up and downdate

I'm coughing up blood. In other news, the artists on halsted and 18th are opening up their homes and bottles of Bernard Shaw for The Annual Pilsen Event. In closing, I think this is about the funniest exchange I've been a part of recently.

X said...
The Episcopal is baptized in a tuxedo while drinking pink (if you know what I mean) champagne from an erotically stylized flute...


Y said...
I was baptized as an infant in the Presbyterian tradition and did some basic Confirmation reading with my dad as a teenager. Just Martin Luther and CS Lewis stuff. I don't intend to get baptized as an adult.


Z said...
Good, don't get rebaptized! Down with anabaptists! I struggled for a while in college trying to decide if I wanted to get "rebaptized" as an adult, but came to the conclusion that it wasn't the right thing to do.


X said...
I was baptized as an adult and it was fucking awesome. you guys totally missed out.


Z said...
When were you baptized as an adult? Your dad's a Baptist minister, for crying out loud, wouldn't he have dunked you at a pretty young age?


X said...
it fucking ruled so damn much.

&&&**&&& -The concertgoer= &^^%

I was a philosophy major in college because of the questions: questions about consciousness, religion, language, carrots, and so forth. But now that college is over my brain has encountered questions about Jennifer Aniston’s love life/ass/workout plan, dental insurance, not books, and a host of other things. Foremost among these post education questions is: Am I loser?

Its turns out this question is not easy to answer. And compounding this difficulty is the fact that instead of trying to answer it I spend my day writing malicious completely true stories about a certain hairy monkey-type man. All this hit me last night as I was writing cursive lowercase “s”’s over and over in my notebook for Big Thoughts. I had just finished my ice cream sunday and was thinking about drinking a tall glass of orange cola, to settle my stomach, when it hit me: Am I loser?

I slept soundly last night because I was drunk. But if I had been sober that question surely would have enacted in my character the inability to sleep well. I awoke no closer to an answer, ate some Rolaids, and went to work.

Upon arriving I discovered I had won a pair of tickets to a concert tonight at the Empty Bottle. I won these tickets by correctly guessing how one “wins” the My Little Princess game from Milton Bradley. The answer it turns out is quite simple – collect all the jewels. Not only did I win this very pathetic and lame competition, I was the ONLY person who even entered it. I was the only person in all Chicago who wasted 5 minutes of his life looking up the rules to the My Little Princess game from Milton BradIey on the internet in order to win the competition that wasn’t even a competition.

So now my brain is filled up by a new question: Are those cigarettes I hid in the gear box of my mom’s car 6 years ago still there? And if not, did she find them? And if she found them, why hasn’t she said anything? Were they Camels or Winston’s?

In other news, Adam Wood is a douche and tomorrow I will post an embarrassing picture of him.

Wicker Park Monsters!~

It has come to my attention that An Doof Ass has gone dancing. For those of you who know An Doof Ass personally this is both hilarious and repulsive revelation. It is hilarious because An Doof Ass can’t dance. It is repulsive because this does not stop An Doof Ass from dancing.

I’ve had the distinct pleasure to see An Doof Ass dance on two occasions. The first was at an establishment named Freuds in Oxford, England. Unfortunately for An Doof Ass, Freud’s wasn’t actually a place one dances. It was actually an after hours place where we went to get more drunk and score tail. On this particular night, An Doof Ass had decided to “pregame it” before the pubs and Freud’s. So by the time we got to Freud’s he was so belligerently drunk that he took the beers a friend and I were drinking “because owed me for them I bought them for me I bought them” and, holding one in each hairy palm with a cigarrett dangling from his mouth, began trolling. He trolled his way right to a table of two fine ladies and one good-looking guy. We stood in disbelief as he spilled beer on the girls while asking them to relight his cigarrett and could have sworn we hear him say “I’m a doctor of medicines who dabbles in assainery.” We thought the worst was over when all of the sudden his favorite song began playing: YMCA.

