3 posts tagged “anecdote”
Those above words are probably my favorite to hear whenever I'm bored and with friends (which happens often). Since I can't play video games for an extended amount of time, and I don't write or play piano that much anymore, my main hobbies are just "hanging out" and driving around. Neither of which are incredibly productive, but I do think they are slowly and surely putting me back on track to the human I was a few years ago. Tonight was a Wal-Mart run night, and it was probably the most fun I've had all break. Originally, I was going to head up to Long Island today to pick up a camcorder (after various problems with ripping Star-Nosed Moles to DVD), but thankfully I did not need to make the four hour up-and-back that probably would have sucked out the last remaining remnants of what you people would call a soul. Unfortunately, I did not find out that I wasn't making the trip until 3:30, so my afternoon was spent bracing myself for the long drive and playing Rock Band with my friends Adam and Curley. We were also planning on seeing Cloverfield tonight (Yeah, I don't care if it sucks, I still want to see it. Go away.), but seeing as you're getting a blog about Wal-Mart, that obviously didn't happen.
At around 6:00, we started to get ravenously hungry, which, of course, meant leaving the house. And in New Jersey, leaving the house for food can only lead to one of two things: a White Castle or a diner. Since I'm a vegetarian, I naturally opted for the latter option, and we were diner-bound. After some good old disco fries (in vegetarian gravy, thank you very much!) and an omelette, we were left with a check, indigestion, and no sense of direction for the night. Since I am undoubtedly going to make my life into a play someday, and this scene will undoubtedly be in that play, I'll give you a sneak peek at this particular portion.
Waitress drops the check on the table. Adam, James and Curley stare at it, then at Adam, who reluctantly pulls out a credit card and goes to pay it. Curley and James sit at the table in awkward silence. Beat. Double-Beat. Triple-Beat. Adam comes back to the table just as James starts:
James: ...Now what?
Beat.
Adam: Wal-Mart run?
The above excerpt will surely be the ultimate moment of the play. I'm sure you can already see the rampant emotion even in text, and can picture us all up on a stage, as real as that night. The audience will laugh, then cry. Women and children will be asked to leave as they get so emotional they become a hazard to the people around them. Then it will pass as quickly as it came, and leave the viewer with a sense that something wondrous just happened. But what, exactly?
Yes, I know that was a tangent, but I had fun writing it. Don't make fun of me!
Anyway, we go to Wal-Mart, and engage in a few activities that probably would have gotten us out of the store if people bothered watching us. These activities included:
- Playing basketball with the bouncy balls. How cliche.
- Tossing and catching a toy called the Orbit Ball, which was marketed as "Fun to throw! Fun to catch!"
- Trying to do the same with balls that did not have the orbit ball's label, but it just wasn't the same without throwing or catching them.
- Playing with the volume of the automobile stereo systems.
- Trying to put tires on layaway.
- Seeing what would be the funniest purchase along with a box of condoms. Winner: Mr. Curley, with a bottle of deer pheromones.
- Hiding behind plants in the garden section, then coming out when someone walked by, saying "Oh, herro!" in an Asian accent, and trying to shake the person's hand.
- Playing hide and seek
- Playing tag
- Playing tag with other people
- Lounging on couches that were on display. On shelves about three feet above the ground.
- Adam and I wanting Curley to page us saying "A-NI-MAL! A-NI-MAL!"
This dog was the ugliest thing I have ever seen. It looked like a chihuahua, mixed with a dachshund, and beaten nine-tenths of the way to death with an ugly stick. This thing was ugly as all hell, but it was also exceptionally long, giving it the opportunity for corny and punny love messages inscribed on its side. Of course, it had hearts on it, but it also had a phrase which I honestly thought I was reading wrong for a few seconds.
"I love this much!"
We took a picture of it, just to make sure that we weren't hallucinating. This picture will be up here sometime tomorrow, for your viewing pleasure. I hope it'll make your day as much as it made mine.
