And I even get to dress in black.

I show up around 9:30's usually. One of these days I'll find someone to drag along. I might then feel something less than completely awkward until after the 2nd or 3rd drink.

Who I see tonight doesn't matter. In part I want to drink, but mostly I need to dance.

Afterward, I shall go to a graveyard I've had my eye on for awhile. I will wander inside, find an alcove, and dance to Sisters of Mercy's 'This Corrosion' on my laptop. I'll then commune. That's at least 30 Gother Than Thou points right there. I think I can send away for a black PVC Kool-Aid Man soon.

Having to get up at 7:30 tomorrow for Cold War's pilot study is somewhat balls, but I have to have this night tonight.

I have also come here to pay tribute to the death of the line of Sputnik--the last of my pet car spiders.

Backstory:

When I first moved to this midwestern mecca of liberalism and cheese curds, I had two things of sentimental value: myself and my car. Shortly after I started the first semester, though, I noticed webbing floating around my driver's side rear-view mirror. The thing had been busted for who knows. I later found out it'd become home to a 4-inch thorny looking arachnid. Being that I certainly wasn't using that rear-view mirror, I let it crash on my couch, so to speak.

It wasn't a pet so much as a freeloader, but the spider was my rear-view co-pilot, my satellite. I dubbed it Sputnik.

Often times, while driving on late summer or fall nights when the wind was low and temperate, Sputnik would meander around his web. It was neat.

Sputnik I was nowhere to be seen when winter came. Like all spiders, he likely bought the farm and went to eight-eyed heaven. But that next spring, lo and behold, new webbing surfaced! And from the bowels of my broken driver's side rear-view mirror niche came Sputnik II.

Sputnik II was an asshole.

It used a bit more of my driver's side door for web foundationing than I liked. And I wasn't too keen on the large brood it developed. True, what spawn it didn't eat were washed away by rain, but baby spider gunk on my car is not cool. So out of annoyance one night, and because it was crawling on my driver's side door in the 'no no' zone (near the handle), I murdered Sputnik II. Or at least drove it onto the ground under my car. Just as good.

And so another winter came, more human things happened, and this year's spring descended like so many pendulous testicles.

Much to my surprise, there was webbing on my rear-view again. And thus came the saga of Sputnik the 3rd. This spider kicked more ass than 90% of the humans I've known.

The best example was just a week ago. I was driving to whole foods. The creature had been playing around its web, promptly holding on for dear life while I whipped through Mad-Town. (It's a wild spider, not a pet dog, after all). Round and round it went, spun by the wind on its web. Around the highway it said "fuck this" and crawled back to its niche.

And then Tool came on.

I kid you the fuck not about what happened next. This spider crawled out onto the driver's side door, looked over at me, faced the same way I was, then proceeded to head-bang in synch with the music. Up and down its forelegs went. Twitch twitch to the bass bass. Fully deserving the devil horns, I promptly gave it to Sputnik. After the song ended, it scuttled back into its niche. I do recall the next few songs sucking; good call, dude.

So I was a tad sad a few days ago when I saw Sputnik's dessicated corpse bumping around in its own webbing. Who knows what happened. Kids, wolves, the Iraqi insurgency. All I knew was that, after 3 generations of Sputnik, there was naught but silence.

And so now, if you will, I'd like to have a moment of silence for not only the last of the Sputniks, but the greatest (commerated by this shitty macro pic):

Sputnik the 3rd
? - June 2006
R.I.Car

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Alright, more CNN.com and perrier.

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