Settle down kids and I'll tell you a tale, a tale of ear wax.

A couple of years ago my friend Eberjan told me a story about how his brother tried one of those liquid ear wax removal products. He followed the directions and put some drops in each ear. Nothing happened. Sure, some wax came out but nothing that couldn't have been reached by Mr. Q-tip. A WEEK later, his brother was startled to hear sudden cracking noises coming from everywhere. Crack. CRAck. CRACK! Suddenly with a whoosh (actually I don't know if there was a whoosh but I like it here)STUFF came pouring out of his ears and by the way Eb said "stuff" I could only surmise that the stuff was odious indeed and seemingly unceasing. Afterwards he claimed that his hearing was vastly improved. By the time he finished telling me the story and by the time I stopped laughing the story had been permanently added to my cache of inappropriate conversations about body functions to be shared with everyone.

Within the following week I told the story to everyone I came across with varying reactions. Some laughed. Some turned away in disgust. It is the way of all things inappropriate about body functions to be shared with everyone. When I told my sister and after the tides of laughter had gentled she cocked her head to the side and said, "Well, actually....the cracking..."

apparently, when she was fifteen or sixteen, she was sitting with my aunt doing something or other when she heard a series of ambient cracking with no apparent source. My aunt looked at her and said, "What's that sticking out of your ear?"

My aunt proceeded to tug on the thing in my sister's ear, eventually employing the aid of tweezers. She proceeded to gently remove a whole, in tact, LEAF preserved in my sister's ear wax. My sister then remembered that when she was about five she was playing and in random kid fashion decided to put the leaf in her ear. Do you understand people???? She had a WHOLE, IN TACT, LEAF in her ear for 10 years!

Tuesday afternoon, I bought one of those liquid ear wax removal products. I followed the directions and put drops in each ear and not much happened. At around 3 am this morning my right ear itched and I rubbed the outside of my ear with my finger and felt something and grabbed it. In my hand, FROM INSIDE MY EAR CANAL, surrounded by dark ear wax was the backing to an earring. I have no idea how it got there. I have no idea how long it's been there. The directions on the box say I can use the thing for four days in a row and believe you me, I will. I recommend that you too use an appropriate ear wax removal product if only to see what you're stashing.

small indeed

independent of me...

amul a boy i sometimes hung out with in high school is marrying
vibha a girl i sometimes hung out with in college

brother this world is crazy small. i sometimes feel like i'm nudging
elbows with myself.

crap. no sleep.

Lately I've been yo-yoing between sleeping ALL the time and not sleeping at all. It has a lot to do with my work schedule thus far. I've been closing on all but one of my five shifts at the restaurant. By the time I get home and wind down the sun is already starting to come up and I end up sleeping the whole day until it's time to go back to work. No problem, I can adjust to that.

What REALLY fucks me up is when on one of my five shifts I go in for a mid-day shift. Today for example, I have to be at work at 12pm. Last night I closed the restaurant and did not leave until 3am this morning. It took a couple of hours to wind down and, oh yeah, there goes the sun. I was so paranoid that I'd sleep through my alarm, hence, my shift that I stayed up all night doing laundry and ironing my clothes. I did the same thing last Friday into Saturday (minus the laundry bit).

The up-shot is that I can see some floor space in my bedroom and I'm fully stocked on clean underwear (but not socks, for some reason most of my socks have disapeared off the face of the earth). The downer is now I'm totally beat and all I wanna do is sleep sleep sleep.

Nice

States I've been to thus far.



create your own visited states map
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The world is crazy.

I got an e-mail from my best friend the other day with this story linked. Apparently, our friend's brother and his friend were shot the eve of their arrival in St. Thomas. They were there to attend a cousin's wedding. The police have no leads as to the cause.

For no apparent reason two young men are dead.

Book Binging: Goldie: A Lotus Grows in the Mud

The scavenging continues. Since Sedaris wasn't all that filling I moved on to whatever was on top of the dining room table. Hence, Goldie: A Lotus Grows In The Mud, Goldie Hawn's autobiography.

Your treated to a couple of neat family pictures and Goldie Hawn comes across as the bubbly optimist who loves her family above all else. It's cute.

Book Binging: Me Talk Pretty One Day

I've become a scavenging bibliophile. I picked up David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day because it was sitting on the coffee table and my sister has, of late been having a mild love affair with his work and Umberto Eco is slowly sucking the life out of me.

It was an easy read. Minor, but audible laughter was elicited. It's like listening to a satellite friend talk about his life.

Blech I don't want to go to work.

Sun poisoning?

Is there a bug going around or has the sun gotten really intense over the past decade? I went to the beach last Thursday and laid out for two and a half hours. I had spf 30 on from the waist up but I didn't put anything on my legs because I wanted to catch up on color. I ended up making a pearl* all night since I didn't get a chance to shower before going to work that night. I spent the next morning hot with a headache and ended up vomitting the three glasses of water I drank in attempt to rehydrate. What the heck?

* making a pearl is what happens when you have sand stuck up your kooch.

Bummer

I was kind of bummed last week because I got a call from Dave asking if I wanted to go on, short notice, down south Jersey to do some field work for about 48 hours. Unfortunately, he called me mid-way through my day off and I was scheduled to work the rest of the week and the short notice was a 12 hours heads up. It was perfect except for the timing part.

