12/06/2004 - 9:41 p.m. | grumble chock kill

I came to some sort of conclusion yesterday that my brain and diary combine to make the perfect organizational system. Therefore, it is simply not feasible to skip crucial ("any") events in these writings. So, yeah. Sorry about that. We'll work backwards and sideways as best as we can.

How was my Thanksgiving, I'm sure you wonder. OK, no, you don't, that was fucking forever ago, but here I am, gonna recap it for you anyhow. Pretty much the shitstorm descended on Illinois the day I planned on leaving. Fun in the frozen rain while crossing the guard becomes death blizzard on the suddenly four hour drive home. Gotta love winter. I can't see shit out the window, and all these cars are piled up in the ditch, and hell, even my car takes a random lurch here and there, trying to buck me like so many broncos, and for over half of my trip, I am trapped behind this shithead who will not go a millimeter over 28 mph. Seriously. It was bad, but it was not that fucking bad. When getting up to 30 seems like some sort of huge D-Day victory, but no - wait, wait there, friend! He starts mashing the brake like he's in a seizure, and fuck, hello 28 again. The whole drive put me very much on edge, so I was pretty excited to get home and relax in my nice little home... with no power. Fucking boonies. Power was out for ten hours that evening. Good thing we had a fireplace is all I can really say. Mom was, strangely enough, pretty worried - first that we would freeze to death (honestly, though, I could tell no real difference between our living room and my bedroom here at school) and then that the sleeping bags would just burst into flames, the corn husks to our disgusting little charred people tamales. Somehow, we survived, but the power company seemed to think that they had fixed the problem when, uh, they had not, so after the ten hours that night, we had another powerless four or so on Saturday as well. If there's one thing that will get me to bed at a reasonable hour, it is the utter lack of heat and light in my life.

Thanksgiving itself was, well, pretty standard. I guess there are two new babies around (including little Raymo, who could very well be a shrunken down version of my late grandfather), but babies are very overrated at this age. Little more than shapeless blobs of flesh. Yes, they can wear clothes. But then, so can the biohazard bag filled with Christina Aguilera's liposuctioned cellulite. A BABY! Once they start doing things - communicating, attempting to stumble about - then you can catch my attention. Anyway, usual food and stuff, all special occasions are becoming redundant, same old, same old. I made little conversation, focusing instead on the piece of tripe known as John Grisham's Skipping Christmas (Now a major motion picture with Tim Allen!!!!!). I hope his lawyer novels are better than that crap; his writing style made me want to die a little. There's nothing wrong with keeping things simple, but God knows there's a difference between that and sounding like a cretin. What a piece of shit. Speaking of, I made a very amusing comment about excrement at the dinner table and was immediately silenced. Now who's the real family here? Kyle would have loved that shit! Maybe I'm just grumpy because the horrors of old age were all about me. Everyone is in pain all the time or crazy or some combination of the two, and I may be the only one who doesn't pretend it's all fine. My poor grandma can't get out of a car anymore. I mean, sure, no one can keep up with me - I get out of cars very quickly, it's what I'm known for - but suddenly it's this huge, painful ordeal for her. She's groaning and straining and I swear to God I heard her swear for the first time in my life that night. "Shit." I nearly passed a stone, I did.

Parents go to bed early, Missy goes to bed early, Nate steals cooking wine from the kitchen cabinet. Hey, I'm not proud of it! Friday, Mom and I head back to Grandma's to help her set up Christmas decorations, further proof that my mother is some sort of saint. I mean, a good deed is one thing - I don't mind that. But for the first time I'm really starting to notice how particular my grandma's vision for things are, specifically that my mom can't do anything right. It even filtered down the line some to me. Mostly I just did my ridiculous laugh, though, because... well, it was pretty funny. Face the nasty ass cardboard singer forward. No, forward. Forward! "It is forward." Out for lunch and then we left on the pretense of going home but ended up hanging out in the area for a few more hours. Even went to the mall. From everything I'd heard on news reports all these years, I assumed people would be ripping one another's limbs off, but the "really busy" Peru mall wasn't even as packed as the Champaign mall on any Saturday night. Mom has an ankle and a back, she says. I say that that is probably how Grandma started out. We meet my dad for dinner, completely fill up the high scores on the movie trivia game machine, and I pee on a dumpster out back while trying to get my junk signal to work in the outback.

