another_story misstree driving through the French Quarter of New Orleans, home from work... i'm used to all sorts of drunks wandering around, gawking and puking and not neccessarily watching traffic... but i was in a bad mood that night... so when a group of four wandered in front of my car, i gunned my engine briefly before braking to avoid hitting them. three of the people crossed, one didn't. i slowed down to give a good ol' chicago-style hollering to the idiots, but before i can get a word out, i feel something cold and wet splash in through the passenger window. i holler, pull away, and realize it was beer. fucker threw a beer in through my window. i hate beer. so, i pull around the corner, fuming, having just recently discarded my outdated notions of pacifism. by the time i'm going past the people again, i have calmed, figuring that it's not worth the trouble to fuck with them further, it won't set anything right. as i go past again, another person throws a drink into my car-this one hits me in the eye. that's it. car gets thrown into park, and i fly out ina fury. "what the fuck do you think you're doing?" i scream, confronting the cardboard vutouts, two boys and two girls that could have come straight off frat row or a spring break special, right down to the out of season mardi gras beads. we "discussed" whether i was trying to run them over or they were walking in front of moving traffic, while the guy who threw the initial beer threatens to hit me, knock me out, things like that. the location for this confrontation couldn't have been better--halfway between pirate's alley and jackson square, the two places i could go to find friends. within 15 seconds i have 4 scary males behind me, confused but protective. but i have some rage to vent. i backed these plastic assholes down the length of jackson square (about 350 feet), asking them how they would feel if i came to their house and threw beer around and pissed on their carpet and walked in front of their car. i told them that if they were in chicago they would be flat. i generally trash-talked and vented, in rare form. by the end of the encounter, by support had grown to 7 *very* concerned males and one female, gutterpunks and fencers and such. the guy who had instigated it turned tail and ran. when i explained what had happened, i had a double-fistful of people wanting to form a boot party. they sped out of the quarter, and were not seen again. so, i didn't get beat up, i didn't get to beat them up, and a wonderful lemon-fresh goddess lent me some magical potion to remove the beer smell from my car. the net gain of this incident? i got to get in the faces of the people who constantly pissed all over my city. and, this being a thursday, i know that i put a little bit of a damper on their weekend, made them think twice before being such imperial pricks. only *I* am allowed to be such an imperial prick. er, prickette. yup. *bows, exits stage left* 001205 ... The Grendel Bird i always wonder if the people in the cars below ever get antsy when i linger too long by the edge of the railroad overpass. maybe i'll drop a big rock. (oooo!) maybe i'll spit (ha!) if i thought i could survive it (and because the traffic webcam is pointing right at the spot) i would jump. it isn't depression it's lack of the reflex that governs self-preservation...and a fair dose of boredom. i would do it, but then i'd never get to see the chaos and media circus that would ensue (and where the fuck is the fun in that???) 001206 ... misstree problem with media circuses is they always something new, so even if you can stir them up a little, they'll go chasing hte next piece of tail to come their way. pranks are much better executed when they are bewildering, disturbing, and unique. like staging a ufo on campus around bar let out (with a mylar baloon and some lasers) two weeks in a row at the same time on friday night. let the buzz get out. the third friday, more people will be there, seeing the pattern, possibly some authorities, and you get to drink deep of the sheeple's confusion, mess with a few minds while you're out... 001206 ... silentbob mistree, i like your story, good for you :) 001212 ... tree of woe From the end scene of the film "Conan the Barbarian" SORCERER: "...my master became King by his own hand and wore his crown upon a troubled brow...but that...is another story." [camera pans back to show a bearded, somewhat aged CONAN seated on an austere throne with a simple crown resting on his head] [fade to black] [roll credits] 001212 ... misstree one night, about a week before halloween, i smoked up and then left to pick up someone on the way to a halloween party. my friend weirdfish was driving my car, and i was sitting with an unlit cigarette in my mouth, zoning out. we started driving through a woody area with a winding road, no civilization to be seen... one doesn't find these often in the suburbs, and this one was completely new to me. as i aimlessly zoned deeper, i began to feel the sensations as if the cigarette in my mouth was lit. then it felt like it was backwards in my mouth, lit. with growing certainty, my nerves were telling me my face was covered with napalm, which was on fire (though no pain was involved). slowly, it felt lke the napalm was dripping and pooling on my legs. the illusion was broken when weirdfish pulled the cigarette out of my mouth. i looked at him, startled. "have you heard a word i've been saying?" i explained to him the strange hallucination i had just been through. fish sighed. "well, that blows that. i was telling you we should act sober when we get to kat's." i laughed. 