01/05/2006 - 7:14 p.m. | *i just can't look, it's killing me*

I�m not trying to sleep as late as I do, but it�s been so gloomy out that my body stays thoroughly convinced that it is 9, 10 in the morning when in reality it 1, 2, 3 in the afternoon. Some perky weather would get me right the fuck up� but then what would I do with my time anyway? Write more entries? No, friends, I can only handle about one of these charmers a day. After that, I sort of want to murder anyone who steps in my path.

But! We are going to get nice and productive and try and knock off two, three, four days in a row in this one little (massive) entry here. The days were not fully exciting enough to warrant their own examinations, but in total I�m sure you�ll just be creaming your pants.

New Year�s Day we eventually all aroused ourselves and gathered the bulk of our tean (Spritz, Kyle, Shelly, Susan, Ducky, me) for breakfast out somewhere. Now, I don�t understand their strange obsession with eating, especially since it picks away my funds four or five bucks at a time, but I come along anyway because it is the last I am going to see some of these people (Kyle included *sniff*) for quite some time. Mary Ann�s and its hangover breakfast menu was our original destination, but apparently there was little original about it. Every damn person in town was crammed into that shitheap. We ended up at Taffie�s (again), and even that mockery of a dining establishment was fucking barricading the doors to keep the cretins from crashing them down. We were put on a wait list At Taffie�s. There is something very, very wrong about this. Taffie stacks were ordered all around (again), although this time Shelly was there to help me in the protest. It�s actually sort of this sliding scale. Girls hate Taffie stacks, which certainly precludes me and Shelly. Susan was manly enough to order but ended up disliking it, and Spritz gets it but orders his gravy on the side. See? Sliding scale. If you ever needed to find out if someone was transgendered, just take their ass to Taffies (I have decided to drop the apostrophe from their name, as it makes it look that much sicker in my mind). Ducky rode across all three of our laps on the way back, which was a very unpleasant experience for everyone but Ducky. He left soon thereafter, though, so I can forgive him for my busted clavicle.

We were all allowed some recovery time. I called Missy and now, fully healed, I was able to talk like my normal self again. Do I regret anything? No, not really. Pretty much the party turned out exactly how I wanted it to, but I wouldn�t have done half the shit I did had Missy been around, no matter how unobtrusive she promised to be. Of course, I�m just as fucked as when I came into this whole scenario, having promised I would visit her as soon as I got better. I�ve been piling on the excuses (originally my paycheck had not been deposited, but I have been dragging that tale on far longer than is truthful), waiting for� what? The balls to break up with her? My first appointment with a therapist (who will hopefully tell me to break up with her)? The girls just loves me too damn much. None of my signals seem to be getting through to her, and she is just so easy to appease for another day that sometimes it�s just quicker to do that. Ugh, I don�t like to think about it.

I also called my parents, who talked to me on the same line with separate phones. I felt like an episode of �Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.�

As everyone healed, Kyle decided to slow that process (and everyone�s blood flow) with his newest culinary invention, the hamlet. So called because one took a piece of hamburger (a bloody pound and a quarter at that) and more or less used it to form an omelet � flattening the fucker, filling the middle with shit, and folding it over itself as it cooked. It was far and away the most disgusting thing I have ever seen, but watching everyone�s different processed of preparation was quite entertaining. Joe and Will each made Philly cheese hamlets, stuffed with roughly 8 ounces of cheese, 8 of mushrooms and onions (saut�ed in all manner of things they should not have been saut�ed in). Yousaf went with a pizza hamlet, filled with chunks of pepperoni and his own 8 oz. bag of cheese, the hamburger completely flooded with sauce. Kyle, always the most willing to take things over the top, coated his shit with eggs and flour (some sort of foul beefcake?) and then filled with everything from tomato to crushed-up Combos (of the cheddar cheese pretzel variety). I�m not sure how the actual hamletting process worked (it�s hard enough to fold an egg over itself, let alone a pound of meat and toppings), but I can at least vouch for the final products: Too. Much. Damn. Meat. Yousaf was the only one who finished his, and that was only because Spritz tagged in for some of it. I helped Kyle with a big of his own (an artery-blocking mass of hell), and Joe�s and Will�s were abandoned not far into the process at all. Thank you, Kyle Wild, master of the low-culture culinary arts. I can�t believe I put that thing in my body.

