01/27/2006 - 6:13 p.m. | whithering away

Every semester there is an awful gay journalism student who spends all his time in my lab on the night I work. We have already met our winner for the semester. I want him to bleeeeeeed.

I dreamt of wearing flip-flops this afternoon. I also dreamt about a conversation concerning this weekend so familiar that I am nearly certain it will come to pass. Here is it is:

(We are sitting in our living room on Friday night)
Shelly: What�re we gonna do tonight, guys?
Nate (looking at Spritz): And we�re not fucking going to Dustin�s. EVER! (Starts doing elaborate Draggin� BallZ impression)
Spritz: You just want your dick in Hillary�s mouth.
Nate: Emily�s mouth?!
Spritz: Hillary�s mouth.
Nate: Oh thank God.
Smacko: We should do paintcans, niggers!

I wish I�d seen how the dream had turned out (besides flip-flops). It would likely save us some time tomorrow night.

Now the homo is trying to somehow induce toner to appear in the cartridges. It is typically my job to aid him in this endeavor, but since I have already shaken the things to death and hunted everywhere possible for new cartridges, I will just look on from my periph.

Ooh, and I had things to write about, too. Three days have passed, and I�m sure there were things I thought you just fucking needed to know.

OK, here�s one. On Tuesday night, we went out to Clybourne (or Clybournes, you stupid Midwestern fucks� Let�s go to Kohlses, get some khakises!) for Wine Night(ses). Of course, in the spirit (and because I am so fucking poor), I tapped into my hidden hoard of moderately-priced wine. Unfortunately, my corkscrew was less than moderately-priced, and the screw part broke off, well-ensconced in the cork, tiny metal rod nub standing out. Shelly and I went at it with some pliers for a while, a risky maneuver threatening to spill wine and us at various angles, but eventually went for it high class ninja style. Bust out that machete, Galetti (There was this user review on imdb, and he kept using these ridiculous rhyming name phrases. �It used wide angles, Bojangles,� stupid shit like that. Obviously, the Downs children must be patronized and encouraged, so I will attempt to use this trick in my own language� O�Language). We tried various positions, most of which would at best result in a huge blade caught in Shelly�s forearm, but we eventually got it right and lopped the top right off. And by �top,� I mean �upper half of the bottle,� sending shards and wine flying willy-nilly. But it was open! And with only a limited amount of tiny deadly glass shards to choke on as I chugged the hell. I used a straw.

Brief interlude: There is this giant black dude in my creative writing class, Double K (He will not give the professor his real name). He came into class the other day with this old as hell giant boombox. Duly noted, of course, but I completely forgot about it until we stepped out of the English Building. Immediately he turns it on and starts blasting at deafening levels the Venom is Driving song (for lack of an actual title). Obviously, I was in complete hysterics, nearly fell over laughing, as he started strutting around the quad, looking all proud and shit. Abandoning my bike, I started following him (from a safe distance, of course) doing my own crazy dance. I don�t believe he saw me. The same cannot be said of many others.

Anyway, back to the bars. I don�t know how it happened, but somehow Dank was talked to coming along on this little excursion. Actually, I know exactly how it happened: Spritz asked Dank, and Dank, being happily ignorant of such thing as Champaign bars and their specials, just thought we were being ridiculous and going out on a Tuesday. Nope. Wine Night is fucking packed hell*

*Although nothing next to Ice Bomb night at C.O.�s. See? Another thing I fucking forgot to mention. Last week, Shelly, Gautam, myself, Spritz, and Smacko went there to hit that. The latter two dropped out early, leaving the rest of us to get obliterated and take in the nightmare. I�ve never been there on a real �at capacity� night. Sodom and Gomorrah immediately came to mind. So fucking crowded, and everyone was either shoving each other or just flat out humping in the middle of the crowd, various parts hanging out. And everything was wet. The walls, the counters, floors. Explain that to me! I actually sort of knew two girls who were out there that night. Two sort of pretty girls that I feel I almost had just cause enough to approach. However, there is always this problem I have. When I am in an awkward position, I try and drink to relax myself a bit. Which is to say, blur my mind until it seems reasonable to do something as crazy as talk to a girl. Unfortunately, by the time all the booze usually kicks in, I am well on my way home, and my sudden confidence is used for far more nefarious purposes than (intended) seduction. This was no different, although we did attempt dancing in the Chubbo Corner for a while. Frown, frown. Shelly ran into Sneaky Pete. I�ll let you look up the reference yourself.

BACK TO ORIGINAL! So, Dank (decked out in his sweater and collared shirt combo � I will be like A.C. Slater and call him �Preppie� all the time), Spritz, Gautam, Shelly, and myself set out for this hell, Shelly and I waiting out in the cold with Tractor Bill while the rest of them got their sway on at Firehaus. Shelly feels that my constant nervous dancing may contribute to my limited success with opposite sex; I feel it only adds to my boyish charms.

Now, the whole point of drinking the wine beforehand, besides warming me in line, was that I have, you know, no money and shouldn�t, you know, be spending any. Well, God bless wine night, there was cover. Of course there was cover. 7 dollar cover even. Actually, let me correct that. 7 dollar cover for dudes. No cover for girls. Spritz has begun research on his lawsuit. �Now, I may not be a big city lawyer,� tugs suspenders, �but what we have here is discrimination based on sex, and that is goes against a little thing we call THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! The Nineteenth Amendment!� Actually, that one�s just about voting. �Fourth Amendment?� Search and seizures. Why the fuck do I know the amendments?

