There’s hope for us all
“He’d better have beer like you said”
“He will, don’t even worry… OK, we’re here, be cool… Hey Matt!
“Hey Matt…”
“Cool Playstation or whatever…”
(mumbles)
Nothin’, just wanted to see what you were doin’. Chill and stuff. Right Alexa?”
“Yeah, chill and stuff.”
“Ohmygod, is that beer? I’ve never tried that kind before!”
(mumbles)
“REALLY?! Ohmygod you are SO cool! Isn’t he cool, Alexa?”
“Yeah, totally cool.”
and scene!
There are a few milestone dates coming up this month that I’m not looking forward to.
One is the day after Valentine’s Day, that being what would have been ADG and my 4th dating anniversary. See how clever we were? The day AFTER V-Day! That way there’s no romantic pressure, see? Ha-ha! It can’t fail!
bleh
The second, somewhat ironically, is a few weeks later and marks one year since we broke up. I’m not sure of the day off the top of my head, but I’m sure I have it written down somewhere, followed by a somber note filled with self-loathing and pity. Whatever the date, it was still in February, and only a week or so after our 3rd year together. It was as if we had limped across the finish line to complete the 3rd year, and then promptly died during the victory lap.
The final day I’m not looking forward to is, of course, Valentine’s Day itself. In my 31 years I’ve had, what(?), like 10-12 legitimate V-Day’s where I celebrated with someone I truly loved and cared for. And, of those 10 or 12, I have had exactly one that I would consider a real, honest success. One good Valentine’s Day (with ADG, by the way) out of 10-12.
I’m not saying all the others have been bad mind you, just not up to expectations.
OK, and some of them were bad.
One good thing, though, is that I’m obviously not under any pressure to perform this year. One bad thing, though, is that I’m obviously not under any pressure to perform this year.
And it’s not for lack of trying. I think the latest, 6 month tally is 9.
You know that old high-speed internet commercial that uses that old high-speed internet joke, where the idea is that you can now surf the net so fast that you’ll be “done” with the internet in no time? And the husband is clicking and clicking along, with interest, and then he gives one final heavy, foreboding click? The camera switches to a view over his shoulder where see that displayed on his monitor is a message saying something to the effect of, “You have now reached the end of the internet. Please log off. Thank you”. Or some other hilarious shit like that? You know the one.
Well, I’ve been surfing this wild and hairy internet for something like 10+ years now and I can tell you this much: I haven’t even gotten close to getting to the end of the internet porn section… let alone anything about history, or mathematics, or engineering, or whatever the hell else other people like christian conservatives, george dubya, and 4th grade school teachers search the internet for.
And we’re talking about fairly standard boy-girl, girl-girl porn here; I haven’t even begun to get to the weird freak crap you hear about in penthouse letters, or anything of that chick in Mexico with the horse that your buddy told you about. Standard porn and it’s already endless.
There’s a philosophy that if something is beyond the scope of your own human understanding then effectively, it doesn’t exist. And so, seeing as I can’t even see the far away misty end to the vastness of the porn internet world, I have to assume the rest of the internets are similarly vast… and therefore endless.
That ad was such bullshit.
This is what’s hilarious about 21-year olds:
“Wait hold on… let me turn on the fucking Ghost Busters.”
As part of my refusing to believe that I could have any lingering effects of last week’s flu, I played tennis with a friend yesterday afternoon. I learned a few things:
1. I don’t, in fact, play tennis
2. I am, in fact, still suffering from the lingering effects of last week’s flu, and finally…
3. I am, indeed, spectacularly out of shape.
Ok, #3 is unconfirmed because of #2, but I have never seen myself so ragged with sweat actually pouring out of me. There were streams of it, rivulets really; and there were puddles forming in my shoes so it squished when I walked. Whenever I would run up and down the court, sheets of the stuff would fly off behind me like a motorboat showing off with a rooster-tail. At one point, I had to strap my water bottle to my head with duct-tape so that I could drink water continuously as I simultaneously lost it out of every single pore.
It was glorious.
I’ve been joking to my friends lately about how I’ve been caught in a self-induced downward spiral (of morality), and that I won’t rebound until I hit the bottom. That explains things like the 21-year old, and the way my phone keeps ringing when I’m out. Of course, I should have been doing this stuff when I was 21, but whadda you gonna do?
And also, of course, describing my behaviour as a result of declining morality is a huge exaggeration. I’m just still searching is all. And self-medicating with alcohol, but that’s beside the point.
Last week, I spent 95% of my time in bed, with what turned out to be the flu. I read a lot, I surfed the internet a lot, and I slept a lot. I wasn’t bored, though nor was I particularly entertained. I didn’t talk to too many people, and, for that week, I was effectively lifted out of the world. Come Friday, I was beginning to feel a little like Howard Hughes in my reclusion, and the point was doubly made when I clipped my nails and shaved my week-old beard in preparation for my emergence.
Which was coming hell or high water.
