I guess I'm going to complain now. I would ask for your forgiveness in advance, but that sounds vaguely Catholic in tone and also kind of sissified. So, I will do the opposite and say that I hope you either don't read past this (right here!)-->WORD, or that you are completely infuriated with me by the time you get to the end of this post.
Yeah, fuck you.
I will start off by stating that it rained Thursday morning. Normally an innocuous kind of declaration, but this past Thursday's (August 9th) bout of precipitation coincided quite uncannily with my car windows being mostly open.
That said, logical cause-and-effect relationships being the standard operating procedure currently popular in our dreadfully Euclidean universe, the upholstery of my car was saturated very, very predictably with water.
Said water refused to stay confined MERELY to the upholstery, and a bit like the state of Israel, invaded and forcefully settled the regions of my dress pants and shirt.
This particular morning, in yet a third uncanny coincidence, I was also required to fulfill an obligation for which I had volunteered, namely manning the department table at a student orientation "Resource Fair". This was a task which I expected to complete with little relish.
It involves running around accosting students, thrusting unwanted promotional bookmarks at them, and delivering a withering harangue about coming to the Academic Success Center before you fail at life and die miserable and alone.
As I walked to the Wayne State University Welcome Center, soaking pants and shirt sticking to me uncomfortably, my thoughts centered mainly on the prospect of spending the next couple of hours at this despicable task.
Of course, the proceedings began late. The group of students was sort of smaller than I had envisioned. I managed to impose myself on about three or four of them when, bewilderingly, everyone was hacked up into small groups by the 'orientation squad leaders' and whisked away. I stood looking around askance.
After about ten minutes of inert semi-idiocy--during which I stood in front of my department table, drank water, stood around some more, watched the thirty people manning the Apple table pack up their stuff and congratulate themselves on working for Apple, read the promotional bookmark front to back twice, ate a doughnut from the refreshment table, and stood around yet further--I finally resolved to ask someone.
Ah, yes the kinda pretty, kinda weird-looking (but I could still probably do her) girl from the Financial Aid office was still around. I asked her. "Do they need us anymore?" And she said "No. We're done. This is a big waste of time," in a very perfunctory tone which told me "go away, pencil dick."
I did, pencil dick duly tucked between my legs, also a bit incensed that I negotiated all this bullshit to be occupied with this OH SO BIG AND IMPORTANT JOB for all of two and a half minutes.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Me: 0, Reality: 0, Heading into overtime.
Extremely awesome individual seeking idiot to kill.
Excellent pay. Short hours.
Inquire within.
______________
This work is largely autobiographical.
Except for the parts that aren't true.
For any resemblance of the characters to real persons living or dead, I apologize in advance.
For any resemblance of fictional events to real events, those to whom I just apologized may apologize to me after they've finished reading.
Excellent pay. Short hours.
Inquire within.
______________
This work is largely autobiographical.
Except for the parts that aren't true.
For any resemblance of the characters to real persons living or dead, I apologize in advance.
For any resemblance of fictional events to real events, those to whom I just apologized may apologize to me after they've finished reading.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
One More Typical Day - The Office Party
Clawing, snarling, and hungry for human flesh.
Bloody perforations staring. Teeth gleaming with a sheen of saliva and blood.
This is not how I pictured myself going out. Not like Droopy. At least I won't be duplicating his exact demise. There'll be more fight from my corner than just a melodramatic sigh and grunt of incomprehension as my innards are scooped out.
Scissors and pens.
Somehow this sudden 180 from office routine to cannibal death-trap doesn't strike me as all that out-of-left field. If I had suddenly gotten rich, then I might be suspicious. This smacks of Euclidean Universe # 1's interesting sense of humor. I always figured I'd get eaten alive in this endless career-bloodbath. This occurring in the literal sense at least provides an opportunity for some good cardio.
Scissors and pens.
They move in, sightless, drawn by some intangible sense of my presence, the ragged holes in their faces giving away more than their glazed eyes ever did. A rumpled middle aged man with level 12 male pattern baldness and severe back problems comes lurching toward me. First in line for a meal, hey Elmer? He tries to get a good grip on me, and to his credit, this change in status from trampled piece of bureaucratic gristle to blood-spewing cannibal thing has given him a more robust appetite, but he's only as fast as his body will let him be. Not going that easy, Elmer.
A Bic(tm) pen occupies a linear portion of his brain pan, inserted through his conveniently vacant eye socket. He drops like a narcoleptic marathon runner, giving one good splurt of thick blood from his ocular orifice as he collapses.
If only Frank Frazetta were here now.
He could really capture this moment--cubicle barbarian selling his life, and contract position, dearly against hordes of the hungry and brainless. Although he might be tempted to flesh out my abs a bit.
As they pile onto me now, I find myself having to kick and punch to remain free of their desperate and grasping claws. My clothes are torn. I lodge a pair of scissors in an older woman's mouth, driving the point up through her hard palate. Her face jets blood and she flops idly to the ground as I wrench the scissors out of her maw, splitting her nose and upper lip wide open.
Scissors and pens.
Blood splatters and squirts. A pen thrust into an ear canal here. Scissors rammed down through a skull there. A pen stabbed up the nose repeatedly here. A pair of scissors transfixing the base of a neck there.
The last hurrah for my abused arsenal results in a longish-haired gentleman having his head removed from his neck and lower-jaw by a deft little scissors-in-mouth maneuver which I admit I completely improvised. As he drops to the floor fountaining blood, his tongue keeps waggling around looking for the rest of his mouth.
In spite the novelty, this isn't getting me anywhere.
Well, shit. I'm not unfamiliar with this observation. If you've looked at my academic and job record for the last two years, the sentiment seems almost a universal truth.
However, now my scissors are broken, and I'm out of pens, and this pack of blood-weeping maniacs isn't getting any smaller.
I need a real big fat office solution.
Time for yet another fit of incredible improvisation. I unhook my key ring and make a dash around my slavering friends toward the copy machine. Reaching my destination after hammering one man's skull against a desk and accidentally impaling it with a paper skewer, I employ the screwdriver attachment on my key ring toward the task of disassembling the paper slicer.
Not much time. Of course, there never is. Especially when you're standing at the copy machine. And there's a line. Like right now.
This line wants to tear me to pieces and devour me raw. So did all the former copy machine lines, but back then they pretended to observe etiquette. At least these bursted-eyed freaks are honest.
I kick one in the chest (I never could have gotten away with this yesterday) and keep at my task. At one point I have to pound a dishwater blonde graduate assistant's face to pulp with an SOP manual, but eventually I have unhinged the large, heavy-duty blade from the paper slicer. It even comes with a convenient handle.
Who says a young unmarried male with little or no social life has trouble starting his own party?
Bring it on. In the land of the blind cannibal things, it's way easier for me to kill everyone.
Bloody perforations staring. Teeth gleaming with a sheen of saliva and blood.
This is not how I pictured myself going out. Not like Droopy. At least I won't be duplicating his exact demise. There'll be more fight from my corner than just a melodramatic sigh and grunt of incomprehension as my innards are scooped out.
Scissors and pens.
