Intuitive Swooping

It isn’t often that you hear quotes as mind-waffling as the following: “The oldest car my family has ever owned is a 2001.” When you do, it is crucial to dive deeper into the psyche of the speaker in order to find out what normally plastic parts of the brain have been replaced with inert Moon Ice.

I thought out all possible responses, discarded a few inappropriate for work, and said to Man U., “If I accept your statement as true, Man U., then you are either from the future or you rented cars prior to 2001. Can I trust you?”

Man U. was not phased. He phrased, “Always trust the Indian kid because he doesn’t have an agenda.”

“Man U., what does that mean?” I'm baffled, nearly buffaloed.

“When is whenever?” He slips a question inside an answer inside a calamitous lifestyle. Some nuts you can’t crack. I left the conversation, about the 1000^th that we’ve had about him wanting me to buy a new car, as confused as a preschooler’s essay on what an essay is.

Fully convinced that my nut cracking abilities had “run away” like a feeble and diseased dog that could barely move the day before, I returned to my desk for a snack. Pouring the last of my shelled sunflower nuts into my hand, I heard from the next cubicle “You’re killin’ those nuts, Wes. Always munchin’ on something... usually nuts.”

I flashed back to 9^th grade basketball: While the rest of the team was gathered around the coach going over the weekly gameplan, I was shooting three’s like a mathematical heroin addict. The ball caromed behind a stool. Sitting beside the ball, crouched patiently, waiting, an empty wrapper with doughnut crumbs inside. I kicked at it, and the crumbs sang to me. I picked up the package, careful not to shake the crumbs, and inspected the tiny pieces of yellowcake with chocolate frosting. It radiated benevolence. I lifted it higher, crinkling the wrapper, tilting the open end toward me. From the other side of the court, a coach, “What the hell, Wes? Always munchin’ on something…” I threw the offending crumbs down my throat, and then drowned a basket from downtown. Don’t nobody tell an addict when not to shoot.

I told my cube mate that if he ever needed snacks, he knew where to turn, or who's "drawers to inspect". Can I possibly interact with another human with making some awkward sexual reference? Nope.

I’ve been listening to Irish talk shows. I downloaded about two hours worth of Irish commentary to my mp3 player. My goal is to have the sexiest accent of any American born male by January 1^st, 2010. I already had a pretty decent Irish accent in my repertoire, but I always aim to be the best. Feel free to request a phone call or a whispered “sweet nothing” if you want me to practice my skills on you. Everything in moderation… except modulation.

Whoa, is that Wes on January 1^st, 2010?

6-pack and I went for a long walk last weekend, mostly to poke coals in Chapel Hill that needed poking. We call it swooping. We walk with rhythm and then purpose for an undefined period of time, and then we “swoop” across the street and demand nothing. If a rolling stone gathers no moss, a perfect swoop leaves no trees (or trace). Our goal is to enter and exit before we enter. While we were mid-swoop, we ran into a co-worker’s girlfriend on the street. She invited us out with her friends. I never meant to make her cry.

Toward the end of the night, while the bartender was waging war on the credit card machine (yelling “If I swipe too hard it will SNAP!!!”), I started to give her relationship advice. She talked about how her and our co-worker were “taking a break,” and I told her I was so good at taking breaks that it was on my unofficial resume. I started to give her relationship advice; it ended with tears. Somewhere in the middle, I think I convinced her of love’s existential potential. Even as she wiped away her tears, her friend pulled me aside and said my advice was sound, and exactly what she needed to hear. Potential career change?

Last night, in a pre-sleep moment of mental lucidity, I figured myself out. I have been trying to find a pattern of times in my life when I have performed at my best; impressed even myself (hard to do). I discovered this: I thrive on chaos. The fewer defined variables, the quicker I solve. This is counter-intuitive to my usual thinking, which is to shoot last and ask questions never. I will be putting this discovery to personal scientific and judicial review.

Here is gay Clark Kent:

I'll take a B.J. (Brake Job)

I realize the last post was terrifying, and had an abrupt ending, but I wanted you to know what it feels like to be dragged into a dark corner with the bright lights at the end of the tunnel flashing before your eyes. Like red-eyed rats holding pitchforks over the gravel graveyards we call alleyways, I hold dearly the cubic space around my fleshy frame. I advise you to practice positioning yourself as far away from Cougars as the great taxidermist in the sky will allow you. We are so much stuffing; hackers raised to raise our own hackles.

In lighter news, my friend Summertime Susan killed a kitten. It is buried in the bushes behind an apartment complex in Raleigh. The kitty’s world collapsed in the following manner: One (1) freshman, origin of species uncertain, began to talk about how he loved and lived in Chapel Hill. I began to think about formulating a response, when I realized that he was as young as my brother, and I should not be socializing regularly with people who share a birth year with my brother. I stepped outside, and took one (1) brisk walk about the building to clear my head. On said walk, I discovered the remnants of an ancient pine’s seed; a cone of coprolitic proportions. I marched it back inside with me, and began to assault Zhang it! on the shoulder while he played Beer Pong. It is a well known fact that I refuse to take drinking games seriously, so my conic probings went largely ignored.

