Recently, three of us guys were granted an afternoon to ourselves as our spouses discussed breast pumps and pitocin over Tupperware. We joked as we were leaving them that we were going to a strip club. Like hell. I remember the discussion as we drove around looking for a quiet place to eat lunch.

"Right there," Brian said, nodded toward a mall to his left so he could keep both hands on the wheel. "That's the store where we got the piece of crap crib."

"I sense hostility," I said from the back seat, in my best imitation of a psychiatrist. "Tell me more about how you feel about the crib."

Brian raised a lone middle finger from the wheel. "No, the crib is great. I just don't I understand why we needed to get it right now. I mean, we just had the baby and we already have a cradle right next to the bed -"

"- But for the most part," interrupted Dave, whose wife was pregnant at the time so he'd been reading a lot, "the baby is basically sleeping with you guys all night anyway -"

"- And the crib is in the baby's room, so when we put the baby in the crib," Brian jumped back in, "she can't sleep because she's worried about the baby."

"Figures," I said. I'd read the same books as Dave, so I knew what they were talking about, but Cheri and I had decided to adopt - in few years. She and I got married less than six months ago. "So, why didn't you say something?"

Brian just looked at me for second. "Oh, that's right, you're still a newlywed. I could tell it wasn't worth mentioning. Don't get me wrong I love her, but we've been married five years - basically, I do what she tells me to do. She tells me take out the garbage, I take out the garbage. She says it's time buy a crib, I go buy a crib. And when she gets tired of me and can't think of anything else for me to do, I'm sure she'll tell me to lie down and die, and I'll do that too. (falsetto) 'Okay, honey, go outside and dig nice deep hole in the back yard... Good. Lie down in it... great. Now stop breathing... Good.'"

The conversation lagged for a minute. Then a shit-eating grin spread across Dave's face. "Of course, you know five minutes later you'd be up, tracking mud into the kitchen, (Homer Simpson imitation) 'Sweetie, now what was I supposed to be - ' (falsetto screaming) 'What?!? God damn it! What's wrong with you?!? Do I have to do everything myself around here? I ask you to do one simple thing! One simple thing and you can't even do that! Look at this floor! Are you trying to ruin my day? Oh, never mind! Just get the mop. Then go fix that hole in the yard.'"

My day sucks. I know that generally you're not supposed to complain on and on, but I do anyway.

My girlfriend called about two hours ago. Said "Honey, I think that we should see other people." Sooooo I got depressed, drunk, and had sex with the neighbor girl, or some whore named Megan. Then my girlfriend called and said "I want you back Lemur." And that was that. I suppose that that was more like twenty-two hours ago but what the hell.

Then my dad bursts into my room shouting some shit like "You beat your sister with an axe? I'm going to kill you" or some shit like that, and then kicks me out. I'm confused because my sisters fine, and at a friends house. I call my dad from next door and point that out, and he says that he's sorry, and some police officer called a wrong number, or something like that, and he wan'ts me to come home.

Now I did some fucked up writeup about southern jokes, and then I get downvoted to hell. Woes to wary noders...


I know that if you are a new Noder, than you may be relatively unfamiliar with the Everything 2 system. Well, I have posted this Write Up to help you assure you that your write up's are not alone in Node Heaven. These are my suggestions.

-Don't be downcast if your first few write up's get negative votes. My first write up got 2 negative votes before getting eaten, all within the first five minutes of posting it.

-If you're first write up (henceforth abbreviated as "w/u") gets eaten, don't be discouraged. Check your Chatterbox. Chances are, the Editor who ate your w/u sent you a reason for eating it. If not, /msg them by typing "/msg username" and your message. Example:

"/msg LerrisofRecluse This is an example..."

I hope that these help you. Remember:

Don't get discouraged. Just get advice and listen to it with an open mind.

I would like thank the following users, and suggest that if you need any help, as a noder, talk to them!

mirv

Bitriot

N~Wing


I just felt like helping out. I am going to get fucking downvoted till I die, and I was only two writeups and 8 xp away from lvl 2 but that doesn't matter to the other god damn 1000+ fucking button happy voters out there... Dont get killed... I hope that this helps you avoid what I've become. Don't get mixed in with the wrong sort. People get fucking killed like that. Like my aunt........