Somehow this sudden 180 from office routine to cannibal death-trap doesn't strike me as all that out-of-left field. If I had suddenly gotten rich, then I might be suspicious. This smacks of Euclidean Universe # 1's interesting sense of humor. I always figured I'd get eaten alive in this endless career-bloodbath. This occurring in the literal sense at least provides an opportunity for some good cardio.
Scissors and pens.
They move in, sightless, drawn by some intangible sense of my presence, the ragged holes in their faces giving away more than their glazed eyes ever did. A rumpled middle aged man with level 12 male pattern baldness and severe back problems comes lurching toward me. First in line for a meal, hey Elmer? He tries to get a good grip on me, and to his credit, this change in status from trampled piece of bureaucratic gristle to blood-spewing cannibal thing has given him a more robust appetite, but he's only as fast as his body will let him be. Not going that easy, Elmer.
A Bic(tm) pen occupies a linear portion of his brain pan, inserted through his conveniently vacant eye socket. He drops like a narcoleptic marathon runner, giving one good splurt of thick blood from his ocular orifice as he collapses.
If only Frank Frazetta were here now.
He could really capture this moment--cubicle barbarian selling his life, and contract position, dearly against hordes of the hungry and brainless. Although he might be tempted to flesh out my abs a bit.
As they pile onto me now, I find myself having to kick and punch to remain free of their desperate and grasping claws. My clothes are torn. I lodge a pair of scissors in an older woman's mouth, driving the point up through her hard palate. Her face jets blood and she flops idly to the ground as I wrench the scissors out of her maw, splitting her nose and upper lip wide open.
Scissors and pens.
Blood splatters and squirts. A pen thrust into an ear canal here. Scissors rammed down through a skull there. A pen stabbed up the nose repeatedly here. A pair of scissors transfixing the base of a neck there.
The last hurrah for my abused arsenal results in a longish-haired gentleman having his head removed from his neck and lower-jaw by a deft little scissors-in-mouth maneuver which I admit I completely improvised. As he drops to the floor fountaining blood, his tongue keeps waggling around looking for the rest of his mouth.
In spite the novelty, this isn't getting me anywhere.
Well, shit. I'm not unfamiliar with this observation. If you've looked at my academic and job record for the last two years, the sentiment seems almost a universal truth.
However, now my scissors are broken, and I'm out of pens, and this pack of blood-weeping maniacs isn't getting any smaller.
I need a real big fat office solution.
Time for yet another fit of incredible improvisation. I unhook my key ring and make a dash around my slavering friends toward the copy machine. Reaching my destination after hammering one man's skull against a desk and accidentally impaling it with a paper skewer, I employ the screwdriver attachment on my key ring toward the task of disassembling the paper slicer.
Not much time. Of course, there never is. Especially when you're standing at the copy machine. And there's a line. Like right now.
This line wants to tear me to pieces and devour me raw. So did all the former copy machine lines, but back then they pretended to observe etiquette. At least these bursted-eyed freaks are honest.
I kick one in the chest (I never could have gotten away with this yesterday) and keep at my task. At one point I have to pound a dishwater blonde graduate assistant's face to pulp with an SOP manual, but eventually I have unhinged the large, heavy-duty blade from the paper slicer. It even comes with a convenient handle.
Who says a young unmarried male with little or no social life has trouble starting his own party?
Bring it on. In the land of the blind cannibal things, it's way easier for me to kill everyone.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Headache that Walks Like a Man
The commute slides through my consciousness like setting concrete.
Sometimes I get the perspective reversed and it looks like the road is coming to a point somewhere in my skull. The dull ache between my eyes only serves to accentuate the feeling.
Suburban Detroit squeezes around the windshield and oozes by fuzzily like a warped 3rd generation videotape in fast forward.
Mornings like this can blunt a knife.
I try hard not to think about the day ahead, but bits of it leak through the gelid wall in my skull and my teeth begin involuntarily grinding together. What the fuck am I doing?
Traffic skates ahead of me drunkenly, a swarm of suicidal locusts. I squirt along the claustrophobic concrete artery like an anonymous cell through clots of human congestion. Eventually I spill into my accustomed parking spot (3rd floor, structure 1, the corner space between two support pylons--for defensive purposes).
I continue my involuntary trek to the office, refusing to focus on anything around me. Head swollen and brittle, I slither along the 6-inch rut worn in the concrete walk by an endless daily succession of my own footsteps.
The sky is stale, the sun beats out its stuffy murk of orange stickiness on my face. There is nothing new in the air today. Just habit.
Sometimes I get the perspective reversed and it looks like the road is coming to a point somewhere in my skull. The dull ache between my eyes only serves to accentuate the feeling.
Suburban Detroit squeezes around the windshield and oozes by fuzzily like a warped 3rd generation videotape in fast forward.
Mornings like this can blunt a knife.
I try hard not to think about the day ahead, but bits of it leak through the gelid wall in my skull and my teeth begin involuntarily grinding together. What the fuck am I doing?
Traffic skates ahead of me drunkenly, a swarm of suicidal locusts. I squirt along the claustrophobic concrete artery like an anonymous cell through clots of human congestion. Eventually I spill into my accustomed parking spot (3rd floor, structure 1, the corner space between two support pylons--for defensive purposes).
I continue my involuntary trek to the office, refusing to focus on anything around me. Head swollen and brittle, I slither along the 6-inch rut worn in the concrete walk by an endless daily succession of my own footsteps.
The sky is stale, the sun beats out its stuffy murk of orange stickiness on my face. There is nothing new in the air today. Just habit.
Monday, July 23, 2007
The Commuter Chronicles, Pt. 3
Bared teeth and staring gouges are turned furiously in my direction, a wall of glistening red and pale wax.
I am a little unnerved.
As if on cue, a grad student wanders into their midst. At first he is casual, staring down at a yellow plan-of-work form, slinging a droopy backpack that has melted into his equally droopy clothes, obviously looking to attract some helpful attention.
It takes a second for him to register the recently-vacated ocular cavities shared by most of the office staff. Another second to realize no one will be able to read his transcripts.
A look of incomprehension and concern slowly squeezes onto his face like a bloom of acne.
It's a new team-building thing. You know, Fulci Friday.
Approaching one of the blind things, he sputters an inane question. At this point, I'm not too keen on details. All the things have twisted around to thrust their bloody visages toward the sound of his voice. His alarm appears to be bordering on total constipation.
He is digging out his cell phone.
Before he can remember which numbers comprise 9-1-1, they are on him. He is torn to shreds instantly. I don't think I've ever seen that much blood in my life. A set of teeth shear into his jugular resulting in a jet of splurting crimson which paints most of his face. Simultaneously, several groping hands tear his abdomen open, ripping through his shirt and pants, and releasing his intestines out onto the floor with a sound like 40 pounds of spaghetti hitting linoleum.
The grimace occupying his face more closely resembles an expression of indignant shock, like somebody told a bad joke. The things are tugging the ropes of his innards in all directions.
Their feast is quite noisy. For his part, he doesn't even manage a scream. Just an exhalation of profound disappointment as a snarling mouth chews his left ear off.
