Chipper and Cheery.
I crawl out of bed in a haze, grab my shit in a state of semiconciousness that sometimes results in shirts that are turned inside-out.
I forget my coffee, but now I'm late, so off I go, hauling ass to the bus stop.

Within one block of the stop, it whizzes past me with an almost spiteful humm to it's engine.
"Hummmmmmmm, if you had left one minute ago you would have made it, HAHA"
WHIZZZZZZZZZZzzz


I'm standing there, like a fucking idiot, staring off into space, holding my bags and my phone, trying to decide what to do. I make up my mind to walk to the 82nd stop, where there's a bench, and possibly more entertaining wildlife.

I'm passing a pink plastic tampon applicator, a McDonalds stir-stick, cigarette butts, rusted metallic refuse, plasic ties, tissue paper, all degrading, as though they were ancient boulders, into unidentifiable particles that line the streets like confetti, random bits of things that were useful once, maybe, if you're feeling generous, but have now devolved into flecks of orange whatever in the gutters.
The cars drive mercilessly by, like a damn storm, wave after wave of grey toxic gas just wrapping me up and making me stink and cough and I'm so used to it I barely even notice anymore, but I bet to anyone who lives in the country I would smell like the fucking tailpipe of an 89 camry.
A car drives past me and slows down. I look straight ahead and keep up my pace, the nice way of saying I'm not a working girl.
There's gravel and it's in these traffic islands. Gravel and rocks. I pick up a nice big rock and I think about hitting people with it. How much damage could I do to a passing car if I threw this?
Then I look at it and try to imagine what this place must have been like in a time before humans came.
I heft the stone in my palm and turn it around and imagine lakes, streams, trees, wan morning sunlight and dew on leaves as I pass FAT CITY FIREWORKS and some drunks hooting and hollering outside the Hing Ming Market.
They're flailing their arms around and clearly all worked up about something. Maybe one of them saved up enough to buy a fresh can of Steel Reserve.

I get on the bus and I start thinking about this shitty ass thing that happened to me- how I'm going to have 138$ garnished by the fucking government from my goddamned paycheck becasue some asshole who bought my old car got a parking ticket and didn't bother to turn over the title.
I remember what I told Hunter when I found out via a friendly looking envelope covered sinister official print.
"When you're a little baby, life sweetly pats you on the head like a good puppy,
When you're a kid, life is tousling your hair with the occasional unwanted smack on the ass, and when you're an adolecent, life is putting it's hands into dark places and telling to to stay quiet becasue this is our little secret.
By the time you're grown up, life has dispensed with the finery and has you bent over. It's fucking you in the ass, with absolutely NO lubrication, and you know it's never going to stop until you die."




Random buslady.



Finally.
After an unanouced detour for construction that makes me late..

I'm off the bus, I'm walking to work.
I'm still in a fucking foul mood as I approach the Keller auditorium.

What are all those people doing out there?


look they're camping! What could it be for?




What tickets could you want so badly that you would sleep out on the fucking sidewalk for?



oh wait.
Oh no.


OH NO

And I thought the devil was having a heyday before.



*shudder*
There are no words to express my shock and horror that people are CAMPING OUT for this godawful piece of shit.

They've been playing this horrific commerical over and over again where the two stars of this monstrosity are screeching out their songs like fucking divas with headsets and stylish scarves and I just want to PUKE every time I see it.
But this? People CAMPING OUT for it?

I wanted to run past them and steal every blanket they had and go give them to the fucking winos to pee on.




I got to work, and I looked at my rock again. Squeezed it, touched the strange beaten scarring and random chunks it's missing, and then I saw it.
And I finally laughed.




the NO rock


Dear life, Esmeralda's not available right now, TALK TO THE ROCK.







Possibly, to cheer my cantankerous old ass up, Hunter bought me the Fable 2 extensions, which make me squeal like a little piggy.

In other news, I'm mighty pissed that Billy Mays is dead.