A Love Letter to Assigning Things

Dear assigning things,

Oh, do I love to assign stuff to things! And of course the antipode: things to stuff. It's something I do automatically, usually, and well. It's probably because I have a meager morsel of synesthesia. When I say "meager" I mean it. My synesthesia - chromesthesia - is a dinky shrimp of a concept that sounds a lot cooler than it is, and I don't like to talk about it. For the uninitiated: sometimes I see colors when I hear sounds. Or hear colors. It is not nearly as extreme as you are imagining it right now. A symphony is not rainbow of light.  It's not constant, it only happens during speaking, and again...I don't like to talk about it.

It's a problem because some people sound like they are the most sluggish, defeated fluorescent yellow they could muster, and I automatically hate them.  They could be a perfectly nice person, but I will refuse to give them a chance to prove it.  It's terrible.  If you've been reading this blog for awhile (all four of you lovelies), you would know that I ardently judge people based on the sound of their voice. Sometimes a person has an offensive timbre and they can probably do nothing about it without the help of Henry Higgins, so I graciously forgive them for shrilling like a human theremin, but that doesn't mean I like them.

So I will assign that person to the list in my brain headed "people who sound like drabby yellow grass." Of course, colors ebb and vary depending on the types of vocalization, the modality, etc., but in general, some people have lovely voices that flutter from pale blue to the night sky and others sing in a papal purple and speak in scarlet, but not everyone, just some. There is no mapping logic to it all. But once you've spoken a color to me I will remember it.

And although some people sound like colors, most people don't. Which means I need to find something else to assign to them.

The act of assigning, the deliberate synthesis of one thing and another, whether that thing is a trait or a phrase or a responsibility or a smell...it's different than something as omnipotent as naming. Naming asserts control over a thing. It involves taking into account history and future and the summation of the assigned parts.

When something is named the audience places immediate judgement. Compare Avatar to Ferngully, two terrible movies with the exact same plot.  Regardless of their similarities, the titles insinuate that the focus of each is different: one word is the manifestation of a god on a lesser plane of existence, while the other is a ravine fully of shaded plants.

So naming is power.

But assigning...assigning is mine. It's my personal association. Assigning could be interpreted as a claim to ownership, but to me it's more like a claim to relationship. Yes, this thing, this person, this place, it means something to me and I to it. We are relevant to each other. 

Maybe when I assign things to stuff or stuff to things, it's a plea to my personal vanity. Or is it a way to organize impressions, or memories?  Is it a way imbue immortality? Or is it my own personal confusion of the two concepts?

I've assigned sentences to the stars and certain behaviors to the trees on my street, smiles to people with a tendency to frown, friends to flashbacks and flashbacks to friends, degrees of douchiness to flavors (what is going to be the kale or cauliflower of 2014? I need to make a list), gravity to versions of nostalgia, lovability to myself, unfair judgement to drug addicts, giggles to puppies, personalities to letters, stamps of approval to restaurants that sell cream of chicken and rice soup on days outside of Sunday, activities to days and emotions to weeks.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of things I've assigned to humans with or without their knowledge:

Speaking of animal personalities, I'm a bear. 
Which means, I'm sure, that I would be a cinnamon bear.

• animal personality (but only from this particular quiz, and I don't so much as assign animals as take the quiz for everyone I meet always)
• toys
• Hogwarts Houses (one time I assigned a Hogwarts house to every US President)
• Myers-Briggs personalities
• colors
• actors and actresses
• biography authors
• walk songs
• weather
• nicknames
• type of circus performer

Sure, all of these are the makings for a fine Buzzfeed quiz, but not really.  Because it's not like I assign things to everyone, and I don't assign the same things across the board. I assign colors and feelings and objects to humans. Durrr.

Still there's a problem: this turns humans into characters, and explaining away behavior by saying, "well, she runs from confrontation because she's a cottontail rabbit who speaks in peach." It's always unhealthy to turn a fleshy, living person into a character. That's objectification, not a relationship.

