06/10/2005 - 1:12 a.m. | come on now sugar

It�s 2:04 at Barmann Central Station, and one can only hope my typing is not keeping others awake. Not that that shall actually prevent me in my endeavors, but we can continue to hope. I�m hoping that writing some each night will save me the painful experience of having to write a long entry after the fact; this always takes several weeks.

Kyle and I leered at the fairly sub-par candidates on �Fear Factor� until Smacko arrived. Tapey started acting up, and I ended up eating like a pound of pot roast at Kyle�s parents, followed by a thing of General Tso�s Chicken immediately thereafter. And that was before I rocked the ganja even.

While we ate, Shelly continually refreshed her thread on the Something Awful forums � or at least that is how I recall it going down. Apparently, if you are a girl, a single thread on the forums can cure self-esteem issues better than any number of therapy sessions. I can see why Shelly is so into it. Meanwhile, we also learned about this so-called �straight camp� where gay kids have religion pounded into them so as to remove their gayness � which is a myth by Satan, by the by. First off, if we follow fat camp as a model, should it not be called �gay camp,� as �gay� is the offending characteristic that is to be removed? I guess some kid recently came out to his parents, and they�re planning to send him there ($4,000 a pop or else we�d all be storming the gates, Smacko trying to get blowjobs from �ex-lesbians� � I need to be saved and whatnot). He managed to intercept a copy of the rules they sent his parents, though, and posted them online. Crazy shit peppered with religious quotes. Oh wait, I�m being redundant. But, like, for the first three days, they aren�t allowed to speak at all. And no Abercrombie clothes or music by Beethoven, because that instantly makes you a flamer. 15 minutes closed-door bathroom time a day. No diaries or contact with the outside world at all (TV, radio, news, internet). And when they are in their little group sessions, they have to say, �I love you, _____� after each person finishes speaking. I dunno about you guys, but that�s pretty much the gayest thing I�ve ever heard of.

I keep forgetting Jevon is religious, man. Like, we were reading their beliefs about gay people, and I started making jokes about how if you took every instance of the word �homosexuality� and replaced it with the word �religion,� it would be equally true. �[Religion] is a myth.� �Sometimes people blatantly cling to [religion] even in the face of overwhelming proof against it.� I paraphrase, but you get the idea. Still, it wasn�t until I made a joke about everyone having to read the Left Behind series that I finally remembered that I might be offending someone. Oopsie.

We went to Schnucks for booze and were all happy with our little selections � Kyle with his Jack and me with our gin and bottle of wine � when Smacko had to go and fuck everything up by coercing us into tequila country. None of us wanted to do it, but the theory was that watching someone else suffer while drinking it far outweighed our own suffering each time we ourselves had to drink (Like, if 4 of us were downing shots, I am really only unhappy for one quarter of the time, and the rest if pure hilarity, watching others choke and wheeze). So, somehow convinced with this logic, we stood there, comparing bottles, trying to figure out what the lesser evil overall would be, and this older guy came over and started giving us advice. He was all friendly and noble. But he didn�t tell us to hang ourselves immediately for contemplating tequila, so I hate him. We made some margaritas, and I can never tell if it is lime mix or the skunk alcohol, but I had me a pretty upset stomach pretty early on.

Smacko had bought some pretty shitty weed from Jason Kahn earlier (Oh, Jason - was I not supposed to mention to the rest of the cookie staff that you deal in drugs? My bad, brother) but had not been planning on smoking any of it until I brought it up. As such, he did not have any sort of apparatus on him, and we had to quickly improvise. We bought some rolling papers and tried to make us a fat blunt, but apparently rolling a marijuana cigarette was far beyond our means. Seriously, dexterity-wise, that shit is on par with brain surgery� except that when you fuck up brain surgery, valuable bits of drug don�t spill all over the table. Strangely enough, though, despite being an almost total newb to drug culture, I managed to assemble us a pretty kicking bong, cutting chunks from the screen door and such.

It was to be a guy�s night out � and a particularly shitty one at that. The plan was to go to White Ho for karaoke, get us some tunes and Smacko some mediocre handjobs. Shelly dropped us off� straight into hell where some motherfucker was singing �Fat-Bottomed Girls� We hung about for a bit, weighing our options, but the ho�s was nasty, the song selection was limited, and the queue was fucking massive. Instead, we mentally consulted the schedule the karaoke bitch gave us at Geo�s last week and headed towards Geovanti�s. Despite the promise of 75 cent draft Beast, the karaoke was nowhere to be found, so we moved onward to Legends. I am fairly sure that Bingo Babe Dawn wants a piece, but then again I�m always drunk when I see her, so I might be holding a little bias. Unfortunately, we were that table, yelling either vulgarities or insults pretty much nonstop. Smacko�s chances of getting tail were falling fast.

