I could see; nothing seemed out of place.  I do have to admit that at this point I was unable to turn on the lights to investigate thoroughly.  I had left the blinds open to let the breezes come in, and the neighbors who were all awake, had as well.  I was on the horns of a dilemma.  Do I find out what happened by turning on the lights and show my birthday suit to the neighbors, or do I just assume that since there is no immediate danger, it was either:

 

1.  A dream

2.  The burglar/axe murderer/raccoon managed to escape and cleaned up the mess before they left.

3.  The burglar/axe murderer/raccoon was hiding in the shadows waiting for me to go back to sleep so they could finish me off.

 

As long as I got to go back to sleep I was fine with any of those options. 

 

6:03 am

 Another dream shattering crash, but this time I am more prepared.  When I went back to bed after the first incident I decided that if it was option three, I did not want to be found mutilated and naked, so I put on my garden gnome pajamas.  I was also a little more rested, and able to think semi-clearly.  I put on my flip-flops before I went out yet again to face the unknown.

 Rounding the corner to the living room, again, I saw nothing out of place.  No windows broken, no door ajar, nothing.   How can this be? I wondered aloud.  I looked around for Jackson, who was happily asleep as usual on his back, running in his sleep on the sofa. 

 Am I going crazy? Hearing things?

 In the dining room I discovered that two of the four framed photographs above the buffet were missing their glass, and that the glass was shattered in to about 8 billion pieces on the top of the buffet and behind it; not all over the floor, but on the white top of the buffet, almost invisible. 

 How do two separate framed photographs just lose their glass?   I don’t know, but I do watch a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I know things like this are usually portents or signs of doom and evil.  Buffy’s mom once had some trouble with art she hung on the wall, and Zombies began to invade her house.  I didn’t think they could come through the window since I am on the second floor with a security door, and zombies rarely ring the buzzer- I figured I was relatively safe there, so I wondered… “What other evil is upon me?”

 

7:35 am

 

The Evil Appears

 I was standing on the Platform waiting for my train.  The “attention customers, an inbound train toward the loop will be arriving shortly” message had just pealed out into the misty morning when I saw the bright lights of the train piercing the fog.

 As the Green Line train to 63rd/Ashland screeched into the stop, it was immediately clear that this would be the ride from Hell.  Apparently there had been a delay at the Harlem stop.  Trains are scheduled every 8 minutes on the Green line, so a 40 minute delay basically means that the car was filled with 5 times it’s normal load of passengers.  

 A diabolical combination of forces had taken over the L-train.  The weather, the delay and the sheer number of people had caused the windows of the train to be completely fogged.  Passengers inhaling and exhaling, sweating, coughing, burping their coffee & cigarette burps, the cacophony of perfume and cologne created a haze that filled the train.  When the doors opened, the haze formed the face of an evil demon and it laughed as it sucked me into it’s gloom bellowing, “The doors are about to close.”

 So, pressed up against the doors that could potentially fly open at any moment and spit me out onto the electrified tracks, I grabbed onto the nearest stationary object to brace myself, and prayed silently to God to let everyone on that train be getting off at the Central stop.  But no, more people got on. 

 Now I am in the middle of the train with nothing to hold onto.  Not that it would have done any good to have something to grab since my arms were at that point pinned at my sides by other people crushed up against me.

 Did I mention that it was about 176 degrees in the train, and it felt like I was breathing through a wet, dirty baby diaper that had been sitting in the sun for a few days? 

 As we jostled on toward our destination, which at this point I was sure was going to be the mouth of hell, the train came to a complete stop and the demon formed its gruesome face in the haze again and shouted “we are standing still momentarily waiting for signal clearance, we expect to be moving again shortly.”

 Demons lie.  We all know this, but I still held out hope that we would in fact be moving shortly.  We wouldn’t.    We sat perfectly still, for no less than 12 minutes.  This would not seem like a long time under any other circumstances, but it felt like an eternity. 

 I chose to be uncharacteristically calm, closed my eyes and thought about strawberry ice cream.  Some of my fellow passengers stood quietly as well, some read books, some texted, one farted, and to my dismay, one decided this was the perfect time to make a phone call to her friend Trina. 

 Apparently, Trina and her husband are going through a rough patch, which was recently compounded by the fact that Trina was newly diagnosed with Chlamydia.  “Oh girl, he gave you Chlamydia? Oh Trina honey, divorce his ass today! Oh, it wasn’t him that gave it to you? All right, but still, damn, Chlamydia.” 

 I begged out loud for the Demon to just take me.  I offered my soul, my first-born child.  I would kidnap a baby and give it to him to eat. “Ask it oh evil one and your will shall be done. Just PLEASE make the torment end” I shouted into the train.

 As soon as I had finished my pact with evil, the red light on the wall began to flash and the demon face appeared in the mist again and shouted “this train will run express and will be making no more stops until Clinton.”   The hell was ending.  In a few short minutes, we were at the Clinton stop, and 80% of the people got off of the train.

