The musings of a madman...

       Sometimes all it takes to ruin a situation is the situation itself…      We have been in this house for almost 17 months now.  I am a decent neighbor; I KEEP the grass cut, my dogs don’t run loose in the neighborhood, I pull my trash cans up from the street as soon as they have been collected and I don’t shoot in the air on holidays. … but I don’t particularly like people, so the BEST neighborly thing I do is minding my own fucking business and leaving people alone.      My wife, on the other hand, is a peopler and has a gregariousness that would cause me to cower into my mancave and lock the door. Compromise: when she decides to entertain, I will make sure the house is clean while I agree to be at least cordial and attempt to refrain from cursing around children.  No promises on that last one.      In that we are now in a neighborhood of people around our age who have children aroun...

       I will be 42 in about 3½ months… I look back to things I did twenty years ago and shake my head so hard that my neck hurts.   It was legitimately NOTHING to get off work at 11 (or 1am), bolt home and wash the day off my ass and head back out until 4am, then reemerge at 7:30 in time for class to turn and do it all again.   Day of the week bedamned.   If it was a “thong contest” ( ß yes, those were a thing in REGULAR clubs) on a Tuesday, me and the squad were there.   Party promoter needed someone he knew would get the place moving on a random-ass Thursday?   He would call one of us. Needless to say, EVERY day between Tuesday and Saturday could easily become a party night until people started shooting INSIDE of clubs around 2003/04.      The only thing I miss about those days is the stamina it took to go to class from 8a-1:20p, work from 2-11 (or 4-1, or 2-3:30 and THEN 4-1 when overtime was cracking) and T...

     Not all of my schemes involve me trying to scare fast money out of the world around me.  Quite the contrary, actually.  Sometimes I just wish to be entertained.  Sometimes – as you have previously read in these stories – I will go to a bit of expense in making these things happen.      So one day, I decides to rent out a venue and throw a New Year’s Eve party.  The theme was a “Party Like it’s 1799 All White Party.”  I would not be bothered with offering ANY further detail as to what exactly I meant by that.  FaceBook invites, Pen & Pixel -style fliers, the whole shebang! Pre-sales of the almost-all-included tickets (food and soft drinks/water included but a cash bar for all alcohol purchases) were through the ROOF!  Sold on into the hundreds, I was in business despite no apparent attempts to actually be “in business.”      Despite my good fortune a couple weeks ahead of th...