08/06/2003 - 10:55 p.m. | i got beat by weather

Stupid monitor turns piss yellow sometimes, so I have to maul it until it gets OK again. I have received complaints (from my mom!!) that my diary entries have been too short lately, so I made it a point to take notes on all the things I meant to write about today. Also, because I have had bad luck with lists in the past, this one is in a code only I understand. So ha.

I made the wise mistake of staying up past 2 last night. I woke up at quarter after this morning and made the usual drunken lurch to the bathroom to brush my teeth (dental hygiene before all else!) when I noticed that the door was shut and the shower was running. �Man,� I groggily contemplated. �Mom�s sure moving slow today. And she never takes showers�� Pause. �Oh, it�s 5:15.� And back to bed I went, upping my total hours of sleep to almost 4. Yes.

Typically, I can brute force my way through a day no matter how tired I am. I have a test, though, to see if I need a little additional incentive: how late do I finally manage to get in the shower. Today it was almost 10 minutes before I was supposed to be at work. Drastic measures. Coffee. Unfortunately, all that was left is about a quarter of a pot from two days ago. Fine, whatever. Pour it in a cup and try too pop it in the microwave. Too big. Fine, whatever. Fuck you.

So I�m drinking my lukewarm coffee (and I am being very generous here with the term �lukewarm� as it contains both the words �warm� and �Luke,� who is my warm-hearted cousin��. What the hell was I saying again?) and screaming Dismemberment Plan as well as my frail vocal chords will allow. Drive by El Ford in Newark; they proudly advertise �THE BEST DEALS IN TOWN.� Yes, because the Amoco has really been putting the heat on, you stupid shitheads. Newark has like 13 people in it.

The first hour after coffee, and I am about as useless as I would be still being exhausted. There is such a thing as too much energy. �HOW COULD I HAVE EVER BEEN TIRED?!� I scream while trying to weld with my twitchy arms. Violent seizures make delicate wire placement much more difficult. So, while I�m doing this, brain is in overdrive about very important things, namely monkeys. See, I thought about myself as a helper monkey welding for the factory, but then I thought about what it would be like if they had real monkeys working there, but then I got worried because they would be too short to reach the welder. Then I thought that they could have stilts and they would go flying around on them all the time, and sometimes they would fall, and it would be both hilarious and adorable. Then I tried to think about what it would be like to be a monkey and tried to think monkey thoughts. Mostly about bananas and how I wanted to throw my feces at stuff. During this period, a good part in a song came along, so I tried to do a monkey dance. Seriously, it looked so much like this you wouldn�t even believe:

Then I thought about the benefits of having a furry tail!! I could weld and feed myself apples at the same time!

This got me thinking about chasing tail, by which I mean women. No, I didn�t actually think about girls. That�s gay. I thought about how I would be had I been born a girl instead of a guy. In meticulous detail. Hell yes, I�m creepy. I killed about an hour doing that, though, planning my wardrobe, hairstyle, and fashion sense. Not that I would want to change into a girl now. No, that�s silly. Just sometimes I would like to start over as one. Man, I�m not defending myself well here, am I? Anyway, I�ll spare you the details of how I think female Nate (�Ana�) would be. Unless you really cared.

At work I become literally anal retentive. See, I feel about three things during my time at the factory: boredom, paranoia, exhaustion. Therefore, any new feeling is a good one, even if it�s just a plain old need to poop. So, gotta stretch out the goodness while I have it, right? I try to wait until neither Harve nor Snake King are lurking about, which is an insane challenge in itself. Windows open up, and just as I�m about to take advantage, one of them bursts back on the scene. I can usually last about 2 hours before I finally have to make a mad dash. And it�s always a mad dash.