I used to objectify myself completely. I thought, "I want people to think I'm this way" and so I would live up to what I thought other people's expectations would be of the person I wanted to be. Then I placed judgement on myself based on how I assumed other people perceived me and tried to anticipate and thwart those assumptions by berating who I thought they thought I was. Like in the mirror.

Honestly? I still do that. Sometimes. But now I realize what I'm doing, and I'm correcting it. Do not objectify everyone. We are people, and therefore unique and unknowable. Stop sucking.  

But assignments help. They reinforce knowledge...I don't think Emi is a gently carved bolt of affable lightning, I know she is. I know Fraya is a bouncy ball with an orange sunset singing inside, Xtine is a crown of perfectly roasted marshmallow stilettos. These are things I know. I have assigned things to them that will last forever.

So thank you, assigning things, for being a thing I love to do.

Love,
Rassles

...

 So I guess I have a Love Letters series now.  I mean, I do. Click here for the list so far.

The Thing About Healthy Parrots

On New Year's Eve I got good and drunk.  Gyna was here.  She brought Germans.  There were all of these Germans in my apartment, and we drank White Russians and ate Caesar salad and Emi came over, who is Japanese, and Xtine who is Korean.  But it was very unlike the Cold War, in all honesty, yet I imagined myself a diplomat anyway until I started doing that thing where I get angry for no reason, which passed quickly. 

We went up on the roof and watched the fireworks at midnight.  Drank champagne out of solo cups.  The usual.  I love it up on the roof.  I think that was the turning point for me.  After midnight everything goes downhill, because I never want to leave city rooftops when it's windy at night.  Partly because of the dancing lights and fireworks and partly because it is really hard to put the ladder away.  It makes a huge fucking racket.

Sometimes I think--no, I know--that I am extremely juvenile about things like rooftops and fireworks and champagne.  I wonder if they felt it too, or if it was just me?  I'm sure they felt something, everyone went off into their little corners and made out with each other and I just stood there staring at the skyline, feeling sad and alive.  It was wonderful. 

But then it's over and we're not on the roof anymore, and we're fighting with the ladder and it just kills everything completely and I'm embarrassed that something so pure has to end so ridiculously.  And I'm nervous because I don't know everyone very well, except for Gyna of course and I will miss the hell out of her when she goes back to Munich tomorrow.  Muffy is moving to South America for the summer.  Just because she can.  How does that work?  I feel like I would be much more likely to up and move if it wasn't alone, because I'm not very good at making new friends on my own.  I'm excellent at being introduced to people who have already heard about me, though.  That usually works out well.

But on New Year's I was nervous.  I would just talk and give prolific answers to very simple questions.  And then I ask questions and receive simple answers, so I talk more and get angry at myself for talking too much until I say something offensive, and then I get angry at myself for being offensive and end up yelling at everyone when I'm mad at myself...I don't like it when my friends get down on themselves.  It makes me sad and angry, because they are perfect.  If they are perfect, what am I?  Angry.  This is how it works, I think in circles.

Did your mothers tell you to judge people by their shoes?  Mine did not.   Apparently Gyna and the Germans were told otherwise: you look at peoples' shoes.  This has never occurred to me before, not until I really got to know someone.  You look at their shoes?  Really?  I feel like if I paid attention to everyone's shoes I would get annoyed.

I feel like I would gravitate towards worn-down boots and stained sneakers, frayed laces.  Or shoes that are ridiculous and overly-buckled, like too many elves got excited with their tiny belts, or shoes that aren't shoes and all and are just like leather ace bandages.  I support walking around in slippers all the time.

Anything too tidy would make me nervous.  Or someone who wears Toms, those shoes you send to Africa.  Why don't you just donate money to an African charity?  They need medicine and opportunity and release and they need us to stop dropping our unusable electronics to the African desert, because Africa is not a dump where you can put the stuff you don't want anymore, you fuckhead. You might as well just buy forty dollars worth of flip flops from Walgreens and put them in a box labeled "Africa" with a picture of a baobab tree and hope it gets there.  Put money in the system instead of sending over canvas shoes that fall apart when you wear them every day.

