March 31, 2004
On the last night in Florida, we went out for dinner. Just the fourteen of us. My spring break budget was $100 for travel, food, and beverage. $40 went to gas to get there. I ate so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that week. To avoid losing too much money at dinner, I dropped in a convenience store to get a whole load of ones so that I could go to the restaurant next door, whose name escapes me at the moment.
Me: Hey, could I get a pack of Montclaires?
High School Girl Clerk Who Had Clearly Grown Weary of Spring Breakers: What're you, buying smokes for your gramma?
Me: No, I'm just trying to save money.
HSGCWHCGWOSB: Alright, $1.50.
Me: Great, hey, could I get like a bunch of ones? As many as you can give me. Like eighteen if you can spare 'em.
HSGCWHCGWOSB: (serious look of dissaproval) Are you going to Woody's?
Me: (assuming that was our restaurant) Yeah, uh...why? Is that not a good place?
HSGCWHCGWOSB: It's disgusting. (hands me the ones) Those girls are nasty. You could get hepatitus.
Me: Oh, well, my friends wanna go there, I'm not really going to get anything.
HSGCWHCGWOSB: Sure, that's what they all say.
Me: (perplexed, mostly at how one could contract hepatitus from seafood) Well...alright...thanks...
Walk out the door. Turn towards our restaurant down the street, and then notice that it is not called Woody's. It has a long name like a seafood restaurant should. Gulf Stream Steaks and Lobster, or something like that. But not Woody's. No, that would be the clapboard strip club across the street. Hey, could I get like a bunch of ones? As many as you can give me. No, really. I desprately fucking need dollar bills, to the point that I'm going to smoke menthol 100s just to save two dollars for a happy ending. That's me. Certified fucking pervert.
Me: Hey, could I get a pack of Montclaires?
High School Girl Clerk Who Had Clearly Grown Weary of Spring Breakers: What're you, buying smokes for your gramma?
Me: No, I'm just trying to save money.
HSGCWHCGWOSB: Alright, $1.50.
Me: Great, hey, could I get like a bunch of ones? As many as you can give me. Like eighteen if you can spare 'em.
HSGCWHCGWOSB: (serious look of dissaproval) Are you going to Woody's?
Me: (assuming that was our restaurant) Yeah, uh...why? Is that not a good place?
HSGCWHCGWOSB: It's disgusting. (hands me the ones) Those girls are nasty. You could get hepatitus.
Me: Oh, well, my friends wanna go there, I'm not really going to get anything.
HSGCWHCGWOSB: Sure, that's what they all say.
Me: (perplexed, mostly at how one could contract hepatitus from seafood) Well...alright...thanks...
Walk out the door. Turn towards our restaurant down the street, and then notice that it is not called Woody's. It has a long name like a seafood restaurant should. Gulf Stream Steaks and Lobster, or something like that. But not Woody's. No, that would be the clapboard strip club across the street. Hey, could I get like a bunch of ones? As many as you can give me. No, really. I desprately fucking need dollar bills, to the point that I'm going to smoke menthol 100s just to save two dollars for a happy ending. That's me. Certified fucking pervert.
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March 30, 2004
F. Scott Fitzgerald would like to summarize the biggest conflict one has when they guiltily attend a fancy college:
"The very rich...are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and crynical where we are trustful...Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are"Sidenote, I promise, Ben: I found a shitload of apartments that we could afford on waiters sallaries and I'm probably gonna head up to Chicago in a while and feel them out. Ask around about neighborhoods. My only requirement is that our doors and windows lock as my only possession that matters is my computer. One of these places has a garage space, which would be excellent for those of us who own a scooter.
Labels: Chicago
12:10 PM | [permalink] |
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March 29, 2004
It turns out that more adult break-ups are harder to ignore, since they come with paperwork. Two weeks ago in the mail I got a letter from my old post office at the beach saying that they've had mail accumulate for us. Things like this are horrible if you, like me, read too much into everything.
They addressed it to both of us, but sent two Change of Address orders. The goddam postwoman knew that it wasn't going to last.
Also, odd to fill out.
For the Two listed recipients:
1) Change of Address for: [x] individual [ ] whole family
2) Is this move temporary?[ ] yes [x] no
3) New Mailing Address:
They addressed it to both of us, but sent two Change of Address orders. The goddam postwoman knew that it wasn't going to last.
Also, odd to fill out.
For the Two listed recipients:
1) Change of Address for: [x] individual [ ] whole family
2) Is this move temporary?[ ] yes [x] no
3) New Mailing Address:
[i][ ][h][a][v][e][ ][n][o][ ][i][d][e][a]
[S][o][m][e][w][h][e][r][e][ ][i][n]
city[C][h][i][c][a][g][o] state [I][L]
zip[p][r][o][b][a]-[b][l][y][?]
