Hippies and Eskimos

It was just after midnight. My mother's first birthday since her murder had just passed. I went out into the cold and rain to run an errand. It had recently been hard to move for any reason at all. Any sense of purpose or passion had drained away months ago. However, hunger still seemed to be a pretty good motivator. I had no money other than the old check in my jacket pocket that I kept forgetting to deposit; that's what led me to the grocery store's ATM.

The ATM was on my right as I walked in the exit. The entrance is closed at that time of night. On my left was a computer station open to all who wish to submit an employment application for the grocery store, and as such goes mostly unused. That night there was a young man declaring his desire to move food. He was perhaps twenty years old. His hair was brown, long, and stringy. His goatee was scraggly. His T-shirt was faded. His jeans were ripped. His sneakers were green and well-worn. On his head sat a pair of enormous, old-fashioned, 80s-style black headphones.

His body jerked along with whatever music he was listening to.

As I began my deposit, the ambient noise of the universe faded away and I heard him quite clearly singing along to his music. I couldn't bring myself to move as my brain processed what it was hearing. This man was singing out loud, off key, word for word the Corky and the Juice Pigs song "Eskimo."

So, in case you've never heard the song and can't spend three minutes watching pure happiness, the chorus laments the fact that the singer is the only gay Eskimo in his tribe. This song, though delightful, is twenty years old. I don't think anyone's cared about it in fifteen or so.

But there he was.

In the middle of a night made cold by wind and melancholy was a single dirty hippie badly singing a song as old as he was to the entire checkout about being lonesome homosexual Inuit. I remained in front of the ATM long after I had finished my transaction, transfixed by the sublime absurdity of the moment.

The song ended.

He looked off at the wall behind the monitor and paused. After a moment of reflection he mused out loud to himself "Huh. That song's pretty gay."

I hastened to the back of the store, where they no longer feel it necessary to light the dairy products at 1:00am, and sat by the yogurt, and laughed. And wept. But mostly laughed.

Gremlin Gripes

I have recently taken to storing my hammer next to my computer.  I have felt the need to remind it that I am the boss and how much damage I can do to it.  Nuisance after nuisance have troubled me for weeks, and half of them have come from my computer.  I am not a Luddite.  I am not a newb.  I do computery things for a living and I generally know wtf I'm doing.  However, I have faced a string of Murphy's law type tech troubles and have come to the only reasonable conclusion:

Gremlins.

There are one or more mischievous fey following me and sabotaging every computer I use until I am so mad that I am reduced to a sputtering mass of flailing rage.  I needed to find relief, so I turned to the place I was sure had the wisdom that could deliver me from this chaos:

The Internet.

Now, I was hoping for some Grade-A quackery right off the bat.  I thought I was in immediate luck when I found a search result called: Warwick Davis - Get Rid of Your Gremlins.  Sadly, it has to do with an adult education program in the UK in which he was participating.  I was at least able to get this sweet midget/gremlin pic, so not a total loss.

As it turns out, gremlins have become a metaphor for self-doubt in the self-help community, which diluted my "how to get rid of gremlins" searches with instances of people trying to improve the lives of others.

Useless.

In my search I did find this delightful satire on Hamster Republic on the nature of Technomancy and how it applies to your computer.  It's a little lengthy, but it does posses some valuable insights into the supernatural evils that are computers, such as "Take a screwdriver, open up your computer, and take a look at the circuit boards. They are usually green, and are covered with complex patterns of thin copper lines. These are Circuit Runes, written in arcane and ancient languages that describe the magic spells that bind the imps to the chips."

I was able to find a genuine spell to get rid of gremlins, but sadly, it only works on laundry machines. Seems awfully specific, but hey, if that's your issue, then it's super-convenient.

I found a gremlins listing on handy little supernatural bestiary.  Turns out that the natural enemy of the gremlin is the pigeon.  However, I have never been able to catch a pigeon and I'm not willing to pay the $265 it would take to get the cheapest set.  This site claims that they can also be lured into empty beer bottles.  Now this makes sense.  I usually drink heavily when I'm cruising through the vast sea of inappropriateness of the Internet, so there's usually bottles strewn about.  A few weeks ago I started to keep things a little cleaner and that's when everything went downhill.

Life lesson learned?
Drink more and stop cleaning up after yourself.

That won't last long, I have too much to do.  My liver, education, and I could use the help of my wonderful readers.  You guys have any advise on how to get rid of/appease these guys?