His eyes glaze. In a moment, various pieces of his body have travelled to various parts of the office in various conditions, none of which give the impression of having belonged to a single organism.
All that's left of the kid is a very unfortunate-smelling Jackson Pollack painting.
Welcome to grad school, my friend. Very competitive.
I start looking around for some good solid objects. All that comes to hand are a set of Bic pens and some heavy-duty scissors. Hey, our budget was recently cut. 3%. Gotta make due.
I am a little unnerved.
As if on cue, a grad student wanders into their midst. At first he is casual, staring down at a yellow plan-of-work form, slinging a droopy backpack that has melted into his equally droopy clothes, obviously looking to attract some helpful attention.
It takes a second for him to register the recently-vacated ocular cavities shared by most of the office staff. Another second to realize no one will be able to read his transcripts.
A look of incomprehension and concern slowly squeezes onto his face like a bloom of acne.
It's a new team-building thing. You know, Fulci Friday.
Approaching one of the blind things, he sputters an inane question. At this point, I'm not too keen on details. All the things have twisted around to thrust their bloody visages toward the sound of his voice. His alarm appears to be bordering on total constipation.
He is digging out his cell phone.
Before he can remember which numbers comprise 9-1-1, they are on him. He is torn to shreds instantly. I don't think I've ever seen that much blood in my life. A set of teeth shear into his jugular resulting in a jet of splurting crimson which paints most of his face. Simultaneously, several groping hands tear his abdomen open, ripping through his shirt and pants, and releasing his intestines out onto the floor with a sound like 40 pounds of spaghetti hitting linoleum.
The grimace occupying his face more closely resembles an expression of indignant shock, like somebody told a bad joke. The things are tugging the ropes of his innards in all directions.
Their feast is quite noisy. For his part, he doesn't even manage a scream. Just an exhalation of profound disappointment as a snarling mouth chews his left ear off.
His eyes glaze. In a moment, various pieces of his body have travelled to various parts of the office in various conditions, none of which give the impression of having belonged to a single organism.
All that's left of the kid is a very unfortunate-smelling Jackson Pollack painting.
Welcome to grad school, my friend. Very competitive.
I start looking around for some good solid objects. All that comes to hand are a set of Bic pens and some heavy-duty scissors. Hey, our budget was recently cut. 3%. Gotta make due.
I unbutton my collar and prepare to interrupt my ex-colleagues' working lunch.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Forever to a human being is still only temporary
Campus people:
The fake student.
Out of work and middle-aged, slinging a battered sack that only incidentally resembles a book bag. Not pursuing a course of study. He vacantly surveys the young women around him, sometimes following a short distance. A sullen enterpreneur embarking on a promising carreer of serial rape.
The cadet campus cop.
Stumbling out of the bathroom, sweat sliming his forehead, as if to reduce the friction between his face and the air around him. He tucks his rumpled uniform into the back of his pants and waggles his handgun in its holster as he swaggers unsteadily. His face is squashed from discomfort. Desperate and miserable, he declares "for the love of God" loudly as he passes.
The career grad student.
She looks like a convalescent patient enduring a treatment that is arguably rougher than the disease. Her clothes and hair are shapeless. Staring at books and printed pages for so long, her face has started to reflect back the same bleached texture. As she lurches by, she visibly struggles against the tendency of her pupils to gravitate toward the tip of her nose. Her face is locked in a continual sour pucker from distasteful medicinal knowledge.
Problem: intellectual curiosity. Cure: higher education.
The administrative assistant.
Her stride is like that of a wingless heron advancing in the teeth of a gale. Everything about her denotes near-constant friction. Her hair is wrenched back into a bun which threatens to pull her entire face loose from its moorings. Her heels click on the pavement like the pounding approach of an enraged wildebeast on stilts. The intense tension of her facial muscles, combined with the tautness of her scalp open her eye sockets enough that one can peer beneath her eyeballs right into her brain. All one sees are the words "Out To Lunch".
The born-again sophomore.
Year two has been good to him. The softness with which he entered college has been elaborated upon by a steady diet of pizza and philosophy. With his un-self-conscious lope and his face hiding uncertainly beneath a curly brown goatee (his proud monument to indecision) he clearly resonates the message of some benevolent brain-damaged god. Sandled-and-stockinged feet carry him to class, where, like a fat white grub, he will wait to be plucked up by the invading ant species and sold happily into life-long insectile slavery.
The fake student.
Out of work and middle-aged, slinging a battered sack that only incidentally resembles a book bag. Not pursuing a course of study. He vacantly surveys the young women around him, sometimes following a short distance. A sullen enterpreneur embarking on a promising carreer of serial rape.
The cadet campus cop.
Stumbling out of the bathroom, sweat sliming his forehead, as if to reduce the friction between his face and the air around him. He tucks his rumpled uniform into the back of his pants and waggles his handgun in its holster as he swaggers unsteadily. His face is squashed from discomfort. Desperate and miserable, he declares "for the love of God" loudly as he passes.
The career grad student.
She looks like a convalescent patient enduring a treatment that is arguably rougher than the disease. Her clothes and hair are shapeless. Staring at books and printed pages for so long, her face has started to reflect back the same bleached texture. As she lurches by, she visibly struggles against the tendency of her pupils to gravitate toward the tip of her nose. Her face is locked in a continual sour pucker from distasteful medicinal knowledge.
Problem: intellectual curiosity. Cure: higher education.
The administrative assistant.
Her stride is like that of a wingless heron advancing in the teeth of a gale. Everything about her denotes near-constant friction. Her hair is wrenched back into a bun which threatens to pull her entire face loose from its moorings. Her heels click on the pavement like the pounding approach of an enraged wildebeast on stilts. The intense tension of her facial muscles, combined with the tautness of her scalp open her eye sockets enough that one can peer beneath her eyeballs right into her brain. All one sees are the words "Out To Lunch".
The born-again sophomore.
Year two has been good to him. The softness with which he entered college has been elaborated upon by a steady diet of pizza and philosophy. With his un-self-conscious lope and his face hiding uncertainly beneath a curly brown goatee (his proud monument to indecision) he clearly resonates the message of some benevolent brain-damaged god. Sandled-and-stockinged feet carry him to class, where, like a fat white grub, he will wait to be plucked up by the invading ant species and sold happily into life-long insectile slavery.
Teeth of the Grinder
Emerge from the bathroom. My shit smelled bad, like a torched vagrant left in a butcher's dumpster.
I'm still trying to shake the murky heat from my skull. It's thick and stifling. It isolates my stray thoughts and smothers them.
The suite floats by, bathed in a cloying haze, indistinct shapes hobbling as I tunnel past office doors and chattering cubicles.
The girl ahead of me has a nice ass. Siezing on the motivation, I drag myself after her like a crippled wolf, already aware of the outcome of the hunt, the futility of my struggling instinct.
Last night I had a dream about a girl. In the dream, she was crying because we had met under casual circumstances, and she had fallen in love with me immediately. I assumed, from her reserved demeanor, that she had no interest in me, although secretly I was in love with her too. We were separated after our meeting, though somehow she had my number and was trying to call me. She kept getting my dad's house (I haven't spoken to the man in years). When we were reunited by accident, she cried and professed her love. We fell to some kind of sex act while swimming naked through the half-flooded halls of my work place.
