Mini-golf parking lot, 11:25 p.m. – My creepy vibe, let me show you it!

There is a seriously skeezy vibe going around town tonight. My friend and I were going to sit on the patio at Sonic and enjoy the cool air, but the hood rat Mafia gangs made me fear that if I let loose a spare shekel they’d grab it – much less my bejeweled laptop.

I drove over to the movie theater – and the place was like a ghost town – except for the random acts of domestic violence in the parking lot. I swear to Kali I saw some people having a throw down out side of a silver Jeep Liberty.

I wanted to watch because it really looked like a ghetto heifer in a silver mini-dress and some hooker heels was about to give her man a “what for.” I reconsidered when I factored in the fact there a) might be a random act of gunfire and b) might be police, which would necessitate witness statements.

I tried the parking lot of the 7-Eleven – and it looked like I interrupted a drug deal when I pulled in. The parking lot of the mini-golf place next door has a decrepit mobile home parked in it and all the overhead lot lights are out.

I’m sitting in my locked car and I’m prepared to drive right over anyone who comes within thirty feet of me.

Great. Now there’s a random bum stumbling through the 7-Eleven parking lot and toward the highway. Please Kali smile upon this lost soul and guide the cars away from him. Unless it is his time to die. In that case, people pancake. Extra syrup for the buzzards on table 4.

There is something vaguely dirge-like playing on NPR. How appropriate. In retrospect, I should not have picked a tree to park under. If by chance a branch falls on the roof, I think I just might have a coronary.

I never realized there was so much action in town as we approach the midnight hour. The 7-Eleven is doing a land-office business.

There’s a TV news crew and a satellite uplink truck here. They’re getting gas. The nearest TV station is more than 40 miles away – in the next county – and there aren’t even bureaus here. I REALLY want to know what the heck is going on tonight.

I check my mirrors more often than a student driver. Please Shiva let me survive the night.

Oh. The TV correspondent is cute. Short (like all TV people) dark and handsome. Hi Mr. Anchorman. Can I play with your TelePrompter?

Random people on bikes are now approaching. Don’t they know they need to go home? I wonder if they have a home to go to. And they’re stopping. I don’t for one second believe that they actually have a flat tire.

I will not be easy pickings. One SUV vs. three bikes. Who’s going to win this fight? Think about it. Think about it. That’s right. Leave.

I think they’re gone, but I’m not certain. The doors are locked. There are parking barriers in front of me, but this is a Jeep. It has high clearance. I’ve hit every curb in two counties and lived to tell the tale.

Screechy violin music is playing on NPR now. Not cute. Not cute for one second.

I seriously need to write a letter to someone about the lack of parking lot lights here. This is a civic disgrace.

Moreover, there is a DISTINCT lack of amenities in town for people who revel in the post-midnight hour. There are two IHOPS, more Wal-Marts than anyone wants to care about and a greasy spoon diner that even the rats avoid. All the coffee shops and bookstores close at 11 p.m. I wonder if I could start sneaking into hotels or hospitals?

Does anyone have suggestions for safe public spaces in the late hours of the night?

The 7-Eleven is empty now. I wonder if the rabble has to be home before midnight – like Cinderella – or else they turn into cigarette butts, empty soda cans and used condoms?

There’s a cop car rolling in; the police are on the prowl. It is an out-of-town cop car no less. Something is DEFINITELY up tonight. I wonder if I should go try and flirt with the cop? No. Police are not worth the time or effort – except for that one cute downtown cop.

It is December and there is green grass everywhere. There are green bushes, palm trees and shrubs all over. It is December and the grass is green. Sometimes, I forget that I live in Florida and stuff like this IS NOT NORMAL for most of the people in the country.

OK. I’ve hit the twenty-one minute mark and probably gotten a pretty good cardiovascular workout in the bargain. Disengage panic mode and try to calm down enough for bed.

Peace out.

Panera Bread, 9:08 p.m. – It is noisy and hard to concentrate and my day was crappy

I’m sitting at the outside patio of a Panera Bread. Score. More free WiFi. I really need to make a list. I wonder if the WiFi here stays open after the place shuts down? I wonder how safe I’d be. I could sit in the car. That would look shady though. Still, free WiFi. Anything is better than the icy grip of the Comcast minions. Anyway.

It is really hard to concentrate here because of the traffic noise. It is made even worse because there’s a really noisy group of teen-agers off to the right of me laughing it up. I must be fifteen feet away and I can hear most of their conversation. I don’t think they bought anything from Panera Bread either.

There’s a dirty white Chevrolet van cruising the parking lot. I hope there aren’t any child molesters inside.

There’s a hot Asian girl going into the ice cream shop near here. Banging hair. I wonder if she’s going to be in a Bond movie or something. Every action movie coming down the pike nowadays has a hot Asian girl in it.

