museum piece(s)

A friend who just left town (call him "Pan Shlay," the taxi driver did) has left me his reading lamp and an alarm clock. This is convenient, as the bulb just burned out in my reading lamp and the battery in my alarm clock died sometime before Christmas (I've been using my mobile phone to wake up in the mornings).

Instead of buying a light bulb and a battery, I've replaced the lamp and the clock. I feel like Gabor Zsa Zsa. (I don't actually know if she was extravagant, although I believe her character on Green Acres was, I just wanted to write her name in the correct Hungarian way because it amuses me. Had I not gone to Budapest last weekend, I'd probably be comparing myself to Ivana Trumpova, which is the correct Czech way to write her last name, and which also amuses me. Amusing me, in case you haven't realized it, is the name of the game in any language.)

Pan Shlay's clock and lamp are just the latest additions to my Museum of Modern Expats. Other exhibits include: the bureaus, desk, and clothes rack (Marguerite), the coffee tables (Paul and Casey), the couches (Kat, Willy, Titi), the wall map (Nathan), the standing lamp (Titi), the end table/wine rack (John and Flanders), the folding chair (Allison), the boom box (Lynn), the television (Steve and Camille), the feather duster (Monica), and one of the cats (DJ Assbot, who also left me the "I spell relief F-A-R-T" button).

The monitor I'm sitting in front of belongs to Martha, the speakers were Kat's, the tower was once the property of a screaming asshole from Poland, and the DVD drive belonged to Johnny - the person, not the chihuahua - who also used to own the DVD player.

This doesn't even begin to tally the books belonging to other people that I have "acquired" over the years (I quieten my conscience, which admittedly is never very noisy, with the thought of all the books I've "lost" over the years. I think they about balance out.)

You may think the resulting image - me on Kat's couch under Titi's light next to John and Flanders' table watching Pan Shlay's DVD of Six Feet Under with Assbot's cat wearing the "I spell relief F-A-R-T" pin - is downright tacky (and yeah, the fart pin probably is). But I prefer to think of it as a living tribute to some fine people.

And for the record, I BOUGHT the STARBUCKS coffee mug.