07/20/2005 - 2:28 a.m. | then again i'm a virgo; i'm no match for you

That last entry really took the shit out of me, but if I don't keep plugging along, I ain't ever gonna catch up! Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to catch up whatever I do, but this way you can mark it on my epitaph: Shithead tried.

The next day I woke up after 7 hours feeling so amazingly rested. I mean, it usually takes ten for me to feel really solid, but I guess when compared to 2 or 3 from the previous day, my body was ready to take anything. Oh yeah, we skipped the second day of filming - I guess you realized by now. I'm sure they'll go through frame by frame and remove all evidence of us as penance for our insolence, but I can deal. We didn't have anywhere to stay (Julie did not have any furniture, and although just about every person in her family offered, Missy didn't want them to get us a hotel room... I'm the same way, so it's not like I don't understand), and it was probably unwise to miss another day of happied filing, so we made our way back. I was not the least bit disappointed, and I don't think Missy was either.

Anyway, there was a shit ton to catch up on, but yes, there always is. Missy came into work with me on Monday before she left and between naps sort of observed me in action. She noted that I was very proficient at my job (in spite of? because of? talking to myself), fast and organized and friendly and not thrown by the cretins who call with nonsensical requests. In all honesty, I do think that in some respects God created me to do office work. It's like every job I've had before has led to this point, and now I'm pretty much at my full potential. But then... Would going into advertising be an affront to God? Would I be spitting in the lord's face?! Maybe I am supposed to be Jesus' secretary when the Second Coming rolls around and I'm tossing it all aside to sell some window cleaner?! WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME! ACK!

Ahem. What can I say? I can't think "office work" without "religious frenzy" somehow.

We sat around or tongued each other or whatever it is that normal couples do until Kyle got home. He wanted a haircut, and this time no one was going to stop me from giving him one. He sat outside while I circled (somewhat randomly) around him, chopping off offending clumps of hair when I could get them. It's true there was no rhyme or reason to my snipping - length was estimated throughout and I didn't cut whole areas at a time - but Kyle's hair is like mine. We keep it messy, so it doesn't matter how "good" it is cut or anything. Real hair I could never do - Spritz would crucify me if I tried something like that on him - but it worked pretty well... even when the downpour started (and promptly stopped right after I put the shampoo on him - we filmed some dramatic Cuba Gooding Jr. scenes of Kyle confronting the Lord - it was just one of those days). Kyle just kept right on sipping his beer; the ones he and Missy had attempted to shotgun earlier had calmed his nerves a bit, but it's still difficult to trim ears when your client is more or less headbanging simultaneously.

We decided to get trashed that night.

Kyle bought some brandy and some root beer. He was somewhat convinced that this is what they call a Brandy Alexander, but it is in fact not like that at all. It is, however, quite delicious, even if the whole of the internet has not heard of it at all. Christian Brothers Very Smooth Brandy (the kind my late grandfather drank, God bless him; I gave him a little shout out and dipped my pinkie in a shot like I used to) and a 3-liter of Vess root beer. Cheap date. Missy got some wine (which, it occurs to me, is actually still downstairs), Shelly got pie ingredients (Silly! You can't drink those!), and I got enough for shitty makeshift Tom Collinses. Damn you, Tom Collins. You fucked me again. Gin seems to be the chink in my armor. I was happily sipping a big old glass of whatever, thinking it was quite pleasant, and Shelly asked for a taste. I'm surprised she did not throw up on my hand then and there. Anyway, three of those, and I was fairly drunk off my ass. How drunk? Here's a hint: My television choices for the evening included Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and "Whose Line is It Anyway?" There you go. First nice drunk then mean drunk, but then I'm always sort of mean, so we'll just say Nate drunk. Hey, were they mad we did not tell them about the movie? Not that mad. I stumbled upstairs and phoned Barnes & Noble, shouting them an order to reserve me a copy of the new Harry Potter book then came back down to eat the possibly raw pizza that possibly contributed to that puking I mentioned earlier on. I said I wanted chewy crust, not ebola virus crust! Silly!

There were some other incidents, and I might not have the ordering down on them exactly right, but it's still important that you know. Trust me. Uh - after months and months of waiting (We'd pretty much planned it when we met, after all), Missy brought her broken super-expensive stereo so that we could toss it off the top of the Allen Hall parking garage. We brought a slightly buzzed Kyle along for our manpower and sent that shit flying. Kyle heaved it mightily, and it hit the street hard (bouncing off the the top of a streetlamp on its way down). Got smashed to fuck, yeah, yeah! But so did the CD that whomever used it last had left inside of it. Oops. Sorry about your CD with the pot leaf on it, whoever. It was probably not very good music anyway.

The next day was, geh, I don't know what. I was not at work in spirit, let's say that. Amongst all the Harry Potter shit, I was reading an article on MSN about this survey they gave all these office workers. Apparently, on average, the normal office worker wastes about two hours of their day doing nothing - and that doesn't include lunch. They also indicated the top five laziest states. Missouri was number one, and boy, were they pissed. They interviewed the Secretary of Office Supplies or whatever, and he was all like, "Well, our busiest workers were of course too busy working to stop and take that silly survey!" Oh, right. My bad. You win, Missouri. I did think it was strange, however, that the article made special notice about a highly-concentrated spot at 205 W. Park St., specifically the second floor, specifically the northwest cubicle.

