02/13/2005 - 6:56 p.m. | ladies is pimps too

I woke up this morning sounding more or less like a 90 year old beerslut - a smoker at that (Too much hyperbole?) It hurt to talk, what I did say was basically incomprehensible, and I could hardly finish a sentence without my body try to extract some of its ample supply of phlegm. Needless to say, I did not think I was in top form to try and talk people into giving me hundreds of dollars, so I took the day off. Maybe not the wisest idea. I mean, I do have more than a few to spare, but this isn't exactly the best time to turn down $30, especially since I'll be visiting Missy at the end of the week, and I'm not exactly sure I can afford that at all. I've run the numbers a few times, and mostly it ends up with me being stranded in Missouri on Sunday evening. In the rain. Well, whatever. Life isn't an adventure unless every undertaking has the potential to become a huge, flaming disaster.

Kyle come up screaming Saturday morning, "NATE! NATE WAKE UP! NATE ARE YOU THERE NATE!" Figuring the house was on fire or he had strangled Shelly in a fit of passion, I groggily tried to croak some sort of response he could hear. "What's wrong, man?" "NATE WAKE UP NATE" "I'm here, man!" groans grandma. "What's up?" "ARE YOU A... HUNGRY MAN?!" Okay, that's just a little hilarious. Last week, we went to Wal-mart and on a whim both bought these terrible Hungry Man TV dinners. As is required by my contract, every time someone tells me to get fish, I must do it. Do not take advantage of this. But anyway, I got a Fish 'n' [Cheese] Chips bucket and some buffalo chicken thing. Luckily, Kyle isn't so cruel as to wake me to the possibly already spoiled fish, so we shared in our chicken terribles. Here's a shocking fact for you: Kyle Wild - the Kyle Wild, pit of thawed MSG for the ages - couldn't muster the stomach to finish the chocolate brownie included with his meal. Therefore, I don't know why I was somewhat surprised when I got to my own, and it tasted like human asshole. With corn in it. I remember what else I did for the rest of the day, but it doesn't seem like it would add up to me being up at 3 am. Oh well - who am I to judge? We played Kyle's basketball game for a while. I made some horribly tall white dude with a bowl cut. He was good at three pointers and nothing else. Somehow, he got trashed varnished. Then I sat about debating what to use my precious free iTunes songs on. Let's see... I got a cover of REM's "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" by Dashboard. Impeccable taste, Nate Walsh. Everyone loves hobo love affairs! How in the world did that take you four hours?

Later, already jonesing for more stupid music, I dragged Shelly to the story with me, so that I could stock up on junk food. The security guards must have thought I was an insane conspiracy theorist, squinting underneath Pepsi bottles, trying to read their innards. We also spent more than half an hour going through celebrity hairstyle magazines. Forget porn, guys. If you want the really hot shit, go for the hairstyle magazines. Lindsay Lohan was on the cover of one, and they pretty much airbrushed her to kingdom come. Not a freckle remained on her body, and her hair almost looked strawberry blonde instead of red. My God, a real person! Ah, but it is only a clever ruse. I am also sort of fascinated with Skye Sweetnam, my one true hope for the post-Avril Avril that Fefe Dobson was supposed to be. She is a horrid redhead with a horrid mole, but somehow this might just work for her. I think she's supposed to frighten me a little bit. I pray for a single, my dear! Finally, Shelly and I stumbled upon a feature about Christy Carlson Romano and both fell in love with her instantly. She is gorgeous. We actually went over to the haircare section to try and plot out how we could make Shelly's hair look half as good as hers. Aborted. Man, I am all about insipid details today, no? Finally, look at these little Snapple lip gloss bottles! Aren't they the cutest ever! WHEN DID I TURN SO GAY

Plans for the rest of the evening were pretty dodgy. Finally fed up with that stupid box of Muffin Tops cereal, I doused them with lighter fluid and lit the box on fire on the sidewalk. They burned surprisingly well, but the smouldering remains made a fog of foul-smelling smoke that pretty much surrounded the whole damn block. Sneaky Andy and Shanks snuck (sneaked, right?) into our house from the roof and tried to scare us, but I heard them coming and thankfully saved us all from a heart attack. Kyle: "Dude, do you hear someone?" Me (spotting them in the shadows): "Yes." They spent the next few hours there, just as bored as we were, Andy talking about shotgunning farts and freebasing Pop Rocks, and Shanks leaving us with a lovely Google image search of "pre op trannys." Longing for Hot Topic some more (How sad, right?), I browsed the website for a while. "God damn it, guys! Kelly Osbourne has released her own clothing line, and I'm not there to peddle it! Fuck!" I did, however, buy a PETA pin with a baby chick on that says, "I am not a nugget." I might send it to ChickenMc, but I might also wear it proudly myself. Probably the latter, as I selfish as all hell. It was at this point that Allison Helm called.

Let's backtrack a moment and discuss Friday evening. Shelly's mutant friend Carle (like the hospital!) was having a party, and a very bored Spritz and Nate wanted to go. Kyle and Shelly were exhausted, however, having spent the whole previous night with the Dew Man, so it was doubtful they would come along. Anyway, I got what I thought would have been pretty damn fucked (a bottle of pinot and some more besides), but they miraculously cancelled each other out, and I was more or less okey dokey. We sat watching stupid "American Chopper," where I paused at one point to say, "You know, Spritz... I think I really don't like motorcycles." This is interesting, as mere hours later, I was somehow loudly asserting my affinity for the very same. Anyway, we were getting ready to head out, when Kyle and Shelly did stumble out, still exhausted, but just as intent on getting sloshed themselves. We set in the dim light and drank and talked, and it reminded me of the old days. But then I'm a sentimental fuck. Anyway, we went to this party presently, and it was pretty lame, but Kyle had already bought cups for himself and Shelly, and damned if he was gonna let that eight dollars go to waste. They had homemade beer, which made me cry it was so bad, but they also made very strong rum and Cokes, and that made Kyle very happy. So we sat around watching Kyle drink and wax poetically about his love for Shelly (aww) when who should come in but Miss Helm and her company?