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1) Towards the end of the trip I began to figure out the other 13 better that I had wished. It became obvious who was used to getting what they want, who asked for very little but was used to getting that, who wanted something but was content to just pout instead.
2) Going on the trip I had this strange feeling all the time as I adjust to doing things that I hadn't done in a while: travelling distances, share sleeping quarters, shop for housewares at Salvation Army, witness eachother in bathing ware, share meals and entrees, and a whole list of things we haven't done since we broke up. Each one felt less uncomfortable than the last, to the point that at the end of the week we could once again share deserts. On the way home I wrote this horribly distancing metaphor in my notebook to explain it to myself:
2) Going on the trip I had this strange feeling all the time as I adjust to doing things that I hadn't done in a while: travelling distances, share sleeping quarters, shop for housewares at Salvation Army, witness eachother in bathing ware, share meals and entrees, and a whole list of things we haven't done since we broke up. Each one felt less uncomfortable than the last, to the point that at the end of the week we could once again share deserts. On the way home I wrote this horribly distancing metaphor in my notebook to explain it to myself:
"There are some people on the trip who do not take care when sun tanning. They fear burning so they stay inside all the time, or they just wanna tan so bad that they bake by the pool with no lotion on, and in an hour they're burned and for the rest of the week they're nursing red splotches all over themselves. And then they can't go outside again. If they do they just get more burnt. But there are some people who take in the sun a little bit at a time. They don't want to hurt themselves with overexposure, but they know that the more they get now, the easier it will be later."So, basically, things are either beautiful or cancerous and I can't tell the difference.
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March 28, 2004
For some reason he decided that the men of the club hadn't had a fair chance at entertainment for the evening, so he started a Jell-o shot eating contest. It was a two-on-two. As in two girls eat it off of eachother and compete against two other girls. The saddest part of these contests, of course, is that women with the power of volition sign up.
Pick you favorite Ron-Jeremy-Wannabe voice: "That's right, fellas, we're gonna see some wicked lesbianism up here!" The girls would then lie down on a table or stand up in their little tube tops and lick the jello and whipped cream off one another.
The cream, I imagine, is requisite only so that the DJ can wait for it to get all over someone's face and shout, "Haw haw, you look just like my ex-girlfriend."
He would then emplore every girl to take her shirt off, or, lacking that, to remove her bra, which several did including one girl who may have otherwise gotten away with so much padding.
A friend of a friend's friend came with us that night and she stepped up on stage to request a song and tarried a moment woo-hooing and doing all the other things that television tells me that girls should do when they go wild.
"Haw, hey baby you gonna show us your tits?" he shouts into the microphone. She shakes her head. "Well look, either you get naked or I'mma get naked and put it somewhere you don't want me to."
Frankly, I needed him to say that so that I do not ever think of moving there, or of becoming an asshole DJ. The girl who should have been the most upset was not, but my fellow fancy-school friends and I were livid for about three or four minutes.
This could not have tainted the night, however, after running into a group of eight sestegenarians shouting "Get your cameras rolling! We're filming Grammas Go Wild!"
Red faced, drunk, her friend goes, "No no, it's Grammas Gone Wild!"
"Grammas Gone Wild!" They stepped right up to us in the street and began to dole out hugs, as grandmothers are want to do. Their four husbands stood in back with vacation hats on and cameras dangling from their necks, "Watch out, she could be your mother."
I designated-drove us home and sat outside by the canal with a few friends and told myself all the things that I do in these sitations: that I'm horribly lucky, that this beats anything else I thought I would do after high school, that these are probably my glory days, etc.
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March 26, 2004
St. Pat's in Key West
1) My last words to a certain member of the Alpha Pi sorority I know back in Ohio were, "You're spending your whole break in Key West?"
"Yeah, straight up spring break. Our hotel has a DJ in the pool."
"Damn...you're totally gonna end up in a video."
2) Saw Ernest Hemingway's house, 50 feet from a buouy marking the Southernmost point in the continental US, 90 miles from Cuba. I like to find out just where the sidewalk ends. It makes me wish that I had already been to that part of Maine, since I've drove to the Canadian border in Washingon, and the Mexican border south of San Diego.
3) Had a slice of Key Lime Pie in the capital of the Florida Keys. It was terrible.
4) The first Spring Break-Spring Break thing we came to was a Hawaiian Tropic Bikini Contest. I spent the rest of the night trying to get my head around the fact that these people exist without irony.
5) Which brings us to our story for the day.
I had heard of a clothing optional bar on the roof of a building in Key West. We sent some friends to check it out, knowing of course that nudists, like swingers, are people who would never get to have other people see their asscheeks were it not for a committed community.