When I woke up, I wondered if it was about time I re-attached my severed penis.
The disembodied ass I have been abstractly watching swims out of my clouded vision. My eyes still feel like bleached and gelatinous carcasses, each in their own pit of tar. They're raw and sticky and scumming over.
Later, a computer screen emerges from the muck. I'm trying to focus on it, but the messages are trivial. The entire Internet feels like a contrived fiction, flat and unconvincing and laminated by a fragile little windshield.
Tiny, made-up Internet-people squeeze their messages out onto the flatness like the splattered juices of insects. I soon find myself squashed in that world, eviscerated and watching my pecked-out guts form into words.
I hit send. The act feels desperate, like an S.O.S. My innards are flushed away down some obscure tube. I hope someone at the other end will read the message. "Is the staff meeting cancelled?"
Then I reflect; everyone I know is just so much software.
I'm still trying to shake the murky heat from my skull. It's thick and stifling. It isolates my stray thoughts and smothers them.
The suite floats by, bathed in a cloying haze, indistinct shapes hobbling as I tunnel past office doors and chattering cubicles.
The girl ahead of me has a nice ass. Siezing on the motivation, I drag myself after her like a crippled wolf, already aware of the outcome of the hunt, the futility of my struggling instinct.
Last night I had a dream about a girl. In the dream, she was crying because we had met under casual circumstances, and she had fallen in love with me immediately. I assumed, from her reserved demeanor, that she had no interest in me, although secretly I was in love with her too. We were separated after our meeting, though somehow she had my number and was trying to call me. She kept getting my dad's house (I haven't spoken to the man in years). When we were reunited by accident, she cried and professed her love. We fell to some kind of sex act while swimming naked through the half-flooded halls of my work place.
When I woke up, I wondered if it was about time I re-attached my severed penis.
The disembodied ass I have been abstractly watching swims out of my clouded vision. My eyes still feel like bleached and gelatinous carcasses, each in their own pit of tar. They're raw and sticky and scumming over.
Later, a computer screen emerges from the muck. I'm trying to focus on it, but the messages are trivial. The entire Internet feels like a contrived fiction, flat and unconvincing and laminated by a fragile little windshield.
Tiny, made-up Internet-people squeeze their messages out onto the flatness like the splattered juices of insects. I soon find myself squashed in that world, eviscerated and watching my pecked-out guts form into words.
I hit send. The act feels desperate, like an S.O.S. My innards are flushed away down some obscure tube. I hope someone at the other end will read the message. "Is the staff meeting cancelled?"
Then I reflect; everyone I know is just so much software.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Relationship of the Cubicle to the Mass Grave
I awaken like the approach and immediate aftermath of a minor car accident. Awake, but not conscious. An awkward and abused puppet, I stumble unwillingly to the bathroom.
My eye sockets are made of rusty steel wool, and my eyeballs float in warm, dirty dishwater. They keep trying to sink back into my head and rejoin my brain as an undifferentiated mass of non-sentient slime.
I tried extra toothpaste, but couldn't brush the furry moth-shit taste out of my mouth. Somewhere below my head, my stomach stirs like a severely-beaten drug addict.
A rough morning. The air around my face is stuffy, prickly, and insistently clinging.
The drive is a greasy, dangerous slide that I barely remember having completed.
Shaken slightly from my coma by the sudden appearance of my grimy parking spot, I momentarily find myself stepping across the hastily buried corpse of the street, the sun inches from my skull.
Just one typical chunk in the long, diarrheic squirt of Mondays I've been sailing across since what seems like time immemorial.
The people around me are waddling blobs. They seem purposeful, whereas I do not feel any purpose at all. I feel like a tiny fragment of instellar space ejected onto this planet to exist for 10 agonizing seconds, wishing to be sucked back into the mindless vacuum.
I suppose I'm just over tired.
My vision focuses a little as I near the glass doors of the office suite. A girl wades timidly past me. For a moment, I consider rushing forward and clothes-lining her.
It has occurred to me before that under the right circumstances, and executed properly, unprovoked physical violence can be damned hilarious.
The office smells like sleep deprivation and dead people. On everything around me is the unmistakeable pattern of the tire tread which has repeatedly run over my face.
I sigh.
"What."
"The."
"Fuck."
My eye sockets are made of rusty steel wool, and my eyeballs float in warm, dirty dishwater. They keep trying to sink back into my head and rejoin my brain as an undifferentiated mass of non-sentient slime.
I tried extra toothpaste, but couldn't brush the furry moth-shit taste out of my mouth. Somewhere below my head, my stomach stirs like a severely-beaten drug addict.
A rough morning. The air around my face is stuffy, prickly, and insistently clinging.
The drive is a greasy, dangerous slide that I barely remember having completed.
Shaken slightly from my coma by the sudden appearance of my grimy parking spot, I momentarily find myself stepping across the hastily buried corpse of the street, the sun inches from my skull.
Just one typical chunk in the long, diarrheic squirt of Mondays I've been sailing across since what seems like time immemorial.
The people around me are waddling blobs. They seem purposeful, whereas I do not feel any purpose at all. I feel like a tiny fragment of instellar space ejected onto this planet to exist for 10 agonizing seconds, wishing to be sucked back into the mindless vacuum.
I suppose I'm just over tired.
My vision focuses a little as I near the glass doors of the office suite. A girl wades timidly past me. For a moment, I consider rushing forward and clothes-lining her.
It has occurred to me before that under the right circumstances, and executed properly, unprovoked physical violence can be damned hilarious.
The office smells like sleep deprivation and dead people. On everything around me is the unmistakeable pattern of the tire tread which has repeatedly run over my face.
I sigh.
"What."
"The."
"Fuck."
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The Commuter Chronicles, Pt. 2
She is talking to me.
Or at least trying to.
Her eyes are protruding from the sockets like bloodshot boiled eggs. They look just about to pop out, possibly interrupting her mumbling, incoherent monologue. Any moment I expect her to try and push them back in and continue muttering.
A little thread of drool anchors her flubbering lips to the lapel of her blazer. Her body trembles furiously as she stands there, stammering at me. Distracted, I try to concentrate on the pulsing vein in her rigid forehead, nodding placatingly.
Little beads of blood form at the corners of her eyes, rolling down her cheeks with a viscous leisure.
Like most conversation, I don't find this one particularly pleasant.
When her eyes finally rocket out of their orbits in a frothing fountain of blood, I'm not exactly surprised. She flails wildly, wordlessly, showering clotted red gunk out of her ruined face. I kind of stand there, more or less looking for an opportunity to exit the discussion.
What surprises me is when she attacks. She tries to bite my throat. Her blood-stained teeth click together sickeningly, inches away from my jugular. I hold her back, hands clenched on her shoulders and neck. This reminds me of a girl I dated once.
She wanted to get married. Talked about it to no end. She had 4/5 of her life planned out before I even met her. The other 5th I'm assuming she'd reserved for an extended engagement with life-support equipment of some kind.
