Author: avidbruxist

KTD

File this one under Kids These Days.

After the juice in my iPod was tapped, somewhere along I-78 West, I was flipping through radio stations, which I never do at home, as my dial is permanently set to 91.5 WUNC, the local Public Radio frequency. Anyhow, I heard “Rude Boy” by Rihanna. Have you heard this song?

OK, lemme just start by saying, I like pop music. I ain’t got no beef with some happy, up-tempo, synthesized tune with simple melody lines.

And at first, I was like it’s-got-a-good-beat-you-can-dance-to-it. But Christ, the lyrics suck. Here’s my favorite sample:

What I want want want
Is what you want want want
Give it to me, baby,
Like boom boom boom
What I want want want
Is what you want want want
Nah naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

That shit is Shakespearean yo. And this is the chorus:

Come here, rude boy
Boy, can you get it up?
Come here, rude boy
Boy, is you big enough?
Take it, take it, baby, baby
Take it, take it, love me, love me

I was talking out loud to myself in the car. “What the hell is wrong with people? How can they like this song?”

Then I remembered that my favorite song in 1986 was “Two of Hearts” by Stacey Q.

I even made up a routine to it.

Digs

I’ll write about my trip in a minute, but I was just at the grocery store and figured out that two twelve-packs of canned dog food would take me to the end of my time in this house.

Wah. I love my house.

I mean, come ON. How cute is that?

But I’m trying to think positively about my new place. Here’s what’s great about it:

  • 5.6 miles from my sister
  • 2 miles from my new job
  • Very close to many friends, including 4 blocks(!) from Sam
  • Less than one mile from the dog park
  • Two bedrooms and one-and-a-half bathrooms
  • Built in 1949, but completely rehabbed—new refrigerator, stove, deck, fence
  • IT HAS A DISHWASHER. A BRAND NEW DISHWASHER.
  • It’s in Durham, where I need to be, want to be; it will allow me to be spontaneously social.

The “eh” parts:

  • It’s six blocks from a pawn shop.
  • It’s about 100 square feet smaller than my one-bedroom-one-bath.
  • On a good day, you might call it a “bungalow-style” house; on a bad day, you might say it looked like a “double-wide” that had been “turned perpendicular to the street”.

I’m going to invest in some flowering shrubbery.

Revive

I’m about to go on vacation, which means that posts may be infrequent and sporadic for the next twelve days. Headed up to Massachusetts, or as they say where I’m from, Massatoosis. (You know, I was born and raised on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, and I heard many a folk from Watauga County talk about chewing food and dining room sets. I don’t know why they couldn’t say Massa-chew-sets.)

Everyone who has ever traveled I-95 knows that, to quote Obi-Wan, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the highways surrounding the Metropolitan DC area. Last year, my then-seven-year-old niece, Violet, the four-month-old Redford, and I spent four hours in that bitch of a parking lot, and not at rush hour either. I called my brother to have him Matrix me out of that mess, but the signs were so confusing I ended up driving right into the zone that his Googlemaps had marked red.

On the way home, I got wise—threw my niece (gently, of course, Wa) and dogs into the car at 8:00pm, set the cruise to nine miles an hour over, and hit Durham at 8:00 in the morning. Then I passed out, natch.

So I’m going to try the all-nighter on the way up this time. I seemed to remember having a sample of Vivarin in my first aid box, so I just dug it out. Stamped on the side of the pouch was “EXP 04 99”. Meh. I’ll try it anyway. I mean, the worst that can happen is that it can not wake me up, right? It won’t make me grow chest hair or anything, will it? Or rupture my spleen? Or give me some sort of palsy?

On second thought, maybe I’ll buy some new.