09/20/2005 - 12:57 a.m. | and suddenly fear besets

[Trying to squeeze into the narrow window when my laptop works to get this shit posted is all like hacking the gibson and what not - sorry for delays!]

Ooh, there was an awful lot I wanted to write about, but now that I have the time in which to do so (namely a two hour lecture on� well, I�m not sure what the man is talking about actually. Eyes, more than likely), I am completely drawing a blank. Uhhh� I skipped my last three days of work (last four, if you count today), and I think it�s finally made it through the mill that I have not been there doing my shit. Well, hell, I don�t think I want to go back at all now, so I�m seriously thinking of mailing in my keys, blocking Brian Van Holm�s phone and e-mail, and getting the fuck on with my life. It�s not like I�m for want of employment, right? I just got that labsitting job in the comm building, and James finally sent me out a schedule, so my cup is all sorts of runningeth over. God, I write like a retard sometimes.

I was waiting fucking forever for the weekend to begin. You might not consider it much of a week when it mostly consisted of me sleeping in and watching way too many �Star Trek� episodes. But come on, man! How am I supposed to go to class when fucking Picard is drawing a smiley face on a warp core breach frozen in time, cackling insanely? That is worth any knowledge I might have earned going to �Classic Campaigns� or whatever bumfuck class I skipped out on. It�s been me and Shelly a lot lately � Kyle is always off at work or meet up with some Russian chick with deceptive boobs (If you set the angle and zoom right, even I would appear to have large knockers), and Spritz is obviously never around, so we keep dragging each other out on our various errands. I guess I could have also accepted Hot Michelle�s invitation to get Indian food, but I do not believe I am ready (e.g. drunk) enough to talk to a relative stranger all by myself. I feel like I�ve been regressing a lot lately � less eye contact and such � so I�m really going to make a conscious effort. Punch me in the ear if I don�t look you in the eye enough.

And, lord, thank you when that weekend finally began. I sat around listening to Dane Cook with Smacko and Shelly, dumping enough gin and Capri Sun in my system that going out would be tolerable. Smacko had heard of a party from the facebook, which sounded like a pretty bad sign to me, but then, our party was on the facebook, so we�ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Actually, turns out Hot Michelle had rescheduled the trip to Joe�s for Friday night instead of Saturday. Of course, I would never answer the phone, so she tried passing the message on to Spritz, and well, Spritz being Spritz, he would obviously never ever tell me. Maybe I should have let him know that I was encroaching on his territory, except� I hadn�t really done a thing. As always, I just wander stupidly through life. Someone IMs me, and I�m like, �All right, I guess we will do whatever dumb shit you suggested.� Still, I expect this to get more interesting all the time, heh. The latest suggestion has been that we all visit Soma, Champaign-Urbana�s only 21 and over club, and clearly the last place I ever, ever belong in the whole world. Apparently, it�s completely different � they have a dress code (no jeans, flip-flops, t-shirts), and no one gets stupidly drunk, and everyone is just amazingly beautiful. Yeah, I�m going to fit right the fuck in. I can�t even go up to normal bar skanks � it seems doubtful that I can approach the fashionable elite and ask them what their majors are. I really think it sort of gets to the point where someone is so hot that I am no longer attracted to them, just because it would be unrealistic to do so. Unless they are crazy, which levels the playing field and is thus far my only lease on life.

But I digress long enough. We eventually gather our forces and head in the direction of Elm for this shindig. I�m not even sure we made it, because we were interrupted on our way by a much, much better party. For one thing, it had Urbana people. Dancing. And there was a live DJ, which pretty much equals party success in my mind. And the song blasting as we entered was the Pussycat Dolls� �Don�t Cha,� a song I know I should despise by all logic but somehow cannot. �Don�t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me? (moan)� Oh, you silly song.

Another digression, I know, I�m sorry. I seem very susceptible to people�s opinions of others. Like, once Missy was like, �I�m not sure I like Jevon very much. He acts too masculine,� and then all of a sudden I�m noticing it all the time, and I�m possibly liking Jevon a little less. Of course, then Shelly and I were eating Indian, and she�s like, �I�m not sure I like Missy very much,� although perhaps in not such explicit terms, and suddenly my opinion is going down a little as well. �Maybe she does demand a lot out of me�� �Maybe she is sort of bitchy to me and all my friends�� Then again, there may just be some unspoken bad blood between Missy and Shelly, namely that they are both typically used to being the only girl in a large group of guys.

