On fishnet Eskimos

Okay, so every reasonably sized non-Amish town will tonight be observing Halloween with that most holy of traditions: slutty costumes. I hit up B&A Warehouse last night for their annual party and found a veritable treasure-trove of slutty costumery--most identifiable, some not; some creative, most not. Some with pants, most--wait, no, none with pants. My bad.

Tonight, of course, women across the city will go all out, wearing clothes that would get them arrested on any other night of the year. Some will find couples costumes so that their significant others can play along--cop and slutty convict, convict and slutty cop, football player and slutty referee, referee and slutty football player. I've been trying to convince The Boy to go with me as doctor and slutty nurse, but he says he doesn't have the legs for fishnets.

Anyway, the most fun is always the people-watching, and people-watching is always more fun with a purpose. Tonight's purpose?

It's Slutty Halloween Bingo.

B	I	N	G	O
Slutty Pirate	Slutty Gladiator	Slutty Schoolgirl	Slutty Cop	Slutty Soldier
Slutty Farmgirl	Slutty Referee	Slutty Baseball Player	Slutty Native American	Slutty Construction Worker
Slutty Geisha	Slutty Rainbow Brite	SLUTTY FREE SPACE	Slutty Bunny	Slutty Angel
Slutty Little Bo Peep	Slutty Devil	Slutty Fairy	Slutty Nurse	Slutty Strawberry Shortcake
Slutty Witch	Slutty French Maid	Slutty Bavarian Barmaid	Slutty Sailor	Slutty Cat

All of these are, of course, actual costumes that I actually saw at B&A last night. Other costumes included Slutty Beach Volleyball Player, Slutty Eskimo, and Slutty Robin (a la Batman), but I didn't know how common those are in your area, so I left them off.

Print this bad boy out and get to checking things off! The first person to scan their winning card and e-mail it to me gets a Flying Spaghetti Monster t-shirt. I'll be posting my own updates on Twitter at #sluttyhalloweenbingo.

On overcoming fear

Okay, so I've got a couple of posts in the can right now (wow, sounds weird, but it stays) that I haven't gotten to because I've been on VACATION, BITCHES. I've been overcoming my fear of an entire week at a secluded beach in Florida with the boyfriend and the dog, far beyond any cell signal and out of reach of my bosses, with nothing to do but hang out on the beach and go for walks and chill out in the evenings with a couple of DVDs. I'm not afraid of you, delicious shrimp and crab cakes and both bay and sea scallops! I WILL EAT YOU!

Anyway, more to come. In the meantime, here's my intensely aquaphobic dog (no joke; he's terrified. Apparently it's fairly common among sled dogs) venturing happily into the surf in pursuit of a stick.



Still can't get him into the pool, though.

Laters.

On twits

Okay, so I have a Twitter account, and I've even used it--fairly consistently, in the beginning, up to the modest point of 100-ish posts and nearly that many followers. Recently, however, I've dropped off considerably, owing largely to the fact that I just don't have time to spend scanning Twitter to divine the meaning of life in 140 characters or less and to the concern that people, even those 89 people, probably don't care that much about what I say anyway. (It also doesn't help that, as a marketing/advertising person, I've been called upon repeatedly to trumpet the ineffable wonders of social media, and I'm just so sick of it. Social media is a tool, people. It only works as a component of a larger, coherent marketing plan. Simply having a Twitter feed is not going to drag in 10,000 new customers, nor is a Facebook page going to make you a millionaire. It's a tool, not an Easy Button, you lazy twits.)

Anyway.

There are people whose opinions on the meaning of life are closely followed. They are the ones we look to for 140-character strokes of brilliance. They are our modern-day philosophers, our reliable dispensaries of little wisdom-gelcaps. They are celebrities, and they always have something to say.

Tweets John Mayer:

You know who the most flamboyant crowd is? Straight, drunk girls. They're like a bunch of little Charles Nelson Reillys.

and Lindsay Lohan:

@samantharonson doesn't respond 2me b/c her family will cut her off if she contacts me...They control the one I love&im incapable of making

That damn character limit. Bring it home, Linds:

Any sort of difference. I'm in love with her, as she is in love with me....but her loved ones-hate her brilliance&resent her happiness

Convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown tells us:

IM SO TIRED OF LAME AZZ PEOPLE...UUGGGGGHHH>>lol

and then expounds with:

IM ALLERGIC TO LAMEZ..LOL...

One of the great questions of our time comes from Jessica Simpson:

Is "asks" even a word? If not, sorry 4 my layziness with grammar.