As I've mentioned in the past I suffer from Crohn's Disease, and as this flare continues my condition continues to become worse. As of today I have not eaten in 13 days. Physically I have no appetite (which is just as well, as eating something would tear me apart inside) but mentally I am craving something with flavor to chew on. At this point I would gnaw on my own arm if I knew that a) it wouldn't hurt (and with my codeine pills, it just might not) and b) I wouldn't need my arm at some point in the future.

As I write this I am watching the 1986 movie Short Circuit on American Movie Classics. There's a scene early in the film where Ally Sheedy cooks pasta with tomato sauce for Johnny Five, the input-craving robot. This pasta meal on-screen is now over fifteen years old. This pasta has long since been broken down into base elements and has returned to the earth. Heck, perhaps these elements have become pasta again in the past fifteen years and have been broken down yet again. That does not matter. I want this pasta dinner. I want to chew it up, take in the tactile sensation of chewing, enjoy the tomato-y flavor, and swallow it down.

My intestines are ripping themselves apart and meanwhile a robot is enjoying pasta. What's wrong with this picture?

Like the majority of Americans I'm hyped up for Super Bowl XXXVII. GO Oakland! GL Tampa!

Spend most my days exploring E2 so have little of interest to share here. I thought I'd share something pretty funny however. I read the catbox archives and the chatterbox at times. For the first few weeks here I could not for the life of me figure out what the TBBK acronym meant.

I searched the site for the answer, searched the jargon lexicon, the various FAQ's and so on. Tried, and tried to guess what it might mean and came up with all sorts of ideas. But every time I'd come up with an idea, it wouldn't fit with the next time I saw TBBK: yada, or "yada, yada TBBK" so I was back to the drawing board!

Finally - it hit me, it stood for "TheBooBooKitty" - must be nice to have an acronym just for you eh?!?! I could kick myself now for having spent so much time trying to figure this out, but still I can't help laughing about the choices I'd come up with for the meaning of TBBK.

I can certainly understand though why the name has been shortened, the name is used 100 times a day, imagine typing TheBooBooKitty that many times?

That was just one of hundreds of things I've learned since joining E2, the learning curve here is tougher than any I've ever experienced, but enjoyable and challenging.

While I still have a few top pet peeves to rant on, and my two daylogs so far seemed well recieved, I thought I'd spare ya'all anything too heavy tonight.

For those of you watching, enjoy the superbowl, and please don't drink and drive.

I pride my self on drunken nodes, have no doubt about that, but I feel that I have lost something.

That something is my desire to achieve, or at least that's what it seems to be. I just don't have the desire or care, or want for anything. This is in itself, a puzzle, for it seems that I do care about things.

I work hard in college, I don't know why; I work hard in weight lifting for football and I don't know why. I automatically put everything I hear or do in perspective to the great scheme of things.

If I lose a few points on a test or quiz...who gives a damn...If I don't get that last rep on bench...who gives a damn. My day is full of events that I put in perspective and automatically have no care for.

I don't think I need help, but do I? Is this what all first-year college students go through? Do all people feel a sense of "lost" in their lives?

I wasn't always like this. It used to be that when I lost a few points on an exam, that I would fret over it, and it would dominate my thoughts for a good while. It used to be that football was all I cared about and getting ready for the next season, and even though I still carry my passion for football...It's just not the same.

Will I look back on this some day and think, wow...was I ever lost in the world. I had no aim or distant goal...or did I? Was this a defense mechanism to the growing facets of my expanding world?

I suppose...that only time will tell

Yay for impromptu noder-gatherings.

I really love the LAWG.

I've had a hard time finding places to fit in here. I've met a handful through the SCA and some through PAN, but after time, each time, most people wander off and i'm left with only one or two survivors. And I usually find out later that most of them weren't my friends ever, they just wanted something from me. It's always clear in hindsight. And even in those groups, I never *really* got along with everybody, or even the majority. I socialized with them because i had no one else to see. That was the only common denominator--we were all lonely.

