11/08/2004 - 4:13 a.m. | well, that went cascading downhill

I had a dream last night that I wrote pretty much the best diary entry ever (It wasn't even long), so I am going to forgo the revision of the advertising paper for now and try and make the dream a reality. Unfortunately, I think it is somewhat impossible because it had little arrows and weird math word equations in it, and I might have been J.D. from "Scrubs." Oh, John C. McGinley. I love you, man, but I swear the only reason you get cast in anything is your uncanny ability to whistle without your fingers. And thus, Nathan's foray into the acting world begins. Anyway, that was the pleasant dream, but there was also my far more status quo dreams about deepset fears becoming reality. The more I think on it, though, the more I think my subconscious is trying to act like my conscience. For instance, the other night I had this dream that I was going to be cheating on Missy with some, well God, chubby girl. And I don't know why I was going along with it. I was all resigned. "Well, I guess hambeast here will be the one I give it up to" while my brain is alternately screaming, "Jesus Christ, dude, you hate chubby girls! And she has so much God damned makeup on! What are you doing?" Luckily, I was saved - not by erectile dysfuntion, as you might expect - but from Spritz driving his SUV through a lake. I kid you not. Anyway, I had a point with this. Oh yes, so I had this dream last night that I was at a family function or something, but I was all sad because I didn't think anyone there liked me. And my mom was trying to make me feel better and goes, "Well, I'll go take a survery." And she comes back and says, "No, seriously! Most of them like you! Wait - hold on -" She runs back out to the people again. "Well, 98% of them think you're a snob." And I sort of felt shitty, I did. Am I really a snob? Do I use big words excessively? I don't mean to, but like, last night I was telling Spritz about the Classic Tan by Meijer, and I said something like, "Dude, it was cavernous. The thing was a labryinthe; I wandered around lost for five minutes." I just like some words, OK? Don't have a conniption. But still, I guess the dream accomplished its purpose, to make me real nervous. Maybe I'll start being all talkative and friendly at family functions. Hahahahaha. Yep.

Last you heard, I guess, I was still in the midst of being bogged down by horrible, horrible work. Well, I got through that, and it only took one really shitty day. Up at 7 to cross the guard, then study until first test, take it (fairly well), then study until next test (not quite as well), then immediately home to work on my advertising project. Start in advance, they say. Fools! I made exactly the ad I wanted with tons of time to spare! I went to Kinkos the next day to print it out all nice and pretty. Expensive shit, that. Seriously. 40 cents a minute to just use a computer, and then because I'm using Photoshop everything takes decades, including my $1.79 printout. Anyway, I lost all bitchy anger when I saw it because it looked soooo cute and just the way I wanted. Here, I'll post:

It's funny, normally I don't give a rat's ass about anything, but man, I have such an opinion about the quality of my work in this area. I look at everyone else's ad, and even with the good ones (like the so, so cute French fry sherrif with his little ketchup mustache! I wanted to hug that ad and said so often), I'm still like, "Well, I would change this or this sucks balls whatever." I defend my own ads to the death. Like, now that I know I could just make the best ad every time, I've sort of decided to go in a different direction and make the most interesting one. And God, are they polarizing. Some people love them, but others don't get it at all. "That's potentially offensive." "You don't actually say what you're selling." "You're too verbose." No, idiots. I am perfect, and if you don't understand that my ad is so much better and filled with more cleverness than yours, then you don't even need to be in this field. You can sweep up my shit later on, all right? And more or less I just tell everyone this. Everyone else just kind of nods and smiles during the criticism, and I'm like, "No! I am right, and if you don't get this, you're an idiot. Everything you count as an error was done intentionally, and if it's different from your normal humdrum shit, it's because I think some people might be clever enough to get it." It's strange. In pretty much everything else, I am so neutral and deferential, but this I have so much passion for. Honestly, I think I finally found the field I could have enough arrogance to succeed in. Next week should be fun, too. We get to make billboards advertising some place. I have already decided that I will be incorporating zombies - in fact, I wish I could start the class over again and make every ad about zombies, because that would be absolutrly hilarious. Zombies and Kansas. Because, honestly, what else does Kansas have? I can think of approximately one thing, and it is not with egg fart smell when you cross the border. Or, mother of God, the Kansas City Royals. Or your stupid meaty BBQ sauce.