Like some kind of hairy, ugly marinet, he began bending at the knees, swinging his monkey arms and moving his head side to side. He spilled what remained of our beers during his first “M,” by the second chorus he had undone his shirt, and soon was being forcibly removed all the while screaming: I have my rights as a gentlemens.
The second time I saw An Doof Ass Dance was at a club in Chicago. On this particular night I had overstepped the limits of sobriety with An Doof Ass and we were having a jolly old time scoring lots of ladies on the dancefloor, etc. Everything was going well until he burned his hand on the cigarrett I was holding. Then he punched me right there on the dance floor. Then we took it outside where together we yelled at some passersby before fighting each other. I imagine his dancing was equally terrible on this night.

Monday!

This weekend was completely passable. Friday night the wife and I ate lentils and then got drunk and watched a movie. On Saturday we organized our schedules and had a good friend over for drinks and a discussion of current affairs. Sunday we got a surprise invite to the Cubs game from some good friends and had really great seats behind home plate. The highlight was getting to see Andy Petite up close. I was indifferent to the game’s outcome.

@@@ --Exceptance-- @@@

Last night started off innocent enough. I had ordered a movie - The Secretary - off of Netflixs and was going to get drunk. It’s your basic love story: a masochistic and a sadist get together and then the sadist breaks off the relationship so the masochist goes looking for a new sadist but discovers she’s really loves the first sadist. They get married but not before you get to see her naked which I thought was a nice touch.

After the movie was over it was only about 7 and, since the wife was gone, I could drink all the alcohol in the apartment without having to share. So I did that. I also read from a book I’ve been reading. The book’s pretty damn good, but also pretty depressing. The combination of the book and the half bottle of Campari caused me to contemplate two distinct directions the evening could take. The first involved a classy suicide with a nice grammatically correct suicide note explaining how lame everything is and how I’m cashing out, blah blah blah. The second option was to pack a bag full of underwear and socks and not look back. I decided to go with suicide.

I was all set to take my handful of Vitamin C tablets and close my eyes forever when Heather called and said to meet her at the ice cream shop. I decided ice cream was a fitting last meal so I met her up on Polk and Racine. That ice cream saved my life. I don’t know what it was, I took that first bite of the sweet sweet candy and then, like magic, my head was hurting like hell - the ultimate brain-freeze. I fell to the ground outside the ice cream shop and began moaning and cradling my skull. I could not continue with the suicide until this headache went away. My nose began bleeding.

So Heather took me home and mumbled all the way about how she hates our marriage because she can not take me anywhere. Since I was in no condition to rebuttle I just let her get some things off her chest. When we got home, the headache was so bad I couldn’t open my eyes to make sure I was taking death inducing Vitamin C instead of life affirming multi-vitamins. So I gave up for the evening, chalked it up to bad luck, and had Heather put me to bed.

Once I was nice and comfortable, Heather went out to the kitchen to mix her sleepy-time Sex on the Beach. I was just about asleep when she came tearing into the room:

The Wife: You son of bitch. I leave for one damn night and you drink all the Kahlua and Grenadine. You’ll pay for this you will.
W.B.: I’m already paying for it, I drank all that Kahlua and Grenadine. Also, why is our apartment full of mixers?
The Wife: Because you wanted to make “fancy drinks” last Tuesday and we need “supplies.”
W.B.: Oh yeah. How’d that turn out?
The Wife: Pretty much like everything else. You made one Flannel Shirt Tied in the Wind declared it “rubbish” and then decided to invent your own “wicked good” drink.
W.B.: Oh yeah. And how’d that turn out?
The Wife: It didn’t. You took 10 shots of Vodka to celebrate your
impending wild success as a cocktail genius and passed out in the stairwell.
W.B.: I love you.
The Wife: Go to hell.
W.B: I’m already there. Hey have you read this book? I was going to kill myself tonight, but this headache made it impossible. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow.
The Wife: Maybe. Listen, I’m going to the liquor store. Want anything?
W.B.: lottery tickets.

Pretty Fly

yes, awesome, the wife is going out for dinner and cocktails with a girlfriend tonight.

Flaming Blue Islands

Sometimes adventure finds you -like yesterday when my bus caught on fire. Good old reliable #60 bus. You always know when it’s coming because unlike the ample #20 buses and accordion #14 busses and snazzy new #157 buses, the #60 is always spewing black smoke and informs you that it is in fact the #60 bus through a hand written note taped up in the front window. The bus sucks.