She was the kind of girl about whom I would say, "she is just looking for an excuse." I tried my hardest not to give her that excuse. Something about the institution of marriage makes my stomach squirm like a dying cephalopod. In fact, something about the entire process of life planning and domestication sends me into a migraine-induced murderous rage.
Her agonizingly plotted life cycle was like a relentless vacuum sucking the meaning out of my own existence and leaving me a perfectly hollowed-out shell. An excellent, quasi-living stage accessory to adorn the mercilessly uniform production she lived in.
She was the goddess of the world she had invented around her, a veritable Bridezilla, but not at all restricted to her (already painstakingly visualized) nuptials.
For my part, I sort of regarded her as one would a brain-damage patient of some kind. Except the part of her brain that was irreparably spongified was the part where other human beings had existences and interests beyond merely pleasing her.
I imagine she looked on me as a chronically misbehaving pet, not that she had the mental capacity to care for a pet, but judging by her treatment of me, I could surmise that my ability to amuse her and pretty up the background was a source of constant disappointment.
This disappointment was something I tried to achieve as often as possible.
So, with her her treated like a retard, and me treated like a stupid dog, it's clear to the observer that mutual humiliation was a basis for our relationship.
But, I'm not going to let the past cause me to neglect the lady currently in my arms, as it were.
I force her back, her jaws snapping at my throat.
This is why I hate dating.
A sharp kick to the stomach sends her backwards, and a quick right hook to her twisted, inhuman face rotates her around like a ballerina in a pit fight. I grasp a good fistful of her flying hair (in this context, a convenient female appurtenance) as she starts to overbalance away from me, and before she can recover, I drag her across my cubicle and feed her scented locks into the paper shredder.
The rest of the office seems oblivious to the whole affair. I shrug and plant my foot on the lid of the shredder to secure it, effectively trapping my would-be companion.
Her ruptured eye sockets continue to bubble up bloody goo as she snarls silently, straining at her machine-tangled scalp, the shredder whining angrily and the smell of burning hair stinging my eyes and nose.
Not one of my more stimulating encounters with a woman.
Although, as I watch her gnashing her teeth and writhing like a cat hooked up to a car battery, I have to say this isn't the messiest romantic entanglement I've ever been in, all things considered, and at least I won't have to talk at all.
But, speaking of entanglement...
Looking around it becomes apparent that the bugeyed mumble is a new craze in our academic circle, because my colleagues all seem fully engrossed in their own respective bouts of convulsions and profuse salivation. In a moment, I imagine, a dozen pairs of eyes will pop in a very unprofessional manner, and I will be occupying a spot on a dozen menus in place of the fucking chicken shwarma sandwich.
I am going to need an office solution, here.
But first, I must see to my date. I'm sure she's getting lonely. Excuse us, everyone, myself and my blushing companion will need an intimate moment.
Tugging the soiled heavy-duty Swingline (tm) stapler free of my late-lady-friend's pulpified skull and wiping my sodden brow, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well the paper-shredder withstood the terrific pounding I just gave it. I'll have to remember the manufacturer. I look down at my handiwork, absently prying one of the girl's teeth from the battered enamel of the stapler.
The paper shredder unleashes an eloquent grinding sound as the shattered wreck of her head catches in the machine's motorized maw. It begins to tug the wads of flesh and bone into its record-effacing depths, and I clean bits of hair and gristle from my blood-slimed fist just as the abused device lets out a final squeal of protest and ceases to function in an eruption of blood and fibrous goop, spouting from the general region of my lady-friend's straining neck-stump.
My shirt, and face, are located right in the path of this shower of gore, but, I'll admit, this is a small price to pay for a quick emancipation from the awkward social duty of having to more tactfully dispose of an over-aggressive woman. I bid my ex-companion adieu, from which, any promise to call her is conspicuously (and fortunately) absent.
The scramble-egg texture of brain matter is also conscipuously absent from this fountaining head-chunk smoothie. Wonder what that means...?
I turn just in time to see the rest of my co-workers performing ridiculous-looking dances as their eye sockets burst wide and spray blood all over their immaculate cubicle partitions.
Or at least trying to.
Her eyes are protruding from the sockets like bloodshot boiled eggs. They look just about to pop out, possibly interrupting her mumbling, incoherent monologue. Any moment I expect her to try and push them back in and continue muttering.
A little thread of drool anchors her flubbering lips to the lapel of her blazer. Her body trembles furiously as she stands there, stammering at me. Distracted, I try to concentrate on the pulsing vein in her rigid forehead, nodding placatingly.
Little beads of blood form at the corners of her eyes, rolling down her cheeks with a viscous leisure.
Like most conversation, I don't find this one particularly pleasant.
When her eyes finally rocket out of their orbits in a frothing fountain of blood, I'm not exactly surprised. She flails wildly, wordlessly, showering clotted red gunk out of her ruined face. I kind of stand there, more or less looking for an opportunity to exit the discussion.
What surprises me is when she attacks. She tries to bite my throat. Her blood-stained teeth click together sickeningly, inches away from my jugular. I hold her back, hands clenched on her shoulders and neck. This reminds me of a girl I dated once.
She wanted to get married. Talked about it to no end. She had 4/5 of her life planned out before I even met her. The other 5th I'm assuming she'd reserved for an extended engagement with life-support equipment of some kind.
She was the kind of girl about whom I would say, "she is just looking for an excuse." I tried my hardest not to give her that excuse. Something about the institution of marriage makes my stomach squirm like a dying cephalopod. In fact, something about the entire process of life planning and domestication sends me into a migraine-induced murderous rage.
Her agonizingly plotted life cycle was like a relentless vacuum sucking the meaning out of my own existence and leaving me a perfectly hollowed-out shell. An excellent, quasi-living stage accessory to adorn the mercilessly uniform production she lived in.
She was the goddess of the world she had invented around her, a veritable Bridezilla, but not at all restricted to her (already painstakingly visualized) nuptials.
For my part, I sort of regarded her as one would a brain-damage patient of some kind. Except the part of her brain that was irreparably spongified was the part where other human beings had existences and interests beyond merely pleasing her.
I imagine she looked on me as a chronically misbehaving pet, not that she had the mental capacity to care for a pet, but judging by her treatment of me, I could surmise that my ability to amuse her and pretty up the background was a source of constant disappointment.
This disappointment was something I tried to achieve as often as possible.
So, with her her treated like a retard, and me treated like a stupid dog, it's clear to the observer that mutual humiliation was a basis for our relationship.
But, I'm not going to let the past cause me to neglect the lady currently in my arms, as it were.
I force her back, her jaws snapping at my throat.
This is why I hate dating.
A sharp kick to the stomach sends her backwards, and a quick right hook to her twisted, inhuman face rotates her around like a ballerina in a pit fight. I grasp a good fistful of her flying hair (in this context, a convenient female appurtenance) as she starts to overbalance away from me, and before she can recover, I drag her across my cubicle and feed her scented locks into the paper shredder.
The rest of the office seems oblivious to the whole affair. I shrug and plant my foot on the lid of the shredder to secure it, effectively trapping my would-be companion.
