I Had an Interesting Night

Big Red and I declare "mix-it-up" weekdays which basically means we drink after work. Yesterday was mix-it-up Wednesday. We went straight to Trinity where they have even awesomer specials on Wednesday. Specifically, half price all drinks. So Big Red and I are there chatting it up. When the marginal cost of another drink is basically negligible, you tend to drink more than you should. Well, we did just that. We left the place around 8:30 and I told her that I needed some brew dogs for the house. Conveniently there was a liquor store right there. Our purchases were the paradigm of classy- a 30 pack of Keystone Ice and a 40 of Olde English 800. When we stepped up to pay the cashier he asked, "Are you over 21?" Big Red answers "yes." Cashier responds, "ok" and rings up the purchase. Word is bond.
On the cab ride back to the house Red brought up a good point. She said something like, "You know, we're the only ones that keep it real. It's a Wednesday and we're sitting in a cab with Keyston and OE." True that, Big Red. True that. However, my life is more of an example of when keeping it real goes wrong.
We played some pong back at the spot and then watched American Gladiators. We both passed out in the living room. D Fo came back late and I think he put my Sox ticket on my face. Glorious. BR apparently woke up at 3am, set off the alarm on her way out, and made it back home. I guess D Fo got up and managed to disarm it.
Work today was awful. I swear to God every time I'm hungover I get killed at work. Which is what happens. Boo-urns.

Weekend Recap

On Thursday Big Red, K Ho, and I went to Poag Mahoney's (or something like that, I don't feel like looking up the real name) for drinks right after work. We saw someone who looked like J Tempo in 25 years. It was creepy. Drinks there were really expensive. Their "special" was 5 Coronas for 23.75. Yeah, great deal. BR and I then went up to Trinity where pints of Bud Light are $1.50. Deals like that are a rarity in Chicago. Plus it is non-smoking which is glorious. D Fo and B met us there.
I completely blew off work on Friday which was an excellent call. I took a cab home from B's on Friday and the cab driver had the weirdest thing playing. I assume it was an audio book of some sort. It was just these women talking about artificial insemination and picking sperm donors. It may have been the girliest shit I've ever heard. It's hard to explain what it was like. They would say in a soft, flowery voice "Mr. X's profile shows him as having a PhD and knowing 4 languages, but there was something about Mr. Y's essay responses that made me really drawn to him." I'm not doing this justice at all but suffice it to say it was really weird and was creeping the hell out of me.
B and I went to the Cubs-Cards game Friday afternoon. The weather was great. That is, the weather was great in the Sun. Our seats were in the shade and I was freezing my ass off. It wasn't too bad, though and I had a great time at the game. It was my first game at Wrigley and from a pure baseball perspective I can see how people hate on it. Half the fans were Cardinals fans, there were tons of empty seats, people showed up late, fans threw a bunch of stuff on the field when a call didn't go their way, etc. However, from a "fun" perspective it's pretty awesome. The atmosphere is pretty cool and there are a bunch of bars around the stadium.
We went to Sluggers afterwards and met up with a couple of B's friends. Good times were had by all.
Sean came over on Friday night and we just chilled pretty much. On Saturday we left for the Blue and Gold game around 830. Big Red was supposed to join us but she had a pretty late night Friday and couldn't make it. We parked a Holy Cross and walked to this tailgate our friends were having. We had this styrofoam cooler of beer that Sean and I had to carry there. I felt like it was the World's Strongest Man competition or something. That thing was pretty heavy and we had to walk a good couple of miles.
The tailgate and game were a lot of fun. The spring game is such a cock-tease though. Whenever something good happens you don't know if it's because the offense is good or the defense is bad. Plus the team holds back a lot. It's better than nothing but I'm ready for the season to start.
The weather was pretty good and I got moderately sunburned. Yay farmer's tan... I slept most of the way back home. Saturday night we didn't really do anything because we were all pretty exhausted. I subjected B to the Ali G movie but that was pretty much it.
The main negative of the weekend was that D Fo's car doesn't have tinted windows. People refer to this as "fish bowlin'" because everyone can see what you're doing. This is not cool.
I drank so much beer over these past 3 days it was ridiculous.
Let me know if I forgot anything of note.

