Ok so I'm thinking the name Double-S CD is a little on the boring side, so I think we should make it stand for something. Ideas?

Annie: That sort of thing is just too hard for me to do...

A few years ago I lived on a mountain in Virginia. I guess it was a ridge, and I don't know enough about that sort of thing to know if that counts as a mountain or not, but anyway that's what I lived on. I stayed there with my older brother, mostly because I thought there wasn't really anywhere else for me to go. He's ten years older than me -- always has been -- and he's married to a girl named Kara. Kara's an interesting character. This is something I don't really want to get into, but as a taste I'll tell you that she once locked herself in my younger sister's bedroom crying because one of my sisters called another one fat. So at the time of this story, when I lived in Virginia, they hadn't yet been married. She was almost always at his house though, so she practically lived there. She was the band teacher at a small high school located in the valley, and she was from New Jersey. Anyway it ended up that she would be in charge of that year's Miss Page County. This was the annual high school beauty pageant, and you're going to have to take a moment to try to understand exactly how important it was to the community. But wait, first of all, yes, I am going to acknowledge that it is kind of disturbing that a high school would actually hold one of these -- but that's just the way things work in the south. So basically, the girls who went to this school lived in the valley, had probably never left the valley, and most definitely had no ambition to ever leave the valley. All the years prior to their coming of age, you know, being allowed to enter the contest, were just a build-up. These girls' lives were for this pageant. It was seriously the climax of all their years. After this -- it was all just life. The only time these girls would ever taste this kind of excitement again would be when their own daughters enter the goddam contest -- and most of these girls, by the way, probably got started on that and have a few kids by now anyway. In fact, after this particular pageant, one of the contestant's mothers violently freaked out at one of the judges because her daughter didn't place. Scary shit. The whole thing was just garbage bag, but Kara was asked to be in charge of that year's, because she had taken part in some goddam contest at some point. So part of her responsibilty was choosing the judges. She had an actual beauty pageant judge from the big city come down as the head judge. His name was David and he was way gay. She recruited her friend Jessica, who had also taken part in some contests, as judge number two. But she needed a third judge -- and so she asked me. I mean, I didn't know what to do. It didn't seem like the best idea, but she told me that all I'd have to do was ask these girls some questions, write down some numbers, and get paid $75. I didn't have a job, so I needed the money, and it seemed like it might be fun -- so I agreed to do it. The first thing I had to do was write up a quick bio about myself. Well I hadn't really done much with my life (still haven't I guess), no credentials, so obviously I just had to make the whole thing up. I made myself out to be some cool dude who spent the previous year touring Europe with his band or some crap. We ended up having to actually do a bunch more lying too. I think we even lied about my name so that people wouldn't know that she was dating my brother, and that that was our relationship. Oh and I felt pretty awkward with the judges because I really stuck out. So basically the whole thing was just WEIRD. I think I've made that clear, so let's move on. Before the ceremony were the questions. We three judges sat in a room and had to think up questions or read them off of some Pageants for Dummies sheet or something I don't know. Anyway some of the questions I asked these girls were dece, but some of their answers blew my mind. I really can't remember many at all, but I remember asking one girl if she had any pets, and she told me that she had pigs, chickens, and sheep. Sorry I can't remember much more, and I don't remember too much about the actual audience and stage part either, except feeling weird about assigning numbers to their posture, presence, dress, etc. So the prettiest girl ended up winning, Amy Good. That was her name. Kara (years) later told me that she and some of the other girls had little crushes on me and were asking all kinds of questions about my mysterious (but fabricated) life. I found her not telling me at the time very irritating because I truly could have used some companionship there. She said it wouldn't have been appropriate. Anyway a few days later Kara went back over the scores and figured that the gay head judge dude had made some "mistakes" with his addition. The girl who we gave first had actually only earned enough points for 5th place, and in fact all of them were completely messed up, it was all very suss, so she destroyed the papers in case they were found. If I'm not mistaken, the girl whose mom freaked out had actually won the pageant.