Maybe I just have high expectations, but when I pay 7 bucks in a middling little burg like Champaign, I better see the craziest shit imaginable. I want caged dancers, six DJs, a levitating dancefloor, live simulated volcano explosions, something. Well, no. Same old dank dim bar. Not even an attractive crowd. It�s like they got half the system right. The guy/girl disparity of cover should lead to a bar full of attractive people, but without a bouncer to turn away the wrong people (uggos, fatties, the cripplingly stupid) it�s just a bunch of nasty girls who got in for free and bunch of horrible dudes who came for the hotties the system was supposed to provide.

Yes, I am well aware that were the system in place, I would probably not be allowed in such a hot spot, but I am OK with that. The system would be working at least. And someday I�ll have money and can properly trump that system. It�s the American way.

The nice thing about Wine Night is that it manages to be busy and still incredibly, incredibly boring. Shelly and I split a bottle of the J-Ro, and I think I stole someone�s shot, someone�s beer. Sorry about that, guys. Out of nowhere, these girls asked to take a picture with Spritz (of them kissing his cheeks), which I guess is pretty flattering, depending on whether or not you like Amazons. I don�t even entirely remembered what happen, besides kind of laughing at poor old Dank and his misery. I kept telling him he looked like a character on �The O.C.� I do not know if this was meant to raise or lower his confidence.

Shelly and I circled the bar many, many times. Apparently I was more gone than I thought since this all seems sort of vague. I think there was a girl, a girl I wanted to dance with. So we sort of lurked around and watched the douchebag she was seemingly happy with. I got sucked in by some nuggets, leaving Shelly open to attack by this Andy guy. Admittedly, he was a pud, apparently kissing her on the cheek, but he taught me a valuable lesson. To have Shelly free to himself, he knew he would have to get me the fuck away, which meant passing me off on some other girl. A Sisyphean ordeal, but he didn�t know that! So he kept kind of dragging me up to random girls, having me introduce myself. �Talk to them!� he�d hiss. Not exactly the most conducive environment to chit-chat, though, so they�d sort of lose interest. Then, the best bit of advice anyone ever gave me: �Just ask them to dance.�

DID YOU KNOW THAT ACTUALLY WORKS?

Apparently, if you actually ask a girl to dance - rather than, say, running up and banging your cock on her, salsa dance-style - she is pretty much honor-bound (though usually more by shame and pity, but I can deal!) to dance with you. Of course, she will run off into the night as soon as it is socially acceptable (even when it is not), but what an awesome loophole! Yes, yes, this was all probably very obvious to you, but it�s like a whole new silly game to me. Ask a girl to dance and see how long before she runs the fuck off. I grabbed the most inappropriate people � some Asian nugget, some girl with freckles (The alcohol blurred them completely away, though! I only know of them because Shelly told me afterwards) � and there they were grinding up on me as I made the most ludicrous looks of surprise at Shelly and Andy. �This is ridiculous that this should be happening!� my eyes said. Hopefully, they said that. It was not pleasure, by any means. Of course, I�m a horrific dancer, too gay for the gays, and I haven�t mastered the art of creepy whispered ear conversation, but you�ve got to walk before you can run, right?

I think Shelly fooled Andy into thinking she had to pee, and we ran off, the rest of our party already having departed. To celebrate the stupidly obvious things I already knew, I bought some nasty sour cream and onion Pringles and passed out in a ball on the couch. It was a good night!

Uh, rest of the week. 452-2 was sort of interesting. We have this big student ad competition coming up, trying to sell these ridiculous fucking mailbox vaults. How it works is that the school�s chapter of the AAF (American Advertising Federation) is who actually enters the contest � we are just the creative arm of the project. As such, it�s sort of like a real agency relationship. They are the business side, and we are the creative. Now, I don�t know if you�ve heard, but those two sides very rarely ever get along. Business side makes strategy, sets limits, and our side tends to sort of hate both. This was no exception. So the AAFers come in, many of them I knew from class (Luke, a total Champaign person but also very nice to me, that Hermione-looking girl, etc.), to tell us what they had decided was our target audience and the strategy we would use on them. And it was kind of a mess. They read bullet points to us � bullet points we ourselves had already seen � without giving us any real useful information. They picked regular old consumers as the target, when it would be much easier to sell to people like housing developers, who would buy these mailboxes in gross rather than one at a time. Their strategy was factual � about identity theft (which I�m still convinced no one actually knows the definition of) � when it probably should have been more of an emotional sell. In general, they just seemed slimy and awful to me. If they didn�t know an answer to a question, they would try and B.S. their way through one and usually fail miserably. I don�t care if you don�t know the answer. If you�re like, �I�m just not sure, but I am going to try my hardest to find out for you as soon as I can,� I will respect you far more than some glib gibberish with some random percentages tossed in. Then this one balding kid came in late, and he really pissed me off. He was so demanding and smarmy and condescending (�Here�s how we want you to be creative��), and I would have loved to have told him off. Luckily, Peter did it for me. He was pretty much feeling the same things I�ve written here, but he is much, much smarter than me and was able to effectively steal the thunder of the whole AAF retard squad. How they were unorganized, unprofessional, unfair (They were all like, �We want to check on you guys at frequent intervals so that we don�t lose touch.� A fine sentiment, but Peter had specifically asked to be involved in the creation of the strategy and target, and they just fucking ignored him, so payback was a bitch). Balding guy didn�t say a word from that point on, and I�m sure some effects were far felt. It was awesome.

Uh, finally finished all that filing at Beckman. They don�t know what to do with me, I think, because I�m so much faster at their tasks than the last girl was. Both Shelly and Missy have told me to slow down, that there is no reason to be fast at filing, but you can hardly dump three years of factory training at once. Greg Hall labsitting has resumed, blah blah blah. Forget it.