Anyway. These kids are loud. Think “Hollywood café scene” background noise loud. There must be three different conversations happening all at once. I KNOW OH MY GOD I TOLD YOU SO I TOLD HER TO GO WHAT DID YOU SAY? IS THAT WHAT SHE SAID OH MY GOD I TOTALLY THINK SO. SHE WENT DOWN STAIRS AND SAW THEM. Le sigh.

Now there’s a motorcycle zooming up and down the road. Zip. He’s in the parking lot and gunning it again. Somebody needs attention. I guess someone’s mummy didn’t talk to him enough.

THEY WERE JUST SCREAMING AT EACH OTHER AND THROWING THINGS. I REALLY HOPE SHE BREAKS UP WITH HIM. I HATED HER ANYWAY.

Every now and again I get a hint of the soft jazz that Panera has playing. I guess the kids have to come up for air sometime.

Back to me. I’ve had a really crappy week so far. I have an enormous project due soon. The pressure is not making me a pleasant person and is actually my mental and physical life.

I’ve had a headache nearly every day this week – and today I woke up around 5 a.m. with a migraine large enough to blot out the sun. I rolled over in bed and prayed for it to go away. No such luck.

Every move was agony. I got up and stumbled to the bathroom and threw up and managed to make it into the kitchen – which is where I hide my stash of migraine pills.

Don’t ask. I keep all the pills in the kitchen so that I remember to take them as part of the morning routine. Otherwise, I forget and bad things happen. Anyway. I knocked back one migraine pill and a handful of aspirin and managed to stagger back to the couch.

I sort of lost the hours from 5 a.m. – 7 a.m. I remember turning on the TV and finding “Tin Man” on my TiVo. I don’t remember much about it other than the fact that the flying monkeys flew out of a tattoo on some lady’s boobs. At some point I went back to bed.

I woke up at 10 a.m. Work was calling and someone was asking “Are you OK?” That’s pretty much how my day has been. I feel like I need a good solid month in a health spa or something to decompress – and the time is just not available right now.

Anyway.

I think there is an ant crawling across my foot. I’m not wild about nature in general or in specific as a matter of fact.

I DON’T KNOW. WHAT DO YOU THINK? HA HA HA. OH MY GOD THAT IS SO FUNNY I LOVE HANGING OUT WITH YOU MAN. These children are seriously annoying.

Two women further off are seriously trying to have a nice dinner. They keep looking up and giving the kids looks that would melt concrete blocks. The oblivious shields are in full effect though. Oh to be young and not have a care in the world.

OH MY GOD. The white Chevy van is back. If OJ is up in that mother I’m going to turn the computer around and start broadcasting live. No such luck. The driver looks like an old fat white man.

A really fat kid got out. This little piggy needs to be up in fat camp. Predictably, he’s going to the ice cream shop. I love America. I just freaking love America.

Peace out. Tomorrow is another day.

Downtown, 6:45 p.m. – The floor is dirty and the action is slow

I’m stealing a table at a tres chic coffee shop downtown, slurping up their free WiFi and drinking a smoothie I imported in from another place. I’m the worst kind of customer – the kind that doesn’t buy anything. Maybe I’ll reward them with a visit tomorrow.

Tourists drive me crazy. This woman in an insane hairdo just went by – cackling like a maniac. Think Angelina Jolie in “Girl Interrupted” crazy. Uh-huh.

Despite it being the holiday season, things are fairly quiet. A contingent of middle-aged white men – obviously in town for a convention – just rolled by. They looked to be from the Midwest, by the cut of their shirts, the cut of their hair, the ruddiness of their cheeks and the roundness of their bellies.

Uh-oh. I just saw a coffee slave looking out the window at me. If I’m evicted, I will post the address and you can all send hate mail.

OH GOOD LORD. Bad fashion alert. WOACA alert. Call out the National Guard and tell them that Fort Knox called. We’ve found all the gold!

OK. This WOACA just clattered by. She’s got on a pair of black clamdiggers (yes, another pair) and a black shirt and a black jacket. She’s accessorized all this black with enough gold to fund the economy of a Third World state for a few decades.

There’s a thick heavy gold clasp on the right hand, plus a few more bangles. There’s a whole STACK of bangles on the left arm, which I imagine she believes tinkle like wind chimes as she walks. No. Think wind chimes caught in a hurricane. The gold horn-rimmed glasses are hanging from a gold chain. The steel-wool-gray hair is pulled back with a bright yellow band.

Single female tourist. Poor thing. She’s in traction, well at least one of those walking casts. She looks miserable even though she’s got a yummy-looking chocolate concoction and a bowl of soft-serve ice cream. That must just suck beyond suck – to be about to go on vacation and then break a foot or something.

