Thursday, June 30, 2005

Going on a Golf Trip With Your Bar

The staff and friends of Tai's Til 4 returned Monday night from a Golf Trip to Galena, Illinois. I attended this trip with them, and had a purely lovely time. I've spent the last few days compiling a list of Dos and Don'ts so that you'll be able to glean the maximum enjoyment out of a trip with your bar, should you have the chance to go on one.

  • DO ride there with your bartender. He already knows how to get there and he'll buy you lunch and play the Cow Game* with you**. He will also take you on a very fun and entertaining "Girls I fucked in Galena" tour.
  • DON'T expect a direct route to Galena when riding with your bartender. He will stop repeatedly, including an hour and a half detour to take his niece for a throat culture at the hospital. Go with the flow. It will be worth it when he announces he knows how to cure his niece's sore throat, then walks over and farts on her.
  • DO remember to bring your bathing suit, lest you find yourself doing some emergency shopping at the brand new 24 hour Galena Wal Mart.
  • DON'T just decide "Aw, fuck it" and go swimming in your underwear. Especially if your underwear are a pair of white boxer shorts. And if you forget and do go swimming in your see through undies, please, please don't get out of the pool and go running around the banquet room where everyone can see your drippy wiener. Trust me: NO ONE wants to see that shit.
  • DO room with your bartender. He will handle check in and check out and will carry your bags in for you.
  • DON'T expect to get any sleep if you room with your bartender, between his snoring and his jumping on your bed at 4:30 in the morning when he gets done drinking while asking you why you disappeared an hour earlier. You can nap when you get home. (and at the golf course clubhouse under a table before dinner)
  • DO steal a golf cart and ride around the course harassing the people who actually went on the trip to golf.
  • DO partake heavily of the free alcohol the bar owner provided at the convenient filling stations placed strategically around the course. DO also take advantage of the tiny bottles of Captain and Jaeger the bar owner has stashed in his golf cart.
  • DON'T forget sunscreen if you're going to be driving around harassing golfers in a stolen golf cart all day.
  • DO invite the little boy bringing you ice to have dinner with the group. Do engage him in a deep conversation about the life of a dairy farming family when he tells you he can't have dinner with you because tonight is his turn to milk the cows.
  • DON'T ask him if he has to milk the cows by hand. He'll look at you with scorn and say "no one milks by hand anymore" and then you will feel stupid. Or go ahead and ask if you don't mind feeling stupid.
  • DO hang out with an ex-marine CPD sharpshooter and watch him try to cure someone else of the hiccups through Extreme Breathing Relaxation techniques. DO laugh about this with a guy who has a master's degree in religion but dropped out of seminary to be a bouncer.
  • DON'T leave your arm hanging out the window for the duration of the 2 1/2 hour return trip - especially if you burned it on the golf course the day before because you forgot your sunscreen.
* The Cow Game is this thing my mother invented when Cap and I were kids. When you go on long car trips, you look out the window on your side. Any cows that you see you count out loud. How ever many cows you count is how many you get to have. As you pass more cows, you add them to the cows you already have. If you pass a cemetery on your side, you have to bury all of your cows and start over. Whoever has the most cows at the end of the trip wins. It took me until high school to figure out that my mother only invented this game to get us kids to shut the hell up and stop touching each other.
**He'll play it but he won't play it right. For instance he'll see a field of cows, and instead of counting them, he'll just estimate "Oh, 100 cows." when clearly there aren't more than maybe 30. Or neither of you will pass any cows for a long time, and then suddenly there will be some on your side, so while you're basking in the glow of your hard earned 4 cows, he'll say, "Well yeah, but I've got like 60 horses." You can try to tell him horses don't count, but he won't listen. At this point I advise that you just sigh and be content with the fact that you got him to play your asinine game in the first place.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Drama-o-rama

So my friend gets very sick while he's on vacation with his family out of the country, right? If you were his girlfriend back in the states, what would you do? Would you:

a. Send him cute e-mails with pictures of soup and ginger ale and other sickbed items, along with messages about how you miss him and hope he feels better;

b. Try not to bother him, but plan a big "Welcome Home!" surprise for him when he returns;

c. Jump on an emergency flight packing a thermometer, throat drops and Vitamin C and rescue him in his hour of overseas need;

d. Have your ex sleep over your house, cheat on your boyfriend with him, tell him about it in an e-mail when he's ill and far from home and friends, then get upset when he breaks up with you and go cry to HIS friends expecting sympathy.