Today, I was just about to give in when one of the racks I put completed panels on exploded. I was walking by it, it made a weird sort of snap, and the frame detached itself from the base, spilling about 400 panels all over the place. Now, cleaning 5 tangled panels up is a huge ordeal, and this formed a huge mountain of them. So, I guess I should have been pissy� except I couldn�t stop laughing. The whole motion of it was so smooth and fluid that it was like the rack had thrown up all over the place. Here is a helpful animation. Pretend the puke is panels:

I ran and got Snake King and pretended to look sad while he looked on in horror and confusion. I tried to help, but he sent me back to the welder (which was admittedly very nice of him) and stared at the mountain for the longest time, trying to find some methodical way to get the panels cleaned up. I watched his progress as he grabbed like one panel from the stack, de-tangled it from about ten others, and moved it to a different rack. Repeat, ad nauseum. About five minutes into this, Doughboy came in. He immediately made two decisions: 1) This was somehow going to prevent him from starting work himself, and 2) He sure as fuck wasn�t going to help. So, he leans on the rack, looking as tubby as is humanly possible to do so and watches Snake King struggled. You fat piece of shit. God, I hate everyone.

When I finally did go to the bathroom, it smelled like someone had made asparagus piss squared. It was so painful I laughed.

Hey, I dunno if I mentioned this to you, but I�ve worked so hard this summer that I�ve rubbed off some of my fingerprint. Yeah, on the index finger of my right hand. Every other inch of it is gross and dirty and dry and cracked except this one little spot. No prints for dirt to get into. Sort of bizarre, but I guess that�s what happens when you rub galvanized steel into the same spot over and over. And then I made ORCHID RINGS.

I got a little tired of my music today, so I tried listening to the radio with Travo for a while. He listens to what I shall affectionately call �Spritz music.� Now, I don�t have any serious qualms with this. Not my taste, but I can bear it. But, man, they fucking overuse the word �rock� sooooo much!! OK, the station is called �96.7 WILL Rock� or something, but they ALWAYS ALWAYS say, �96.7 WILL Rock ROCKS!!� ALWAYS. Rock rocks. Rock rocks. Rock rock rock. I don�t even know what they�re talking about. They used the word �rock� like 4 times in a sentence during one of their promos. �If you like to rock, we rock you good on 96.7 WILL ROCK ROCKS� FUCK! Why does that bother me so much? Rock rock rock. It makes me hate myself for allowing myself to not kill everyone affiliated with that slogan. Rock rocks while rocking in the rock rock rocks.

Came home and tried to stay focused and study-oriented for the econ test. Mostly I clipped my nails and listened to music. Frog shower curtain and stuff came today! It�s so awesome. I might have to get the matching garbage can. Excess caffeine had long since burned itself out, and I was in the bad aftermath. Parents decided to drive me to class so we could get dinner afterwards, but they got me there way early, so I stumbled around to try and wake up. It didn�t work. I was the living dead. I finished the test in 20 minutes. The only guy who beat me was the one who doesn�t know anything. I am fairly confident in my A-, which is only a crime to some. Insanity starts to set in. I watch a rainbow in the parking lot, mumbling to myself about the people who walk by (ugly or not) while waiting for my parents. We got out to dinner � more coffee! This is what�s pulling me through now. And good fries. It seems like more amusing things happened, but they are dust in the wind now. DUST.

Stopped for Tropical Sno on the way home (Apricot Stone Sour is an amazingly good combination) and then the WALSHES had a discussion about my mom�s mom, who has this strange habit of saying �heck-pup-a-deck� as sort of a sigh or something. There is no explanation for this; we don�t think she even realizes she does it. Anyway, my mom recently realized that my grandma used to call her �Nancy-pup-a-dancy� when she younger, leading us to the new fun game where we just take every word and make it into a �pup-a.� Nate-pup-a-date. Rock-pup-a-dock. Diary-pup-a� diary.

I just realized that this upcoming semester I won't be taking a psych or soc course. Not cool. I hope something opens up once school gets started because it's all I find interesting (even if the advice I give is consistently wrong and terrible), and right now there's nothing open. I'm even thinking about 18 hours. When did I get crazy ambitious? When I stopped sleeping.

I refuse to admit I am tired at all. AT ALL.