0306.25
23:59:59
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over.
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Ah, blogging.
So, Monday, I slept, I think, for most of the day, and I think I did Tuesday, as well; however, this isn’t important, and the lack of importance to most of Monday and Tuesday is probably the reason why I was sleeping.
There was, though, something to merit writing about on Monday. See, somehow or another, the Midwest Turf Association was obliged to to instruct Andrea and her little brother in the mystic, dark arts of Lacrosse.
I call it that because it resembles quite closely a game I’ve been formulating in my head for years, based on intersting points I’ve gleaned from watching football, hockey, baseball, and the occasional Cricket and Australian Rules Football (or whatever the heck it’s called) broadcasts, and the other reason is that all sorts of people become quite interested — almost, say, conversationally preoccupied — in a positive manner when it’s mentioned.
Somehow or another, Andrea et cetera coming over to play with Crystal-Ball morphed into Andrea and Amanda coming over to be instructed by the lesser sibling, with me helping out. Why? Although the expected point of contention (put bluntly by my mother afterwards, asking “Did Amanda behave herself?” XD) never flared, there still was the whole thing of me … playing sports. Around people. Certain people.
Although I woke physically beforehand on Wednesday, my brain turned on sometime around 9:30 or 10 AM, when my mom popped on the intercom to tell my dad that the grocery store in Mentone, my grandparent’s place of residence, had exploded overnight. Unbelievable. Ish– the guy who ran Frank & Jerry’s at that point, was killed, seeing as part of the building was the owner’s apartment. Ishmael (well, probably Ismail) was an older Palestinian gentleman who, like my grandfather, collected old coins. His son, whose name I can’t currently recall, was injured. I’m not sure how badly, but I bet it was probably pretty severely. Fortunately, in one way or another, the other son that worked there was unable to return to the US after visitng the family in Palestine, as he just happened to visit during September 2001. I remember my grandmother telling me this when it happened, and thinking it was incredibly boneheaded, but it probably was a good thing overall. However, grocery stores don’t tend to explode, from my personal experience. Certainly, rural northern Indiana doesn’t have the most strictly-enforced building codes, but Frank & Jerry’s had been there long before the Palestinians owned it– a good fifty or sixty years, at least, from what I remember of the building. And if the building was going to naturally succomb to some sort of spontaneous blasty, I would suspect it would have been shortly after constuction or other modifications, not five or ten years after it had new owners.
Harvey, a Brother from my dad’s group of friends from his days at South Bend Central High School, called later in the day to say that the stuff had been on WNDU, the NBC station for the area, since he knows that’s where the grandparentals live and such. Here’s their story. It has some things that blatantly contradict my knowledge– fire instead of explosion with fire, and the Po Po wondering why the dudes were inside the building, when I know that there was a part of that building which was an upstairs apartment. I also wouldn’t really call the store a Mentone Landmark anymore than the Phillips 66 Station turned auto shop– everything in a small town is a ‘landmark’ in the use of an urbanite, as there aren’t mindless, generic miles of mindless, generic restraunts parked infront of mindless, generic stripmalls in a small town. It’s a landmark in the sense that now it’ll be harder for me to remember where Franklin street is coming from the park south of town– that is, if I ever make it back to Mentone. Or there’s a Mentone left to make it back to, with more than half the people there old and dying, and all the other ones moving out or now being exploded.
Of course, it looks from the quotes like the police are trying to pin the blame on the owners, when, if anyone is to blame, it’s probably some dumbass that never went to the store, but knew there were some ‘damned towlheaded desert niggers’ that ran it or whatever the hell some imecile who’d blow the place up would use as an epithet for ‘Palestinians’. I don’t know, I just made that up. Not that Palestinians are black– they’re Semites, but I don’t think that’d probably be important to somebody that probably has a rusted, small-size, short-bed, mufflerless diesel pickup with prominently-displayed Confederate battle flags and white bedclothes that have interestingly-placed holes. I think this calls for a picture of Arafat.