I'll let you think through your answer for a bit while I discuss the concept of consequences. Dictionary.com gives the following definitions for consequence:

1. Something that logically or naturally follows from an action or condition.
2. The relation of a result to its cause.
3. A logical conclusion or inference.

It seems a very simple concept, no? Yet people seem to be struggling with this concept at present. For example, if you should, say, cheat on your boyfriend, the naturally following action is that he may break up with you. This should not be a surprise; it is the consequence that fits your particular action. That you e-mailed him and admitted it really has little bearing here. Nor does your being remorseful about it after the fact. Cheat on boyfriend = no more boyfriend. Similarly, assume that now you have cheated on your boyfriend and he dumped your ass, you decide to call his friends looking for advice because you are hurt. Whose friends are they? They are his. Who is their loyalty to? To him. So if you call them up and try to play the "I'm the victim" card, the logical conclusion of that is that rather than the validation you crave, you will end up getting a big "Fuck you". That is the consequence for deliberately hurting that person's buddy. How you feel about the whole situation: irrelevant. See? Consequence. It's simple.

Now, back to the SAT question at the top of the post. In the context of this recent discussion of the consequence principle, which of these options seems like a good way to NOT keep your boyfriend hanging around?

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Epilogue

After drying my body and hair with paper towels and throwing some clothes on, I headed for work. As I stepped out onto the front porch and locked the door behind me, I glanced into the laundry basket.

Mother fucker was still in there.

Amberance and The Visitor (a comedy in three acts)- Part III

Part III

I woke up this morning long before dawn. As in 4 a.m. Usually if I'm up at 4 a.m. it's because a) I haven't been to bed yet or b) the bartender has called me because he 1) is drunk 2) is angry 3) has a bar story to tell 4) feels like making fun of me 5) some combination of the above. Today however, I set my alarm for 4 a.m. on purpose because I needed to be in super early today to run some last minute Monte Carlo simulations (Fish insists on referring to these as "Monty Python" simulations, and to be honest, with as well as this endeavor has gone for me today, that is probably more appropriate. But I digress). Let me just say that because of the bartender's bizarre phone-in hours, I'm generally awake at 4 a.m. as often as not. Somehow though, when you are doing it on purpose for work related reasons, it is almost unbearable.

By 4:45 I had finally tired of bashing my alarm clock to death every 9 minutes, and so I stumbled out of my room and toward the general direction of the shower.

Ah, the shower. The shower is a special place for me. How I love to lather up my head with shampoo and twist it into funny shapes. Or to draw little cartoons on the steamed up window. Or endlessly play with my navel (which contains a small shiny object, which I have mentioned before I am fascinated by). But also I do some of my best thinking in the shower.

Today's shower was a fairly long one since it was far too early to be functional and the longer I stayed in there, the longer I could avoid going to work. Meaning I had a lot of time to think. So there I was scrubbing away and thinking about my waking nightmare the prior evening. I went over my decisions for errors, now that I was out of any immediate spider danger, but concluded that at each turn I had done the only thing I could have done to survive. I was quite pleased with my outer calm and rational* behavior. Concluding that that particular hellish episode was behind me, I turned my thoughts to the few scraps of clothes I had in my closet (since my laundry was still in the car) and attempted to make a reasonable professional ensemble for work. Dark gray slacks and a red mandarin shirt were still available, so I was all set. So, having done the best thinking I was going to do for the day, I rinsed myself off and shut off the water.

Which is when it hit me.

Every single towel that I own is in the backseat of my car.

And "every single towel" literally means every single towel, including beach towel, hand towels, dish towels from the kitchen, even my tiny little scrap of wash rag were all outside and a block away from naked, wet, dripping me. Folks, this is my life. This is the way it is in my world all the time. Every single day is some variation on my being trapped in the shower, dripping wet and cold, with no towel in sight, because of a teeny tiny fucking bug.

