Peerless Pirouetting

If life is a storeroom of mixed nuts, then I am a cache you want to crack. If life is theory, impartially attributable to a Bang of virgin particles, then I am in charge of the Concept Ion. Any way you slice it, I come out on top.

Enough with the custom puns and homespun cussing - let’s talk about sects. Last Friday night, I found myself part of a collection of “high society” individuals about to partake in the age-old tradition of getting the hell up out of your seat and making a scene at an upscale Japanese hibachi grill. The event was Chris Lethal’s birthday. 6-pack and I arrived late, having struggled to find the place; it being hidden in the basement of a sprawling mall in Raleigh. Within minutes of being seated, I had puddled my seat. The gentle giant seated next to me had already bear-hugged me, told me he was a fireman who owned two construction companies, and told the waiter to order saki-bombs for the whole restaurant. The waiter pulled the clueless card, Big Bear pulled a fat wad of cash from his wallet, and I pulled my hamstring.

Here’s how: after the manager of the restaurant finally convinced Big Bear not to finance a small liquor war, the entire staff came out of the kitchen with balloons and did a little clappy-dance around Chris Lethal. The “high society” crew started getting high off helium, and before long a bouncy little orange balloon flirted around my shoulders and floated into the kitchen, which was right behind me. I dashed heavy, like a bad chef, and slipped on the floor with my no-sole arch-crushing clown shoes. The floor was soaked, probably with the failed remnants of broken saki promises, and my feet shot in separate directions. I had pulled my hamstring playing flag football the Sunday before, and my shaky-maky-matrix moves on the kitchen floor weren’t helping the situation. I snagged the balloon an instant before it hit the floor, and limped by a waiter holding a knife to his chest, him scared of the crazy American in clown shoes.

We spent the rest of the night behind the velvet ropes of a VIP section of a club in downtown Raleigh. Once, Chris Lethal’s brother got kicked out for trying to help a drunken beast escape the cave, but he impressively snuck back in through a window in the kitchen. My only interaction with the group all night was when someone asked Big Bear what time his girlfriend got off. I immediately said “She gets off when he gets home.” Everyone who heard snapped their head in my direction, but only one person understood. He did a slow, lethargic drunken blink, and said “You’re funny. You’re really funny.” This was the same man who had to be escorted out by Chris’ brother.

6-pack and I shared a bed that night at the Lethal household. Sometime during the night, we lost our comforter to Chris’ girlfriend, Gabby, who stole it during a sleep stroll.

A director visited my team at work this week from San Jose, and since I don’t really have a role on the team yet, I watched as everyone else impressed him with presentations. That morning, I had decided to wear a nice but stuffy workshirt, and the temperature was twenty degrees warmer than I predicted by 11 AM. When I got up from taking calls, I realized that the back of my shirt was soaked. I whistled out to my Dodge Caravan, the baby-making caravan, and changed my shirt. Unbeknownst to me, as I was standing in the parking lot shirtless and picking from the fine selection of shirts I keep in my trunk, the director rolled up and walked toward our building. When we finally met with him, after lunch, I was greeted by him as “the guy I saw changing in the parking lot.” If that isn’t hot, or sweaty, I don’t know what is. Sometimes I bite my right wrist when I’m nervous. During the presentations, I’m pretty sure he saw me biting my wrist. As soon as the last slide was finished, I sprinted down the hall and left work. Oh, how I continue to impress the higher-ups.

A lady called in to work and told me her computer had a virus; possibly, a terrorist virus. This was exciting news to me and I thought I might get some exposure to homeland security, possibly land a side job in terrorist virus research. I asked the lady what kind of terrorist sent her the file. She said “I got the file from a co-worker from India. They told me it was a video clip of some Disney movie. It says ‘Wall-E’ on it, but I’m sure it is a terrorist file.” I started to get very animated. It was genius – a massive computer virus crouched inside the shadow of pre-teen storytelling. She finally divulged that the main reason she was afraid of the video was that it was a .wmd file. Curious, I had her send it to me. Turned out to be a video clip of Wall-E, in .wmv (windows media video) format. I thoroughly enjoyed the clip. Or, rather, I emptied the clip, and nothing was killed but a few minutes of my time.