 So, now I am a minion of evil, blood pact all signed and sealed.  I hope this is a multi-ride deal, and because I will be tormented for eternity in the afterlife, I get seats to myself, and lots of crazies to write about until I have to pay my debt in hell.  

 When pictures start jumping off of walls, and you see evil faces in the mist, call a priest, have an exorcism and go back to bed, as these are clearly signs of impending damnation.

 

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

My Favorite Church's between downtown and my Stop on the Green line


Performing Christ Ministries (Perhaps this is where god's career as a mime started)

Renewance Baptist Church (Is that a word?)

Holy Trinity Apostolic Mt. Zion Baptist Church of God's Holy Word (I'm not joking) 











Sunday, August 23, 2009

Vaseline and Razor Blades



 

As the train rumbled into the Central Avenue stop, I looked out the window to my right and saw a group of nearly twenty people standing on the sidewalk between the Day Care center and the Liquor store. 

 

There appeared to be some animosity between them – if you have ever seen Meerkat Manor, you can spot the signs of trouble between rival groups very easily.  They were thumping their feet on the ground, jumping up and down to look more threatening, and I think one or two were scent marking.

 

I thought it may have been mothers picking up their children who were trying to chase off the drunks, but it turned out to be drunken mothers fighting with each other. 

 

Come to think of it, the scent marking was probably just the drunks peeing on the wall of the liquor store.

 

The two leaders of the rival groups were in front and their peeps were behind them gesturing wildly and obviously shouting at each other.  I could not hear what they were saying because I was inside the train, listening to Japanese Avant Garde Pipe Music on my IPOD.   Whatever one of them said, the other clearly did not like it and she proceeded to snatch the other’s weave out. 

 

Yes, she literally grabbed hold of her rivals’ hair and pulled hard enough to dislodge the synthetic fibers that had been glued to the woman’s scalp.  We have all heard the phrase “gonna snatch your weave out” many times, but I never thought I would live to see it actually happen.  After the de-weaving, it turned into an all-out brawl.  Punching, kicking, biting, you name it.  It was a fight to the death on a street corner, and I’ll be damned if I was going to miss any of it. 

 

I leaped from the train just as the doors were closing, and took up my ringside spot on the train platform, which was perfectly positioned above the action.

 

As exciting as it might sound to witness a phenomenon such as this, it left me wanting more.  Not more violence mind you, just more.

 

What ever happened to the good old days of chick fighting? 

 

Where have the classy ass-kicking women gone?  Women like Pam Greer as Coffy or Pam Greer as Foxy Brown or Pam Greer in Jackie Brown?  

 

Coffee, Foxy, or even Jackie would never have lowered themselves to a street fight in front of a day care liquor store.  They certainly would never have done it with a bunch of drunk mothers for back up, and I can guarantee if one of them were planning for a fight, she would carefully have taken her own weave out so that bitch didn’t have an opportunity to pull it out (do you have any idea how much hair costs?).  What I am talking about is planning ahead, and doing it with class!

 

Coffy would (and did) tease her natural hair up into a big-ass afro.  Then she would (and did) take a package of razor blades and carefully insert them carefully into its dark recesses.

 

Follow these simple steps and the one that grabs your hair is going to get a surprise, and possibly a severed finger. 

 

For white girls, dirty hair teases up better (tips from a drag queen I know) so don’t wash your hair for a few days and use a lot of product.  Use the current Miss Texas as your guide, her hair will always be the right size and shape for hiding any number of objects. 

 

Once you have your hair set, you work your way down.  You take out the hoops in your ears, and if your teeth are removable you take those out too.  Leave nothing to chance.

 

Next you coat your face in Vaseline so that if that if she does land a punch, it slides right off, drawing her closer to you so you can cut her more easily with the knife you have in your bra. 

 

Additionally, the fight should ALWAYS take place inside a building of some sort.    Fighting inside gives you several advantages.  First you are less likely to end up in jail than if you do it in front of a day care liquor store; but the main reason is you have access to items of furniture that can also be used as weapons.  These weapons in turn provide you with appropriate segue ways to witty comments. 

 

For instance, shrieking “Fuck You Ho” at someone who just said something equally nasty to you, and/or pulled out your recently purchased hair is SO not classy. 

 

Inside a bar, when your opponent says “I got a black belt in Karate and I’m gonna hurt you bitch”, you have the opportunity to take a page from Foxy Brown and crack her over the head with a stool, knock her unconscious and then calmly reply “Well I got my black belt in bar stools bitch”.

 

I say we should give up trying to “Stop the Violence” in Chicago.  It is pretty much never going to happen. 

 

Today, I am starting a new campaign called “Keep the Violence Classy”. 

 

I have taken the first step by ordering the Pam Grier Collection and all 300 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I will turn into a seminar on how to fight with style.

 

When I write my U.S. Federal Grant Proposal (researchers, operating on a $2.6 million 
NIH grant, are now "training" prostitutes to drink alcohol 
responsibly, to reduce the women's willingness to engage in risky 
sex.  However, the training is taking place in Quangxi province, China.  I think mine is an equally important endeavor) I will list this as the research phase.

 

I will be soliciting a volunteer corps soon to take the message to the streets.