My eyes are about to fall out of my face.

It's before 6:30. I haven't been awake before 6:30 in years, probably. I woke up at six because: a. it's literally ninety degrees in my room because our air conditioner is broken and b. I'm so, so hungover and my head feels like it's about to explode. I can't think of a better simile, I'm sorry.

I even turned on the air last night, hoping that it would at least lower the temperature at least a degree or two, and this morning I woke up with my head wedged between the slanted part of my wall and my bed above the vents. It did not make me feel any cooler.

It's cooler outside than it is in my house right now. It's June fucking sixteenth.

So: to explain why I'm hungover and perhaps still a little drunk. The university had this sort of employee-appreciation picnic (although it was inside) yesterday afternoon at three o'clock. Three. O'clock. Afternoon. Still in the daylight. DAYTIME.

Anyway, I found out about this on Wednesday as I was leaving because my manager said, "Are you going to the picnic?" I have no idea what she was talking about, and she said that I probably didn't get the emails because I'm still new. This really isn't important but I took the effort to type all of that out without grammatical errors, so there's no way I'm deleting what took a lot of effort. My eyes hurt. I'm doing this all for you, people.

We all left work at three and rode the train up together to the LP campus. The party's theme was "Wild Wild West" and they were playing "Devil Went Down to Georgia" to put us in the mood, as well as handing out straw cowboy hats and bandanas. They also gave us free wine and beer, which is really the only way you get me to wear a cowboy hat for a few hours. Oh, and they also started serving shots of burbon and curacao. I'm guessing that's what was in them. I know that as the "night" went on, they became progressively stronger. And I kept drinking. Because really, I was getting paid to do so. Hell, I kept drinking after five o'clock. I'm not afraid of working overtime.

After they shut down the bar, I went to another bar down the street with two other coworkers. The fact that it was still light outside and I already could not see straight was a good enough reason for me to take it easy on the one beer I drank there. It was a PBR. It's mostly water, right? Anyway, I remember trying to explain "Virginia" to two people from Illinois. They were also Catholics, so then I tried to explain "Episcopalian," which I found difficult. I said that the fact that I couldn't explain what it was like to be an Episcopalian should give them an idea of what it's like being one.

There are a few things I'm grateful for:
1. I'm glad I got home okay. I'm much rather be hungover and sweaty in my room right now than still wandering the streets of Lincoln Park.
2. I'm glad we only ran into one other coworker, who we met at the Fullerton stop and called us out on being really drunk from about ten yards away.
3. I'm glad the emotional breakdown I had last night happened at home instead of over plastic cups of Ecco Domini merlot. Public crisis averted.
4. I'm so glad I didn't dance to the Temptations in front of people from work. Saint Vincent was obviously looking down on me.
5. I'm also glad that I saw people doing the Cha Cha Slide. I thought that was just a Southern, white-trash wedding dance. Chicagoans know how to break it down.

I forgot to put a title.

I just wrote half of what was going to be a really long post, and I just can't bring myself to actually finish it because I'm already feeling kind of upset about the content. I'm sorry I haven't updated, but things have been hectic, and I'm afraid that I'm going be even more stressed out in the coming weeks. I'm taking my class now, which is going to be a steady amount of work. I'm moving in a month and haven't signed a lease yet and I'm starting to feel less optimistic about the move. Work is crazy because we're getting a lot of mail, so I really have a good deal of work I should be doing right now. And I'm terribly afraid I'm going to go back to Virginia at some point this summer and I am really, really hoping this doesn't happen. I'm trying to stay optimistic, and I'm hoping I can at least get through this week because the weekend should be a little less stressful.

Hopefully minor yet hilarious life-event will happen by Friday and I can update again. For now, I'll just say it could be worse:

Happy Birthday, Laurie!

Your Monday morning seizure has been brought you to by Laurie.

I'm almost a mature adult.

I was just upstairs getting a coke from the machine in the student lounge. I walked past the windows that face onto the roof-top patio. There was this guy in his blue and red graduate robe, and he was standing in front of the Sears Tower and his mother was taking a picture of him with his diploma. To my own surprise, I did not think any negative thoughts toward this person. In fact, I was excited for his success.

I should probably add, though, that the guy was Asian, and if it was a white guy I probably would have thought he was a douchebag. So there you have it: for a split second, I confused my own racism (racism in the vein of "All black guys are good basketball players" and "All Jews are rich") with maturity. I suck.

Cat on wheels.

I'm sorry, but I can't help myself.

"When I was in high school, I had the best cat ever. He was a stray, but we found him when he was just a kitten. He grew up into this beast. He always had this wild nature to him and he always disappeared for days and we never knew where he was. He was huge, too: like, twenty pounds or somethin'.

