09/13/2004 - 3:17 a.m. | run over the winner

First off, this is worth reading, especially if you don't want to deal with any of the horse excrement below.

I'm all confused by this writing business, mostly where I am along the insane timeline I've been supplying you with here. Uh, let's see. I'm getting mostly nowhere on the huge entry based off of my notes from forever ago, but when it does come out, there will be some good things in it, I think, and you will enjoy them, I'm fairly sure.

On Thursday, I went to the Old 97's concert. Alone, which is my own stupid fault, but it was actually really cool. City driving is perhaps the only thing I am still reasonably afraid of in the world, but it fills me with crazy adrenaline, and I guess I need that now and then. I've been told I'm too mellow. Haha, can you believe that? Anyway, there was only one near-accident, and it wasn't even my fault: An idiot lady started trying to pass someone when I was right next to her, so I had to slow down and get the fuck out of the way. Can I really blame her, though, having done the same thing myself before? Well, yes. Life is full of double standards, like how girls don't have to tuck their shirt in at fucking Inside Scoop. Ooh! There's a fun tangent! It's nice only writing a couple times a week:

So, I'm finally starting to toe the line (does that even mean what I think it does?) and tuck my shirt in and shit at work. Unfortunately, Scott was in town the last time I worked, and he honestly makes everyone's life a pit of despair and misery. Even the anal people think he's crazy. Amy, new manager Lori, even fucking Tiffani - the most insane people I have ever met, and they still back up and go, "Whoa, this fucker is OCD." Man! This is awesome because there are all these stories I don't think I told you, so I get to tell them again, and you act all surprised. OK, inner tangent #2: During the whole regime change, Scott was working in the store with me. This family comes in, and they have a bunch of little kids, and all of them start filling up bags with a few pieces of a bunch of different types of candy. Technically, this is against "the rules," but usually I pick something pretty average from each bag and just charge them for that. No big deal. Except to Scott. He comes over to me and whispers about how I have to go tell them that they can't mix candy. (I actually heard he made a diving leap to stop somebody from doing it once before. No, seriously). I give him this absolutely incredulous look and go, "Yeah, OK," like ha! Good one, Scott! But he is being seriously, so I walk over to the mother and let her know that her kids can't mix the candy. She gets all mad. "Well, fine! We'll just get something else then!" So she starts taking the bags away from the kids and handing them to me (because I am really going to go through with a little gay plastic glove and sort this shit out), and all of the kids - all four or five - start freaking out and yelling and screaming and throwing shit on the floor, and the mom is yelling, and the dad is spanking this one kid, and it's just insanity. Scott gives me this look like, "Well, what are you gonna do about it?" I stand there and laugh. So Scott comes up to this sudden warzone and says in his horrid Indiana monotone, "Can I help you find something today?" Oh what the fuck, Scott. That's really gonna settle these kids down. No, seriously, this is how we have been taught to face these issues. I believe I got some lecture later, I don't remember what about. I was too busy cackling at the insanity of his one command to not look out into the hallway ("There's nothing to see out there." Yeah, nothin' but superhot Abercrombie bitches, you soulless monster!). I have to keep an eye on the store, see, at all times, always facing inward. But! I also have to greet people coming in the store within 10 seconds. But Scott! How ever am I to know that customers are in the store when I must constantly face away from the entrance. I swear to God, this man drives my blood pressure through the roof. So, anyway, end that tangent, back to the first. I come into work one day, all cute and tucked in and ready to go, and Lori comes up with her, "We need to have a talk" voice. Well, fuck, what now? We are not allowed to wear long-sleeved shirts under short-sleeved ones. This is pure madness. My life is living insanity. What the fuck have you done with logic, you wicked eater of souls and seller of Mike & Ikes? So there was that. And then, Scott comes up to me and is like, "Now, you know, Nate, that we never close the store early." Sigh. "Uh, yes, sir. Of course not." "Because I was looking over the journal tape from last Sunday, and I believe it said you closed a few minutes early." "No, sir. I know for a fact that I did not." In most other cases, I would at least give him the benefit of the doubt because, hey, I do fuck up and forget things once in a while, but 1) I never, ever close the store early. We're usually the last to go when it's me closing. 