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Things that have been put off for too long

Well, I finally got around to doing a few of those things people tend to put off; like tidying my bedroom, where papers and clippings and flyers typically come to rest on the floor, and installing a bedside table to hold a reading lamp and my book(s) of the week.

S’funny… I once read somewhere that males tend to sleep on the side of the bed closest to the door, as if it were some kind of inbuilt “defend the female” mechanism in case of nighttime attack, and to this day I’ve found it to hold true. I, at the very least, instinctively move to sleep on the side of the bed closest to the bedroom door no matter what the room (and I’ve lived in a lot of houses, so it has been tested in a few different configurations), and I do it without thought or explanation… though it’s impossible to tell whether I do it because of the article I read all those years ago, or if I would’ve come to do it anyway.

The charge doesn’t stick when applied to my father who, in the last two houses my parents have owned, has not occupied that doorside position —so it’s not a learned behavior— and I don’t spend enough time spying on my friends’ intimate relations to find out where they stand on the matter… so I’m utterly baffled as to whether the claim is a simple (though clearly not universal) truth, or whether it’s a total sham. It may be a dominance thing, where the dominant partner sleeps closest to the door (I’m sure my father will be thrilled to read my assessment that he doesn’t wear the pants in his relationship), but I’m very interested to hear what all of you have to say on the issue; the gay men in the crowd in particular. Do write in.

I also started importing those few remaining CDs in my collection that I didn’t rip when I bought my first Mac and fell in love with iTunes. The story goes that Amazon didn’t have cover art for them (most of them being local bands, singles, or the more obscure) and I didn’t want to have any part of my collection incomplete, so I refused to rip them. A year or two later, and with a perfectly good scanner at my disposal, I’ve finally got around to it. Hello oddball compilations and local punk rockers! It’s been so long I almost forgot about you… except for Waste of Space, since some of your band members dine semiregularly at my pub.

Standing on the platform awaiting the instruction to jump

And finally, I finally (finally finally) got around to jumping off of a huge tower with an elastic rope tied around my ankles. They call it bungee jumping… you might’ve heard of it. A most enjoyable experience, given my great affection for flying, and I do plan to repeat it — though preferably in New Zealand, or somewhere they have much longer drops than Bungee West. A wonderful, brilliant sensation for the first 4 seconds (since you just keep bobbing up and down for a minute or two after that), and while hitting the pool at the bottom was a mild refresher, that first dive is just the tits.

Honestly, if I were to commit suicide, jumping from a high–rise building would have to be the way to go. Not only would the death itself be quite exhilarating, but the resultant mess would assure you a spot in the evening news. Amongst all the shootings and car crashes that have become so terribly passé, a good human pancake story could really liven up the show. I’ll have to put that on my to–do list.