-blake
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who heard rumors 'bout him and a bucket
Well, he said quite sincere
To all who would hear,
"I never decided to fuck it!"
Well this hurt the poor bucket's feelings,
She didn't find lying appealing
Though they were never in bed,
She'd given him head
And took quite a few while a'kneeling.
(I made that up last night after my haiku. It amused me, at least.)
Okay, I'm well aware in advance that this post is going to be incredibly incoherent and it's probably going to bear strong resemblance to my last stream-of-consciousness-esque rant, but that's what you get when you're running on such a weird sleep schedule as I am. Don't worry, I'm not missing any sleep, it's just not all in the right places, so I feel incredibly tired at as early as 8 PM...Hopefully my full 8 hours tonight will right any wrongs that have accumulated in the last...fuck, has it been 4 days? 4 days. And hopefully my post full of ranting tonight will right any wrongs that have accumulated in my mind recently. It probably won't, but at least it'll make me feel better temporarily, as these posts often do. I haven't been writing a lot, and I've been songwriting/playing piano even less, but at least I know right now that it's not because of some absurd writer's block. It's because I have no time, a rather new development in the sense that it's always been a problem, but it hasn't been the only problem I've faced for a long, long while. But I'll get to that in due time. My weekend is far more interesting than my petty little personal problems. So without further ado, I will give to you
The Absolutely HorriblAmazing Thanksgiving Break of 2007!!! - Micro Edition Because I really don't think I'll be able to write much in this state.
Wednesday- So Wednesday I was supposed to leave for home at 9:00, bringing two of my dorm-mates to Poughkeepsie so they could catch their respective trains by 11:30 at latest. Of course, this doesn't happen; not even close. My parents don't end up getting here until 10:45, at which point we pack it up and book it for Poughkeepsie (40 minutes away, eep!). Of course, we don't have very good directions, so that got us even later than we were originally going to be. Somehow (miraculously), we got there by 11:36, my dad quietly seething at me for other people getting bad directions, and we run in. Unfortunately, the 11:30 train has already left (an American train...ON TIME? ON A HOLIDAY??? Of all the times...), but there was a 12:30 train, which the website didn't state. So they take that train and can still get to their respective changeovers because apparently everywhere BUT Poughkeepsie is being hit by massive Thanksgiving delays. So I get back into the car, get berated by my father, and I go home wondering why I decided to come in the first place.
Oh right, I have an Eagle Board of Review Wednesday night. That's why I decided to come home. So I come home, set my stuff down, and immediately run out to get my Eagle Scout board of review. ZOMGZ! I'll withhold the outcome until the end of this paragraph, you know, to make you curious and all. So I go to the board of review in a technically non-Class A uniform (Class A is the full deal, you need it to advance. I forgot a belt, which was concealed by the pair of pants I was wearing, thank goodness), with pink hair, painted fingernails and shaved limbs. I also fuck up really badly on a few questions, the most prominent one being this:
Q: "So, why do you want to be an Eagle Scout?" <--- An extremely important and relevant question...
A: "Um...I dunno. I don't really." <---An IDIOTIC answer, followed up by: "Well, no I mean I do want it, but I feel that I've done all the work--gotten all the merit badges and whatnot-- and I've furthered myself and my church by doing this project, so even if I don't get Eagle, I'll still feel that I've earned it." <--An equally idiotic justification.
Can you believe that I actually said this to the Eagle Board? I can't. But I go through the hour-and-a-half interview, leave the room for a bit while they debate, get pulled back into the room, and lo and behold...
I'm an Eagle Scout. Hell yeah!!!
But my night didn't end there; fuck no, not today! [/Fear and Loathing] From there, I went to Melissa's house (MK of Title of Radio Show fame) and met up with a bunch of friends that I'd end up hanging around with for a large part of the weekend. We walked around the development, went to Quick Chek and got snacks, then watched Snatch with my brand new computer's S-Cable! Whoever invented something thats sole purpose is pretty much to enable people to show stolen movies on a big-screen TV is my hero. The S-Video Cable is a miraculous invention, and Snatch is an amazing movie.