2) My memory, while not quite photographic, is still fucking amazing, and I can tell you everything about the last customers that Sunday - mundane things you wouldn't even care to know, like how she was pretty and had very "well-contained" (this was the phrase I used at the time) huge boobs in her more blue than teal tanktop and how he was probably a closet homosexual and how they started just eating gourmet sugarfree chocolates from the bin, so Tiffani flipped out at them, and we ended up closing a few minutes late even - but what good is this? I can't prove shit, and it's my word against the clock on the register, which certainly seems accurate, but God in heaven, Scott, at least give me due credit that I would have the common sense to not close the register nine minutes early where all I had to do was wait around nine minutes while I was mopping or whatever and do it then. GIVE ME THAT. Well, no. "I can tell you, down to the most minute detail, why we did not close early last week." "Just make sure it doesn't happen again." Drawl drawl drawl. Please do not think I inherently hate authority or something. That's far too cliche for me, all right? While it is true that I have pretty much hated, well, every authority figure at any job I've worked at (Harve, Doug, Danee, Scott, and so on...), I don't think it is just because they are in charge. It's not even because of inherent characteristics that they all seemed to share. OK, well, maybe a little. It's the fact that they seem to demand respect from me even though they have not earned at all. Yes, you have your lovely little title and whatever, but that's all it is. A title. I am a fucking notary public, a baron, and a minister. Think on that. If you want my respect, you have to earn it like everyone else, and fuck! It isn't even that hard! If you're fair and not a phony, that's all it takes. I might not like you, but I'd respect you. Apparently, though, those characteristics that made you what you are today aren't earning shit from me. I am fucking amazing at retail, honestly. Everyone ALWAYS talks about customer service coming first, but from so, so many people, I dunno, that's what it seems like. Being serviced. A blowjob on a street corner, if I may. Everyone goes through the motions and is so fake, and I don't know how they can stand themselves. I'm not friendly because I want to make a sale; I'm friendly because I want to make friends and make people smile a little maybe! I dunno, sincerity is very important to me, but somehow it seems like the fakest people are the ones who do the best in the field. And I know, I should get used to it, because that's how the world works, but fuck it. That's not how I work. I am so good at my job. I know more about the product than any manager. I'm polite, I'm funny, I'm charming (if a little weird). I bend over backwards, I tell the truth, I sympathize, try to find some common ground. Actually, did I tell you about this? I was talking to some guy at the candy store, you know, just bullshit about gummi candy and weird Jelly Bellys and shit, and he comes back a few minutes later. Apparently he works for the Best Buy Geek Squad, and if I wanted, I could call him, and he could push me through to a job there almost immediately. Not the first time it's happened either. I get all sorts of compliments about how good of an employee, I am, how I'm actually real and don't spout, "Can I help you find anything?" as soon as you pop in the door. And that is the only really gratifying part of the experience. Because I'm sure as hell not in it for the girls. Haha - why are guys the only ones who ask me for my number? It happened yesterday at Hot Topic. Luckily, this guy has a girlfriend, so I think he just wants to hang out. Still, when are you girls gonna work up some courage, because as Spritz pointed out very eloquently one night, and now I can't remember his wording at all, God damn it, I'm not like guys are supposed to be at all. I've also been told that I have a very gay sense of humor - that I am constantly walking the line between arrogance and self-deprecation. And I dunno, man, it seems like the homosexual floodgates have been thrown open since then. I'm on Facebook, and all these dudes are poking me, and one guy called me positively gorgeous, I think, which is a funny phrase, I don't care if you're Kyle Wild or not. This is a curious phenomenon. What makes me so darn gay-seeming? I mean, I guess I care somewhat about my appearance, but who doesn't, really? In this age of metrosexuality, people like Kyle and Smacko are getting rarer and rarer. And I'm never really over-the-top well-dressed; I'm too poor for that. I wear bright colors: stupid small homemade t-shirts and skinny ties. Oh fuck. That is a little gay. And I do dance and sing about a lot. And the tummy piercing. Ha - did I mention that to you guys? Yeah, the survery is a little outdated. I'm studded. But come on! Even that has at least a little heterosexual motivation. What better way to meet girls than to touch tummies? OK, well, shit. It has dawned on me that I am the gayest person ever on paper. So that issue has been resolved. In short, deal with it.

