Last Seen Wearing Thin: Background Noise - TIMEOUT!

Last Seen Wearing Thin: Background Noise - TIMEOUT!

Background Noise - TIMEOUT!

                Once again, I sat me down to share something of possible mutual interest and once again, I forgot to turn off the background noise.

Alas, there was a time when I, too, pouted thusly.  Mia's pout will have to do.  The interesting stuff had to do with a rumor I heard about the raising of the income tax to 75% over in France.  I wondered, with hungry curiosity, whether we would shortly begin to experience a diaspora of frenzied French ex patriots establishing colorful, little artistic colonies hither and yon - with gay music, poetry reading, passing the beret and other amusing distractions.

        Indeed, I sincerely hoped my neighborhood might be one such - hither or yon, that is.  About to make a quick dash to the closet to check out potential 'French-artistic-colony' vintage ware, I was accosted by the clawing, far-too-perky/sincere dulcet tones of "VESICAREWOMAN".

        On the narrow chance that you've been deprived of this 'mad-ad-drivel', allow me. 

Background Drop:    WHITE

Music:                       Muted-Bouncy

Action:                      Varies with scene; Opens with:

        "VW", a PVC-pipe, gold-sprayed stick figure; short, chic coif tinted burnished bronze, extricating herself from a line-up of similar creatures to 'share' with us,

"I've worked hard to get where I am. . ." (Said locus seems to be a successful career in the corporate world (glass ceilings be damned & rendered shards by metallic piping).

        Keeping the action going, she beams onto a people mover and, speaking simultaneously to us and the call-ee (?sultan with a fetish and beau coup investment $?  Broker, awaiting "buy" or "sell" commands?) on her cell;

attends an important meeting (judging from the length of the conference table at which she has parked her angular, metallic ass at the head 'wing chair';

rides (is driven, actually in a stretch with the tags "TAKE CHARGE" - which is the theme of this consumer (that's us) service announcement -

"I have more important places to go than always going to the bathroom."  (Clearly a "not-need-to-know" fact for this or any civilized woman of today).

        You see, thanks to VESICARE, our glistening, dry, gold-piped Twiggy was apparently once a slave to (thankfully un-named) bladder malfunctions which due either to frequency or severity or (heaven forbid) both, caused unacceptable - indeed potentially career-threatening - treks to the Loo or the nearest white porcelain fixture.

        Should you, dear feminine reader, be visited/afflicted by similar (hardly possible) intrusive, life-altering plumbing pathologies,

"Take charge of your life."

Pipe Girl, "VW", did and now she's leaked her secret - VESICARE.

(Betty, cue Dino with a hook and an Allen wrench.)

            Then we hear our

confused but oddly happy-sounding "Genealogy Girl"  (Molly - right - is actually seeing the image of her Grams - Moi, left - as she is forced to sit on the stage for the school end-of-year 'show' while she would prefer to be home sleeping or having an all-out primal scream secondary to fatigue, frustration and hearing people like "Genealogy Girl" on the TV.)

        "GG" always wondered about the 'first' Ellen, for whom she was named.  (What turns THIS supposedly harmless odyssey into a tragedy - the likes of which caused this writer to utilize the above visuals.)  Ultimately, Curiosity - the murderess known/experienced by tragic heroines of history - nudged her to her computer and the helpful 'robot' staff at "ancestry.com".

        Before she had time enough to enter Aunt Ellen's stats - meagre as they were - on the wizard's template, she was showered with scoop enough to realize that she had actually walked passed Auntie E's house each day and evening going to and from work.

        For sooth, plus very good reason, we never hear whether this is still the case.  Oh, Auntie E no doubt carried on high and led a raucous PRIVATE life at that address.  The key word (caps) is why she was able to do just that.  No fool, Auntie E.  Ancestry?  Who gives a 'tini's olive?  Once you start fishing around - using new-fangled hardware to boot, or glass slipper as was E's wont, you're bound to meet trouble. 

       But it would be just like her sister's bookish, 'what-makes-the-flowers-grow?', naive spinster kid to wonder why her name was dumb-ass gene Ellen.  Now trouble -  starts with 't', rhymes with 'p', stands (usually) for 'pool' is what "GG" got.  Along with her 'new address' from which she will not be passing Aunti E's house, she got an eviction notice after missing a few rent payments.

        Seems every time she queried the robotic 'seer' re: Aunti E's background, there was a charge attached.  Addiction has no conscience - or common sebse, for that matter - and before she knew it, our Ellen was a 'trust baby'-niece but a 'bag lady' debtor, causing a change in life style, occupation (none) and address.  (Third and Lex, I believe was where she was last perched.) 

        Why?  Well, there are exorbitant fees attendant to the fact-finding mission that provides the 'wonderer' with enough data to transform her into the 'wanderer'.  All because, when the 'answer' came - with a variety of spellings of the queried subject's name - Ellen kept saying "Yes!"  Some questions may be better left unanswered.  That was the 'first' Ellen's philosophy.  Seems to have paid off.  Ya think?

        That French 'diaspora' could have been SO much more fun.

Later,  Lorane. . . .