Never Again Is What You Swore

A hangover is only a problem if you have to be up at early hour. Twisted ankles only bother those that have to move. A lung full of plater of paris is only... well, a lung full of POP is just messed up.

If you're like me, you have two things in life that command your attention; real life and web life. I had an unfortunate meeting of the two. And before you start salivating for the kind of sordid, webaffair [that is a word isn't it, yet?] with the seedy motel, wife busting in, families ruined type thing- relax, it's not that kind of story, though I do almost die.

Evening:
The mental alarms nearly took chunks of gray matter [I'm Americano, so shut it!] right out my lid as I leapt up. I knew I was too late, but I sprang up from the laptop anyway. Into the kitchen, where I could see torrents of smoke pumping out from the lid of the pot. I knew it was extremely dangerous to heat oil in a closed lid pot, but it is also very convenient if you want to bring oil up to a high frying heat quickly, and in my less than sober state I did want to bring oil up to frying temperature very quickly. I turned off the burners, moved the pot off the old burner and to one that was cool. The smoke seemed to sense my unease and billowed forth even more earnestly.

So I started thinking back to the last time I'd been in this kind of situation, many years ago, when I was invincible and knew it all. I started a huge fire then. In my apartment. Flames higher than my head. Fireballs. Etc. I was lucky then to get out without any burns, even though I did do the whole Hollywood leap-over-the-flames-and-kiss-the-girl thing.

So this time, being drunk and wiser and single, my concern was less for my personal safety and my for preserving the state of relative calm in my neighborhood. Meaning no fire alarms.

There is a game called Sloshball, which is essentially kickball with a keg on second base; everyone must play with a beer in hand, catch with a beer in hand, throw with a beer in hand, plus every runner who reaches second base must finish their current beer and take up a new one.

Afternoon:
I believe it was the first pitch of the game, at least the first pitch for me.

Evening:
I took the lid off knowing what was going to happen. I just had to stop the clouds of accumulating smoke from turning my apartment into a cheap nightclub. I expected a laser show to bust out at any minute. Or Michael jackson in his white socks. The smoke stopped. And for one bright shining innocent moment I thought it would all be okay, that I had cheated Vulcan, but, of course, there's no cheating the Gods, even if they're Gods borrowed from other cultures. The oil combusted. Vulcan spewed laughter all over my stove and I was scared.

Afternoon:
The ball was kick high over left field, where I was, but went afoul. I chased it down, but being one who spends 10 to 12 hours a day in front of a computer screen, it takes me a while to warm up to being outside, and although I'd riden my bike to the field, I wasn't quite yet up to speed. I twisted my ankle, a feat that would remind me of itself with every move during the sloshball event and inevitable soccer match afterwards, unless, of course, I had a drink in my hand, especially a Jamie.

Evening:
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But what if you need to have the key to open the door that lies between those two points? I hate to say it but I thought of old Atari games like Adventure, as I watched the flames lick higher along the wall of my kitchen. Oil fires don't like water. They like oxygen. What they don't like, and what I couldn't find, was a powder, like say flour [which I'd just used the last of] or corn meal [which I'd also just used up].

So, flames, oil, in my kitchen, where I have no suffocating powdered anything, and [had I remembered, 25 yards away from the nearest fire extinguisher, but what am I thinking? Thank God no alarms are going off yet. So I, brilliantly quick, scan from my location outwards, what can be of use in this situation, luckily [and seasonally] I don't have to go far. In the next room there is a carton of plaster of paris from the current mask making session. I grabbed it, wondering if it was flammable or otherwise likely to make the situation even more dangerous than having a jet of flame shooting up from the stove.

I blasted the majority of the carton's contents onto the pot, nearly stifling it, and sending up a cloud of, what I am sure will be the death of me, white powder. Plaster of paris plus water equals a cement like substance. I soon started coughing in exactly the same matter as firefighters and fire victims do on early morning newsreels. I did not like that. And it was killing my buzz.

Morning email:
We were able to authorize a full time position with full benefits. Can you be in on Monday 9 am?

Evening:
I logged into urban dead, had to check in on my character in Chanclewood, Zeds have be besieging the Haslock building and it's surrounding tactical resources for months but the survivors have so far resisted and have been gaining the upper hand. I bought a new skill, leveling up in the process, now I had to start searching for a new object, a DNA extractor,- oh, you don't know Malton? Never-mind. Oh shit, I left the oil on, my kitchen's smoking!

Afternoon:
Drink, kick, drink, kick, kick, eat, drink, drink, kick, drink, drink. I wore a shirt make of beer and Jamie.

Evening:
I breathed in cement and oil.
Still, I congratulated myself on my quick plaster of paris thinking, as the apartment filled, incredibly fast with smoke from a fire that was no longer burning [which killed my drunken french fries dreams]. As an added bonus, none of my fire alarms had gone off. Sweet. I ran from room to room, disabling alarms. Opened the back door to the balcony and the front door and waited, whilst wheezing to a new rhythm, for the the smoke to clear. The alarm went off.

Not the annoying bleat of the 9 volt battery fueled room alarm, designed to wake the slumbering urban chump, but the building alarm, the one Out Front, the one designed to be heard for blocks and blocks. This was the one I had dreamed about, the one that, had I been in Dreamscape would have been my nightmare; all the neighbors around me, pointing, jeering at my failure. For one who's spent the last two years earning a living in his own apartment, having the neighbors looking at you funny can be a full time occupation.

I looked down onto the stairs from my top floor apartment to see one of the new neighbor rushings up to see if all his possessions would soon be lost, if his girlfriend should be urgently ushered into the street, if he'd made a grave mistake moving in two months ago. A real go-getter, this one. I liked him right away. If you're going to be assaulted by the building alarm better to have at least one of the neighbors on your side.

I knew from an earlier incident [not my fault] that the building alarm, which does not call the fire department, could only be turned off by the fire department. And somebody had already called them. So I waited, one minute later they were rounding the corner to my street.

I'll spare you the details of them trudging in, looking around, opening windows and pointing out the fire extinguishers. I'm infinitely grateful for their coming, and if not for my plaster de paris idiot-savantness, I would have needed them in the worse way. But in this story, they are but a footnote. Thank God.

Speaking of footnotes, I still think that oil should be at its smoke point, and rice flour makes the best tempura.

Afterward:
I'm drinking a second cup of coffee, and a shot of whiskey. And I'm checking in on Malton. Wish me luck for tomorrow.

Postscript: I got the job.

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House Cleaning

After doing aegis's virb page, I figured I'd learnt enough to go ahead and update this page. First piece of business, Do a sample blog so I would know how it'd fit in the design. So guess what this is? That's right, you got tricked into reading this piece of fluff purely because you're nosy and wanted to see what I was writing. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no, well, you get the point.

This is a part that should be emphasized. I'm listening to Grantby as I write this. Grantby is a British musician best know for a remix of Depeche Mode's Home on which Martin Gore, sings lead vocal, a duty that is typically handled by Dave Gahan. Dave Gahan has a new album out soon. I've been listening to the single. It only has two verses; I like it.

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