Where I've Been
Nowhere, really. Just vegging out. Hanging with friends. Treasured escapism.
I'm currently immersed in trying out the beta test for a game called City of Heroes.
Seems most of you dear readers are not the gaming kind, so I won't try to bore you--unless I get specific requests. But check out the links if you're interested and want to know more.

Meanwhile, what's happening out there in the real world?

Went to another birthday dinner this weekend. This was in a crowded little place with no name (literally) in the East Village, on 2nd Avenue. Dark place serving Italian food. As usual, my fellow diners drank like fish. Liquor is such a commodity! I wonder if they know how much they drink? I don't mean these specific people, because I've only met a few of them once before, and the others, never before. But from an outsiders' point of view, I gotta say--people who drink sure do drink a lot! Then the tail end of the night has them all slurry. But I must say, the birthday boy didn't do too much alky. He was on point for the whole night, and he's a hyper fellow to begin with, so a couple of glasses of liquy didn't slow him down noticably.

After the dinner we went to a bar, whereupon we found a big booth right under the speaker (again). So there was the quintessential activity of dark lighting and hollering to be heard going on. This is a NYC norm? Is THAT why people speak so loudly on their cellphones? Bad conversation training? Bad sale of goods, if so.

I did get into a lengthy, meaningful conversation with the birthday boy's roommate's girlfriend. It was a very conspiratorial conversation. We were deconstructing The Man and His System. Of course, her boyfirend is a subset of The Man, while we two were the The Man's "victims"--a white female and black male. I told her that she had one advantage--The Man desires her and wants her. Black men have no such advantage. She had to agree, but she didn't like to think that the method was the only way for her to succeed. In toto; we don't like being dependent on The Man and His Rules of Acquisition. Mind you, she had quite a few drinks in her, and I didn't, so I feel more responsible for the comnversation and thus, a little more guilty that we were, in essence, pounding on her boyfriend. But, since he's The Man, he will recover. (It's easy to recover when all of society reinforces your Type as Hero, Provider, President, and Leader. Your girlfriend might be chatting up the Mandingo hunk in the corner, but you KNOW she wants to stay with You because you're Going Places in this world. And if necessary, you can always step in and call a policeman to haul the Mandingo away for harassing your woman.)

Me? Bitter? P-shaw!

Anyway, he took her home that night, I didn't, so we'll all be just fine. :-)

Me at 4/13/2004 01:05:00 PM

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