Straight No Chaser

Early Morning Entry

...actually, it's after ten-thirty. still, this is early for me, these days. before leaving for work, dad yelled up the stairs to let me know school's letting out two hours early today due to weather, meaning chad will be home around noon, probably while i'm still in my pajamas. the puzzle of it is, looking outside, i see no more snow than what was out there yesterday, which is not a lot. anyway, till he gets here, at which point he and i need to get some meaningful start on our christmas shopping, here's a survey, julienne-style, the way grim likes them.

1. if you could have any title, what would it be (e.g. sir, lord, lady, captain, doctor, count, etc.?)
well if i say doctor then i'll probably get what i want within eight to ten years, but i've always wanted to be comptroller shannon.

2. if you were stuck on an island with four dollars, what would you buy: a banana or sex with a cheap prostitute?
well, assuming this is a civilized island where such things are sold, i'd have to invest the four dollars in some sort of banana leaf hooker dress and become a cheap prostitute. no sense in blowing it all in one place without the promise of any return. my dad would not expect any less.

3. what is your favorite animal?
all god's critters got a place in the choir. however, while watching animal planet with krystle last semester, i finally encountered what is definitely my least favorite: the surinam toad, named for its place of origin, and which reproduces by pressing the developing eggs into the female's back, where they reside for such a long time that a crust of mucusy skin forms over top; at the end of gestation, the babies burst out from the extra layer, creating one of the most dismal sights nature has to offer. see here: http://www.honoluluzoo.org/herp_jour_photos.htm

4. what is your favorite thing in back to the future: the clock tower, the delorean, or einstein the dog?
first truly dumb question of the survey. my favorite things about the trilogy were, generally, the themes of change and continuity, which i guess are best captured in the physical symbol of the clock tower.

5. what color socks do you prefer?
black, they are easiest to camouflage beneath dark jeans and leather boots.

taking a break here. go and look at the surinam toad, if you didn't. krystle and i screamed to high heaven when he showed up on animal planet; since then i have not yet experienced a reaction to match our horror. maybe it's that he's not as disgusting as i think, or maybe it's that seeing him realtime and in motion was grosser than any still photo could be, or maybe it's just that, really, all god's critters have a place, and his is to personally gross us out, only us. but seriously. i can't even eat my waffle now, having looked at his picture again.

6. if you lived alone in a big mansion in the caribbean and you had your own yacht, would you be happy?
no.

7. kiss and tell, or shag and tell?
neither please, though i'm breaking my own cardinal rule of always choosing one of the options presented. kiss and tell, i guess. although, in my particular college environment, just kissing probably holds more meaning than actually fucking. a kiss with no expectation of sex, that is, probably means the two actually like and value each other, which is more than can be said for a lot of the sex that happens down there. but still, if it's me, then...kiss and tell.

8. which do you prefer: monopoly, hungry hungry hippos or twister?
definitely monopoly, as the latter two require not even the slightest shred of meaningful skill. hungry hungry hippos makes my ears and my hands hurt; my legs are too skinny for twister. but i usually get trounced at monopoly.

9. if you had to move to either liberia or greenland, where would you go and why?
to the motherland, after receiving the proper shots and tutelage. seems like the fastest way to feel culturally alienated would be to show up in a country on the continent of one's ancestry without any prior language training. i'd have to shave my head, too, completely start over, grow one of my weak, floppy afros. too much curl to lay down flat, not quite enough to kink to stand up straight. i'd be frightened in either place, liberia or greenland, but at least in liberia i wouldn't be cold.

10. if you were going to buy a pet, would it be: a seahorse, a giraffe, a sloth or a tiger?
a giraffe, with whom i would have the most in common.

now it's snowing, but i can already tell it's not going to stick to the streets. this would be distressing if i had a car at my disposal, but i left my altima parked in atlanta, my parents' are at their respective offices and chad claims he's going to charge me five dollars per use of his stupid volvo. so, whatever. it's too cold to go anywhere, anyway. the snow is pretty. i should put some music on.

11. if you were working behind a counter at a sandwich shop and were asked nicely to hand over all your money at gunpoint, would you?
no, i'd follow whatever directions they'd given me to respond to that situation, meanwhile trying to charm the robber out of shooting me.

12. if you were involved in a car accident where your driver is at fault and the person in the other car is badly injured and bleeding, would you prefer to:
prefer to what? i'd call emergency, of course. unless i thought they were going to execute my driver for the heinous crime of an accidental car collision, sparing him a few points on his license wouldn't be worth risking a stranger's life. (such is, at least, my instinctive, heroic answer.)

13. do you still prefer the socks you chose?
the black ones? yeah. in fact, i should put on a pair, since the temperature in this house perpetually hovers somewhere around forty-three.

14. what were you doing last saturday night around ten in the evening?
watching my eight-year-old godbrother play the piano, which was more fun than it sounds.