Also, excessively well-groomed shoes confuse me.  Do you avoid puddles just because of your shoes?  That's ridiculous.  Why else would you wear them?  I specifically wear shoes so I can walk through puddles without hesitation. They are feet armor.  Not accessories.  Alas, this is where I differ from the world.  

My mother told me to judge people by their stories.  If my stories were shoes, everyone would think I was rich.

The next morning I was in the process of waking up and I thought I heard one of the Germans say that I came from wealthy parents.  It kind of bugged me, because he does not know my parents.  Then again he could have used a completely different word.  He could have been talking about healthy parrots.  "That's the thing about people with healthy parrots," is what he could have said.

I don't really understand what it means, but I think I heard it. 

I am thirty-one years old right now.  It just happened like three hours ago or something.  I'm playing bingo tomorrow night - tonight - because now I'm an old lady.

...

Glamorous Batman

Xtine, old roommate extraordinaire, got hitched the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and I was the minister (a calling I found around this time).  She decked me out in this polyester 40 year old vintage fluorescent-mint, monstrous get-up with long, hazy butterfly sleeves.  It was a nightmare on a hanger.  But I itched it on and looked like a goddess when I wasn't scratching myself.  I was made of regal magic and lovely dreams.  From now on, Xtine will dress me every day.  Every fucking day. 

I gave a sermon about The Little Prince and The Pink Panther and did an impromptu interpretive dance to a poem by A. A. Milne because the reader said, and I quote, "This is a poem by A. A. Milne, and while I'm reading Rossi will do an interpretive dance."

"Shit.  I mean, shit.  Sorry.  Go ahead."  And then I vogued with my flowing sleeves and the awkward grace of a dancing bear on a tricycle, and only gave the thumbs up once.   But never in my sermon did I directly bring up how many men Xtine has slept with, which was hard to do because Paul stopped by before the wedding for a beer on my porch and left me with this: "just don't say anything about that time that she fucked those two gay dudes on my couch."  Which is my couch now, by the way, and I silently blessed myself for washing the cushions. 

She and Kevin had popcorn vendors roaming around while we sipped a meet-cute of champagne infused with cotton candy (invented by Adam Moby-Statham during a happy accident) and sang karoake.  We went to a bar afterward where Adam and I teamed up against another co-ed team of attractive pool sharks (I was his wingman, because my dress had wingsleeves) who took their eight ball very seriously.   My sleeves kept on getting in the damn way.  Fucking pool. 

I dislike playing pool at bars with people who insist that we follow professional rules.  Recreational softball is nothing like the major leagues and touch football isn't nearly as convoluted as the NFL, but tall hipster males take their sharking very seriously.  At one point I yelled, "Who the fuck are you, Minnesota Fats?  This isn't a goddamn Paul Newman movie."  And then he tried to get me to play again, which in retrospect was a good sign but me and Adam were through with trying to woo these people and besides all I could think about was how rugged and lumberjacky Kevin's little brother had grown in the past two years after fighting wildfires in California and I really wanted to touch his arm and talk to him about spaceships and conspiracy theories as a continuation of our last conversation in 2009 after we played Risk on his birthday.  Which I won, by the way. 

But alas, I have gained - ho-lee FUCK - 22 pounds in the last two years.  That was the last time I stood on a scale.  I've decided to blame my stolen bike and my friends who left me (I am looking at YOU, MoLinder and Gyna) for this weight gain, because even though I know the bulk of it is bite-size Butterfingers in groups of seven and 2am pizzas (which I blame on CrazyLiz), I refuse to accept responsibility.  Something will have to be done, and I will have to find more obscure things to blame until I am either (a) satisfied or (b) amazing-looking. 

Despite how awesomely I glowed in my dress, how I felt like glamorous Batman on a winning streak in Vegas, I was not mentally capable of starting that conversation and was afraid I would make some joke about how much both of us had grown in two years and come off sounding desperate, which technically I was.  Alas.