"One day - this is when I was away at college - he came back home and was, like, dragging his hind legs. They took him to the vet who said he had some kind of blood clot that had, like, affected the nervous systems in his legs, or somethin'. The vet asked if he could do this experimental operation for free. He amputated the hind legs and replaced them with wheels. But, you know, the cat was never really the same after that."

WHEELS. They took the poor cat to a vet who, instead of, oh, I don't know, removing the clot or possibly putting the cat out of his misery, replaced his legs with WHEELS. WHEELS. A CAT ON WHEELS.

Thank God for Google image search:I know said cat was not Persian (this picture is especially for Sarah, who will think that little alien-looking thing is just darlin'), and those wheels aren't ATTACHED to the cat. In fact, this is a picture of a cat on a CART, which is much less depressing than a cat whose hind legs were REPLACED with wheels. And yes, there was a testimonial that went with this gem of a picture (and yes, it was posted in Comic Sans): "Pugsley is a wonderful cat. Thanks for the cart. It gives him more mobility on long jaunts.. Now his favorite thing is to go down hill. He loves the speed. Zoom, zoom."

That cat's name is Pugsley and he goes on jaunts. God bless America.

Awkward bathroom interaction.

So I was walking in to the bathroom behind this middle-aged, short, rather portly fellow who works down the hall. I don't know who he is, but I always see him in the bathroom. Go figure.

Anyway, I'm minding my own business at the urinal next to him, and I realize that he is leaning ON THE URINAL and facing me. Then he sighs, long and deeply, and I suddenly feel like I'm supposed to ask him something like, "Rough day, eh?" or "Can't wait 'til Friday, either, huh?" Of course I don't, because I'm too busy staring straight ahead and minding my own business.

Thank God he left before I was finished, although the best part of the story is, I think, that he did not wash his hands before drying them with the electric dryer. Think about it.

6-6-06.

[I did a Google search for "666," expecting a demon or a pentagram, and I found this instead. I think we can all agree this wins.]

If you're on MySpace, you've probably known that today's date is the Mark of the Beast for weeks thanks to many promotional ads for the remake of The Omen. If this is what we're going to have to go through every time a shitty Fox movie comes out (remember when MySpace was "X-Space"?), I'm going to have to write a letter* to Rupert Murdoch. If we let him keep getting away with this, we'll soon have Bill O'Reilly leaving us picture comments. No thank you, Mr. Murdoch. It's bad enough that the new "game" ads want us to help President Bush out-knit Saddam Hussein. "Help Bush win!" they plead. I don't think so.

I think I have less patience for people who give a shit about "666" than those who use that fear as a promotional campaign for an bad (and unsolicited, if I do say so myself) remake of a pretty good horror film. I mean, it's one thing to be religious. I'm fine with that as long as you don't offend me with your beliefs. I've realized since my anti-religion stance in high school was just as ridiculous as the people I was arguing with, and at this point I avoid the fiery fights and welcome the nice, civil discussions. But seriously, people who believe that 666 has anything to do with anything? That's Y2K-level of nonsense, especially since no one knows if "666" is even the acurate number. (Wikipedia, which we all know is one hundred percent true one hundred percent of the time, says that "616" was the original number used in Revelations). It's this folk-Christian belief that's based on what has become a stupid pop-culture reference.

So you can imagine my frustration when I overheard a certain person at work who has a higher degree in opera singing from a reputable Big Ten university, who, by the way, also calls his significant other "Momma" and warns her to "carry her pepper spray, since the riff-raff likes to come out when it's warm," telling our manager all about his experiences with ghostly apparitions in honor of the skooky associations with today's date.

[And I KNOW that I shouldn't write about people at work, but I can only take so much. When it gets to the point where it's like listening to a five-year-old entertain himself during a foreign film (whistling, doing impressions of the African-American manager at the Walgreens who "cannot control the volume of his voice," practicing his German pronunciations, singing selections from West Side Story, speculating on the plausibility of gangs fighting through dance, and tapping - no, BANGING - on his desk), I lose my patience and feel the need to expres how this certain person really, really sucks.**]

I think my favorite part of the conversation, which, I should add, was rather one-sided, was when the certain co-worker said to my manager, "It's not that unusual for something really strange to materialize in a place this size. Has anyone ever died in the building before?"

Sigh.




*(An open letter, which will be published here, since I cannot afford postage right now.)
**(This is all hypothetical, of course.)

Eight-year-olds shouldn't play with guns. Twenty-somethings should not play with blogs.