So! About that concert! It was pretty awesome. Even with the $32 ticket and the $25 gas and the $15 parking, it was worth it, but then I have a complete shambles in my brain as far as monetary value goes. Rhett was tons less drunk this time. Shelly asked which performance is better, and I couldn't give a straight (ha!) answer. I think both are worth seeing. Drunken Rhett was amazing with his discordant singing (more like yelling), but sober Rhett is far more charming (He actually talked, for one thing). You can see that he was born to be a frontman. The rest of the band is amazingly talented - musically, probably a lot moreso than Rhett himself - but Mr. Miller is just balls-out charisma. The man was born to showboat - the windmill guitar strum, the smooth flow of his semi-erotic dancing, the hair flying about in his face. lol - and he looks a little like Kevin Sorbo, but that's besides the point. Anyway, the show kicked ass. As I was drunkenly naming the songs they played for Missy, I realized how much ground they really covered. Around 25 songs, I think - that's about 2 albums, at least (7 if you're Rivers Cuomo!) Because I was skinny and alone (aka emo!), I managed to weasel my way up to second-row center. I would have tried for first row, but the Asians and midgets would have masticated me. Somehow, in the process, I made friends with this crowd of middle-aged people, mostly because I managed to sneak by the guy they had posted there to keep people from sneaking up to the front. Then we teamed up to keep away the frat guys who just want to be up front on principle. You know the type I mean: They claw their way up as close as they can get and then spend half the show facing the wrong way and talking to the chicks nearby. I, however, belonged up there. More than anyone else, in fact, if we went by pure amount of lyrics known. I was so excited when they played "Hands Off" (a song off their first album and my current favorite - I had thought there'd be no way they'd ever play it), and most of the fuckers didn't even know what that shit was.

As far as the people about me went, I had some real winners. There were a pair of redhead sisters next to me. Yipe. The one of them was OK enough, but the other was so much like Kathy Griffin that I kind of wanted to stab her on principle. GAH, the facial expressions! WHY!! They were on a date of sorts with two ridiculously tall college guys, both of whom had redhead fetishes so blatant that even I picked up on it within moments. Obviously, there is no accounting for taste AT ALL. They kept whispering shit between each other all night long, to the point where I was tempted to yell, "JUST TAKE HER MUTATED VAGINA ALREADY! WE CAN ALL SMELL THAT SHE WANTS IT" I think crazy things sometimes. One of the members of the middle-aged group was this awful horny woman who was trying to hit on everybody all the time. Yeah, get some computer programmer ass, you psycho whore! She had this disconcerting habit of leaning around a lot while she talked, so she kept brushing into me with her fat ass. I would physically shudder every time this happened, so I started mimicing her movements so that we would be less likely to bump. Yes, that's right. I still have touching issues, and I am still damn pleased with it! Probably the strangest person of the lot was this one girl right next to me who did not move for the entire show. Didn't clap, didn't dance, didn't even bob her head or tap her foot to the music. No, listen. I don't care who you are or how awful your life is: If you are hearing a live performance of "Timebomb," you are going to a) love it and b) go apeshit. But nope, no response. I really thought I should talk to her and make sure she wasn't going to go off herself right after the encore, but I was suddenly being assaulted by this crowd of girls, and she probably would have started choking me anyway. But yeah, this group of, erm, very average looking girls came up to me and started talking and more or less try to grind right in my face. Again, they have fucked priorities. The one girl's ass just kept getting closer and closer to my pelvis, and she kept trying to send me looks, but I would just dodge them and continue on staring at Rhett as he gyrated about. Honestly, guys, this is pretty much like church for me - some sort of altar or something - and just like real churchgoers, I only go once or twice a year. Leave me my holy space. This is turning out far longer than I intended. "That's what she said." Thanks, Kyle. I'm glad you have successfully invaded my subconscious.

