04/27/2006 - 9:26 p.m. | we have seen this stuff, and we have seen enough

I used to write in a diary. Remember how good that was? There were some good things today, but mostly there were not good things today. The good things were particularly small but no less important. For instance, I liked the weight of my [Kyle's] backpack as I walked home from Beckman. It was a reassuring weight. Two, hummus burps taste better than the hummus itself, possibly because in burp form they are warm, and I do not like cold things.

In terms of bad things, Missy is firing a gun this weekend, moving to St. Louis shortly thereafter. Doesn't bode well. Elsewise: not that I'd been invited, but at the premiere party from The University of Illinois vs. a Mummy, Andrea got quite lit up and talked about her bisexuality. How could I miss this?! Apparently the whole room was secretly rapt. I was always curious, but how does one bring that up in conversation? And not curious in the heh heh let's try something way just curious in the manner of a person not knowing a thing. I am like Will Smith, reassuring you that I am not that type of a guy. I am mad I missed it, also because everyone there (Andrea included) was shitting on her awful rodent boyfriend. It seems he has even fewer redeeming qualities than I imagined, putting him actually into the negative then, as he is apparently a controlling ass in addition to being boring and unattractive. But, he apparently is a friend of a guy who knows Rivers Cuomo or something, and that is pretty much an instant in with our Andrea Gordon. Three, there is a new Tool album out, and it sounds exactly like every Tool album. It is new? I swear I have heard that song in 40 other incarnations, 800 times prior, over the past 7 years. I expect to be crucified promptly for this.

Have I ever told you my greatest irrational fear? I managed to drop most of them (sort of), but this one continues to linger. Whenever I am walking somewhere at night, I mentally cringe any time a car approaches from behind because I think it will be full of drunk guys, and they will throw a half-full crushed beer can at me, and it will hit me in the head. I do not know why that is such a worry. It probably couldn't even do that much damage. A bottle would be much worse. In these worried fantasies, the beer is always Miller Genuine Draft.

Last night was the creative advertising barcrawl. Based on our mental states - so many late nights keeping the ads improperly open, finishing Tower Records shit - I called it the Burned Out Black Out. It was not much of a crawl, really. We were at Brothers for four hours, Geovanti's for two, back to Brothers for one. And there was hardly any crawling, come to think of it. Mostly between bars I skipped at high speed and bitched everyone else out for not being as awesome at it as I am. Hula hooping and skipping. It is like they took the most respected talents of a second grade girl and made me their champion.

The reason we were at Brothers for so long (besides the obvious) was that from 7 to 10 you can get a whole keg for 15 dollars. We did as such and then spent the time trying to get our money's worth. Pretty much that occured after beer 2 (it was Miller High Life Light, and there were 10 of us to divide the cost - 75 cents a pint seems about right). We weren't about to spend our drinking money on stupid printed barcrawl shirts, so we all got 2 dollar white Ts from Walgreens and scrawled on them in permanent marker. Well, except Lauren. As I had predicted, she bought some form-fitting thing that probably cost a good deal more than 2 dollars. Not that it stopped us from writing on it. I wanted to write "PREGNANCY WILL RUIN THIS" on her tummy, but I did not have the balls.

Oh, Lauren. She was chief fuckup of the evening. I mean, everyone was pretty drunk*, but she was far and away the most unnerving. She's like that sober already - unnvering, I mean - but it becomes twisted in whole new directions when she drinks. The girl just loooooves to dance. And I'm not sure if she's good at it or not - she crams in way too much movement way too fast - but she certainly thinks she is. Quite the hilarious little attention whore, too - grinding up on pretty much everybody, perfect strangers, standing on barstools and tables, randomly massaging her own boobs. Yes, she is probably pretty, but I don't think I've ever met someone so willfully aware of it. It was terrifying.