I started laughing. I laughed and laughed, so hard that it hurt. And then I laughed some more, so greatful was I for having with a sense of humor about myself.

*or at minimum, rationalized.

Amberance and The Visitor (a comedy in three acts)- Part II

Part II

I'm really not a fan of doing laundry, which is why I own enough underwear that I can go 3 weeks to a month without washing clothes. The drawback to this is that by the time I sack it up and do my laundry, there are TONS of clothes. Enough to usually require me to make several trips when transporting them from house to car, car to laundromat, laundromat to car, and car to house. Also I will be standing there listening to Spanish language television and folding them for a really long time.

Aside from the Mexican soap opera blaring from all corners of the room, laundry goes fairly well. I have enough laundry to use the Big Washers, which for some as yet unexplained reason, I think are really neato. So I'm happy about that. I also get a surprise call from my friend Minnick in Cleveland, who may potentially visit me late next week, so I'm also happy about that. And by the time I'm done washing and drying my metric ton of laundry, almost everyone else has left, and I have the folding table all to myself. So I'm happy about that. While I'm merrily folding my underwear in thirds (not even kidding you), Fish calls. He's on his way home from work, and I tell him how the laundry's going and that my buddy called and so forth. Fish says, "So what about your visitor?" I am momentarily perplexed. We had just discussed the possibility of Minnick visiting, so he couldn't be talking about that. And boys don't typically refer to women's periods as a "visitor" (as we girls do), and in fact, generally don't bring up such topics at all, so I'm pretty sure he's not talking about that.

It is then that I remember: There is a spider on my porch. And it's dark. It will be waiting for me. Waiting for me to struggle up the steps with heavy bags of laundry, repeatedly. Waiting for it's chance to jump on my head and Eat Me. "Oh God," I say in dismay. "Um, can I sleep at your house?" This would seem almost reasonable (almost, because who sleeps over someone else's house because of a spider on the porch?) except for the fact that Fish lives a solid hour away from me, and it is now 10:30. And I have to be at work early. Which gives me another idea. "Oh! Or, I could just go to work now, and sleep under my desk. That might work. There's no spiders in the Loop."

"I'm pretty sure that's not true," said the wise Fish.

I park my car while talking to Fish. Fish tells me about some games he's playing and we chat amicably. Ten minutes later he asks "Are you still in your car?"

Me, sheepishly, "Yeah. But it's because I was watching this little bunny hop around."

"Amber, you have to go in the house."

"No. I'm sleeping in the car. With my laundry." I had already determined that I was going to have a hard enough time getting myself back in the house without having to lug a clumsy, not to mention heavy bag of clothes up the stairs. It would slow me down and give the spider more surface area to use in order to get ON ME. My plan was to leave the laundry in the car overnight, and bring it in the following evening, when it was still light out and I could watch for the spider. I had a few scraps of clothes still in the house that I could wear to work the next day. Assuming, of course, I could find the inner strength to go in the house.

"You are not sleeping in your car. Go in the house."

I meandered my way towards home. Passing my neighbors, whom I've never spoken to, I wondered if maybe they wouldn't mind my crashing on their couch for the night. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up, paralyzed. He's up there. Waiting for me. Waiting to jump ON ME. And I realized that as I stood there quaking with fear, directly above me was an enormous tree. And everyone knows that trees are giant spider army bases. Any second one or 50 of them would be parachuting onto my head. I was trapped between a spider infested tree and a spider infested porch with nowhere to run. I narrated for Fish, in case something happened to me, so he could explain to the police when they found my half-eaten corpse halfway up the stairs. "Ok. Ok, Fish? I'm going. I'm going up the stairs right now. I can't see anything. Oh God. What if they've built a web across the stairs and I walk right into it in the dark?" (Seriously, these are things I was actually thinking. In my head, I imbue them with an overwhelming intelligence, malice and superior organizational skills. And so, so much evil.) I felt something touch my head. "AAAAAAAGGHH! AAAAAAGH? WHAT WAS THAT? WHAT TOUCHED MY HEAD? (pause for hyperventilation) All right. Ok. I think I'm ok. I'm pretty sure that was just a tree branch. All right, I'm almost there..." Fish's patience is absolutely astounding, I'm telling you.