And one of the great answers of our time comes from P. Diddy:

BRAZIL!!!!! Ass! Ass! Ass! Phat round beautiful ASSES!!!!! Everywhere! Its a ASS suniami!!!!!!!! I think I like it here!!! Lol

But the problem with Twitter is that it's such a harsh, bland medium. The written word, pah--where is the nuance? Where is the emotion??!!? Where is TEH PASSION???!!//??!1!? Right here, says the Washington Post.



(Enjoy more dramatic tweetage hither and hither and hither and then keep going.)

None of this is to say that all celebrity tweets are incomprehensible Net-babble. Convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown, for instance, does have one nugget of true wisdom to offer:

IMA TALK ABOUT OTHER SH** FROM NOW ON.... ima fall back lol.. twitter will get u IN TROUBLE...lol

lol indeed.

(H/T Celebitchy)

On answering the call

Okay, so yesterday I ran into this guy I know. I wouldn't call him a friend; I'd call him a friend of a friend, an acquaintance, although Jesus would probably call him my brother (not to be confused with the guy my parents would call my brother). This Guy had just, he said, gotten rolled in Five Points and needed a ride to the hospital. And, in fact, he looked bad; he had a cut above his eye that would probably need stitches and one on his nose and one above his lip, his jacket was ripped, and he was wobbling around like a guy who'd had his head smacked against the pavement much in the way This Guy said his had been.

I lied and told him my car was broken.

Not that I'm trying to excuse it, but I've known This Guy for about three years, and I had my doubts that the real story was precisely as he told it. This Guy has been an alcoholic since before I met him, drinking away his wife and his two young children and his home and every job he's ever had. He's spent probably 85 percent of the last three years homeless, not counting the time he's spent in lockup. And the aforementioned Friend (of whom This Guy was a friend) had taken him in, through the goodness of his heart, to try to help him get his life back together. He'd tried to get This Guy cleaned up and sober, help him find a job, resolve legal issues, try to talk with his wife. My Friend had bailed him out of jail, helped him find a lawyer, driven him great distances, and even given him a place on his couch to sleep for a period of time as he tried to get things straightened out. And over and over, This Guy failed and came back--started drinking again, lost his job, and came back; got his girlfriend pregnant, lost the baby, came back; served time in jail on a couple of old warrants, came back; got another job, started drinking again, lost the job, came back.

Every time, My Friend took him back in. Good Christian and Democrat that he is, on matters like this, he tends toward a big heart and a small brain. Every time, he was convinced that This Guy was ready to get cleaned up and just needed to make the effort. Even when This Guy came back, even when he showed up drunk, even when he stole from My Friend, he was asked to leave and not come back--and when he came back, there was an open door and another chance.

All of this is by way of explaining, if not necessarily excusing, why my heart wasn't as big when This Guy approached me. His story was questionable, and the alcohol seeping from his pores made me wonder whether the wobbliness was due entirely to his head injury. And so when he asked for a ride, I lied and told him my car was broken. I called an ambulance and sat with him until they arrived. When they asked how I knew him, I said I was a friend of a Friend, and This Guy looked kind of stricken, like he expected me to identify him as my own friend. When the police officer who responded pulled me aside and asked me if This Guy had any "bad habits," I told him about his history, even knowing that it would probably have somewhat of a negative impact on the way he would be treated. When the paramedics asked if I would be riding along in the ambulance, I said no. And then I went home.

Last night, around 11:00, I got a call from the hospital. I recognized the number and let it go to voicemail; it was an ER nurse telling me that This Guy was ready to go and needed a ride. Half an hour later, another call, same number, and I let it go. No voicemail this time. At midnight, another call, and I denied him a third time. No more calls after that.

I could say that I had the best of intentions, that I was trying to teach him a lesson or trying to push him out of the nest or trying to give him a chance to sit in the ER and sober up, but I've done enough lying recently. I just didn't want him. He wasn't mine, he was My Friend's, and I didn't want him--not in my home, not in my car, not in a box, not with a fox. I didn't want him in my life, and so I left him in the ER, and I don't know what he did or where he is. And that doesn't feel good. It feels like I've abandoned a person in need, and while I know, intellectually, that there's nothing I could do or can do to change the way his life is going, my heart is telling me that I should have tried. And since I didn't, it's telling me I was wrong.

I'm not sure why I posted this. It might be that I'm begging people to line up in comments to assure me that I did the right thing. But I've already talked to two people about it, one of whom was the big heart with the small brain, both of whom assured me that I did the right thing. But conventional wisdom is that when you do the right thing, you know it because you feel good about it. Sitting there last night, watching the phone ring and not answering it, didn't feel like the right thing, and it doesn't feel any righter in the light of day.