Sheila Rambles

“Put it this way,” she said, “Chocolate and peanuts go well together.  Beer and peanuts go well together.  But would you really want to put beer and chocolate together?” “No, I guess not,” Amy admitted. “Then there you go.  You’re the peanut, baby.  It’s not a bad thing to be.  And either I’m beer and he’s chocolate or he’s beer and I’m chocolate but either way we’re really best taken separately, at different times, with palate cleansers in between.” “I think he’s probably beer.” “I think you’re probably right.  He drinks enough that if you cut him, he’d bleed it.”

“You were right—the job was a good luck charm.” When Delany interviewed for the job, she’d asked the usual question about why the position was open in the first place.  Margie’s answer was that the store had a tendency to raise people’s vibrations so that the next thing you knew, their dream job opened up or they started their own business.  Delany didn’t have the heart to suggest to Margie that maybe people would be less inclined to bolt to other jobs or plunge into the risky waters of entrepreneurship if she paid something closer to a living wage.

Nah, I don’t want to get in trouble with your girlfriend. You don’t have a girlfriend?  Seriously? Sure, you don’t.  That’s what they all say, you know. “I swear to you I’m not seeing anybody else.”  Yep, those words exactly and everything.  Not falling for it.  Not this time. Whether or not I have a boyfriend is not relevant.  I don’t want to get in trouble with your girlfriend.  I know how vengeful women can be when they find out. So you seriously don’t have a girlfriend? Sorry to hear that.  Maybe you should reconsider your technique for meeting people.

There was a second blog I'd set up because I had this nifty idea about writing music reviews of albums that I'd never gotten around to listening to but that music critics keep namedropping on me. It was an interesting idea.  Might even have been an interesting blog.  Problem was, I could never seem to get around to writing it and the unfinished business gnawed at the back of my brain for a matter of years. Today I put up the copy of Exile on Main Street that I'd picked up for the blog in question on swap.com and a copy of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World popped up as a possibility.  Sold. I did try listening, and I even took notes, but the thing so completely failed to hold my interest that I couldn't even muster an entertainingly snarky review.  The most it did was make me want to smack Mick Jagger upside the head with a bottle of Jack Daniels, tell him to wake the fuck up and remind him that he is neither African-American nor Southern. So ...

“Is that new?” Sebastian asked.  He’d settled into the seat next to Delany. “Had them installed when we put the shelves in.  Stones before spells and all that.  I also had a video projector installed as my plausible explanation.” “How did you explain the curtains over the mirror?”  “If they’d asked, I would have told them I have eccentric but wealthy clients who get nervous around mirrors.  It would have had the added bonus of being absolutely true.  As it turned out, if you pay enough, they don’t ask questions in the first place.  Shall we cast the circle, then?”