After my flight through the gaunlet of terror, I slammed the door behind me and locked it (you know, so they can't turn the knob and just walk right in). I made Kristen sniff my head for any spiders that may have transferred there from the tree branch, but she didn't find anything she wanted to play with, so I figured I'd lucked out on that one. Fish kindly listened to me wax psychotic about how they have magical powers and can fit into tiny spaces and come out huge again on the other side, and that I could feel them crawling on me,and about how they are Dastardly, in the way the villains from the pre-talkie cinema days were dastardly, laughing maniacally and twisting their mustaches while the train bears down on the damsel they tied to the tracks.

Finally Fish talked me into going to bed, and I fell asleep, waking only occasionally with the sensation of evil eight legged monsters crawling all over my skin...

Amberance and The Visitor, (a comedy in three acts)- Part I

Note: The only, and I mean ONLY reason that any of this happened is because I was dumb enough to actually laugh and enjoy Heather's story about her own run in with a spider. In the future I will take better care when tempting fate.

Act I

I stand in my dining room, staring fixedly at the laundry basket on top of my dining room table. I have my phone to my ear. Fish cheerily picks up the phone on his end and hears me say "Fish, there is a fucking *spider* In. My. Laundry basket."

Fish is 35 miles away and at work. How exactly I thought he was going to be helpful in this situation I have no freaking clue. "Uh oh," says Fish.

"Fish! What am I going to do?! It's inside my dining room!"

I love Fish. I love him because he is possessed of much logic. Unfortunately for me, logic does not help in these types of situations. "Kick it down the stairs and outside. It will come out."

"ARE YOU CRAZY?! I can't touch the laundry basket! It's IN THERE! It could GET ON ME! It's contaminated now. I'll have to throw it out." I am entirely serious when I am saying this. Under no circumstances can I put clothes that touch my body into a container that once harbored a spider. Clearly I must buy a new laundry basket. Eventually. But someone else has to get it the hell out of my house because I can't touch it.

Fish calmly tries again. "Do you have a spray bottle? Spray it with water, and it will crawl to the middle of the basket, and then you can kill it with a shoe or something."

I'm not having it. "You want me to SPRAY IT WITH SOMETHING?! And piss it off even more? No way. No. Fucking. Way. If I spray it, it will *move* more! And my shoe? I can't kill it with my shoe. It could get ON ME FISH. And I'd have to throw my shoe out too. Think of something else."

"I'll call you back," he replied. This is not because he was thinking of solutions for me so much as it was because he had customers with problems he could actually solve and thus, wisely decided to focus on them instead.

I am left to deal with the spider alone. We are having somewhat of a staring contest (I think at one point I even said to Fish in my best crazy-talk voice "He's staring at me!"). I have to get my laundry done tonight. And I can't just leave when there's a spider in my house. There is no way around it. I must pluck up the courage and Act.

I run to my front door and open it wide. I am going to carry the basket out there, but I can't pause to open the door with the basket in my hand, because the thing might get ON ME. So I do it ahead of time (score one for advance planning). I go back to the dining room. Carefully I check all over the outside of the basket, looking for more of them (another of my irrational spiderisms is that if I see one, there is obviously an army of 65 others hiding nearby waiting to pounce). Finding no other interlopers, I grasp the edge of the basket and start walking quickly toward my front door. As soon as I start moving, IT starts moving. Blood curdling screams fill the house, if not most of the neighborhood. Immediately upon getting to the porch, I drop the thing like it's on fire. The spider bounces and almost falls out one of the side holes. I shriek again, because if it is airborne it could get ON ME. But he falls back into the basket and scrambles back to his post to stare at me some more.

Quickly as I can I make several trips to the car, always watching for movement from the basket, and skirting it as much as possible. I get everything into the car and lock myself in. Paranoid, I check every surface of my car for the elusive Spider Army. Fish calls back in the middle of this sweep. "Any progress?"

"Um. Um. Um. (I struggle with words when I'm on the verge of panic.) Lateral progress. The basket with spider is outside on my porch, and I am in my car with my laundry."

"Well good! How is that lateral?"

