The Virgin Prince's War Journal
The grim and gritty side of things. If everyone had a soundtrack to their lives, mine would be the best.
Monday, January 10, 2005
January Has Hit
Valiant visitors,
Terribly sorry for the lateness of this post, but I’ve been a bit busy, as I’ve been attending a great many parties of late. I don’t care what they say; Hall and Oates still rock.
But that’s not what I’m here to write about. I’m here to write about the annoyance of neighbors, among other things I’ve considered over this holiday season. You shall all be pleased to know that I did manage to get Mohammed Ali the Reindeer (the poorly constructed light-up reindeer in my backyard) working properly in the final few hours before my nephew and niece showed up to celebrate Christmas with all of us. After countless hours spent tinkering with this beast of metal and wicker and cheap plastic lights in my backyard to no avail, I finally returned outside, once more, in one final attempt to get this clearance-priced monstrosity to work as it should. Outside I returned, armed only with two pairs of pliers, a paperclip or two, and a thin dress-shirt that could not prevent my poor nipples from attaining a diamond-like density, out in the December cold, but I was victorious! With minimum effort, I finally had the reindeer raising and lowering his head fully, not with the jerky, minimum-movement bobbing motion that the beast had been producing since it’d first been assembled (to exact specifications).
My niece arrived and instantly was in awe of these light-up beasts glancing around and eating the plants in my backyard. Of course, I had to repair Mohammed once or twice more during the course of our Christmas festivities; each time he got worse in his debilitation, being so clearly designed to fail, but I had him working clear past Christmas, up until a heavy rain proceeded to flood my backyard. By that point, the deer had served my purposes and I was more than content to let the crummy things jerk their heads up and down and side to side in the manner of mental patients, outside in the heavy chilling rain.
But the rain brought other problems.
The last night of our family’s time together had us sitting at the table playing dominos. I ran outside to unplug the reindeer, burning brightly in the drenching downpour. I returned inside to find my older sister bawling, apparently upset at my prior risk of electrocution. I swiftly thereafter returned to trouncing my family at The Mexican Train Game, a game at which I was apparently very good. I continued dealing out defeat by means of dominos up until there was a knock at the door. Neither of my sisters wanted to answer it, both apparently worried at the prospect of greeting a stranger. I finally went over and answered the door myself.
The man introduced himself as our neighbor from the house on the hill behind ours, and told us that he had come down to let us know there was a lake forming on the roof. I groaned at this news; there’s constantly something wrong on or in our house. It seems it hasn’t been a month since I’d last been up on a ladder hammering paneling back onto the side of the house, reattaching some piece of the roof that the wind had blown off. The prospect of cleaning our rain gutters was not appealing at all to me, partially as I realized that most of our cheaply-assembled gutters had fallen apart around the house anyway, leaving direct downpours of water flowing freely from our rooftop.
As my family and I considered what to do about the problem at hand, I assumed I would be waiting until it stopped raining, then scaling the roof to stop the blockage. The matter seemed to pass quickly and I was asked to help my young niece use the bathroom. I was barely done helping her wash her hands when I realized that my older sister was on the rooftop. I was immediately filled with fear, understanding very well just how wet, slanted, and slick the roof was (my own reasons for wanting to wait for a break in the rain) and not wanting to see my niece and nephew orphaned at an obscenely young age.
I immediately ran up the ladder after my sister, but she was already well established and managed to clear each gutter-hole on top of the roof, one by one. What did she find causing the blockage? A tennis ball, a golf ball, another tennis ball, and another golf ball. I cursed again at our other neighbors from up the hill; I had put up with their occasional ventures into my backyard, and been understanding about the many soccer balls they’d kicked into the yard, I even (with some annoyance) ignored their litter of my yard with tin cans and other random junk, but the fact that they had very nearly collapsed the roof of my house with an assortment of poorly-placed refuse from their own yard irritated me to no end. I knew then well in my heart that I would shake-and-bake the mongrels with a dose of my atomic vision at my nearest possible convenience.
My relatives left the next day and things quickly settled back to normal, my usual routines of diet and exercise returned, and my body slowly purged itself of all the ham and eggnog it had taken in over the course of Christmas. By midweek, I’d spent the evening playing dominos with my chum, Foxy Hernandez, and by New Years Eve I was out partying down amongst many friends, many of which I’d worked with at the theatre, and had not seen in a very long time. It was fun seeing them again, though several had become even more distant, bizarre, and bearded in the time since I’d seen them. As usual, my old foe, the Crackbrained Columbian was there, and she forced us all to suffer through an unreasonable amount of Prince “music” until she shortly thereafter had a mental breakdown on the couch (as she does at literally every party we have). However, the day was saved, and her crying fit ignored, thanks to a well-timed playing of Tom Jones’ Sexbomb by myself.