After those festivities (oh, I also cooked Tofu. Forgot about that part...), I went home and crashed at the bright and early hour of 2:30 AM. It was beautiful.
Day 1 Sleep--2:30 AM - 10:30 AM. 8 Hours
That's all I'm going to write tonight. I'm delusionally tired for reasons I'll divulge as the rest of this comes to fruition.
ohmygodineedsleep...
[Update 1 of Many]
So it's Monday. I'm not entirely rested, but I have caffeine in me, so that'll probably do the trick for a little bit. In the 15 minutes I have, I'm going to attempt to continue this little recap of mine, in order to better explain my current situation.
Thursday- Thursday was that one day...the day where you eat a lot of stuff, and a bunch of Native Americans saved the early settlers from dying one winter...umm, shit, it's the day before Black Friday. Yeah, you know the day I'm trying to talk about, I just keep forgetting its name. Whatever, it'll come to me eventually. So I had to spend the day with my family because, well, it was just the right thing to do. My day was incredibly uneventful: I played video games, I worked on homework a little bit, I wrote a little bit. Of course, nothing really productive was done...I couldn't have read more than 30 pages, and I doubt I wrote more than half a page. The larger portion of the day was binging myself on some Mass Effect.
For those of you not in-the-know about video games, Mass Effect is from the same people that made Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare. And, in the style of KotOR, it's incredibly open-ended. After the prologue, you start off with about 5 possible quests, and probably 5 different ways to accomplish each quest. Depending on how you go about these quests, you get more XP, different alignment shifts (Paragon vs. Rebel), different party members, or different powers/weapons. Put that on top of a giant solar system to explore (something like 50 randomly generated planets), tons of side quests, and nearly infinite character options, and you've got a game that will probably take me months to complete. My character, named Z'Omgz Shepard, is an Earth-Born human who is a ruthless marine that will do anything to get the job done. When the majority of his team died on a dangerous mission, he became rather jaded, and focuses only on the completion of his mission. He is fully trained in weapons, and also has a limited knowledge of Biotics (a combination of Magic and Force Powers). Character creation alone took me about half an hour. It's a mad fun game, and I'd even say that it's almost worth buying a 360 just to play it. Well, it and Rock Band, but that's a completely different story.
So I played Mass Effect, then had the large dinner gala with my family, and at this point, I realized something that took me three-and-a-half months to recognize: the only reason I really can't stand coming back to New Jersey is my dysfunctional family (Rephrasal: At the time, I thought this...). I just feel that when I come home from Bard, I'm taking a step back in my life, going back to a place that I was at, but don't want to be at ever again. My friends are cool (I thought), and Hackettstown isn't that bad of a place. It's my home that bothers me. Take the discussion at dinner, for example: we either talked strictly about me and my experiences at college/my new success as Eagle Scout or we talked about something I had no idea about, such as my brother's marching band career. The two sets of conversations were mutually exclusive; only one person was involved at a time...it was totally ridiculous. I couldn't relate to half the things that were said, so I couldn't respond, and I imagine that my brother had the same feeling the other half of the time. Another interesting topic of conversation during dinner was about thank-you notes. My grandmother inquired about what I was doing for thank-yous since my Eagle Project had finally reached completion. I explained to her that I'd sent hand-written thank you notes to the people who generously donated to my project, and that was it. She then asked didn't I want to thank my Scoutmaster or my Eagle Adviser? I said that no, I didn't, because there was no precedent for it, and I already thanked my Adviser for donating some carpentry material and time. She then asked if I had gotten any thank-you notes for working on another scout's project. I said no, and she asked if I had expected one, to which I scoffed out something to the effect of "God no, and I never will." Of course, this escalated into an argument which was partially my fault, but for chrissakes, it was about thank you notes! I mean, come on...
