Had a drink with a friend tonight again.

I had a drink with my intense, somewhat depressive bookseller friend tonight at the bar he's been going to for over thirty years. Some of his friends I've met before were there - the odd conservative guy who reads military history; the Irish guy who ragged me about blowjob culture among American teenage girls - and one who I haven't, this tattooed white-haired pony-tailed Vietnam vet named "Bucky" who was telling me about how he grew up on a farm and was used to slaughtering animals like lambs and pigs, it doesn't bother him to not get his meat in plastic, you should have seen his friends's faces the time they were throwing a lambroast and he woke them up at 8am to go chase a lamb down and kill it, they were like, "What the fuck you waking me up for so early, Bucky?"; and who sympathized with my bitch about what assholes bikers (=bicyclists, not motorbikers) are, and said that if I ever hit one with my car, to sue their family first and say I'm so traumatized I can't even get in a car again for fear another dumb-ass biker will come out of nowhere and slide under my car, because if I don't, they might get my house instead of my getting theirs.

He also at one point told me about these girls in his town where he grew up, who grew up on a pig farm. Since everything on a pig farm smells like pig shit, these girls did too, so they couldn't get a date for the life of them, which was a shame, since they were nice-looking girls.

Anyhow, right when everyone was finishing drinking, Bucky invited everyone by to go blow a joint at his house, and when I politely declined and he began talking more to the others, he added, "And if you can, bring over some broads."

"Brats?", I was like, perking up. "I totally could go for some brats right now!"

Earlier in the night, the Irish guy talked about how in the mid-80s he lived in Downey, California, which was home of the Carpenters. I asked him what it was like, and he was like, "Sometimes ye'd be drivin' and a feller'd say, 'That home there is the Carpenters's', and ye'd see this modest-like home there that looked like nothin' perticular."

"Really?", I was like.

"[my name]", my one intense, somewhat depressive bookseller friend was like, "Haven't you ever been to the West Coast? It's all like that. People out there are whores for celebrity."