Her ruptured eye sockets continue to bubble up bloody goo as she snarls silently, straining at her machine-tangled scalp, the shredder whining angrily and the smell of burning hair stinging my eyes and nose.
Not one of my more stimulating encounters with a woman.
Although, as I watch her gnashing her teeth and writhing like a cat hooked up to a car battery, I have to say this isn't the messiest romantic entanglement I've ever been in, all things considered, and at least I won't have to talk at all.
But, speaking of entanglement...
Looking around it becomes apparent that the bugeyed mumble is a new craze in our academic circle, because my colleagues all seem fully engrossed in their own respective bouts of convulsions and profuse salivation. In a moment, I imagine, a dozen pairs of eyes will pop in a very unprofessional manner, and I will be occupying a spot on a dozen menus in place of the fucking chicken shwarma sandwich.
I am going to need an office solution, here.
But first, I must see to my date. I'm sure she's getting lonely. Excuse us, everyone, myself and my blushing companion will need an intimate moment.
Tugging the soiled heavy-duty Swingline (tm) stapler free of my late-lady-friend's pulpified skull and wiping my sodden brow, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well the paper-shredder withstood the terrific pounding I just gave it. I'll have to remember the manufacturer. I look down at my handiwork, absently prying one of the girl's teeth from the battered enamel of the stapler.
The paper shredder unleashes an eloquent grinding sound as the shattered wreck of her head catches in the machine's motorized maw. It begins to tug the wads of flesh and bone into its record-effacing depths, and I clean bits of hair and gristle from my blood-slimed fist just as the abused device lets out a final squeal of protest and ceases to function in an eruption of blood and fibrous goop, spouting from the general region of my lady-friend's straining neck-stump.
My shirt, and face, are located right in the path of this shower of gore, but, I'll admit, this is a small price to pay for a quick emancipation from the awkward social duty of having to more tactfully dispose of an over-aggressive woman. I bid my ex-companion adieu, from which, any promise to call her is conspicuously (and fortunately) absent.
The scramble-egg texture of brain matter is also conscipuously absent from this fountaining head-chunk smoothie. Wonder what that means...?
I turn just in time to see the rest of my co-workers performing ridiculous-looking dances as their eye sockets burst wide and spray blood all over their immaculate cubicle partitions.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Commuter Chronicles, Pt. 1
I walked into work, pretty much as I do every day.
Maybe you are familiar with the sort of daze, or stupor I'm speaking of. It's almost like yesterday and the day before and the day before and the week before and the month before have all somehow begun to co-exist simultaneously in space and time, and for some reason this bizarre cosmic phenomenon is obligatorily accompanied by tiredness, pastiness of the eyes, and a dull headache.
I sat down, as is routine, at my desk. This action is accomplished by a sort of spineless flop backward into my chair (the deluxe, fully-adjustable, stream-lined, articulated office chair belonging to a set that some co-workers and I stole from an adjoining department's vacant offices) and is generally followed by a melodramatic and despair-laden sigh.
Then comes the morning Internet-sing. I have to check my blogo-tubes, my inter-blags, my tubo-spheres, my webo-tubes, my blogo-webs, and my intertubes. Usually nothing significant comes of this. Though occasionally I receive an email or something.
My rounds of the Internet complete, it's now time for my own particular morning constitutional. This is the part of my work day where I head over to the water fountain and refill my empty water bottle from the day before. A fact unbeknown to many--Detroit city water is actually some of the cleanest drinking water in the United States. That's not to say that it's particularly clean by any standard, but apparently we do have some of the most rigorous water treatment and water-fortification schemes of any municipality in the US. This does explain why Detroiters notoriously get diarrhea whenever we drink municipal water on trips. Think back to your own last road trip. Probably a few memorable Imodium moments there.
This leads, quite opportunely, to the next point in my chronological narrative. Water bottle filled with minimally cloudy fountain water, I sit at my desk and take my first 'refreshing' slug of the day. This aquatic gulp serves no other purpose than to grease the gears. I immediately find myself in frantic need of shitting, at which point, I make my way (not too hastily, but none too swaggeringly, either) to the departmental bathroom.
My department, the Comerica Academic Success Center (its full name), is graced with several of the goddamned cleanest bathrooms at all of Wayne State University, a fact we strive to keep secret. This doesn't prevent unaffiliated parties from dropping off their change, so to speak, in our facilities, but the numbers of these advantage-takers hasn't, as yet, reached inconvenient proportions. For my own part, I prefer total isolation and privacy when I am in the act of launching a snake. My heart always flutters slightly as I pull open the wooden bathroom door, in anticipation of a pristine, empty john. Today, the john is occupied.
The occupant (it seems like every other shit-taking person gravitates to the handicapped stall, which always sparks a certain amount of speculation on my part [such as 'which part of crapping requires 5-7' of flailing space for a non-physically-challenged person?']) is wearing sandals with white cotton sport socks. They are not Goldtoe. You can generally surmise an unfortunate amount of information about a person by both footwear and foot posture visible below a stall partition. For instance, I can immediately tell Mr. Sock-Sandal considers himself a man of leisure. From his regal ankle posture I am quick to surmise that he is an upper-eschalon lettered person, probably one of our academic advisers (we share our suite with University Academic Counseling). I can also tell that this person is an inconsiderate asshole, since he chose, of all the hours of the day, the precise moment my bowels begun their grumbling to take up his residence on one of only two porcelain pedestals available to me.
The point where I sit down, knowing someone is shitting next to me, is usually an anxiety-filled moment for me. This anxiety typically centers around my ability to resist the impulse to shake the stall partitions as hard as possible and buck and grunt loudly. I generally feel that the person I am shitting next to should suffer, much, much more than myself. I have to calm myself sufficiently to relax my sphincter. My anger and indignation, though, have hardly abated. In order to best achieve the discomfort of my partner in excretion, I choose the passive-aggressive path. There are a couple of things one could do. One can start talking, leading the other to believe that you are striking up a conversation (a sufficiently disturbing prospect in and of itself), and then ice the cake by making it clear after the other responds that you are actually on your cell phone. Or, you can take the more direct passive-aggressive route: push violently with one's abdominal muscles, causing an audible outrush of poop-air along with the forthcoming turd.
The shit-fart, followed by a subtle exhalation of breath, is generally a sure-fire way of getting your toilet rival to hoist anchor, dredge the canal, and sail off into the fluorescent sunset. In this particular instance, my tactic works and I can sense my adversary stiffen and prepare to depart the commode in haste, and in just a few moments, I am free to enjoy the sights and sounds of a nearly-deserted public restroom.
I tend to take a good fifteen minutes to shit, which serves several functions: one, to ensure the total exclusion of all unwanted matter; second, to fully appreciate the relaxing solitude of the john and enjoy the act of vacating a good clutch of shit-eggs; and last, (some would argue, most important) to maximize the amount of time that I am at work but not actually working.
Returning to my desk after a satisfying flush, and a guilty scrubbing of the hands (guilt always follows pleasure...despite my atheism, I was raised Catholic), I now prepare to begin work in earnest. By now, I have probably thoroughly wasted nearly 40 minutes of work time.