Summertime Serious, however, jokingly threatened to crash the pinecone’s adventures by claiming she was going to take the seed outside and toss it into the bushes. Finally, after several attempts, she was able to wrest the cone from my grasp and bound through the door and into the night. I followed, but too late. I arrived at the hedge just in time to hear a loiterer say “What did you just throw into the bush?” Before Summertime could open her guilty mouth, I informed the crowd that my former friend had just blasted the delicate body of one (1) baby kitten into a dark lake of leaves. The inky-skinned and small-brained group was nearly moved, in unison, to tears. Summertime went back inside, scared of an uprising. I knelt over the bush, prying at it with my digits and holding back tears. I asked the crowd to leave, using something like “Get out of here, loitering is just littering with your bodies.” They obliged, not because my comment made sense but because you aren’t allowed to take pleasure when a man can’t find his pussy.

Fudge left for South Korea, and to celebrate I set up a “Fudge and Chicken” event at a local park. Our volleyball team (3-2 on the season) held an extended match, and by the time we finished handing the other team brochures for PTSD, the Fudge had melted and the chicken was cold. In recompense, we went to Chili’s, where over a basket of unlimited chips, I found out what Man U. really thought of me. During a discussion over how big my ears are, Man U. chipped in with the following compliment, “I’ve never actually noticed his big ears… How can you, with THAT CHIN!” When this wasn’t taken as an insult by me - I’ve got a quick and quirky chin – Man U. attacked the fact that I refuse to get a new car. I told him that I would rather pay child support than make a car payment, because at least my kids would appreciate in value, even while deflating my bank account. Seeing as our arguments were caste in different lighting, we agreed to disengage. Fudge was happy to have lobes to poke fun at, and I think her last night in America was a good one.

I had dinner with Rachel Peachpit, her boyfriend, and several of his Duke Theology allies. God blessed them with a purpose, the ocean with a porpoise (apropos), and me with an undoubtedly idealistic view of life as a limited opportunity to make discontented people feel otherwise. As I was on my way home from the lovely meal, I slid up squeaky style at a red light behind a car that I’d assumed was going to go though and violate law but not protocol. When the car’s inhabitant heard my Intrepid’s shrill pleas(e) to get new brake pads, the door swung open and a face assaulted my vision with its appalling grace. A human growl, a metal moan, as the car’s frame shifted; “Did you hit me?” both asked, in different languages. I answered in the negatory. The question was repeated, I remained upright and seated, and my answer didn’t change. The light changed outfits, and directives. The car’s frame cried again, the door was sucked inward as if some inner obsidian gargoyle had suddenly sprung to life. The door then flew fully open, the bowling ball rolled out into the passing lane, and my mind climbed out of the gutter and into a bubble, waiting for something or someone to burst.

Thundering like my worst atmos-fear of liquid nitrogen, she performed one of the well-known but naught respected “Let me pull up my pants before I bend over” move. She inspected her bumper, and my teasing grin, then flipped me off and melded into her driver’s seat. The beast rode away with its burden.

Later in the weekend, I went running with Zhang it!, and he showed me how badly it hurts to run a 6.5 minute mile. Chris Candlewick dealt me a quadriceps contusion during basketball, and I was so hobbled that over the next two days in the office, I fell over twice while standing and working on my model poses. I had an older co-worker come up to me in the break room and say, “Saw you get up from your chair and walk away. You looked like I do when it’s about to rain.” He has a metal hip and a grin that rivals Creed’s.

A couple great compliments were paid me during calls over the last few weeks. First, a man named J.J. said he would name his first boy after me, after I helped him recover an important presentation that he had deleted from his computer. A few calls later, I was presented with a situation in which a lady was not showing up anywhere in the company’s system. She wasn’t able to do anything productive and I decided to help, even though I didn’t have the resources or permission to help her. I contacted a friend on the backend (did you just touch my ass?), and he was able to get some dirty laundry ironed out. The next day, her manager called me during an online meeting she was holding, and told the whole meeting that I had done a great job and deserved their praise. Half the people thanked me by name - though I had never met them and they all lived in California - and the manager gave them all my e-mail address and told them to call me with their issues. She said that if she came out to North Carolina on any business trips, she would take me out to lunch. That is the third person since I’ve started that has propositioned to buy me a meal over the phone.

Next time: blood drips from the CarbamaRaptor, a car dies in the forest and no one hears a sound, and I buy a Michigan football ticket with a dirty quarter…

P.S.: this post will be published to 30threads.com, in the Humor section, so by referencing it here, I might break the internet. It's like looking into a maze of mirrors, or Google searching "Google search."