The rest of the evening was spent watching VH1 and lying in moaning heaps on the couch. Susan was still there, although she hardly said a word all day. Apparently it was a rough night with Sumo Lloyd. I don�t know even if any fucking was gotten out of the deal, what with all the kaking Susan was doing in and around the Holiday Inn. When they could finally feel their limbs again, Joe and Yousaf took off, probably not to be encountered anytime in the foreseeable future. Allison was in and out all day, so she sat with us as we sort of droned through Dark City. Dank was around, too, but he mostly sat with the men, playing Madden.

We were all watching this horrible religious pseudo-cartoon about self-control and obedience when who should ironically walk in but Smacko? We thought that he and his friends had been on the porch drinking from the keg the whole time, but I guess they eventually wandered off to seek out other mischief. Smacko, filled with beer and a fifth of a fifth of tequila storms in, and start roaring about rolling on this bitch. He says things like that so often that we had no idea what he was talking about, so he stopped to specify. He had been going somewhere with his friends and someone had shouted something off of some balcony, making of their friend Mike because he is short or whatever. Mike actually has some handicap or something, though, so Smacko was not about to take this lying down and came to form a posse he would lead to this jerkoff�s front door. Will was first in line (obviously), his airsoft gun all loaded and ready. I was a more surprising second, running upstairs to grab my machete. As I fastened the scabbard to my belt, Kyle and Spritz signed on pretty quick. We even got on board with the stipulation that we could hold the rear and take off running at any time. This was something that needed to be seen.

We went out to meet Smacko�s friends. I believe they were impressed by our weapons, even if they were entirely useless. In all honesty, the machete is dull as hell, but it still looks fucking crazy and imposing when boy pulls a GD sword out, you know? Allison was walking with us, although Smacko slurred that bitches were not allowed and quickly sent her packing. Fearless leader went on to stop like three or four more times, tying his shoe like a mongoloid, taking a piss in some bushes, etc. Kyle used these opportunities to change weapons three or four more times. He finally settled on a rather large rock. You�ve got to admit, if you answer your door, and there is a crowd of dudes standing there in the shadows, one of them holding a fucking boulder, you are probably going to be scared out of your mind.

We arrive at the place (Green St., right next to the Super Pantry) and we file up the stairs, Kyle talking shit about the line being formed in terms of courage - him, Dank and me forming the rear flank. I wasn�t about to take that, though, so I moved up next to Spritz as we arrived. Kyle mysteriously vanished somewhere halfway down the stairs, far behind Dank even (who had no desire to be there at all). Courage indeed, what what. Smacko bangs on the door and starts slurring a this shirtless guy regarding his qualms. I�m not really listening (I�m too busy cackling at what the fuck we�re doing� plus the idea someone put on the table about randomly throwing the rock through their window), but it becomes clear that this guy has no idea what we�re talking about. �I�m here alone, man,� he says. �Sleeping.� Of course, that�s probably what I would say, too, guilty or not, if a posse of dudes arrived on my doorstep. It takes a while to appease Smacko, but he seems cautiously satisfied with the man�s answer and moves onto the next door over. This notion has me in absolute hysterics; everyone tells me to shut up. Smacko is pounding on the shit, yelling at the top of his lungs. �COME OUT YOU COCKSUCKER AIN�T SUCH A BIG MAN NOW ARE YA� This carries on for another couple of minutes (to my amusement) until the guy from the first door comes and tells us to get the hell out of here.

We make a gradual retreat to the outside of the building, where Will starts firing his gun at the guy�s window. The rest of us try to confirm that was the balcony that the guy had been yelling from� right up until one of Smacko�s friends (the one who punched the bum) takes half a brick and heaves it up at the guy�s window. THONK. No broken glass, thank God. Captain Courage (Kyle) immediately takes off down the street, followed by Will, Dank, and myself in short time. We slow down, however, when we see Smacko and his dudes still standing around. �Maybe everything�s OK,� someone offers hopefully, right at the point they come tearing at us. �He�s calling the cops,� someone yells, and we all need to get off Green St. right the fuck now. We disperse in various directions (�Attack formation Riker Gamma!� I yell, thus assuring my spot as the world�s biggest nerd) and regroup back at our house. Everyone�s OK, although the mission could hardly be called a success.