There are days when the banality of work seems to have physical symptoms. The fluorescent lights shrivel my cerebrum slightly, and I feel little rivulets of blood coursing down my cheeks from my distended eye sockets. It usually takes an entire evening of mindlessly violent videogames and unredeeming gore flicks to remedy this boredom-induced-hemorrhaging.
I like to think that my diverse interests, strong will, intelligence, and overall crippling level of immaturity are what save me from succumbing to full adulthood without so much as a half-hearted writhe like my many associates, but maybe it's something else.
Today, I watch as the palpable waves of professional vacuousness course down from the hopelessly uniform light fixtures above the cube area (we call it the 'cube farm'. I think of it as a 'cube factory-farm'). My co-workers seem more distant, more dull and anemic than usual. They generally tend to move in a genuine zombie-like fashion, but today it's more pronounced. Somewhere in my pinging skull, my brain, already besieged by an hundred other trivialities, makes a note, and I return my attention to my scowling work email.
Maybe you are familiar with the sort of daze, or stupor I'm speaking of. It's almost like yesterday and the day before and the day before and the week before and the month before have all somehow begun to co-exist simultaneously in space and time, and for some reason this bizarre cosmic phenomenon is obligatorily accompanied by tiredness, pastiness of the eyes, and a dull headache.
I sat down, as is routine, at my desk. This action is accomplished by a sort of spineless flop backward into my chair (the deluxe, fully-adjustable, stream-lined, articulated office chair belonging to a set that some co-workers and I stole from an adjoining department's vacant offices) and is generally followed by a melodramatic and despair-laden sigh.
Then comes the morning Internet-sing. I have to check my blogo-tubes, my inter-blags, my tubo-spheres, my webo-tubes, my blogo-webs, and my intertubes. Usually nothing significant comes of this. Though occasionally I receive an email or something.
My rounds of the Internet complete, it's now time for my own particular morning constitutional. This is the part of my work day where I head over to the water fountain and refill my empty water bottle from the day before. A fact unbeknown to many--Detroit city water is actually some of the cleanest drinking water in the United States. That's not to say that it's particularly clean by any standard, but apparently we do have some of the most rigorous water treatment and water-fortification schemes of any municipality in the US. This does explain why Detroiters notoriously get diarrhea whenever we drink municipal water on trips. Think back to your own last road trip. Probably a few memorable Imodium moments there.
This leads, quite opportunely, to the next point in my chronological narrative. Water bottle filled with minimally cloudy fountain water, I sit at my desk and take my first 'refreshing' slug of the day. This aquatic gulp serves no other purpose than to grease the gears. I immediately find myself in frantic need of shitting, at which point, I make my way (not too hastily, but none too swaggeringly, either) to the departmental bathroom.
My department, the Comerica Academic Success Center (its full name), is graced with several of the goddamned cleanest bathrooms at all of Wayne State University, a fact we strive to keep secret. This doesn't prevent unaffiliated parties from dropping off their change, so to speak, in our facilities, but the numbers of these advantage-takers hasn't, as yet, reached inconvenient proportions. For my own part, I prefer total isolation and privacy when I am in the act of launching a snake. My heart always flutters slightly as I pull open the wooden bathroom door, in anticipation of a pristine, empty john. Today, the john is occupied.
The occupant (it seems like every other shit-taking person gravitates to the handicapped stall, which always sparks a certain amount of speculation on my part [such as 'which part of crapping requires 5-7' of flailing space for a non-physically-challenged person?']) is wearing sandals with white cotton sport socks. They are not Goldtoe. You can generally surmise an unfortunate amount of information about a person by both footwear and foot posture visible below a stall partition. For instance, I can immediately tell Mr. Sock-Sandal considers himself a man of leisure. From his regal ankle posture I am quick to surmise that he is an upper-eschalon lettered person, probably one of our academic advisers (we share our suite with University Academic Counseling). I can also tell that this person is an inconsiderate asshole, since he chose, of all the hours of the day, the precise moment my bowels begun their grumbling to take up his residence on one of only two porcelain pedestals available to me.
The point where I sit down, knowing someone is shitting next to me, is usually an anxiety-filled moment for me. This anxiety typically centers around my ability to resist the impulse to shake the stall partitions as hard as possible and buck and grunt loudly. I generally feel that the person I am shitting next to should suffer, much, much more than myself. I have to calm myself sufficiently to relax my sphincter. My anger and indignation, though, have hardly abated. In order to best achieve the discomfort of my partner in excretion, I choose the passive-aggressive path. There are a couple of things one could do. One can start talking, leading the other to believe that you are striking up a conversation (a sufficiently disturbing prospect in and of itself), and then ice the cake by making it clear after the other responds that you are actually on your cell phone. Or, you can take the more direct passive-aggressive route: push violently with one's abdominal muscles, causing an audible outrush of poop-air along with the forthcoming turd.
The shit-fart, followed by a subtle exhalation of breath, is generally a sure-fire way of getting your toilet rival to hoist anchor, dredge the canal, and sail off into the fluorescent sunset. In this particular instance, my tactic works and I can sense my adversary stiffen and prepare to depart the commode in haste, and in just a few moments, I am free to enjoy the sights and sounds of a nearly-deserted public restroom.
I tend to take a good fifteen minutes to shit, which serves several functions: one, to ensure the total exclusion of all unwanted matter; second, to fully appreciate the relaxing solitude of the john and enjoy the act of vacating a good clutch of shit-eggs; and last, (some would argue, most important) to maximize the amount of time that I am at work but not actually working.
Returning to my desk after a satisfying flush, and a guilty scrubbing of the hands (guilt always follows pleasure...despite my atheism, I was raised Catholic), I now prepare to begin work in earnest. By now, I have probably thoroughly wasted nearly 40 minutes of work time.
There are days when the banality of work seems to have physical symptoms. The fluorescent lights shrivel my cerebrum slightly, and I feel little rivulets of blood coursing down my cheeks from my distended eye sockets. It usually takes an entire evening of mindlessly violent videogames and unredeeming gore flicks to remedy this boredom-induced-hemorrhaging.
I like to think that my diverse interests, strong will, intelligence, and overall crippling level of immaturity are what save me from succumbing to full adulthood without so much as a half-hearted writhe like my many associates, but maybe it's something else.
Today, I watch as the palpable waves of professional vacuousness course down from the hopelessly uniform light fixtures above the cube area (we call it the 'cube farm'. I think of it as a 'cube factory-farm'). My co-workers seem more distant, more dull and anemic than usual. They generally tend to move in a genuine zombie-like fashion, but today it's more pronounced. Somewhere in my pinging skull, my brain, already besieged by an hundred other trivialities, makes a note, and I return my attention to my scowling work email.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Proof positive that I was born on the wrong planet
I attended a close friend's wedding this weekend. I was involved in the capacity of a groomsman, which was a new experience for me. Being a groomsman means standing around looking pretty while stuff happens to other people. It also means having an ostensible position of importance in the matrimonial proceedings but without having to actually do anything. All the hard work and very little of the glory falls upon the bridesmaids. I found it expedient to privately mock them for this.