Well to make a long story short, I be on da’ bus kickin’ it up north to the center of the city so as to make my cake when smoke starts filling the inside of the bus. Now, the bus’s engine is behind the last row of seats. Therefore the seats are always pretty hot. Therefore the hobos love the seats because they are always sick and cold. Therefore when a #60 bus catches on fire it starts in the back of the bus by the hobos. On this particular day there were two hobos sleeping in the back of the bus, and I was sitting in front of them when I noticed the smoke and heard more coughing than usual. I tried to solve this “urban” problem as any white person does: I turned up my Spoon single on the ipod and acted like nothing was happening. This however turned out not to solve the problem, and about 15 seconds later one of the hobos poured his bottle of Triple Sec down the vent in an attempt to extinguish the fire within. This just provoked it and before we knew it even the college students were awake and coughing.

So the bus pulled over and everyone got out and watched another faithful #60 bus go up in black greasy flames. When the next bus came the hobos went right to the back and began coughing up blood, looking for scraps of food, and fighting each other for the warm seats. I sat near the front so I could read Jonathan Kozol's new article in peace.

~!:Weekend Revelations:!~

Well another weekend has come and gone, but not before things happened. Friday night Heather, Heather, Andi, Richard, and I played cards. Heather brought cookies and Richard shared his Irish whiskey and new found coffee wealth. All in all it was a fun evening.

With Saturday however things turned a bit strange. When An Doof Ass lived in Chicago he was known for taking long afternoon trips up to the Lakeview neighborhood to have a walk about through its many used bookstores. To his credit, he often came home with the latest Greek Lexicon thriller or another exciting edition of Aquinas’s commentary on the De Anima. Well, I never did the used bookstore thing during his Chicago-period because I was usually asleep when he left and good and settled in for an afternoon/evening of smoking in front of the tv by the time he got home. But this Saturday was one of the last beautiful day’s so I decided to take advantage of it and hit An Doof Ass’s haunts.

For some reason, every bookstore An Doof recommended was in a section of Lakeview called Boystown. Now Boystown has some of the best restaurants and wine shops in the city. It also happens to be where Chicago’s male homosexual community goes to hold hands and drink bubble tea. Followng A.D.A directions I ended up in front of very nice little place called The Antiquarian Gay Man’s Fabulously Used Bookstore.

Now, I love reading a Foucault-ian interpretation of Ockahm’s “razor” as much as the next guy, but when you see a book entitled Aquinas: The Hung Ox you really start wondering about the quality of the scholarship. Yet, the store was not without its charms. For example, the complimentary mint cookies and green tea was a nice touch, and knowing An Doof Ass would make meals out of anything complimentary,in order to save up money for boxes of wine, I could see why he might put up with the occasional copy of Plato’s Symposium: The Allure of Alcibiades. But out of curiosity I asked the proprietor, Fabian, if he remembered a certain gin-hound in a blue flannel shirt, wool socks, and Birkenstocks…

Fabian: Oh you mean Axel. Yeah, he’d came in here all the time. Strangest guy that Axel, he’d sit in the corner hiding a Greek Lexicon inside of a copy of How to Write like Abelard without the Unpleasantness? just eating cookies and calling anyone who walked by him a ‘no good heretic and destroyer of the great traditions of the Angleican World Alliance.’ Of course he was always drunk because he kept putting schnapps in his green tea so most people thought he was just an Angleican sponge looking for a good time. He was so sweet though, everytime on his way out he’d thank me for running a fine bakery and that he was very seriously considering the eventual purchase of some of our "wares."
W.B.: hmm…did he ever go off on the regal and noble Baptist tradition?
Fabian: oh all the time. After a couple swigs he would pat himself on the back and say ‘No backsliding here you Baptist heathens, just good Angelican devotion.’ The strange thing is he’d come in so early most of the time he’d just be yelling at his reflection in that mirror over there.
W.B.: Ah yes, I’m familiar with um…”Axel’s” affinity to for yelling at mirrors. I remember one afternoon he was fist deep in a box of Burgundy and in such a heated debate with his reflection that he not only punched out the mirror, but also punched himself out to avenge the death of “his greatest interlocutor.”
Fabian: Oh that sounds like Axel all right.
W.B.: yes, well, any way, how much for the copy of Augustine’s Other Confessions?
Fabian: 6 bucks.
W.B.: (whispers) 5 and you got yourself a deal.