I guess it was this day that my weird little fog set in. I was watching VH1, like I said, some of their end of the year countdown shit, and I was like, I�m so out of touch. I don�t know any of these videos or songs and only half the celebrity news. Where is my connection with pop culture? And then I think on it further and I�m like, well, what about my contacts with indie culture? I kind of passed it on to Missy and now she�s listening to all these new bands I�ve never heard of, and I�m all sitting here reveling in my 1991 Liz Phair albums. Am I already getting so old? And all my regular stupid problems � Missy, money, classes, whatever � they all kind of got hidden under this cloud, this vague desire, to be really fucking cool for once. Problem is, I don�t even know that means. I sat here, looking in the mirror, my head reeling, and I can�t even decide what that means. More importantly, I don�t think I could ever pull it off. Like, if I went mainstream and got a haircut and started dressing normal and listening to MTV shit, people would still see right through me. And I guess I could go for indie cred, listen to all the latest shit (and its derivatives), but I can�t really stand all that posturing either. Dank said something interesting to me today. We were talking about meeting girls, and he said that it wasn�t necessarily that we need confidence � it�s that we need to get rid of this self-awareness that makes us unconfident and the damn process just seem dumb. Of course, the only way I can think to get rid of that is through a tack hammer, but maybe you have some ideas. As it is, I downloaded the Killers album (what? why?) and continue to wonder what I�d look like with a lot less hair. My problem is no closer to being solved.

Susan was gone before I awoke on the second. The daylight part is a bit obscured in my mind. Posted some entries, I see, probably played a stupid game or two, had some nasty fossilized chicken wig dip, I don�t really remember.

Actually, this stands corrected a day later (more details skipped!). ESPN2 was on, and for some reason they were showing the National Spelling Bee... of 1996. Now, I hate those ugly little fucks with their endless questions and stalling, but I was only paying it a little attention, so it didn't matter. I started to think, though, I bet a bunch of these people went to college and ended up on facebook. So, as each contestant came up, I'd search for them there and see what they'd done with themselves or if they were hot. It can be presumed that most were not, as nearly everyone opted to post artfaggy pictures of pets instead of a self-portrait. I quickly latched onto the prettiest girl there, Nikki Dowdy, and she had turned into a right hottie down there in Houston. When the bee was over, I was going to send her a message congratulating on her 17th place win or whatever (it seemed like a funny line), but she just kept doing better and better. She actually made it to the final two, which dragged on for like 4 rounds, many of which she could have won if she wasn't so nervous. Beauty and spelling prowness? Lordy, we may have found a winner. I sent her message, which she later commented was like the best she'd received (apparently I was not the only one with this plan... only the cleverest). Yes! Unfortunately, I've looked at her profile, and though she is clever and has interesting taste and a sense of humor, she is engaged to a fucking horrific redheaded hobbit thing that just makes my eyes water. Cruel fates! Explain it to me!

It was, as always, night that got interesting. Smacko and Allison were on something of a date (progress, progress! oh lord finally!), and they eventually came back to our place to the play The Sandlot drinking game and help us kill the keg. And kill it, we did, although I swear that game gets more hellish every time. I started a little late, so I tried to hold out longer, but it got to the point where each sip of warm Coors Light had me nearly spewing back into the bottle. Great game, everybody! I now hate that movie!

We sat around drinking for a while, until Dank and Spritz and Kyle left to play Madden, and it was decided that the rest of us would play Truth or Dare. Apparently this was and always is Shelly�s idea, but I don�t care to rewrite anything I wrote previous, so she�ll just have to deal with that. Anyway, we were sober enough to still do dares, so there was plenty of destruction and sexy dances and boobs and shit. I saw Smacko�s dong; it looked like a brine shrimp. On the plus side, we have a new beer tapper now (apparently stolen by Will from the same house he once stole that guitar from � scary flashback shit!). Also, there was this sign for the apartments across the street, and over break they put up some new floodlights, which are bright as hell and somehow shine directly through my window onto my face whether the blinds are closed or not. No more, though, friends! Smacko beat the fuck out of them all with a grill brush! Unfortunately, I�ve gotten to know everybody so well that the truths revealed are hardly startling at all anymore. We need new friends.