So, uh, anyway, enough of that. Went to church this evening. Had to go to Mikey’s class of junior highers and the random college kids that don’t get a class, which would have sucked, but Mikey is at some youth trip so we Mike Stegemoller, who is most excellent. However, he kind of, you know, talked like a Texan does to a foreigner, seeing as he’s Texan and Middle Schoolers are about as foriegn to anybody who isn’t a Middle Schooler as they come. Afterwards, said college kids (including myself), along with how-exactly-is-this-kid-just-a-high-school-sophomore Andrew Edwards, went to the Starbucks behind that Irish Pub, Claddagh or whatever, on 96th on the far (that is, Geist-ward) side of Keystone, sort of by the Rover dealership. Although, I think, en toto, the amount of people there included, but was not limited to, El Baile, Zak, Christie, Andrew, Andrea, and myself, it was only the altter three that spent any significant time chatting at the outdoor seating, as the others decided to follow Dan’s lead of shooting off bottle rockets at the retention pond behind the strip mall containing Starbucks. I can’t remember really much we talked about, except college, and the fact that there were a whole bunch of Corvettes and a live band at the pub. Also, two car commercials happened whilst we relaxed and I, at least, sipped on my Tazoberry– whipped cream, please.
The first one happened just as the Starbucks people were closing up for the night. Some black Japanese sedan pulls up in front of the store. because two of the four sides of the café ¡re glass, I can see in the side and out the front door as if I were in the building. So, this guy, mid twenties, black pants, unbuttoned white dress shirt, probably with his loosened blue tie sitting in the passengers seat walks up to the door, and tries to open it. Locked. He fumbles with the handle. He knows its locked, and he know’s it’s intnetional, because he sees the people inside sweeping up. But, he thinks, in the typical manner– maybe, just maybe, if I fumble with this enough, it will open, and then I can prtend like the shop isn’t closed and the people inside can, too pretend, like they’re still working. However, he’s not a four-year-old, and his short spat of make-believe doesn’t last for more than two seconds.
His expression changes. “MY WIFE IS PREGNANT,” he yells just loud enough so that he knows it carries through the glass. The two just-out-of-highschool girls working there look up, and come to the door, and unlock it. They speak in a normal tone, which, due to the live band and incoming corvettes, doesn’t carry to my table. Their gestures are easy enough to undertsand.
“It’s just one little frappuchino double whip with extra mango; it won’t take long,” the man says, desperately.
The girls, not far from that stage in live, empathise. “But, you know, we’re already closed, sir, the machines are shut down for the nigh, we can’t make anythingt.”
The man looks even more desperate.
Before he can do anything, the other girl chimes in. “Don’t worry! There’s another Starbucks just down the street, about a mile, at Allisonville. They stay open later than we do. “
“Th– oh– ye– Thank you,” stumbles out the man’s mouth, remembering the ubiquitous nature of the chain. He smiles, and leaves. The girls giggle, and lock the door. He gets back in his black sedan, flips on the lights, and drives out of the lot, giving a nice silhouette of the car’s side from the dim glow of the twilight sky and lights from the pub, and then a good look at the rear light assembly. The perfect place to add in the finance rates and the small text.
The next one, oh the next one. Two girls come rollerblading in about half an hour later. These girls are a little older than the starbucks workers, and they carry drinks from the somewhat-nearby Arby’s as they sit down at a table at the front corner of the Starbucks, far enough away from us not to engage, but still close enough so that I can glean the information that they’re off-duty hostesses from the pub. Blondes– fairish complexion, athletic looking, with their hair up for ease of travel, wearing white t-shirts and those sports-type black shorts.