Weeks and weeks ago, after hearing about the dress, the Smith Sister Savannah said to me, "Ross, for my wedding?  I would never, ever, ever make you wear something like that," which was her kind way of saying "don't you fucking dare pull that neon circus-garb out again for my wedding."

Coincidentally, Savannah's wedding was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, so after I woke up the next morning I had to get my ass in gear to officiate another wedding, which will, of course, be discussed in a later post, because I have run out of wine and it is time for bed. 

...

EDIT:  Aaaaaaand there's the dress.  I don't have any pictures of me in it where you can really see it in all it's glory.

...

You Take Your Own Life In Your Hands

day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy

"Wull, yeah," Michelle shrugs and cuddles her shins.  "Just on the floor."

"Just...on the floor."

"Just on the floor."

I taking a long pull from my beer.  "I don't get it."

"Well, it doesn't occur to people to...you know.  Look down."

She's right.  I set the beer on the table, pick up a pair of scissors and start cutting the paper in front of me.  "And you just find it there.  All the time."

"It's not just me," she says, delicately peeling a piece of tape from the back of a pinwheel and shifting its location.  We're making pinwheels.  It's very Martha Stewart. "I mean, I have friends that work at bars and they say that after their shift when they're cleaning up they find a ton.  You know, people get drunk and they're stupid.  They drop things."

"I just don't buy it.  I mean, I've found like a dollar before.  Usually in my own pocket.  Or something.  Or a nickel. I find nickels.  I find fuckloads of nickels." 

"No, I don't even bother with, like, nickels," she laughs and shakes her head, thick black curls shading her face.  "Sometimes I'll find a dollar and I'll just be disappointed."

"So you're finding what?  Big bills?"

"Usually.  I found sixty the other day at Rainbo, just three crisp twenties laying on the floor.  Yesterday there was a ten crumpled up on my lawn.  I just pick 'em up.  You know, and like, drug dealers are bad with money and they drop things all the time.  I find cigarettes too, but I don't smoke so I'll just give those away."  She turns to set her finished pinwheel on the ground, then tilts her head with a soft pause, staring at the thing.

"It looks good," I say.  She smiles and drops it on the pile.  "So just cigarettes?  You just...pick up loose cigarettes? Or packs?"

"Oh, like, packs.  I wouldn't pick up just like, a cigarette."

"No, of course not.  That would be ridiculous."

Xtine laughs from the other side of the table, but Michelle just keeps talking.  "And then when I find like, a pack of cigarettes I'll give them to a friend in exchange for drinks." 

"Prison currency."

She laughs.  "Yeah, I guess."

"This is bonkers.  I can't believe you just find money.  Like laying around.  Did you know about this?" I flap a maniacal pinwheel at Xtine, who is jamming wooden dowels into carved wine corks and getting glue all over her kitchen table.

"Michelle is just lucky," Xtine giggles, wiping her fingers on her skirt.  She hands me the dowel, and I fasten the pinwheel to the wine cork with a thumbtack and give it a spin.  "Oh, they look so fucking good."

"Your wedding is going to be awesome," Michelle tells Xtine.  

"I know," Xtine laughs.  "Everyone is going to be so jealous.  And we're almost done!  But I'm thinking about starting a pinwheel sweatshop. Michelle, you ready to get back into the work force?"

Not sure if I heard right, I ask, "You're not working right now?"

Michelle looks sheepishly through her hair and shakes her head. "Mmm mmm."

"For how long?  Does it suck?"

"Three years or so."

I stop making pretty pretty pinwheels to look up in disbelief.  "What the hell?  So you don't have a job?  Other than finding money?"

She laughs and doesn't answer.  "Right now I'm making wedding decorations in exchange for cookies, lentil soup and wine."  After a brief silence, she adds, "But I can't give away all of my secrets."

"I had no idea finding money and cigarettes was such a lucrative business." 

"I dunno. I find at least thirty or forty dollars a week.  You just need to look down.  That's what people don't realize," she shrugs, pulls her knees closer to her chest and starts cutting another piece of paper.

"I'm so confused."

"Just, like I said.  Just look down.  It's there." 




...

