Blessings

Some janitor ripped one outside my class last night. This reminded me that our society needs to develop linguistic formalities in the event of public flatulence. Without these, all you’re really allowed to do is ask the obvious “Ummm, did he just…?” Of course he did. Fess up, Custodian Dan.
Unfortunately, both “pardon” and “bless you” are already taken, because I would favor using the latter in the above mentioned case. Then, after being blessed, a farter could respond “thank you”. And then the blesser could respond, either whimsically or sarcastically, “no, thank you“.
But I guess I’m still not sure why people bless or, especially, thank others for blessing them. There’s always that person who will get really indignant if they’re the only one who gives an old-timey fuck about blessing the person who has just sneezed.

Sneezer: (sneeze)
Crowd: (silence)
Indigent Person: (looking around the room) Uhh? (scowling) Ummmmmm? (to herself) Well, I never… (looking directly at the person and speaking with self-righteous politeness) Bless you!

The bless you/thank you case is one of many painfully meaningless exchanges we are forced into every day. For instance, you are a leaving a building, in the doorway even, and someone asks, “Heading out?” and you respond, “Yehhp.” Or when someone asks you how your weekend was and you say “not bad” whether it was actually excellent or fucking abysmal.
And, Custodian Dan, please don’t stand there so I have to ask what you did on Saturday because, bless me, I don’t give a shit.

$10,000

Besides Kevin Smith or people with transmittable terminal illnesses, I don’t know if there’s anyone I wouldn’t sleep with for the tax-exempt sum of $10,000. I wish this were otherwise, but I’m simply not under the impression that money can’t buy one (me, in particular) happiness. I would also like a list of the erotic acts my perspective client requires prior to our rendezvous. Obviously, these well-born men and women will want to get their mileage from the D-train and I’d like to be prepared for the south-bound route I’m taking.
Shit. I should establish a time limit for this or I’m going to end up somewhere as a sex slave. Let’s go with two hours. I was going to say “one evening”, but I don’t want to find myself arguing about semantics chained to the floor of a 54-year-old woman’s igloo. “Oh, D-train, stop your struggling. The sun doesn’t come up for another four months.”
You’re right, I wouldn’t get much traffic under the pseudonym “D-train”. And, horsefuck it, Aurelion the Fallen is already taken.

Warriors

Apparently 25,000 fundie kids thought San Francisco would be a good place to protest gay marriage, Young Jeezy, and partial nudity on television. Teen Mania Ministries, a suggestively-titled evangelical revival group, sponsored this “Battle Cry” of a rally. (By sponsored I mean charged $55-$200 per ticket.)
Anyway, I tried to create a “Battle Plan” with the aid of their gritty hate-the-sin-annoy-the-sinner website for Mr. William H. Taft–resident of Moscow, Michigan at 535 Glory(Hole) Lane. Unfortunately, they knew instinctively that Howard hadn’t rightly prepared his heart with a Basic Training for Warriors kit and hassled the shit out of him with a series of password error prompts.
Still, with “Hollywood, the music industry, advertisers, and even the mainstream media using their arsenal of tools to win the battle for our teens’ hearts”, it was imperative Howard and I direct ourselves to their message board of Christ.

Topic: Today’s Teen
new life: Here’s a question, why is that the divorce rate of non-Christian mates is the same as claimed Christian believers? I truly believe that this has a direct affect on the lives of youth.

Caryn: My parents aren’t divorced, but a lot of my friends parents are.
I think the reason the divorce rate is the same is because so many people say they’re Christians but don’t really mean it. Or when they get married they’re being blinded and binded by Satan.new life: I have many friends who didn’t know their dads. It is culturally accepted now to divorce, despite what the Bible says.

BibleMan: This is how my town is! I went to this thing called Tactfest! It was about local teenage bands. I went to check it out and found out it was a waste of money. But through it the Lord spoke. Colville is know widely as the poor town–mostly because a lot of people rely on the state. As a result, we teenagers don’t have a lot of money and have to find things to do. The biggest one is drugs! It make me so sad to hear my friends say that they smoke so much pot.

