03/25/2006 - 3:04 a.m. | delicious

It�s been a slow couple of days.

I know. You�re shocked.

After the whirlwind of activity that was my last entry, I�m sure you were holding out for an orgy or something, but bad, bad news, guys. None of that happened. Oh, incidentally, does it offend any of you that I refer to you, my audience, as �guys�? Even though there are girls � OK, a girl � in my readership? I apparently used the term in one of my creative non-fiction essays, and this psycho bitch wrote me like a paragraph about it. �IS THIS STORY ONLY INTENDED FOR MALE READERS BECAUSE I DON�T THINK THAT�S RIGHT.� I responded professionally, implying in a critique of one of her essays that all of her stupid, boring problems could be solved with the first four chapters of a Psych 100 book. I am tough but fair.

It has been a slow lonely, lonely day. Wednesday and Thursday were fine � Shelly came back to town, dragging Kyle in her wake � so I�ve had people to talk to and quasi-legitimate reasons to skip doing anything the least bit industrious. The two left for Chicago this morning, though � apartment hunting � and did not get back until after midnight tonight, so I�ve pretty much had the house to myself, and while it�s nice to blast whatever stupid songs I want on repeat, I may be going a little stir crazy. Part of it is that it�s Friday night, and both body and mind are confused as to why there is not alcohol in me and why I am not standing at the corner of some awkward social situation. You get habituated to these things so when they�re gone, you�re kind of lost without them. There is no one to blame but myself, of course. I could have gone up to Chicago with them, and in the two minutes that Gautam and Sruthi were here, they did ask if I wanted to accompany to them... to the Triangle fraternity� to watch a man get drunk in a room alone (That was how I pictured it anyway), but I opted to stay here and be creepy.

I am in a strange mood. Besides the isolation drills, I guess I�m a little weirded out that they signed on a place today. It feels like the beginning of the end. And not even because of the moving or whatever � I�ll probably end up in Chicago myself � but they�re going to be entering like this whole new level. I guess part of it is socioeconomic in nature � they�re going to have a fair chunk of change in a matter of months � and I�m still going to be floating along jobless. I won�t have the money to move in with them even if I wanted to. But, more than that� it�s like they�re starting in on the adult world, and I�m still sort of awash at sea. It�s the last time we�re all going to be in the same boat together � poor, aimless, free � and I guess I�m worried about sailing alone.

Sorry about the lame nautical metaphors, but that�s the mood I�m in. Sullen pirate. Anyway, I guess the whole thing just really hammers home how little I know about what I�m doing with myself. I�ve got vague plans up until the end of the summer, but then what? I would still love to bum around here an extra semester, not even as a student, but do I really want to start my adult life as That Guy? I suppose I do, but I feel like I�d be letting some people down in the process.

Anyway, I�ll just go through the past couple days briefly, and hopefully that will cheer me up in some capacity.

Wednesday evening Spritz and I sat around awaiting the timely arrival of the Wonder Twins. They were considerably late because Shelly�s battery died along the way. Also, Kyle forgot his wallet in Cincinnati, leaving him without passage to the bars or to the mounds of cash he has ostensibly been earning. He is having it FedEx�d to himself, though, so I guess that says something about the type of lifestyle he must be leading. I made the poor choice of getting this nasty 4-pack of blue margaritas in little plastic mouthwash bottles. They were so teeth-burningly sweet that I had to water them down with rum. This was much, much worse, but at least in a familiar, expected manner.

Alex and Jevon and Booger joined us for the night, Gautam too, and we made our way to Campustown, theory being that it would be so dead there that no one would bother carding Kyle. Backup plan was Kyle bugging his eyes out real far and using one of Alex�s IDs. I�ve mentioned Alex in passing before, I�d imagine, but I doubt I�ve gone into the type of clusterfuck enigma this man truly is. Born in Columbia, he ended up head chef at some place in Scotland before ending up here to attend college at Parkland Community College. Obviously. He has a thick as fuck accent that I believe I understand less of than anybody (�July� = �Chu-lie� = True Lies, starring Arnold Schwartzeneggar and Tom Arnold???), and it only gets worse when he drinks. Which he does. A lot. Hard. The amazing thing about him is that, despite being nearly incomprehensible � or perhaps because of it � he is like the greatest social engineer of our time. I think part of it is that he doesn�t really understand American social mores. He�ll just kind of take shit without asking or, I don�t know, ask for things that people do not normally ask for, like free food from restaurants or to see your boobs. And I think people are so confused by this whole song and dance that they�ll just kind of go along with it and give him what he wants. But really I don�t understand it at all and could never really hope to explain it. He is the type of man who can stand in the middle of the street, screaming, waving his arms around, and cars will just go around like this is the most normal thing in the world. That is like his life summed up.

