um...

and...

ok, so there's just kylie.

i never quite got Neighbours, not even during my post-baccalaurate days as an ex-pat in merry ol' england. now, home and away was a different story. i mean, these kids are on the beach, for chrissakes, with all the attendant states of undress this implies. i suppose that we all have our loyalties. i simply could not miss eastenders, while others swore by coronation street or brookside. that theme song still makes my heart race with anticipation. on a related note, i can now admit my obsession with Santa Barbara in the late 80's. that cruz and eden! what a love story!

ok, but back to my point. friday night, at 2:30 in the morning (so i guess that makes it technically saturday morning but whatever), i was jolted from my peaceful slumber by the demonic screeches of slags on the street. keep in mind that i live on a QUIET street; so quiet that one can hear the jets on their way into O'Hare; so quiet that when my roommate's friend made the slightest ruckus round midnight on a wednesday, someone called the cops. this is what i heard.

"SHAWN!"

"SEAN!"

"SHAUN!"

after that the caterwauling became somewhat indistinct, though i did manage to catch something about sucking dick. i'm not sure if she wanted to suck his dick, if she was accusing him of sucking dick, or if she was simply expressing her disdain as in "you suck dick!". imagine drunk girl from SNL with an anger management problem auditioning for juliet in a david lynch adaptation and you're almost there. in fact, the whole thing was so cliched that, frankly, i was embarassed for her.

i lie in bed expecting the ruckus to subside. lo and behold, the ruckus enters my building, staggers up the stairs and slams the door across the hall. more cussing, swearing, yelling, laughing, screaming, shouting, cackling, and other related hulabaloo ensued. now, it WAS rather warm and i DID have all the windows open and who WOULDN'T want to be out on their front porch in such balmy circumstances, right? after hyperventilating my way through the PTSD flashbacks, the most unexpected thing happened. i went right back to sleep.

the next morning, i met the girls downstairs, chris and jackie, who had also been disturbed by the prior evening's festivities. nice girls, these two. the kind of folks who water your plants for you when you're out of town. in fact, that's exactly what they were doing when i met them. it seems that the gruesome twosome next door pull this shit from time to time.

honestly, after living with the tim-ster, if sorority sistahs need to blow off some steam now and again, shit, i'll spring for the mad dog myself. i'm sure it goes without saying that almost the entire episode was repeated at 4 in the morning on saturday. i just smiled sweetly to myself and drifted back off to slumberland. what a difference a month makes.