The next day I attempted to recover from both a lack of sleep, and a rather uncomfortable hangover. It would seem that my newfound physique can not handle alcohol as well as my old one could, my newer, trimmer form being made to feel ill by merely a fraction of what I used to be able to drink. After a few hours worth of recovery, my old chum Foxy Valentino flew by and we took off to another party.
The New Year’s Day party was tucked deep inside the belly of South City, not at all far from the lair of the Green Mike and Red Raven. I knew virtually no one at this party, though, as it was a largely Latino party crowd, I did get to dance some merengue. I jokingly mentioned to some friends of mine, prior to hitting the dance floor, how it was about time for me to “white boy it up”. They chuckled and said it was fine for white boys to dance poorly, cute even, as it’s just a natural thing.
After being pushed to the center of the dance circle, I came back from the dance floor to two very disappointed friends, whom both begrudgingly admitted I was a better dancer than they expected. They hadn’t realized that I’d picked up a bit of the Latin flavor in my childhood, having spent most of my youth listening to Oscar DeLeon and every weekend at a soccer field where few spoke English (and I soiled my face in the grease of pupusas), and I looked decidedly pale by comparison. Quite possibly the only positive aspect of my years spent with the thrice-nippled Peruvian. When the Macarena came around years later, and the rest of the American public was getting hip to the new dance craze, I was ready; I’d been waiting.
We played Foosball and I knocked back vodka, whisky, and rum. I chatted up a lady or two and made buddies with whom I discussed upon large bottles of tequila, the finer points of traveling abroad for the sake of importing liquor, and Bush’s destruction of the American economy, along with the saddening decline of the American people. As I got ready to break out the Panjabi MC for my newfound friends, the people I’d arrived with became tired and we all returned home. Again, arriving home very late in the morning, I settled in for another bit of recovery rest.
Not that I ever seem to get a chance to actually sleep undisturbed.
To be continued...
Be seeing you,
The Virgin Prince
Terribly sorry for the lateness of this post, but I’ve been a bit busy, as I’ve been attending a great many parties of late. I don’t care what they say; Hall and Oates still rock.
But that’s not what I’m here to write about. I’m here to write about the annoyance of neighbors, among other things I’ve considered over this holiday season. You shall all be pleased to know that I did manage to get Mohammed Ali the Reindeer (the poorly constructed light-up reindeer in my backyard) working properly in the final few hours before my nephew and niece showed up to celebrate Christmas with all of us. After countless hours spent tinkering with this beast of metal and wicker and cheap plastic lights in my backyard to no avail, I finally returned outside, once more, in one final attempt to get this clearance-priced monstrosity to work as it should. Outside I returned, armed only with two pairs of pliers, a paperclip or two, and a thin dress-shirt that could not prevent my poor nipples from attaining a diamond-like density, out in the December cold, but I was victorious! With minimum effort, I finally had the reindeer raising and lowering his head fully, not with the jerky, minimum-movement bobbing motion that the beast had been producing since it’d first been assembled (to exact specifications).
My niece arrived and instantly was in awe of these light-up beasts glancing around and eating the plants in my backyard. Of course, I had to repair Mohammed once or twice more during the course of our Christmas festivities; each time he got worse in his debilitation, being so clearly designed to fail, but I had him working clear past Christmas, up until a heavy rain proceeded to flood my backyard. By that point, the deer had served my purposes and I was more than content to let the crummy things jerk their heads up and down and side to side in the manner of mental patients, outside in the heavy chilling rain.
But the rain brought other problems.
The last night of our family’s time together had us sitting at the table playing dominos. I ran outside to unplug the reindeer, burning brightly in the drenching downpour. I returned inside to find my older sister bawling, apparently upset at my prior risk of electrocution. I swiftly thereafter returned to trouncing my family at The Mexican Train Game, a game at which I was apparently very good. I continued dealing out defeat by means of dominos up until there was a knock at the door. Neither of my sisters wanted to answer it, both apparently worried at the prospect of greeting a stranger. I finally went over and answered the door myself.