Update: In my haste to write this thing, a few truths slipped my mind (along with a hundred other details I no doubt wanted to get down in writing). First off, we finally know the secret of Smacko's name!! At long last! I'm sworn to secrecy, of course, but this had to be rubbed in someone's face, and I choose you, internet. What else? Uhm... Spritz confronted me about our alleged "competition," which means more or less no one gets my occasional use of ultradramatics. To synopsize, occasionally, when he is drunk, and sees me as a threat (somehow)for a girl he wants, Spritz will wield his ungainly force towards me like any competing suitor, and I am just not used to the shit, so I don't like it. Luckily, I am a threat to pretty much no one, especially to the girls he typically likes, so it's practically a non-issue. So there. Resolved, hopefully. Will was backed into a corner regarding his sexual history. I had been curious myself, but I also knew well enough to never, ever ask. On the plus side, man, my mom called this morning and told me that you had gotten handsome since the last time she'd seen you. Buff and stuff. So, there you go. One fewer roadblock to getting girls (or moms at the very least).

While Allison was in the can, Smacko ran over to us and drunkenly conspired that the game must fizzle. Right now. All this talk of sex had gotten her fired up, he hoped, and now the time was ripe for him to �walk her home� (as I am told the kids on the street call it these days) and for us to return to our sad little lives. It was my turn at the end, and I thought it would work in Smacko�s favor if I dared Allison to down a copious amount of the aforementioned Evan Williams eggnog. I couldn�t have been more surprised when she found the thick brew delicious and did her five shots (and another six on top of it) with gusto.

Shelly is no actor (and I doubt the booze could have helped any), so when she pretended to collapse, going, �I�m sleepy!!� in a terribly contrived voice, I pretty much had never heard anything funnier in my life. We more or less did leave Allison and Smacko to their own devices, but it was only because we were too busy giggling at our poor impressions of just being so darn exhausted. Everything was going great in Smacko�s corner; Allison had put her arm around him and sleepily asked, �Who�s going to walk me home?� How could he possibly have fucked it up? Oh yes, by ranting upwards of five minutes on his personal genocide of the Jewish nation. Anyone who knows Allison for more than five minutes knows that she�s something of an advocate of the Jewish people. Will was wearing an Israeli army t-shirt he�d gotten from somewhere, and Allison started interrogating him about it. Somehow Smacko leaps into the fray, and they start mock arguing about the Jews. Actually, I can�t specifically say they were mock arguing; it just seemed that way to me and Shelly as we tried to hold in our laughter about the whole thing. It started off as the whole hording gold big nose same old business but then Smacko reached a sort of crescendo where he talked about murdering millions of Jews (Allison�s mother was included in this perhaps?). Anyone reasonable would have known he was joking, but Allison was anything reasonable at this point and just ended up sort of pissy. Smacko once again lurched up to us and told us we should probably go to bed. We were just glad to escape the giggles and hid in the next room with all the Madden players.

The rest all comes on hearsay, but it went down roughly like this. Suddenly, Allison did not want to be walked home; she wanted to stay here. Smacko came in to ask me to try and sort this out. I thought this was a poor idea and volunteered Spritz. Apparently Spritz is only good at this sort of thing when it is in his own favor, because he got nowhere. Shelly was sent in, for a woman�s touch, and only succeeded in getting Allison up to Gautam�s room with extra blankets and pillows and stuff. Smacko eventually braved the trek up there, where he encountered a sobbing Allison, bawling about her sexy dance from earlier. She asked him to cuddle with her, they kissed some, and then she was telling Smacko to leave because he wasn�t from the east coast (???). He told her he had been to Maine before, but I guess that wasn�t east enough (Never mind the fact that Allison had been to New York two days tops herself). Smacko comes down to regroup � which is to say, get really hammered until he could pass out next to her with a puke bucket � and starts downing a bottle of pinot grigio he had purchased for their date that evening. There is nothing funnier than getting drunk on white wine. Shelly and Will and I went back to the living and soaked in some country videos or something for a while. Drunk Shelly gets sort of touchy and started rubbing my feet, but when I am equally drunk I can�t easily complain about things like that. It was pretty funny when Kyle finally came in (he has been very, very absorbed by Madden lately � strange on their last week together� seems he�ll have time enough for that when it�s just him and his soccer-loving roommate) and got all annoyed when she said she liked me feet better than his.