But these guys, they're great. It feels like the closeness I had with my highschool friends, the same easy flow of conversation and consciousness, where just being together is fun and we don't have to DO anything. Just hanging out is cool and there's no need for more, although more is fun. A thanks to the LAWG folks--you guys have given me a set of friends I feel like I really belong in, something I have NOT had during my time at Purdue, and it's a pretty special feeling. Thank you all.

The evening started with mcc and me not doing dishes because my sink was clogged and backing up water into the apartment of the girl downstairs. So no clean pots, can't cook. Let's go out. How about LBC, the Lafayette Brewing Company, one of our favorites where we haven't been in months. Cool. A message from pmdboi inviting Andrew to go eat dorm-dinner with him, but we drag him with us instead of the other way around.

After a bit of a wait (ok, a lot of one and a side trip to CastleBrooks Spiritual Supply in the meantime), food was had. Excellent food, and it would have been even if we hadn't been famished. Pmdboi had Shephard's Pie, mcc got a burger of some variety, and I had the Chicken Marsalla, all started with a plate of veggies and cheese.

Then back to my apartment to watch Richard III which we'd just bought from Ebay. A message from evadyne masquerading as czarkhan suggests we hang over there, but we insist we outnumber them and win. They show up, then mcc leaves to pick up the previously-AIMed s_alanet and a non-noder friend. (Adrian, we'll get you yet!).

Movie was watched, and unless they're just all too NICE to tell me it really sucked, the crew seemed to enjoy it almost as much as I do. Richard Loncraine/Ian McKellen's version of Richard III truly kicks ass. It's Shakespeare's play reset in a fictional fascist European state, and pulls it off brilliantly. My personal favorite touch is a jazz singer performs Christopher Marlowe's "A passionate shephard to his love as a song. (Doubly cute becuase Shakespeare has been known to quote this piece, and some scholars, like those who argue the veracity of his own works, wonder if Shakespeare acutally wrote this piece.)

Super Mario Sunshine, Cubavore, harassing of Sam-the-Kitty, and far too much ineundo followed the movie, as did chocolate milk. I finally threw them out when I got too tired to sit up all the way.

Evenings don't get much better than this--as they left, I realized it was snowing.

I went to Fry's yesterday. That was my first mistake.

Apparently Fry's was running their inventory and purchasing system on a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database. Apparently they also left this system wide open and un-firewalled to the Internet at large. And they neglected to keep it patched. And it just so happens that nearly every unpatched, un-firewalled machine running MSSQL 2000 was compromised yesterday by the W32/SQLSlammer.worm.

The result of all this was that I had to wait in line for a good 45 minutes to buy a stack of CD-Rs and two PS2 games. After finally reaching the checkout stand, I was forced to wait while the "friendly sales associate" verified the prices on my items (despite the fact that they had price tags), hand-wrote an invoice, figured out how to work the ghetto credit card carbon copy machine, and called the bank to verify my funds.

This is the part of the writeup where I stop and inform you, dear reader, that if you have any objections to reading about someone getting punched in the neck, you should not read any further.

After finally having purchased my items, signed several forms and retrieved my credit card from the greasy hands of the aforementioned "friendly sales associate", I proceeded down the long dark hallway that leads to the only exit. There in front of me was a mob of people waiting like good little sheep to have their bags checked and their receipts hilighted. In addition to this mob, there was a large, irate hispanic man yelling very loudly and being restrained by three "friendly sales associates". It seems one of the "friendly sales associates" had been helping this man load a brand new bigscreen TV into his truck when the TV fell and shattered on the pavement.

This left only one "friendly sales associate" to search the evil shoplifting customers. I hardly felt like waiting any more, so I walked past him. I usually do this, since the store has no more right to search me than I have to shoplift. Usually the bag-checkers make a feeble attempt to get my attention and then give up, letting me walk free. But this "friendly sales associate" had other plans.

He grabbed my arm. So I punched him in the neck.