The man introduced himself as our neighbor from the house on the hill behind ours, and told us that he had come down to let us know there was a lake forming on the roof. I groaned at this news; there’s constantly something wrong on or in our house. It seems it hasn’t been a month since I’d last been up on a ladder hammering paneling back onto the side of the house, reattaching some piece of the roof that the wind had blown off. The prospect of cleaning our rain gutters was not appealing at all to me, partially as I realized that most of our cheaply-assembled gutters had fallen apart around the house anyway, leaving direct downpours of water flowing freely from our rooftop.
As my family and I considered what to do about the problem at hand, I assumed I would be waiting until it stopped raining, then scaling the roof to stop the blockage. The matter seemed to pass quickly and I was asked to help my young niece use the bathroom. I was barely done helping her wash her hands when I realized that my older sister was on the rooftop. I was immediately filled with fear, understanding very well just how wet, slanted, and slick the roof was (my own reasons for wanting to wait for a break in the rain) and not wanting to see my niece and nephew orphaned at an obscenely young age.
I immediately ran up the ladder after my sister, but she was already well established and managed to clear each gutter-hole on top of the roof, one by one. What did she find causing the blockage? A tennis ball, a golf ball, another tennis ball, and another golf ball. I cursed again at our other neighbors from up the hill; I had put up with their occasional ventures into my backyard, and been understanding about the many soccer balls they’d kicked into the yard, I even (with some annoyance) ignored their litter of my yard with tin cans and other random junk, but the fact that they had very nearly collapsed the roof of my house with an assortment of poorly-placed refuse from their own yard irritated me to no end. I knew then well in my heart that I would shake-and-bake the mongrels with a dose of my atomic vision at my nearest possible convenience.
My relatives left the next day and things quickly settled back to normal, my usual routines of diet and exercise returned, and my body slowly purged itself of all the ham and eggnog it had taken in over the course of Christmas. By midweek, I’d spent the evening playing dominos with my chum, Foxy Hernandez, and by New Years Eve I was out partying down amongst many friends, many of which I’d worked with at the theatre, and had not seen in a very long time. It was fun seeing them again, though several had become even more distant, bizarre, and bearded in the time since I’d seen them. As usual, my old foe, the Crackbrained Columbian was there, and she forced us all to suffer through an unreasonable amount of Prince “music” until she shortly thereafter had a mental breakdown on the couch (as she does at literally every party we have). However, the day was saved, and her crying fit ignored, thanks to a well-timed playing of Tom Jones’ Sexbomb by myself.
The next day I attempted to recover from both a lack of sleep, and a rather uncomfortable hangover. It would seem that my newfound physique can not handle alcohol as well as my old one could, my newer, trimmer form being made to feel ill by merely a fraction of what I used to be able to drink. After a few hours worth of recovery, my old chum Foxy Valentino flew by and we took off to another party.
The New Year’s Day party was tucked deep inside the belly of South City, not at all far from the lair of the Green Mike and Red Raven. I knew virtually no one at this party, though, as it was a largely Latino party crowd, I did get to dance some merengue. I jokingly mentioned to some friends of mine, prior to hitting the dance floor, how it was about time for me to “white boy it up”. They chuckled and said it was fine for white boys to dance poorly, cute even, as it’s just a natural thing.
After being pushed to the center of the dance circle, I came back from the dance floor to two very disappointed friends, whom both begrudgingly admitted I was a better dancer than they expected. They hadn’t realized that I’d picked up a bit of the Latin flavor in my childhood, having spent most of my youth listening to Oscar DeLeon and every weekend at a soccer field where few spoke English (and I soiled my face in the grease of pupusas), and I looked decidedly pale by comparison. Quite possibly the only positive aspect of my years spent with the thrice-nippled Peruvian. When the Macarena came around years later, and the rest of the American public was getting hip to the new dance craze, I was ready; I’d been waiting.
We played Foosball and I knocked back vodka, whisky, and rum. I chatted up a lady or two and made buddies with whom I discussed upon large bottles of tequila, the finer points of traveling abroad for the sake of importing liquor, and Bush’s destruction of the American economy, along with the saddening decline of the American people. As I got ready to break out the Panjabi MC for my newfound friends, the people I’d arrived with became tired and we all returned home. Again, arriving home very late in the morning, I settled in for another bit of recovery rest.
Not that I ever seem to get a chance to actually sleep undisturbed.
To be continued...
The Virgin Prince