010124 ... kingsuperspecial So, this guy Kees (pronounced 'case') is a developer I work with at my current contract. He's bit of an odd kid, and doesn't fit the computer type profile. He seems more like a construction worker, or maybe a cab driver, or a bartender. He's stocky, a bit on the out of shape side, and tough. He's a really nice guy, but he does not take any shit from anyone. Anyway, he's walking to work one morning, and one of the valets from the big pay lot across the street backs a car out of the lot real fast, nearly running over Kees's toes. The guy stops short and Kees leans down to look the guy in the eye and says "watch it, buddy, you almost ran me down. what the fuck?" The lot workie give Kees a dirty look and says "I was going to apologize, but now that you swear at me, I say "fuck you'!" This is the wrong thing to say to Kees. He replies - "Fuck You? Get out of the car and say that, asshole" at which point the lot guy backs out into the street and takes off. Now, that story is good in itself, because Kees is such a scrapper, but it gets better. As he's walking the across the street to work, Kees realizes that if he had gotten into a fight, he might have messed up his work clothes. So, what does this mean? The next day he wears jeans and a t-shirt to work, and goes walking buy the same parking lot, looking for the guy to finish what they started. I love that - the only developer I've met who wore his 'scrapping' clothes to work, so he could give the lot guy a sorely needed ass whipping, and still be dressed okay for work afterward. It's things like that which keep me warm at night. (a) end of story. 010615 ... weirdfish sounds like someone i once knew 031020 ... pipedream *claps for all the stories* GOOOD for you, misstree, that particular story had me mentally cheering...my rather minute-in-comparison adventure was yesterday. me and one of my close girl friends decided to walk down to a pretty little park near the university. it's our park because we figure we're the only ones who get such pleasure from a bunch of swings and a big shady tree :) nonetheless, we were sittin' under the tree; she was reading a book and i was writing a response paper when two sleazy slimy ickies on a motorcycle decided to stop by and leer some (particularly at my friend). also tried to offer their phone numbers which we very icily declined, but they ruined our special park afternoon so i got so mad (at that and also i am rather protective of my friends, girls or boys) so while they were kind of skedaddling in a hurry i showed 'em the finger. *grins proudly* hahahahahaha i know i know, oh big deal pd, but in my part of the world you *don't* do that...hehehehe but im glad i did. ruddy maggoty slimeballs. can't a body sit in a park without becoming the bearded lady and then some? 031020 ... misstree and another, just a quickie, inspired by pipedream so, every year there's a net.goth convention called convergence... just think overwhelming numbers of yummy gothgeeks in black vinyl and you're got a start. convergence 5 was in the french quarter of new_orleans. late one night i was talking to someone on a corner in front of a convenience store, can't remember the cross street now but it was down decatur towards the marigny. anyhow, i'm standing there talking, wearing a little black vest and a jingle belt, habing a ball, and a cluster of tourists walks by. they're men, they're drunk, and they just came off of bourbon street. i suppose i should have expected their behavior. they started hooting at me as they crossed the street, making the usual style-less caveman propositions and empty content. they were distracting me from my conversation and i'd had a whole weekend of this, so when they were standing on the corner diagonal from us, i finally whirled around and said, "hey! can you pound a nine inch spike into your penis?" (nods to real_genius, and yes i misquoted it, it entertained me more.) they conferred amongst themselves for a moment, quite bewildered--doubtless they had been told to fuck off many times, but this was an actual question... finally, the one who had been loudest with the comments, piped up with a shaky "y-yes?" "show me the spike and we'll talk," i hollered back, and resumed the conversation without further interruption. and for any who were curious, the ghost of a fish earlier was my friend weirdfish emerging much like a halloween groundhog, materializing in the most unexpected place just before the fateful date. indeed the same person from the story, and the person who cursed me to lead an interesting life in the first place. plenty more stories about that one, but those are for another time... 031021 ... Lemon_Soda Heh..heh... He said yes? You said what? Oh, god... grins, grins, and more grins to you misstree. 