The Phases of the Moon

It's Chinese New Year. Be sure to eat your black-eyed bamboo shoots.

Chinese New Year is based on the Lunar Calendar. The most populous nation on earth can't help but keep track of irregular monthly cycles.

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata was written during a Waxing Gibbous moon. Mrs. Gibbous later moved to Brazil where her scandalous grooming procedures slanted the other way.

Atlanta: Land of Contrasts

My annual King Day set at the Star Bar. I guess the idea is to remind the most self-consciously jaded audience in town that an idealist was born a mere 2 miles to the west.

It's my ongoing attempt to give my comedy a sense of place. That place may be a city built by the railroad and sustained by an airport, a metro-wide convention center everyone's just passing through, but there was one person of note actually born here.

Cognitive Dissonance

The Minimum Wages of Sin

A professionally flirtatious woman on the corner of Ponce and Myrtle offered certain services for my Department of Commerce Digital Convertor Box Coupon.

 

I politely declined.

 

Now to adjust my rabbit ears.

Practicing Word 2007

My Phlebotomist had the Fidgets

For the third time, and the 2nd in a row, my bloodletter missed a vein. This meant her twisting the needle around a couple times hoping to catch it again, then giving up and moving to a second vein nearby.

In platelet donation they draw from one arm and send the platelet-less blood back through the other. This meant a triptych of needle marks and the cool-looking bruises from the one that came up dry. Walking through Little Five Points this weekend one of the smack addicts actually warned me to try to kick soon.

Apparently, my veins are a lot like me: they look approachable but if you try to get too close they sometimes turn away. But this is a new year, and they did get their pints. Plus, I think it balances out my phlegm and black bile.

This'll Fix Everything

Greens for money and black-eyed peas for good luck. I still don't see how the only legume that's a regular victim of domestic abuse is lucky, but when in Southern Rome....

I'm looking forward to the New Year. Heck, I've been writing 2009 on my checks since Nov. 4th.

Now to dance a Strauss waltz with a peg-legged drifter.