Sadie Hawkins Day

Sadie Hawkins Day is a day most have little use for now, belonging more to the time of the Complete and Total Loser's recently dead parents more than his own and certainly not the young people who he works with. Most of them haven't even heard of it. The Loser, even now, with the day irrelevant, likes to think a woman will make the first move. On him. Of course, the few times that's happened in the Loser's life have involved women he did not and could never have feelings for. Still, the fantasy remains.

He admires those who take chances, though, people with more guts than he. Someday his life will end and his only representation on earth will be bags of clothes and things no one has use for anymore. 

Bags of the Loser's dead parents' clothes wait to be picked up by sanitation workers. Many, many more clothes were donated to worthy charities. The Loser's two sisters-in-law handled the details of this.

Big Money

How often do you go to an ATM? The Complete and Total Loser goes pretty often, about once a week. The women he knows in his urban environment, go far more often, withdrawing small sums as low as $20, fearful of being robbed. (The Loser takes out $80, usually, up from the regular $60 he took out weekly in the 1990s.)

Recently the Loser was reimbursed for debts he paid that stemmed from events surrounding his parents' deaths last autumn. The normal thing to do would be to deposit the check from his their estate account into his bank account. Instead, the Loser decided to cash the check. 

He took it in twenties. The teller used a machine to count it, then counted it out by hand. The Loser walked out with a wad of cash he likened to what old-time prize fighters or gangsters would have in a roll. He put the envelope in a secret place no one will ever find (kitchen cabinet on the left when you enter from outside; second shelf, behind the box of recipes) and goes to it when he needs cash. Not counting the withdrawal fees, this will save the Loser enough time to make the risk worth it.

The Loser's money waits to be wasted.

The Loser's Mac

The Loser's Mac Mini is dying. The mouse cursor freezes in place as if tacked to the screen, a blue screen pops up and stays there for two to six seconds. It fades and all is well again until the next time, which may be from one minute to half an hour. It's unconnected to anything the Loser is doing and happens whether or not he's online. Disconcerting. The Loser has searched Mac forums and finds mention of it by others, but no resolutions offered. Tomorrow, the Loser will take his Mac to a genius bar at an Apple store. Imagine saying that to someone forty years ago: "I'm going to a genius bar at an Apple store." It would be nonsensical. 

The Aliens Among Us

It's a classy ride, the Complete and Total Loser's commute. The train creaks through rich Zip codes on its way to the third rate city the riders work in. Last week, Loser spied this dapper gent working on a crossword puzzle. He looked at the puzzle and saw that instead of words the man was filing it in with oddly stylized circles. Proof, of course, that he is not of this world. The Loser showed the photo to a young woman at work and she said, "Oh, he has turtle lips." The Loser had never heard the description before, but it's true, no?

This is big so viewers can see what the Loser is referring to in his post.

The Move is Complete

After a zillion trips up and down a winding, three flight set of steps (his back; his legs), the Complete and Total Loser is at last finished with his move. He put most of his crude and ugly furniture out on the street, where it was snapped up quickly by blacks in pickup trucks. Among the objects he put out were his childhood desk chair. He'd had it since he was ten or so, sitting his dawdling butt down to try (and fail) to study. The Loser may have been sentimental about the chair, but he knows that life is no more than a series of lessons in nonattachment. You can't keep everything, no matter how much it is valued, forever.

The Loser's childhood desk chair.