Category: People

The story of Sunday night

August 9, 2005 /

Running for the shower, my hands wrapped in singed pajamas, gripping a toaster oven belching flames, I began to wonder: where did it all go wrong?

As you may have deduced, Maria and I are trying to move to a new apartment about a hundred yards from our old apartment. It was Sunday night. In less than a week it would have been the two-year anniversary of the toaster’s purchase, and it was the first time we tried to cook anything with the toaster in the new place. Maria was trying to heat up some leftover restaurant tortilla chips (restaurant tortilla chips are very good, but only hot) and asked me how I usually heated them. I foolishly told her to toast them on medium.

Maria: ACK! Brendan, our chips have burst into flames!
Toaster Oven: REVENGE

I proceeded to treat the situation with a carefully thought-out policy of not opening the toaster door, and then, after a few seconds, opening the toaster door. The flames streamed upward like a reverse baby waterfall. Maria began to express concern over the possibility of activating our fire alarms.

Toaster Oven: THROW ME OUT OF THE WINDOW NOW, HU-MANS
Brendan: No! We’re never allowed to open the windows in here, because one of us is mildly afraid of bugs.
Maria throws open the windows.
Brendan: It’s not me.
Toaster Oven: HA HA PAN-SY

But off the stage, things weren’t going so well. Toaster Oven was slowly descending into a nightmare of booze and pills.

Brendan: I guess I knew things were falling apart when, after one session, I had to wrap my hands in old pajamas, grab Toaster Oven and throw him into the shower.
Toaster Oven: MY HABITS WERE OUT OF CON-TROL
Maria: That night was kind of what brought me to my senses. If this was the condition our lead guitarist was in, how much longer could the band last?

As it turned out, not long at all. Maria and Brendan intervened with water, followed by a heavy dose of baking soda. The band’s creative spark was extinguished. Also, the fire.

Toaster Oven: YOU BAS-TARDS ARE THROWING ME IN THE DUMPSTER QUESTION MARK EXCLAMATION POINT
Brendan: This for your own good, Toaster Oven.
Maria: It’s actually not.

It took nearly two days, but Toaster Oven and the Hu-mans would eventually resurface–without Toaster Oven itself. Instead, Maria and Brendan plan to audition new toasters based on a grueling selection process that involves being both cheap and at Target.

Brendan: Aww, this one’s adorable!
Toaster Oven: ARF ARF, AND SIMILAR SOUNDS
Maria: I don’t know. Do you think you’re ready for the responsibility of a toaster oven?
Brendan: I’ll take it for a walk every day! I’ll feed and water it, and I promise I won’t get tired of it, I won’t! Plus it’s on sale.
Maria: Well… As long as you understand that–
Brendan: Hooray!
Toaster Oven: SINISTER LAUGH-TER

August 2, 2005 /

This past weekend, Maria and her family and I painted the living room of our new apartment. It’s pretty fancy! The base is two coats of navy blue, and over that we color-washed a custom purple glaze with brushes and rags. If you ask me what color it is, I will tell you that it is Maria.

July 26, 2005 /

Maria got her board scores back yesterday. She did better than she had hoped, which is better than most of the country! Maria is awesome!

It’s Plug Starshift Crisis Day!

July 25, 2005 /

Now I feel like I have to follow that title with a Girlsareprettyesque story about how your family life is weird and conclusions are disappointing.

Read Starshift Crisis! Seriously, why aren’t you reading it? You have the choice to read Kristofer Straub’s punchlines on a daily basis and you’re not! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!

July 20, 2005 /

Wheeler came to visit us. It was fun! We played a whole lot of video games and some board games and ate high-quality vegetarian foodstuffs. He stayed with Lisa and Scott three nights and me and Maria for two, and did not hold me responsible for making him trudge all over Bardstown Road in the heat. Wheeler is, to quote Sumana, a good houseguest and a friend.

Lisa, Wheeler and I constitute three fifths of our weekly instant-messenger-based Nobilis game. Normally we play from our disparate locations in Louisville, Louisville, New Mexico, Georgia and Connecticut; this time the aforementioned three of us were all in my apartment at different computers, which was a neat if odd kind of synthesis. It’s easier to Laugh Out Loud at a joke when there are other people doing the same within earshot.

July 15, 2005 /

The sword Anne’s holding is also a guitar, and a magic wand.

It’s a sworguitwand.

“We got you surrounded, Moloney!” harshes the cop with the bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up!”

“You’ll arrest me?” Anne shouts back.

“Shit no!” The bullhorn catches the other cops laughing. “We just want an easy target!”

“This is it,” she mutters. “Live by die by, right?”

“Yea,” says Jesus grimly, unholstering his Desert Eagles. “When I was cornered, you gave me to cap.”

“Shit, Jesus.”

“Today I am your vengeance, Anne!”

They blow out the door, fire and bullets, wailing hard on high G.

FIGHT HIM DIE BY THE SWORD IM U

July 13, 2005 /

Mom’s safely in London, doing everything. Apparently a mild bombing isn’t enough to shut down anything cool. She saw Brian Dennehy in Death of a Salesman. Live. My mother has seen Brian Dennehy on stage and I haven’t!

July 11, 2005 /

Crystal’s Adventures is pretty amazing. She’s in Asia on a grant this summer (she’s in grad school at Tulane, although I don’t know her degree program); in May she wrote for an adolescent health website in Bangkok, after which she and two friends traveled overland through Laos to Hanoi, where she’s working on a sustainable community development grant proposal.

This sounded a little scary and exciting to me, as somebody whose only knowledge of Laos and Hanoi comes from old Doonesbury comics. Crystal’s account–which is well-written, clear and reasonable–makes it evident that this is a batshit loonball psycho death trip. Also that she is an action hero. Check out the part where she watches a cargo truck flip off a mountain, almost has her own bus do the same, stays in a house that uses old bombshells for dishes and scares a biker gang into carrying her down the mountain for three bucks. Man!

I found Crystal’s blog through her domain-co-resident and fiancee, Clinton Roosevelt Nixon, a name very familiar to indie RPG geeks who don’t read this. My Nobilis ballers may recognize him as the guy who wrote The Shadow of Yesterday (and, ergo, invented Keys).