Surprised

Have you ever seen Reservoir Dogs? If you haven't, then you should. It is, after all, one of my top 10 movies.

If you've seen it, then you may or may not remember the following clip. If you have not seen it, you should be able to watch this with minimal fear that any plot spoiling will occur. (Although you cannot watch it without lots of curse words occurring.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPZ9kidioi8

(It's not letting me embed it. *grumble*)

For those of you who care not to watch it, it's Quentin Tarantino talking about the meaning of Madonna's song Like a Virgin. Basically he's claiming that it's about a woman who'd slept with a lot of guys, but then she meets a guy who makes her feel, physically, like she'd never had sex before.

Anyway, I was reminded of this over the weekend. I was at Ozzie's and I was having a drink and waiting to sing, and I heard something.

I've heard some things, in my years going to Ozzie's and other karaoke bars. I've heard some great singers and I've heard lots of mediocre singers and I've heard a massive number of bad singers.

After a while, one builds up a tolerance for terrible singing. One needs a toughness that allows sanity to remain without being overwhelmed by disgust or anger at the people who just aren't good singers.

I have a pretty high tolerance for bad singers... after all, almost everyone that sings is there to have fun, and being positive is much more healthy and fun than being negative.

With that being said, I heard something. I heard a singer that was very bad.

She was so bad, that she caused me pain. It hurt me.

It shouldn't hurt me, you know--my ears should be Bubble Yum by now--but when this chick sang it hurt. It hurt just like it did the first time.

What was it about her? A combination of things. Was she out of tune? Yes. Was she enthusiastically off-beat? Sure.

But she had that special something that made her resonate on a visceral level. I don't know what "it" is, but she had "it".

And I hope I don't see "it" again any time soon.

A Fine Line Between Kind and Stupid

I work on and with computers quite often. I read about people getting hacked or phished and it turns out that it's not very often brute force: having a computer run every username/password combination is simply too time- and processor-intensive for most potential intruders.

Instead? Social engineering is key. Determining what password a user is likely to use helps cut down the amount of work it takes to get in. Asking what a user's password is can be tricky and might require nerves of steel, but that is even easier.

While it's easy to think that I will never fall for that some or trickery, I try not to delude myself. I can keep my guard up but I know that I can fall prey to it, also.

Of course, even if we sometimes forget, scams--like porn and dating--predate the internet. People learned long ago that cheating someone out of valuables is often easier than earning those valuables through honest work.

OK. So. Please pause there. Hold that thought, even.

Now back to me. I don't like talking to people. Unless it's for my job--where talking to people is a key reason I get paid in (reasonably) hard US currency--I don't like talking to people unless (a) I know them, or (b) they are attractive women.

That might make me sound like an asshole, but it's generally true. I'd say that I'm working on it, but... I'm not. Not really. I don't want to expend emotional effort to learn to like talking to strangers in random social settings.

Even, though, as I have come to terms with my introverted streak, one thing that I do want to work on is willingness to help people in need. I have a tendency to be self-centered and, when coupled with my introversion, it means that I am oblivious (or even apathetic) about the plight of people I don't know (who don't just HAPPEN to be attractive women).

I try, at least sporadically, to help those who seem to need it, even if it means talking to strangers.

Which brings us back to the thought that you've been holding...

Some time back (a fortnight? A month?) I was approaching my apartment building. There was a guy who was using a cell phone right outside the door of the building, and I fobbed (is that a verb?) my way in and past him, and he initiated conversation. I was not altogether pleased, but I didn't want to be rude, so I had this conversation with him:

Dude:  Hi, could you help me out?
Me:[warily] Uh... maybe.
Dude: Do you know the best way to get a hold of the building manager?
Me: [pointing to the phone on the wall] Did you use the--
Dude: I just called the number on the flier and used that phone... no answer.
Me: Sorry to hear that. No I don't--
Dude: Hmm... well, could you do me a favor?
Me: I don't--
Dude: I just came from Renton to pick up my friend's car. He passed away and it's in the building's garage.
Me: I don't know...
Dude: If the manager were here, he could just let me see if the car's even there. It's a brown pinto.
Me: Well, yeah, I don't--
Dude: Could you maybe let me in to just take a look? I've come all the way up here and would hate to just turn around if the car is right in there.
Me: Hmm...
Dude: I've got the key, even. Look [shows me the key].
Me: OK. I'll let you in.
Dude: Thank you so much! I appreciate it!
Me: ...

