Biscuit: Tasty Doesn't Get You A Date To The Prom

Ahem. Pardon me for the minor hiatus. A weekend of rainy weather sans umbrella apparently has a negative impact on a young man's health, however much he may love the rain. I have been rather sneezy and stuffy and generally (if you will pardon the pun, and then again, even if you will not) under the weather. It took me the better part of an hour today to catch up on the lives and happenings of my Diaryland compatriots this afternoon. And yes, for those of you who keep track of this sort of thing, I am at work, so it was an hour of severely diminished productivity on my part. Just as it should be.

For long-time readers, here is a plot point that should make you feel all kinds of nostalgic: due to a miscalculation, I have but a single dollar bill and a handful of quarters to last me until payday -- i.e., a week from today. I look forward to a week of creative sustenance -- in other words, packets of rice that are hiding in the back of my cupboard. One bright spot: because the household ordered cigarettes online, I have enough to last me through this dry spell, which takes a remarkable amount of strain off me.

For the past week I have refrained from attending the gym -- due, of course, to those sniffles I mentioned earlier. I resumed attendance today, and made a startling, wonderful, and wholly welcome discovery: if I take my half-hour-on-the-bike sym break at 2 pm, I get to watch a nice little chunk of the guiltiest of my many pleasures. I speak, of course, of Passions. Ever since the first of my many unemployment binges (this one back in Colorado), I have had a soft spot in my heart for this televisionary wonder, which features an evil witch, computer-generated tiny people, nasty billionaires, a tennis star who somehow is never seen practicing or playing tennis, a bitch in an electric wheelchair, amnesia, the Bermuda Triangle (its mystery is only exceeded by its power!), and a Hispanic housecleaner named Pilar. And of course, until recently the estimable Timmy, bless his soul. I have a feeling this two-o-clock break is going to be a regular one.

Due to my recent stint as a hermit, hibernating at home, I have very few other stories to share. I shall go back to doing the work I am being paid for, and listening to Freezepop while I do so. Had I brought my Eiffel 65 with me, I would certainly be listening to that, in solidarity with my elf-lovin', booty-shakin' brother down in Florida. (Confidential to J: did you see that special feature on Orlando with his hot hot mohawk and his way with spinning knives?!?)

p.s. Bear is back in the country. If he knows what is good for him, he will start updating his diary soon, and you will all read it and love him.

p.p.s. I thought about this after I originally wrote this entry, and realized that there simply must be a Passions diaryring. Lo and behold, I was right. Breathe in, breathe out.

Does anybody want to get me a) a belated birthday present, or b) an early Christmas present? Because I have decided what I want.

http://jon.hostcentrel.com/seduction.html.

Not only does this amazing product promise I will get "laid like a drunk monkey," it will teach me how to "bed virgins, married women, conservatives, catholics, strippers, younger women, older women - even LESBIANS or several lesbians at once." And as a special bonus, I can also get the "Golden Orgasm guide to bringing any woman to mind-blowing multiple orgasm every time!" I can "learn how [I] can use the power of hynosis to make women orgasm from [my] voice or touch alone." PLUS, (as if this was not enough!) "[I] can use it as a 'reset button' if she ever gives [me] trouble - just like [my] stupid computer!"

It is only $99.95, and it comes with workbooks and CDs! Plus, the developer of this amazing hypnosis system promises a moneyback guarantee if it doesn't work for you -- although he claims that if it doesn't work you're either "just gay, or can't speak the native language." So I suppose this kit can also act as the acid test to finally determine once and for all if I really am a homo. See? It has so many uses!

I do have to say that ArtStudent got a little excited when I told her about this, and mentioned the possibility of "bedding" several lesbians at once. So clearly, she thinks this could help her out as well. Do us both a favor. Provide me with hours and hours of laughing my gay little ass off, and provide ArtStudent with an orgy. Everybody wins!

p.s. It comes with workbooks. It comes with getting laid workbooks.

p.p.s. Did I fucking mention that it has WORKBOOKS??? I am positively beside myself.

The city is subdued again -- nobody on the subway is saying anything. The only sounds on the way to and from work are the bing-bong of the doors closing, and the announcement of the next stop. The only other time I've heard things this silent here was just under a year ago. Everybody is thinking about it, and thinking about whether or not we're going in to work, or about how far away from televisions we're going to stay.

Random things are making me all teary-eyed. Thinking about this tiny stone museum-house in a park by my apartment did it -- that's where we went walking last year to take a break from looped TV coverage. My alarm clock did it this morning -- Tom Brokaw's voice on it last year started the whole process for me. A fire truck a block from work, doing something as normal as putting out a normal fire, did it, because for one second you don't know if it's a fire or a FIRE.