Boom. You're Done.

Faced with the chilly temperament of the big city after a heated workweek, I spent my Friday night playing volleyball with a group of 80’s ladies and embattled weakened warriors. I joined the Recreational Sand Volleyball league on Meetup.com, and they invited me out for a Friday sandstorm. After impressing 100% of the people there with my skills in the first few minutes, I spent the next two hours demonstrating to them that their faith in me was misplaced. My court flailing and failing dusted their eyes with sandy irritants, and my clumsiness left one lady with a bruised everything after I pinned her and her boyfriend under me in a midcourt display of stinky instincts.

I was able to repurchase some rapport, if not some credibility, when I opined that “the net just pinched my nipples.” Someone asked if I meant that my chest had hit the tape; if my nipples had brushed against the net. I replied with “Whatever you want to call it. Brushed, pinched, tweaked… The net just action-verbed my nipples.” By personifying the net and making it out to be a spindly beast with careless hands and a deviant sex drive, I was able to take the focus of my inadequacies. I like to think that my court name is IED (Improvised Explosive Device), but I know a few people would be delighted to swap “device” with “douche bag.”

Like a sandy little frog, or camel toad, I hopped to Wisconsin’s apartment to shower before heading to downtown Raleigh to meet Zhang it! and Joe (the Taxidermist). Zhang it!, who had sworn off Carbamas the weekend before, was doing a Carbama when I walked in. Joe had taken a cab to Raleigh (30 miles and $85) and was put in handcuffs twice in two different taxis. Joe’s pitbull was drinking vodka, water, and lemon slices.

We got dropped off and made a pretty straight line toward a bar called the Ugly Monkey. At the door, they tried to charge us $1 to become members, but I said I didn’t have any money, and Zhang it! told the bouncer that I was a member and that he was my guest for the evening. So we ended up inside, and I ended up with a membership and a sharpie I stole from the bouncer. I would call him incompetent, but it was the same guy that wouldn’t let me in with my work badge back when I forgot my license. Once inside, I began to mark Zhang it! up and down with marker, telling him that the cap was on. I marked every poison ivy spot that I could find, which added up to a lot, which resulted in a Zhang it! with a zillion tiny black X’s. We began to spread the rumor that he had Sherpes, a sharper, more permanent, STD.

Sitting on the sidewalk at the end of the night, listening to Zhang it! talk to someone irrelevant on the phone, I suddenly found myself in the middle of a near shoot out. Joe had managed to press roughly on a passing taxi driver’s buttons, apparently by jostling his crotch in the taxi’s direction. The driver started screaming at Joe, Joe was saying something New Yorkish (actually, it was “Boom, you’re done” over and over), and Zhang it! was giggling like a Hello Kitten stuck in a blending machine.

On the walk back, we came across a group of empty husks rustling with their tops off. About eight guys were gathered, gesticulating and threatening to hand out beatings to each other. I snatched a nice shirt off the ground, and we kept walking.

When we got back to Joe’s simple complex, Joe grabbed a mini-gargoyle from in front of a neighbor’s place and put it down next to a door a bit further down the hallway. Zhang it! was trailing a bit behind, probably still kicking it like a cicada into his cell, when he noticed Joe setting down the ‘goyle. I can only assume Zhang it! thought it was Styrofoam, because at that instant he sprinted unabashedly toward the squatting gremlin, and booted it as hard as he could. It moved about two inches, and Zhang it! went sprawling and howling first into a wall, then to the dusty expanse of unkempt flooring. Then, like a outcropped cherry hiding in a forgotten drawer, he rolled into a ball and waited for a night light or a dark spark. I typed out the following text and forwarded it to ten people: “Zhang just kicked a gargoyle.” I woke up trapped under a flood of concerned responses. Zhang woke up to Joe’s pitbull peeing on his bloody sock.

