#53: I Got the Senior Thesis Blues

I clacked away at my typewriter into the wee hours of the morning. In the background was the Warren Woodward University public radio station, WWWU, humming at a low volume on my cheap clock radio. It was so late, the programming had gone from news to jazz to classical; they were now broadcasting some free-form art rock courtesy of a deejay who was also an editorial contributor to Detroit’s anarcho-primitivist underground newspaper, The Fifth Wheel. The sounds were hypnotically weird, and I was getting bleary-eyed.

#50: Telling Tall Tales Along the Ann Arbor Trail

After locking up her office, the Phantom Jungle Girl and I raced downstairs to the waiting Y+Thems van. Rubber Brother was in the passenger seat; with an elongated arm, he opened the sliding side door for us to hop in back. Domina was behind the wheel; she was the only Youthful Permutation. The others—Soren, Kiddo, and Tempy—were never part of our plan, Jasper wanting to keep the operation light and mobile.
     But much to my surprise, my sister Avie and Kozmik Kat were waiting for us in the back seat.

#34: You’re Not the Boss of Me

The apartment I found was affordable—that was perhaps its first and only attribute, aside from being next to the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City, a free-thinking quasi-Christian sect housed in a rusticated Gothic church. Located on West Forest Avenue a couple blocks west of Woodward at Cass, my apartment was on the third floor of a once-modest townhouse turned into sawed-off rental units run by a white-trash couple from down south. You think I’m being mean, but if you saw them, you’d agree. The woman was a mean old bitty who dyed her hair red and the man wore a toupee that looked like a bird’s nest…but that’s neither here nor there.
     I had the picturesque garret apartment in what was once part of the attic, basically one room, a kitchen, and a bath, with all kinds of ceilings angling every which way, and windows pointing to the front and side of the building. There were other apartments on the top floor, and a long hallway that ran to the back of the house to the external back stairs—these egresses would come in useful if I needed to be Ms. Megaton Man in a pinch. At least it was a place to hold my stuff, although I’m not sure I’d call it secure. But at least it was within easy walking distance of the Arbor State extension, Warren Woodward, and the Union Stripe restaurant, where I landed a waitressing gig.