Trying to keep the ranting under control is something of a task. It makes me forget what I'm doing. Friday night, we saw Saw, which is funny because the night before I finally saw the unedited, non-Fox TV version of Seven, both featuring overly-complicated serial killers with twisted morals. Everybody always thinks serial killers are so smart, and usually the opposite is true. Like Jack the Ripper. I know that I used to think of him as this clever nobleman or something, running around in his tophat and being all sneaky, killing prostitutes and sending clues to the police. Yeah, more likely he was this psychotic immigrant, barely in control of himself, who just tore people apart because he couldn't hold himself together. Fuck, where was I going again? OK, two brief movie reviews. Se7en (or as it is more properly known, Sesevenen) I knew all about, of course, so it was all fine and good, but they didn't really focus on the killer's kills enough. When they were just showing little blips of shit on TV, I thought it was just editing, but mostly they weren't very thorough. I dunno, it all seemed very half-assed to me; I was hoping to see a lot more elaboration on pretty much everything. Or maybe I'm just bitter because of the mention of this on IMDB: "The original script had a strange, dwarf-like woman as part of the forensics team, appearing in every one of the "cleanups" after a murder and hurling foul language and epithets at Somerset and Mills." That just makes everything better. As for Saw, I dunno... it had more of the elaboration, I guess, but some of it was just sort of stupid and nonsensical, and the acting was often times more hilarious than dramatic. I think we were all supposed to be upset in the final scenes, rather than cackling. I am really, seriously throwing about the idea of writing a zombie movie set on campus. It would be terrible quality, obviously (the idea of developing head shots alone is mind-boggling), but it would be soooo much fun to work on.

Saturday, worked (nothing memorable there, just the same unusually mutated people coming in as usual), hunted for a nice brown polo shirt, failed that, and pulled off some trickery. Apparently, girls - Missy and Michelle - call it "stealing," but I question the accuracy of the term. See, I was at Meijer, and they had a negative display watch that I finally found decent (not great, want to mod it, but still - decent). Problem was, it was some Ironman Anniversary bullshit: $48. Fuck you. So, what I did was took it off it's little plastic display module and switched it with that of a $10 watch. Honestly, you really want me to pay more because of the piece of plastic it is sitting on? Illogical, says rationalization. And then, turns out all watches were 25% off, so there. Karma and I are square for a little while. I'll be taking a dick in my ass on my car if I ever decide it is inoperable (Seriously, I'll get to it... once all these business affairs of mine are sorted out). More importantly, Spritz wanders up to my room at some point. "Do you want to help me make a flamethrower?" Yes, Spritz. I believe I do. So we took this shitty little water pistol Shelly won at bingo, mounted a Zippo in front of the nozzle, and filled the sucker up with lighter fuel. Instant success. Unfortunately, no one wanted to actually go and light trees and cars on fire. What's the point of even having the device then? Bullcrap.

Saturday night, Smacko, Shanks, Shelly, and myself gathered for a rousing round of Edward Fortyhands. Spritz and I ran all over the place trying to find girlie shit that wasn't shit apple or raspberry, but that sort of failed. Sugary ass by the bottlefull. And we later found out that our 40's weren't even that - one pint, eight ounces. You'll have to figure out what that really is, I don't have time for your math. Pints are illogical to people not from Scotland. Might as well tell me 12 hectares in a bushel. I guess I should have suspected that they were less than usual, because when I finished, I didn't wholly feel like croaking in a corner. Below is pretty much the coolest picture we will ever take in college. Each of us is making a supremely awesome pose. Make note of my shirt, huh? It says "NO WAR" (the closest you'll ever get to a political message from me; it's so oversimplified and silly and cool that it makes me laugh whenever I think about it). I made it by putting masking tape down and painting over it. It would be sort of nice to do the reverse and somehow paint it to look tape has been placed down on it (overlapping strips would be darker and such), but I don't have the technology.