After being thoroughly disillusioned with my family and dinner, I retired to my room in order to organize myself, write a bit more, and maybe even work on homework. Or at least, that was the plan. I wrote for a bit, then discovered a few online games, which I indulged myself in, with the full intention of starting my "real work" at 11 PM, and I'd stay up only until 1 AM. Then Dan IMed me, asking if I wanted to do something like "Midnight Madness". I inquired as to what midnight madness was, and Dan replied that it was something like Black Friday, but it started at midnight. Places like Staples were doing it. Oh boy, did I ever! So I ran downstairs at 11, asking if I could go with Dan. Unfortunately, it was Thanksgiving (that's the name!), and the tryptophan had put everybody to sleep but me, the vegetarian. So I was going to sneak out, and leave a nice little note on my door saying where I was going. I know, I'm a genius...
So we go out, and I bring my life-bag with me. My life-bag has pretty much everything I'd ever need if I was stuck on a deserted island except for food. In it, there were 2 books (Lolita and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), my camera, my journal, my iPod, and my secret device which contains all sorts of contraband. Of course, Dan sees the device, knows what it is, and since he's never been high before, starts asking me about it. We discuss the pros and cons of these illegal drugs, and after arriving at the Staples in town--which was reportedly selling a 500 GB hard drive for 80$ (after various rebates)-- and seeing it closed, we began to wonder. What if midnight madness didn't exist? Dan wanted to drive to the nearby town of Rockaway to see if the larger malls were participating, but on the deal that if it didn't happen, Dan would smoke with me. So we go to Rockaway, and we see there are a lot of cars outside of Best Buy. However, upon closer inspection, it's revealed to us that midnight madness DID exist, but it was camping outside of stores, not shopping in them. In 30 degree weather with ridiculous amounts of wind at 1 in the morning, these people were tenting up outside of Best Buy so they could save maybe 25$ on Christmas shopping. Frankly, that's pathetic. I mean, I don't need to put up an argument to justify my position here; I think that the sheer number of Midnight Madness-induced colds, hypothermia and frostbite cases will speak for themselves. Fuck justification, I didn't do it, so I don't have to take the hit. I therefore turn the microphone to you, the reader, and I ask you: What in James' name would compel you to do something like that (If you participated, that is. If not, congratulations. You probably have a higher IQ than a rock.)
So since I was right, Dan and I didn't go directly home. No, we had other plans...plans that involved going to train tracks, then Dunkin' Donuts, then around town, meaning that I didn't get to bed until 3:00 AM! It was beautifully hazy.
Day 2 Sleep- 3:00 AM - 8:00 AM. 5 Hours Oops?
Friday- Friday was a fun day for me. Well, at least if you're the Marat de Sade... I guess what I mean to say is that it had its high points and its low points. I had to get up at 8:00 AM for a reason...and that reason was that it was Black Friday, the most important holiday America, nay THE WORLD, has ever known and will ever know. So of course, since the previous night (morning?) was a failure, I had to get up early and try again, this time with my friend Becca.
-blake
Okay, so here goes one of my first anecdotes. I'll try to make it a relative quickie, because I'd like to get a bit of sleep tonight after the horrible episodes I underwent today.
Today was supposed to be the best day of the weekend. I had all of my immediate homework done, a work schedule where I didn't have to wake up until noon, and a loving mother who was going to come up to Bard, visit me, and give me money/real food. What I wouldn't give to have any one of those things happen at any given time, let alone all within 24 hours of each other. Of course, as it's been said, the best laid plans of James Blake always go awry, and today's was no exception. I woke up from a semi-drunken stupor at about 10:30, and didn't feel the need to go back to sleep. That's right, in the first five seconds of my consciousness, I somehow destroyed one of the many beautiful events of my day: I didn't want to sleep in. I wasn't complaining at the time, but now that it's 12:30 AM, I'm starting to grumble inwardly, which might also be caused by a lack of food...