So we end up at Firehaus for �KOUNTRY NITE� (or however they choose to crazily misspell it). The Most Out of Place Waitress in the Entire World (this weird nerdy kind of chubby Asian girl in glasses and slutty cowgirl clothes) tells us that cans of Hamm�s (Hamm�s?!) are on special for 75 cents, so we all order one � Alex orders three � and we start playing the usual shit. After a devastating rule emerges, forcing each person to drink every time they use the word �you,� we are all very quickly some sort of messed up. Booger gets back to his usual extroverted self, burping out sonic booms and cackling, and that�s all I have to say about him. That�s all I ever have to say about him.

I guess Shelly and I eventually got tipsss enough to hit the dance floor with the other inadequate white people trying to move to the sounds of Garth Brooks or whatever. I apparently know all the words to the Dixie Chicks� �Goodbye Earl� � that was a good skill to pick up somewhere along the way there. So we are all drunkenly flailing, and everyone is totally being put to shame by this crowd of black girls daring enough to crash this Klan meeting of a bar and just go to town, getting down to the shitty country and making our own two-steps look so, so lame by comparison. I thought this was cool as hell and would have loved to join them, but obviously in this case I was part of the enemy, and it just not would have worked out well.

I don�t really have too much to say about the rest of the night. It is getting blatantly obvious that I am stealing chips from Jimmy John�s now, but God bless underpaid college workers who don�t give a fuck about the corporation that employs them. Back at the house, people gradually trickled home while Kyle and I watched �The O�Reilly Factor� (WHAT WHY the man is like a cartoon character of insane values!) and Kyle told me they�re pretty much training him to be a pig surgeon over at his co-op these days. That is the oddest thing to fall ass-backwards into. I hope they eventually just make him an M.D. for all his work on pig wounds and whatnot. �Ah, just take it, son. Start yourself a nice plastic surgery practice.�

Thursday was sort of slow. Woke up late, fucked around playing Parappa, went out to Ruby Tuesday (ha ha ha), and when all that tuckered old Kyle Wild out, he passed for like four hours for a nap. Shelly and I went to get haircuts in the meantime. She pretty much got the same old thing as always, but I went for something a little more drastic than usual. Pretty much had the lispy man buzz off everything but an inch of hair all around. I don�t think my hair has been this short since I was a baby.

Now, I am a bit split on the whole thing overall. On the one hand, I think I kind of look like a douchebag. It�s not military short, but it�s definitely getting there. And, you know, I look pretty pissed off to begin with, so when you add in this skinhead hairstyle, it only exacerbates things. Pretty much I�ve already taken to giving toothy smiles to passerby just so they won�t spray me with mace or try and punch me in the face. �I am not going to be stealing your purse!� is the expression I am shooting for. They probably think it is a sinister grin, however, and keep their finger on the trigger. It�s also kind of a� manlier hairstyle than I�m used to. My hair has always been sort of boyish and silly and messy and now I feel like I�m sharing terrain with Vin Diesel and the Rock and frankly there is no way I can keep up. Nothing about me is manly to match, from my clothes to my personality to my body type. It makes for a weird anachronism.

On the other hand, one of the sorority hotties that work at Classic Tan, the ones who would normally avoid looking me in the eye, one of the ones too pretty to even fantasize about, yeah, one of them caught my eye and gave me like the biggest, friendliest smile out of nowhere today. �But I was shy, and I looked down, soooo down�� Apparently everyone loves a douchebag! [Stops here to plan a clever parody shirt*]

*I can�t wait �til I come back and read this years from now and can�t fucking get the outdated reference. I�m sure it will happen hundreds of times, but I look forward to this one in particular. Good luck, age-d Nathan!!