We�d heard there was a party over at Quimby�s, so we slowly made our way in his direction, stopping only, you know, every five or ten feet. Kyle would take one of his shoes off and whip it at a bunny whenever he saw one; he was starting to lead them towards the end, and his aim was getting pretty decent. Smacko was in full-on destructive mode and would not have listened to us if we�d even tried. Still, keying cars is bad, even for him. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage in the time it takes you to pick your nose. We tried to disapprove, but it is not our approval he seeks, but rather the complete destruction of all joy and happiness (and property) in the world.

Someone was severely misinformed about Quimby�s �party� �cause when we got there it was about six people in a room that smelled like B.O., playing Mario on various drugs. We stayed just long enough to be polite and then got the fuck out. Oh, did I mention we went to Big Boob�s place, as we decided she would be the most likely source for Smacko�s first rebound fuck? Yeah, we tried the doors and shit, but I guess a booty call would have been proper etiquette.

Then Smacko discovered bricks. And each time Smacko discovered bricks, Kyle would take off running like a cowardly little girl. Sure, maybe it was not a good idea to just walk away laughing when Smacko threw the brick in the lightpost and it sort of crashed through and stuck� but at least we looked like men. Someone in some house heard it and peered out the window. �What was that?� �I dunno, man,� I said. �Meteorite.� And his attempt to destroy the church sign was� ill-conceived. Maybe he thought the brick would just� stick. Yes, that would hold up in court.

Fucking slow drive to Kansas, guys. I left so fucking early today, but because of all the damn road construction and the fact that every person who drives a car is retarded, it took nearly an hour and a half longer than it should have. And yes, the retarded car driver is clearly self-inclusive. You know my history (and apparently so do Kyle�s parents now). But at least I�m a fast retard� and I�m respectful of other fast retards who want to get by. The slow ones exist in their own little world, and they seem to think that going 57 allows them access to the left lane to pass the guy going 56.9repeating. You should be going at least ten above to get passing clearance� and if you wanted that rule enforced, I would buy some sort of automatic rifle.

Anyway, I�m here now. We did not do much, as we were both sort of tired, but I got to watch two super artfaggy movies I had been waiting on for a long time. The Five Obstructions sounded like a neat idea when I read about it a while ago. This guy made some short film, and this fan of his has him remake it five times, each time giving him a series of increasingly challenging obstacles. The whole thing was recorded in documentary form. Well, I thought it sounded neat anyway, but it was pretty damn boring if I�m going to be honest. I guess it didn�t help that the source material � the short film that was to be obstructed � was this crazy indie art school black and white thing that I didn�t understand to begin with. �The Perfect Human is eating fish � it has a green sauce.� O Lord, I have learned so much about myself and about the world in general. So, anyway, what this led to was just a series of more bad art school movies, except each was made with some lame gimmick now, too, like animation or the guy who played Sydney on NBC�s �The Pretender.� Not recommended.

I�m not even sure I can speak too highly of the other movie either, but I�m going to have to watch it about seven more times before I can tell you for sure. It�s called Primer, and it�s this really low-budget thing about a couple of engineers who sort of accidentally stumble on a way to travel through time. They do talk like engineers, though, so it was difficult to grasp at first (I�m sure my roommates would revel in it � huge cocks and clits all about!), but I at least caught the gist of how the time travel system worked. Once it started getting put into effect, though, and all the doubles and failsafe systems and Milk of Doom started showing up, I reached for any straws I could grasp. It might have helped if they had just a teeny bit higher budget, so they could have actually shown the doubles on screen at the same time. As it was, it was just very, very bewildering. Still, it was very intelligent [-sounding?] about the usual problems these movies had, and I�d like to give it a few more shots before I come to any sort of conclusion� except that Missy should pick out the movies from now on, as I seem to lean towards suckfests.

We ate fruit chicken of some sort for dinner, which was fine, but I think Missy�s mom may have been vaguely annoyed with me for not having a real summer job. Me, too, woman, but what the fuck am I supposed to do? I have the skill set of a baboon, and I�m not ready to dive back into retail, as I know it would only lead to self-sabotage:

�Where�d you get those pretty eyes?�
�Jesus. Jesus would also like you to be this beach skirt, I�m just saying.�

That is an imagined conversation between me and an older patron, by the way. Speaking of which, perhaps because Missy�s parents are older, they seem to follow the same trends of conversation as my grandma and grandpa did, namely who is sick with what. And of course our old pal death. Nothing makes you want to down green beans like hearing who has what cancer where!

Oh, by the way, Spritz, thanks a ton for telling Missy the whole reason I changed my voicemail announcement to that longass one was a last ditch attempt to get fewer voicemails from her overall. Regardless of the veracity of this claim, the one rule we�ve always have � above all � for one another was no cockblocking. If that�s recently been amended, you should have let me known; I have a few things to tell Jen � wait, or is it Amber who is the primary girlfriend now? I can never seem to remember which one is holding the top spot.