Last week Chris Lethal, my housemate, asked if he could use my red lunchbox. I said “sure” in the kind of way that most people say “no.” After an awkward moment, he told me that the lunchbox was his. It was suddenly clear to me why he had taken it from my room several times and set it on the kitchen counter. I had thought, “Hmm, curious,” and chalked it up to excessively polite behavior. As it turns out, he was taking it back for himself, but I was packing it and stealing it before he could get to it in the mornings. When my Grandma was alive she used to tell me that the early bird gets the worm, which was an excuse for us to go to BINGO before dinner and stay until after my bedtime. Back then, I had ink all over my hands from marking her B-19’s, and now I have ink stains from a night out spreading Sherpes. Early birds may get the multi-hearted dirt snakes, but the lovable, clueless sasshole gets the zippered red lunchbox.

Painting the Town Red

I was getting ready to be a threat; I was getting ready to consider my next plan of attack. While visiting Clemson, SC for my sister’s volleyball tournament, I took a break from life, allowing my dad to decision make like a cattle prod. The man creates his own reality, pushing into the fabric of space/time and slipping through the rips into a dimension where he is King and all that matters is family matters. He got us into a private club where he embarrassed me at pool and darts in front of the members. We slept in a van in a field full of cars in a town full of unencumbered disillusionists. I felt… feelings. You know.

Speaking of feelings, I speak of them to no one. But you may have noticed a few weeks of slippage in my blogging life, and this was due in no small part to my inability to write when I have something on my mind that I cannot/will not talk about. It just so happens that the date of my birthday closely coincides with the date of my first truly exceptional and acceptable relationship. That is all I will type on the subject.

My dad drove the two of us back to Chapel Hill from Clemson, and the partay started. As we were watching college football and sipping starter drinks, my dad looked around and noticed a severe shortage of birthday treats. Before he left for the store, he asked if anybody needed anything; Zhang it! ordered Everything bagels. An hour later, my dad walked through the door with a gallon of ice cream, a four-part cake, and about 10 bags of bagels. Either Zhang it! was speaking Engrish or my dad had never heard of everything bagels. I’m going to bet on the latter; he couldn’t decide what an Everything bagel was, so he bought everything.

Needless to say, in less than half an hour, we were required to inhale three shots of tequila, one FULL bowl of ice cream, and a hefty slice of cake. We stumbled down the street trying not to paint the bushes with vanilla ice cream and medium rare cake.

I spent the walk downtown convincing Man U. that it was OK for him to drink in front of an elder. As soon as he had stepped in the door, he pulled me into a corner and said that I should have told him my dad was going to be there. I asked if that would have changed his coming, he said no, but that he would have gone through a mental preparation session. He ended up sleeping on our kitchen table.

At Top of the Hill, I spent the first half hour yelling my computer password into the phone at my dad. “THAT’S D like DHARMA INITIATIVE!” I disappeared with Chris Lethal to a different bar, where he was going to try to find some Chapel Hill people to introduce me to. When Laura called (Candlewick’s Laura) and asked me where I was, she says I said “iiiii am not the person to be asking… if you want accurate informationnnnnnn.” I snuck out of the bar in an attempt to be the first one to get back to my house, but after hopping three fences, I was actually the last to return. I helped guide a couple of people through a shortcut to my neighborhood, and as I was verbally narrating my voyage, rolled down a hill, and painted the bushes red with embarrassment and pain.

The next morning we played football and Zhang it! painted the bushes yellow with bananas and water (note a severe lack of bagel remains.)

My dad had to leave and I started making my own decisions again. Not as exciting as it sounds…

I am writing a book (or, the book is writing me). I am going to a concert in Chapel Hill tomorrow for my favorite musician:

Andrew Bird

I am interested in life and it is mildy attracted to me. We’ll see what happens.

