Saturday, October 12, 2013

Halloween at Xanadu

Xanadu was a co-op in Ann Arbor.  The best dance floor in the organization was the living room/dining room in Xanadu.  I recently ran into some Xanadu names on Facebook, who were at the great Halloween party.

My friend and I were wearing mostly greasepaint.  All she was wearing was a short pleated skirt with no under ware, I was wearing a Speedo tank suit.  Her torso was painted silver grease paint, she was a topless dancer.  When she twirled, that skirt went out horizontal.

Dave Stewart got the job of painting her, in the second floor bathroom.  She sat on a bar stool in front of the mirror and Wazoo (Stewart's nickname) was painting her.  In walked this really straight laced Chemistry major named Lisa.  Lisa has red hair, was painfully skinny, wore glass's, and looked the part of a Chemistry major in general.  Lisa went into a stall to relieve herself and Wazoo hollered, "Hey Lisa!!  Whacha wearing to the party?"

Lisa replied, "I don't have a costume yet."

Wazoo, "Why don't you go to the party wearing what Nell's wearing?"

"What's she wearing?"

"Greasepaint.  I've got plenty, I can paint you too."

She came out of the stall, looked at Nell, and said, "I don't know......"

But Stewart talked her into it, and she sat down on the bar stool, took her blouse and bra off, looked away, and let Wazoo begin to paint.  It didn't take very long to paint that skinny torso, but Wazoo smirked the entire time.  When he finished he told her to look.  She slowly turned and looked in the mirror.  There she was with her naked scrawny torso painted silver with greasepaint.

Without saying a word, she got up and went into a stall.  In the stall she washed the grease paint off with the water in the john.  Put her blouse back on, and with bra in hand stalked out of the bathroom back to her room.  Nobody saw her for 3 days.

Nell, on the other hand had the wildest party of her life.  She rubbed that greasepaint off on every guy on the dance floor.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Free advise

I got a lot of free advise yesterday.

A landlord told me in so many words that I came off as a scam artist.  Sweet.  How do I change that?  The truth doesn't work.  The "scam", letting people check with a good friend who convinced me he would help me find a place to live doesn't work.  What did I do that was so wrong?  It all started close to 10 years ago.

I moved into the place on Kent Lane so I could get a dog, and I adopted Gromit.  We lived there for about 5 years.  During the first year, there appeared a spot of mold on the ceiling above the windows in the living room.  I kept an aquarium right below that spot, and feared it was the result of the humidity from the aquarium.  It was much easier to look at it in fear than it was to do something about it, and I suppose in retrospect the smart thing to have done would have been to have scraped it off and painted over it.  Dunno.  Anyway over the course of 4 years it got to be about 24" in diameter.  It was caused by snow melt that formed something called an ice dam.  When the management finally got around to inspecting the apartment, which they should have been doing on an annual basis they told me I had to leave at the end of my lease.

Then I lived on HWY 19 between Marshall and Sun Prairie.  My landlord thought he was going to make a small profit off living there and renting the rooms out, but it was a real primitive place to live AND he was losing money on it.  My fault?  No, it was his fault, but he wanted to break the lease after about 7 months.  We didn't get along very well, he lied about the place when he rented it to me.  He finally said he was going to evict me.  So he filed an eviction action against me and thought I wouldn't find out about it.  I did, showed up in court with a lawyer, and it was dismissed.  Now, when people look me up on the internet one of yesterday's free advice people told me they don't bother to notice it was dismissed.  So, I now have a prior eviction when I never got evicted.  I just checked it, and sure enough, I react the same way when it's not me.  You have to press the "Court Record Events" button to see the dismissal.

Then I lived in a string of motels, and that was OK, but it's not the same as having a lease and considering the place home.  Then I lived in Orfordville and that was weird.  Then I lived in Lake Mills and that was totally off the wall.  Now I live.....

God, would I love a decent place to live.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

My new favorite quote.

"If you don't write the book, it ain't gonna get written."  Tom Clancy.

They had a bit on PBS about a New Deal program that sent a bunch of homesteaders from Michigan and Wisconsin  to  Alaska in the '30's.  Now I know why my grandmother always said she wanted to go to Alaska.  From the sound of it, it sounded like an experience into moving into Hell.

I think I saw a solution to my housing problems the other day.  I'll see tomorrow.  Tomorrow I'll check it out real close.  The more I think about it, the more I begin to see ways to make it work.  It's a place I looked into once before and dismissed without a second thought because they don't allow dogs.  Well, Petie died of old age, Gromit got terminal cancer when he was close to 14 which is old age in a dog, his eyebrows were plenty grey.  When I got busted up in May, I went through some changes.  All of a sudden, I grew old.  All of a sudden I started looking at life in terms of worrying about even being able to take care of myself.  Maybe some day I'll be able to have a dog again, but that busted knee broke that marriage to a dog sleeping on the bed.

A story came to my imagination, modern, scary, and plausible.  The first paragraph can grab a reader by the throat.  The first page, and first chapter will also grab.  And it's so plausible it could be rejected by a publisher on the basis of it's too doable.  Something that terrorists have simply never thought of.

Terrorists?  Sure.  Clancy's first book was The Hunt For Red October.  The bad guys used to be the Soviet Union.  Supposedly they'd bury us Americans.  I read it a long time ago, and I've seen the movie.  Imagination candy, a good yarn that doesn't stick in your memory.  Good entertainment for a week reading it, or 2 hours watching it.  My yarn isn't about a Soviet boogie man.  My yarn will be about a bunch of young religious zealots (morons, but I'll be polite).  There are plenty of them out there.  The 9-11 attacks, which I remember pretty vividly, were done by such people, and we've still got them running around in the United States, and a lot of other places.  They're proud of hating America and Americans.  I wonder what they'd to give their lives meaning if American ceased to exist.  Those Imams would find someone new to hate, that's what they're basically about from what I've ever seen.

Speaking of Middle East American haters.......  All of a sudden Iran is back in the news.  Back in 1979 I had a good friend who was an illegal alien from Iran, his name was Whoshang Arrapour.  He had the rottenest teeth I've ever seen.  I remember another Iranian asking him about politics, and threatening him.  The same guy threatened me, and to this day I'd like to get a chance to discuss the matter with that f*cker man to man in a dark alley... Oh well....  Anyhow, I asked Who (Whoshang) what the Iranian equivalent of the American saying "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow I shall fear no evil for I am the baddest son of a bitch in the valley!" would be.  Who spoke very good English, he knew the saying and it's meaning immediately.  He replied, "I have taken 100 thirsty men past the well and returned them thirsty."

Why does that Iranian saying matter?  Why do I think of it now, all these years later.  Who went on to explain that in Iran being a real sneaky SOB is considered cool.  The guy who could lead 100 thirsty men past the well without them noticing the well and drinking must really be a big time leader.  So this new guy who says he's a reasonable Iranian leader, well I don't think he should be trusted.  But that can be the basis for yet another great yarn, how about a Tom Clancy style CIA guy looking into the dishonesty of Iran in modern times........  I must think about that, perhaps.....