I have plenty of quick email notes to myself, often sent as the start of an article which I intended to finish upon arriving at the office, or at home, or whatever.\u00a0 Of course, I rarely did\u2026
\n<\/p>\n
From April of 2005, here\u2019s a \u201cwage slave rant\u201d with an inexplicable title.<\/p>\n
Ironpole Purpleflesh: \u00a0Medieval Adventurer<\/p>\n
I’ve given up. \u00a0It’s as simple as that. \u00a0I’m going to buy a used airstream trailer for $150 and park it out in the Mojave. \u00a0I’m thinking I’ll raise rattlesnakes and sell them over the internet and, maybe, score myself a job at a cinder mine or as a guard at the entrance to the Faulkner F. Williamson Cobalt Testing Ground. \u00a0I’ll be the guy in the box ny the gate, big long beard, crazy stare, moth-eaten, torn, stained security uniform: \u00a0“Ya cain’t go in! \u00a0This here’s guvment pra-per-tee!”<\/p>\n
The thing about giving up is that it’s liberating. \u00a0When you’re young, that is. \u00a0I’m 31 in the next few weeks and, let me tell you, I still feel young and vital. \u00a0So giving up carries with it a certain hopeful charge as I mark which of my personal property I plan to sell and which I plan to burn in a drunken fit of self-loathing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
——–<\/p>\n
From August, 2005.\u00a0 The effect was…what?<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, I was reading about Hawaii’s gas cap law and I thought to myself, those poor Hawaiian\u2019s, I hate it when I lose my gas cap.<\/p>\n
Well, actually, I just read the headline. \u00a0I didn’t read any of the, you know, words. \u00a0A friend later pointed out it was a cap, like a baseball cap, and not a cap like a cap. \u00a0This, later, turned into a conversation about how the article wasn’t about a cap like cap nor was it about a cap like a baseball cap but was, instead, about a cap like a cap, though not a cap.<\/p>\n
See? \u00a0Well, we were drinking. \u00a0It’s all very amusing if you’ve polished off a bottle of Bacardi and a packet of purple Kool-Aid.<\/p>\n
Once I got rid of my friends, at gunpoint, I was left alone in my basement with my old college buddy James. \u00a0I was on the floor watching a giant centipede skitter towards my face and he was on top of the pool table screaming. \u00a0I don’t remember what happened next, but I’ve seen The Hidden enough times to hazard a guess. \u00a0My next clear memory is sitting out on the porch at 3am holding lit matches under my hand and talking about The Great Nixon.<\/p>\n
As the booze wore off, James and I began to discuss more mundane things, such as, oh my god, America is fucked and, oh my god, so are we, oh my god.<\/p>\n
“April Fools!” \u00a0he said suddenly. \u00a0Is that bad form? \u00a0Said suddenly? \u00a0I wanted to work in ‘halted haltingly’ but I’m not clever enough to do so.<\/p>\n
I replied: “New plan? \u00a0You’ve got months to work it out.”<\/p>\n
“It’s a rock your boxers plan.”<\/p>\n
“As good as last year?”<\/p>\n
“I don’t know…”<\/p>\n
Last April, James had invited his boss to dinner. \u00a0By the time has boss arrived, James had covered the living room in plastic and, answering the door with a raincoat, goggles and fire ax, he grabbed his bosses tie and roughly pulled him inside. \u00a0The effect was<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
————<\/p>\n
Another one that ends mid-sentence, from\u00a0 January of 2006:<\/p>\n
Thursday, 4:30pm.\u00a0 With my head on my writing desk, where writing is never finished or even successfully approached, I stared sideways at the smoldering remains of what was once a Dell hard drive, failing even to carry out its last suicidal program to crash a day after the warranty.\u00a0 It had failed a day before the warranty.\u00a0 A new Dell drive, silently moving towards it\u2019s own hateful demise, spun in the computer behind me, but that wasn\u2019t on my mind.\u00a0 None of my New Years resolutions haunted me, either.\u00a0 I had one clear thought:\u00a0 The word \u201cwhom\u201d is obsolete.\u00a0 And I\u2019m gonna tell you why.<\/p>\n
