substitute

I didn't go to klikitak's thing tonight, partly because I am a social anxiety poster child lately and partly because I didn't want to get extruded through my own car by drunk people going to L.A. and back. Instead I ended up at realitylost's where she and Craig stuffed me with really great food and their dogs sat on me. One of the many reasons to like Craig is that he is serious about food. O garlic bread, O cobbler.

I meant to go over and hang with burntcurtis for a few later but a quick trip across the boulevard revealed that his entire neighborhood had been parked upon by partiers. Tonight is official Adult Halloween Party Night, and everyone was getting smashed, with pumpkins. A couple of his neighbors were incompetently necking in the condo complex and I nearly ran them down. She was wearing a slutty noun costume and he was in a rapist costume (pirate, soldier, Haidl, dunno). He was trying to paw her while simultaneously bracing a 24 pack of beer on his hip and she was trying to do the coy push-away-only-not but instead stumbling in front of my car. Two cheers for Halloween; it's now Daterapemas!

Part of the time at Susie & Craig's tonight the TV was on. I hadn't seen the History Channel in a long time. Wow is it dumb! The supposed academic guy referred to the "Cape of Africa" (?) and they spelled Gibraltar wrong, and the show about the history of dragons spent a full segment talking to a couple of lunatics who believed that dragons existed and waved broadswords while saying they were druids.

One of their neighbors has a license plate holder that says "Foamer Forever." Anyone know what that means?

I dreamed that I had found a website that looked at first as thought it was the usual unpleasant sexual tourism thing, guys visiting impoverished countries to do nasty things. But it was worse. It was a cannibalism tourist site, where you could arrange to visit places so benighted that they'd sell you their children and you could eat them.

The site was disguised as a kind of crackpot medical clinic called the California Creative Radiology Institute.

I think this is the first actual Internet nightmare I've had!

This has been a good weekend, full of unexpected social delights and fatty foods.

I have had totally heterosexual man-dates two nights in a row. Friday, burntcurtis took me for Chinese (and I hardly look it) at China Palace, where I ate round-eye delights like orange spicy chicken. Great conversation with him in a romantic booth. Last night threepunchstuff spirited me off to a G(r)eek restaurant where we ate flaming cheese, etc. Thanks to both of you for being wonderfuli and totally heterosexual man-friends!

I also got to see all sorts of people I never see, and purely by chance, including the reclusive handstil and godforesaken who are rarely observed since their natural habitat is fifty feet underground.

And! Other people had sent me books recently so I read a pile of them, including two graphic novels about hellholes. Guy Delisle's Pyongyang details his time in North Korea working on animation projects, and Ted Rall's half-graphic Silk Road To Ruin is a combination "comic book" about his travels there and history/backgrounder on Central Asia. Both good. Rall's is particularly useful and full of the sort of black humor that only places like Turkmenistan provide.

I'm enjoying the Halloween season this year for the first time in forever. I managed to recapture that childhood sensation of anticipation about costumes and haunted houses and candy skulls. I was never big into candy, although acquisition itself was a huge high on the actual night, but I loved the way neighbors did up their houses into "scary" haunts. People around here really get into that, and there are some dark and creepy strobed-out houses with hands reaching out the windows, etc. already. I like that way better than the adult beer-bash version.

Speaking of which, the costumes for kids are turning me into Old Conservative Guy. Nick and Nicole found a set of wrist-and-ankle bondage cuffs in the Halloween store, complete with unambiguous drawing of bound hussy, that included the instruction they were not for children under six. Meanwhile, a young teenager was being urged into a Slutty Nurse Outfit by her mother, as Junior complained "Mom, they won't allow this at school!" No.

The Santa Ana winds make my eyes and throat dry and are kind of a pain in the ass, but it's so BEAUTIFUL here right now with that very clear light we never get. I took a load of pics in Santa Ana yesterday and maybe some of of them are salvageable. The "camera out the window at 40 mph" style isn't conducive to great art.

Maybe I'll drive out to the desert tomorrow.

pbd was way, way too good at this costume. Photos courtesy realitylost, used with permission.