Rings|Clix|G-book|Profile|Recommend

Listening to: From the Choirgirl Hotel. Not for long, though... it's not really matching my mood quite like I was expecting it too.

Currently Reading: Just barely started Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music. Kind of saving it for the train, as well as a stack of others (both fiction and non). Also, I recently read Laurie Notaro's I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl (again) in like two days, and peed myself laughing. Highly recommended. I also devoured The Broke Diaries by Angela Nissel in, like, a mere few days. Laughed until I peed. Also highly recommended.

Wishing: income. Lots of it. Other than that, life's pretty good.

I couldn't be more The current mood of ronkc@diaryland.com at www.imood.com right now.

Buy "Civilised Conversation..." Merchandise! Please? All the cool kids are doing it....

Please help me pay for college by purchasing items from Amazon.com through this link!!

Do you love me?

01 August 2002 | 11:04 PM

Muscles At The Table

Okay.

So the other night I went back to the Bingo establishment I was babbling about last time. I saw Sylvia again, and she hadn't changed one bit in the three days that I had not seen her. I was sitting in the same place as I was the time before. At first, she was going to sit directly to my right (remember she sat directly to my left the time before). But then, after some reconsideration, she picked up her things and moved another table down. So now I'm beginning to think that I had been sitting in her regular seat, and although she didn't have it reserved, my guess is that she had been frequenting the establishment far before I was, and I can't help but feel a little bad about showing up in her seat twice in one week. I didn't want to make things any more uncomfortable, though, so I didn't appologise and offer to move, I just stayed put.

So then, the joint starts to fill up a little. A woman (older than me, younger than Sylvia) sits on my right, between Sylvia and I. Another woman (about the same age) sits on my left, where Sylvia sat last time. We share a table. This could either be really fun, or really excrutiating, depending on how fun of a table buddy she is. For a moment, allow me to digress.

Usually, bingo establishments play "paper," that is to say that the cards are made from recycled newsprint, and are disposable (recyclable) after play. When playing paper, one can use chips or spray-painted pinto beans or stale cheez-itz or whatever, but most establishments require that, with paper, players use what's called a dauber. A dauber is, in it's most basic form, a sort of tube of ink with a sponge at one end for dispensing, and a cap that screws onto the end with a sponge. Imagine a sort of felt-tip pen with a very flat tip the size of a quarter. With the dauber, one gently touches the marker to the number called to mark it. The ink goes to the sponge, which evenly applies just enough ink to your called number. I have seven of them, for of which are glittery. I have two red, one blue, one sparkly turquoise, one sparkly gold, one sparkly purple, and one sparkly pink. They are a most exciting accesory.

Okay. Back to Bingo.

So my table partner, let's call her, oh I don't know, Muscles. Muscles doesn't seem to understand the trick to these daubers. Muscles seems to think that it takes an exorbitant amount of force to get the ink through the sponge. As a result, Muscles tends to slam her dauber on her card, rather than a light barely-tapping, which is considered polite in the circles of the initiated (and me). Or perhaps it was Muscles' supersticion that the harder one pounds, the better one's chances of winning. I don't know. Muscles pounded away all night. I could barely believe it. I have two good luck charms: a painted pewter rooster that I bought in Portugal (if you want to hear the folktale, email me and I'll consider making it a future entry), and a one-inch tall plastic full-colour statue of the Immaculate Conception. I set them just so, in a position where the Virgin Mary can gracefully and reverently smile down upon the cards I'm playing, and pray for me, interceding on my behalf with the heavenly powers that be, so maybe, just maybe, I'll win a million fucking dollars on a pulltab or something. Anyway, Muscles hits the table so hard, that as I look up between games, I notice that my little statuary has either shifted positions, rotated several degrees, or has falled down entirely. I cannot believe a woman so small as Muscles could pound away at her card so mercilessly that the table didn't stop moving once.

Furthermore, during intermission, Muscles gets up to get something from the snackbar, and guess what she comes back with! Guess! Seriously, guess. Okay: she comes back with (I swear on my fucking life) a chicken-flavoured Machuran Cup-o-Soup, and a styrofoam plate towering with pickles provided on the side of the snackbar primarily for those enjoying a burger or a hotdog. I thought I was going to die. Part of me wanted to vomit. Part of me wanted to laugh at her. Part of me wanted to ask, in a very concerned and altruistic tone, if she was recently involved in some sort of accident that had any sort of impact to her head.

And before the night was over, the bitch got bingo. a $250 payout, at that. Anyway.

So a while back, when I was kind of strapped for cash, I signed up to take these internet surveys for cash. I'm not sure I would do the same thing over again, but it's water under the bridge. So tonight I get an email from one of the survey companies, and they want me to take a survey on toothpaste. They do form-emails, though, so the subject line read: "Special Invitation For Toothpase Users!" and I thought, here's MY speical invitation to toothpaste users: "I invite you to keep up the good work." Who sends special invitations to people who don't use toothpaste? And what do those invitations say, besides, "I invite you to pay more attention to oral hygiene, RSVP"?

I don't know, I just found that really compelling, and I thought that you might, too. Goodnight, kiddies.

��������������������������������������������������

Oh, Whoops. - 10:34 PM , 02 September 2005

In Like Hula-Hoops. - 11:28 PM , 12 April 2005

A - Z - 4:37 AM , 26 March 2005

w00t - 12:15 AM , 25 March 2005

Just Let Her Go. - 12:12 AM , 20 March 2005

��������������������������������������������������


�2001 Design by CC | Words by ronkc