In the process, I\u2019m going to debate Heather Stadelhofer\u2019s analysis, the author of the first article that came up when I searched for \u201cwhom is obsolete\u201d in Google.\u00a0 I\u2019m also going to discuss my New Year\u2019s resolutions.\u00a0 Finally, I\u2019m going to prove that the wavelength for red is, in fact, the same wavelength for green using Nacho\u2019s Analytical Theorum, the controversial theorem based off of the work of ancient Greek mathematician Ohmymedes which states that I\u2019m not color blind, it\u2019s all of you who can\u2019t see right.<\/p>\n
First of all \u2013 is whom obsolete?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Now, on to my New Year\u2019s resolutions.\u00a0 The first is to never do business with a woman I have known intimately.\u00a0 After much self-reflection (which came naturally after my hard drive crashed on New Year\u2019s Eve and left me to sit around reading cereal boxes and playing with an old Lite Brite set I found in the crawlspace), I realized that I\u2019m the type of guy that women like to \u201ccorrect.\u201d\u00a0 By that, I mean that I\u2019m a hopeless misanthrope who drinks all night, sleeps all day, and has sudden moments of clarity where my best laid plans dissolve into panic attacks that begin with me losing my breath and screaming at people and end with me waking up on a bench in Heathrow.\u00a0 I also fail to share any emotions, distrust everyone around me and, overall, smile and nod while their lives fall apart, grateful that I\u2019m better and smarter than them.\u00a0 I\u2019m better and smarter than everybody, by the way, and any proof otherwise will send me right onto the first British Airways flight out of here.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll go ahead and say it \u2013 I\u2019m touched by god.\u00a0 An old Navajo told me that when I was thirteen years old.\u00a0 I think he tried to rape me later, but I was smarter and better than he was.<\/p>\n
I also think I attract strange women.\u00a0 I know that, actually.\u00a0 Often, I seek madness.\u00a0 I seek it out because I\u2019m exhausted by normal people and, when you drink all night and sleep all day, it\u2019s hard to meet safe, secure and upwardly mobile women.\u00a0 For example \u2013 the blonde in the corner of the All-Nyte no name Columbian bar in one of Silver Spring\u2019s back alleys, where the front room is closed and dark and the back room is an illegal bar, she\u2019s not a good bet.\u00a0 Yet I seek her out anyway.\u00a0 I seek her out because I think I\u2019m trying to commit Suicide by Woman.<\/p>\n
My second resolution is to learn to drink straight alcohol.\u00a0 No mixers.\u00a0 (And all alcohol, not just the ultra-smooth no-mix vodka water that costs $69 a drop.\u00a0 And I mean drink with no reaction.\u00a0 Calmly gulp it down while staring lesser men in the eye.)\u00a0 I\u2019ll admit that I can\u2019t do this, even though it harms my image.\u00a0 I\u2019ll also admit that I didn\u2019t drink until I was 18.\u00a0 (Except for a rum party when I was 17, but we\u2019ll not talk about that dark night of my life.)<\/p>\n
I feel that my drinking has waned in these later years.\u00a0 I had an excellent and exciting streak of heavy drinking in my mid-20\u2019s, where I bedded strange women, consumed exotic cocktails and named constellations after other people\u2019s pets.\u00a0 Then I entered the work force and, despite the reality of taxes and soulless supervisors, my drinking slid away fro me.\u00a0 I had to wake up in the mornings, go to work, be responsible, and a hangover at a 9-5 job isn\u2019t as fun as a hangover at History 304: Weimar Republic.\u00a0 That\u2019s not just because everyone in the Weimar Republic was hungover, it\u2019s because I drank all day.\u00a0 Part of my resolution has been to just start drinking at work,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
———–<\/p>\n