Quite a day yesterday.

I had quite the day yesterday evening.

I found a primo new Obama button at the African-goods store where I get my Obama buttons (I'm always having to get new ones, since somehow I always find myself selling at cost the one I have on to different people) -- it's a picture of Barack and Michelle fist-bumping on a blue background above the words

"YES, WE CAN!"

and the quote marks are on the button too, they're just not something I'm putting around the phrase in my blog.

I was talking with Sister Rose who runs the store, too, and she was saying how horrible it is that Palin keeps spreading lies and stirring up hate, and that it shows how bad McCain is because he doesn't stop her.

We were standing by the door talking, too -- she kept calling me "Precious", by the way, but since she has some accent, she would often say "Pwecious" -- and some (black) friend of hers walked by with this young kid and a little shih-tzu on a leash, and Sister Rose was like, "So is this your boy!?!?!?", and somehow the lady too called the dog her joy, so I was like, "That's cool, here you are with your boy and your joy," and both laughed, and I said good evening to both of them.

After that, since it was a nice night, I took a bike ride, and the drummers were out at the beach ten blocks south of me. I had passed them before but never stopped, so I did this time... It was four (black) guys with big bongo drums each keeping a beat and improvising, while this one (black) dude improvised on flute and every once in a while paused to shout "Yeah!" or "Play it!" or, when this one young black lady with a baseball cap that was actually a white woven hairnet with a baseball cap brim started dancing, "Dance on, sister, you're burning up!" It was very nice, and very black. One (black) guy had his lawnchair out, and some other (black) people had brought out a big thermos and were having hot chocoloate and just listening to the drums. Someone had told me that it's a great place to be in the summer, since you can go for a swim all day and then get an ice cream from the beach foodstand and then go listen to the drums when it's evening.

Later, I was going to the bar to meet a friend for a drink, when I ran into my neighbor, Lars. Last time I had run into him it was a Monday and he was pretty hammered and was heading off to band practice, and this time I ran into him he was coming back from the bar and had a six-pack of Miller Highlife in a brown paper bag, so since we hadn't caught up in a while, we went to his place and drank a few while he played me some music of this band he's been playing with.

He also mentioned that he gets like four-and-a-half or five hours of sleep a night, since he pretty much drinks eight beers per evening and smokes a ton of pot and then pretty much plays guitar till twelve or one, then he's up five or six to get ready to go in for his job.

He also said his big Swedish grandfather who lives in the U.P. is an alcoholic, and drinks a fifth a day of vodka or brandy, and that's not counting beers, since according to his grandfather beer isn't alcohol.

("I take after that side of the family with drinking," he was like, "they're total Swedes, though I don't look anything like them, I take after my mom.")

In between, too, he was talking about how worried he is because of the economy, since he's already lost $3,000 in stocks (he doesn't even bother to check their worth anymore) and he's just not sure what's going to happen with his Roth IRA.

It was getting time them to head to the bar to meet my friend, and I ran into a girl who had gone with me once to see hipster karaoke, and she kept gushing about it, and was saying how her and her husband want to go back, it was so much fun, that the one roller girl who was there not only had tattoos all over but also blood all over her jersey since she had just come from a match, and then she added that when they were in Hawaii this summer visiting her sister they decided to do "Waterfalls" after seeing it done at hipster karaoke by two guys and enjoying it so much (personally, I remember the guys's version being jackass-y, to be perfectly honest), and though her and her husband sucked, her sister nailed the rap, and then when her husband sang "The Safety Dance" like he always does at karaoke and nailed it, the owner came running out to him from back in back holding this karaoke book out in front of him and was like, "Please take a look at the secret book!"

"What?", I was like.

"Oh," the girl was like, "They have a secret book at this place, filled with all the good songs that stupid people usually sing and do bad at, so they took them out of circulation and keep them a secret just for the good people."

"Oh," I was like, "That's cool. You means shit lke 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and 'Living on a Prayer'?"

"Yeah," she was like, "the book had a lot of Bon Jovi. My sister was pissed, too, since she's been going there for years and didn't know anything about a secret book."

Later, we all decamped to a stoner party where I played Guitar Hero against a hipster, this skinny guy with bicycle pants a nose-ring like a bull. He played expert and I played medium, and I beat him on the second round, and he was like, "Dude, so this is your first time playing this today?", and when I told him yeah, but that I was only beating him on medium level, he was like, "But you don't understand, I've been playing this for years."

Previous to that on the way to the party, I also passed by my one friend's apartment building and she was right by the window at her computer, so I called to her and she came to the window and was telling me about this awesome play she had just seen with some people, and then finally she was like, "You should go now, or you'll get raped," since a woman had just gotten raped in the garbage room of the building next door the previous night.

I did go, then, but then the rest of the night I kept texting her things like, "[her name], help please, I am being raped. Ah!", and then when she had replied with "You fuckwit," "Oh please [her name], help, the more you are sarcastic the more I am hurting. Ah!", to which she responded, "I am ashamed at myself for finding this remotely funny."

Today as well, I texted her, "i know it's not my fault but i feel so ashamed," and later maybe I'll write her something about wanting to take a bath all the time.