February 10th, 2003. Monday
My apartment is starting to creep me out. On Saturday night, there was a noticeable dip in the electricty, resulting in my computer screens flickering, and a marked drop in the brightness of my household lights. Then, as I was eating dinner, suddenly half the electrical appliances turned off, leaving me sitting at my kitchen table under a single bare lightbulb. So this sort of creeped me out. And last night, I started to wonder if the constant piano playing that I hear from a neighbors apartment is actually supernatural in nature. It starts very early in the morning, and I often hear it late into the night. Everyday, from the power outages to the sewer smell in the bathroom to the mild suspicion that the joint is haunted, I wonder less and less why the previous tenant of my apartment moved out. Well, I actually wonder more, but I've narrowed down the possible reasons.
Also, to add to the creepiness, I saw the first bug I've ever seen in my apartment last night. MCM had complained of spider bites, to which I said pshaw, as I'd never seen as much as a gnat in my apartment. I'd always found that a bit suspicious, and it actually worried me a bit that there were no bugs in my apartment. What kind of place doesn't have bugs? I'd assumed that something in my apartment was so toxic that drove all the bugs away. So last night, I'm standing by the pisser, and there's a nice looking spider right on the wall. Naturally, I asked MCM to kill it. I wanted it dead but didn't want to do the dirty work. So I told MCM that she could finally exact her revenge. Predictibly, she didn't want to hurt the spider. And I'm admittedly squemish about making a mess of dead bugs. So now it's scurrying about somewhere in my apartment.
There were also minor points of levity this weekend, however. On Saturday night, after running out of my creepy, half-lit apartment, I met Miss Charming Melodee in Union Square at the UA theaters and we saw the movie Shanghai Knights. I'd only seen a few minutes of the first one, which didn't look that good to me, but I found myself feeling strangely compelled to see this movie. Plus, when the first one came out, I was particularly anti-Owen Wilson, a stance I've since softened. That old galoot just went and won me over. Anyway, the movie was thoroughly enjoyable. One review I read said that Owen Wilson couldn't have been more anachronistic if he was wearing a walkman, and that's pretty true across the board. And normally that kind of thing actually bothers me. But it was easy to ignore. Also noteworthy, as far as factors atypical of these sorts of movies, was that there were not one but two villains, and that our hero, Jackie Chan, was outmatched by both of them. In both his fights, he clearly lost. But all the fight scenes were really entertaining. Probably his best American movie to date. Though I didn't see the Tuxedo. Anyway, I'm a little surprised over just how good of a movie I thought it was. Then again, I also count Teen Wolf among my all-time favorite movies.
Sitting next to MCM at the movie was a gentlemen in his mid-to-late 30's. This man enjoyed the film more than I've ever seen anyone enjoy a film. He literally shook the laughter out of him. I didn't notice until halfway through the movie, since he was two seats away from me, but at one point I looked over to see MCM's reaction to something, and there was this guy, shaking his arms violently in front of him. It was a full-arm, back and forth motion, with his hands flapping wildly and freely slightly over his knees. He'd do this every time he laughed out loud. The first few times, I thought he was just straightening his pants or something. But then it became apparent that this gut possessed a slightly socially unacceptable tick. It was fine in the movie theatre, and I'm never one to judge how somehow enjoys something as long as it doesn't harm anyone else, but I certainly wouldn't want to tell a funny story in front of this guy at a dinner party. Making if he were making a martini or chocolate milk or something, but otherwise, I'd try to keep the hysterics to a minimum. But boy, did this guy liks Shanghai Knights. At the end, he had this, gee-whiz, golly-gee-willickers look of utter and total satisfaction on his face, as you might imagine one might do after slapping one's knee and putting one's hands one's hips. Anyway, it was really weird. I'd be there, watching the movie, see something funny, respond in an appropriate manner (at least what an appropriate manner is to me) then look over and in mid laugh alter reaction from hilarity to increduality, as I watched this guy literally spaz out right before my eyes. To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, "I don't know what inappropriate is, but I know it when I see it."
Also this weekend, I started my own protest campaign. It's really a protest of other people's protests. I'm generally a status-quo kind of guy. And nothing bothers me more than an uninformed opinion. Except when I have to stare at these uninformed opinions during my commute everyday. They mostly take the form of protests against the government or some trendy slogan or whatever. So I printed up a bunch of stickers that simply say "Oh, Give Me A Fucking Break!" I figured this was a good catch-all for most forms of stupidity I see on the train. And while my stickers are in large part in response to stickers and magic-marker slogan writing, I have reserved a large portion of my printed stickers for items along the lines of Kangaroo Jack posters.
Speaking of protesters and war-business, a saw and heard a couple of interesting tidbits this weekend regarding the Iraq situation. I don't know how much of it I believe, but I was watching Crossfire the other day, and they were talking to a nuclear scientist who used to work for Saddam Hussein. He just wrote a book called "Saddam's Bombmaker." Anyway, during his short interview, he said that early in their nuclear development program, he travelled to Europe to buy, I think, a nuclear reactor. Or two. And the two countries that sold him reactors were France and Germany. Curiously, they're the most vehement European opponents to any war on Iraq. I'm not really trying to make any sort of point, but I just find the whole thing pretty fucking curious. He also said that Saddam's goal was to make a single nuclear weapon, which he found noteworthy, because as he said "You can't test one nuclear weapon. Once you test it, it's gone." So it became clear to him that the goal of the nuclear weapons development program was to make a single bomb to drop on someone. So then it became clear that "he was a madman," and he got the fuck out of there.
Also, I was reading an article about the real estate market in Baghdad, and how it's actually picked up. Apparently, Iraqi citizens, at least the ones interviewed, don't really care if there's an attack or not. One of the interviewees said something like, after 20 years of war, they're used to it. So some are actually buying up a lot of commercial land in anticipation of a regime change, which one would assume would lead to more money to be made through capitalistic ventures. Anyway, the more I hear and read about it, the more I'm starting to think that it may not be such a bad thing to go in with guns blazing, get it over with quickly, and hurry back home and prepare for the retaliation. Which is probably coming anyway. Pull the band-aid off quickly or slowly is what it boils down to for me. Still, when they finally do kill him, it would feel really weird to feel good about it. I really hate talking about this stuff.
Mail to G-Rock