Two Kinds of Disturbing

Today I got to attend my very first snake feeding.

My buddy, who we'll call "A" got a rat snake for Christmas, and it only gets fed once every two weeks. Of course, that means every two weeks, he gets to watch the snake bite, squeeze and swallow a live mouse. Long story short, we picked up the mouse at some reptile store down the street from A's house. The store gives it to you in a brown paper lunch bag, which didn’t dawn on my until right now as weirdly coinidental, since the little guy was about to be dinner. Or at worst a very late lunch. When you only eat once every other week, I’m sure it doesn’t matter what you call it.

The mouse kept scurrying around inside the bag on the way home, so I decided to name him Mr. Scurry. (Note: It is never a good idea to name something that you know you will be feeding to something else within the half-hour.)

Once home, we drop Mr. Scurry in the cage, and he proceeds to begin sniffing around. The snake, named Vic Mackey after Michael Chiklis’ character on The Shield, does some smelling of his own and springs into action. Mr. Scurry and Vic come face to face for what was about two seconds, at the most, but felt like a lifetime. Mr. Scurry sniffed some more, obviously having never seen a snake before, but unfortunately for him, Vic was all too familiar with mice. Vic struck, biting and coiling up Mr. Scurry in one motion.

Now here’s the disturbing part: Mr. Scurry’s little face was exposed through the coils, so we could see it, with his mouth wide open as Vic literally squeezed the life out of him. Then came the coup de grace: Blood came out of Mr. Scurry’s mouth, like a movie character that has been stabbed or gut-shot. Vic then proceeded to slowly swallow Mr. Scurry whole. When he got near the end of the job, we noticed something odd under Mr. Scurry’s tail. There was a big pink bubble that he didn’t have before the feeding. Vic had squeezed so hard, he blew out Mr. Scurry’s asshole. Blew it right out like Bubble-Yum. Disturbing stuff.

And then I had to decide what was more bizarre: what I had just seen, or the fact that "A" and his roommate "B" (I'm not just using the alphabet in order, these are their initials) had planned a trip to a Raleigh gentlemen’s club at midnight to see a much-advertised “Midget Night.” When we and "B" were all back at the house (having eaten dinner separately), we recapped for "B" the events that took place between Vic and Mr. Scurry.

“So we’re going to see the midget strippers at midnight, right?” "B" asked "A".

“Yeah,” "A" said. “But I’m gonna take a nap first.”

“Okay,” "B" said, leaving the room. “I’m gonna go bake a cake.”

And "B" went to begin baking a cake. And I’m assuming "A" is taking his nap. As for me, I had to pass on midget strippers because, really, how many fucked up things can you see in one day?

Update: Originially, I had used real names, until "A" asked that I use with initials. He also later reported that the midget strippers were "creepy."

When It's Time To Change, You've Got to Rearrange

I woke up today with an undeniable feeling of inside itchiness, which either meant something big was going to happen, or I had internal chicken pox, which I had never even heard of much less likely come in contact with.

Then it struck me. I was in my room getting ready to change for the gym, when something in my brain said, "Fuck the gym." Usually that voice is urging me to do other things, like have another cup of coffee or smoke a cigarette, and that's why my little invisible friend doesn't want me to go to work out. But this time it was different: the little voice told me to reorganize my room.

Now, I've lived in the same townhouse for the last seven and a half years. Calling it a rut would be like calling Britney Spears a fat, sloppy trailer-trash whore-bag. It's just not quite strong enough. Dig?

So I undertook to move the loveseat and nighttable and guitar amplifier so that I could attempt to somehow move my queen-size bed (insert your own gay jokes here). On a happy side note, I discovered that the middle supporting beam of the frame had come un-screwed, making history as the first thing to become un-screwed in my bed. *rimshot* Of course, this explained why my bed was the squeakiest bed on planet Earth and why my neighbor, who could hear the squeaking through the wall once said to me, "I wondered if you had a squeaky bed or if you just had lots of sex." (This comment, at the time seemingly innocuous, would later become greatly ironic, though that does not need to be documented here.) Of course, I thought it would be impolite to tell a girl I barely knew, "Yeah, it's mostly the sex," so I went with, "Bed's just squeaky. I don't know why." Well, now I do, and thanks to my little friend the wrench, it is now non-squeaky.

I moved the bed, moved the table, and a bunch of other shit before finally vacuuming to complete the effect of new, clean room. And let me tell you: It is awesome.

I decided to retroactively check my horoscope on this matter, not because I believe in astrology, but because sometimes it's fun to see if something you've done that day is freakily mentioned in your horoscope for that day. It's happened to me before, but that involved stealing a bunch of newspapers and jokingly asking a friend of mine to marry me before she and I scattered them across our friends lawns in the pre-dawn hours. But I digress.

Here's what the horoscope had to say: "Tackle this problem one step at a time and be constantly aware of not only how the problem changes, but how your feelings for it mutate, too. In that way, you'll be able to prevent it from happening again."

Turns out, that wasn't much of a help. My feelings were pretty much static as I rearranged furniture. I was excited and remained so. Plus, is furniture moving something you really have to prevent again? I've already used my "feelings" to determine how I will prevent this from happening in the future. Should I see someone break into my bedroom and attempt to move things around, I will shout forcefully, "Unhand that boxspring, scoundrel!" I figure that should pretty much take care of business. No one likes being called a scoundrel.

Feliz Ano Nuevo

Welcome to 2006, everybody. Just wanted to get on here and wish a happy new year to everyone I know (except the piss-drunk cock who punched a dent into my hood on new year's eve -- that guy can suck it 'til December).

This year, I figured I'd make a resolution not to make any resolutions. Kind of like in the movie Singles when Campbell "I Can't Get Work Anymore" Scott tells Kyra "I Look Like a Goblin But Am Married To Kevin Bacon" Sedgwick that he "doesn't have an act" and she tells him that not having an act is his act. Of course, I'm sure one of you smart-asses will now go to imdb.com and inform me that Campbell Scott has several movies in post-production or some crap like that. Regardless, I'm sticking with my original zinger.

Also, I wanted to give a belated shout-out to our good buddy Matt Dees, who, in the tradition of fine journalists everywhere, desperately needed sources for a story about murder-for-hire and blogs and apparently thought that was Regis sitting across from him, so he phoned a friend, i.e. - me.

That resulted in some mad love for this blog in the venerable News & Observer. Here's the excerpt (so you can skip all the murder stuff):

But not all blog controversies are matters of life and death.

Each installment of Evan Markfield's "Blog Cabin" usually entices no more than a few comments from readers. (One post titled "Brush with Greatness" alerts readers that he recently purchased a shower brush.)

But in May, Markfield posted about a college buddy, Mike Ogle, a journalist who had offended residents of Guam with a piece he wrote for ESPN.com about a cockfight he witnessed in the island territory. It wasn't long before several dozen outraged Guamanians found their way to Markfield's blog.

Suddenly he was in a hassle half a world away, with some anonymous posters using profanity and ethnic slurs to argue that Guam was misrepresented in Ogle's piece.

"It was kind of fun or exciting at first, because all of a sudden a lot of people were reading my blog," Markfield said. "It became kind of annoying when things started taking a nasty turn."

Also, a big shout out to Keith and Mary for hosting new year's down in Wilmington, and to the boys for enacting the “ridiculous tie and ridiculous shirt” plan, and to the acne-faced checkout kid at the Food Lion who mocked my Scooby Doo tie. And of course, to all of you. Happy new year!