Throughout my life I've tried very hard to keep an actual hand-written journal. I think I first started journaling around fourth grade, probably after I read Dear Mr. Henshaw and Strider by Beverly Cleary. (If you have not read those books, you should pick them up. It's never too late to read Beverly Cleary.) Unfortunately, I even lack the motivation to complete a whole journal. I think the most I've ever written in one was about twenty five pages, and that included a year and a half. I have several notebooks sitting around in my parents' house, and each have a week's worth of my life written on the first ten pages.

For some reason I love blogging. I think it's because it's much less effort to type out random thoughts than to write them down. And I think a major draw to writing a blog is that people can read it. I think I've always wanted an audience, even when I was writing in my journals back when I was a pre-teen. I remember making shit up all the time, thinking that it'd be really awesome if someone found them and believed what I wrote.

I wish I could blame Sylvia Plath's journals for this behavior, since part of me thought at one point that one day, when I'm famous as SHIT, someone would find my journals and publish them and then people would say, "Wow, he was brilliant even when he was a teenager!" I realize, though, that I probably thought that before I even read The Bell Jar, so I can't blame Plath for it. I'm just vain.

I think vanity plays a big part in the blog-o-sphere (ughihatethatword). It's amazing how many people, including myself, think that other people would be interested in reading about their lives. I mean, I'm not publishing any juicy shit here; I'm writing whole posts about my swollen eye. Sometimes it baffles me that people find this entertaining and keep reading it. (I'm primarily talking about people I don't know, since I see the excitement in reading your friend's blog.) (It's also funny that people HATE my blog and keep reading it anyway, but I've touched on that subject before.)

I've been thinking about this all weekend. Part of it comes from thinking about the online journals I had on other sites that were so vastly different from what I write here. I used to write about people or things that really upset me. I think I was much more candid, but in some ways I think I'm just as open and honest about things here, but I take a different tone about what I write about. I try not to take myself seriously and I hope that comes out in my writing. And when I do stupid shit and get embarrassed about it, I write about it on here instead of avoiding it. That way people have to laugh WITH me. Right?

This post spawns from two things that happened this weekend. Yesterday, at the Printers Row Book Fair, I was standing at a booth looking at old printing press materials. I looked across the booth and saw this guy. I turned to Nicole and said, "Hey, there's that guy whose blog I read!" I thought for a split-second that I should introduce myself, and then I said, "Wait, he probably wouldn't know who I am and that would be weird!" I mean, based on my awkward interactions with people I've actually met in person before, you have to see where I was coming from. So I decided not to say anything.

Then, about two minutes later, he came over and said, "Are you Tyler? I'm Kevin." We talked for a bit, and it was really cool to be "recognized" or whatever, especially since I didn't realize he also read my blog. Of course, after he walked away I went into panic mode and was like, "Oh God, he probably thinks I'm ten kinds of crazy," (My previous blog posts started flashing in my head), and then Nicole said, "Oh God, do you think he realized I'm your roommate you write about?!" It was one of those weird moments that my mother warns me about ("DON'T POST ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET BECAUSE EVERYONE WILL SEE IT AND HACK INTO YOUR COMPUTER AND STEAL ALL OF YOUR MONEY AND THEN COME KILL YOU!!!!"). I think I was over it in about ten minutes, but it's still a weird feeling to actually realize that people know all about you. I think it made me about two percent more mature than I was on Friday.

The other thing is something I can't really write about, since it involves a stupid argument with a friend over a situation I'm still a little sore about, since I spent all last night trying to figure out if I was overreacting about how I felt or if I was being rational. I wanted to write something about it, but I knew I shouldn't, since it would just make things worse, and Megan would fuss at me tomorrow morning in our daily eighty-email correspondence. She would be right, of course; online journals are no place to spark social or family feuds, and I think sometimes I push the boundaries (both deliberately and not). And I know that sort of thing is passive-aggressive, but sometimes I feel like I have friends who only follow my blog these days instead of actually talking to me. I guess that's partially my fault, since I have the blog in the first place. Oh, the Catch-22 of blogging. It's a real bitch, as my mother would say if she was a blogger.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

If I'm sober, awake, and blogging at 2:30 in the morning, especially on a Sunday morning, I must have something important to say.

Eh, turns out it's not really important, it's just a thought I had just now. About Sex and the City.

Now, I really didn't watch the show all that much. What I did see was pretty funny but nothing that kept me interested in following the entire show. But there is something that I've always wondered about it. You know how Carrie is the narrator of the show, and how her narration is always typed up in a word document in her laptop? Well, is that supposed to be her column? Because she writes a lot of stuff about her three slutty friends, and I feel like if they actually read the column and saw that she printed the stuff about them, those bitches would have beaten Carrie with her own Manolos.