The Mini-Vacation: Wandering Massachusetts

Saturday I had breakfast with Mariano, who was kind enough to let me crash on his futon, said my good-byes and left to wander towards Marblehead. Mind you I did not make any hotel reservations, placing myself in the hands of fate. I recommend to anyone that they do that at least once in their lives. Go somewhere without a plan. It's liberating. I went into Marblehead and just took the town in. Spent some time on Old Burial Hill looking at headstones and looking over the harbor just visible over the tops of houses. For the most part I just drove around the area from Swampscott to Salem. The homogenation of America is well on its way. I stumbled across Captain Jack's Inn. I couldn't have found a better place to stay if I had planned it. It was an ocean front property with a pool and a jacuzzi and a winding access down to the ocean. I took advantage of that access to do sunset and morning yoga and it was terrific. The caretakers were very warm and eager to help me find whatever it was I was looking for. I highly recommend staying there to anyone. Here's the view from the third floor.


In the following conversations can be found a multitude of reasons why I am an idiot.

When calling the inn to see if they had rooms available.

Me: Hi! Do you have any rooms available?
Him: Fooorrr?
Me:(pause) For me to stay in! (uber cutesy voice in full force)
Him: (long pause)No. For how many people?

When asking about kayaking rentals in the area.

Me: Do you know if kayaking is allowed in the bay?
Her: What bay? You mean...the OCEAN?
Me: ...ok...(uber soft, uber small voice)

After a good fried oyster dinner at Dube's and a good night's rest I headed to Marblehead to hunt for some kayaking. I ran across a group from
Hobie doing a kayaking demo. How awesome is that?! I got to kayak the Atlantic Ocean rental fee free! I kept asking around and there was this myth that this guy sometimes rented out kayaks in Marblehead but most of the people I talked to knew nothing about it. So taking the locals' advice I headed north to Essex to kayak some more. I spent 3 hours kayaking the Essex River Basin. We took a break mid-way to lounge at a half-deserted beach.

Just the way I like them.

After that I ate 3lbs (that's right 3 POUNDS) of steamed clams, a box of onion rings, and a corn on the cobb at Woodman's. I was just settling into my meal when a group of three approached me.

Him: Wow. I gotta tell ya'. I just needed to come over here and say I thought I was eating a lot but wow. (accompanied by a pat on my shoulder)
Her: God bless you!
Me: Thanks...?

That's right bitches. I ate it all. After that it was a long drive home.

The Mini-Vacation: The Erasure Show

I got things off to a good start with my new favorite breakfast combination, a corned beef hash omelet at the duchess. I arrived in Boston around 4:30 pm. Plenty of time for to be at the Avalon when doors opened at 6 pm, you say. Heck no! Not when there's a home game at Fenway Park which turns out to be right across the (very little) street from the venue! I knew parking was going to ridiculous and or expensive but man! An hour later I was in line waiting for the doors to open and entertained myself with some people watching. The people waiting in the line with me ran the gamut from mostly aging fags to the barely of-age fem-boys. The rest of the straight people came much later. I guess they weren't that obsessive about their Erasure fix. The club adjacent to the Avalon must have been having an all-age punk show, judging from the kids starting their own line in front of it. I watched a couple of Red Sox fan unknowingly wander to "our side" of the street and when they looked up they seemed startled, looking back and forth from the punked out kids behind us and the obviously beautiful gay men on our line. They immediately crossed the street.

Elkland opened with a few songs. They had catchy and fun songs. They had a very classic synthpop sound to them. The lead, Jon Pierce, sounds remarkably like a happy Morrissey.

Erasure was fantastic. Andy Bell was delightful as always. His hippity-hoppity dance sent the crowd (myself included) into a frenzy. It was a small stage but they made the most of it. Vince Clarke is adorable. He played all the fave classics and some stuff from the new album which sounded great live but sound awful in the samples provided by amazon.com. This was the closest I'd ever been to a group during a show. I was 5 people away from touching the stage. I'm really glad now that I didn't go to the New York show. I know I would never have been able to get that close to them otherwise. Surprisingly, the club and or Erasure, were really cool about pictures. The bouncers who were right in front of us didn't even look at us when we blatantly took out our cameras and there were no threatening signs prohibiting flash photography and the lot. Here are my 3 favorite pictures.


I left the show spent, sweaty, and exhilarated with a little bit of my voice.

Yeah! a mini-vacation

I am officially on my mini-vacation in which I move through life with vaguely formed plans. I'm sticking around the area so that I can set a while with my ex-roommate who's family is in from Seattle tomorrow night. Friday morning-ish I'm leaving for Boston where I will simultaneously explode and implode at an Erasure concert. Afterwards I'm sure there will be beer and some fun and awkward reminiscing with Mariano, one of the foreign contingent from the NDI days. I'm crashing at his place Friday night, apparently with some other chick if I read his last weird-ish e-mail correctly. My plans to meet up with one of my high school friends has fallen through and I shall have to live with the disappointment of a boggle-less Saturday night. Still, this opens up the opportunity for me to camp out on one of the islands off of Boston harbor or just camp randomly somewhere, or go up to Maine for a couple of days. We'll see how it goes.