Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

Halfway through the second syringe of blood, emptying into the vein in the back of his mouth, Dennis's eyes widened suddenly and his stomped his foot against the floor. Of course, Dr. Shultz couldn't stop until the syringe was empty, and then he drew the needle out, pulled back his gloved hand from deep within the vampire's mouth and waited for him to speak. "What," Dennis gasped out, cletching his chest. "Is that?" The other vampires, who had already received the second infusion nodded. They probably had also had the question, but Dennis was the leader and they usually let Dennis speak first. "It's probably your heart starting up again," Dr. Shultz explained. "It may be a little rusty, so the first few pumps can be surprising." "But it's so loud ," Dennis insisted. "I mean, I can hear it. Can you all hear it?" He looked around at the small cadre of vampires. "I can hear all of theirs." "It...

After my first trip to Los Vegas, I came home and bore my testimony about how if there can be a beautiful, holy temple in crass and tawdry Los Vegas, any of us can keep ourselves pure and unspotted from the world. Unfortunately, all anyone remembers of that testimony is that I used the words "crass" and "tawdry." The guy in my ward who's from Los Vegas still gives me greif over it. But you know what? I'm sticking with crass and tawdry. A couple of girls in DC got asked to drinks at a nightclub after repeated (and falsely) insisting that they were 17-year-olds from Arizona. Another person in our group was asked if she had an ecstasy to share with her interlocutor. The streets here are literally paved with porn and I can't begin to describe the t-shirts they sell here. Even the things that are beautiful--the Bellagio fountains, Caesar's palace, the rainstorm in the middle of the Miracle Mile Shops--are all facades, spectacle built on and supporting of ...

Margaret brought this to my attention, which made me start thinking about day-seizing. Thursday, perhaps. I got out my "Winter 2010 Schedule" Word document and figured that I could spare Thursday afternoons and evenings between 12 and 8 for wild shenanigannism and hijinks.* I started making a list in my planner of things I was to seize from my diem: peaks I haven't hiked, pedicures I haven't gotten, and a lot of International Cinema I've missed. This year I'll do the things I want. Then I started thinking about the things I've done this year. I've pretty much been doing what I want all along. I have this year ...kayaked in the Potomac around Roosevelt Island, ...spent a few days in Tempe with Jen and Paul on a whim (And went to the No Doubt concert while there), ...went to a Gogol Bordello concert with Jen and Linsey, ...gone to Disneyland for my birthday--and on a a school day too! ...been ice skating, played racquetball, took a Hip Hop Hustle aerob...