Anyways, I'm up at 10:30, so I decide to go get myself some breakfast at Kline. They have to have good food for parents' weekend, right? The whole desire-to-impress deal has to come into effect in the food, which is probably one of the most miserable items on campus. Yet again, wrong. After trudging 10 minutes in the grisly downpour that generally symbolized today, I got to Kline to discover they hadn't done shit about their food. It was still the same old shit, but they decided to put away some of their less delectable items, such as their "Tangy Tofu". It was the cream of the crap, so to speak. Being the genius I am, I decided not to waste my entire trip up by not eating, and I grabbed an entire bowl of Fruit Loops! After downing the part of this completely unhealthy breakfast with water-milk, I made the 10-minute trudge back soaked to the bone, and checked my e-mail.
At 12:15 PM, I realized that my mom had sent me an e-mail, in which she expressed her excitement at some of the parent/student activities going on that weekend. And then there was a but. There's always a but in these sort of things. In this case, the but was that she didn't want to drive five hours in the rain 'just' to see me, and that she'd come up some other time. At 12:16 PM, I realized that, of course, my dad had told her not to go, and, of course, my mom had complied like the feeble puppet she is. Let me clarify something here; I detest my family as a whole, and wish nothing less than their complete and total destruction. My father is a manipulative, lazy, greedy bastard who doesn't give a shit about anything or anyone but himself. My brother is a lazy idiot who spends more time playing video games then caring about the classes he's failing in his sophomore year of high school. And my mom, well, my mom's great. She cares, she listens, and she understands the things I choose to do...when she's not around my dad. When my dad has even one word to say about a topic, my mom doesn't care, turns a deaf ear, and castrates even my right to be heard in the family. Naturally, I was incredibly excited about seeing just my mother for the weekend; my dad (alas) had gotten caught up in yet another one of my brother's failed attempts to fill my shoes.
Then it started raining, and my dad just used it as an excuse not to see me. Of course, my brother can go be driven an hour each way to do a Scout thing that he'd just slack off during; dad's in charge of that. But let poor old mom get behind the wheel for 5 hours total to see little old me for 10 hours for the last time before Thanksgiving? 'Feh, let the bastard rot there' is my dad's general philosophy. I'm not joking, either. The night before I left for college, he literally told me that that night was the last chance I had to pack my bags and leave forever. That's almost word-for-word what he said. But enough about dad. I was more pissed that my mom had bowed to his will yet again, and in doing so, ruined my day. Everybody else at the dorm was doing stuff with family today, so I was going to be alone for the rest of the day if I chose to stay there. Alone in my room with nothing to do, because, like the genius I am, I got homework out of the way to see my mom. So at about 12:20, I quietly started plotting my revenge.
This revenge would manifest itself a lot sooner than I would ever have thought. At 12:23, my friend Dan started talking to me about a concert at his college. He commutes from home to Montclair State University, and is majoring in music education. The concert in question was called "Oc-TUBA-fest", and was a celebration of our favorite instrument, (you guessed it) the tuba. I responded to him with jealousy, saying that I'd give an arm and a leg to see that show. "Well, why don't you take the train down here, see it, crash at my place, and go back to Bard Sunday?" he queried. And so, at12:25 the dice were cast.
The plan was so: I would ask to get the last half hour/hour of my shift off so I could grab a 4:00 train into the city at 5:55, changeover at a 6:10 train, and get to South Orange at 6:45, where I would be picked up and go to the 8:00 concert with Dan. I ran like a madman through the rain to the gym to get in contact with the lifeguard who would take my shift, and after being soaked from head to toe and shivering, I had the shift off. I was going home, and I was going to bring pneumonia with me. It was supposed to be fantastic.