And then I spent the rest of the evening wondering if I should have escorted him to the garage and escorted him back out. Or if I shouldn't have let him in at all. Or if it was just perfectly fine that I let some random dude into the building.

On the one hand, lots of old people die in my building. It's entirely reasonable that amongst the hundreds of my neighbors someone had kicked the bucket.

On the other hand, crime is pretty common in our area, ranging from a bomb scare to Politica's car getting stolen to all sorts of other reasons cops are parked on our block that I don't even know about.


On still the other hand, he seemed desperate. He gave details.

On still... OK. Enough with the hands.

Liars know to give details. Scammers know to make a series of small, reasonable requests and to escalate once they get to "yes". Thieves know ... well, how to steal stuff, I guess.

Was he an honest guy in a jam? Or did I help him break into cars and/or someone's apartment?

And why do I talk to non-attractive female strangers... ever?

All's Weird that Ends Weird

Sometimes I like to tell stories of things that happen in my life. Sometimes those things flatter me, but more often they are passively embarrassing or overtly humiliating. This is a tale that is both of those latter things.

I was, once upon a time, singing at Ozzie's. Shocking, I know. I was there by myself on a Saturday night, and I was drinking more than a little bit.

I was downstairs, waiting for my turn to sing, when I saw a couple of reasonably attractive young women standing in front of me. One of them had, I noticed, a card on a necklace around her neck. My eyes are pretty good, but I couldn't make out what it said. Because of the combination of the woman being attractive and me drinking more than a little bit, I asked the woman what the card read.

"Have a man speak to you in another language."

Immediately upon reading this, I went into inner turmoil. It was minor turmoil, for sure, but it was turmoil.

As everyone who knows me should know by now, I'm not a big fan of bachelorette parties. More specifically, I REALLY don't like them. I admit that they have their place as a ritual for brides-to-be, and for the brides-to-be's friends, but I also know that much of that ritual is to mockingly flirt with men around them while ignoring objective measures of attractiveness... meaning they usually act much more hot than they are.

(Yes, I know society's standards for beauty in women is, at many levels, bullshit. I know that how a woman is on the inside matters. I know that it's not fair that gorgeous women get away with more in life than more plain ones. But when I'm in a bar drinking, I rarely care much about any of that.)

So, on the one hand, I had my disdain for the bachelorette party generally. On the other hand, I had a great opportunity to talk to a couple of attractive women, and ... I'd been drinking more than a little bit.

The rum won out (as it occasionally does) and I opened. It went something like this:

Me: Puedo hablar español para usted...
Her #1: What?
Her #2: Ah... [insert a BUNCH of Spanish that I didn't follow at all due to ignorance and rum consumption]
Me: Wow. I didn't get any of that.
Her #1: ...
Her #2: ...

There comes a time in every conversation with women I don't know, where I have to power through discomfort or flee (as gracefully as possible).

The conversation with these two women wasn't a disaster to this point, so I continued the chit-chat, asking if either of them were the ones getting married (they weren't) and if they were going to sing (they weren't).

Her #1 clearly wasn't that into me. My ego told me it was because she had a boyfriend, of course. (Whether facts would tell me that or not is another matter. I never found out.)

Her #2, though? She was staring at me the whole time with a big smile on her face. That, for the record, is either a very good sign (she's interested) or a very bad one (she's totally insane). I decided that it was probably the former, so I got their names, told them it was great to meet them, and that I'd see them around the bar later.

And, I did see them around later.

More rum had gone into my system, and I was getting ready to sing upstairs when Her #2 approached me. She had a card around her neck this time, and as the karaoke song was being queued up, she smiled and stared at me and I grabbed the card and it said, "Be serenaded by a man."