Anyway, I made the same joke that I did in here, that if I got really sick of Missy, I could always just cheat on her and have an easy way out. Don�t really need to make excuses for dicking some nasty blonde ho, right? Well, Shelly might have taken this suggestion to heart, because she�s suddenly trying to push me towards these different chicks all the time. Like, we�re at this party, and I�m sort of dancing by myself in my area (which, it occurs to me, might freak some girls out more than me just coming over and trying to dance with them), and Shelly keeps stumbling over and putting bugs in my ear. It's my own fault � she knows how much I love attention. But she�s all like, �That tall girl is into you!� or �You should go dance with that Asian chick!� Hillary�s superhot ex-roommate (the one who kept insisting I strip that one time) was there allegedly � I could not see well enough to confirm it was her � and Shelly even tried that shit in regards to her. �She�s seen you half naked! She probably wants to see the rest!� I paraphrase. And even though that girl is way, way out of my league, I�m all like, �Hey, she is giving me eyes a lot! Maybe there is a chance.� Luckily, I�m still a coward � a polite coward at that � so I just sort of hover nearby, and nothing really happens. The closest I got for the evening was getting some nugget to take a drink of the Capri Sun I had along. �There�s no roofies in it,� I said. Sip. �See?�

Smacko was dancing for a while, which was awesome, and even Kyle got into it for a bit, but they all eventually left, and I sort of leaned against a tree and tried to recover. Out of nowhere, though, I heard the bassline to �The Humpty Dance� and ran back inside to belt it out. The party had mostly cleared out by then, though, and I was surrounded by all these huge black guys, each of them at least a head taller than myself, and they�re all looking at me like, �What the fuck is this crazy cracker doing?�

I passed out after 3, 4, entirely confident that Shelly would forget all about our plans the next morning. No such luck.

See, remember that voicemail I got about winning 2 nights in any Marriott and $500 internet money? Well, I finally got sick of all the messages, so I called them back to see what the story was. The thing is, the whole thing seemed pretty legit � the guy seemed pretty forthright with all the details � �You listen to our timeshare pitch, you win these prizes.� Only other catch was that the meeting was all the way up in Downer�s Grove early Saturday afternoon. If no one had been willing to come along, I probably would have just said, �Fuck it,� but according to the terms of our new agreement, Shelly was all on board for that stupid shit. I had been sort of hoping that she would be too hungover and would sleep right through the whole morning, but wait, that was me. I might possibly have still been drunk, so I tossed Shelly in the driver�s seat and downed some nasty lo-cal peach drinkable yogurt before we left.

The drive was long, but it gave me lots of time to sober up (Not that I�d be driving on the way back either � I need to be payin� Shelly�s car bills like your grandpa probably needs another tumor), and we slogged through insane traffic (driving in lanes that did not exist, trapped in triangle configurations with complete assholes) to get there right in time. I didn�t even know the name of the place, but we found it OK and sat down with all the other couples (tee hee) to wait for the shit to begin.

Our portly speaker for the day had just been married the day before � talk about a lovely honeymoon. �I�m gonna spend an hour pitching vacations to white trash who are only here because of the free hotel!� If we�re interested in a hotel stay only because it is free, how likely will it be then that we will want your $15,000 vacation package? But I am getting ahead of myself. First, she wanted to try out her new Powerpoint slideshow of all the various places this business offered vacations for. I can�t say why exactly, but this struck my funny bone hard. By the time we reached the pictures for Vermont, tears were streaming down my face, I was trying so hard to hold my laughter in.

The idea was not a bad one, actually; it just happens to be entirely unfeasible for two college students. The company is like a Sam�s Club for vacations. You buy them in bulk, and it cuts the cost of each individual vacation to under half. Again, though, I ask, if you were really the type of person who could afford to take 30 weeks of vacation a year (that is, the maximum they allow with this package), you probably wouldn�t need to worry about half-price and shit like that. You�d be too busy wiping your butt with fifty dollar bills.

So, the lady got through with her speech, and then we went sent on to our giantess of a caseworker, who basically repeated the thing all over again. I didn�t mind, though, because I now had a free styrofoam cup of Mello Yello. We kept telling her how we were just too poor (Shelly coined the phrase �negative money,� which I happened to enjoy a good deal), but I guess she was probably required to go through it anyway. We tried to make her feel better. �Well, once we get on our feet a little and earn a little money and vacation time, I would totally consider using your service.� Ha. I will be paying off bills longer after I am dead, and the only vacation I will be taking is one straight to fucking Hades.