Of course, it wasn't. I packed, went to lifeguarding, got off, and eagerly rushed to get my ride to the train station. I got on the train, which was 10 minutes late, and got antsy around 5:40, when we pulled into Yonkers. We were still about 20 minutes off from Penn Station, and as a relative newbie to changeovers in the station, I had no idea where to go. I figured that a 15-20 minute gap would be fine, but with the current schedule, I'd be lucky to get a 5 minute gap. At 6:00, as we rolled through upper Manhattan, I had one hand on my cellphone and the other on my bag. The train got into the station at exactly 6:07, and I practically sprinted out and up the escalator to try and find a quick-ticket window and get my sad, sopping ass to Jersey. By some ill-founded miracle (what God in their right mind would help me?), the ticket machines were literally right in front of the escalator's top, and so was a train schedule. The Dover line, which went through South Orange, just started boarding, so I had to hurry my ass up. I muttered curses to myself to the amusement of the passersby while punching in factors of my journey, when a man walked up to me. He was a short-ish, but incredibly stocky black gentlemen who greeted me as I was putting my credit card in. After I'd fucked up the direction twice, he asked me if I had any money I could give him, to "help a brother out" (not being racist, that's the exact terminology he used).
I calmly explained that I was really late for a train as I got the credit card right, but he persisted. I finally caved. "How much do you need?" I asked impatiently, opening my heart and my wallet to him. "Ten bucks would be fine, man." he said calmly to me as I punched in the final details and waited for my ticket to print. "I only have six I can give, sir," I said, shelling out the only small change in my wallet. Unfortunately, I shelled out too obviously, and revealed a series of 20-dollar bills. Big, big mistake. "C'mon man," he said, taking an ID card out of his pocket. I flinched as his hand went in. "I just got out of prison, man. Did ten years, hard time. How about that twenty, man?"
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was being mugged through veiled threats in the middle of Penn Station as the soothing voice interrupted classical music on the PA to say "Last call boarding for the Dover line on Track 1..." And as my ticket dropped from the machine, I gave him the 20 and tried to suppress my disgust for the entire human race as he pounded my fist and said "Thanks, bro. You made a good choice." And, taking the twenty-six dollars I had foolishly given him, walked away.
Resignedly, I sprinted to the train, caught it, and went to South Orange. I had twenty dollars left to my name, but goddammit, I had made the train in 4 minutes, and I was going to see some amazing tuba antics. And see some amazing tuba antics I did, but nothing could prepare me for the hell that was the grand finale of my night. Dan neglected to tell me that he actually had a trombone lesson tomorrow morning, but he'd made sure to tell his parents who keep him on an incredibly taut leash. Lesson in the morning plus orchestra practice in the afternoon equals no friends over for the night. James can go sleep at his own house...or can he?
Dan drove me to my house in silence, where the lights appeared to be on and all appeared to be well. Alas, that was not the case. My bastard father was asleep in front of the TV, and nobody else was anywhere to be seen. I got as far as the sun-room as Dan pulled away, and then was confronted with the problem of locked doors. Great, everybody's sleeping, I'm locked out of my house, I've been mugged, and my knight in shining armor just drove out of my life in a '92 Toyota pickup. I'm on the last dregs of my battery as I type this, but let's just say the garage isn't as warm as the house could be.
What in any deity's name made me think that tonight would work, even in the smallest part? My mom's not going to be happy to see me; I'm just going to get bitched out for not telling them, losing my money, and wasting money on the train. Then I'm going to get bitched out for making them drive me back, because I sure as hell am not going to be allowed to take the train.
My message of the day to you: Don't trust your impulses. Ever. I don't think there's ever been a case, at least in my experience, where acting on your impulses has led to a positive outcome.
Also, the new Streetlight Manifesto album has apparently found its way onto the tubes. The link (links aren't illegal, yay!) is here. Enjoy, if that's your thing. I hear that it's really good, and really intense. Knowing Tomas and Streetlight, it'll probably make my top 10 list at the end of this year.
Until Sunday, when I'll have stories.
-blake.