A little love for my current city

Next time: Zhang it! breaks his foot kicking a gargoyle. And a new friend, Joe, earns the nickname The Taxidermist.

Lawn Darts and Land Rants

For my visit to Ann Arbor, I drew up an entire maize and blueprint of plans. Like a childless aviary activist, I wanted to take a generation beneath my wing and leave my imprint, all but guaranteeing their ejection from family circles and membership into my exclusive club. All my plans were vacuumed into an alternate reality, where vacuum bags are full of unmet potential, when we instead ended up “floating” down a pile of rocks - rocks with only the faintest trace of water flowing over them. These few droplets of moisture were enough, however, to convince someone adept at being incompetent to label the bastardized gash in the earth a “river.”

Ike (previously referred to as Kent) convinced us that during Spring term he took a lazy float down the Huron River, and that the float was relaxing and life-altering. With this simple story he convinced nine others to join him, myself included. After ten minutes of seeking bright lights at the end of dark tunnels, I had no skin on my hands, and Ben had been nearly impaled by an underwater logknife. Forty minutes later, no less relaxed, we emerged from the sludge and ordered an ambulance home. Forty-two minutes later, whether from the myriad moss injections or the garish stress and cold our bodies were subjected to, we all had The Sickness.

While in the Acceptance stage of recovery, I had a brilliant plan to get all of my sicknesses out of the way at once, so I posted the following on Craigslist:

Wanted: Swine Flu - Let's get this out of the way (for $3)

I figure that everyone is going to have to deal with this eventually. As I consider myself a go-getter, a Casanova of initiative, I would like to be an "early adopter" of the latest virus that Piglet technology has to offer. Pigs have had such a misunderstood image since Animal Farm, and I feel like things are finally turning around for them. I tote an "I support Porcine" reusable grocery bag, and this has garnered me the support of many in the community. If you even have to ask "what community?" then I'm not interested in further communication with you.

Now the logistics: I have been sleeping poorly and not drinking sufficient fluids for weeks in an attempt to lower the effectiveness of my immuno defenses, but to no avail. I am seeking someone who definitely has H1N1, but I don't really care if you have been “officially” diagnosed. I have always been told that the Proof is in the Pudding, so to start things off with forensick foreplay, I would like you to eat half a bowl of pudding. I will then take your spoon and finish the bowl. We don't need to kiss, probably shouldn't actually, so I will settle for a hug-and-sneeze combo. To finish, I will ask you to take a few drinks out of my water bottle. I should be able to take it from there.

Serious responses will receive serious consideration. Feel free to attach photos depicting various levels of your physical disarray.

IF I AM SUCCESSFUL IN CONTRACTING THE DISEASE, I WILL BUY YOU DINNER AT THE RESTAURANT OF YOUR CHOOSING, or give you a $20 gift certificate to for bacon/porkchops.

Location: Chapel Hill

The post was deleted after twenty minutes. This highlights all that is right with America: you have a higher chance of contracting an unwanted STD from a 17-year-old online than a consensually downloaded illness. I was simply practicing my viral marketing skills.

To make up for my failed attempt at drinking piggy “cough syrup,” and for the group’s mishap with the Huron River, we bought pink floaties at a gas station and went to a lake deep in the Washtenaw County woods.

Conversation (while performing a real float):

Snack Snake: “Pyramid schemes are the lawn darts of our generation.”

Myself: “Who gave you the right to speak for our generation?”

Snack Snake: “I am the generation. I am the voice of our generation.”

Myself: “I don’t want you as my spokesperson. I’d rather have this floatie speak for me.”

Ike: “If Snack Snake is our voice, if he is right, then we are all drowned.”

Myself: “But if we drown the Snack Snake, we’re alright.”