Ladies. Let me dispense some fashion advice. Even if you are in a tropical climate, jeweled sandals do not pass for “dressy.” If if looks like something you bought at Target and decorated with your Bedazzler, you should not be wearing it with dinner rings and accompanying your husband in a tuxedo. Thank you. We shall now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

You know, for a “gourmet café,” this place has the most deuced uncomfortable furniture. All they’ve got for seating outside are these plastic patio chairs you can pick up at Wal-Mart or Target or K-Mart for like $5. My rear end is used to more padding than mal-formed plastic. Some nice wooden benches would do wonders for the ambience of this place. I’m just saying.

I wonder what the hours are? If they’re open late I could totally come here and use up the free WiFi. Starbucks is such a grinch with the WiFi. But I love the coffee so. Choices.

This place is messy too. Like trashy messy. Some really need to sweep around here. This place and the Sonic both. My grandma – even though she’s 75 – manages to keep her house clean. She’d be ashamed for anyone to see this floor – and these people are asking paying customers to stop and sit a spell.

My god. There is an old woman wishing someone farewell at the top of her lungs. I can hear her over traffic noise. Does everyone on the street really need to know “THAT WAS A GOOD DINNER. I’LL SEE YOU TOMORROW?”

There’s a boy making rude noises with a straw. How cute. He’s obviously old enough to know better – but looks like he’s having a world of fun. He’s flipping through a real estate magazine – the kind they leave out for tourists that have all the $8 million dollar mansions.

If anyone bought me an $8 million dollar house – they could make all the rude noises they wanted.

OK. Another café slave is giving me dirty looks as he brings out the trash. Not cute, but scowly.

OK. OK. I’m leaving.

Starbucks #1, 6:29 a.m. – It is morning at Starbucks and nobody is happy

The very-early-morning crowd at Starbucks is completely different than the early morning crowd, the morning crowd, the mid-morning crowd or the late morning-not-quite lunch crowd. How, you ask?

Easy. Nobody is awake, nobody is communicative and everyone speaks in grunts and vocalizations that would serve as Oscar-winning dialogue in “Clan of the Cave Bear.” Daryl Hannah would be so proud.

Right now I’m looking at a man in white short and a gray shirt make the largest production out of getting cream and sugar into a cup that I’ve seen this side of a white-tablecloth coffee service. I don’t believe that starched-apron maids make this big a deal out of precise amounts of cream, sugar and sprinkles of cinnamon.

And then there are the early risers, the go-get-em’s, who are delineated by their brisk walk and the pep in their step. They want to talk to the baristas, who are more than likely as not as sacked out as their customers. After all, they don’t just open they store at 6 a.m. – they have to show up earlier to brew coffee, set out pastries, etc.

A lovely couple just waltzed in. Real estate types by the look of things. She’s got a casual but dressy black sweater ensemble tossed over her shoulders and is moving in pert and precise steps. Her companion – in khaki slacks and a white cotton shirt with creases so straight you could slice cheese with it – orders and sits down to read the paper. It’s up to her to pay and fetch the brews.

Some schlubby-looking Indian - (the subcontinent, not the tribe) - businessmen in the house now. They are dressing very fashion forward – even if everything is wrinkled. One has a purple pinstripe shirt and a dark purple tie; the other has a white button-down and a flashy lime-green thing around his neck. Maybe they watched this week’s “Project Runway?” Maybe they’re just clueless. You decide.

There’s a contingent from the large downtown hospital here. And a skinny woman with the most awkward-looking broken-arm sling known to man. If I ever broke my arm, I really do not know what I’d do. My life is lived at a computer. I’d have to get a direct neural hookup or something.

Sling lady is a fashion disaster. Ballet flats, fried perm, at least a dozen cheap gold bangle bracelets and an ugly sweater vest that is not the same color as her ballet flats.

The Indian dudes are lingering for some reason – although they don’t seem to be able to cotton on to the fact that there are tables available. They’re wandering around. They look like they have cell phone plus some other data devices hooked to their belts. The one in the lime green tie is making sure that everyone in the Starbucks knows that he left “MY IPHONE AT YOUR APARTMENT LAST NIGHT.” Seriously dude. Glad you got a hookup. Nobody cares. I’d throw you back. Even if you have an iPhone.

There’s a semi-cute boy wearing a pair of clamdiggers looking at the outrageously expensive $600 coffeemaker Starbucks is selling for Christmas. He would be cute if the would not be trying to grow the mustache. Clamdiggers – unless you are within 10 yards of sand – do not look right on men, especially when paired with black athletic sandals. These are the rules of fashion by which we must all abide.

There’s a traffic jam at the condiment bar. Three old men wearing, in order, a peach polo shirt, a white polo shirt and a navy polo shirt. They are polite, but I sense they are about to start measuring the unmentionalbles in order to get at the pitcher of half-and-half. The morning coffee is serious business with this crowd.