I've gone through most of the past year being okay. This past week, though -- it's been decidedly not okay. As we get closer and closer to the 11th, my mood is devolving closer and closer to how I felt a year ago. I remember the wine glass that I knocked off the kitchen table and how I was only saved from sobbing on the floor by the intervention of a phone call from Canada. I remember the I Heart New York t-shirt, with "broken" scrawled in black marker over the heart. I remember sitting in Union Square surrounded by rolls of butcher paper and scores of candles, everyone staring south at nothing. I remember standing on my roof, watching bits of paper and ash and airplane and person, floating across the river and landing on the street right in front of my apartment. I remember hearing no voices, hearing no car horns, and looking at chalky, shell-shocked faces. I remember going to the empty bar uptown where ArtStudent worked just for a change of scenery. I remember redialing a hundred times until the call went through, to tell my mom I was okay. I remember the walls of snapshots and Polaroids everywhere I went. And as Shiv points out, I'll always, always remember that smell.

And I remember it all like it was yesterday.

Whew.

The wind is whistling past the office windows, someone's computer keeps quietly repeating a two-second musical phrase from some Enya song (much to everyone else's annoyance), I have coffee, and today is beginning to feel like a normal day again.

As soon as we got past 10:30, the weight lifted. Until then, I had been thoroughly stuck in last year -- "I'm not even awake yet." "I am just turning on the TV." "The second tower just fell." But the litany in my head has stopped now. I have run out of time markers to remember. Distance is reasserting itself, and I am back in 2002 with everyone else.

I love you, New York City.

I love spending money. I mean, I truly adore it. I am also a technophile. These two traits in the same person can lead to a variety of outcomes -- the most likely being an inability to buy food to eat while playing video games.

My acquisitive tendencies led me to purchase a PlayStation 2 this weekend. And extra controllers. And memory cards. And a stack of games to play. My hand was actually shaking as I signed the receipt, due to a mixture of excitement, and horror at spending that much money at once. One game in particular, Grand Theft Auto 3, has proven particularly crowd-pleasing. The boys and I passed the controller around all weekend long, creating a chorus of man-voices yelling "Whoaaaaaaaa!" and "That was HOT!!" every time someone pulled off an especially adept jump or U-turn. There is just something about stealing a Viper, driving it at top speed all over town and running over a passel of pimps on the way that I find enthralling. Something about that "living vicariously through others" thing, I suppose. (Not that I actually have a burning desire to do something like commit vehicular homicide, mind you -- but I do enjoy the fact that I take pleasure in such a tough-guy activity. Anything that makes me feel a little butch is fine with me.) Not to mention, by the way, that the little collection of pixels making up the main character that one gets to control in this game...well, those pixels have a really hot ass.

StyleGirl and I are also planning to buy a new kitchen counter. The adventures into do-it-yourself home-repair will be chronicled here when they occur. I am familiarizing myself with such terms at "shim," "backsplash," "jigsaw," and "fuck, my fingers!!" in order to use them properly when the opportunity presents itself.

The other things I like to acquire (okay, that I have a desperate need to acquire) are books and clothes. Several bookshops and Macy's are a few short blocks away from my office, which itself is smack-dab in the middle of the Fashion District. If I continue spending my paychecks as soon as they arrive, I had best resign myself to a lot less food.

p.s. Shiv is destined for stardom. Buy stock now.

Following the example of The Shiv, I thought I would share a little news tidbit of my own:

Scientists find the most absurd dinosaur ever! It's from China!

Is it possible for the artist who rendered this newly-found buck-toothed dinosaur to have drawn it looking any MORE like the dorky gimp of the dinosaur world? It is even flopping its gimpy little arms around like a little gimp.

Perhaps if they had drawn a T-Rex giving it a wedgie, or laughing at its slide-rule. Never would I have imagined a dinosaur running (floppily) across the majestic plains of what would some day be China, shouting out its mating call of "Glaiven!"

I have been to Mecca. (Again.)

Last weekend, I was treated to a visit to the local IKEA in scenic New Jersey. StyleGirl's parents were in town and had splurged on a rental car, so away the four of us went, to bask in the glow of Scandinavian simplicity and meatballs. I managed to restrain my spending urges admirably, if I do say so myself, and left having only purchased a new medicine cabinet, a flour sifter, a six-pack of wine glasses, a twelve-pack of drinking glasses, a pastry cutter, four scrubby brushes, and a new bedroom light fixture.