I don't mean to give the impression that I thought he deserved it. If I'd had more time to think, I probably wouldn't have punched him. But I don't enjoy being grabbed, and he grabbed me quite forcefully. It just happened that the arm he grabbed was the one with the bag attached to it, whereas my other arm was completely unencumbered and was thus in prime form for neck-punching. I don't recall ever actually punching someone in the neck before, but it seemed to happen totally by reflex. I was as surprised as he was, but he was probably in quite a bit more pain.

Luckily, the punch was angled such that it caught him in the side of the neck, rather than in the throat, which could very well have killed him. After making sure he was still breathing (I knew this because he screamed, and it's hard to scream when you can't breathe), I walked out the door. He didn't try to stop me.

Two tracks

Yesterday, while working intently on one of my epigraphy projects, out of the corner of my eye I noticed something that looked like water damage on the ceiling. I turned my head to look at it, and realized that it was just a dried ornamental plant of my wife's on top of a bookcase, which I had seen from below with the ceiling behind it. I realized there actually was no water damage. And then, after I realized there was no water damage, it occurred to me that I should overcome my lethargy and go see how extensive the water damage was.

After a split second of surprise, I had to laugh at myself. I realized that seeing the apparent damage had set off two different courses of thought in my mind, and that they arrived in my consciousness in an order that made the second one useless to me. But it arrived anyway.

Not long ago something similar happened when I was crossing the street and felt myself in danger from a car. I got across and realized with relief that I had made it to safety. A second or two afterwards, I felt the sensation of fear, which I immediately noticed was no longer of any direct use to me in getting to safety.

I wonder if the slowness of the second of the two thoughts in each of these cases, or the failure to suppress it once it has been obviated, is a sign of aging. Certainly I don't remember this happening when I was younger. Although my first inclination was to be angry that my mind wasn't behaving rationally, I was shortly overcome by a feeling of pleasure in seeing that my mind is a mechanical instrument over which I do not have full control.

Then back to work.


last day-log entry: October 15, 2002 | next: January 27, 2003

I guess life never really makes sense until I've stood back a hundred feet or so and watched myself.

On the beach, taunting the ocean. Laughter and sand between the toes. Pretending pants pulled up to the knees will make any difference when the waves creep up slow gliding along the surface, all white frothy beautiful - the gasping as it soaks to the waist and then, admittance of defeat. The sand in your socks, afterwards, I think I like that the best.

The escalators - sunsets over the Charles. That unyielding FAO Schwartz song on loop, spelling out stupid things with giant blocks. Squished on the T with the BU girls, yes, just like a tin of sad little sardines. Waiting for the green line during rush hour, spending hours leaning against a pillar and the random people who will speak to you about anything just because it really does get to feeling odd when there are hundreds of people all around you and no one, save a couple here and there, so much as look at the others. I love the anonymity of a city, sometimes, mostly because it makes the tiny connections here and there all the more poignant.

And then, of course, there is the person next to me in all of the photos, all of the memories stored in my head. And there is a great sadness at all of the doubt and the nerves and the inability to settle. The always looking for a way to fix things that will most likely always be broken - things like me.

Perhaps it's time to smash the Mercury..

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

5:30 PM

I receive an instant message from my best friend:

Best Friend: Hey lets place a bet Bucs over the raiders
Micholaus: OK, Raiders it is

7:45 PM

Best Friend: Ahahahahahahahaha....now will that be in installments or one lump sum?
Micholaus: I hate you.

9:15 PM

Best Friend: OK, how about this: the Raiders score another touchdown, you get ten bucks?
Micholaus: You're on.

9:45 PM

The Oakland Raiders have scored their first touchdown of the game.

Best Friend: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
AUTO RESPONSE FROM MICHOLAUS: Lighting a cigar with a dollar bill since THE RAIDERS SCORED A TOUCHDOWN, BITCH!

January 26, 2003. (11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.) Australia Day, National Popcorn Day in the U.S., Super Bowl XXXVII, and my 30th birthday.