*Other drunks: Sweet little religious Beckah was trashed out of her gourd, second place in frightening people, with her lame attempts at sexualized dancing. Meanwhile, Bertie, clearly uncomfortable with the whole scene, tried to dance ironically. And failed. Kevin, never one to speak ever, was downright chatty and funny and weird, a man barely hinted at in the sober world. He challenged me to an origami crane contest. Brenna might have been drunk, but her Drunk Tell is acting completely sober, so it is very, very hard to tell. Dan covered my shirt in a vast variety of insults, most of which I hope were jokes. Drew, no less twitchy and nervous than usual, made out twitchily and nervously with some stranger dude. I don't think Ashley did anything. Holly was there with her husband (Despite looking like Tiffani-Amber Theissen, she is apparently like 28 and married). I don't know why, but her fucking husband loved me, maybe because I made efforts to talk to the two of them, maybe because he thought I was some sort of player. How did he get that impression? Well, I was dancing with a lot of people, and Shelly appeared at one point all up in my face, so maybe he thought it was like the fastest seduction in the world. Hardly.

There were no hookups :( Perhaps this was my fault. I base this on a couple somethings Peter said (he came out for the first couple of hours), neither of which I can actually phrase correctly because, though soberer than most, I was still pretty lit up (What is a T-bomb? Who kept giving them to me?). But he said two things that seemed suspect to me, one of them about flying monkeys, and the general impression I got is that he thought I was supposed to get with Lauren. Sorry, old sport, but we've got a lifetime of neuroses and a judgmental countenance to get through first. Plus, all night Lauren kept coming up to me like, "Let's go get boys to buy us drinks!" so she may have had the wrong idea entirely.

A girl in the lab keeps looking at me. She is pretty, and I do not know why she would do this. It is making me nervous. Every time she walks by, she looks, and I do not know what that means. Finally, I waved. Maybe I know her from something. I hate being marginally handsome. If I were just regular old good looking, then I would be used to people looking at me. As it is, it is just confusing, because you never know who is going to be attracted to you. I might take a break to crank up the visualizations on Windows Media Player and just go nuts.

Like I said, I was drunk, but I don't think drunk enough. I wanted to be chatty, and I was not anywhere near that. I have to be well swerved to ramble. If anything, I was the most reticent one of the group, which is kind of a reversal of how things normally are. That's OK, though - I was pretty worried about the 7 hours of drinking, and I guess I'm glad I survived without horking. Geovanti's was a nice break, though. Karaoke is a completely different experience with a huge crowd. I did my passable version of "Blister in the Sun" and pretty much fucking tore down the house. Eoin (formerly Owen) was there, and I believe Shelly was yelling at him for burning me with his cigarette. I can't believe she remembered that. I barely remember that. Dan, at my insistence, tried singing Sister Hazel's "All For You," but apparently not everyone studies that masterwork with the same drive and intensity as my little social group, so I ran up to save his offkey moaning. Also, within my little triad, there is an established in-joke where we yell "REMIX" at the start of random songs. See, yelling that particular word has become a trend in modern music as of late, although I myself rather doubt it's credibility. "I bet this is just the first mix, and you just wanted to yell that, isn't that the case?" Anyway, before both of our songs, Dan and I decided to yell it. Have you ever heard a room full of confused laughter? It is awesome. I was much faster in a footrace.

I made one friend that night. Obviously it had to be a stocky redhead. Brenna's roommate, Katie. She kept saying things like, "If Brenna loves you, I love you!" (She actually wrote it on my shirt) "Brenna talks about you all the time blah blah blah." "Brenna thinks you're the greatest, so we do, too!" I tried not to jump to any awkward conclusions. It's not that I find Brenna unattractive... we've just gotten a little too close for me to think of her in that way. And irony just comes shooting out my ears. Anyway, in Brenna's circle of friends, they use the facerub (a la John Travolta in Face/Off) as an obnoxious form of affection, which is actually pretty awesome. Thereafter was a nonstop cycle of sneaking up on one another to do that and/or dodge/groan as it was being done to you. It helped redeem the night as people began to thin out. I vaguely remember blowing minds with a dead on rendition of "The Humpty Dance," including an accurate performance of the dance itself. Brenna bought my pizza for me, and I was eternally grateful. It was a drunken walk home. I tried to run, and it was still not a good idea. I am slowly being reeducated. I do not like it. Except I sort of do.

All in all, not a bad experience, I guess. If we could only have started like a semester ago, had a few more of these, things might have gotten just that much interesting. Missed opportunities wahhh.