The Road to Dearborn

So four weeks ago I set out for the World Steam Expo in Dearborn Michigan.  I was to travel with my dear Kaiju-Senpai.  I feared the worst.  I feared… a Grand Adventure.

I didn’t want a Grand Adventure.  Those things are expensive and exhausting.  I wanted a nice quiet road trip.  We were going to pick up a nice girl named Brittani along the way.  Well, she seemed nice, I didn’t really know her.

The beginnings were ominous.  There was heavy rain and the foul stench of imminent circumstance in the air.  We packed as best we could, took a deep breath, and begun our journey.  The rain eased up and by the time we reached the edge of the city it had stopped completely.  It was a pleasing sign.

We were going slowly in the slow lane, just to be safe.  The roads are still slick for a while after that kind of rain.  I had to move over one lane to the left, though.  Directly up ahead was a cop car with his lights on.  It seems that there was already a wreck up ahead and they had just cleared the cars off to the side.

It was at that point a speeding van approached in the slow lane and decided at the last minute that he didn’t want to rear-end the cop, so he darted left… into my lane… where I still was.

So once again I found myself in a car that was spinning in circles around the interstate.

My car came to a stop only several feet from the people standing around from the previous accident.  Everyone was okay, though.  The right-back quarter of my car was pretty much shattered.  Funny enough, it drove just fine.

We went to the nearest Wal-Mart and bought some duct tape, blue to match my car, and taped the bumper back on to keep it from catching wind as we drove.  Then we promptly manned-up and continued our journey.

My poor baby.

We picked up Brittani and left my wheel well at her house.  We needed the room.  This is when I find out that Brittani, who I had only seen being quiet and sweet, was a foul-mouthed harpy of a woman.  So I spent the rest of the trip crammed between Godzilla and Baba Yaga.

We managed to make it all the way to Toledo before I got a flat tire.

Luckily there was a tire place two miles from where we were.  Baba was nice enough to find it for me and call them up while I was putting the donut on.  Since we were stopped anyway, I thought that this would be the ideal time to visit Last Chance Waffle House.  It is the last Waffle House on the way to Michigan.  I’d been wanting to go there, and it was just like I imagined: Like any other Waffle House.  That’s okay,  though.  That’s exactly what I wanted. It was the most delicious coffee I’d had in months.

The way back was much better.

Except that Baba Yaga needed to stop at a 7-Eleven to fulfill some sort of sentimental ritual, and then we stopped at a diner... which didn’t have anything I ordered.  So we were an hour late before we even started.

Kaiju-Senpai insisted on buying a book on CD for the ride home, so we stopped by a truck stop and took a look.  They looked through the fairly large selection and both independently picked the same book.  Apparently they were fascinated with The Rape Fairy.  They needed to hear about magical raping ways.  I really, really wish I were kidding.

I'll never understand women.

Instead we got a story that began “Prince Rupert rode his Unicorn through the Darkwood.”  I nearly died from ironic joy.

Somewhere along the line we had dubbed ourselves the Three Amigos of Disaster, so when it became dinner time, we couldn’t pass up this place.

It seemed thematically appropriate.

And the harpies were sated.

Then we made it home safe.  The End.



P.S. - If you’d like to hear about what actually happened at the World Steam Expo, tune in Monday.  You’ll be glad you did.

International Relations

So today I'm at work, minding my own business, and heard an alert on my phone.  I looked and found that there was a message telling me that someone named Joe Fonda had sent me a friend request on Skype.  There was a very small profile picture of a brown-skinned person (maybe Asian, maybe Hispanic, it was hard to tell with so small a photo) sitting in a pick-up truck with a trucker hat, smiling at the camera.  I didn't know any such person, but decided to accept the invite nonetheless.

Almost immediately thereafter I got a message from Joe saying that I was familiar from LinkedIn.  I admitted that I didn't even know what that was, and Joe apologized, having thought I was someone else.  It seems Joe Fonda was looking for someone to practice English with due to an upcoming interview with HAUSCR.  After finding out that my new friend was in Shanghai, I could not resist an interesting story.  So I did what any reasonable adventure lover such as myself would do: I took my lunch break and spent the next hour on the phone with what ended up being an adorable Chinese girl.

We talked about things we like, our hobbies, and I even asked her some questions she might hear in an interview setting.  She asked my opinion on the Arnold Schwarzenegger controversy.  Apparently in China he's called Schwartzingu.  She's a sophomore in college and she's studying accounting on recommendation from her family, but she really wants to be a director.  Adorable.