Some man just came in and asked for his 7-11 cup to be refilled with coffee. He’s wearing a NASCAR hat and shiny metallic shorts that do nothing for his enormous rear and I just saw him pour half a pitcher of milk into the cup. I guess I just witnessed a ghetto latte. Stay classy NASCAR man, stay classy.

Meh. I have to go to work in a few minutes. Peace, love and understanding.

Barnes & Noble, 8:45 p.m. – I suffered for this post!

I have never had to work under such primitive conditions.

The battery on my MacBook Pro is dead. Very, very dead – so I have to keep the power cord plugged in at all times. I am at the Barnes & Noble – and there is exactly ONE power point in the café area. ONE.

Let me repeat that. ONE. It is not even near a table. It is near a plush chair – which is currently occupied by a skinny old dried up prune of a woman who looks like she sand-blasts the hulls of oil-tankers with her tongue in her spare time.

There are NO other power points anywhere else in the café area. NONE. I’m currently wedged beside a structural support staring at a display of MAD compilations and “The Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes.”

There are women and children and assorted howlers monkeys crawling all over me like I’m a dropped ice cream cone at a fair and they’re an army of ants. There is a shelf poking me in the back and I’m desperately wishing I didn’t have that extra soda for dinner. So help me Kali I’ll never spend another penny at Barnes & Noble again as long as I live.

Mon dieu. Why do parents shop with their children? This fat woman is arguing with her kid, who is bored and wants to leave. “HONEY I’M TRYING TO LOOK AT BOOKS.”

She’s yanking his arms and trying to make him understand that whining in public is unacceptable. Well, maybe if you paid more attention to him – and taught him to read – he’d find more to interest him in a bookstore.

This shelf keeps digging into my back and I can’t get comfortable on this floor. I have to keep remembering to hit APPLE-S to save so my entire volume of beautiful prose won’t go down the tubes – and protect my work from the hordes of people who go stomping by.

I just noticed that the display in front of me includes “Uncle John’s 4-Ply Bathroom Reader.” Neatorama.com is always quoting articles from Uncle John’s. I find it breezy fun – but I’m not sure I’d spend $9.98 on a book. Actually, I don’t even know the last time I bought a book. I usually just reserve a copy of whatever I want at the library and read the best-sellers that way.

There is a woman in a pink T-shirt and a pink velour jacket browsing the books over to my right. She has a Christmas list in her hand. She has on the ugliest pair of horn-rimmed glasses I’ve ever see on a human being. Totally wrong for her face.

Help me Kali. This shelf is totally killing my back. My left leg is totally numb. If you are reading this, please know that I suffered to bring these words to you.

There’s an old man in a red gingham shirt browsing the $12.98 table. He’s looking at a slim “The Beatles” tome.

My god. There’s a twelve year old girl with a giant glitter bow on her behind. She is wearing heelies and trying to skate on the carpet. She nearly wiped out and caught the edge of a table. Too bad the forces of Darwinism were denied a victim.

WOACA alert. Skinny woman in black jeans and black long-sleeved tee browsing the bargain paperbacks. She’s a short one, Mr. Grinch – trying to look taller by wearing three-inch heels. That’s fine – but she really needs to cover up the gray in her hair.

The girl that wiped out on the heelies is being marched out by her mother now. I wonder if they were asked to leave or if they’re just leaving? Hopefully it is the former.

Creepy man alert. There’s a dude in blue jeans and a white shirt staring at me. YES IT IS A LAPTOP AND I AM TYPING ON IT. He’s looking at pop-up books.

Cute boy alert. He’s checking out gift boxes. How to play the guitar. Is the flirting? No. He’s talking to a girlfriend. But he did say “excuse me” as he walked in front of me – which is more than the 27 other people who walked by did.

When did it become acceptable to go out in public with your lower buttocks exposed? Someone please tell me. Please. I’m looking at a girl – who has to be in high school – who is wearing a pair of short-shorts that would make Catherine Bach blush with shame. There is NOTHING left to the imagination here. She’s parading around with a Hollister bag and a frappuccino like nobody’s business.

Loud people coming up on my left. Please leave. And take the old man with you. He has wrinkles.

There’s a rampaging pack of teenage girls in here. One keeps reaching down to “adjust” something in her female area. I hope to the heavens she just has a tight thong. Although it would be poetic justice if she’s got a case of the LiLo firecrotch.

Anyway. There’s a freaky woman in a red spaghetti-strap tee and those horrible red Crocs who’s shuffling across the floor toward me. She has a tattoo on her ankle. This I noticed as she went RIGHT by my and didn’t excuse herself.

Die in a fire heifer. Die in a fire.

I’m out. I can’t deal with this anymore.

Peace, love and understanding.