The only person in the bar who had no pants on was the DJ (who had Kiss Me I'm Irish painted on his chest and a clover painted on his genitals) and an old man in a collard shirt and baseball hat whom I will get to later.
We realized that the alternative to this bar was to go back into Spring Break land and get disgusted with the neo-Reagan Youth assholes. And if we wanted to do that, we could have stayed at our fancy college.
The core group in the bar was friends I've had since freshman year. We got a call from the other girls staying in the house and told them to come meet us there. This was when the grinch got a wonderfully awful idea. Three of us stripped, and then, when the other five realized how hilarious it would be to invite someone to a bar and have them desprately search the crowd for their friends only to find them in the worst way, they stripped too.
The girls walk up the stairs, still having no idea what kind of party they have walked into, and spot us from across the room. "Hey guys guess--" The crowd parts--this is it, this is going to be fucking hilarious--and we wait for the joke to play itself out. Then we realize that there are four extra faces staring at us. The ending of her sentence, I later discover was "--guess who we ran into: The Alpha Pi girls."
1) My last words to a certain member of the Alpha Pi sorority I know back in Ohio were, "You're spending your whole break in Key West?"
"Yeah, straight up spring break. Our hotel has a DJ in the pool."
"Damn...you're totally gonna end up in a video."
2) Saw Ernest Hemingway's house, 50 feet from a buouy marking the Southernmost point in the continental US, 90 miles from Cuba. I like to find out just where the sidewalk ends. It makes me wish that I had already been to that part of Maine, since I've drove to the Canadian border in Washingon, and the Mexican border south of San Diego.
3) Had a slice of Key Lime Pie in the capital of the Florida Keys. It was terrible.
4) The first Spring Break-Spring Break thing we came to was a Hawaiian Tropic Bikini Contest. I spent the rest of the night trying to get my head around the fact that these people exist without irony.
5) Which brings us to our story for the day.
I had heard of a clothing optional bar on the roof of a building in Key West. We sent some friends to check it out, knowing of course that nudists, like swingers, are people who would never get to have other people see their asscheeks were it not for a committed community.
The only person in the bar who had no pants on was the DJ (who had Kiss Me I'm Irish painted on his chest and a clover painted on his genitals) and an old man in a collard shirt and baseball hat whom I will get to later.
We realized that the alternative to this bar was to go back into Spring Break land and get disgusted with the neo-Reagan Youth assholes. And if we wanted to do that, we could have stayed at our fancy college.
The core group in the bar was friends I've had since freshman year. We got a call from the other girls staying in the house and told them to come meet us there. This was when the grinch got a wonderfully awful idea. Three of us stripped, and then, when the other five realized how hilarious it would be to invite someone to a bar and have them desprately search the crowd for their friends only to find them in the worst way, they stripped too.
1) When you talk to people in this condition, they give you such perfect eye contact. It's as if everything you say could save their life."They're coming, they're coming!" A friend peered over the rooftop and saw them on the street. I had a cigarrette and never realized how difficult it is to ash without clothes on. Meanwhile Naked Old Man walks up to my roommate and says, "Man, it's great that you guys are so open. People will come to Key West to have a wild time, they'll drop $25 on a shirt that says Party Naked and then they'll come up here and just, like, leave it on."
2) A surpising amount of people want to dance.
The girls walk up the stairs, still having no idea what kind of party they have walked into, and spot us from across the room. "Hey guys guess--" The crowd parts--this is it, this is going to be fucking hilarious--and we wait for the joke to play itself out. Then we realize that there are four extra faces staring at us. The ending of her sentence, I later discover was "--guess who we ran into: The Alpha Pi girls."
3) There's something oddly dirty about getting dressed again in public. I kept feeling like people were spying on me in my bedroom.You have no idea how many fucking times this week I've heard the joke, "Oh, hey, I didn't recognize you with your clothes on."
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March 25, 2004
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Today, as in last wednesday, we went to Bahai Honda beach in The Florida Keys. It's seven dollars to get in, which came out of our dwindling trip fund. I have $100 to spend. $40 went to the fund already just to get here, which means I have little more than $30 for the week (we have taken on another passenger for the way home).
This beach is gorgeous in the way that I am taught beaches are supposed to be. The water is the strange shade of blue that seems almost unnatural. I sat there all day watching sign and signifier find eachother for once. It was just so peaceful, so real, I thought, so...so much like a Corona ad!
I hated myself for the rest of the day for thinking that.
This beach is gorgeous in the way that I am taught beaches are supposed to be. The water is the strange shade of blue that seems almost unnatural. I sat there all day watching sign and signifier find eachother for once. It was just so peaceful, so real, I thought, so...so much like a Corona ad!