15. if the world was ending today, would you think about sex?
yes.

i'm second-guessing myself on what to do for marcus, for christmas. here's the thing: i had a bunch of ideas lined up, you may remember--some stuff i'd written, a creatively bound collection of his own poems, probably a purchased collection of someone else's, the crooklyn soundtrack (inexplicably his favorite), some sort of guitar accessory, a homemade card and the only things he actually asked for, "love and the light of [my] conversation"--all of which, combined, would have been finanically manageable, and great gifts for someone who'd appreciate all those things. but he's had a tough semester and i just...aborted thought. i'll figure it out. i need to shop, today or tomorrow. someone will have to leave me a car.

16. if the world was ending tomorrow, would you have sex?
hard to say. not randomly, no, but probably under the right circumstances. marcus would have to come here and want to, and we'd have to discuss it, and reach the agreement that it was warranted and a good thing to do. by which point the world would probably already be over.

17. if you were robbed, would you hand over a wallet with one thousand dollars cash or your mobile phone?
since there's almost no chance i'll be carrying that much cash in my wallet any time soon, and i can always get the phone replaced for pretty cheap, so, the latter.

18. guys: double d implant boobs or b-cup natural boobs?
girls: eight-inch penis or a tub of ice cream?
on the former, i'm not a guy, but i cannot imagine that any size fake boobs would be preferable to te real thing. and on the latter, it's not the size, it's how you use it. ice cream please.

19. close your eyes and imagine yourself running from one side of a freeway to the other...just for a minute, then continue the survey.

20. where is the dew from mountain dew collected?
the mountains, duh.

the birds are crying, and repeatedly sabotaging their own endless quest for millet seeds by pushing the sticks off the top of the cage, over and over. then dive-bombing after it, can't fly because of their clipped wings, and just keep getting stuck down there on the ground. and if i have to go in there. one more time. and rescue them. i. will. scream.

21. do you think i look fat in these pants?
yes. you should take them off.

22. did you try and picture me and what pants (if any) i'm wearing?
yes, but the hell of it is, i made you a man in abercrombie jeans, and men don't ask that sort of question. well. maybe the ones who wear abercrombie jeans do.

19b. what was the freeway that you pictured like?
dusty, deserted, ran through a really flat landscape where the ground was mostly sand, there was a roadkill turtle and i had on stilettos.

23. would you prefer to get a job straight out of high school and earn thirty-eight thousand dollars a year, or go to university for four more years and get a job earning seventy-five thousand dollars a year?
neither, i choose to go to university for eight years and graduate a trazillionaire.

24. would you prefer to fall into a pit of spiders, a pit of snakes or a pit of semen?
oh fuck. like bartleby, i would prefer not to. but if i'm absolutely compelled to pick one, and assuming the spiders are of the tiny, nonpoisonous variety, then i choose the spiders. snakes...i don't trust snakes, and that much semen would have to have been produced by more than one person...i just, ugh. i would die.

25. if you were invited to a party, went to the train station, but missed the last train there, would you: just sit at the station all night, go home, or start walking to the party?
uh...go home?

my bad, it's sticking. the snow. i missed snow. atlanta never has any.

26. if you were on an airplane flying over the atlantic ocean and the pilot warned everyone of an engine failure and an emergency landing, would you: continue watching the in-flight movie (which is space jam), try and calm everyone down, or find a parachute and jump off the plane killing everyone else on the plane?
well, i lost interest in this question shortly before the colon, but i guess i'd do the second thing, because i don't think i could spend my final moments watching space jam, and i'd be pretty much a tool for taking the only parachute. but if it's not the only parachute, then i'd do that, because i don't think fleeing the scene would really constitute sentencing everyone else to death; i didn't cause the engine failure, and the other passengers woulnd't be any safer with me on board.

27. if you were deep sea diving alone and went down so far that there was no sunlight, and you forgot to monitor your oxygen and realized you've run out, would you: swim as fast as possible to the surface (even though you probably won't make it), spend your last few minutes of life petting the weird creatures, panic and start asking the fishies if they've seen a spare oxygen tank anywhere, or other (be creative!)?
other--i wouldn't be there in the first place, for fear of this very situation. but if i were: other--i'd die a quick and very panicked death, having dreaded exactly this my entire life; hence the reason i don't particularly like the ocean or other deep water bodies, and the reason you will never catch me scuba diving, ANYWHERE. (there's only one place this kind of shit could happen, you know where.)

28. if you were santa claus's successor, would you: take the job and make children happy, sell santa's workshop for eight billion dollars and sell the elves to asia's illegal slave labor industry for five million, or just move to the workshop and party had with the elves?
these questions are too long.

29. turn the nearest tv on, and don't change the channel!
done. it's on bet (black entertainment television).

30. after doing this survey, do you feel like: writing a story about an airplane accident, deep sea diving and living with elves, or watching whatever's on tv, or buying socks, or complaining to the mountain dew company, or something else?
something else. something else entirely.