November 06, 2007
From the Oregon Department of Ghostly Glows
I've been wondering how anybody in Portland ever manages to get undressed.
The issue is layers (and ogres). When you are wearing three shirts and two sweaters, or a skirt and two pairs of pants, it just isn't that easy to take them all off. But my owning roommate and my bike friend have both patiently explained to me that this is just how we operate around here: not with big heavy coats, but with hoodies on top of sweaters on top of thermals on top of other thermals.
Not with a bang, in fact, but with a whimper. At least not with a bang if we cannot conveniently remove enough layers to get on with the banging. Perhaps this is why Portland is such a city of immigrants -- the Oregonians are not making more Oregonians because their clothes are in the way.
I speculate that bedtime is not a problem because people simply don't go to bed at all. Around 4 am the entire city shifts en masse from late nights with crappy beer to early mornings with good coffee. Maybe the bars have trick walls like the casinos in Dick Tracy, and at the appointed hour they all swivel around and turn into coffeeshops. The bleary-eyed barflies take their places behind the counters and turn into surly baristas. They sulk behind the espresso machines until mid-afternoon and then swivel back with a sigh of relief to become barflies again.
It goes a long way toward explaining why, after 5 pm, you can't buy a cup of tea but you can have three drinks in three bars without walking a block.
I suppose these are hipster circles in which we operate, and so showers aren't strictly necessary. But I wonder if they've worked out some way around going to the bathroom.
Posted by dianna at November 6, 2007 09:38 AMYou should really consider making a Flickr account and posting your photos there.
Then (and only then!) we can be Flickr friends.
Posted by: Chris at November 6, 2007 01:07 PMIf only there were such things as bioluminescent blossoms, and they lit up when I walked by. Yes, that would be marvelous indeed!
Posted by: Ping at November 6, 2007 02:32 PMThat little letter U makes such a difference, doesn't it?
Evidently that statement is part of a sort of story that once read line by line on the stair risers of the Graduate School of Education stairwell. So says my boss. But now there are only three or four lines of it left on the first floor and nothing above that.
Chris, I will hasten to do just that so that we can replace our totally insufficient actual friendship with a technologically sanctioned Flickr friendship. Flickr schmickr. I prefer to make you read my blog entries around distracting blocks of unconnected photographs, actually.
Posted by: Dianna at November 6, 2007 05:25 PM"I prefer to make you read my blog entries around distracting blocks of unconnected photographs, actually."
Format c/o Mike Doughty.
Posted by: Chris at November 6, 2007 05:30 PMDude! The orange paper with wheat was a great call! I got your message yesterday about the eye-catchingness, and although your voice cut out and I couldn't hear whether the stickers are sticky or unsticky, I can't wait to get some!
Posted by: katie at November 6, 2007 06:17 PMChris: yes. (My mutinous fingers originally typed that as, "Christ: yes.") But that is precisely where I conceived such a love of this deeply obnoxious habit.
Katie, they're pretty sticky as far as I can tell. Evidently they're supposed to peel off easily, which is a shame, but I've put a few around town and another on my laptop and they seem to be staying well. I stuck an envelope full of them in the mail to you today, so you can see for yourself.
Posted by: Dianna at November 6, 2007 07:27 PMI don't find it particularly obnoxious; I actually enjoy it.
I just wanted more Flickr friends :-P
Posted by: Chris at November 6, 2007 08:16 PMNo Flickr friends for you! I reject your tiny electronic efforts!
Posted by: Dianna at November 6, 2007 09:38 PM