Noodle-Armed Demon of Spite (I want to punch me in the face for this)

I just ran out of justice tampons, so I guess I'll have to buy the regular kind now.

The tampons originally came from a fancy resort where my parents were doing a puppet show. If you're a performer, the resort doesn't pay that well in dollars, but it does pay pretty well in time at the resort. You get treated just like a paying guest, so when you fill one of their kayaks with blackberries and then eat the whole kayak, you may get a bit of side-eye from the management, but they certainly don't stop you.

Only this time I didn't get treated exactly like all the other guests. I wanted to go to this arm workout class because sometimes I feel bad about having a set of flaccid noodles instead of arms, but the guard lady turned me away at the door.

“Only paying guests,” she said.

And the tiny, spiteful, noodle-armed demon in my head threw a tantrum. “You said we'd get treated just like paying guests! YOU SAID!”

I managed to quash all external signs of my demon-tantrum in front of the guard, but 11.6 seconds later I discovered that every single bathroom in the resort was equipped with a miniature treasure box full of tampons.

In the third bathroom I visited, an old lady caught me scooping double fistfulls of tampons from the treasure box.

She fixed me with a withering glare.

I stared her right back, all aglow with righteousness.

“It's for justice,” I said.

Oddly, her expression didn't change much after that. I don't think she got it. But Hitler used to be legal in the past so I guess I shouldn't expect old people to understand justice.

Hm. Reading about the situation now, it seems entirely possible that I've been using spite tampons for the last several months instead of justice tampons. Oh well. I'm more than a quarter century old. You can't expect me to understand justice.

Precious Mermaid Oil

My new roommate isn't named Piña Colada. His parents named him after a completely different fruity alcoholic beverage, but I'd like to show a token of respect for his privacy so I'm not going to tell you which one.

If there's a story in this house, I'm pretty sure it's Piña Colada's and the rest of us are just supporting characters on his journey. Most of the people around here roleplay and Piña Colada doesn't, but he understands real adventure.

Like, he got to Wisconsin by hitchhiking from Florida with a backpack and a guitar. Piña Colada keeps his guitar wrapped in white lace like a bride but I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually want to marry his guitar. (Is that even a thing? Can you be sexually attracted to guitars? I want to say “no” because most of the words used to describe attraction have Latin roots and guitars didn't exist in Ancient Rome. Lyres were pretty popular though, so I guess you can be sexually attracted to lyres if you want.)

Piña Colada didn't have much of a plan for his arrival in Wisconsin, so it's a good thing he's extra charming. He met my girlfriend, and within a few days we'd offered him a room in our house. It was a pretty good investment. Not just because of the guitar, but because sometimes he says things.

Piña Colada walked through the room when I was telling people that one of my friends looked like a mermaid.

“My father used to hunt mermaids,” he said, “but not just for sport. He'd heat the house using their precious mermaid oil.”

So there's that.

My girlfriend is much better at coming up with roommates than I am. The last person I invited into the house was this guy:

I built him out of fleece and evil and then he tried to steal my soul so I had to kick him out. I hope he learns to play the guitar. Then he can win souls legitimately in guitar playing contests instead of just stealing them for no reason.