Bam!

As the summer draws to a close, it’s hard to think about all the ways I’m going to be completely fucked for the next couple of months. Take today for example; I had to walk to the bus stop this morning in freezing ass rain. Now, I’m not much of a complainer, but it’s hard to feel upbeat when you know your skin is about to start falling off in dry crumbly chunks and you won’t see the sunshine for weeks on end.

Worst still is the fact taht working in the Loop -in the summer- is pretty fucking good. You can read in the sun at Daley Plaza. You can nap in the shade at Millennium Park. You can even take the Red Line to Addison, grab a dog and a beer and watch a couple of innings from a side street bar.

But there’s one thing I’ll miss more than all these others. And that’s scoping racks. The Loop on a sunny Tuesday in July is just swarming with knockers. I don’t know how many times I’ve almost been hit by bus, robbed by a hobo, or pounded by some hick from the suburbs just because of cha-cha’s. It’s always an adventure when you’re out trolling for the twin temptresses, and you just can’t get the same thrill mentally undressing a girl in January just to take you mind off the wind that’s turning your face into sandpaper.


-Goodbye summer; goodbye hooters.

BEE STING

I have the brownest and mushiest banana I’ve ever seen in my lunch. It looks like a rusty railroad spike.

In other news, I should change the name of this site to iceteathenewspaperandinbedby8:30.blogspot.com. I’ve been living a pretty t/lame life the last couple of weeks. . . I’m just kidding -I’m drunk* right now!



*being drunk means I must be living a crazy fun life. I mean, come on, I'm drunk. Do I have to spell it out for you? yeah! party! whoo! someone stop this bullshit planet's orbit! I mean, anonymous hot sex! whoo!

diploma papercuts

"March of the Penguins," the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing." Oh good lord. I bet MoftheP would make a great dissertation topic at Gordon-Conwell Evangelical Seminary of Bible America Church of Bible bible bible....

Broken Kick Awesome! **: /////A Confession////

Last night the wife asked me how she would know if she was an alcoholic. She asked this while pouring her “glass” of bedtime Boone’s Farm. I was at a loss, but felt like I should assure her or something. The whole affair reminded me of a similar event from the time of An Doof Ass and Regal Andy.

One Tuesday afternoon A.D.A was freebasing a mixture of what he called “The Rambler,” which was a cocktail of Wal-Mart brand Nyquil, yellow gummy worms, and chalk. While trying to find a vein, he looked up at me with his hollow cheeks, vacant expression and gummy smeared lips and said: Will you keep an eye on my drinking and smoking and slutttery and freebasing? You know, keep me accountable? At the time I said I would. How could I not? He looked so helpless curled up in the fetal position screaming: Mr. Bummbles save me! In fact, I not only said I would be his accountability partner, but that it would be “an honor.”

A couple days later while he was licking the lead paint off the garage, I went up to him and said the totalitarian and other-denying nature of accountability “partnerships” was “too heavy man.” Of course, he didn’t remember anything we had talked about earlier that week. But ever since that day I’ve always felt a bit responsible for him getting Hep C from that syringe he found in Greektown.

To the Journey

Mr. Mercer –Frog Eyes lead amphibian- did not disappoint. He was fat, cranky, and sang every song I could think of involving “fucking the sun” which seems pretty cool. At one point, a band mate stepped up to Mr. Mercer’s mike to request more guitar in his monitor and Mr. Mercer told him to “never talk into [his] mike again.” He also derided some fans for hooting.

The show was at the Bottom Lounge, and it was all ages. This was my first time at the B.L. and it was pretty damn lame. For one, it’s 2 dollar beer was Stroh’s, which is gross. For two, the sign above the bar was lit up by a black light. For three, it was on Belmont in Lakeview which is a cesspool. But the all-ages thing was great. For one, I could sell cans of Stroh’s for 4 bucks to 16 year-old-girls with backpacks covered in puff paint proclamations on Slipknot, W., Avril Lavigne, and McDonalds. For two, I felt cool smoking and drinking next to said 16 year-olds. For three, I was taller than everyone. Heather and I both agreed An Doof Ass would have like it because there were lots of ugly girls in unwashed shirts there.