I hated myself for the rest of the day for thinking that.
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March 22, 2004
This is Tuesday, but of last week
Get up, go directly to the beach. Like at 9ish in the morning. Before the others are stirring. I love the beach. If you don't beleive me, I wrote a weblog about it last summer. The theme for the forteen of us in this house is Create Your Own Vacation, and I was lucky enough to find three other people nerdy enough to wish to sit in sand all day, lotioning our pasty asses and reading books.
I read Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, and while I agree with the entire Anglophone world that it was not exactly deserving of the Booker Prize, I am eternally glad that I read it, and I can think of no other circumstance under which I would read a book about Texas written by a guy living in Australia.
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We got to Orlando at about midnight. The last time I had been here, I was six on a family vacation to Disneyworld. I still had a cast on my leg from a skiing accident, which meant that when we got to the theme park, my family was priveleged into the wheel chair-access lines. I saw Captain E.O. twice. I also remember on that vacation that we kept driving around Florida with this smoky-ass old lady who showed my parents condos. Jay and I couldn't figure out why our parents wanted to move to Florida and we were probably stressed out. Years later I found out that we did this because if my parents looked at their retirement homes, we could get free passes to all the parks.
Magic Kingdom Update: Orlando sucks. It reminds me of office-industrial Columbus. Some big buildings, but mostly parking garages and four lane highways. No magic remaining.
We stayed for the night with Molly, the girl I met in Turkey, her boyfriend, and my ex-girlfriend, who was a sometime roomate of Molly's in Turkey. My entire connection to these people is that when abroad, Molly missed her boyfriend alot and so did she. They have a cute house together now, and I...I have an iPod and new anxieties.
I slept in my sleeping bag on a futon and had trouble sleeping since I had done so in the car all day. Got up twice:
1) To make sure I had gone to the bathroom enough.
2) Because I worked out a perfect character sketch for the best-friend of the main character in my next fiction project. His name will be Joseph Sanchez. He will discover, through his relationship with David Gallahad, that white people also have Taco Night, and that it is often on thursdays.
We got up at six to race to the beachouse. There were a limited number of good bedrooms, so we had to hurry to get the good real estate. The boys had left in another car and driven through the night, so they would of course get the good rooms. But trailing far behind was another car, and we would get them. Oh, we would get them.
Magic Kingdom Update: Orlando sucks. It reminds me of office-industrial Columbus. Some big buildings, but mostly parking garages and four lane highways. No magic remaining.
We stayed for the night with Molly, the girl I met in Turkey, her boyfriend, and my ex-girlfriend, who was a sometime roomate of Molly's in Turkey. My entire connection to these people is that when abroad, Molly missed her boyfriend alot and so did she. They have a cute house together now, and I...I have an iPod and new anxieties.
I slept in my sleeping bag on a futon and had trouble sleeping since I had done so in the car all day. Got up twice:
1) To make sure I had gone to the bathroom enough.
2) Because I worked out a perfect character sketch for the best-friend of the main character in my next fiction project. His name will be Joseph Sanchez. He will discover, through his relationship with David Gallahad, that white people also have Taco Night, and that it is often on thursdays.
We got up at six to race to the beachouse. There were a limited number of good bedrooms, so we had to hurry to get the good real estate. The boys had left in another car and driven through the night, so they would of course get the good rooms. But trailing far behind was another car, and we would get them. Oh, we would get them.
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Coming Attractions
1:22 PM | [permalink] |
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March 21, 2004
There's about seven or eight things I'm going to try and tell you this week and I hope I get to all of them. First of all, I'm moving to Savannah, GA as soon as possible. Maybe not in May, but if Chicago isn't fun when Ben leaves this fall I'm flying south for their non-existent winter.
It is important to keep in mind that I still harbor all the horrible feelings that everyone should have for white people in the south. The confederate flag stills strikes me as moronic, peanuts should never be boiled, fuck state's rights, and blah blah blah. But we drove in through Savannah on our way to Spring Break Spring Break last week and we did so in an accidental way that turned out to be how I will enter every strange city from now on. We took essentially the first exit that talked about the city, which put us into the outer ghetto. You've maybe never seen it, but if you've seen the movie Big Fish, it's the town of Spectre somewhere between the mythic beginings and sad ending. Every house has a different color that wouldn't always seem like a good housepaint: mustard, fuscia, lilly, etc. The greenery is out of control. Trees that line the streets touch in the middle and have intertwining spanish moss and kudzu.
It was a great place to be lost because all of the toothless residents couldn't wait to give us directions. A shirtless man at the lotto desk in a gas station even got in a fight with another local about which street would be better to have us take into downtown, if we had never been there before. ("You gon take em down Bull? Aw hell naw, baby, I'm sending them down Abercorn so they can see some shit.")