A couple things that I think rank as highlights for the weekend include, but aren't restricted to: Driving (not merely riding in) a convertible with the top down at midnight trying to find a suitably grimy bar for the groom and the other groomsman (I was obviously DD for the wedding's eve). Not finding one, they bought a case of beer and drank it next to a river. We discussed chopping my own car to make a convertible. Driving a convertible is quite an interesting experience if you've never had it.
I also formed an olympic platform diving team with the other groomsman and the groom's father, but our competitive career came to a halt when some kid did a gainer off the third platform and made us look like legless idiots.
I got to dance with Kari Sauve (she was a bridesmaid) which was kind of cool. Seeing as I haven't touched a woman in two years this was the most action I've had in a long time. Someone asked if she was my girlfriend, which made me laugh. I had to shake my head and reply in the negative. However, even though we barely spoke during the course of the weekend (and I imagine she probably didn't personally rank me among members of the human species), if she had in fact been my girlfriend, our relationship, such as it was, would still have been slightly less frigid than my last real relationship (at least toward its closing).
The hotel was extremely nice. In the bathrooms, the shower was not partitioned from the rest of the facilities, instead, the tile floor merely sloped uninterrupted to a drain in one corner of the room where the shower head was also located. You could pull a plastic curtain around that area if you so chose, but the prospect of showering while watching myself in the mirror was exceedingly tempting. All told I showered five times in about two days, which is also precisely the number of times I took a shit. As you can see, once I was in the bathroom, no matter my intended duties, I found myself deciding to shower as well since it seemed so casual a setup.
I saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long time. There was a lot of meaningless catching-up type conversation and some even more meaningless serious conversation, none of which I remember and none of which will I attempt to reproduce here, although the first words from Sikander Kahn's mouth to me were, in sum, "There's a Big Ten Burrito around here. I still owe you a burrito," which debt I had coincidentally mentioned on several occasions to various persons prior to this little reunion once I found out that the aforementioned would be attending. In addition, there was quite a bit of ribbing about a THREATENER reunion from various family members, and also some quality jests about our musical talents and proficiency with our instruments, all of which were sadly accurate.
Also the bride and groom, not being religious, had a published atheist officiate the ceremony in place of a man of the cloth, which was a nice touch, but slightly chagrined some of the above's more traditionalist family members. But, what would a wedding be without some wringing of hands and snarling of mouths? I was resplendent in my rented tux. The ushers had trouble unrolling the carpeting thing. The officiate made a crack about being a professor, but in spite of this, he would try to be brief and succinct. The groom became too choked up to complete his vows coherently after this.
Lastly, the bride and groom did indeed walk out at the reception to a looped section of SLAYER's 'Raining Blood', and later the bride requested 'Ace of Spades' be played, which number cleared the dance floor abruptly (though I'm not sure why. MOTORHEAD is really a music group to kick your heels to on any occasion).
All told the experience was quite surreal for me, and it was a view to the inside which has determined me never to be in the groom's position myself. Because in spite of the awkwardness, discomfiture, high social expectations, heavy responsibilities it is necessary to bear, money spent, time wasted, sleep lost, and relatives to placate; at the end of the day, the only thing one has gained from the entire ritual is the promise of a thoroughly domestic existence. While I applaud Mike and Abby for making it, and I congratulate them for discovering a very true love, I think such a fate is not mine.
Adjust laces on Converse All-Stars, grip filthy drum sticks appreciatively, and lie back, drumming the beat to a Pig Destroyer tune on my mattress, to watch Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith for the umpteenth time.
A couple things that I think rank as highlights for the weekend include, but aren't restricted to: Driving (not merely riding in) a convertible with the top down at midnight trying to find a suitably grimy bar for the groom and the other groomsman (I was obviously DD for the wedding's eve). Not finding one, they bought a case of beer and drank it next to a river. We discussed chopping my own car to make a convertible. Driving a convertible is quite an interesting experience if you've never had it.
I also formed an olympic platform diving team with the other groomsman and the groom's father, but our competitive career came to a halt when some kid did a gainer off the third platform and made us look like legless idiots.
I got to dance with Kari Sauve (she was a bridesmaid) which was kind of cool. Seeing as I haven't touched a woman in two years this was the most action I've had in a long time. Someone asked if she was my girlfriend, which made me laugh. I had to shake my head and reply in the negative. However, even though we barely spoke during the course of the weekend (and I imagine she probably didn't personally rank me among members of the human species), if she had in fact been my girlfriend, our relationship, such as it was, would still have been slightly less frigid than my last real relationship (at least toward its closing).
The hotel was extremely nice. In the bathrooms, the shower was not partitioned from the rest of the facilities, instead, the tile floor merely sloped uninterrupted to a drain in one corner of the room where the shower head was also located. You could pull a plastic curtain around that area if you so chose, but the prospect of showering while watching myself in the mirror was exceedingly tempting. All told I showered five times in about two days, which is also precisely the number of times I took a shit. As you can see, once I was in the bathroom, no matter my intended duties, I found myself deciding to shower as well since it seemed so casual a setup.
I saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long time. There was a lot of meaningless catching-up type conversation and some even more meaningless serious conversation, none of which I remember and none of which will I attempt to reproduce here, although the first words from Sikander Kahn's mouth to me were, in sum, "There's a Big Ten Burrito around here. I still owe you a burrito," which debt I had coincidentally mentioned on several occasions to various persons prior to this little reunion once I found out that the aforementioned would be attending. In addition, there was quite a bit of ribbing about a THREATENER reunion from various family members, and also some quality jests about our musical talents and proficiency with our instruments, all of which were sadly accurate.
Also the bride and groom, not being religious, had a published atheist officiate the ceremony in place of a man of the cloth, which was a nice touch, but slightly chagrined some of the above's more traditionalist family members. But, what would a wedding be without some wringing of hands and snarling of mouths? I was resplendent in my rented tux. The ushers had trouble unrolling the carpeting thing. The officiate made a crack about being a professor, but in spite of this, he would try to be brief and succinct. The groom became too choked up to complete his vows coherently after this.
Lastly, the bride and groom did indeed walk out at the reception to a looped section of SLAYER's 'Raining Blood', and later the bride requested 'Ace of Spades' be played, which number cleared the dance floor abruptly (though I'm not sure why. MOTORHEAD is really a music group to kick your heels to on any occasion).
All told the experience was quite surreal for me, and it was a view to the inside which has determined me never to be in the groom's position myself. Because in spite of the awkwardness, discomfiture, high social expectations, heavy responsibilities it is necessary to bear, money spent, time wasted, sleep lost, and relatives to placate; at the end of the day, the only thing one has gained from the entire ritual is the promise of a thoroughly domestic existence. While I applaud Mike and Abby for making it, and I congratulate them for discovering a very true love, I think such a fate is not mine.
Adjust laces on Converse All-Stars, grip filthy drum sticks appreciatively, and lie back, drumming the beat to a Pig Destroyer tune on my mattress, to watch Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith for the umpteenth time.
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