Caryn: I know how you feel. I know someone who went into JobCore and I was so proud of him! Then half way through he shows up at church. He’s home for good now. He quit. He missed his pot and alcohol. It makes me so sad inside!BibleMan: Yeah, I guess our towns can relate.Caryn:

Yeah. It kinda sucks.Drake: This is a sad time in youth history (frowny face).

Caryn: I know. I don’t like the way it’s going. mississippi88: WHY SO SAD!? GOD IS GIVING US EASY TARGETS!!! We’re nowhere near a minority as the Christians in early Rome were and look how that turned out. They converted the whole country in a couple years. OUR JOB IS TO EVANGELIZE!!!! WE SHOULD BE EXITED THAT WE GET TO DO IT!!!!Caryn: I never looked at it that way before. That’s a totally new perspective. Thank you!

Anesthetic

Let me just say that I would find alcohol to be an entirely unsatisfying anesthetic. I like my whiskey, but I may have taken a bout of gangrene over a backwoods surgery preceded by a fifth of Old Crow.
This makes me think that enterprising sadists of the 19th century provided booze to impoverished drunks in exchange for the opportunity to saw off their limbs. Maybe they [sadists] were just less crafty then.
It would make sense. How inherently less cruel would it be than, say, boxing, Bum Fights, Fear Factor or, in the future, rollerball? But seriously, it’s not fair to equate those mediums of violence. Boxing is for rich people.

Senioritis

It’s the Sunday night before classes resume following Spring Break (dear diary?) and I’ve realized how increasingly difficult–i.e. not “drinking in between classes”–it will be to give a fuck. However, I hesitate to use the term senioritis because it’s fairly embarrassing for everyone involved.
Still, I will have this conversation dozens of times during the next month and a half:

Skyler: I’m am so ready to be done.
Me: Oh yeah.
Skyler: I mean, why work when you could be partyin?
Me: Good point.
Skyler: Yeah, I’m pretty sure we all got a bad case of it…
Me: (wincing) I…uh…
Skyler: Sen-ior-i-tis, man!

Like pre-frayed clothing, senioritis devalues apathy through institutionalization. What’s worse, it tries, like present-day opponents of McCarthyism, to make a reasonable and commonplace opinion seem edgy. “Look out for me, I’m excited about graduating from college, ahhhhhHHHhHHHhhHHh!” Terrific. I like scratching my pubes, but you don’t see me getting all exclusive about it. “Pube-scratcher hi-fiv—waaaaiiitttt…”
What’s worse, senioritis is accompanied by demands from internal and external forces to “come together” as a class. “Hey, I know you guys never talked or anything but you’re standing near each other at this one time on this one day so now you’re all best friends.” Back off. Stop guilting me into empty mass sentiment.

(Soft guitar strumming). Green Day/Vitamin C/Eve 6/Nickleback, here we come.

Fish

I brushed my teeth six times before sex last night and not simply because I am a foreplay master. (Which, by the way, sounds like the title of a Jodeci song or the “handle” of a violent sex offender). That night I had ordered the garlic fish special at Thai Smile 2–an above average authentic eatery nestled in between an ExxonMobile and residential area in Muncie, IN.
I say “authentic” because the employees were a family. Our hostess was 10 or 11 and I half-expected her to lead us to a back room filled with Asian women in numbered cages. I do not say this because I am a violent sex offender–which I am not–but because Thai Smile 2 positions underage Asian girls in private school uniforms at the entrance of their restaurant. Alright, that was just our hostess, but they also had a cylinder tank filled with goldfish who appeared to be blind (cave fish?!?).
I saw some girl there who I thought I knew. She was sitting next to the cave fish tank. “I’m going to go check out the cave fish,” I told my girlfriend. “Alriggghhht,” she said. Even then, I still couldn’t tell if it was her. And the cave fish were definitely staring at me. So I sat back down. I wanted to say her name out loud as I walked past but if it wasn’t her and the not-her person figured out I was saying her not-name to her, I would really be embarrassed. So I didn’t. I did, however, continue to turn around in my booth and try to catch the girl’s eye. “Stop staring,” my girlfriend said. She was right. Lots of people were starting to notice me staring–like the couple next to us in an argument. Not her, though. Or, maybe, not not-her. Who knows. She and her friend had their dinners boxed up by the underage prostitute hostess before I could come to a definite conclusion.