Abercorn would be a terrible road to have to take to work every morning. That's because it's beautiful. Every other block has a square park in the middle of the street with more big trees, more benches, more people. The buildings surrounding it look like what I imagine Spain to look like. Tallish--five to eight stories--, brick, ornate, god-fearing.
Also, and I realizes that this taints the sample we got there on St. Patrick's Day (Observed). The sunday before. The streets were filled with all residents, not just pasty-assed drunks. Somehow, St. Pat's is huge in a former Spanish city. I had very little money, but I bought sushi and rice at a little place up the street and sat in one of the square parks to eat it with my travelling companions.
My camera ran out of battery then, and I feel like a big-foot photographer right now. I'm scared no one will ever beleive me.
It is important to keep in mind that I still harbor all the horrible feelings that everyone should have for white people in the south. The confederate flag stills strikes me as moronic, peanuts should never be boiled, fuck state's rights, and blah blah blah. But we drove in through Savannah on our way to Spring Break Spring Break last week and we did so in an accidental way that turned out to be how I will enter every strange city from now on. We took essentially the first exit that talked about the city, which put us into the outer ghetto. You've maybe never seen it, but if you've seen the movie Big Fish, it's the town of Spectre somewhere between the mythic beginings and sad ending. Every house has a different color that wouldn't always seem like a good housepaint: mustard, fuscia, lilly, etc. The greenery is out of control. Trees that line the streets touch in the middle and have intertwining spanish moss and kudzu.
It was a great place to be lost because all of the toothless residents couldn't wait to give us directions. A shirtless man at the lotto desk in a gas station even got in a fight with another local about which street would be better to have us take into downtown, if we had never been there before. ("You gon take em down Bull? Aw hell naw, baby, I'm sending them down Abercorn so they can see some shit.")
Abercorn would be a terrible road to have to take to work every morning. That's because it's beautiful. Every other block has a square park in the middle of the street with more big trees, more benches, more people. The buildings surrounding it look like what I imagine Spain to look like. Tallish--five to eight stories--, brick, ornate, god-fearing.
Also, and I realizes that this taints the sample we got there on St. Patrick's Day (Observed). The sunday before. The streets were filled with all residents, not just pasty-assed drunks. Somehow, St. Pat's is huge in a former Spanish city. I had very little money, but I bought sushi and rice at a little place up the street and sat in one of the square parks to eat it with my travelling companions.
My camera ran out of battery then, and I feel like a big-foot photographer right now. I'm scared no one will ever beleive me.
Labels: Chicago
10:53 AM | [permalink] |
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March 14, 2004
So the point of this week's mix tape is that I hate selling myself out when I DJ. The hardest thing for me to reconcile at the tables is that I got into it because I love good music and sometimes I end up playing complete shit just so people will dance. Then there are a few songs I play each time and love to do so, but then there are a few songs that I love to play, which people love to dance to, but the gap in our appreciation makes me wish I hadn't played it. Thus, I am in a project right now to remix and thus reclaim a number of songs which I like, on demand and without apology.
My First Actual Mix-Tape
My First Actual Mix-Tape
In Da Club (ft.Biggie, Beyonce)
No Diggity (ft. Wyclef)
Pass That Dutch (ft. Eminem)
Sexual Healing (ft. Missy Elliot)
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March 12, 2004
1) Some part of me always gets all Iron & Wine when it's time to leave school or go home. I've also been watching alot of the Sopranos lately, so I'm convinced that if I just try and figure out what makes me so angsty, then I'll be ok. The specific moment where I get sad when I go in either direction--actually, come to think of it, it's pretty much only when this happens--is when I pack my scooter into the front seat. To do this--given that I have a very small Toyota--is to unbolt the front passenger seat and stick it in back so that the rear wheel of the scooter can sits in the back and the front end is seatbelted next to me. The effect is that people drive by expecting to see a person seated next to me on the highway, and instead they see the headlight and ferring, which appear as a robot, whom one can only expect to dictate directions.
It always reminds me of the first time I moved my scooter, which was the end of Junior year when I packed it up to move out of school to go home for a week and then move to Deleware. I'm pretty sure this was one of the happiest times of my life, but that's only because my iPhoto from this era is full of sunny pictures of my friends and I smiling. Ben made me a CD of MP3s that spring and it was pretty much all I listened to on the way home. I can play it in my car because I'm digital as hell. Nine albums, all of which--Postal Service, Aesop, Iron & Wine, Soul Position--would give me flashbacks if I played them while the scooter was next to me.