I spent the majority of the time on the floor either by Spritz's computer (which was playing, by my request, the Old 97's "Too Far To Care," pretty much my favorite drinking album ever) or in the bathroom (Ted Leo's "Shake the Sheets" - WE STILL SEE PEOPLE WAITING FOR THE NEXT EXCUSE FOR WAR), because that's what I do. Man, that Ted Leo. He's my mental model for the type of band I would want to have. They just seem so happy about their music with their barroom backups and all. Of course, it's probably simulated because no one ever yells a chorus at bars (unless Kyle and I are there). Yes, still want the mandolin. Jason Kahn was over, tripping on DXM. Sort of annoyed me, 1) because I pretty much don't like him on any drugs and 2) he kept being a bitch about it. "So you liked this stuff? You can't even see anything with it." Thank you, Mr. Expert. If I recall, only months earlier you were "totally hardcore" straight edge sXe punk rock, so you'll excuse me if I ignore everything you say, Cheech. Who invited you anyway? Oh wait, you did. What else? Oh - turns out there's been a package for me outside on the wrong porch for God knows how long. I only know because Missy told me she sent it to me. Anyway, once again, she is just too much for me. Little shriner monkey pencil topper, a new mood ring, a bike bell, one of those creepy water tubes that flow through your hands, and a bunch of colored hair tyes because she said my old black ones were too boring. So yeah, I called and gushed to her for a while until Spritz came and told me I was off to the hookah bar with him. OK! We met John Woo there, and I dunno, it was fairly boring but good to be out. Made fun of passerby and yelled at pretty much everyone. Spritz kept wanting to know when the bus was coming, so I'd cautiously venture out to check. They might have been laughing at me, but I don't care. I sure as hell felt like a ninja at the time. Eventually, John Woo's crowd left, and then it was just me and Spritz. We were getting ready to leave, but he went in to pee and came back out, grabbed me, and paid my way in so that we could dance those last awesome 20 minutes. It was so much fun and totally worth it, except then I was all riled up and wanted to dance some more. I was in one of those moods where I wanted human contact - not intimate human contact; quite the opposite, really. Just mashed in a crowd of completely generic, writhing people. But it's cool; we came home and played the original NES Mario Bros. for a while. Usually when I play games, I sort of get pissed off and frustrated because I suck balls at them and keep killing my dude over and over. This time, however, was a purist experience. I was all amazed with the fact I controlled this tiny person in this absolutely fucked up, insane world. I kept a running commentary. "That's right, I am smaller than a turtle or that evil mushroom with Dracula teeth! But fuck, look at that! I ate that gliding mushroom I found in a box and doubled in size. And that flower makes me shoot weird bouncing fireballs. And this mushroom apparently affords me the opportunity to be reincarnated as myself a few moments earlier in time! And there better fucking be at least seven fireworks when I get into that castle, because I am going to be PISSED OFF otherwise." Ah, simplicity.

As for today, well, the diary entry I was avoiding my research paper with? Well, turns out I ignored that too, to go to Arby's and get some beef and cheese with Shelly and Kyle. I dunno, man. I had a bad case of the sillies, because everything was funny as shit to me. "Can I have a cup for water?" I'd ask. They'd give it to me, and I'd cackle and fill it up with Dr. Pepper. And meanwhile little Ambesol addict Kyle was telling me about the adventures from the rest of his night, which I'm sort of sad I missed. He and Smacko ran around doing the usual (shooting, taking hundreds of Queen and Christian rock CDs, ditto skateboards, multiple Discmen, and a Bubble Boy costume that smells like cigarette ass - They didn't even know what it was: "We don't need that shit!" "Dude, it has gloves. We're taking it" - digging for unknown reasons in the dirt. "Cover me," says Kyle, so then Smacko runs around guarding him with the gun. God, they will be arrested some day. Actually, Spritz got a call while we were out that someone had been arrested, but they wouldn't say who. Obviously, the two of them topped the list. I myself would consider arresting Smacko just by looking at the guy), but I guess they wandered into this random party - except it was really like 5 people (dancing! Fuck, I missed out) with this crazy huge nice Lab running around them, and they instantly all become friends for life. They gave the duo beer, which Kyle promptly puked up (So much for your vomit cherry, boy-o!) . Ah, the great equalizer that is alcohol. Unless you are shoving me through the air. Oh, OK. Even then.