First off, I was sick (no pun, etc) of being sick; and, secondly, Saturday night we were celebrating one of my best friend’s birthdays… something I wasn’t going to miss. I had been feeling steadily better all of Friday (though still marginally feverish, and still definitely incapacitated), so I had a glimmer of hope that I would be able to make it.
Saturday morning, I woke up determined to shrug off what had kept me down all week, and jumped out of bed… and then immediately hit the floor, completely out of breath, and with absolutely no energy. In reality, my living situation doesn’t afford me the chance to eat particularly well to begin with, and being sick, I’d really only been drinking fluids supplemented with an occassional sandwhich for the better part of a week. I walked out to the kitchen and began peeling an orange, but had to actually sit on the floor half way through because my heart was pounding, my breath was ragged, and I felt like I was in the 22nd mile of a marathon.
This was not looking good.
I literally crawled back to bed and weighed my options. I felt pretty OK. by which I mean I wasn’t feverish or achey, and I wasn’t terribly congested. I was just so weak. I figured it was the lack of food, so I mentally prepared myself to marshall all my energy for one big attempt, and try to go out for lunch.
And I did.
By the time Saturday night rolled around, I was ready. OK, maybe drinking wasn’t such a good idea, or screaming at the top of my lungs in a bar wasn’t the best solution for my mangled throat, but I did, without a doubt, have a great time. Because it was a surprise, my friend’s girlfriend brought him to Kincaid’s, ostensibly for dinner, but really because we were all waiting in the bar. I wouldn’t have thought that a restaurant bar not particularly known for its hippness would be that much fun, but apparently dousing everything in Jack Daniels takes care of that.
Afterwards, we wandered down to Old Tony’s on the Redondo Pier, which was, in a word, awesome. Don’t get me wrong, this ain’t the Sky Bar, and the crowd is at least a generation older than the one up the coast in Hermosa, but when you’re in a dive-bar with a mullet-headed guitar and harmonica playing/singer/keyboardist who takes requests, and pulls them off unbelievably well… you can’t go wrong.
Also, talking to hott girls makes it good.
So, from crawling on the floor, to staying out until 4, I think I kicked the flu.
Three years ago I wrote about today, and the Challenger tragedy again comes to mind this morning. I still remember, and probably always will, being a ten-year old boy who wanted more than anything to be an astrobaut someday, and seeing my heroes die so tragically.
I also remember, with a chill, later in the day when President Reagan eulogizd the crew to the nation and ended with:
.: Reagan’s address to the Nation
.: NASA Day of Rememberance
.: New Hampshire town to celebrate McAuliffe legacy
.: US to mark 20th anniversary of Challenger disaster.
*ring ring*
Hello?
Hey hon, how’s it going? What are you doing?
Going alright, doing nothing, what about you?
Ack! You sound awful, honey, are you still sick?
Yeah, I didn’t go to work again today… but I’m feeling better… I think I had the flu.
Come out with me!
Uhhh…
c’mon! It’s Friday night! I did my hair and my make-up, and I’m all dressed up. I’m just waiting for someone to call, now.
(laughing) I’m sure ONE of your boyfriends will call.
yeah, right, no way. Come out with me.
Can’t do it, baby… unless you want me to die
That’s all it would take? Then come out! (laughs)
You could come over here. Take care of me. Dance around in your outfit a little.
(laughs) If you’re not going to take me out, I need to call my girlfriends
Have fun!
Call you later
So this minor cold I came down with has been putting me through the ringer all week. I haven’t been to work in 4 days, and I feel like there’s a good chance that my weekend will be no better.
Maybe.
It’s been quite the pathetic scene, actually. Me, trudging back and forth from my bed to the bathroom every few hours, leaving the apartment only fora short while in search of food. No TV, no couch to veg on, no radio, no etc etc. Luckily, I have you, internets.
I attempted to go buy a microwave yesterday, that being one of the many things that I need to replace from the fire that I could actually use right now; but I failed. Instead, I got all dizzy and feverish at Target, and gave up. Pathetic.
Speaking of pathetic, I could hear Them working on my apartment from my bed yesterday, and I excitedly went over last night to check Their progress.
They replaced one window pane.
All day they were there. One window pane. Only three more to go, fellas. Oh, and then putting back together an entire kitchen, but whatever. Work at your own pace.
Happy Birthday… Mr. Smithersss
Without my noticing it, the 5th birthday of this blog came and went earlier this month.
5 years!
Including the web page I had before this blog actually existed, that makes (I think) 8 years of being on this particular one of the internets. That is a long time, and yet I am still a bit player in the blogoshpere. Ah well, I do it for myself, not the fame (…is what I say to myself as long as I am not, in fact, famous).
Some interesting observations: I went and read all of my January 2001 posts when I got distracted getting the link for my very first post, and I noticed that:
.: I was a lot funnier 5 years ago, and,
.: I was also a lot more depressed (though the casual reader may not be able to glean that from my posts the way that I can), and,
.: almost every link I posted is dead.
That last point says to me that it actually is a fairly noteworthy feat to have maintained a site for as long as I have. It may not have all been gold, but at least it’s in the race.