It always reminds me of the first time I moved my scooter, which was the end of Junior year when I packed it up to move out of school to go home for a week and then move to Deleware. I'm pretty sure this was one of the happiest times of my life, but that's only because my iPhoto from this era is full of sunny pictures of my friends and I smiling. Ben made me a CD of MP3s that spring and it was pretty much all I listened to on the way home. I can play it in my car because I'm digital as hell. Nine albums, all of which--Postal Service, Aesop, Iron & Wine, Soul Position--would give me flashbacks if I played them while the scooter was next to me.
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2) The really great thing, though, is that I don't feel like I did on Thanksgiving break whatsoever. The worst realization I've had to come to this year is that the relationship I had built up in my head as being perfect and fullfilling and lasting, would just never have worked out.
Don't read too much into this, but I think that most guys repress the fact that the person they are looking for is just like their mother. For me it's my brother. Explaination:
Remember that homophobic asshole who threw me out of a party for being a faggot? I don't want to get into this too much because the personal scares me, especially online--even though if you know who I'm talking about then you would know the story anyway and if you don't know them then who the fuck cares?--but he was in the bar the other night.
He was speaking ill of me to a lady I have recently grown acquainted with and he started to make up stories wherein I was the villain. And she slapped him. Twice. Then once more. Then a friend of mine looked over and gave her a look to convey his perplexity at the sight of the two of them speaking, given their respective relationships to me. So she slapped him again just to illustrate what she was doing.
At my table, my closest friends had the same question for me and so I decided that I might as well turn my own life into the third-act of a John Hughes film.
"Hey, man, hey come here a second."
"What?"
"We have a question over here at my table, and no one can figure out why anyone is bothering to talk to you, and I told them you're a changed man."
"Right."
"I told them that you weren't the same guy who chased me out of a party months ago screaming faggot and making comments on the nature of my physique."
"...yeah..."
"So, why don't you prove them all wrong and say this right now. The next time you get in a fight with someone who's not as heterosexual looking as possible: what's the one word you're not going to reach for?" Mind you, if he stepped forward, if a glass broke in the room, if the song "Self Esteem" started on our old-ass jukebox, I would have shat myself.
Visibly embarassed: "Right, dude...totally..."
"Great, so why don't you say it right now. I, ___, will never say the word faggot again."
"Nah, I'm not saying that word again."
"This isn't a trick, ___. We just wanna be here to hear it for the last time."
"Dude that was the last time, you heard it."
"Right, I know I heard it. But I didn't get a good look at your face because I was too busy running away from you as you charged at me. So give it a shot. 'I, ___, will never say the f-word again.'"
"I'm not saying that fucking word, man."
"Not that fucking word, ___, that faggot word. Just repeat after me, quote me, even: 'I will never say the f-word again.'"
"Alright, alright, I will never say the f-word again. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"That's beautiful," I said, and went into guidance counselor mode. "You see what we did here tonight? We had a healing. Society gave us a ton of bricks and we built bridges, not walls." Some people I've always counted on left halfway through because they can't handle confrontation, and some people with whom I have since grown more acquainted continued to slap him later when ___ and I spoke again and made him apologize continually everytime he tried to weasle out of taking responsibility.
Don't read too much into this, but I think that most guys repress the fact that the person they are looking for is just like their mother. For me it's my brother. Explaination:
Remember that homophobic asshole who threw me out of a party for being a faggot? I don't want to get into this too much because the personal scares me, especially online--even though if you know who I'm talking about then you would know the story anyway and if you don't know them then who the fuck cares?--but he was in the bar the other night.
He was speaking ill of me to a lady I have recently grown acquainted with and he started to make up stories wherein I was the villain. And she slapped him. Twice. Then once more. Then a friend of mine looked over and gave her a look to convey his perplexity at the sight of the two of them speaking, given their respective relationships to me. So she slapped him again just to illustrate what she was doing.
At my table, my closest friends had the same question for me and so I decided that I might as well turn my own life into the third-act of a John Hughes film.
"Hey, man, hey come here a second."
"What?"
"We have a question over here at my table, and no one can figure out why anyone is bothering to talk to you, and I told them you're a changed man."
"Right."
"I told them that you weren't the same guy who chased me out of a party months ago screaming faggot and making comments on the nature of my physique."
"...yeah..."
"So, why don't you prove them all wrong and say this right now. The next time you get in a fight with someone who's not as heterosexual looking as possible: what's the one word you're not going to reach for?" Mind you, if he stepped forward, if a glass broke in the room, if the song "Self Esteem" started on our old-ass jukebox, I would have shat myself.
Visibly embarassed: "Right, dude...totally..."
"Great, so why don't you say it right now. I, ___, will never say the word faggot again."