Kyle has this unique ability to do such idiotic, hilarious shit that it makes me laugh completely out of context just from the memory of it. I mean, obviously there is his giant orange t-shirt, but I was talking to Spritz one night about the pasta we were eating. "Do we have any Parmesean cheese, man?" He checks the fridge. "I don't see it, man [There was a can in the trash], but I seriously doubt that Kyle could survive without his parmy." "What the fuck?" "That's what he calls the shit." And then I proceeded to break down laughing for the next five minutes. I dunno, man. It's such a horribly obnoxious term that everyone hates, and it can make me laugh at any possible time. Unfortunately, comedy such as this is very hit or miss, so Kyle's probably only really batting like 300 or something. That's just a guess, though. Anyway, while we eat, we all started singing and miming different LL Cool J songs. I can't tell you why. Shelly did a shark's fin (her head was like one), I slobbered over my invisible apple (doing it and doing it and doing it well) and Kyle mostly just ate copious amounts of cheese (Get off me! Can't hold me!) I know, none of this is important to you, but it means the world to me.

Afterwards, we went to Wal-mart, and I relived my glory days buying hilarious, creepy products. Besides the $3 dented box hair dye I will apparently be entrusting my scalp to, I also got this "magic" hair remover powder (for black men with bumps, it boasts), this creepy fucking painted pig angel vampire lightbulb, a, er, "Palm Pilot," and Mitchum deodorant. I've looked at the latter before, mostly because it has such a good motto - so effective you can skip a day!, or something to that effect - but the rest of the packaging or whatever always led me to believe it was for ancient old men (so corpselike you can skip a day!), and I am not willing to try these things alone. Oh! And a "Star" magazine because I am fascinated by celebrities and their lives. Weird circumstances abound. Like, I bought it mostly because of Courtney Peldon and her thighs, but I also spent like two hours reading about Crispin Glover again online, and it turns out they are dating. If only my psychic gifts weren't so mundane and awful.

Oh God, so I finally got down to revising this thing we supposedly wrote for advertising research methods, and it is the worst thing I have ever read. I mean, besides the obvious style and grammatical errors ("intensive purposes" = "intents and purposes"), it is also important to note that my part of the proposal is the only one wiithout comments besides "good" on it. I rule and everyone else inherently sucks nuts... And it wasn't even that bad at first. Like, there were errors, but there was basic structure and shit, stuff I could work with. Towards the end, though, the paper devolved into total batshit insanity. Had I actually bothered to read this thing over beforehand (oops), I would have been embarrassed to turn it in. I let Shelly look at it, too, and she agreed. The last two people didn't make sense at all. Not only did they not talk about things irrelevent to the topic, they also apparently have no concept of the English language and strung together random words in the hopes of getting lucky. Luck was not with them. Even the grader who marked up our first draft wrote (and I quote), "What's happening to this paper?" like it was the victim of some sort of horrid disease. True enough. I had to find the original source material each person had used for their portion and rewrite the whole thing more or less. I was somewhere between pissed off and amused and was going to send a scathing message along with my revision. Something along the lines of, "I had to pretty much overhaul everything everyone wrote. I hope that doesn't offend you or anything. Actually, I don't care, because that pure madness I read. I can't believe they even gave us an 85 on the first draft. I could have shat on the people and made more of a point. Do you guys know about, you know, words and phrases? I mean, I'm not perfect - I am obviously very apathetic regarding work that I am not passionate about (pretty much everything), and I could have helped out more had I cared earlier, but let's think: You all care about your grades and worry so much about getting this done and bother me all the time, when I could have started on this all tonight and still gotten a better grade than you. That is why talent is more important than enthusiasm." I know, terribly mean, but I was mad. And then when I met up with my group, they were all so cute and hopeless that I couldn't feel anything but bad. Like retarded bunnies. "They must be so grateful for me. I am the only one who makes sense." Well, actually Justine, the hot one, the one with big boobs that are strangely fascinating to me (I dunno, I've been giving the old college try - haha - to liking big boobs - and some are at least standing out - haha again) did a good job too, so we should just make reasonably attractive babies whilst the others flail about trying to not shit their pants openly in public. I say "reasonably attractive" not so much because of her but for me, for while I might be a touch striking, I do have some zits and am usually also in some state of filth. I don't know why; I really like being clean, but somehow I don't always "get around to it." That makes no sense.