Joe picked her name because the first part of her name started with a "Jo" sound, but didn't know it was a guy's name.  I explained that it can be a girl's name, but it can be misleading.  In fact, my mother's name is Josephine and often went by Jo when she was younger... so I just suggested to Ms. Fonda that she drop the "e."

All in all it was a fascinating and enjoyable experience.  It's not everyday you get a random phone call from the other side of the world.  I hope to hear from her again.


P.S. - Oh, and she says the sweetest things about this blog.  ^^

The Art of Bacon

So I recently went on a date.  That's right, a date.  I'm dating now.  I'm a dater.

She asked me if I wanted to go to a bacon art show, and I froze for several moments.  I was using all of my considerable brain power trying to think of any circumstances in which a person would not want to go to a Bacon Art Show.

I looked it up.  It was being held at the dooGallery.  I had never been, but it seemed pretty legit.  We met up, and that's when our adventure began.

As we got closer to out destination, I realized that we were no longer in the best parts of the city.  I wasn't particularly concerned, though, until I found the address we were looking for.

Oh yeah.  Legitsville.

All the rusted out vehicles in the lot give it character.

I can totally see this being a place I spend a lot of time not getting stabbed.

By this time I was not surprised when the bald tattooed man at the door told is it was cash only.  (I didn't photo him because I like my blood on the inside) We were faced with the decision to go find cash or run far away to safety.  We of course opted for cash.  To further illustrate to you, dear readers, the type of neighborhood in which we were, here is a snapshot of the display that was directly next to the ATM:

Would you like Black, White, or Latin porn?

It was a perfectly nice affair once we got in, mostly one white warehouse room with some art.  You know, hip.  I knew it was hip because the place was crawling with hipsters.

I have no idea what the Giant Eagle was doing there.

The art was actually a lot of fun.  Here is a selection of my favorites:

"Breakfast"

"Double Bacon Rainbow All the Way"

"Apparition of the Shroud of Turin, Hickory Smoked Center Cut"

Martyr de L'Espece Porcine

 There was even a raffle, in which they gave away a beautiful selection of bacon related door prizes.

Bacon related door prizes.

 And a table full of bacon related snacks, and free plastic cups of PBR.  Because they were hipsters.

The tuna salad crackers made with Baconnaise made me ill.

The gem of the show, the reason for its existence, was the tasting room.  If you traded in your raffle ticket you got your hand marked and allowed entrance.  Totally worth everything.

There were bacon-wrapped dates, bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, two different kinds of bacon cookies, and three different kinds of bacon cupcakes.  The real treasure was bacon and peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate.  It was... a transcendent  experience.

Oh, and I got my picture taken next to a statue.

I know.  Poignant.

...


One last thing.  I've been pretty good about giving you guys plenty of nightmare fuel.  Today is no exception.

Have a man made out of a pig.

Gelastic Syncope: The Funny Seizures - Part 2

I mentioned before that I have the Gelastic Syncope, a condition that makes me
have seizures if I laugh too hard.  This is an account of its most dangerous
occurrence:


So I was hanging out with some friends when my friend Timy asked if he could get a ride to work.  Being a good friend, and one of the few at the time with a viable car and license, I agreed.  I didn’t know that way there from where I was, but he did, so we were golden.

The trip seemed to take a bit longer than expected.  There were a lot of turns and the area seemed to be getting more and more shady.  When I tried to confirm that he knew where he was going, he conceded that he had only been this way once… in a bus.  My confidence was shaken.  It was completely gone when I arrived at one of the worst street corners I’d seen at that point in my life.

The buildings were run down and boarded up.  There were cars on blocks.  There were people selling drugs, and sex, and probably babies.  The streets were filled with cartoonish stereotype of urban black people.  There are mystical nexus points where reality becomes a caricature of itself.  These weren’t black people.  These were specters out of the nightmares of what white-trash rednecks think inner-city black people are like. It was a blur of gold chains, low-hanging pants, and hip hop.  I wanted to get out of the car and plead with them to stop propagating the stereotypes, but more than that I wanted to not get stabbed in the face, so I didn’t.

I wondered where I was.  What sort of place would let this happen.  I stopped behind a van at a red light and looked at the street sign.  The name of the street was Blackland Road.

Blackland Road.

