10/08/2004 - 1:11 a.m. | you're smarter than this

They tell me. I have my doubts, but I shall give them the benefit of them. OK, that doesn't make any sense. First, though, I will pour out this huge cup of the very adequately named coffee-piss, for it is 1) a danger to those around me (me) and 2) smelly. OK, good. So! Everyone else is pretty much out right now, and I guess I should be too, but then I started overthinking things, and I thought, "Well, why do people go out anyway?" Two reasons, far as I can tell: 1) To Get Smashed. This is all well and good for most of America, but I do not feel any of the positive effects I am supposed to be feeling. I just talk louder. Great. It's supposed to make me not feel what I'm normally feeling, but I guess what I'm normally feeling is contentment, and the opposite of that is restlessness, an absolute need to upset the order of things, a fear of committment the way vampires fear the sun. (These are just examples) 2) To Get With someone. Well, by all accounts, I should not be doing that, right? As much as I desire ego-stroking (funny how this requires other stroking, no?), I don't know how interested anyone is, me or otherwise. So what point is there in being out? None, I said. So here I am.

I've gotten sort of sick a little in the last couple days. Sore throat is the main symptom, of course, but at least there is finally an advantage. I got some new cough drops - Fruit Breezers or something infinitely gay like that - and they taste exactly like Fruit Stripe gum. You remember that shit, right? Well, then you would also remember that the flavor typically lasts about 15 seconds, thus making this new sensation something like an extended orgasm (albeit a medicine-y one).

The last couple days have at least theoretically been concerned with my advertising history test. The main points I've learned were that everything moves in cycles and that whatever I think is usually wrong. So, I went into this thing with my usual notion that I could just fly through the readings the day before and bang out an A no problem. Turns out these readings numbered somewhere in the 500 pages. Well, piss. I did my best, kept eating tortilla chips (every meal) and drinking that fucking horrible sugar free green tea to try and stay awake, but through distractions and useless trips and naps, I only got about a third of the material done. "Oh no," he thought. "My habits have finally caught up with me! This time I am surely forsaken!" Wrong again, bitch! Short essay questions! All the idiot frat people around me were filled with rage at this prospect, but I was overjoyed. Between the stuff I had read and what little general knowledge I do actually hold, I was fuckin' home free! So that would explain my unusual joy for the day.

That course set, what other happenings were there? Well, I was all gung ho about this big meal at Red Lobster (I know, totally unclassy, but I never pretended to be, did I?). Salad and baked potato and whatever else. Well, fucking idiot decided to have McDonald's instead. Nevermind. I'll just soak in my grease. Stupidly thought bottom steps were one and not two, stumbled, punched wall. Actually started to clean my room a little, kept being distracted by art projects (fix mirror, make extremely-flammable lanterns), dragged off to party thing. Could things be different if I applied myself? Well, I feel that way, but that is an important part of my delusion, is it not? The most noticeable side effect was on the walk home where I really, really wanted to just sit for a long, long time. But! I am not one of THOSE cretins, so I pressed on. And I do believe that is all I have to inform you of. Oh - here is one important note from the other day: When we went into Abercrombie to buy Spritz's sweatervest, the store (split infinitve!) was about 20 degrees colder than any other place in the mall. My theory? Hard nipples sell overpriced t-shirts. It's a sick world. A sick, sick world.

I seem to take some things a lot less seriously than the rest of the world and some a lot, lot more. Like, for instance, I live ridiculously beyond my means pretty much. I was buying the texts for my history test, and I was like, "Ooh, $40 for 2 books! Awesome!" And then the course packet? $86. And I laughed at them. Out loud. And then went out to Borders and bought a whole bunch of shit that I don't really need, but that I feel will somehow enhance me nonetheless. I would very much like a whole crapload of housewares, I've decided, especially the $100 Swedish massage pillow. I know, pricey and all, but it would completely eliminate any need I ever had for any woman. Also would like a fliptop garbage can, so I could make it talk like a seal. I know, what a materialist am I, but I am pretty much good everywhere else, and we all need something to whine about. "My penis isn't big enough," etc. Maybe I'll rework this punch-drunk strategy for tomorrow.