So I'm driving back from class no more than two minutes ago, trucking down the one way street in the left lane to make my left turn onto my street, when some asshole decides to make a left turn from the right lane. Total dick move. Cuts me off, and I lay on my horn and prepare the middle finger, when the dude slows down to a near stop and stares at me. A fucking gaze that if I was not already sitting, it would have knocked me on my ass. Beneath his eyes and nose, a moustache that hangs on its own special wall in the rock and roll hall of fame. Freddie Mercury, no fucking joke. He's alive and he's cruising around Macomb like a madman. I let go of the horn as I stare back in awe, and when he sees that I know who he is, he turns his head, and speeds back up. It was that moment, I realized, that I was not cut off by Freddie Mercury, but in fact I had been in Freddie Mercury's way as he tried to go about his business.

At work, we've got the average never-shuts-up guy. You know the type. He never shuts up.

So he's bothering me with another boring-ass magic the gathering story, and I say to the guy "Let's play a little game. It's called 'You Shut Up, and Everybody Benefits. The rules are simple. You shut up, and then everybody benefits". He gave me a really wicked glare, which would have been unsettling if it wasn't accompanied by a dead-on perfect Elvis Lip. He then walked off. The rest of the night if he was talking instead of working, I'd say "You're losing the game!" and he'd give me another Elvis Lip.

It's interesting, because during philosophy class today we were talking about B.F. Skinner and his research on positive and negative reinforcement. Never-shuts-up would be negatively reinforced by me telling him to shut up, and I would be positively reinforced by his Elvis Lip.

So the other night I went to see John's show. It was supposed to be him and his bassist, but his bassist punked out and John wound up doing his usual solo acoustic stuff. The place his shows are at always puts huge sheets of paper down on the tables and leaves a mug full of crayons at each one for the visitors to scribble with. Before the show started I had chopped out a scottish space explorer using blue and red. Not too soon after, more people showed up including John's roommate, a girl we both work with, and one of her friends.
She sat down at the opposite end of the table, so that she was just to the right of my view of the stage. As I watched John set up his show and him reacting to his roommate's heckles, I noticed that for what was probably a full two minutes at least, this girl was very obviously staring straight at me, wearing this completely mysterious grin. Kind of like grinning wasn't something she had much practice at doing, but she was putting up a hell of an effort. Her goal was then accomplished, she had my attention.

A dude like me Isn't usually one to attract the attention of anyone, I tend to sit in corners and not move much, especially in crowds, but here was different. i'd say about a dozen people were there, and the guy that invited me was putting on a show. So I picked a seat that wasn't one i'd usually pick, leaving me wide open to a situation such as this.

She laughed a little, probably at how long it took for me to acknowledge her, and asked my name and she told me hers. a handshake was extended, and it turned into one of those. The contest handshake. The kind of handshake me and my close friends have when we finalize a plan. grab each others hand, and shake like hell, until one of us has to stop in fear of permanent tissue damage. Kind of like the bloody knuckles disguised as a friendly greeting. She asked what In college for, (art if you didnt know), and I showed her my spaceman drawing, which led to her handing me a pencil and asking me to draw something for her. This fucked me up. Because of this, I didn't ask what she was in college for or anything of the sort! Damn! She asked for a horse with a ridiculous smile on its face (not the one she flagged me down with), and from there my imagination grabbed hold and i wound up drawing a horse in a vest at a cocktail party holding a martini, creeping out all the guests. Must have taken 10 minutes or so to draw, as John belted out a few tunes in the time it took to complete. Ten minutes of me being too wrapped up in doing what I was doing to talk or look away from the paper. Right as I finished, a guy she knew sat down at the table with us, which gave me hell of paranoia, and I directed my attention once again to the stage. He moved on to another table after a while, but the damage had been done. I was hell of nervous from that point on, and clammed up for the rest of the show. She began talking to one of her friends at the adjacent table and then left a song or two before John was done. It's been eating at me since then, so I figured "fuck it, man. bitch about it on the internet."

Thinking back over things has helped. I've got a plan next time this sort of thing happens. It goes as follows:
1. everything is awesome
2. you are one of everything
3. act the part, dipshit!
4. steps 1-3 are vitally important if you meet this girl again.

- Aquas <- 12:42:04 pm, monday, november 12th, 2007 pst

I discovered today the shattered remains of my The Cars Greatest Hits CD. My fan apparently fell on it and blew it to smithereens. That CD had a history behind it. For one, The Cars was a damn fine band. Listen to them if you haven't heard their music. Second, the CD was a birthday present from Matt and Brent back when we were in highschool, and the second CD I ever owned.

Stu offered to download and burn me a new copy, and after I told him I like to buy music rather than pirate it, he treated me like I was some sort of horrible goblin for the next ten minutes. Since when the fuck did buying music become taboo? Fuckers make music for a living and if I like their shit i'll cough up 20 bucks for their CD, no problem. Hell, Beck has succesfully taken about 120 bucks from me and Rush managed to weasle about half that as well. This made me realize that I can't respect someone's opinion on music unless they have the drive to actually own the fucking album instead of downloading the MP3s.

On the upside, it was a greatest hits CD, something ive sworn never to buy again, meaning I can start buying their albums instead and get a lot more of their work.

I completely crumbled on my first math test. Holy dick!

I wake up to Rush (excellent start!), get dressed, fail to find a pencil, get in my car and get a pen out of my bag, drive to class, find the closest parking spot to the entrance (SWEET!), find a pencil in the hallway (FUCKING UNSTOPPABLE!), get a pepsi from the machine (routine) sit down in class a minute early (NEW RECORD!), take a sip off my pepsi and think to myself "i am the king of all universes", receive my test, look at it, look at the board with a hint scribbled on it, look at my test, take a sip of pepsi, look at my test, look at my newly aquired pink glitter bic pencil, look at my test, look at the second problem on my test, look at the first, look at the back page to see how many problems there are, look at the board again, look at the professor who looks at me and just fucking KNOWS im in distress, look at my test again, look at the clock, look around the room, look at my test, and think the word "FUUUUUUUCK!" to myself so loudly that the guy next to me probably heard it.

I cant fucking learn math if its just some dude up infront of the class writing shit on the board and explaining it. Ive got disorders here relating to math. I can however learn it if i sit down with the book for a good few hours and work on the shit inside it. That i can do. The problem is that last week, I left my car windows down. Ive got a gypsy curse, which is that whenever i leave my fucking windows down, IT FUCKING RAINS. My roommates noticed this too. I roll my windows up almost all the time. If it rains, then my windows must down. They'll go roll them up for me.

TANGENT: i just coughed up a gigantic loogie on my monitor screen. Holy shit.

Anyways, it rains in my car. nobody's home to roll the windows up. I'm at class, we took Stu's car that day. Math class is done before Stu shows up, so i left the book in my car. Rain. Back seat. Soaked. Book. FUCK. the thing's bloated up to 3 times its normal size and the pages are all dicked. This thing is trashed. I cant study, cant do homework, cant afford a new one. I am BONED.

So I sit there the entire class period, with this test, not knowing WHAT the fuck, attempting a few with the shit i remember from the first week of class, realize that i have NO clue how to do the last four steps, move on to the next, realize that this one im completely lost on, and wind up at the end of the class with two problems partway solved and a handful of tiny scribbles and doodles that my arm produced in frustrated reflex. I talked to the teacher and he's going to let me do a second test, but its averaged together between the first and second test. So the best i can do is a 50 percent. Better than a straight up zero but still.