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stalking debbie reynolds
Wind's all whipping crazy rain up against the window, nice and hard-like, trying to get my attention like it's challenging me to come outside and be a man. Instead it's just making me tired, creating that peppery staccato of water on glass and siding that just makes me yawn and want to slip under the covers and lie awake all night, tired enough to sleep but enjoying the weather too much to do it.
So I've got a stalker. (Hi, stalker.) This doesn't really surprise me much. We sensitive blogger-boy types tend to attract deficient female attention on a pretty regular basis. My average is low, maybe one to two a year, but I'm working on it. By this time next year I hope to be pulling down as many lady fiends as, uh, someone more important and celebrated than me. (I'm drawing a blank.)
A day or so ago, the guys and I -- okay, fine: my coworkers and I -- caught the train uptown (I'm bad with directions, so it could've been anywhere, really; 'uptown' just fit) to grab a bite to eat. Okay, but the story really starts later, so skip that part. We're on our way back, and B. says, "You know, my wife told me this morning that either Ann-Margret or Debbie Reynolds died yesterday." M. gasps, and I'm all, "Wait, how can you confuse Debbie Reynolds and Ann-Margret?" B.'s all, "I don't know, my wife just heard this from a friend and couldn't remember which one died." And either M. or I say, because I'm drawing a blank on specific voices here, "Wait, are you sure? I haven't seen or heard anything about this." And either M. or I say -- the one of us who didn't just say the previous line -- "Yeah, I think it'd be pretty newsworthy if one of them died." And B. goes, "Well, hey" (all defensively now) "I don't know, I'm just telling you what my wife said!" So we get back to the office and I hit CNN and there's, like, nothing about Debbie Reynolds or Ann-Margret. And then I see it, the name of the person who died. So I wander down the hall and bump into M. and say, "Hey, I looked into that Debbie Reynolds/Ann-Margret thing," and he's all, "Oh, who was it? I hope it wasn't Ann-Margret. Wait, or Debbie Reynolds." And I say, "Neither. It was Jack Paar." And we all have a great big chuckle round the water cooler. Good to know the water cooler's still around for a reason.
How boring that people actually used to gather around this thing. It's always burbling, interrupting conversation. And you're all kickin' it, gettin' pissed, and everyone's all staring at you and wrinkling their noses like something smells funny, and you all turn red and storm off. Yeah, that happens all the time.
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