five from
brdgt
Mar. 2nd, 2009 07:48 pmhmmm
1. Baltimore. This city is crippled by snow. It snows maybe three or four times a year, not enough to learn how to deal with it, and it's always gone in less than a week, so we never have to learn to live with it. We get pounded by a blizzard (and by "blizzard," I mean more than 5") maybe once every five years. The big snowstorms always seem to happen in March, and they always take everyone by surprise. I really hope this is it for another year.
2. Travel. Somebody always dies when I travel. It's true. Mr. Rogers died while I was in San Francisco, Ronald Reagan died while I was in Prague, Sadam Hussein and Gerald Ford both died while I was in Edinburgh, and while I was in Durham, a Walmart employee got trampled to death. For whatever may happen while I'm in Istanbul this October, I apologize in advance.
3. Byron. One time I had to do an annotated bibliography on "Manfred" and unfortunately, the classmate who had done her project on "Don Juan" had taken every last book on Byron criticism out of the library and suddenly had go out of town for a funeral, so I pulled books out of my ass which had nothing to do with "Manfred," like Lord of the Dead by Tom Holland and Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jameson, and completely BS'd my way through it. The professor was impressed by my creativity. God, I miss grad school sometimes.
4. Convertibles. I used to have a very big problem with crap accumulating in my car. The best incentive to keeping a clean car is to drive a convertible, because A) if you leave anything of value in there, some creep is going to try to slice open the roof to break in, and B) when you put the top down, it will all blow away.
5. Lace. I got bitten by the lace bug the summer of 1990, when I found an issue of Old Time Crochet tucked in with the porn at Barnett's News and Tobacco. I was inspired to write a story called "The Hellbound Doily," in which a bored college student finds a lace pattern once belonging to the Marquis de Sade and manages to crochet a porthole into hell. It was a great story, but I sent the only copy to a guy I liked. In retrospect, perhaps the sweater curse also applies to works of fiction as well as needlecraft.
1. Baltimore. This city is crippled by snow. It snows maybe three or four times a year, not enough to learn how to deal with it, and it's always gone in less than a week, so we never have to learn to live with it. We get pounded by a blizzard (and by "blizzard," I mean more than 5") maybe once every five years. The big snowstorms always seem to happen in March, and they always take everyone by surprise. I really hope this is it for another year.
2. Travel. Somebody always dies when I travel. It's true. Mr. Rogers died while I was in San Francisco, Ronald Reagan died while I was in Prague, Sadam Hussein and Gerald Ford both died while I was in Edinburgh, and while I was in Durham, a Walmart employee got trampled to death. For whatever may happen while I'm in Istanbul this October, I apologize in advance.
3. Byron. One time I had to do an annotated bibliography on "Manfred" and unfortunately, the classmate who had done her project on "Don Juan" had taken every last book on Byron criticism out of the library and suddenly had go out of town for a funeral, so I pulled books out of my ass which had nothing to do with "Manfred," like Lord of the Dead by Tom Holland and Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jameson, and completely BS'd my way through it. The professor was impressed by my creativity. God, I miss grad school sometimes.
4. Convertibles. I used to have a very big problem with crap accumulating in my car. The best incentive to keeping a clean car is to drive a convertible, because A) if you leave anything of value in there, some creep is going to try to slice open the roof to break in, and B) when you put the top down, it will all blow away.
5. Lace. I got bitten by the lace bug the summer of 1990, when I found an issue of Old Time Crochet tucked in with the porn at Barnett's News and Tobacco. I was inspired to write a story called "The Hellbound Doily," in which a bored college student finds a lace pattern once belonging to the Marquis de Sade and manages to crochet a porthole into hell. It was a great story, but I sent the only copy to a guy I liked. In retrospect, perhaps the sweater curse also applies to works of fiction as well as needlecraft.