The installation of the light fixture was foremost in my mind when I got home. Basically what was already in my ceiling was a can light -- you know, the recessed light fixture with the strange conical lightbulbs that seem to be all the rage in today's modern homes. If you listen carefully late at night, you can even hear architect-spirits whispering "Scatter a few can lights across the ceiling and call it good," to the night winds. I do not find can lights to have very much personality, so I was eager to put up my new tasteful three-spotlights-below-a-frosted-glass-circle, so as to protect my eyes from glare when I read in bed.

I went after the can light with a variety of tools such as my fingernails and a flat-head screwdriver to remove it. After sproinging the cunningly concealed latches that held it in place, I was left with a disassembled can light, dangling from a rather large hole by a few wires. Always excited to look in hidden places, I took a peek into the forgotten spaces of my ceiling.

And made a horrifying discovery.

Apparently my landlord had, at some point, come up with the ill-conceived idea to install a drop ceiling -- essentially a new ceiling a foot below the original one. In the process, he both a) made all the rooms in our apartment shorter by at least a foot, b) covered up antique plaster light fixtures, and c) tore down the existing crown moulding that used to edge the rooms. I was overcome with shock when I found this out -- and of course, I immediately ran around to my various roommates to let them know. We have been entertaining dreams of tearing down the new ceiling to expose the old ever since. Nobody can understand what would drive a man to such extreme lengths as these, simply to install can lights. CAN LIGHTS. He traded plaster fixtures and crown moulding for CAN LIGHTS.

For those of you without immediate access to my apartment, I have taken a photograph of my bedroom that illustrates the problem. Luckily, ArtStudent even has enough fancy-schmancy photo equipment to let me take a picture of the gap between the old (or "awesome") ceiling and the new (or "fucking craptacular") ceiling. You are now all contractually obligated to view this photograph by clicking on this. I am continually amazed at just how much space is being wasted. (And yes, if you are wondering -- that is a Macintosh G4 Cube sitting on my lovely IKEA desk.)

All I can ask is that you do not let this happen to your home. Do not modernize for the sake of modernization. There are still those of us left who do not mind a few cracks in the plasterwork if it means we get something like antique light fixtures. In addition to looking good, they (along with words like "brownstone," "balcony," "ceiling fan," and "no-fee") are also a source of major bragging rights among New York apartment renters. If we can keep just one claw-foot bathtub from being replaced with a multi-jet Jacuzz-i-tub, our vigilance will be worth it.

I am taking a brief break from the crushing disaster that I like to call my job. Ahh, the wonders of working in a tech position and having to finish four weeks of work in one, to meet some software-release deadline. Or even more exciting: three weeks worth of that is re-doing previously completed work, lost due to someone else's mistake. My favorite.

At any rate. This weekend may see me sitting in the office, alternately typing out my HTML code and cursing the person who held this position before me, who, it appears, could not write a cleanly coded web page if his life depended on it. (Perhaps that is the reason he is the previous holder of this position.)

I have been listening to both the Cruel Intentions soundtrack (yeah, yeah, it comforts me) and the Happy Hardcore album, Volume 6 (yeah, shut up about that one too. I have a weakness for bad dance music.). My ears are sweaty from the headphones.

Aside from all of that, I think I am going to jump on this bandwagon as I see it pass by: NaNoWriMo. I have seen two diaries mention this already, so I figured I may as well add my voice to the crowd. Ideas are already starting to bubble up in my brain -- by the time November rolls around, I should be more than ready to crank that novel out with ease. (At least this torturous workload has not diminished my brain's ability to lie to itself! Ha!)

That. Was. Disturbing.

I just took a cue from Shiv and took a lovely little online quiz.

I am the bastard child of mankind and technology. I take pride in my balance of intelligence and physical strength. I have capabilites neither common to the average human, nor implementable in the average machine. I am good with my hands, as well as my head. Spotting me in a crowd isn't hard, I'm the one with the quick wit and the light spirit. Still can't find me? Look for the robotic arm. What's your superpower?

I do not find the Cybernetic Enhancement idea to be disturbing. What startled me is the fact that for some reason, without any urging from me, the dulcet tones of Aqua began pouring from my headphones, which were perched atop my computer. "Cartoon Heroes." I started rummaging through my desk, trying to find the Aqua CD, convinced the last thing I had listened to was Happy Hardcore Volume 6. Started wondering if I was so confused on Sunday that I put in Aqua and forgot about it. Began suspecting a coworker had rummaged through and secretly laughed at my music. My heart started racing. Realized that the CD player program was not even OPEN, much less PLAYING anything. Got seriously skeeved out at my possessed computer, freaked out. Started dancing in my seat to the song nonetheless. And then, finally, at last, realized that the nice person who made the quiz programmed it to PLAY the damned SONG when someone finished the damned QUIZ. It was being piped in over the internet.

I feel like such a tool.