The drive home was pretty fucking long, especially since I had been holding in a piss since before I left. And the fact that I kept getting mildly lost every couple of turns. Not my fault - the street names are printed entirely too small on the signs. I have to be halfway through an intersection before I can realize that it was the one I was supposed to turn onto. Luckily I had Intuit Direction and Mapquest, so I eventually made it out OK. For whatever reason, the adapter for my CD player crapped out, so I kept the radio on scan for the duration of the trip, stopping only when JoJo came on (A good deal more than you would think). However, by the time I was nearly home, it was almost 3, and I was wiped out. Luckily, fate intervened. It is so important that I make note of this: Christina (X-tina?) Aguilera has just recently covered Rose Royce's "Car Wash" (One of my all time favorite songs) with some help from Missy Elliott. If you recall, Ms. Aguilera covered "Lady Marmalade" a few years ago and she just recently sampled Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" in her duet with Nelly, "Tilt Ya Head Back." If you are keeping track (and of course you are not because you aren't half as cool as me), we are up to 3 songs off of the "Pure Funk" compilation CD. That is over one-seventh, people! It is now my goal for her that she eventually recreate the entire CD with her unique brand of way too many trills. Cameo's "Word Up!" is next, bitches.

Friday was sort of a waste of a day, but at least I made my $16.20 crossing the guard. Yeah, I'm back to that, did you know? I simply cannot remember what I relate to you people. Anyway, it's a brand new post way the farfuck south in Urbana, in what I can only assume is some sort of utopia because it is the happiest, friendliest, 1950's sitcom suburbiest place in the whole world. I'm pretty sure the cars would all just stop on their own, to give the children free, delicious, non-arsenic-filled candy, but what the fuck? I'll take what they give me. I've really been meaning to creep this one family out, because I remember them from the candy store a way back. "SOOOO... Are you enjoying your... PUCKER POWDER AHAHAHAHAHHA" but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, now does it? Seriously, though, even the animals there are nicer. I typically don't much like pets, as they what we call the most highly-adapted parasites in the world, but there is this cat that hangs out on my corner in the afternoons, and it is seriously the Nicest Cat in the World. That's it's name, as far as I am concerned, although I do call him/her "Cat" for short. Anyway, this cat waits around on the corner after school gets out so that little kids will come and pet it. Everyone was kind of freaked out by it at first, but I very cautiously pet it one day, and it was sooo into it! It rolled around in its tummy and purred and nuzzled me and was soooo happy! It reminds me of Jen from Hot Topic, so I'm sort of into it as well. So, I've started telling little kids about the cat (Happily, they now call him/her "Nicest Cat in the World" when they see it as well), and now it has all these friends, even if the little girls are sort of obsessive, and it has to hide in the bushes sometimes. But it comes out for me, because we are pals, and I was very tempted to take him/her home with me to live in the backyard, but it has gone missing recently. I brought it some milk one day (which earned me tons of brownie points, it seems), but it hasn't been around, and my car now mysteriously smells like sour milk. Well, it did smell like sour milk, but then I got a car air freshener and said "Fuck this whole 'open it a little bit at a time' bullshit," and now my car smells like a pine whore. But, I hope that the cat comes back. I've decided that it probably got onto the bus that comes by everyday and is now visiting different kids at other schools. The parents are glad I have such hopeful theories for their children. I'm like, "What theories?"

Friday night I got about as wasted as I ever will (which is still a lot less than most people), and we went out to the hookah bar on Green St. Oh! I meant to tell you guys something interesting. One of my many cool Advertising teachers was telling us the other day about how everyone thinks that they can tell the different between cheap and expensive vodka, but he apparently decided to test this theory and has been doing these taste tests (in class!) for the last seven or eight semesters. He gets a bottle of good, not great, vodka - Skyy, for example - and one of those huge plastic jugs of what is typically considered shit - Skol, let us say - and then sets up a series of taste tests among student volunteers. Turns out that their identifications are usually worse than chance, which pretty much means that the cheap and expensive shit are virtually the same. They are the same, in fact - some companies actually make the same vodka and then just sell it in different packaging, and we buy it up just like we would with any name brand. Anyway, moral of the story is, I drink cheap vodka and Redbull now. We walked to the hookah bar on Green St. - you know what a hookah is, right? - and I was pretty fairly out of it, so much so that I pulled out Sean D. Mills' ID instead of my own. Whoops. Oh shit - I dunno if I told you about Mr. Mills either! I was walking to my car one day, and I saw this ID on the ground. I picked it up and was all like, "Oh good! I shall do a good deed!" Then I looked closer and saw that Mr. Mills was over 21. "No I shan't then!" Even though we look a fair amount alike - both white, same height nearly, with black hair and blue eyes (To account for the weight loss, I blame heroin) - I was far too much of a pussyshit to ever try and use the thing. Until this fated evening. I just gave them an ID without looking and all of a sudden I'm having a bracelet slapped on my wrist. Huh? Well, isn't this a sense of newfound power! Despite my prior thoughts, I'm still not down on smoking something even as relatively safe as a hookah, but it was awesome as hell to keep going up the bar to buy drinks for everyone. I flirt with the waitstaff :D Sean D. Mills loves his mature status! Mostly I stared off into the haze and let the Mexican ass music wash over me while everyone went nuts, but I still had an awful good time. We advanced to Joe's next, and I entertained those all about in the longass line (as goes my drunken recollection, and I am bound to agree with it), and I was fairly surprised once we got in there who it was I seemed to be attracting. I had fewer qualms with dancing with girls than usual, and fucking Jenni of all people showed up, but you don't know who that is yet, because I have not finished that old entry, nor am I ever likely to, because of longass shit like this. Unfortunately, Spritz broke his toe, so we had to get the fuck out, but I ran into Mary Adekoya and went on a bike ride, and both were fucking amazing! I could not sleep for a very long, long time.