Finally, a beaten woman, she summoned �Steve,� her supervisor and our last pitch before we�d get our free shit. Steve hated our asses. �So, there�s no way you could do this right now?� No. �What if were only like 50 a month?� 50 cents? �No, dollars.� No. He wanted to strangle us right there, and I would not be surprised if there were hundreds of dead babies in his closet back home, him with his creepy white facial hair and blue eyes, all looking like some sort of blubbery fish.

What do you expect, though, Steve? The only reason I�d �won� this contest, as far as I could see, was that I had drunkenly filled out the entry form in a particular way (and yes, I had been drunk at the time), marking that I was over 21 (but that could mean anything), that our household makes over $25,000 a year (and it almost does, I bet� with five people in it), and that I had spouse (listed as Kyle, but I believe they saw �Kylie�). That�s the risk you take with such a bold promotional move, Steve. And I hope I fucking win that car, too. I will drive it off an overpass as the final loogie in your eye!

One more man to talk to, one more entry form filled out in secret (probably a mistake, in that winning would only bring us back here), and we were free and clear with our hotel and our internet money. We�d called up Smacko (drunk and labsitting) and asked him to look up the website we had just won our �internet shopping spree� for. From what little he told us, it did not sound great. He was right. Perhaps the first clue should have been that the site�s URL was shopcrp.com. They made up some stupid acronym for CRP, but you know! You know! When we got home (after a brief stop at some snooty Von Mall for food, stolen ribbons, and a picture of a stuffed squirrel holding a tool box� followed by getting misdirected towards Chicago, paying like seven dollars in tolls, me using my excellent map-reading abilities to get us back), I spent like half an hour and deemed the site quite crappy. Nothing on there was worth having � shitty remote control cars, no-name power tools, AM/FM portable cassette player with SUPER BASS, gaudy jewelry, faux leather jackets (under �Fragrances,� they had a sole sad bottle of Powerpuff Girls perfume, Bubbles specifically) � and considering the hyper-inflated shipping costs, nothing was free about this shopping spree at all. The aforementioned SUPER BASS device? $15 shipped. They even addressed this in their FAQ, using the craziest excuses I�ve ever heard. �Shipping costs includes wrapping of packages, tape, buying those little packing peanuts and the gas costs incurred, recycling fees, the electricity used to power the internet, helping mail clerk Glady�s son with the treatment for his seizures, tithes to the pope, etc., etc.� I paraphrase. At least the hotel is worth something � as long as we tell them like 2 months in advance with 2 alternates and a few random dates. Yes!

Map-reading abilities are the stupidest abilities to boast about.

Shelly and I had an interesting conversation along the way about her friend Micah. You know, the one who suggested that he and Shelly make out "as a joke?" I'd never really had a complete picture of the boy - I thought that sort of shit was the only game the poor buy had. Apparently, however, he is quite the master sleaze, always bangin' girls and being all sly with lines and touching you covertly and shit. Best of all, he makes playlists when he is going to get some, such that he has some rhythm to bang along with. Slower at first and then POW POW POW and then slower. It would be awesome if he left it on shuffle accidentally. Anyway, this rocked my world a) that he gets girls and b) that this is somehow related to the things he says and does to girls. I'm in awe.

Incidentally, I've invented a new kind of sarcasm that is so serious that no one can even tell it is sarcasm anymore. It's really anybody's guess.

The night before I was� adequately soused, but I hadn�t been really, really gone in a long time. Like, that nasty booze taste in your mouth the next day. That drunk. So, to that end, I got some fancy pants apple cider that was half off from 10 bucks, and just downed one after another, occasionally running upstairs to wail some Dave Matthews. That�s right, you cunts! No shame there! Dave. Matthews. Band. Live tracks from years past, still enjoyed by Nathan Walsh! Suck on it.

Everyone was pretty fucking stagnant, and I was pretty fucking drunk and needed to get out of the house. Thus, as I am wont to do, another drunken bike ride, riding no handed (as if to prove, �Well, I�m not that gone!�), wailing some song or another, sipping from my cider bottle. I was on Springfield, a little east of McCullough, and there was something of a gathering in front of someone�s house. Someone yells to me, �Hey, man! Stop at our party!� Well, why the fuck not? I pull over and walk up to them, pulling on my drink. �You were drinking and riding your bike?� �Yeah, good thing I didn�t get a BUI, right? AHAHAHAH!� And we were all fast friends from there.