The ridiculousness of the situation overwhelmed me.  I began to laugh harder than I ever had.  My body became tingly and numb at the same time.  The world faded away.  I awoke very disoriented and sitting in my car.  This wasn’t the first time.  I drove cross-country frequently, so I was used to waking up in my car.  However, this was the first time I was in the middle of the street at the time.  The guy who was driving the van got out and yelled at me.  I had released the break during my seizure and bumped into the back of him.  I got out of the car and tried to get my bearings.  I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what was going on, and tried to explain that to the other driver, but he was in no mood to be receptive to my situation.  That’s when Timy came in.  I should mention that Timy had tattoos, piercings, Ass-Stomping Boots, a black leather jacket, a green Mohawk, and the attitude to back it all up.  He approached swiftly and asked the driver very sternly if there was a problem.  The driver quickly decided that he wasn’t nearly as angry as he thought he was, told me to be more careful next time, and drove away.  My friend explained to me what happened, and realizing that all’s well that ends well, we had a good laugh about it all… not too good of a laugh, though.

We drove on and he decided that we must have missed our turn on Piedmont Roadsomewhere, so we turned around.  We found it on the way back, but weren’t surewhy we missed it.  Thinking that maybe it was one of those roads that changes names at the intersection, I looked at the other side.

Blackland Road.

I took a right onto Piedmont and did my best to keep a straight face.  Timy kept a straight face.  He turned to me and with perfect deadpan stated “Blackland Road makes white boys have seizures.”  We were already deep into a state of the giggles.  Imma gonna save you some build up here.  I had another seizure then
and there, only I was actually going down the road that time. Timy took the wheel.  We approached an intersection where there was a traffic cop, but luckily it was our turn to go.  My left hand was plastered to the side window shaking.  It looked like I was waving at the cop, so Timy did the only thing he could do.  He leaned forward and waved at the cop, too.  The officer waved back and we passed on though without further issue.

I woke up moments later, took the wheel again, and got us safely to our destination… where I proceeded to take a nap in the back room.



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Gelastic Syncope: The Funny Seizures - Part 1

So I was halfway through a really long post where I talked about a bizarre medical condition that I have when I came to a grim epiphany, then erased it.

It’s one of my favorite stories.  I love telling it.  I realized that it would absolutely break my heart if I were to start telling it to someone to whom I’ve never told it before and they stopped me saying “Oh yeah, I read about that on your blog.  That’s funny.  Let’s talk about something else.”

Then I thought about those of you who I will never meet; those of you who will never know the joy of speaking to me in person, who will never hear the story directly from my lips.

I began to think of the children I hope to one day have, and their children.  One day I’ll be gone from this world, and my descendants will never know about those hilarious seizures I once had.

That’s when I understood that even though there may be moments that pain me, this is a story that must be told and preserved for posterity’s sake alone.  So here it is…

***

I am prone to Gelastic Syncope, a subtype of Vasovagal Syncope.  According to the paper to which I linked, there have only been five documented cases, so it’s extremely rare. 

When I laugh too hard, I pass out and have seizures.

No lie.

I found this out one day at a CiCi’s Pizza.  I was a teenager then.  I was having lunch with a couple of my best friends, Daniel and Vinnie.   We were having a debate as to which would be better for population control, condoms or cannibalism.  Daniel and I were on the side of cannibalism.  The debate lasted for an hour.  It ended with three lines, we each had one.

I said “The government is not going to hire the homeless to watch people have sex.”

Vinnie said “Well, why not?”

Then Daniel said “Because people will kill ‘em and eat ‘em!”

As funny as that might be to you right now, if you had heard the entire conversation leading up to that, it would be a lot funnier.  In fact, at that point in my life it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.  I laughed and laughed.  Things started getting fuzzy, and appearing as they were much further away.  I felt faint.

The next thing I know I was waking up on the floor.  My mother was sitting at the table across from us.  She told me to stop making such a scene.  I had no idea what was going on.  There was a carpet burn on my forehead from where I had been seizing on the ground.  Do you know how difficult it is to explain away a carpet burn on your forehead?  Very.  The answer to that is very.

It took a few times to figure out what was happening.  The funniest, and most dangerous one was when I was driving a friend to work. (That's the teaser for part 2)

Yesterday I Felt Like a Blogger

Yesterday was bad-ass. I spent the entire thing with my long-lost sister. She is amazing. We finally found each other in the autumn of last year, and this was our first Christmas together. Our father was also there. It was the first time the three of us were in the same room together since 1982... But I think all that's for a different post. The point is, it was one awesome brother, and one awesome sister tearing up southern Michigan.