Saturday, Justin and I go out shopping, our main motivation for Nicolas Cage and his new film. But it's sold out at the mall, and each place we proceed to (Ottawa, then Morris) isn't starting until 7. I continue flinging Scooby-Doo playing cards at his head, periodically sticking them under the windshield wipers of the occasional car like some sort of idiotic parking ticket. For some reason, this strikes me as the funniest thing imaginable. Finally, in Morris, with about an hour to the movie, having eaten at shit R-Place once again (having seduced the waitress into giving me an ice cream sundae with bananas in it, I mean), having played another shitty gun video game, Justin decides he is not in the mood, and we come home. Cocktease. That's fine, I decide, because Love Actually is on HBO, and that is the epitome of adorable and/or British. Hugh Grant! I should hate you, man! You always play the rake! But God, there you are, and I'm all like, "There you are again, you little devil teehee" Ooh - earlier on, I watched Once Upon a Time in Mexico. See, uh, I can't decide what I actually think about this movie. The story is almost entirely irrelevant, and I don't really care about the characters (except, you know, Johnny Depp and the yellow shirt kid), and I was kind of annoyed that Robert Rodriguez added Salma Hayek in for literally no discernible reason except to put her gigantic boobums front and center on all the movie poster. I mean, don't get me wrong; I love the woman's ridiculous latina cha-cha's, even moreso that she was also randomly the Best Knife Thrower in the World, but damn! Make a movie about that! Don't add it into a movie with only a few threads of connection. Anyway, I do still recommend it, though, because of how comically overstylized it is (My assumption is that it is on purpose, but God knows I've been wrong before) and, more importantly, for the occasional surreally ridiculous moment contained within. Mostly I speak of Enrique Iglesias' (yes, him!) flamethrower guitar case and the R/C guitar case bomb-o-matic shortly thereafter. Those, my friends, make art.

Sunday night, I made an important decision. "Boy, man! I don't want to be one of those people who drink all the time! Therefore, better get so smashed as to want to completely avoid the shit all week long!" And so we did. The six (???) Mike's Hard Limes might have done the trick on their own, but Kyle had to be a whiner and not want his Boone's Farm, so I had to drink all of that as well (and I was so pissed at Bald Bull in "Punch Out!" that I needed something to take my mind off things), and then I can only assume I either stole drinks at the bar or had some sort of patron saint because I know at least one Blue Moon appeared from somewhere. This may well be the secret to success at bingo because I won a fuckload of prizes. 3 to 4, but fucking Smacko (drunker than me, theory goes) smashed up all of my police gear when he elbow-dropped our table. That's what I recount anyway, but I was a little busy winning Full Body Shambo! I could not misstep, even if I can't precisely pin down what happened. I mean, there are obviously some constants. Touchdown no doubt said some creepy shit about female bodybuilders. Smacko no doubt explained to Tony that O-68 is "You blow me, and I owe you one." Go back a few entries, and I was clearly pining for the bingo babes, just like normal. Unfortunately, my big prize for the evening (an huge inflatable Monday Night Football blimp) did not last long. Could be from us playing catch with it all the way home from the bar, but I blame fucking Pat Doran, author of the DI's "The Way Life Should Be." Fellow has entered my life, I tell you! And he is now my arch nemesis! Just 'cause of the whole Jake Gyllenhaal thing. Tried to burn me and my blimp with his cigarette. Just about the last thing I remember about the night was completely refuting Spritz's claims that I was drunk (That's when you know it is bad) and watching Smacko stumble outside with a saw for some reason. He woke up the next day with 12 cuts on his hands. Another Sunday well spent, even if I did have to blow off the eMall.com meeting that night. Yes, yes - that might be why they didn't come, but fuck! I left a message with a good excuse. I want my free protein shake samples, you shits!