T |
I |
There's no doubt that Rory's house is a creepy place. It's a Victorian structure, like a less extravagant version of the famous house in Amityville. It's painted a grim dark grey colour and is situated among several dead or nearly dead Canadian Hemlock trees (dying, no doubt, of the Wooly Adelgid, a tiny insect parasite which is wiping out Hemlocks throughout the east). The house is surrounded incongruously by cheap brick apartments designed as low rent student housing, and the contrast makes it stand out as an apparent locus of evil.
Creepy looks, however, do not a haunted house make. It needs to have a creepy history and there needs to be evidence of present-day haunting. Apparently, this particular house is known to have been the scene of at least one suicide. And Leah says that when she was looking through a record collection in the house last night, she could clearly hear a ghost whispering his opinions of the records over her shoulder. And Rory hears footsteps throughout the house when he knows no one is home. I find all this very amusing, because I'm too big of a rationalist to take anything like this seriously. I want to believe in ghosts; the world would be more interesting if they existed. I have to give lots of credit to the human imagination.
Tyler, Rory's housemate, was there, along with a couple of chums who work at Plan 9 Music. One of these wears a mullet, the sort that hasn't been in fashion since 1985. It's the kind aging rock stars get when they realize they can no longer grow the thick hair of their youth but at least they can afford a stylist. You see, there's a strong mid-thirties classic-rock geek element at Plan 9 in addition to the trendy Generation X indy rock scene.
B |
Evidently they'd been discussing my brutal new hand-held security system. Ray wondered in a seemingly serious way if it was such a good thing to have obtained it without the approval of my housemates, but then he said his wondering was in jest, and he started laughing. I most definitely do not have that guy figured out yet. I explained that I'd had death threats from skinheads (which is a bit of an exaggeration) and that I needed a higher level of security. The blond guy asked why the skinheads were upset with me and I said I'd been publishing uncomplementary things about them on the internet. He shook my hand: support in meatspace.
I packed a bowl with some of Leah's American Spirit Pow-Wow blend (it contains a variety of natural herbs and a bit of organic tobbacco) and passed it around. That stuff makes me light headed in a very pleasant and completely legal way. But it also reminds me of the fine old days at the tail end of Big Fun when Matthew Hart would roll joints filled with a concoction consisting of Pow Wow blend and marijuana. So I ran off and raided my dwindling marijuana stash and prepared a bowl with just such a mix.