The Schubas show was pretty good. Stag Party likes to sing about girls taking off their clothes which was a nice change of pace after so much sun-fucking.

Saturday was spent at a German Fest in Lincoln Square. Heather and I spent the first couple of hours at a small bar filled with Germans watching The Three Stooges on TV while blasting The Scorpions and Queen. There was a man at the end of the bar who looked like Derrida and was waving his arms around and saying stuff in German. I found this to be in bad taste. The highlight of the night came when I found 6 dollars on the ground. At the time I was hanging out with an unemployed acquaintance so I said she should take it. Only while boarding the train about 2 hours later did I realize that money had fallen from my own pocket. I was pissed.

Sunday was spent sleeping, drinking coffee, eating Mexican sweat breads and watching episodes of season 4 of The Simpson’s. Around 5 I visited Chicago’s newest set of Vegetarian White Kids in the Ghetto over on Kedzie and 18th. There’s no way in hell I would live there. Forget the crime and so forth, there’s just nothing to do, especially if you’re a vegetarian. I told my friends amongst them they could come over whenever they wanted to get away from the hookers, screaming kids, and Wendell “I make a living off feeding lines to dumb fuck suburbanites” Berry reading roommates, but I was lying.

From the Desk of a Working Boy: Weekend Mercies

Listen, I've got a shot tonight of actually having some fun. I'm planning on hitting two show's that should kick ass. the first will so without question. Frog Eye is opening for the very terrible band Xiu Xiu, but The Frog should overpower me with lyrical gems like "drink the sun's blood in cups," "mastication we hate the front lines," and, my personal favorite, "I slept with the queen, the lights were on the bed was clean." Moving on, F.E. should be done by about 10 thus giving me ample time to make it Schubas for the Catfish Haven record release party with Stag Party opening. Just so you know, I'll probably do lots of drugs tonight and get like 25 to 50 sets of digits from short black haired babes. Ergo W.B. has spent the day just kind of chillin' and practicing his "cool" and "uncool cool" concert faces and eye rolling. sweet.

p.s. what does "ergo" mean?

An Doof Ass Goes to College: The Sage continues via flashback and predictions.

As you know, An Doof Ass is gone. But here in God’s city, Chicago, which is surrounded by God’s toilet, Chicagoland, traces of him remain. By traces I do not mean one of Levinas’s nonstarters that is completely uninteresting and unoriginal, I mean crap. Nasty poor man’s crap is strewn about my super cool pad. Crap that has kept me from scoring lots of hotties.

Crap like his bathroom towel which I NEVER saw him wash. It smells like the Gin and cigarretts he would smoke during his ritual get drunk in the bath so there less to clean up afternoon. There’s also his toothbrush which was just a couple of teeth from a comb glued to a rusty spoon. I’d throw it away, but that would actually require not only being near it but fighting off the rats that have declared it their god. Not to mention the fact that I still can’t turn on the oven for fear I might smell latent grease from his many Aldi brand Kielbasas. I can still hear him talking about them: W.B., they taste neither good nor are they good for me, but when I eats ‘em I get my’s belly full and then I’s can drinks me more nail polish remover. And who can forget the way he completely destroyed my shrine to whatever erotic Eastern god was cool with the Wicker Park bitches that week dragging his found in the garbage recliner out the back door. I asked him why he was bringing it to New York and he look at me with his too close together eyes and said: Because it was free! Not to mention I still haven’t found that 6 cents.

Of course, he didn’t forget everything. He sure as hell took my custom made Pimpin’ 24/7 muscle shirt. I can see him now: Prancing his way down Bronxs boulevards flippin’ change to sex workers and pointing his hairy monkey arms at my cool words emblazoned in hot pink letters. That bastard. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s completely swiped my swinging-babe-getting-game-moves. I can see him using my never fail William Foster Wallace line: I love like how like fucking long his ‘works’ are and how like I totally identify with the character because she/he/shehe is like sad and confused but really smart n-stuff. That’s my scoring line! Damn you An Doof Ass!