Raping the Women and Wasting the Men

I am interrupting my memetic programing to tell you this:  the song categories for this meme were created by assholes.  

Because of this, the original days 16 and 17, "a song that you used to love but now hate" and "a song that you hear often on the radio" will be eliminated and new categories created.


So I bring you days 16 and 17, Two Songs I Dominate While Driving. 

Why would I want to show people music that sucks?  And I don't listen to the radio.  Too many commercials.  And I don't have an iPod, so there better not be any iPod categories in the near future. 



I am not a big fan of Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst's other band, which you prolly already knew but I'm saying it anyway because I had no idea who Oberst was when I first heard this song because Bright Eyes sucks) and the Desaparecidos had this brilliantly horrible hollerin' garage-feedback shitty anthem rock thing going on, like Black Flag covering Springsteen.  

Once someone made me a CD with this song on it - Muffy, of course, because I get all of my music from Muffy, Xtine, and my dad - and it makes me wish I'd just gotten away with robbing a bank.

And this next song, well.



Don't even pretend you don't like it.  DON'T EVEN.

When I was a very mediocre keys player/back up singer for a band that really, really could have been big had the members stuck with music instead of taking a "hiatus" to get an "MBA" or go to "law school" so they could get "real jobs" and stop working at "restaurants" and "UPS," we did a cover of this for a battle of the bands and we goddamn killed it.  We practiced constantly.  Fucking constantly.  We were determined to play it in under 3:30 while keeping faithful - which is like running the Kentucky Derby, by the way - and BY FUCKY WE DID.  Thank god.  Every day we'd practice, get hammered, and close with a sweaty, screamy sloppy Iron Maiden cover, and eventually we decided to just do it for real, and we tightened it and cranked it up.  I'm going to see if I can find a recording of it, because we were awesome.

We were competing against all these heavy metal bands that hated us since we sounded like a cross between Queen and Os Mutantes and a marching band, because Xtine is a hipster who plays the theremin listens to things like 1960's Brazilian psychedelic rock, plus we had about nine people on stage.  And a violin.  So these guys, over the course of several nights, all Danzig-ed out and heckling and jerking themselves into a Faygo frenzy had to shut their yaps when we speed-metaled the hell out of them. Their shitty bands couldn't do that. I wanted to cover "Ace of Spades" too, just so we could show those fuckers what's what (and because I would have gotten to sing that, not Xtine) but no one else was on board.


...

Who Am I To Mock Your Fun?

Apparently, for Valentines Day, the best love that me and Gyna were able to muster up was from our fathers.

Because Gyna mentioned this VDay phone call from her dad:

"I think someone got you something sweet from your sweetheart for Valentines Day!"

"Is it candy?"

"If you guessed chocolate candy, then you would be correct!"

My Dad drove out here on Sunday to wander around a used bookstore with me and have dinner, which was unfortunately the best date I've ever had. Because seriously, there are few things more satisfying than coffee and the smell of old books.

"Is it sad that our only Valentines are our dads?" Gyna asked me on the way to the VFW.

"I don't think so. Nevermind. Yes."

Some people wouldn't go out with us on Saturday, and gave us sarcastic excuses like, "Oh, I'm sorry, my limo driver has the night off." It's not our fault you live far away.

So we gathered up Xtine, her friend from work, and Bowser ze German, and headed out to the VFW, where we were served cans of PBR by an old veteran named Hot Rod. It was goddamn single hipster central.

Hanging out with ze German is a blast, because his pants are too tight and he dances with abandon and wants to hit on all the American girls.

I wanted to make fun of him so bad for dancing. So. Bad. Because he looked epileptic and painfully Caucasian. I had to hold off. Who am I to mock someone for dancing for fun? Even though no other man in the entire room was doing it? I admire that: the fact that it never even occurred to him to be embarrassed for dancing like a fucking moron. I guess I'm growing up.

But seriously, if you're at a place with Xtine, Gyna, and myself, and there's karaoke? You would dance with abandon too, because you walked in with the three best chicks, and everyone there knows that, you lucky bastard. Because we rock so fucking hard. We always turn into minor celebrities for the night.