031021 ... misstree So, in the house called Amityville, whose stories are strewn across these pages, once upon a time there was a Birthday Party of the Apocalypse. (Everything was of the apocalypse those days, meself the Hostess of the Apocalypse, the Four Bouncers of the Apocalypse, the Keeper of the Bone of the Apocalypse, the Butler of the Apocalypse... but i'm starting to bore myself). Myself and three other people were on serious amounts of hallucinogenic substances, happily bouncing about in the crowd, spreading the trip to others, and just generally having a grand time in our own little world. All of a sudden, a gaggle of underagers went bolting into my room, squealing, "Hide us! Hide us! The cops are here!" I was staring after them, stunned, when someone came up and said, "Tree, there's a cop at the door, you gotta come talk to him." I blinked at him. "Darling, i'm tripping *hard*. Isn't there someone else who can do it?" "You're the only resident we can find." I giggled to myself at the ridiculous, impossible situation, and made my way down the stairs, clinging desperately to the undulating walls for the whole hour it felt like it took. I took a deep breath as I reached for the door, and the second I opened it, my brain was miraculously solidly stacked in real life. The officer was very nice, and explained that there had been noise complaints from the neighbors, probably from people being rowdy on the porch, as we didn't have the music very loud at all. As we were talking I can only assume he was scanning the party, and he would have seen a pretty laid back group of people, a large gathering of friends, likely townies, not the type that spells trouble in a college town. This was going well, I was clinging to sobriety and he was buying my act, another few minutes and we'd be in the clear. What I didn't know was that, in the living room behind me, someone had bet a girl that she couldn't get the underwear from some other person at the party. She knew exactly who to turn to, and he happened to be in the living room behind me. I am told that she asked him for his underwear, and he was happy to strip down, hand them to her, and put his pants back on. She was waving the undies in the air, triumphantly crying "I got 'em! I got 'em!" and heading for the porch when she saw the officer. "Oh, um, I'm... just gonna go back inside...." she said as she turned and slunk off in a hasty fashion. I was mortified. Here was our entire cover of being nice, clean-cut kids, blown in one moment that even *I* was a little thrown off by. The officer stared after her a moment, a puzzled look on his face, then said, "So, having fun, eh?" "Yeah, well, you know, just messing around." He smiled. "Sure thing. just try to keep it down on the porch. Have a good night." I swear he was smirking when he left, and I was still clinging to the door, recovering from panic faded into amazement, when he drove away. I could tell about the party that we had an on-duty officer as an invited guest, and how she managed to surrpetitiously make a purchase at the slave_auction at piratoga, but that's another_story altogether... 031110 ... misstree lemon_soda was the one who generously donated his garments for the cause. just got permission to name 'im. 031111 ... misstree once upon a time, when i was a hard-core denny's rat, a friend of a friend committed suicide and was found by one of the news people on mancow's morning madhouse. driving around with my friend jenny one morning (the one whose friend had died), we heard that mancow was doing a show at the Park West in chicago on st patrick's day. there would be four girls from the body shop (a strip club), four porn stars, and a caged in bed. we, of course, needed to go to, ah, speak to the newsperson about the suicide. we were up all through the night before, and jenny, billy and i took some ephedrine and went to the show. jenny and i elbowed our way towards the front, on the left side of the stage, and stopped when we were about two people back. after a bit, mancow had two girls on stage kissing. now, jenny and i both are honest-to-god bisexual females, and we can tell that these girls are just doing it for show. this is infuriating to most bi girls, and we were no exception; we started complaining loudly at the farce before us. a man in front of us in the crowd overheard. he turned to us and said, "could you guys do better?" "hell yeah!" we responded. jenny had been hitting on me since we first met, and we'd fooled around on a few occasions, though she had mental issues that kept me from doing anything too interesting with her. "would you do it on stage?" we expressed our enthusiasm to right the wrong being performed in front of us. "hang on," he said, then waded forward and signaled one of the people on stage. after speaking to him for a minute, he pulled us forward. "would you do it with your