The two of them passed out not long thereafter, and I went to see how the footballers were doing with their shit. Actually, I could sort of tell, as now Smacko was really gone and running a nonstop commentary on their gameplay. About as useless as John Madden but with much, much more swearing and hamburger references. Any attempt to recount out it would pale in comparison, but whoever had the ball, Dank or Spritz, would hear something akin to this, �You stupid cocksucker � just run it right up the middle. Shove that ball right up his fucking twat and let him stew in it for a while. Yeah, baby, give him a goddamn motherfuckin� Royale with cheese right down his throat. See? I told you! I told you that would fuckin� work! Right up his ass, and he can�t do shit about it! Yeah, boy! You gotta listen to me on this shit!� All yelled at the top of his voice at a frenetic pace. I would occasionally grab him and go, �Look � stop talking! Just for like a minute! Don�t say anything!� But he would ignore me like I�d never spoke. �Yeah, baby! QB Sneak! I told you that fuckin� shit would work! I ain�t never wrong!�

Spritz got up to take a piss, and right then things got a lot more interesting. He�d come in and out to play Truth or Dare with us and had had a little bit to drink, but he seemed all right on the couch. He stands up, though, and suddenly he is like Stumblefuck the Lush. He starts screaming for me from the bathroom, door wide open, �Nate, help! I can�t walk back!� He is holding onto the wall for dear life, so I have him grab my hands and lead him back to the couch. He is the far fuck gone suddenly and all giggly and stupid, not even really playing the game now, just holding the controller stupidly in his hand and asking again and again for more of Smacko�s wine. We try to tell him that this is the worst of all ideas, that wine tends to give the most awful hangovers, but he won�t listen to anything besides the awesome �Dirt Off Your Shoulders� joke I make while he is trying to get through a sentence. He loses the game, pretty fiercely, and starts collapsing around the house, looking for his cell phone and then for a cigarette. When he finds neither, he starts shoving me out the door to walk to the gas station with him for smokes. �Dude, I�m barefoot.� �Shut up, you ffffaggot,� he slurs as pushes me out onto the pavement. I manage to sneak by him as Smacko comes to join us and run inside to tell Dank to get out while he can.

I come up here to go to bed, but eventually hear Smacko and Spritz back (they�ve survived?), so I come down to get a drink of water. I am immediately cornered:

�You fffaggot, we broke that nigger�s window.�
�What? Whose?�
�That nigger talking shit to Mike the other night. We threw a rock through it.�
�It was amazing.�
�Jesus! Was he home?�
�Probably� We took off running as soon as we did it. He probably called the cops.�
�I would say that is a reasonable assumption.�

Now, fighting is one thing. If this guy wronged your friend, sure, fuck him up. That seems fair. But we don�t even know if this really is the guy and now he�s got a rock through his house, damages to pay, and there is a warrant out for your arrest. He spots you on facebook or something, and it could be over. I did not approve of this plan. I should have come along� but I probably would have ended up nothing more than an accessory.

Home stretch now, I swear! These last few days have been boring as hell! The third Dank came over to play Madden and watch a series of shitty movies with us. D.E.B.S., Face/Off, BASEketball, Fantastic Four - it was all cinematic feces for us (although the literal form made an appearance as well � a small and a large chili from Silver Mine do not do pleasant things to my tummy). We played with my toy guns and got nothing, nothing, nothing done.

Yesterday Will left, so we had our final dinner at Courier. I actually went out and ran in the tundra, got a few errands done, too. Best Buy with Dank, reclaimed my long lost bicycle, got my pills sorted. But mostly I�ve just been sitting here, writing these damned entries, while things go on below me, mostly football-related � Madden, Rose Bowl, etc. � since when did all of my friends turn into real guys? How did I miss the boat? Although I�m not sure pulls of eggnog when they �go for it� is as manly as they think� Maybe I�m wrong. Anyway, like I said when I started, I wake up when it�s dark, and it�s certainly darker now. The highlight of my day was D&D Frat Guy coming out of the walls to give me random career advice. And to talk about D&D, of course. Not unappreciated, but still very fucking weird. Now I want to be like, �Maybe we should go out and pick up chicks together!� but of course that would never, ever work. The best I can hope for is a swift death.