I told her it seemed I was the next best thing, and I sang to her.

She seemed to enjoy it, and at the end of the song I noticed that her entire bachelorette troupe was in a booth on the other side of the room. I noticed because they were all chanting, "Kiss her. Kiss her."

I looked at Her #2 and she stopped staring long enough to roll her eyes. We smiled at one another. And I kissed her.

To the applause of her party.

Coincidentally, it was just about closing time. I asked where she lived (she lived close). I asked her if she wanted an escort home (she did). I asked her if she wanted to leave right then (she did).

On our way out of the bar, one of her friends checked in on her, establishing that I wasn't kidnapper Her #2, and that she was sober enough to not be constructively kidnapped. After a brief conversation, we headed to Her #2's place.

Which was fine. I'm going to gloss over things until the way the night/morning ended, but highlights/lowlights included:

• No television (??)
• An awesomely friendly Siamese cat
• A funny txt exchange with one of her friends that she let me write "her" end of

So... after a couple of hours of talking (and stuff) it was about 4AM. I was exhausted and much more sober. And the conversation got weird.

Her #2: ...
Me: What's up?
Her #2: ...
Me: You're acting weird all of a sudden.
Her #2: ...
Me: What's up?
Her #2: ... it's just ...
Me: ...
Her #2: ...
Me: Is it cool if I crash here tonight?
Her #2: ... well, my parents are going to come pick me up tomorrow...
Me: What time?
Her #2: 10:00.
Me: Bah. No problem. I'll get a few hours of sleep and be out of here well before then.
Her #2: ...
Me: What?
Her #2: ... I think I need alone time.
Me: OK. Now?
Her #2: Yeah.
Me: ...
Her #2: ...
Me: Are you just waiting for me to leave at this point?
Her #2: Yeah.
Me: Ouch. OK.

And so, with that, I got dressed (meaning put my shoes and jacket back on, of course), petted the cat, and departed.

It was (and remains) the oddest brush-off I'd ever received from a woman while in her bed, and I lashed out in the only way I knew how: I failed to ask for her telephone number.

That'll show her, right?

Even after all this time, I'm still processing whether this experience makes me dislike bachelorette parties more or less...

The Invisible Injury

Growing up, I think we all hear the same things from old(er) folks. Insight and advice and laments and observations that don't really register. Stuff that, essentially, adds up to, "I didn't really think it would happen to me, either, but you'll know what I'm talking about someday."

Which, of course, is not always true. We won't all know what it's like to have lost a leg in Vietnam or to lose our life savings in an elaborate gardening misadventure or to find out that we actually killed our father and married our mother and then gouge our eyes out.

I mean, we all can do anything we want in this world, right? So there's time. It's just not likely.

One of the things that I'd (blessedly) managed to avoid was the aches and pains that so many people talk about as they get older. Until recently, I'd have a sore muscle and then it would go away--either because I tweaked my ankle walking down the street or I slept on my neck wrong.

Lately, though? My knees hurt. I might have tweaked the right one working out, but giving it time to heal hasn't done much good... and now my left one is starting to feel bad, too. Maybe it's feeling neglected in my allocation of attention. I dunno.

Perhaps these are isolated, temporary, aches and pains... like so many in the past. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The thing that I'm more concerned about? My voice. My speaking voice gets dry and raspy at the drop of a hat nowadays and my falsetto singing voice is just... gone. It's been about a month now and I think I'm more worried that I won't be able to sing Grace Kelly than I am that my legs will hurt when I change sleeping positions.

My voice has left me before, of course. My singing voice has disappeared before--late 2007/early 2008 it was gone for about three months, and when we went to Las Vegas in 2009, I couldn't even singing Stayin' Alive--but I always got the sense that it would come back. I always had confidence that, like the bruised tailbone I received in November, 2002, it would linger for a bit and then one day I'd wake up and all would be right again.

But maybe this time will be different. Maybe this time I will never recover, and I will have my singing options reduced permanently. And maybe, just maybe, some day I will tell the story to some young person about how I didn't really think it would happen to me, either, but he'll know what I'm talking about someday.