I was a little bit freaked by the idea of turning 30 until the day before it happened. Then, as with such ages as 16, 18, 20, and 21, it came through that it was just an arbitrary number, nothing that really meant anything. (You'd think I'd know that by now with all these supposed milestone birthdays behind me.) Before, it had been a little variation on I was supposed to be somebody by the age of 23! -- by 30 I was supposed to at least feel like a grown-up, right? Not working part-time for a little newsletter publishing company, making barely enough to get by (except for the generosity of my grandfather, who either feels guilty about his past or just wants to give away his money little by little now so as to avoid estate taxes when he dies), and spending my little extra money on kids' toys.

But on the 25th my mom came over, brought me a chocolate birthday cake, and then we went out to the International Plaza (Tampa's most "upscale" mall, with various expensive or just not-found-in-every-other-mall stores) and I stocked up on Hello Kitty stationery and Mom bought a Hello Kitty clock for her bathroom, and an almost-30-year-old and a 55-year-old buying all this Sanrio stuff kind of brought all the whole adulthood thing into perspective, perhaps. Then I went home and cleaned the kitchen and my bathroom (and let me tell you, there were corners of the kitchen floor that hadn't been cleaned in the 4.5 years Jon and I have lived in this apartment, until now) because people were coming over for my birthday and I didn't want them to see the worst of our slobbishness. The dustballs on the carpet and magazines/books on every available surface were enough to show that we're not huge on neatness.

And today I spent the morning (well, the first few hours after I woke at noon) playing with the new additions to the apartment's Simpsons figurine collection, which Jon bought as a sort of gift for me the night of the 24th. We have the courtroom with Judge Snyder, as well as Gil, Ranier Wolfcastle, Kirk van Houten, and Larry Burns now, making 83 figurines and 21 playsets, as I discovered when I counted them all to fill out the optional survey that was on the back of the coupon I was sending in (redeem 4 UPC codes plus a check for the shipping and get a Be Sharps Apu figurine). If we ever need some money, we can just sell all these off on eBay.

Then at 3:00 Deb and Phil and Chuck, the former of whom I hadn't seen face to face in a month and the latter two in more than a year, arrived. Then Matt and Shayna, who I literally had not seen since my birthday party last year. Then Ben and Jodi, who I see on a regular basis but nonetheless enjoy. Almost everyone who was invited, but Sean Michael was working and Rob never responded about the party. We took pictures of one another, we caught up on one another's lives (Jon said that he and I need to get friends who have less interesting lives than ours so we might have something to say in these conversations, but I told him that it's rather hard to find people with fewer events going on in their lives than we have.)

Deb, Phil and Chuck left for one Super Bowl Party and then Matt and Shayna for another -- I do hate it when my birthday falls on Sunday because damn it, I don't like sharing attention with a sport. Especially since I haven't the slightest interest in any sport at all, but particularly football. And living in Tampa, it's particularly intense this year when the local team is in the big game. To help ignore it, Ben, Jodi, Jon and I watched much of their gift to me, An Evening with Kevin Smith, which is terribly funny (as one would expect). Then we went to CDB (or as Ben and I have both accidentally called it at different times, EDB) for pizza, and as it turned out, a running idea of how the Super Bowl was going from the yells in the bar. Back to stately Segnboroweth Manor to work on that birthday cake of Mom's and more random conversation. And the Bucs won the fucking game, so fireworks, gunshots, sirens, and car horns have punctuated the hours since then (and they goddamn better stop this soon! Just because the team won doesn't mean people don't have to go to work tomorrow!) They all seem like fair-weather fans to me -- you never used to see so many Bucs flags and jerseys back during the many years when the team sucked and really might need some support. Even more than having a sport I'm not interested in forced into my world, the people jumping on the bandwagon annoys me -- I grew up with my North Carolina-born, South Carolina-resident dad and his lifelong love for the New York Yankees through thick and thin, so I expect fans to have a bit of loyalty.

But it's been a very good day and I have not fallen back into my previous discomfort with passing into a different decade of age. Hopefully my post-big-event-depression will not hit tomorrow and drag me back into it. I have all these great people in my life (Everythingians included, especially the ones who sent me birthday greetings).

(Added when I finally got the chance to post this on the 27th: No, I seem to have stayed OK with being 30 throughout today.)

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