I try and start off on a conversation with my table, saying how I never could quite get the hang of rollerblades. Andrew chimes in that it’s a lot like ice skating. I never could get the hang of that, either. Well, ice saktings like hockey. I start off on the same phrase, but I think Andrea finishes it for me. I’m not sure that happened, really, or if my memory’s just made it up because I don’t quite remember how I ended the sentance, since…
Another black car– this time, a Chevy Malibu, I think– puills in the access route beside us, and stopps parallel with the girls. The car is angled about 20 degrees to the left of the centerline of the street, whcih lets me see the headlights as well as the tails. the white flourescensce of the Starbucks sign casts very nice highlights and shadows on the car’s trim. A kid– well, he was probably 20– leans out the window, and starts talking, just on the edge of my ability to discern, with the engine noise and the band and all.
“Is he trying to… ” Andrew trails off.
“… yeah,” I reply.
Andrea looks up, her face inquistive, but for just a second. She hasn’t been paying attention to what was going on, makes a quick assesment of the car, the kid, and the girls, replays the recent dialog in her head, cuts the qinuisitve look, and goes back to what she was doing.
I watch, a couple more exchanges between the kid and the girls, back and forth. Something happened, as the kid drives off, and the girls get up and leave. The departure still gives some good shots of different angles of the car.
I mention something about how that was so totally two car commercials in a row, and Andrew suggest that I give up on this foreign language junk and go into advertising. I make some sort of spoken noncomittal gesture.
We three left at about 9:30– I don’t know what happened to the rest of them– I stopped hearing bottle rocket reports at about the same time the band got down to business, so I’m not sure how long El Baile and his splinter cell tested their weapons of minor occular discomfort. Whatever.
Later that night, I discovered Ostendorf works cashier at Marsh 34. Afterwards, my mom asked why it was that I didn’t really particularly like her. I remember stumbling out ‘It’s the principle of the thing…”
So what if she graduated Valedictorian by some stupid technicalities and mere thousandths of GPA difference. So what if Nazzy really and truely deserved the honor. If my thinking’s right, which it normally is, an old coin-collecting grocer in my grandparents’ little village is dead because some worthless bastard didn’t like the fact he wasn’t white. What the hell am I doing, being a jerk about some pathetic crap like getting a blue ribbon and a two minute speech instead of somebody else?
So, Monday, I slept, I think, for most of the day, and I think I did Tuesday, as well; however, this isn’t important, and the lack of importance to most of Monday and Tuesday is probably the reason why I was sleeping.
There was, though, something to merit writing about on Monday. See, somehow or another, the Midwest Turf Association was obliged to to instruct Andrea and her little brother in the mystic, dark arts of Lacrosse.
I call it that because it resembles quite closely a game I’ve been formulating in my head for years, based on intersting points I’ve gleaned from watching football, hockey, baseball, and the occasional Cricket and Australian Rules Football (or whatever the heck it’s called) broadcasts, and the other reason is that all sorts of people become quite interested — almost, say, conversationally preoccupied — in a positive manner when it’s mentioned.
Somehow or another, Andrea et cetera coming over to play with Crystal-Ball morphed into Andrea and Amanda coming over to be instructed by the lesser sibling, with me helping out. Why? Although the expected point of contention (put bluntly by my mother afterwards, asking “Did Amanda behave herself?” XD) never flared, there still was the whole thing of me … playing sports. Around people. Certain people.
Although I woke physically beforehand on Wednesday, my brain turned on sometime around 9:30 or 10 AM, when my mom popped on the intercom to tell my dad that the grocery store in Mentone, my grandparent’s place of residence, had exploded overnight. Unbelievable. Ish– the guy who ran Frank & Jerry’s at that point, was killed, seeing as part of the building was the owner’s apartment. Ishmael (well, probably Ismail) was an older Palestinian gentleman who, like my grandfather, collected old coins. His son, whose name I can’t currently recall, was injured. I’m not sure how badly, but I bet it was probably pretty severely. Fortunately, in one way or another, the other son that worked there was unable to return to the US after visitng the family in Palestine, as he just happened to visit during September 2001. I remember my grandmother telling me this when it happened, and thinking it was incredibly boneheaded, but it probably was a good thing overall. However, grocery stores don’t tend to explode, from my personal experience. Certainly, rural northern Indiana doesn’t have the most strictly-enforced building codes, but Frank & Jerry’s had been there long before the Palestinians owned it– a good fifty or sixty years, at least, from what I remember of the building. And if the building was going to naturally succomb to some sort of spontaneous blasty, I would suspect it would have been shortly after constuction or other modifications, not five or ten years after it had new owners.