"Um. Yeah. Um. Well, you see, I'm going to go do my laundry now, but when I get back it will be dark. And I won't be able to SEE where it is. So. I have no idea how I'm going to get back in my house. But I don't have to deal with it for a few hours, so the problem is temporarily solved."

Fish talks to me calmly while I drive to the laundromat. He graciously gets online to research characteristics of the Brown Recluse, since I have now convinced myself that that is what this creepy fucker is. He is patient and makes affirmative sounds as I ramble on about how they are Evil, and Conniving, and Dastardly, and most importantly, Trying To Eat Me. My blood pressure has nearly returned to normal by the time I pull into the parking lot.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

You Bastard(s)

I am tired. I am exhausted beyond belief. I sleep and I sleep, and I'm just as tired as before. I also have a sore throat and a headache, and my body is sore. And because I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I know that what I have is mono.

Alright now, who was it? Come on, fess up. Which one of you fuckos that I've been kissing was sick and didn't fucking tell me? You know who you are. Hell, you know who each other are (hint: if you haven't been in the Chicago area in the last two weeks, it's probably not you). I swear to you, next month when I have the energy to stand for longer than 4 minutes at a time, you'll pay big.

You just think about owning up, you germ-leaving kissing bandit you. You think about it...while I go take (another) nap...

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Mini-Update

Someday, and someday soon, you will stop by Bizzybiz and, lo and behold, there will be a long and involved post about the serious and intense drama I've somehow managed to let envelop me yet again in my life. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry. Mostly it will make you smack your forehead and say, "How does she continually get herself into these types of things time and time again?" That day is not today.

Today what you get is a link over to Heather's Blog where you can find details of an experiment the two of us have cooked up for your inevitable amusement and our probable embarrassment. Though honestly I can't wait for my dare. I'm never happier then when I'm making a complete ass of myself and then photographing/writing about it so that the general public can see me for the shitpencil I really am.

So, to recap, and in the interest of brevity: Drama abounds. Hilarity ensues. Posts are forthcoming.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Heather & Amber: Clearly Not Punks

VelociHeather: hey, does the PGS in your name stand for pukey girl socks?
VelociHeather: pungent gritty soda?
VelociHeather: perfect green silk?
VelociHeather: pussy goat shit?
VelociHeather: ugh, that was gross, sorry
VelociHeather: prancing gargantuan sweeties?
PGS DenMILF: haha
PGS DenMILF: i'll suggest those to joe
PGS DenMILF: it joe and jim's band
VelociHeather: putty grape stains
PGS DenMILF: pale green stars
PGS DenMILF: seriously
VelociHeather: haha, gay
PGS DenMILF: is that the worst name for a punk rock band ever?
VelociHeather: lol
VelociHeather: looks like we feel that same about the name
PGS DenMILF: it would explain why joe was rubbing jim's nipple the other day anyway
VelociHeather: pale green stars for a punk band?
VelociHeather: lame
VelociHeather: iron fist of death
VelociHeather: punch the throat
VelociHeather: ass kickers
VelociHeather: those are names
PGS DenMILF: fucked your sister, thad be good
VelociHeather: suck my wang
VelociHeather: punch that bitch
VelociHeather: something like that, you know? needs more rage
PGS DenMILF: indeed. rage is important
PGS DenMILF: it's the main reason i can't be a punk myself
VelociHeather: they could use one of our awesome insults for a name
VelociHeather: like shitpencil
PGS DenMILF: people are like "FUCK YOU" and I go, "okay"
VelociHeather: tinselfucker
VelociHeather: You have no rage?
PGS DenMILF: not enough to fit in with the anarchists
VelociHeather: hmm
VelociHeather: don't they have punk rock for passive aggressive people?
VelociHeather: Groups with names like, "Whatever, go ahead and do it, I don't care"
VelociHeather: "Sure, fine, whatever"
PGS DenMILF: yeah. bouncing souls
PGS DenMILF: also an incredibly bad punk rock name
VelociHeather: hmm, but not as bad as the pgs one
PGS DenMILF: no that sucks mad dick
VelociHeather: there you go
VelociHeather: "sucks mad dick"
VelociHeather: for you avg homo punk band
PGS DenMILF: oh, i like it

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

This Is Ponderous, Man. Really Ponderous.