And I just couldn't stop thinking about blogging.

It's totally not my fault. It started with this:

Okay, I get that a few of you might not get the awesome of what's going on here, so I'll explain. You see, I'm not balls deep in the blogging community just yet. In fact, there's only two blogs that I read that aren't written by people I know IRL. That would be Jenny Lawson's, The Bloggess and Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half. They are both beautiful, insane ladies who make me feel a little more beautiful and a little less insane.* Well, Allie's boyfriend's name is Duncan, and Jenny has a history of shouting out "Wolverines!" with little to no provocation. I was only sad that it was only a singular wolverine, and not plural. Anyway, I made my sister turn the car around and stand in the snow so she could take my picture with this blogging monument.

Later we were walking through Ann Arbor and came across this amazing little used bookstore called Kaleidoscope. They had a magical basement with all sorts of neat old books, comics, magazines, and collectables. There was even a box of old action figures, in which I found this:

I had done it. I had found another Wolverine. They were plural now. What had I found that day?

Wolverines!!!

Here's the clincher. We took to driving again and passed this:

And ALL I could think of was a senior's sea cruise for sex freaks. I could not stop giggling. Once again I made my sister turn around so I could photograph it, and share it with my dedicated and loyal followers. Turns out it was a car wash or something. Go figure.

So there it is. Not only did I apparently have blogging on the brain all day, but this is the first time I officially inconvenienced anyone to indulge my blogging habit. There's no going back now.

P.S. - And to top it off, I wrote this post on my phone on the flight home.


*I swear I'm not gay.

Besuited Voyeurs

I had a real post all written out and ready.  Then this happened and I had to share.  I'll post the other thing tomorrow.

So I started some laundry last night.  I was pretty much out of clothes.  I know I shouldn't wait that long to do laundry.  I know I should to laundry when I have enough clothes to fill a load.  However, this never happens.  I'm a dude.

Times have been exhausting, I was all tuckered out.  Almost immediately after starting my first load, I fell asleep.  I awoke this morning with nothing but dry dirty clothes and clean wet ones.

"Clean Wet Ones" would be a great album title.

I managed to put together an acceptable work outfit with stuff I had tucked away in my closet, but all of my gym clothes were unacceptable for use in their current condition.  I like to work out in the fitness center of my office building on my lunch break.  So I pulled out the only thing I had left, my cold weather outfit.  Long sleeved gym shirt and long pants.  When the time came, I felt ridiculous wearing them inside, and I knew it was going to get hot, but I thought to myself, "Hey, it's not like anyone's going to be watching me work out."

Five minutes into my treadmilling, a man in a suit walked it and said "Oh, hey.  We're going to watch you work out."  Then six more men in suits walked into the fitness center.

I soon remembered that my building has much unused space, and in fact my Specialty Ham Company was planning to move out soon.  As the men in suits diverted their attention from me and began inspecting the room, I concluded that they were likely prospective renters.

Still, just a glimpse into the everyday life of Adam Jones.

The Most Portentous Clover Ever - Part 2

When I got home from finding the first four-leaf clover that I had in years, I sliced a bit of my thumb off.  Sadly, there is no good story to go along with this.  I was cutting onions.  I was improperly using a slicing device and paid the price with my flesh.  I was in such a panic that I just put the missing bit back on and put a Band-Aid on it, hoping that it would just decid to latch back on.  I was beginning to feel quite distraught and betrayed by my clover, until I remembered that my friend K.T. lost half her thumb in a metal shop accident (which is bad-ass).  So who knows, if it weren't for the clover, I could be missing a lot more thumb.

There's... a lot to cover, so I'm going to start summing up.

Caught in thunderstorm, super late to work, got stick caught in my car, thought I had a flat tire, but didn't.  It was the stick... it would make sense if I explained it... but no.

On Devil's Night an old friend I hadn't heard from in ages called me out of the blue to tell me she was going to be at the same party as me, and that I should keep an eye out for her.  I had planned to be alone in my living room, in my pajamas.  Instead I decided to go to this party, of which I had never heard.  It was at a seedy warehouse in the middle of nowhere and she was two and a half hours late.  It turns out the good party was at a different seedy warehouse further down the alley.  God I hate the scene.