At this point the Snack Snake thrashed around in such fear and was performing such advanced avoidance maneuvers that he almost drowned himself. Whether it is driving snakes at him through waist-high weeds, or driving fear into him in waist-high water, there is no better entertainment than a cornered Snack Snake.

When I returned home to the Triangle – wearing my Burmuda shorts and a plaid skirt as a shirt – my dad was waiting for me. He was here for my birthday, or at least this was his cover story. Really, he was here to help my murder the Intrepid. I went to work as normal, barely suppressing a smile, knowing what my dad and I were planning. The plan was flawless; not only were going to get away with murder, the endeavor was to act as a catalyst for father-son bonding.

Our molecular bond began its rift when a third element entered the equation: such is the physics of mechanics. In order to officially declare the car dead, we needed to get it checked out by a grease monkey. Grease monkeys cost money. I wanted to hire a patsy… some pansy who would look the other way while I pulled out the vehicle’s Roveries, rendering it sterile. Instead, my dad wanted to take it to a licensed mechanic who was actually going to look under the hood. I said no. My dad said nothing. I should have looked him in the eyes. People say when you are lying, your eyes point a certain way. I’ve never understood this; when I lie, it is always on my back. My eyes always point at the ceiling. So does my nose, mouth, and sense of entitlement.

So while I was at work, smirking like a bondsman, my dad was out trading fiat for false securities; he was bankrupting our mutual fun and breaking my heart. After all the hard work I put in to poisoning the car – neglecting its maintenance, never locking it, telling it it was adopted – my dad was going to fix it so I could keep it. He called me in the early afternoon and said, “Pick me up at the shop. I’m just down the road.” I got in his car, a minivan, and drove to him, almost in tears. I had never wanted to see the Intrepid again.

When I pulled into the address he had given me, I was surprised at the amount of cars the mechanic had endeavored to work on. An entire field full of shifty excuses. Impressive. I pulled up to my dad, noticing as I put the van in park that he was holding a knife. I left the van on and motioned that he get in without ever meeting his gaze. I wanted him to feel my blazing scorn. I wanted his conscience to burn like discount popcorn.

Still standing, holding out the knife, he assumed nothing and thusly pushed all my buttons. I flung open the door, telling him he could drive. He turned the blade inward, presenting me the handle, and said “Do the honors.” It suddenly all made sense. The field of broken dreams. The knife. The forklift operator dragging cars into a huge pile and in turn dragging an entire pack of cigarettes into her. I was at a junkyard. I made my bed, and now I was to lie in it. I couldn’t bring myself to stab the beast; I wouldn’t do that to an old friend. I had no problem, however, leaving that same old friend at the mercy of the forklift driver, and treating the only father this kid’s got to a pork chop and pasta dinner.

Next time: my dad forces ice cream down everyone’s throat between tequila shots, and I try to play guide dog, but instead end up spraining my sarcasm on a misplaced and dangling modifier.

Deep Posits in Diver City

Reclyning, a recycled orphan stuck in “washed up” cycle, giving double the blood at triple the pleasure. Plasma, endemic to my veinity, drains into a machine from my left arm, while with my right I scroll through my phone looking at Oddly Enough, a news feed with strange stories from around the world. I’m still giggling (see My Experience Last Time), because giving blood puts me in a drugged state. I see a great story, it tickles me, so I call out to Zhang it!, “They discovered a new species of dinosaur in Croatia!” He responds, wondering if they called it a Zhangitasaurus. “Of course not,” I replied, with just the right tone of irk, “it’s a CarbamaRaptor!” Still giddy, but now all the nurses know. They eye me with a suspicion usually reserved for vegetarians selling lien pork; it’s like borrowing against the piggy bank…

I call Zhang it! the CarbamaRaptor because he is absolutely addicted to Irish Car Bombs, a type of alcoholic beverage. He drinks little else, even uses it with cereal. I am four hours from getting on a plane and ice is tiptoeing through my body; my blood is swirling and being dissected of red cells in a procedure known as Double Platelet donation. My head is still spinning and I am recovering from Decompression Sickness. It has been a rough day in Diver City:

I was on call, charting the chat lines with glossy confidence. Suddenly, my entire team is up and marching, shrinking into the distance. Over a shadowy shoulder, as an afterthought, I hear “Wes, meeting in building 5, ten minutes.” What what what what what can a man do, when on a call he can’t drop with a talker he can’t stop? I feel like a bucket with no mop, sliding up a mountain with no top. I become brusque with the custom here - not hearing the customer - and I am off the phone in just under ten minutes. I race to the right place, forgetting my laptop, rapturing their meeting in like a postscript apocalypse. Not only is there no seat for me, but the man who hired me, the man who decided to bring a Finance major to an IT company, is sitting in the corner with his daughter. Apparently it’s bring-your-precious to work day, and all I’m holding is the doorknob.

As I pull in a pilfered chair from a nearby cubicle, I notice that the man leading the meeting isn’t my manager; it’s his boss. The meeting picked up steam while I lost credibility, and soon the leader stood up, snapped shut his laptop, and was off. I started to stand up, but no one else moved. It was time for the Diver City townhall. Dr. Powerline, my “hiring manager,” takes over as the diving instructor. Keep in mind that at this point, I still have no idea what the meeting is about, and I am confused as to whether we are actually adjourned. Dr. P is quick to shock, “Wes, since you were late, why don’t you give us your definition of Inclusion and Diversity?”

No. I can’t do this. I shun situations like this. There is a reason that I always stand with my back to the wall; I can’t be stabbed in the back and I can’t be snuck up on. I wasn’t sure which this was, but I knew it was one of the two. My mind, my greatest curse, whispers to me, Tell him you’ve always thought Diversity is the city where divers are born. I will absolutely not do that. I am not dumb, neither dim nor uneducated, but whatever I am has shrunk into a conch shell and conked out for the afternoon. Say it. Say Diver City is a great place to be a kid. Diver City is where Greg Lugayness was born. Instead, I say the following, verbatim: “I think inclusion is being part of a team. Like, knowing you are on a team and that everyone has your back. Or, you have their back. Knowing you can count on someone else… And diversity – well, for example, I went to school at Michigan. We have 13% Chinese people.” I should have said Diver City.

Dr. Powerline visibly regretted hiring me, then went on to give an awesome presentation about diversity at our company and how to foster ideas from dissimilar cultures and backgrounds to make a difference in the marketplace. I went on to fish a knife out of my pocket, and continually jammed it into the nearest socket in an attempt to destroy what my parents should have never created, me.

So, it was with great relief that I reclined on an uncomfortable cot with a needle hovering over my left side like a shard of some tasty spacechip. I watched it slip into something more comfortable - my arm -and laughed at the nurse. A concerned look only made me laugh harder, and she asked if I was on laughing gas. “I’m a diver,” I said. She asked no more questions.

Zhang it! had to leave early, because they missed his vein, hitting ivory. This caused quite the commotion; no one likes an angry CarbamaRaptor. The nurses escorted him out with oatmeal raisin reasons. Wisconsin and I sat the table, content in our colossal loss of blood, eating Oreos and sipping apple juice. We discussed death and cars, and the death of cars. I had only just taken my car into the shop, the judgment being that it had weak bones; the frame was about to snap. Afterward, I took a shot of milk to commemorate its loss, and to care for my own brittleness. The repairman asked what I was going to do with the beast. It took me less that a second to reply, “I think I am going to take it out to the woods and shoot it.” He thought this quite intriguing – the personification (and slaughter) of transportation – and walked back into his shop, howling about it with his mateys.

Wisconsin and I then jetted to the airport, walked the plank to our departure, and were off to visit Michigan: home to millions of people and the birthplace of Gracelessness. But I heard she had a French father and a British mother; you can’t help where someone is born.

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."