Sure. Karaoke celebrities at the VFW. Yeah, we're cool.

Still, I love it when strange guys give me high fives and tell me how awesome I am. Inevitably, though, in the middle of our conversation about the Peter Sellers movie in the background, whatever girl who was clinging to whatever guy before he talked to me at the bar would come barreling over and drape herself around his shoulders and glare at me in victory. So I would smile to take the sting away, and ask her if she was singing, and she would giggle and say, "Oh, no, I don't sing. He knows," she tilts towards him and coils around him tighter. "You were great, though."

Friendly smile. "Thanks." Pick up my beer and start walking away. "You should totally sing though. Who fucking cares that you suck so much? Other than him." Beer salute to the dude, grin at the whore on his shoulders, and back into the fray. This happens what, like, four times? Same conversation, exactly.

Story of my life. Back to the friends, who've gained genuine admirers from the crowd. They just want to be around us, I think. Am I really so full of myself, to think that? To assume we can have that effect on people?

No. After all, it's how we all met each other. Hanging out at a bar, being so impressed by how the others shined that we all kind of grouped together and became excellent, inseparable friends. Is it too hard to imagine that we wouldn't meet other friends that way? That people wouldn't be drawn to that?

I don't think so.


...

Little Red

In honor of my birthday, which is coming up in three days, I'm having The Whores write little snippets on the fly about me for my blog.

In case you were unaware, and you probably are, some of my friends and I call ourselves The Whores. We all bonded over being obsessed with live band karaoke (as if you haven't yet gleaned that I'm completely engrossed in it) and that escalated into obscene, overpowering friendships where we constantly embarass, esteem, and enliven each other.

We used to spend all of our time at a certain bar, and some douchebag put up a post on Craigslist's missed connections one day about us.  This post was from "the MAN at the bar" (Mothers) to "the whores" that were setting back the standards of womanhood by getting drunk and being unladylike in general.   Which is amazing. You know what it's like when you get seven bold personalities together, people who are completely unafraid as long as they're with each other? That's what it's like. I don't know if I know of any group of women that are as intelligent, independent, hilarious, and in control as The Whores.  Well, when you're out of control on purpose, you're still in control, right?

The ridiculous part about that?  He was hitting on us all night and we kept shooting him down, which is why he was so angry.  Also, he neglected to mention that not a single one of us hooked up with anyone at the bar, and that we were with a bunch of dudes, too. 

They better not care that I'm putting a picture of us up here. I tried to pick a cleaner one, even though this was nearly two years ago (on Rabbit Night) and M.E. is dressed up like a vibrator. I was going to be Bunnicula, but I just completely failed. And Jesus, my hair is long.

The following was written by Xtine (Little Red) former roommate and lead singer of a band currently on hiatus that I horribly, sloppily played in a couple years ago. She does a mean "Jolene" and an even better "Run to the Hills," but her best songs are the ones that she wrote herself.

Ross has what would be characterized to some as a "naughty laugh." And by "some" I mean everyone, but especially British guys who have no shot. The day Rahm Emanuel got posted I texted her saying she must be in love, first because he's hot, and second because nobody is happier to know you have her in mind than Ross. This is in part because she is an accredited life ruiner and wants to control your mind, but that's usually not bad because it means she will get you hooked on Heroes or something equally awesome. Best roomie ever, worst pool partner ever, bag/costume-maker extraordinaire, Bo Peep, big big boobies, and she can do a mean Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Oh, and she's kinesthetic. What more?

...

Imitation = Flattery

I'm good at imitating. With friends, especially.* So good, in fact, I don't even realize I'm slowly and surely becoming all of them. And that's kind of a bad thing, but only to other people.

1. I notice myself cock my head and wrinkle my eyebrows when I suspect foul play, in an explicitly rooster-like fashion. Gyna, that's your fault. Okay, pretend I'm Gob. Caw-cacaw.