"Nah, I'm not saying that word again."
"This isn't a trick, ___. We just wanna be here to hear it for the last time."
"Dude that was the last time, you heard it."
"Right, I know I heard it. But I didn't get a good look at your face because I was too busy running away from you as you charged at me. So give it a shot. 'I, ___, will never say the f-word again.'"
"I'm not saying that fucking word, man."
"Not that fucking word, ___, that faggot word. Just repeat after me, quote me, even: 'I will never say the f-word again.'"
"Alright, alright, I will never say the f-word again. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"That's beautiful," I said, and went into guidance counselor mode. "You see what we did here tonight? We had a healing. Society gave us a ton of bricks and we built bridges, not walls." Some people I've always counted on left halfway through because they can't handle confrontation, and some people with whom I have since grown more acquainted continued to slap him later when ___ and I spoke again and made him apologize continually everytime he tried to weasle out of taking responsibility.
1:54 AM | [permalink] |
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March 10, 2004
Whenever I go home, I end up getting dinner with Tori, who graduated with my older brother and may have not known that she was my best friend until she graduated after my sophomore year of high school. That is to say that I had a huge crush on her and we hung out every day every summer and when she was the cool, busy, older girl, we would sit in her house and make vegan cookies together on weekends.
We always made food a big part of our relationship, oftentimes travelling for hours to a vegan oasis somewhere in CT or Mass, but now I feel that we are slipping into that middle-aged, housewife-ish, track of meeting for a meal to catch up once a year and then checking out. But next year she's moving to Iowa City to go to law school, which is three hours from Chicago. I didn't realize this at first, but it will be immensely comforting to know that we can both run away to eachother's cities if necessary.
We always made food a big part of our relationship, oftentimes travelling for hours to a vegan oasis somewhere in CT or Mass, but now I feel that we are slipping into that middle-aged, housewife-ish, track of meeting for a meal to catch up once a year and then checking out. But next year she's moving to Iowa City to go to law school, which is three hours from Chicago. I didn't realize this at first, but it will be immensely comforting to know that we can both run away to eachother's cities if necessary.
Labels: Chicago
12:08 PM | [permalink] |
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March 07, 2004
Fat Joe-"What's Luv"
Dizzee Rascal-"Stop Dat"
Jay-Z-"Big Pimpin' (Unplugged Remix)"
Cee-Lo-"Closet Freak"
Immortal Technique-"Obnoxious"
Black Star-"Definition"
8:57 AM | [permalink] |
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March 06, 2004
Quick Survey of Other Men Who Are Assumed Gay:
Are you getting called a fag more frequently since this whole San Fran business?
In the past three days in Columbus, OH, the following things were screamed at me:
"Hey, faggot, you like it up the ass?"
"Why you gotta be so gay?"
"FAAAAAAAAG."
"Check it out: Dyke-on-fag!"
The last of which was when I was walking with a girl, and most certainly not sucking on any man's penis. This may be an issue of location. If you grow up in the midwest either gay or playing football, you look forward to the day that you can live in Columbus.
Are you getting called a fag more frequently since this whole San Fran business?
In the past three days in Columbus, OH, the following things were screamed at me:
"Hey, faggot, you like it up the ass?"
"Why you gotta be so gay?"
"FAAAAAAAAG."
"Check it out: Dyke-on-fag!"
The last of which was when I was walking with a girl, and most certainly not sucking on any man's penis. This may be an issue of location. If you grow up in the midwest either gay or playing football, you look forward to the day that you can live in Columbus.
9:40 PM | [permalink] |
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March 03, 2004
Were you the author of a religious satire website, you would never be able to create one any funnier than one intended as serious:
Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair 2001
Article by Dr. Richard Paley & FBCSF Staff1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"
Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.
2nd Place: "Pine Cones Are Complicated"
David Block and Trevor Murry (grades 4) showed how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God's design in nature.
Honorable Mention:
"God Made Kitty" - Sally Reister (grade 3)
"The Bible Says Creation" - Aaron Kent (grade 5)
"Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False" - Paul Sanborn (grade 4)
Middle School Level
Patricia Lewis displays her jar of non-living material, still non-living after three weeks.1st Place: "Life Doesn't Come From Non-Life"
Patricia Lewis (grade 8) did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes.
2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.