Harvey, a Brother from my dad’s group of friends from his days at South Bend Central High School, called later in the day to say that the stuff had been on WNDU, the NBC station for the area, since he knows that’s where the grandparentals live and such. Here’s their story. It has some things that blatantly contradict my knowledge– fire instead of explosion with fire, and the Po Po wondering why the dudes were inside the building, when I know that there was a part of that building which was an upstairs apartment. I also wouldn’t really call the store a Mentone Landmark anymore than the Phillips 66 Station turned auto shop– everything in a small town is a ‘landmark’ in the use of an urbanite, as there aren’t mindless, generic miles of mindless, generic restraunts parked infront of mindless, generic stripmalls in a small town. It’s a landmark in the sense that now it’ll be harder for me to remember where Franklin street is coming from the park south of town– that is, if I ever make it back to Mentone. Or there’s a Mentone left to make it back to, with more than half the people there old and dying, and all the other ones moving out or now being exploded.
Of course, it looks from the quotes like the police are trying to pin the blame on the owners, when, if anyone is to blame, it’s probably some dumbass that never went to the store, but knew there were some ‘damned towlheaded desert niggers’ that ran it or whatever the hell some imecile who’d blow the place up would use as an epithet for ‘Palestinians’. I don’t know, I just made that up. Not that Palestinians are black– they’re Semites, but I don’t think that’d probably be important to somebody that probably has a rusted, small-size, short-bed, mufflerless diesel pickup with prominently-displayed Confederate battle flags and white bedclothes that have interestingly-placed holes. I think this calls for a picture of Arafat.
So, uh, anyway, enough of that. Went to church this evening. Had to go to Mikey’s class of junior highers and the random college kids that don’t get a class, which would have sucked, but Mikey is at some youth trip so we Mike Stegemoller, who is most excellent. However, he kind of, you know, talked like a Texan does to a foreigner, seeing as he’s Texan and Middle Schoolers are about as foriegn to anybody who isn’t a Middle Schooler as they come. Afterwards, said college kids (including myself), along with how-exactly-is-this-kid-just-a-high-school-sophomore Andrew Edwards, went to the Starbucks behind that Irish Pub, Claddagh or whatever, on 96th on the far (that is, Geist-ward) side of Keystone, sort of by the Rover dealership. Although, I think, en toto, the amount of people there included, but was not limited to, El Baile, Zak, Christie, Andrew, Andrea, and myself, it was only the altter three that spent any significant time chatting at the outdoor seating, as the others decided to follow Dan’s lead of shooting off bottle rockets at the retention pond behind the strip mall containing Starbucks. I can’t remember really much we talked about, except college, and the fact that there were a whole bunch of Corvettes and a live band at the pub. Also, two car commercials happened whilst we relaxed and I, at least, sipped on my Tazoberry– whipped cream, please.
The first one happened just as the Starbucks people were closing up for the night. Some black Japanese sedan pulls up in front of the store. because two of the four sides of the café ¡re glass, I can see in the side and out the front door as if I were in the building. So, this guy, mid twenties, black pants, unbuttoned white dress shirt, probably with his loosened blue tie sitting in the passengers seat walks up to the door, and tries to open it. Locked. He fumbles with the handle. He knows its locked, and he know’s it’s intnetional, because he sees the people inside sweeping up. But, he thinks, in the typical manner– maybe, just maybe, if I fumble with this enough, it will open, and then I can prtend like the shop isn’t closed and the people inside can, too pretend, like they’re still working. However, he’s not a four-year-old, and his short spat of make-believe doesn’t last for more than two seconds.