2. Lying is getting much harder for me. Xtine says, "um" and "uh" whenever she lies (I figured you out Roomie, don't even pretend it's wrong). If she speaks the truth, she pauses and breathes when she loses her words, and eloquently speaks again when she finds them. But during the lies, or even small fibs, it's all nonsense filler noise. Ever since I've been aware of this, I've started doing it. I don't even realize it until I've done it, and then I have to fess up and be all, "Shit. I lied." I used to have a large problem with lying to people for no reason.

3. Around Muffy I talk loud. Booming loud. It makes sense, she's a loud talker who's unconcerned about stupid things like eardrums. Or, I mean, maybe it's because I'm usually hammered around Muffy. Whatever.

4. For some reason, me and Schmee have entire conversations in tardspeak. We're in our mid-late twenties, and we act like we're four. We have ten minute conversations like this:

"What you drinky?"
"Me drink wadka."
"Have, please? Sippy sippy?"
"No, eez mine."
"Eez for sharing."
"Eez for me-ing."
"You're a whore."

In the past, I only spoke like this around her. But it's slipping into other conversations where people don't play along, and they just think I'm an illegal alien from some florescent-skinned nation (I am so white I glow under black lights) or that I didn't get enough oxygen in the womb.

5. The real reason this is a problem is because yesterday I talked on the phone with my friend Dave, who incidentally has rather distinct speech patterns. He also has severe developmental issues, which makes comprehension difficult if you don't know Dave (and believe me, if Dave knows you, you know Dave. And he'll remind you, repeatedly, "You know me."). I've known him for years, so I don't ever really have complications.

So I talked to him on the phone during my lunch hour yesterday, which was nice because I haven't in awhile. We did lots of laughing, as always, and once we hung up the phone, I had Dave on the brain. I started talking to a co-worker and immediately laughed like him, in his broad, donkey kind of laugh, and then realized what I was doing and started laughing harder... it just escalated. Co-worker looks shocked and makes wide-eyes at me, and I explained Dave.

She was all sorts of cross. Very offended that I was making fun of him, like I was doing something wrong. So I tried to explain that I imitate all of my friends, I just pick up certain ticks and speech patterns naturally when I'm around them. She did not like that. Be more understanding, it gives other people the right, don't just go around making fun of the disabled.

Developmentally delayed, I tell her.

I'll laugh how I want. Friends are friends, and I imitate them. Deal.

Oh, and PS: I'm seriously considering becoming an adult film reviewer, just so I can say that I worked in the porn industry. Thank you, M.E. and Craigslist. I'm only sticking with it if I get paid. Apparently, bonuses up to $150 are available. Which means, you know, free porn. Which I will then sell on Ebay to make millions. Or to make $150.

* I also overuse the word "especially."

...

Weakness, Heroes, and Hi-C Lavaburst.

So I caved and bought Season One. I am so fucking weak.

Had every intention of buying it last week, but I looked in my wallet and realized that funds I had set aside for Heroes has been spent on weddings and wedding-related enterprises and all other manners of asinine frivolity where I spend too much money on someone who is not me.

So I decided that the best way for me to save money was to completely stop doing laundry, because that costs me like five bucks every two or three weeks, so by December I could be a proud owner of Heroes Season One, but a very smelly admin.

Then I drove past Best Buy yesterday, and gazed out the window of my car. Longingly.

Next thing I know, I'm sitting on my Lay-Z-Boy grasping my remote, sweating profusely, disc one in the DVD player.

I blacked out, I swear. I don't even remember buying the damn thing. I could have stolen it, or blindly handed out cash to the guy at the register (was there even a register?) until he told me I gave him enough. What if I gave him a hundo and told him to keep the change? I can't find a receipt anywhere; I have neither record nor recollection of the entire event.

But chances are the slightly evil, really really physically strong version of myself that I see in the mirror sometimes took over and busted up the Best Buy, murdered the workers, and then buried the bodies under the Kennedy/Armitage viaduct.

Peter Petrelli would never have succumbed to this. I am lame.


PS: I got Xtine hooked on it within and hour. It's like crack cocaine, or Hi-C Lavaburst. You just can't get enough of Heroes.

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