Pimpgnosis

Let’s say you’re staying at a semi-pricey hotel, in a schmance part of town.

Let’s say that this hotel charges $30 for overnight valet.

Let us say further, that the nice man at the valet discreetly lets you know that the cops don’t start patrolling until 8 in the morning, and that there might even be an all-night garage in the neighborhood.

Let us even say that you manage to find said all-night garage, after discovering that parking on the street is probably not totally advisable in a late-model rental (you only have to go one block off the main drag to find whores, for instance).  And said all-night garage has a $10 max charge.

What is the proper tip in such a situation?

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“Travel Pussy: Die Kunstliche Vagina” (the packaging on…well, I’m sure you can guess).
“The cake is a lie.” (graffiti)

The puzzler: Are there any countries that have both good beer and good pastry?

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1.) Nothing opens until 10 a.m.  What is this, San Pedro Sula?  Even Miami gets up earlier.  Hell, even Atlanta gets up earlier.

2.) The only place open for breakfast (excepting Starbucks, which doesn’t count.  I mean, they have Starbucks in fucking Pocatello at this point) was the Reading Terminal.  There I ordered a sage turkey-sausage  pretzel dog sold to me by a towheaded lass in an Amish snoodie.  A pretzel-dog that would have given me food poisoning had I not spat out the last two nauseous bites and then went to dry-heave in a toilet of the nastiest men’s room (truck stops included) this side of Cuzco, where they shit out in the open and don’t provide TP.  This, approximately 12 hours before boarding a transatlantic flight, when spending the duration doubled-over with stomach cramps (or worse, driving the tin-plate bus) is the kind of event that usually ends with an emergency landing in Gander, NF.  Fuck that noise.

3.) I was fraudulently sold a day-old New York Times at a Starbucks on South Street.  Yes, yes, buyer beware blah blah blah.  Stocking day-old newspapers does no-one any favors.

4.) Could find no copies anywhere of any work by Philly’s own E. Dibgy Baltzell.  Worse, when I asked at the independent bookstore where they stocked sociology, I was pointed toward political science.  When I repeated my request, I was referred to economics and philosophy.  I considered for precisely three seconds the possibility that the clerk was making an elaborate joke at my expense about the original disciplinary training of the three greats — Marx (economics), Weber (political economy) and Durkheim (philosophy) — then decided I had spent 2.9 seconds too long considering the question, and that the most likely explanation was that I was being served by an idiot.

5.) For a “foodie” town, the hot new “Peruvian/Chinese” place was, in fact, Ecuadorean and Vietnamese.  Which promised intriguing fusion, but actually delivered mediocre banh mi (pork belly and mayonaisse is simply too much, I’m sorry.  And how do you get cilantro to have no flavor whatsoever?).  To be fair, the soy-bean and mzithra salad was excellent, but it bore a more direct releationship to tossed fresh favas and feta than to anything produced in either South America or Southeast Asia.  There very well may have been awesome ceviche, but I was in no mood to tempt fate (see item #1).

6.) Finally, when you install a new exhibition at your art museum, try spackling the holes left in the wall from the last collection shown in that room.  For crying out loud, people.  At least make an effort.

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Conversation #1 (somewhere in the free state of Jefferson):
8-year old: Mommy, who’s that strange teenager?
Mommy: Oh, you’ve met RBL before, honey. It was last 4th of July, don’t you remember?

Conversation #2 (at the Clunie Pool):
10 year-old: Mister? Are you the swim teacher?
RBL: No, child. But you’ve just made an old man’s day.

See, now if this were sandwich-brigade girls saying these things, it’d be one thing. But out of the mouths of babes? I’m gonna go with I’ve probably hit my fighting weight.

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So these antibiotics apparently have antidepressant properties. This will likely mean I will be extra chatty over the coming months. I apologize in advance.

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Branwell Bronte and I now have something in common.

Here’s to a nine-month course of antibiotics. Which, among other things probably means I’ll lose another 10 pounds (since taking the meds with booze is contraindicated).

Oh, and to finally getting around to reading Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

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I considered trying to find a way to enfable this, but my fabulosity was temporarily disabled when I had to endure an evening that involved:

a.) A fundraiser for the largest gay partisan organization in the country (by its own report, which is of course suspect) that involved absolutely ZERO drag queens. Instead we were treated to an acoustic version of “Anthem” from Chess.

I’m sorry.  If I wanted to relive those tragic moments of early 90’s self-pity when I drove my sorry-ass vehicle up into the Peninsula hills blasting the soundtrack to Chess at full blast, I’d fucking buy a goddamn 1982 Toyota pick-up at current blue-book prices, plus a cassette-tape version of the London soundtrack, plus the gas it takes to drive from Stanford to San Gregorio and back, and still pay less money than what I plunked down to attend your sorry-ass goddamned fundraiser. 

And that’s leaving aside the entirely bizarre semiotics of singing a song about defection at  the main fundraiser for a partisan political group.  Chess, really?  And not even One Night in Bangkok?  Really? 

Here’s a quarter, dude, for the next time the clue bus rolls around.  Maybe you can catch a ride. 

Where was I?  Oh, right, annoyance #2:

b.) listening to an earnest speech by a young man in a bow-tie.  A senior at McClatchy, no less.  In not just skinny pants, but skinny cords. With a glamour shot that involved jumping from a rock into a river (surely the upper American), complete with life-jacket, “On-Golden-Pond” fishing cap, jaunty wave before submersion, and entirely appropriate knee-length swimming trunks.  Not that I was paying attention, mind you.  An oh-god-please-tell-me-I-wasn’t-that-earnest-at-18 speech.  A speech that entailed not one, but two shout-outs to his fag hags. 

Thank you, Christ, that I never thought it appropriate to thank my best female friend publicly for being there when I came out.  There are some things that become clearer with distance.  And one of them, it turns out, is the fundamental ingratitude entailed in saying “thank you” to people you have left behind. 

And no, I am not bitter that bitch stole my bow tie.  I remain unconvinced that he tied it himself.  And no, for the record, I will not, I repeat, not, swear that I can myself tie a bow unaided. 

Fucker.

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I found a way to insert Foucault into the lit review you demanded.  As well as a direct quote from someone saying that your request is literally “irrelevant.”  Not to mention a reference to a document produced by the OECD saying that you are wrong, and I am right.

So there, motherfucker. Bite me.

And yet still: if the baby dies?  I don’t care.  I get paid either way.

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The word we were looking for was “balusters.”

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When you go to the consulate to get a visa for your next vacation, and you are declined.  For two reasons:

a.) There are not enough blank pages left in your passport on which to stamp said visa.

b.) Your destination is so obscure that the consular official (whose job it is, surely, to know their own nation) does not recognize it when named, and cannot find it on a map.

For the record, this did not happen to me. 

It happened to my mother.

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