seasonal paganry

I was reading a back copy of Discover magazine, one of the periodicals I've subscribed to in order to make myself a better, smarter person. The Guy was working on the computer, tickety-tackety on the keyboard. Every so often he would share a tidbit from slashdot with me, to which I would pretend to be interested in; every so often I would share a tidbit from my magazine, to which he wouldn't pretend to listen.

"Did you know, there was an extinction before the dinosaurs?" I said. "It was called the Permian extinction. Wiped out 90% of life on earth. It happened 250 million years ago, which puts it, um, 185 million years before the dinosaurs."

"Uh huh," said the Guy. Tickety-tackety.

"Hm. Nobody knows how it happened," I said.

"It was the Russians," he mumbled.

Obviously, I haven't died. I must have been imagining the anthrax thing. Silly me. It was a cold.

However, it could very well have been anthrax. It might have been. Sniffling, sneezing, coughing, achy head, fever; I had them all.

Wait. I'm getting my symptoms mixed up with some kind of advertisement. Drat.

Anyway, thanks for being worried. Or panicked. Mostly panicked. Or disapproving. So much for selfless friendship: I didn't get one offer from any of my friends to rush over and give me the Breath o' Life if I should need it. The love was sadly absent. In fact, some of you saw fit to mock me about the Kettle Korn.

Just so you know, some day, you'll get what's coming to you. Just you wait. You'll want that Kettle Korn, and there won't be any, and I'll be hoarding my Costco-bought, nine-pound bags of air-popped yumminess, laughing my ass off at you....

In my own defense, I really was sick. I really was looking forward to death.

(Oh well. We can't all get what we want, I guess.)

The Guy's birthday is rapidly approaching, being two days before Halloween, October 25. It's useless to tell me that Halloween isn't until the 31st; several people have made that attempt already, and every time, my brain just ends up going to my Happy Place.

My biological clock, useless for everything else, is helpfully assisting by counting down days until I need to worry about special holidays. Conveniently, -- at least for my biological clock, a lower-grade model most frequently seen in the sale bins at K-Mart -- all important holidays are on the 25th. Didn't know that, did you? Halloween, October 25th. Thanksgiving, November 25th. Christmas, December 25th. Valentine's, February 25th, and so on and so forth.

As I said before, the Guy's birthday is on the 23rd, two days before Halloween. I was briefly considering getting him a subscription to Playboy, but decided against it on the suspicion that this might not be one of those Smart Ideas that I occasionally have. It doesn't rank on the level of, say, dropping my phone out the window to avoid telemarketers, or agreeing with my old roommate when she said she was a bad girlfriend.

Advice is welcome. Somebody give me some inspiration here, because otherwise, he's going to end up with a bag of tootsie rolls lovingly hand-molded by yours truly into profiles of famous 18th century composers.

Sunday was the phantasmagoria that is the annual Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. As a cultural event, this is not to be missed. Music! Dancing! Folk art and folk crafts! Prizes! Raffles! Pumpkin hats! Farmer Mike and his Magical Giant Pumpkin Sculptures! And new, this year only, a prize-winning 1010 pound pumpkin! It's a celebration of the squash that, truly, brings a tear to the eye. Nowhere else is our old, misunderstood, underrated friend, corcurbita pepo -- scientific name provided by your friends at dictionary.com (scientific name of pig, incidentally, being sus scrofa domesticus) -- given its due in so colorful, expensive a fashion.

Are all the fruits gone to Idaho? Wherefore the California celebrations of spices and decorative sideboard centerpieces? Why not a festival for the pear, or the peach, or for the watermelon? Or, if we absolutely must be unique, a fete for brother marijuana or sister weed?

I came away from the revelry unscathed, except for the purchase of two pairs of earrings. They're charming things. They dangle from the holes in my ears, the artificial holes, the holes that I put in the lobes once upon a time several years ago, only to lose sometime over the course of the last six months.

I came home and showed them to the Guy. Then I showed them to my roommate. This afternoon, I showed them to the tortoises, who stared at them thoughtfully before mumbling amongst themselves.

"They're really cute, aren't they?" I encouraged. I dangled one against Number Seven's head; he looked unconvinced. Lucky meandered gravely over to investigate.

"It's not your color," said Lucky. "It makes you look green." Posted by yhirata at October 15, 2001 11:57 PM