Eventually we got Kyle up and had a few drinks and watched some movies. First there was Walk the Line, or as it should properly be titled, Everyone is a Goddamn Cunt to Johnny Cash. Jesus, his first wife and his dad were just so over-the-top shitty to him that I was like rooting for Elvis to give him the damn drugs already**. I�m sure it�s been said a thousand times before, but harelip aside, Joaquin did a fucking amazing job, especially with the singing. It really made me want to go bust out some J.R. then and there. I don�t particularly love the lyrics or music to any of his shit, but lord that voice is a fucking demon erupting from him. I need to buy some biographies.

**Smacko told me the part about Elvis giving Cash drugs in advance, arguing that if Elvis (or anyone famous for that matter) offered you drugs, there is pretty much no way you cannot take them. I had to stop and think about this for a moment, but I have to agree with him. I don�t care what kind of bumfuck celebrity it was � if fucking Paul Reiser was like, �Nathan, I want you to smoke this crack rock with me� � how the fuck could anyone turn him down?

On the exact opposite side of the quality coin, we followed up with Into the Blue - starring Paul Walker and Jessica Alba!1 It is a natural, inevitable pairing, really. On separate occasions for each of them I would think, �Wow, is this person attractive! And boy, they sure can�t act at all! But wow, are they attractive!� So it made total sense to stick them in a movie with as little clothing as possible. It was not a good movie, but then, did anyone go into it � and this includes the writers and producers of it � thinking it would somehow turn out to be good? I was reading Ebert�s review of it this morning, and he gave it far more praise than I could ever muster, saying it was all like devious and wicked and shit and how well they managed to do the underwater shots, that they weren�t chaotic at all. Perhaps he and I were watching different films, for pretty much anytime there was action underwater, it was just a huge clusterfuck you just sort of had to sit through until they got back above the surface and you could kind of gather what had happened. �Who�s choking who now? Wait � is that a shark? Who just got shot? Is everyone dead? Why are they murdering each other? Who are these people?� That is every underwater shot every time.

We stayed up talking like old times. Shelly left eventually, reasonably, as they had to be up at 7, but Kyle and I skipped by such silly technicalities and trekked on through the night. The whole night. We talked and talked, and yet now, thinking back, there is only one bit that I can actually remember of it, and that�s just because it�s so damn useful. Lately I�ve developed something of a nervous habit where if something�s on my mind, I�ll run to the bathroom and start plucking nosehairs. It helps me get centered, and it certainly doesn�t hurt cosmetically, so I�m pretty cool with it. Kyle totally gave me an awesome ProTop, however. See, you grab the hair but you don�t just yank; you push IN then you yank. This allows you to build up a little velocity before the yank, instead of trying to do it cold. It�s so damn simple I should have thought of it, but I didn�t, and now I�ve tried it, and it�s fucking brilliant. So there�s a $60,000 engineering degree for you.

Meanwhile, the best I can do is look at you condescendingly when you make a pun because advertisers don�t do that. Well, not the good ones anyway, and I am trying very hard to pattern myself after the good ones.

We eventually ended up at Steak & Shake, and since Kyle still didn�t have his wallet, I had to pay for both of us. I was all set to do a good �I can�t quit you� line as we left, but I got distracted by my stupid debit card being declined. Not a big deal, Shelly�s check just hadn�t gone through yet, but it is embarrassing when the scum who work the late shift at a chain diner are giving you superior looks because you just had your card turned down. On the way back, we talked about what it�d be like if Kyle were a genie granting wishes that always turned out to be bad and ironic, and they always involved spikes. I don�t know why I�m telling you this; I expect because I had to hear it myself. We passed out to the same early morning psychotic children�s penguin we always do. Except he had to get up 15 minutes and drive to Chicago whereas I was allowed to sleep all damn day.

Like I said, empty house, boring, boring. My legs did not like the run today, having been allowed to atrophy for so long, but I liked that my legs did not like that. I really did not do a damn thing. Some laundry, I guess. And I watched High School Musical for like the fifth time. I am going to buy the damn thing it makes me so happy. It�s starting to give me goosebumps at the best parts. I�m actually afraid to watch it under the influence of anything because I might just explode into a ray of pure golden sunshine if I did so. See what I mean about not being manly enough?