Saturday was a hangover, but a different sort of a hangover, so I can at least be glad of that. Saturday was also 9 hours of work, leaving me totally dead by the time I made it back. I met the new girl, Maeve, at the candy store, and she at least seems a little interesting and not hideous, which seems to be saying more and more these days at that store. I spent ten minutes fashioning a working kazoo out of a Pucker Powder tube and then the next 2 hours bothering the hell out of anyone who came in. What can I say? I was proud of my ingenuity! The five hours at Hot Topic went by pretty fast, mostly because it is just me standing and either bullshitting or hugging Jen. So not in love with her. So not in love with her. Because that would make my efforts to leave her fiance seem selfish and unthoughtful, and I am anything but! Ha! Seriously, though, I wish we could at least hang out outside of work, but professionalism dictates that this should not happen, and alcohol dictates that it definitely shouldn't, so let us not think on it. As I said, when I got home, I was utterly exhausted and wanted to mostly just die, but Brytne has a strategy that seems to work better than just repeatedly asking me to go out and do something - she fucking drags me and won't let me turn around. That would seem to do the trick. So, we more or less stole all of the party from our house and went to Murphy's, where Sean scored some more drinks, and Smacko reached a new level of drunken awareness. He was trying to sing and kept making up words and drumming off time and drooling on his cigarette. Elliott was there. You'll recall how much I loved Elliott in the past. Somehow he's gotten worse. He's apparently gone beyond regular emo to a new world of bitchy assholish pissiness about life that he seems to have borrowed from Allen Wittman. Any joy and cuteness, any happiness, is gone. Now it is just glaring and horror. After the one drink (Yes, quite worth the $3 cover!), we started to head back to Katie's apartment, where I spent much of the evening walking people home or to various illicit sexual encounters. But I'm not supposed to talk about that, am I? Luck of luck, Katie had a half-bottle of Charles Schaw blanc (Two-Buck Chuck!) which I more or less had to myself. You can't imagine how good decent wine is after you've had nothing but boxed for months and months. While I set out on making labels for pretty much everything within Label Buddy distance, Smacko told us again and again of the time he was verbally abused by his drunken janitor boss. You keep on fighting the good fight, man! I believe there might have been some hints that Smacko could have joined the Katie-Elliott-Nate Fun Zone, and don't I feel like part of such a noble bunch! Christ, what is going on in this world! Well, anyway, Becky was going to leave, and she said hi to these two guys walking near the apartment, and they started freaking out and telling Smacko how they had just jumped out of a second story window and how the cops were chasing them and how they needed a place indoors to hide out. Sympathetic Smacko said he'd be right with them, slammed the door in their face, and then showed his balls to them out through the window, making sort of a buzzing noise as he did so. One cannot question the logic of this. More carting of people around, and I did not sleep for a long, long time again, but I distinctly remember thinking... I'm glad I'm an OK guy.

Today there was a cookout (WHY HAVE I BEEN EATING SO MANY FREAKING HOT DOGS LATELY THAT'S JUST FUCKING GROSS) and I bought books on Jack the Ripper and self-hypnosis as well as some Sam's Choice cola and I slept a lot and I feel as though there was more I would like to expound upon but mostly it has to do with my "feelings" and you don't want that. Maybe later then. I consider this a very decent start.