But now that I think about it, if he’s just using my W.F.W. line and The Shirt he won’t get much beyond the hot artist’s ugly roommate’s older uglier sister. But if he’s using all my sure fire moves -like wearing rainbow-tinted neon shades inside, saying 'n shit' a lot, and referring to himself in the third person as The Cruiser- he may well just land himself the artist’s ugly roommate.

Sigma Chai

I am currently reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s “an Indian history of the American west.” It’s pretty much nonstop bummers. But its got me thinking about changing my name to Stands-in-Puddles and selling Heather for some glass beads and salted meats.

Speaking of bummers, school started up again for the youth of Chicago. Now -instead of spending their energy pummeling each on the basketball courts behind my place or huffing paint outside the Trebol liquor store- they are packing the #60 bus full of their beady eyes and boney elbows and taking out their end-of-the-school-day aggressions on innocent “white bread” (they’re especially mean when I’m wearing pink shirt and tie combo.) Take for example, the little fat kid that sits on the box factory steps all afternoon. During the summers, he’s usually nursing a bloody ear, an ice cream cone, a plastic bag full of gold spray paint, and either a gameboy or berretta. Now he sits out there with a backpack, a notebook, and carrots sticks. So instead of a completely happy satisfied little angel there’s a hyped-up punk just itching for a fight. So I’m walk by the little bugger and he says:

Little Bugger: “Nice shirt.”
W.B: Are you really saying, “you’re gay”
Little Bugger: Yes.
W.B.: well, alright then.

Then he’ll walk behind me the rest of the way home stepping on the backs of my shoes. If I start running he starts throwing rocks yells: Where you goin’ Huckleberry? I ain’t done with you yet.

Once the others hear “Huckleberry” is running they appear out of nowhere, surrounding me with their sticky purple hands, BMX bikes, and Minnie Mouse backpacks filled with God only knows what kind of rage inducing vegetable or fruit. Trapped in the center, they take turns pushing me and grabbing at my Marshall Field’s bag.

Mean Childs: What you got in there Fish? Huh? What you got?”
W.B.: Just cigarettes, a flask, and a couple porno mags, honest.”
Mean Childs: You sure? You don’t got no pixie sticks or nothin’?
W.B.: honest, just low grade smut.
Mean Childs: you bogus! Open the bag Fish!

If I open the bag, I’m as good as dead because I’ve got approximately 34 Snickers bars hidden under the skin mags. But I’m not out of tricks just yet. Oh no. I’ve got one move left and it works every time. What do I do? Easy, I just start kicking the little monsters and using my heights and superior strength to overpower them. You’d think they’d learn, but kids on school-bender do some “crazy ass shit.”

chunky soup!

Hungry for a slice of the exciting world of evangelical divinity training? of course not! but check out chunky soup for the poor bastard's sake anyway.

Minneapolissis SUcks

Well I’m back from visiting friends in Mnpls. The weekend was all-together a fine experience. The only major complaint I have is that Slanger has gone bananas.

His apartment was the first clue something was wrong. It looks like it’s inhabited by some kind of Nuevo-Unabomber. For example, he does not have dishes only disposable plates and plastic silverware since “the government infected his home with ‘super viruses that infect anything from Crate & Barrell.’” I tried to tell him all the best stuff comes form the CB and CB2, but he would have none of it. He placed earplugs on every surface in the apartment “to keep the voices out,” and doesn’t have a tv, cd player, or radio. Worst of all, he lives off of cinnamon raisin flavored protein bars, which is just fucking gross. The place also smelled like bacon for some reason. It was creepy.

After placing our bags in the living room and mixing a couple of drinks Slanger told us we should really think about getting the microchips in our brains removed. He said if we didn’t Senator McCain could turn us into robots for the Army and Senator Liberman could “get us to renounce the blood of Christ and become ‘The Jews’.” Well, I wasn’t too sure about the first possibility, but the second had me scared six ways from Sunday, which, if Lieberman has his way, I guess would be six ways from Saturday and that’s just not right, damnit. So I told Slanger I’d sleep on it.

During the night I awoke to him standing over me with a steak knife and, to his credit, a sock soaked in disinfectant. I calmly asked him what he was doing and slowly reach for the bat I had brought along in case of a Slangergency. He began mumbling something about “cutting the radio waves out of the air” and began rubbed the knife in the sock. I closed my eyes and swung with all my might hitting him square in the conk.