Recent events have got me debating: Is it better to have a fuck-friend, or a friend-fuck?

Now I know you're saying, "Amber, you tawdry slut! Perhaps you should be less of a tart and get into an actual relationship."

Someday kids, someday. But the truth is, I'm not over the ex, and I'm even more not over the kids, and I'm having a good time justifying this behavior as "finding myself". So, kindly blow it out your ass.

"Fair enough," you say. "But what in Bilbo's pocket is the difference between a fuck-friend and a friend-fuck?"

The difference is this: A fuck-friend is someone you are sleeping with and that's it. You don't hang out with them, you don't go for drinks or have long telephone conversations, you don't get them a nice birthday card. In fact, you may not otherwise even be able to stand each other. There is nothing there but the physical. A good example of this is the Rusty Nail (nickname compliments of my dear friend TupperDoug, who explains, "Rusty, because he's old. And Nail, because he likes to nail you." Thanks, D). The Rusty Nail used to work with me several jobs ago. He was an ornery bastard who never turned his timecards in on time, and resented having this 21-year old fresh from college with her fancy degree little lassy nagging him about it. For my part, I thought he was a stubborn mule and general all around asshole. We used to get together on Tuesday nights and make hate to each other. The next day we'd be back at each other's throats. This went on for an entire summer. We never started hanging out, we never went to dinner. Hell, we never even learned to get along. I haven't seen him even one time since I quit that job. That's a fuck-friend.

A friend-fuck is someone that is just exactly like your other friends. You get together, hang out, go to parties, talk on the phone, e-mail, whatever. You also happen to occasionally fall into the same bed, and subsequently each other. Everything else stays the same. You don't start holding hands in public, or buying them flowers or shit like that. You're just friends. Friends with a cherry on top.

So which is better? With the fuck-friend, there is no chance of getting any more deeply involved. There are no feelings there, even of the non-romantic variety, and therefore no real chance of getting hurt. But along with that, there is never going to be anything deeper, and if it goes on long enough it will start to get hollow (read: boring). Conversely, with your friend-fuck, you have the benefit of being with someone you really care about. You actually have something to talk about in between takes or what have you. But what you also have is a connection. A connection that can grow into romantic feelings on the part of one or both parties. A connection that can lead you down a path of fear and jealousy. The dark side of friend-fucking if you will. The kind of stuff that if you don't tread very, very carefully could unravel your entire friendship.

Over the years I have found myself in both of these situations a number of times, and I have to tell you people: I still don't have an answer for you. Or, for that matter, for me. The benefits and drawbacks for each still appear pretty evenly balanced.

It's a mystery kids. And that's why, so is mankind.

Murphy's Law

Today I'm wearing a dress. It has material of three colors: white, red and black. Also today, I stopped for a very rare cup of Starbucks finest on my way in. Because I am Captain Klutzo, I spilled it within seconds of leaving the shop. Where did it land?

Yes. Only on the two white parts.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

6th Grade English

Remember when you were in junior high or middle school, and your English teacher made you write in reflective sentences? An example:

Homework question: Did Suzy go to the grocery store with her mother?
Your answer: Yes, Suzy did go to the store with her mother.

Some guy was talking like that on the train the other day:

Reflective Sentence Guy: What do you want to do tonight?
Aquaintance: I don't know. Would you like to get some dinner on the way home?
RSG: I would like to get some dinner on the way.
A: Do you think we should just grab takeout?
RSG: We should just grab some takeout.
A: Oh! I think I have some leftover cake for dessert!
RSG: Yes, leftover cake would be good for dessert.

This went on from the Loop all the way to Belmont. You know what? It's annoying.

This Is Why My Friends Always Run Away

Have I mentioned my childlike awe surrounding small shiny objects? Fascinating I assure you.

Such as yesterday. I took a break from working* to use the latrine yesterday. I was sitting there (as girls do) looking at the floor, and I noticed some little tiny silver pieces of something I couldn't identify.

Which obviously made me think of mercury. You know, the mysteriously expanding-with-heat, in a liquid state at room temperature metallic element, formerly of thermometers**? That's what tiny silver specks on the bathroom floor remind you of right? Right?