shirts off?" jenny and i were also regulars at the rocky_horro_picture_show. we were brazen harlots. we looked at eachother with a grin, then jenny's face fell. "i'm wearing a see-through lace bra. i can't." the man turned to me. "how about you?" "hell yeah. i'm wearing my pretty pretty bra," i grinned. fifteen minutes later, we're standing on stage waiting for mancow to get to us. i've never had much of stagefright, but between the crowd and hte ephedrine, there were some butterflies in my stomach, and my memory gets a bit blurry. when he came over, i took my shirt off. the crowd hooted and hollered. mancow said a few things to us, and i told him that we would kiss if he promised to come to rocky_horror with us. he said sure, and jenny and i were free to lock lips. that was one hell of a kiss. jenny and i crushed ourselves against eachother, and everything else was far, far away. she had the passion of having longed for me for a while, and i had the predator's grin and the harlot's passion, and such soft, wonderful lips under mine. our hands roamed over eachother, oblivious to our surroundings. the only thing that i remember besides the kiss was when the cameraman stepped in a little closer to put my bra strap back on my shoulder (i don't remember it falling.) we finished and left the stage, and wandered around in the crowd, talking to people and getting drinks. billy, whom we had abandoned when we crushed to the front, didn't realize what we were doing, and looked up at the giant monitors to see his "little sister" sucking face, larger than life. he was more than a little thrown off. the epherdrine was fading, and the three of us were sitting in the foyer between two sets of doors when the show ended. there was a security guard in there that had been talking to us, and he kept telling people to "keep moving" when they paused before exiting, even as he chatted with the three ragamuffins on the floor. he echoed sentiments we'd heard all morning--"that was the best kiss outta alla them girls. i can tell you really like eachother." we grinned. "listen, there's gonna be a party after this, i can bring you backstage if you wanna go. the body shop girls and mancow and the whole crew will be there." it was tempting, but it had been a long, long night, and we barely had the energy to get home. we thanked him, wished him fond farewells, and headed out, running out of gas on the freeway exit as if karma decided it needed a little slice off the top. that's fine. we'd had more than enough fun to spare some. don't know if it was quite as much fun as the techno_ravetastic_shower (see: innerviews_misstree_blink_blink), but that's another_story... 031113 ... misstree the case of the beautiful timing... just a short one... at the club last night, i was cantankerous and prickly, though in a rather good mood. one gent who traditionally hits on me showed up, and i convinced him to buy me a drink because he "needed to talk to me." while he was fetching, i asked lemon_soda to rescue me from conversation about a minute and a half after i got the drink. i ended up waiting with the gent at the bar, and had to tell him fairly quickly that i was distinctly *not* in the mood for physical contact, and his rubbing my back was unacceptable. the conversation wandered for a few minutes, and he asked if i would like to take out some of my agressions. i contemplated for a moment, as i believe that any question deserves having some thought put into it, and said naw, i was all right. "are you sure?" "i'm positive." "are you suuuuuure?" times like this, i don't tell myself what i'm doing. it just happens. i leaned in close, my eyes narrowed and sparking. i enunciated every word like a technical drawing. "i... *said*... i'm... fucking... positive..." all the little people in my brain were holding their breath, waiting to see what duty they would need to jump to, eyeing eachother nervously. i had just dropped into no-more-bullshit mode. just as i was about to go on, and probably do some damage to this unlucky soul (who had originally come to me seeking comfort), lemon_soda came up. "tree! hey, can i talk to you for a minute?" "sure!" i chirped. i set off with him, and we stood by the dance floor, my arm looped through his, me giggling about the timing. just when i thought i was top of the world, my bodyguard outlander joined me on the other side, and had my other hand looped through his arm. we stood there together for a few minutes, watching the dance floor from our little alcove. soda danced a little, my hips played and swayed while my torso moved just a little, and outlander stood calm and still. i've never felt so safe in a club in my life, than having my captain and my bodyguard flanking me, and knowing they were both damn good at their jobs. (outlander has saved me a few world's worth of trouble, but that's another_story or five, and those you probably don't get to hear.) so, i guess that story's kind of lame, but i was very very entertained by soda's timing. perhaps another_story more worthwhile will surface soon. 031217 what's it to you? who go blather from