Honorable Mention:
"Mousetrap Reduced To Pile Of Functionless Parts" - Kevin Parker (grade 7)
"Dinosaur & Man Walked Together" - Donny Findlay (grade 6)
"Rocks Can't Evolve, Where Did They Come From Mr. Darwin?" - Anna Reed (grade 6)High School Level
Eileen Hyde (right) and Lynda Morgan (left), future Creation Scientists.1st Place: "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria"
Eileen Hyde and Lynda Morgan (grades 10 & 11) did a project showing how the power of prayer can unlock the latent genes in bacteria, allowing them to microevolve antibiotic resistance. Escherichia coli bacteria cultured in agar filled petri dishes were subjected to the antibiotics tetracycline and chlorotetracycline. The bacteria cultures were divided into two groups, one group (A) received prayer while the other (B) didn't. The prayer was as follows: "Dear Lord, please allow the bacteria in Group A to unlock the antibiotic-resistant genes that You saw fit to give them at the time of Creation. Amen." The process was repeated for five generations, with the prayer being given at the start of each generation. In the end, Group A was significantly more resistant than Group B to both antibiotics.
2nd Place: "Maximal Packing Of Rodentia Kinds: A Feasibility Study"
Jason Spinter's (grade 12) project was to show the feasibility of Noah's Ark using a Rodentia research model (made of a mixture of hamsters and gerbils) as a representative of diluvian life forms. The Rodentia were placed in a cage with dimensions proportional to a section of the Ark. The number of Rodentia used (58) was calculated using available Creation Science research and was based on the median animal size and their volumetric distribution in the Ark. The cage was also fitted with wooden dowels inserted at regular intervals through the cage walls, forming platforms which provided support for the Rodentia. Although there was little room left in the cage, all Rodentia were able to move just enough to ward off muscle atrophy. Food pellets and water were delivered to sub-surface Rodentia via plastic drinking straws inserted into the Rodentia-mass, which also served to allow internal air flow. Once a day, the cage was sprayed with water to cleanse any built-up waste. Additionally, the cage was suspended on bungee cords to simulate the rocking motion of a ship. The study lasted 30 days and 30 nights, with all Rodentia surviving at least long enough afterwards to allow for reproduction. These findings strongly suggest that Noah's Ark could hold and support representatives of all antediluvian animal kinds for the duration of the Flood and subsequent repopulation of the Earth.Honorable Mention:
"Geocentrism: Politically Incorrect" - Richard Cody (grade 9)
"Young Earth, Old Lies" - Melvin Knuth & Glenna Reher (grade 11)
"Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire" - Tom Williamson (grade 12)
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March 01, 2004
Long Overdue Post About An Awful Girl
Women's Studies Senior Seminar. The only people in the class are the six students in the senior class who minor or major in the department. It's the kind of class I always thought I'd get to take in college. We meet regularly at the professor's house. Tomorrow she's getting us all chinese food.
But two weeks ago in class, the teacher was on a roll about the polyvalent nature of the theory we were working with. Real nerd shit. "A theorist like Cixious works on many levels because you can look at the theory from one way and it works within a particular framework." I noted a few choice examples and looked up from my notebook and saw the whole class nodding, really into it. "I mean the complexity is apparent. And it works like one of those images where from one angle it looks like a duck and the other it's an old woman."
The Girl I Can't Stand starts nodding her head. A lightbulb goes off: "Ooo, oh oh oh, right!...Optical illusions!"
The women's movement went back five years.
Everytime she speaks, I have to either tune out the entire lecture or suffer through what she says because she always sits next to me. Then TGICS bent over on the couch where we had class. I noticed something on her back in marker:
Women's Studies Senior Seminar. The only people in the class are the six students in the senior class who minor or major in the department. It's the kind of class I always thought I'd get to take in college. We meet regularly at the professor's house. Tomorrow she's getting us all chinese food.
But two weeks ago in class, the teacher was on a roll about the polyvalent nature of the theory we were working with. Real nerd shit. "A theorist like Cixious works on many levels because you can look at the theory from one way and it works within a particular framework." I noted a few choice examples and looked up from my notebook and saw the whole class nodding, really into it. "I mean the complexity is apparent. And it works like one of those images where from one angle it looks like a duck and the other it's an old woman."
The Girl I Can't Stand starts nodding her head. A lightbulb goes off: "Ooo, oh oh oh, right!...Optical illusions!"
The women's movement went back five years.
Everytime she speaks, I have to either tune out the entire lecture or suffer through what she says because she always sits next to me. Then TGICS bent over on the couch where we had class. I noticed something on her back in marker:
INSERT
PENIS
HERE
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9:31 PM | [permalink] |
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INBOX:
Nikki Keller EATING DISORDERS AWARENESS WEEK 3/1/04 12:08 pm
lucy VEGETARIAN? VEGAN? 3/1/04 12:02 pm
Nikki Keller EATING DISORDERS AWARENESS WEEK 3/1/04 12:08 pm
lucy VEGETARIAN? VEGAN? 3/1/04 12:02 pm
2:23 PM | [permalink] |
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Secret to Happiness