The Vortex

This entry tells you all you need to know about The Vortex. Yep, it's twelve years later and I'm still in The Vortex. It whirls around me like a tornado of crazy chance.

The Vortex
(April 02, 2000, Diaryland)
 
Hub named it "the vortex" once he realized it was real. Pretty accurate moniker for the fact that coincidences of the most unlikely nature seem to ebb and swirl around me like concentric rings you get when you throw a pebble into a lake. Despite this and numerous other weirdnesses about me, he's stuck around for 7 years, poor man.

We've tested the vortex, and found that, for the most part, it's a measurable phenomenon. I think we first measured it when, driving back on a Sunday from my parents' house in Connecticut, we somehow fell into a discussion about the Trojan Horse and got around to wondering, what if it wasn't a horse? What if they'd built a Trojan Cow? Endless cow puns followed ("udderly ridiculous!" etc) and the topic played itself out until we were sick of each other. Not ten minutes later I espied, peering through the glare of the road and in glaring disbelief, what appeared to be an enormous cow in the roadway ahead. Gradually we overtook the behemoth and it was indeed a cow-- some evil, smiling plastic or fiberglass construction that required a huge trailer truck to haul it past our lives, leaving us gaping in stupid wonderment.

I think it was Hub's idea."Let's just pick a way-out there thing, something that has never touched our lives." I agreed. "How about, I dunno-- COLOSTOMY BAG."

The next Wednesday, we were listening to Opie and Anthony, a pair of nutjob DJ's on WAAF who've since been fired over a practical joke that went too far. They're in New York now where, apparently, the local government can take a joke. But I digress (sorry-- I do that). Since it was Wednesday, it was "Whip 'em Out Wednesday," meaning we women were supposed to unleash our lovely rosebuds for anyone who had a "W.O.W." bumpersticker. Opie and Anthony had added Whip 'em Out Wednesday to their week along with "Friday Fake-O," a bit in which women called the station and vocalized a fake orgasm. Anthony said that maybe it was too much, two days out of five with planned themes, "What's next, colostomy bag Tuesday?"

Happens all the time.

Why bring it up now? It's just that I haven't thought about that Australian agent of my pre-teen era, Rick Springfield, in years. Two days ago I entered his name in ebay for no good reason. I won Working Class Dog, the album that launched a thousand puberties. Well, tonight I went to Sky Bar to see the Boy Joys and Waltham, and as Waltham starts their set I'm thinking, "This is just like Rick Springfield. How can it be like Rick Springfield? I mean this song is JUST like a Rick Springfield song." Just then Ad leans over and says, "Whaddaya think? Rick Springfield?"

Why'm I surprised anymore.

Going, Going, Gone

I would like to start off the new archives by bringing back the first entry I ever published. This was posted on Diaryland on April 1st, 2000, but if memory serves I wrote it in December 1999. It just took four months to grow the balls to get a Diaryland account, and then what did I write about? ebay. And I'm happy to report that I don't have this problem anymore. (md, 15 August 2012)

Going, Going, Gone
(April 01, 2000)
 
I am addicted to ebay.

I don't mean I merely LIKE ebay-- I mean fix-needy, daily habit, intervention-worthy addicted.

I've decided that logging on to ebay is the cyber-equivalent of joining a music club or, say, slightly less of a paycheck-sucking vortex than going to Costco or BJ's Wholesale Club. If you're a member of any of these "it seemed like a good deal at the time" clubs, you know that one of your duties means having to explain your crap to your friends. Like, why I own a copy of the Pat Boone heavy metal CD? and why do I have 413 green plastic forks left over from last year's New Year's Eve party? "It's cheaper in the long run to buy the 500 pack," I seem to recall chirping ever-so-logically to Hub, whom I only bring along because he's 6' 4" and 200 lbs and can get his sinewy arms all the way around a gross of Charmin Extra Soft quilted toilet paper.

The thing about ebay, more specifically, about the crap I've been bidding on and sometimes "winning," these bits of music and nostalgia and oh-lord-deliver-me from the...COLLECTIBLE...I don't need it. Not a whit. Who needs it? Yesterday, I was perfectly content WITHOUT the Laverne & Shirley wristwatch, in fact I didn't even know such an item existed on the planet. Today, it makes all my dreams come true. Why?
Perhaps a more logical question is, how come there's so MUCH crap like this in the world? I'm a Taurus, I'm painfully logical. Then I get online.

Logic flung to the wind like a 1985 limited edition BJ and the Bear Frisbee, I feverishly log on to "my ebay," breathlessly scrolling through the auctions I'm bidding on, hoping to see green, green greeeeeeen...green text, as you know, means I'm "winning," or more accurately, Go. Go, to the post office for yet another money order and mail it to a total stranger somewhere in the bible belt, in exchange for...well, for what?

In some scary endeavor to enrich my life, I have now assumed ownership of a Littermaid Automatic Litterbox, a copy of Rick Springfield's "Working Class Dog" album, yes on vinyl and yes I have it on CD already, and a John Lennon doll. And most recently I have bid on-- and lost to others just as pathetic as me-- THREE A-Team lunchboxes, TWO Little Lulu dolls,and a tiny pair of red shoes and white socks that may or may not fit a Shirley Temple doll I already bought.

I know perfectly well that this is a symptom of something sinister, some evil that I'll have to reckon with someday.