Utah Teen Seeks Agoraphobic Girlfriend

Tonight the guy who runs the taxi (who recently asked in a sincere tone if anyone had any firecrackers, M80s, anything like that, and when someone said "Why," he said, "Because I'm thinking I'm just going to park all the taxi vans in a circle, pour gasoline all over them, and then light a bunch of firecrackers in the middle") (it is a stressful job) asked if I wanted to drive to Anchorage tomorrow at 10am. 

"Umm..." I said.  I work tonight 10pm to 8am.  I work tomorrow night 10pm to 8am.  If I really needed something from Anchorage I'd do it, but otherwise... "No, I don't think so.  Sorry, I have to sleep."

"That's cool," he said.  "Also, you'd have to pull the trailer behind the van."  I guess for the passengers' luggage.

My last Anchorage run was a fun adventure of cultural stereotypes that turned out to be true, sandwiches that turned out to be garbage, me pretending to talk to Laura Ingalls Wilder while pretending Joni Mitchell was in the passenger's seat pretending to talk to Amelia Earhart. 

But if I'd said yes to tomorrow's I feel like there would have been too many foreboding elements - it's supposed to rain, I'd be running on zero sleep, I just got over a horrible flu, I'd be pulling a trailer, and who knows whether any of the passengers would Canada me through it.  Sorry.  I know I would've had good stories for you, had I said yes and survived it.

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In other news, I have two new neighbors, who are boys from Utah who look like they're twelve.  They listen to emo music.  All the time.  Really loud.  And sing along.  All the time.  Passionately. 

Do you know what emo music is?  It's inanely repetitive chord structures behind whiny-voiced guys yell-singing about their emotions, who all have this weird pronunciation with their vowels where they change "y" sounds into "oi" sounds.  So like, "goodbye" would be yelled through the nose as if on the verge of tears and pronounced, "good-boiiiy".  I don't know if that explains it.  You are probably already familiar with this genre of music, dear reader.  Somehow I've escaped it til now.  Maybe because my neighbors back home blast either hip hop, R&B, or mariachis. 

Hmm.  How is it possible that when my neighbors back home blast those genres of music, I am annoyed the way you would expect a white woman who does not listen to those genres to be annoyed; HOWEVER, when I am in Whiteyville, USA and my neighbors blast emo music, I am as annoyed as a Mexican woman who listens exclusively to hip hop, R&B, and mariachis?  I am the worst of both worlds.  In this sense.

When I was a teenager back home I would sometimes do the music-war thing where I'd crank up K-Earth 101 (bubblegum pop oldies station) in response to the wall-thuddingly loud basslines of my neighbors' hip hop music.  Which gets the point across in a non-confrontational way.  Bubblegum pop oldies is one of the least aggressive genres of music.  The point it gets across is, "I find your music as annoying as you find this music, so let's not do this."

However I don't know what the opposite of emo music is.  Metal, or something?  I don't like metal either.  In response all I do is turn my music on at a normal volume, which drowns their music out.  Because ultimately what I care about is that there be peace in Southcentral.

Just one more thought though: the other day one of the lyrics of one of their stupid emo songs was, "I want a girl who doesn't leave the house when I'm away."  I snarled at our common wall in response.