On Halloween I went to see my bff Mareta at her Haunted House.  She had been doing make-up effects, but I hadn't gone to see.  It was good, then her husband and I went to go have coffee.  We talked for hours about a constant trend of the older generation of any age scorning the social change brought on by the younger generation, and other stuff... which was weird, cause we never really talk.

And my mother's husband didn't have lung cancer, as it turns out.  Just Sarcoidosis.  Which in itself isn't great, but it beats lung cancer.

I was dating a girl in Chicago, from Atlanta.  That wasn't working out well, so we ended things in Wisconsin.

A gorgeous woman caught my fly down, and The Most Interesting Man in the World covered for me. (Seriously, Google this dude.  It is ridiculous.)

One of the most bad-ass women on the planet didn't seem to mind when she found out that I have a huge crush on her.  Also, she kissed me.

My flight home got delayed, and when I went to sleep that night, the frame above my bed fell on my head.

I bought a new jacket.  Okay, I get that this one may not seem weird to anyone.  I get that.  But trust me, that is bizarre.  Like woah.

Stiver and I went to a diner to get coffee.  We got tired of the place, so we walked down the street to the Waffle House to get coffee.  On the way there was a donation bin with the most bad-ass poster ever.

I call it "Two Moon Panther."

(My wall isn't yellow, it's just weird light.)

Can you believe that someone was getting rid of that?  It is now on my dining room wall.

Thing is, after several straight weeks of strangeness, I thought "I have got to tell someone about this."  Then I corrected myself  "No, I have got to tell everyone about this."

So here it is.  MeetAdamJones.com.  Inspired by a clover, and built solely so I can tell you about the weird shit in my life.

...

And help satisfy my enormous ego.

The Most Portentous Clover Ever - Part 1

When I was a child, I was mad talented at finding four-leaf clovers.  I could look at a clover patch and find one within two minutes.  There was a period of a few months were I found dozens.  I thought I was the luckiest boy alive.  Eventually those around be became less and less enthused by my discoveries, and even my mother adopted her "Oh, that's nice Dear" response.  I suspected then, as I do now, that they were all jealous;  So in an effort to spare their feelings, I stopped looking.

A few weeks ago I considered myself in need of some luck.  Things were not awful, but I was in a terrible rut, also I had been slacking off on my fitness routine for a few weeks.  I was about to walk up Stone Mountain, a local mountain in the Atlanta area.  It is made of stone.  We are creative here.  I had been going up once a week for months, and the week was almost over.  I was not going to miss it.  I walked to the foot of the mountain and caught a patch of clover out of the corner of my eye.  This seemed like an opportune moment to get back in the habit of luck finding.  I poured over the patch, and sure enough, less than two minutes later I found this beauty:

That's when things got weird.  The following few weeks were packed with bizarre happenings and strange luck.  I will now proceed to scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg.

I've always considered finding a four-leaf clover to be good luck, but picking it to be bad, at least for the clover.  So I moved along.

On the way up the mountain I saw a woman that looked just like an Ex of mine.  She was identical from the back.  Same body type, hair, and clothes style.  I looked around and gestured like "Is anybody else seeing this?" knowing full well that there was no one else around, and that even if there were, they wouldn't likely be able to make a comparison.  When I looked back, she was gone.  For just a second I considered the state of my sanity, but then she popped up from behind a rock.  I sped up to pass her, so I could leave that awkward reminder of my past behind me, but it was too late.  I was thinking about her.

I hadn't thought about her in a while.  Things had ended poorly between us, and I dislike poking wounds.  If I had a stick, and there were a wounded dinosaur, I wouldn't poke it.  Especially a brontosaurus, because they don't exist.  I realized I missed her quite a lot.  Not romantically, but we had been friends for many years before anything romantic happened, and we hadn't spoken since.  I missed her friendship.  It didn't really seem appropriate to just send her an unsolicited email and hope for the best.  So I tried my best to make peace with the fact that this was likely one of those sad losses that a person must simply carry through life.

The next day my email got hacked and everyone I knew was sent a link for discount Viagra.  Everyone, including that Ex.  She's a smart lady, I was sure she'd realize I didn't mean to send it to her.  There's those few seconds though, the ones between where she sees she got an email from me, and when she sees that it was an automated boner-selling spam-bot.  I guess those few seconds were enough, because she replied, and we started cautiously trading emails.  So... lucky.