Things have been... well, odd... since revelations were made a while back, and the evening was more than a little alcohol-fueled, but I do think Allison and I finally buried the hatchet. This is supposed to be a good phrase, which is why I am using it, but it sure doesn't seem like one. "Allison and I finally buried the hatchet... in my lower back." Anyway, we decided we held mutual respect for one another, and decided to be allies in bitchiness, as more or less we are the only people we can stand in the whole of the advertising program, the rest being sorority girls killing time until they can become trophy wives or stupid artschool rejects who are no doubt more concerned with how their carefully mussed hair looks than any creative product they dump out. That said, we hung out at the party for a while, discussing ads and how horrible everyone is and whatnot. She has a good deal more focus (intent?) than myself, studying ads and learning about the industry, whereas I am more of the preccocious prodigy, beliveing everything will come naturally to me, all resulting in both genius and perfection. In other words, she uses her head, and I use my heart (or possibly my crotch). Maybe we can balance each other out. Her friends had already left, so I walked her home, because I do have some faint notion of chivalry in my cold, reptillian soul, and we went to her room to look at her can of gravy (Not a euphemism!) and the ads she hung up under her bed. And that's all. Most of the ads she had were from women's magazines, so their strategies don't always come naturally to me. "You'll have to do ads for women someday, though," she argued. Yeah, and I've already got them all planned out, thanks to Kyle Wild: "SHUT THE FUCK UP / YOU'RE ON THE RAG" [Buy Herbal Essences] "This is your face; I'm ramming my cock into it" [Buy Yoplait]. Good stuff, right? After I left, I ran all the way home, just to make sure I could still go a mile or so without dying on the pavement. I could.

Anyway, in honor of our newly-sealed friendship, Allison called me up on Saturday night to see if I wanted to go to a party down the street. I signed on, yelling The Streets at passerby as I weaved my way there. So then I got there, and I wasn't exactly sure she wanted me there at all, which is certainly confusing. Actually, there was a whole vibe there that I didn't entirely understand. Maybe it was that I wasn't drunk, or maybe somehow the whole room knew that I had purported them to be artfags, but I felt like I was getting a lot of weird eye contact the whole time. Allison and I may be all right, but it remains to be seen with her friends. Hillary / Haylie seems civil at least, and though Nik (the Bob Dylan one, right?) tried his best to be biting, he wasn't very good at it. "Something something artfags a lot something something." I shouldn't judge, however; not everyone sold their soul for the ability to be amazingly acerbic at a moment's notice, drunk or otherwise. [Yeah, I guess I could have gone for money or power or women or something, but the ability to dig down to someone's soul and just... bug them a bit seemed a whole lot funner. And, on the plus side, I can't see myself in the mirror! Tricky Lucifer has gradually weakened my control over this power, however, so that now I do it without thinking. PERVERT! CUNT! Damn my dark gift.] Anyway, them I could handle. I still don't think they have all the facts, in that a) I do not use "artfag" as a negative term and b) I am an artfag myself (if perhaps only a little more self-aware of it), so I'll just keep trying to explain these things. I am, however, fairly terrified of meeting a drunken Emily Johns in an alley one of these days. Girl's got rage, and I have a bad feeling I'd wake up with organs missing and something foul tattooed on my forehead.

Allison was being oddly... sensual with her German-skirt wearing friend (who also kept glaring at me), and I did not feel welcome in Emmanuelle 4: Concealed Fantasy, so I stayed downstairs with Nik. Oddly enough, Andy's roommate Jimmy was there as well. Now, it might be that he was drunk (or that I have never seen him not drunk), but Jimmy is more than a little unnerving to me. Allison thinks it's his beard, but anyway... So he starts talking to me, because we do sort of know each other, and there's just this creepy edge to him, moreso than usual. And then I remember that I saw him last night at Allen when I was walking Allison back. It would seem he has some sort of thing for her, because he starts interrogating me. "So, what's the deal with you and Allison, man?" Uh, nothing. We're just friends. "I saw you walking her back to her place last nght." Well, yeah... It was cold and all her friends had left, so yeah... "So, what went on?" Uh... Well, we're both ad majors, so we looked at some ads for a while, and then she got sleepy, so I left. "Right..." Meanwhile, more and more people seem to be looking at us. Is it me? Jimmy? "Don't bullshit me, man. What really happened?" Nothing, man. Jesus. I've got a girl. "You do?" Yeah, man. In Kansas. "Oh something mumble something something world weary sigh I can already tell I'm not going to end up in my bed alone tonight." And he walks off. Well, great! This has been about as surreal as I can take. Allison is nowhere to be found, and the only other people I know here seem to either bitter or psychotic, so I book it. Longest twenty minutes of my life.

The rest of the evening is spent as DJ, sorting through Spritz's piles and piles of shit music for the occasional bit of indie or nostalgia that we can agree on. I had sooooo much chocolate milk.