I mostly talked with the guy who invited me over, Chris. He was some redhead mega-hippie, tie-dyed shirt and everything. I guess his house was the unofficial home for pretty much every biology grad student on campus, so I was meeting all sorts of people who majored in frogs or whatever. Fascinating crowd. Not that attractive. Out of nowhere, Chris goes, �Hey, do you smoke grass, man?� I laugh at his choice of the word �grass.� Now I know this fellow is a hippie. But hell yes, I do, and we�ve been all cut off since Jason Kahn and his damn book, so suddenly we�re passing this huge J back and forth as cops cruise by. This is limitlessly funny to me. I suppose the weed helped.

So, I�m chatting with some other dude when this chick comes out on the porch and yells, �Does anyone want to shake some booty?� �Hell yes I do!� I cry and run inside with her. What a flock of mutants. There were three of them and me, all sort of spinning around to bad trance music (bad trance music they somehow knew the words to). Someone hands me a glass of bougelais [sic], and this one girl keeps trying to do swing dance moves on me, and it is surreal as all hell. I stay for a couple songs and then decide I need to get the fuck of dodge before the big one (the leader) starts to put the moves on me. I promise them I will return with friends � a promise I actually end up keeping when I come home and tell Shelly and Smacko about where I�ve been. Quite loudly, I�ve heard.

We go back, and Smacko and Shelly run to do shots, and I am stuck with the giantess, and it eventually becomes clear that there is no one here for Smacko to score with (nor would he want to, I would wager), so we started to depart. Not before I got into some sort of fake boxing match with the giantess. I wish I could even begin to impart the logic behind that event, but I can�t. We left.

Down the street was another strangely amazing Urbana party (in that it had lots of people dancing, I mean). Was there a DJ at this one as well? It is difficult to say, as at this point, everything becomes sort of a blur. Smacko left early on, but Shelly started in on her whole �Let�s get Nate to cheat on Missy� game. Not that I am somewhat to blame myself. Anyway, I was very, very drunk, but still whatever mental hitch I had remained intact, and I would not go up and dance with anyone. Shelly eventually handpicked some girl for me. �You think she�s pretty, don�t you?� Uhh� I can say with some certainty that every girl had some attractive quality at that point, but yes, she seemed gorgeous. Incidentally, my drunken repeated catchphrase of the night was, �Look, I�ll be honest.�

Anyway, Shelly sent me in the direction of this girl, and since I am much easier to command in an inebriated state than, say, Kyle Wild, I did my best to follow orders. But, well, let�s be honest (heh): I�ve got no game, there were a hundred other dudes all over her and her friend, I�m not much to look at, and I�ve got this major mental kink that makes it difficult to just go up to some poor pretty girl and bother them. Besides, they were too drunk to notice even the most overt advances. So, what did I do? Like the other hundreds of guys surrounding them, I sat in wait. Waiting to speak with her, waiting to possibly get close to her, touch her. See, maybe that�s why I don�t like it. It�s such a creepy sad game.

Eric Wilson was there, haha.

Anyway, my chance came when girl tumbled over on the ground, drunkenly. Chivalrous to a fault (ha!), I helped her up. �What�s your name, drunko?� She told me, but I do not recall, so perhaps we were not star-crossed as you may have thought. Continuing my weak chit-chat, I asked if she went to school here. She said, �No, I go to [Letter, Letter] H.S.� �Wait. You�re in high school!?� Sheepishly: �Noooo�� �How old are you?!� ��16?� It was like a blast of negative energy � everyone just flew away. Well, you girls owe me. I left you free to prance about stupidly, unraped by any of your fellow party goers.

But what did that leave me with? Not much. Shelly was talking to somebody outside, but when I came back from following that girl around, she was gone. Probably home, I thought, so I ran to the store to get some bean dip. Actually, that�s the short version. I wandered around for a while, looking for Sarah Zhong�s party (no clue where that was � was she even having a party?), not finding it, calling Missy, listening to her sob for like half an hour and not understand why at all, leaving Shelly a series of very drunken singsong messages about my plans for the evening, mostly about how I wanted a girl. Sorry, Shelly. You opened Pandora�s Box.