So anyway, I'm in the can, pondering mercury. I once spilled some mercury by dropping a thermometer on the floor. And immediately panicked because, you see, I have a cat. A special one. A young one. Who, like many young animals of various species, likes to put things in her mouth. And completely brain-addled person that I am, in my head I start picturing my cat, floating in water upside-down with x-shaped eyes. Because that's how they always draw mercury-poisoned fish, so I figured Kristen would eat some, draw x's on her eyelids, find a body of water, willingly get in it, and keel over dead if I didn't do something to clean up the mercury right then.

Have you ever tried to clean up mercury? It's hard. It beads up all weird-like and rolls around on the floor. Eventually I discovered that if I blew on it, the whole mess would gather as one large quivering silvery bead. Once I did that, all I had to do was get a paper towel and mop it up right? Because, hey, liquid!

But that didn't work - I did successfully get the mercury bead on top of the paper towel, but instead of absorbing, it just rolled around on top like a spineless marble.

All of this went through my head while I looked at the shiny metal things on the floor of the bathroom. When I got back to my desk I asked my friend Fish via AIM what he thought about my bead of mercury, and his take was the same as mine: that the molecular structure of the mercury must simply be too big to fit into the holes in my paper towel. It is a metal after all, despite it's viscosity. But then, as always happens, Fish wanted to know where I even came up with such a question.

And that is why my friends consistently end up running away.

*carrying on multiple IM conversations with Fish, Vicodin Jim and PGS JoE.
** Hot Heather informed me last night that thermometers are now made with alcohol instead of mercury, assuming you can even find one that isn't digital.

Monday, June 06, 2005

I'd Tell You About It, But I'd Have To Kill You

Just coming off of one of the most awesome weekends ever. It was beautiful! There was sex! There was booze! There was rock and roll! (though, not all at once nor necessarily in that order)

I had so much fun that, unfortunately, I can't really tell you about it. There are people who are reading who will barf if I post all the gory details, and other people who might read them and find out Things of Which They Need Not Know (T.W.T.N.N.K.).

What I can tell you is that the guys from Sum 41 are really nice guys. And that that opinion is based on spending 35 seconds watching them sign a big glossy photograph for me and the collective 6 words they spoke to me. But they did it while smiling, so obviously they are very nice.

I can also tell you that Rise Against rocks so much ass I started to think that maybe I should become a punker. And I can tell you that when Rise Against is rocking out all hardcore-like, and a torrential downpour starts, that it is very cool and punk rock to just keep jumping up and down and waving your fist (or potentially your "rock on" finger-pose) while getting thoroughly drenched. Until they are done playing, and you are cold and wet, and no one knows if Sum 41 is even going to get to play, let alone what time it will be, so you go home. (Note: after careful consideration of this last part, I have decided that being punk is still not quite for me.)

I can also tell you that my brother makes a mean Long Island, and that by "mean" I mean "Gets You Fucking Drunk". And that if you're ever at a party of my brother's, make sure to order his very tasty self-invented shot called Barney's Balls (it's purple). Just be prepared to wait 20 minutes for it, as it involves about 17 kinds of liquor, a shaker that leaks and the ice which he stores in a separate room.

I'd like to tell you about how cool my cousin Sarah is, but much of her visit occurred during the T.W.T.N.N.K. So I'll just say this: she's really fucking cool.

So is my friend Fish, but again T.W.T.N.N.K. prevents me from elaborating.

So you see, a good time was had by all, but really you don't see, because the best parts happened during T.W.T.N.N.K. and I've entered into a C.T.K.S. (Conspiracy To Keep Secrets) even though in my humble and sober opinion, the T.W.T.N.N.K. wasn't really as B.A.D.A.P.A.M.I.O.T.B. (Big A Deal As People Are Making It Out To Be).

But whatever, y'all. It kinda harkens back to the days of Tim Doesn't Know and that's never not fun. My advice? Come visit me if you don't already live here. We will create our own nights of T.W.T.N.N.K. and you too will have something to hold over the heads of your friends and torture them with.

*Addendum: Hot Heather would like me to add that she was present for nearly every event chronicled and not chronicled in this post.