While he was unconscious, Joe and I tried to unravel the mystery of Slanger’s craziness. During our search we found 65 dollars in his wallet and a notebook labeled “Master Plan 67*^”, which contained a formula for “authentic breastmilk,” a recipe for “one hell of a quiche,” and an essay entitled “Bacon Grease Equals Disinfectant.” We left it there. But when we got to the car we discovered Slanger had already removed Joe’s car battery leaving a Post-It note on the cables reading: I need to cut open your brains. We were stuck.

Not wasting a moment, we tied up Slanger and went to the Best Buy across the street. There we bought: a cd player, the Maroon 5 cd, a tv, and the complete first season of “Save by the Bell.” When we got back to his place, we put him in front of the new flatscreen tv, filled a bowl with Lucky Charms sweetened with Splenda, and put in The Bell. After only 2 episodes, three yoo-hoos and a baloney sandwich, Slanger was telling us all about the upcoming season of “The OC,” Bush’s plan for rebuilding Iraq, and the new Motorola RAZR phone. He also asked if we could go to Uptown to “troll for bitches” and look for an authentic Lebanese restaurant. It was then that we knew he’d be OK.

Journal of a Working Boy: 9-2-05 *Shot in the Head by an Old Forester*

From the Desk of a Working Boy

To Whom it may concern:

Last night, I was overcome with a thirst that only alcohol could slake. I slaked it for about two hours at the kitchen table over multiple hands of, appropriately, solitaire. During the drunkening, I decided to make my breakfast for the morning so I wouldn’t have to make it then. That was a mistake. The attempted making of a pizza from an old loaf of bread, ketchup, baloney, and bleu cheese dressing was a bigger mistake. I also made some phone calls. I would like take this time to apologize to Allen, Peter, Joe, Slanger, Slanger again, Danny, Heather, Jill and Amanda for any unpleasantness I may have caused. I would also like to apologize to my body, and to my brain I say: You’re getting yours now aren’t you, you bastard. Through all this however one thing remains clear: This is all An Doof Ass’s fault.

The Boys are Back in Town!

Oh sweet freedom. This morning at 3 in the am I took the wife to the L stop so she could get on a plane and go to sunny Los Angeles. Some guys would be nervous about sending their ladies off without some assurance of their return but I’m not. I trust her implicitly. I just wish her wedding band hadn’t started irritating her finger last night, and I don’t what she sees in that stupid book, Taking Dead-end Job Husbands of 3 months for All their Worth and Scoring Man-Babes on the Beaches of California with your Best Friend: A Guide, all its got is a bunch of pictures and mixed drink recipes. But I’m not worried. After all, nobody satisfies her like I used to.

Anyways, I got home and fell right back asleep for an hour and half. Then I got up drank a pot of coffee and smoked two cigarretts and at no point during this activity did I hear:

You’re having another cup?
You’re smoking at 6 in the morning?
You’re smoking another fucking cigarrett!?

I also didn’t have to listen to her complain while I was singing Lampchop’s “This is the Song that Never Ends” while flossing over the kitchen sink, or when I was cracking my knuckles while talking about my theory that cats and dogs are really the same creature just with different whiskers (I have not yet figured out how guinea pigs figure into this theory).

Of course there are drawbacks to her being away till Tuesday. For one, I had to make my own lunch for work. Luckily she had placed Post-It notes on all the food in the fridge. There was:

half a flat beer
moldy bread
Heather’s food
Food I (Heather) will eat when I get back and
cottage cheese

Not wanting to rock the boat of marital bliss, my lunch today includes: half a flat beer, cottage cheese, and something she forgot to label that looks like Chex mix but smells like dog food.

Another bummer is there is no one to tell me when its time to change the channel on the TV, when it’s time to do the dishes, when it’s time to clean the bedroom, when it’s time to make her tea, when it’s time to iron her clothes, or when it’s time to make her chocolate soufflé, or when it’s time to call her guy-friends to set up a girls night out.

So it’s not all fun and games when the wife’s away, just mostly fun and games. In fact, one could say: It’s almost exclusively fun and games.

p.s. I am lonely and scared.