Bingo tonight was fairly standout. Well, first, we played drinking Jeopardy, me and Shelly versus Kyle and Smacko. Good thing it is the only game I dominate at. I won $14,000 to -$2000 or something, which means they should have taken 140 drinks. Roughly. God bless genetic gift for absolutely useless trivia. Have I been saying "absolutely" a lot? Urg. Conversation between Smacko and a mailbox: "Here you go - you want some mail?" and tosses his cigarette in. Anyway, all were in top form for bingo tonight. I dunno if I mentioned, but our table has become known as Team Tourettes ever since my outburst a few weeks ago (Bingo cock ass fuck, roughly), and we have all tried to live up to that noble ideal ever since. Tony even reserved a table for us tonight. He may very well be the only one who likes us. Crowds were sparse this evening, and I do believe we made enemies with the table closest to us. "Show us your funbags," Kyle and Smacko would state repeatedly. And they would flick us off. Shelly later pointed out that maybe we were the reason bingo attendance was dropping. Well, fuck them, says I. Fuck shit ass dickballs cuntlip, more specifically. Touchdown had a friend with him there, "Fieldgoal" or "Safety" depending on who you asked. We really didn't win too much - I got a baby's fork and spoon set - and I did not got the least bit smashed despite my three hilariously overpriced Cherry Bombs, but the one gorgeous girl was there, and Jevon thought maybe she was interested in him (of which I was, am, intensely jealous of) but mostly she was just drunk. Darn. But it's cool. Shelly and I started singing Geggy Tah, and the Boumi hat was there somehow, and it was just good old drunken fun. Things got more interesting, however, when the inflated giant monkey finally came up as a prize in Full Body Shambo. It was quickly decided, one way or another, this monkey would be ours by the end of the evening. Why is it always monkeys? Has fate linked us all together? Anyway, some girl won, and Spritz and Jevon and company started (very loudly) formulating their plans. It was actually pretty clever, but I was in the pisser (with Tony, which is just weird) at the time. Spritz, the one of us who comes to bingo the least, was hiding outside the bar behind the big pillar right in front. A group of us would walk out with the people as they left and would say either, "What a cute monkey, right?" (to indicate they were going right) or "What a cute monkey" for the opposite. The plan itself was executed flawlessly, it seems. Problem is, the girl had somewhat of a death grip on the thing, and by the time Spritz had wrenched it away from her, "it" was more or less just the poor monkey's head. He took off running into the night, and the girl came back inside all sad as her suit deflated. I was tempted to tell the girl to wear it as a costume ("Dude, the monkey suit's back"), but we had bigger fish to fry as everyone was suddenly accusing Team Tourettes of mischief. We, of course, lied. "Naw, man. I have no idea who that guy in the John Deere hat was. Yeah, I saw him sitting with us. I don't know who he know! But God, that fucker! Listen, I'm gonna go out looking for him, all right, and I swear to God I'll come back with his head. We'll put it on a pike and you can wave it about all willy-nilly. Nobody sullies the good name of Team Tourettes - and makes some girl sad about her monkey! Let's go get him, fuckers! Ass fuck shit hat!" And then we ran to meet Spritz behind La Bamba. After some wandering (to lose any tails) and oft-forgotten coded references to the heist, we got the head to Jevon who took off running at what could only be called blinding speed. I got some shitty S'mores candy bar because of the hateful masochism and then Kyle and I read and laughed over Armenian swear words for a while. "Kunem ko hokey" = "I fuck your soul" "Tsem Vzit = I'll Fart on your neck" "Kakem teerojit mera" = "Shit on your grandmother" "Yes kunem kez ay ruma vocan" = "I fuck you, gypsy nomad" "Pagh paghagi jaja goudes" = "You're eating sperm ice cream"And my personal favorite: "Glirit Mortin hed Sarma Shinem" = "I'll make Sarma with your penis's skin" We'll be Team Aremenian Tourettes soon enough. There 4 am. It's gonna be another beautiful day.