His expression changes. “MY WIFE IS PREGNANT,” he yells just loud enough so that he knows it carries through the glass. The two just-out-of-highschool girls working there look up, and come to the door, and unlock it. They speak in a normal tone, which, due to the live band and incoming corvettes, doesn’t carry to my table. Their gestures are easy enough to undertsand.
“It’s just one little frappuchino double whip with extra mango; it won’t take long,” the man says, desperately.
The girls, not far from that stage in live, empathise. “But, you know, we’re already closed, sir, the machines are shut down for the nigh, we can’t make anythingt.”
The man looks even more desperate.
Before he can do anything, the other girl chimes in. “Don’t worry! There’s another Starbucks just down the street, about a mile, at Allisonville. They stay open later than we do. “
“Th– oh– ye– Thank you,” stumbles out the man’s mouth, remembering the ubiquitous nature of the chain. He smiles, and leaves. The girls giggle, and lock the door. He gets back in his black sedan, flips on the lights, and drives out of the lot, giving a nice silhouette of the car’s side from the dim glow of the twilight sky and lights from the pub, and then a good look at the rear light assembly. The perfect place to add in the finance rates and the small text.
The next one, oh the next one. Two girls come rollerblading in about half an hour later. These girls are a little older than the starbucks workers, and they carry drinks from the somewhat-nearby Arby’s as they sit down at a table at the front corner of the Starbucks, far enough away from us not to engage, but still close enough so that I can glean the information that they’re off-duty hostesses from the pub. Blondes– fairish complexion, athletic looking, with their hair up for ease of travel, wearing white t-shirts and those sports-type black shorts.
I try and start off on a conversation with my table, saying how I never could quite get the hang of rollerblades. Andrew chimes in that it’s a lot like ice skating. I never could get the hang of that, either. Well, ice saktings like hockey. I start off on the same phrase, but I think Andrea finishes it for me. I’m not sure that happened, really, or if my memory’s just made it up because I don’t quite remember how I ended the sentance, since…
Another black car– this time, a Chevy Malibu, I think– puills in the access route beside us, and stopps parallel with the girls. The car is angled about 20 degrees to the left of the centerline of the street, whcih lets me see the headlights as well as the tails. the white flourescensce of the Starbucks sign casts very nice highlights and shadows on the car’s trim. A kid– well, he was probably 20– leans out the window, and starts talking, just on the edge of my ability to discern, with the engine noise and the band and all.
“Is he trying to… ” Andrew trails off.
“… yeah,” I reply.
Andrea looks up, her face inquistive, but for just a second. She hasn’t been paying attention to what was going on, makes a quick assesment of the car, the kid, and the girls, replays the recent dialog in her head, cuts the qinuisitve look, and goes back to what she was doing.
I watch, a couple more exchanges between the kid and the girls, back and forth. Something happened, as the kid drives off, and the girls get up and leave. The departure still gives some good shots of different angles of the car.
I mention something about how that was so totally two car commercials in a row, and Andrew suggest that I give up on this foreign language junk and go into advertising. I make some sort of spoken noncomittal gesture.
We three left at about 9:30– I don’t know what happened to the rest of them– I stopped hearing bottle rocket reports at about the same time the band got down to business, so I’m not sure how long El Baile and his splinter cell tested their weapons of minor occular discomfort. Whatever.
Later that night, I discovered Ostendorf works cashier at Marsh 34. Afterwards, my mom asked why it was that I didn’t really particularly like her. I remember stumbling out ‘It’s the principle of the thing…”
So what if she graduated Valedictorian by some stupid technicalities and mere thousandths of GPA difference. So what if Nazzy really and truely deserved the honor. If my thinking’s right, which it normally is, an old coin-collecting grocer in my grandparents’ little village is dead because some worthless bastard didn’t like the fact he wasn’t white. What the hell am I doing, being a jerk about some pathetic crap like getting a blue ribbon and a two minute speech instead of somebody else?
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