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monotonously-predictable crying pattern
Saturday, June 8 2002
This morning while walking Sally in the woods of Prospect Park (as I have done every morning since returning from my Virginia vacation), I could hear the distant playing of bagpipes. Live bagpipes have never been a common sound anywhere I've ever lived, even back when I was a student at musically-rich Oberlin College. As I drew near the source of this sound, I saw that it came from a gentleman standing on the edge of the Triangular Field. A couple dozen feet away stood another gentleman with a golf club, chipping balls off into the middle-distance. It was a strange little celebration of things Scottish. The one thing it lacked was a pair of kilts.I thought my old housemate John was going to visit me today on his way from Philadelphia back to Vermont, but he never left Philadelphia. I'd even gone to the trouble of buying beers so I could offer him one when he arrived. He'd told me in a phone call yesterday that he'd stopped taking ADD medication and now he just drinks "a lot." For my part, I haven't drunk any alcohol in three days. I've been giving my liver a rest after the Jane Fonda Workout it received down in Virginia.Since the warm weather came and our back door started being open all the time, Gretchen and I have suffered from the cries of a horrible little screeching baby living in one of the apartments adjoining our backyard (due to the numerous floors above us and the echoing acoustics, neither Gretchen nor I know where). The baby has a monotonously-predictable crying pattern. There is always a piercing high-pitched shriek followed by existential soul-wrenching baby-sobbing. The sobbing lasts about five seconds, there's a brief pause, and then there's another shriek and the sobbing continues. It usually goes on for 15 to 20 minutes in this monotonous pattern. Once it starts you know you're just going to have to sit there and deal with it until it eventually ends. One time it was so bad that Gretchen ran out into the backyard and shouted to whomever the culprit parents might be, "Your baby is driving us crazy! Could you please shut your window?" Other times we deal with the situation by closing the door, switching on the television, or humorously exchanging radical anti-baby sentiments. I had the idea that I should go into the backyard and loudly offer my spanking services so that I might teach the offending infant how truly painless being silent can be.
More recently, I had the idea of perhaps starting an e-commerce website offering spanking services at reasonable prices. There could be monthly flat rates for spanking "packages" and special discounts for spanking referrals, especially those made on transcontinental airline flights. I was discussing this idea tonight with Fandango Matt when he directed my attention to a website offering supplies for the busy spanking parent of today
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Back when I was visiting Jessika in Charlottesville, she told me about a movie she and Daryl had taped off of HBO called How's Your News?. It's about a team of mentally-retarded folks being driven around the country in a dilapidated RV, stopping here and there in various towns to act as reporters for the gathering of unconventional "news." Jessika told me that the resulting tape has become a big hit amongst her and Daryl's friends, and it is perpetually on loan. Now I know it's not funny to make fun of the retarded because "there but for the grace of God go I," and all that. But that's also true of sellout politicians and guys with cheesy mustaches. There but for the grace of God go I. I've tried to find How's Your News? on KaZaA without any luck, although I have been able to track down a whole collection of mp3s. I've listened to all of them, and "That's A Story" is probably the best, from a "there but for the grace of God go I" standpoint.[REDACTED]
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