Hold on... that's my cubicle! :O

That evening we went and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at a nearly packed house. It was far closer to the book than the original movie, but I still can't honestly say I was satisfied. For one thing, no one has ever gotten that damn glass elevator right. There are no rocket engines on top, you fags. All it is is a 1) glass 2) elevator. That's it. The Oompa Loompas were closer, and it was an inspired choice using that strange little Indian man cloned again and again, but you could hardly understand the words of the songs, so the point was lost. Finally, I just did not like the treatment of Willy Wonka at all in the story, the whole damaged childhood thing. Lots of people might blame Johnny Depp for his creepy Michael Jackson-esque performance, but it's like everyone is too old to understand what Willy Wonka is actually supposed to be like. Both Gene Wilder and Mr. Depp made him too slow and too creepy, and I think it's the result of reading the book like an adult. If you look at the book like a grownup, yeah, it is fucked up. Wonka brings these kids in, and horrible stuff happens to them, and he kind of laughs it off. It's sort of unnerving. But it's a fairy tale, and kids inherently understand that there is no psychology behind it. Willy Wonka does not have unresolved issues with his father; no more than the queen in Snow White has narcissim. Go too deep and you spoil the whole thing. Wonka should be fast and clever and definitely a little manic - and definitely not understood by adults - and I'm not going to be happy until someone plays him as such.

We hit up Barnes & Noble afterwards for the huge gathering of Harry Potter nerds. They were actually pretty organized about the whole thing (Take a page from their book, movie producers!), so we didn't have to wait too long. Unfortunately, there was no time for costumes or anything, but there were plenty of others to make up for our lack. I stood and tried to guess if the hot girl in the Slytherin schoolgirl outfit was legal or not. Best not to think on it.

Missy was upset at me. See, while at the theater, Allison Helm called. I checked my phone while it was ringing, and Missy asked who it was. I lied and said Edmund, but it turns out she had seen who it was anyway, the dirty cheat. Anyway, that pissed her off, for obvious reasons, but as they always say, I lied with the best intentions. I am well aware of how Missy feels about Allison, how the mere mention of her name gives her stomach cramps, and occasionally I think it is best to dodge such bullets as, yes, Allison calls me and, yes, sometimes we do spend time together. Not doing anything bad, but that doesn't even seem to matter to Miss, and so I try and keep things on the D/L. Well, anyway, when we got back, this all escalated and came back to the same issue that's been bouncing around in her head for some time now: Cleveland.

Actually, to be quite honest, Missy was pretty insane this weekend. She cried no less than five times and would usually try to jump my bones soon thereafter. Like all men, I am somewhat of the opinion that sex will cheer anybody up... but that women do not want to have it when they are sad, so this was all very confusing to me. "You try going from out of control horny to clinically depressed six times a day." Anyway, it was a rough patch for me, trying to deal with the madness when I am already not the most secure partner right now. And she kept pushing at me about why I was not including her in my future plans necessarily, and I very nearly pushed her away completely rather than tell her, but I finally let some of the truth leak... that I see every relationship in terms of how it will end and that I just can't bet on us being the real deal. I'm just not feeling it. That would be depressing to hear, huh? Yeah, maybe I keep some things in for a reason, right?

I felt closer to crying than I had for a while (Well, barring the end of the most recent Harry Potter book... Is it bad that I did not cry at my own grandfather's funeral but teared up a little at Dumbledore's? Well, my grandfather's funeral wasn't as well-written, now was it?), and I'm honestly not sure if or how things sorted themselves out. "You have to try, Nate." I've been trying, girl. That's the only thing that's kept me going in relationships this far. It would be so easy to cut myself off from all the people around me. Get an efficiency, away from home, from friends, from family, from everybody. It's only because I try and fight that stuff that you see me around at all. When I start to push people away, I have to drag myself back all over again because I know it's actually the right thing to do.

And don't think I like that you know that, either. Now you know that I know you are going to go away someday and that it's pretty much all I think about, that it underlines pretty much every thing I ever do. I'd just as soon not have you as an insider on this lunacy, but here we are anyway.

Thank God we finally slept.

"I'm kind of tired
'cause you wouldn't let me sleep last night
I'm a reasonable man
But I can't believe what's on your mind"

The ants are winning the war. I've been digging around, trying to find the ant spray, and the shit is gone. The only theory that makes sense that they found it and sold it on eBay and used the money to buy more ants.

No, wait. I found it. OK, so it's clearly far to late to try and rid myself of this infestation. My only hope is to instead use the spray to make a ring of sacred protection around my bed, a border which they (hopefully) cannot cross. It's like all those exorcism movies. The evil can't hurt me inside the ring.

Then again, usually in those exorcism movies, there's some evil already inside the ring waiting to trash the priest and toss him down some stairs.

Christ.