Some People’s Hobbies are more Interesting than Others…

Psst. You have a minute? Just a minute?

What if I were to tell you that I could – absolutely free! Although, hey! You want to buy me a beer, that’s entirely up to you (and much appreciated!) – by way of my morning commute’s playlist, predict your future?

Not the long-range future, of course, ‘cause that’s just crazy. No, no, no. The immediate future! Saturday! Sunday!

What the heck. Indulge me.

Weirdo by The Charlatans
Third World Man by Steely Dan
All Alone by Gorillaz
Love Train by Wolfmother *
Wanderlust King by Gogol Bordello
Camaro by Kings of Leon
Just Dropped In (to see what condition my condition was in) by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition

Hmm! Not looking too popular this weekend – not in the beginning, anyway. But get out! Put some real pants on – you know, the kind with a zipper – and hit the streets, my friend. Someone’s looking for you.

Also, there may be quite a hangover in there...

Hey. Ya play, ya pay.

I’ll be out there this weekend, because you know why?

Because it’s spring in Minnesota, the snow is gone, and I’ve got this thing about garbage.

I’m against it.

Not just any garbage, of course. Garbage cans, landfills, dumps – as ugly as these things are, they’re necessary. Ugly, smelly, and necessary.

But look over there, there in the park. What the?? You see that? Who in the world just leaves their garbage? Why wouldn’t you walk it the 50 feet to the garbage can and dispose of it, leaving the place as lovely as you found it?

Because they don’t have to and no one can make them so na na na na boo boo.

And that’s where I come in: Trash Gal. Seriously, I’m thinking of having a cape made. Or at least of wearing tights and those groovy boots.

That’s right. I gots me a stick with a nail at the end of it. I’m wandering, all free-form like, amongst the trees and napkins and empty bottles, picking up garbage and humming/laughing to myself.

You know you find things, in the park.

I found the world’s smelliest pillow and an empty full-sized bottle of mouthwash under a pine tree last spring. Isn’t that charming?

The biggest thing I ever found would have to have been the possible owner of said pillow and mouthwash bottle, a man taking advantage of all the park had to offer, face down. And when I say “face down”, I mean it literally, in all its sinus-crushing nuance. I called to him. I poked him with a stick. Nothing. I called the cops, and they sent an ambulance, and he was lifted on to a gurney and taken away, an oxygen mask over his dirty, grass-and-pebble-pocked face.

I wonder how he is?

At any rate, I’ll be out there again this weekend. It’s not hard to do, and the alcohol-poisoned are not even a yearly feature, which is both a relief and a disappointment in a you’ll-never-believe-who-I-ran-into-today kind of way.

And if you see a woman in a cape, flitting about the park, stabbing at garbage and laughing at her own jokes, say “hey”, would ya?

She’s sanitizing, for your protection.


* It was a tight race against "All Alone", but I'm diggin' this one today...