Trail

I happened to trail a young woman yesterday. She was walking out to her car while I was heading over to the apartment complex fitness center. “No, m’lady,” I wanted to say. “This is merely coincidence for I am not ‘following’ you. No need to fret.”
Still, despite these telepathic affirmations, I sensed her fear and was consequently offended. Then I noticed that I was an unshaven young man with tattoos wearing a black hoodie and picking up on her sense of fear. Also, I was wearing gym shorts in the snow and holding a one-sided mental conversation with her. A one-sided mental conversation conducted in a terrible British accent, none the less.
So I slowed down a bit to appear less sinister but it was cold as shit and that wasn’t happening. Then I did one of those awkward “jog arounds” and must have had a really pissed look on my face because the wind was cutting directly into my tear ducts.
I don’t know how she reacted. I didn’t look back. But I’ll assume she did what any young woman with a healthy appetite would do following a brush with an untamed Bulgeasaurus Rex.
And I mean masturbate. In her Grand Prix. On the way to class. With a fountain drink.

Yeah

Spring Break reminds me yet again that alcohol causes men and women to do different shit in different ways. A guy, for instance, might get wasted and punch a hole in a wall because he’s, well, wasted. “Dude, that wall looks stupid(/cool/hard/soft/awesome). I’m so going to knock a hole in it…with my fist!” A girl, on the other hand, will want to fuck a couple guys, get drunk, and then use her drunken state as justification for popping some D. She knows her friends can’t get too pissed because they need that same excuse to pop some D when the situation allows itself.
That’s why girls on Spring Break–many thanks from freshmen-year-I-just-downloaded-Kazaa Dave–all happen to “go crazy” in the same damn way. They already know before they leave that they’re going to dance on tables, flash their tits, and scream in unison. They know they’re going to make out with their best friend. They know, sure as hell, they’re going to stumble across a “really sweet guy” in Oakley sunglasses and fuck him.

Well, better let you go. Your song (“Yeah”) is playing.

Customer

It’s really awkward when you walk into a garage sale as the only perspective customer and have the immediate realization “I don’t want any of this shit. No way.” But you have to look around and pretend to be interested in, say, a set of decorative plates. And then the lady will inform you, “I picked those up Renaissance fair in Oregon” and you’ll have to respond with something like “Yes, yes. Fine craftsmanship.”
Shit, me. And, shit again. Here I am apparently enraptured in the aesthetic proportions of…tongs?
Further, why do we feel obliged to lie about our interest in a bad garage sale? Why get their hopes up? They have to be thinking, “Look, Mindy, that young fella is going to buy that framed inspirational print for sure.”
And you’re putting yourself through hell. “Ahhh! Stop holding me captive with your eyes!” However, this manages to come out as “what a wonderful elephant figurine you have here.”
Or maybe they know and the whole time you’re there they’re thinking, “Ahhh! Get the fuck out–I know your ruse. Why are you putting me through this? Hmm, maybe if I tell him a story about this stained ironing board…”
Fine, but no before I buy this Aladdin puzzle (minus a third of the pieces) for fifteen cents to appease my conscience.

Pi

Though I was unaware that yesterday (3.14) was Pi Day, I have had the inclination to reference the number in my finite mathematics class–the lowest level course offered by the department.

Prof: Can anyone tell where the lines intersect on this graph?

Me: (making frenzied calculations in notebook)

Prof: “Intersect” means where the lines cross…

Me: (cautiously raising hand)

Prof: Dave?

Me: Yesss… (methodically chewing on pencil) is it… (gaining confidence)… is it… (feeling a sense of glory)… is it (pointing pencil directly at teacher) PI?

We allow pi to have this different dimension/secret society distinction, but I fail to see what it’s done for me besides making the volume of a cylinder extremely difficult to find. When I think of pi, it’s always a picture of (a) some scientist making illegible notations on a dry erase board or (b) pyramids. If it turns out pi doesn’t have something do with pyramids or time travel, I’m going to be pissed. Infinity is cool, circles are alright, but pi better “hold the key” to fucking something and that “key” better unlock fucking lasers.
If it doesn’t, we might as well round to 3.