I made it home and sat with Smacko and Kyle out on the porch for a while. Suddenly, Kyle asks, �Where�s Shelly?� I�d sort of assumed she was passed out in her room, but I guess no one had seen her since I last did. Kyle, whose temper has been flaring more and more lately (Spritz and I decided we need to have a serious talk to Shelly about giving up her flower), started wigging out, punching and kicking shit and talking in his Angry Voice, which I was not fully able to deal with at that moment. So, he gets Spritz, and they start tearing around town looking for Shelly. Smacko leaves, and I am left alone with my thoughts, and I start feeling guilt because this is probably all my fault. I should have been guarding her better.

So, I just start tearing my way over to the party, stopping at every place with a crowd along the way (can of unopened bean dip still in hand, by the way), and I get to the party, which is simmering, and talk to Eric Wilson, and there�s still no sign of her. I start walking home in remorse until I am finally able to get a hold of someone (Spritz) and learn that she is home safe after all. See, I had totally forgotten that she had run into her friend Satiri from work (although I was quite proud of myself for figuring out who he was during our conversation just from context) and was probably with him the whole time. I only remembered her talking to this other bearded friendly hippie guy (also named Chris probably � aren�t they all?) about the legal age of consent and possibly weed some more, I can�t recall. I really can�t.

On the way home, I unscrewed the antennas from about 5 or 6 cars (one of which I know was a former � current? � police car). They were waiting for me in a pile next to me on the bed when I woke up the next day.

I bought some Fun Dip the other night. Although I hate the sugary part, I do love those white chalk sticks.

The next day was spent watching VH1 to recover from hangover, making phone calls, trying to decipher who I had sent IMs to (thus far I know I wrote Justin and mstan to tell them how much I wanted to hang out with them, as well as Jasmine and Hillary as I wanted to know �where the party at� Which party, I do not know), and creating nine damn roughs for ads.

Ever since the 26 voicemail incident, I have been trying to keep a handle on things, keep numbers way down. I seem to be cursed somewhat, but I did the math, and I typically get at least 4 voicemails in a 24 hour period. Maybe it is that I never, ever answer the phone the first time it rings. On Saturday night, I recall listening to 7 that I had somehow gotten in the past day. 5 (or possibly 6) in a row were from Missy. It was a world record, and I kept an out-loud tally for everyone to cheer along with.

Today (Monday) I went to class (sigh), did not go to work (sigh of relief), learned exactly how hard I am fucked in getting a double major (gasp), lost my Social Security card (piss), had probably the second best campaign in class (woo), heard back from the cookie place (hmm), got voicemails from Julie Downs (eee), and ate a massive portion of a veggie platter my G.E. friends stole from one of their little meetings (spray). They brought home a 16 oz. cup of dip, for Christ�s sake. This is their big week, I guess, where they all have to dress up (Kyle bought a suit?!) and meet with various companies - for preinterviews that could lead to interviews - and get all sorts of free food and prizes because everyone is fighting for them. Somehow, I am thinking my job prospects will not be tugging my arms as such, which is of course based on the assumption that I will have employers clamoring for me at all, and even if they are, chances are slim I will be wealthy or successful at all. But as I constantly say to roommatess, �You may be rich in money, but I will be rich spiritually.� What a God damned stupid thing to say. Still, I sort of feel like I should be doing something, too. I mean, something besides kicking ass at �The Typing of the Dead.� That�s right, friends! A typing teacher based on the dual successes of broken English and murdering zombies (I have it available for you, if only because you need to see how ridiculous it is)! This is how my children will learn to type. And if they hate zombies, lord help me, they will join their ranks soon enough then!

I sometimes think I�d like to be a doctor because of how insane the hours are and how stressful it must be. Then again, I�d just as soon not stick my fingers up butts (or really help people at all), so maybe I�d be better of being something with equally crazy hours. Like coke addict.

I had a dream last night I flew a space robot to the moon. It was like the size of the garbage can, and even though my parents flew up there to meet me at Lunar Base Whatever, there was some sort of sense of accomplishment to what I did. Like maybe I was the first to have successfully flown the space garbage can to the moon. It was cold there, by the way. Wear layers.

Also, Spritz and I were watching an episode of �The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air� (That butler is hilarious, with his dry air!) and saw a commercial with mozzarella stix in there somewhere, leading to an ill-fated poisonous trip to Perkins.