So I think the answer here is that it wasn't actually her column, but why would she just type up her narration? I realize this is one of those stupid questions that I ask that really have nothing to do with the plot. I mean, shouldn't I demand an explanation for how Samantha escaped a herpes infection? For some reason, I don't dwell on those major issues with plot as much as I question the characters' small little flaws. The other night, Nicole and I watched Adventures in Babysitting, and after an hour and a half of her getting upset over things like how the major plot points made absolutely no sense (such as Elizabeth Shue's character coming up with a song on the spot to sing in some South Side blues club, as well as the whole car-theft conspiracy the kids were wrapped up in), I didn't question anything until the end when Elizabeth Shue sticks the peanut butter in the refrigerator.

"Why the hell would she do that?!"



I told you this wasn't important. I'm going to bed now.

An Open Letter to My Left Eye.

Dear Charles,

What up, dawg? No, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP?

Okay, okay. Let's be civil. I mean, I'll be civil, since you haven't really been so nice to me lately. I mean, just look at yourself. You look like SHIT. And when you look like shit, I look like shit. Come on now, clean yourself up and stop making a TOTAL ASS OUT OF YOURSELF.

So what the hell did I do to you, huh? I've always treated you right! I've avoided sports all of my life. Okay, except for PE and T-Ball, but those weren't my fault. It wasn't MY decision to keep playing T-Ball until I was in FIFTH GRADE. And it sure as hell wasn't my choice to take PE. I tried my best, I really did. Remember the touch football unit WEEK OF HELL back in '97? I got injured every day. Did you get hurt? Nope. It was just the back of my head on that day when Dean pushed me backward into Thurston's front teeth. And hey, remember when Mike Hall stepped on my hand? Just be happy that he didn't step on my FACE. You came out of that unscathed. The rest of me, including my PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES, took a hard beating that week.

And let's not even get into the great volleyball fiasco of '98. Just be glad I didn't serve with my eyes. I think my right forearm is still bruised.

But this letter isn't about my lack of athletic ability, which is a subject I'm sure you'd just LOVE to gab on about. WELL FUCK YOU FOR THAT. THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. THIS IS ABOUT YOU. YOU AND YOUR STUPID SWELLING AND REDNESS.

I'm SO SORRY that I got suscreen in you. It's not MY fault that I'm either snow-white or lobster-red. I'd much rather be somewhere comfortably in the middle with the rest of White America who look like Abercrombie models but IT'S NOT HAPPENING. I have RED HAIR. Have you ever seen a red head with a tan? Because, really, if you see one, please, point him / her out to me, because then I will know that you're seeing things that don't exist and that you are, in fact, completely BAT SHIT CRAZY. And besides, just because I have red hair does not mean I want the eyes to match. I WANT YOU TO STAY BLUE. OR GREEN DEPENDING ON WHAT COLOR SHIRT I'M WEARING.

I've always been on your side. I mean, suuure, Gustov is slightly stronger than you. Suuure, Gustov has the cooler name. But that doesn't mean I love you any less. Just because you are the cause of my astigmatism doesn't mean I don't CARE ABOUT YOU.

And I'm NOT going to get into another discussion with you about the glasses. I HAVE ASTIGMATISM. You HEARD what Dr. Ryan said. I have astigmatism and that's why I got the glasses. I'll admit that the prescription isn't very strong and YES some people might think I only got glasses for vain reasons, but I can't help that: a. I have a mild case of astigmatism, and b. I think I look more attractive with glasses. The second part just happened to work out nicely for me, so you're just going to have to DEAL WITH IT.

Is this about the Clean and Clear? Is that what it's going to take? HOW MANY TIMES have I told you to NOT FALL FOR THAT COMMERCIAL. It's a BEACHBALL. That's not even a REAL EYE and it's PREPOSTEROUS for ANYONE TO FALL FOR THAT SHIT. BEN STEIN ISN'T EVEN THAT FUNNY IN THOSE COMMERCIALS AND THEY ARE A WASTE OF HIS TALENT AS A COMEDIC GENIUS. I'm going to keep using the Visine and you're going to like it, BITCH.

HOW MANY LATE NIGHTS did I lay in bed with a warm washcloth pressed against you when you had pink eye? DO YOU THINK I WOULD DO THAT IF I DIDN'T LOVE YOU?! Well, NOW I have to sit here with an ICE PACK ON MY FACE to make the swelling go down. I can't imagine that's any better for you. Come on now, let's work together. Let's put all of that IMMATURE SHIT ASIDE and be ADULTS FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.

I HATE YOU FOREVER,

Tyler.



PS. Thanks for being my excuse for leaving work early today. That was sweet.