Paraphrased II

"Our difficulties are directly proportional to our capital."
-Ma$e & P.Diddy

MIMS

The average kinetic energy of my molecules is high because I am capable of self-elevation and subsequent lateral movement. Your state of existence, however, is the inverse.

-Mims, paraphrased

Romantic Semantics

Through some conversations I've had recently at work I've noticed that there is a dearth of relationship terms and tiers. People throw around terms like "seeing," "dating," etc. without there being a common understanding as to what those terms means. They also seem to mean different things to different people. I'd like to take a stab at creating tiers and definitions that could be universally adopted to help clarify things. I'll try to make them really simple and really broad. These are previously used terms, but I'm assigning them definitions somewhat randomly.

"Going Out" - Actively going out on dates. No exclusivity.

"Seeing" - More serious than going out. There isn't "required" exclusivity, but a.) you don't want to date anyone else, or b.) you'd feel a little weird/guilty if you did go out/hook up with someone else.

"Dating" - This means you have a girlfriend/boyfriend. Typically I've used this along with "seeing," but I'm redefining things now. You are exclusive.

These terms and levels are not all-inclusive obviously. There can be "friends with benefits" and whatnot, but the above covers most normal relationships.

Obviously, my suggestions will never go into widespread use. But it would make things easier if they did.

While I'm at it, I think "hooking up" needs defined. When I was in hs hooking up meant sex. I still remember during my first few weeks at college I was in this convo with a bunch of girls and they're all talking about hooking up with all sorts of people. I was thinking "damn, this college shit is crazy." I later found out that this was ND and (whether for better or for worse) there wasn't much of this type of hooking up going down. So at ND hooking up means anything at or above making out. I use the ND version and propose this be used universally for consistency's sake.

And can somebody please comment at least for the sake of posting a comment? J Tempo is getting lonely. I know for a fact other people read this piece. Do it anonymously! Throw me a bone here!

Random Things

Screw you, Google. I was googling myself (doing a little self DD, as they say in the biz) the other day and searched "jskoff" because I use that as a username sometimes and it's in my email. Anyhow, the image below shows Google basically calling me a jerk off. =(


I had an excellent weekend. However, I can't think of much of note to write about. Well, at least nothing I can/should write here. But here are a few notes anyhow:

• Tempo wore sneakers to a Enclave on Saturday. He had to go back and switch shoes. He came back wearing my shoes.
• Saw "Blades of Glory" on Friday and went to a bar afterwards.

I feel very stressed/restless/anxious tonight. I get like this sometimes. I have a few things going on im my life right now that I'm really excited and/or nervous about. And me, being a headcase, am in the mood to freak out over said things. I guess that's only normal but I think I take it to a higher level than most people (or men, at least, heh). I need to learn to just calm down and be happy. Sorry for this doctor Phil moment. Again, strange mood.

D Fo just said "man, living in the desert sucks." Thanks for the insight. However he just made up for it by saying "You can't spell 'autoerotic asphyxiation' without USC."

Animals are stupid.

Dyanasty: 13-2 (10-2).

Drank #4

4. "Death Tastes Like Licorice, and Vice-Versa" Location: NYC. Date: Summer 2006

Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes the black jellybeans. It's always the last one in the jar and I can only assume that they are eventually either incinerated or shipped off to a 3rd world country to be used as a building material. So what assclown decided it would be a good idea to make a drink that tastes exactly like it? I'm talking about Sambuca, obviously, and it's probably my least favorite liquor.

The interesting thing about Sambuca is that you never buy it yourself and it allllways comes your way uberlate in the night. This happened to me in an especially bad way last summer. I was out with a bunch of people from work that I really didn't know at the time and we were out at some weird bar. I'm not really too drunk but my stomach had too much to drink, if you know what I'm saying. So I'm sitting there and all of a sudden a bucket-sized shot of Sambuca appears out of nowhere. I throw it back and then have to summon every ounce of chi and concentration I can muster to prevent from throwing up. This would've been devastating to my budding friendships and reputation. My life was almost wrecked by liquor(ish).

Drank #3

I apologise (yes, I'm in a British mood) for delaying the continuation of this series of "My Top 5 Worst of All Time Ever Drinks Ever." Let us recall #3, again in no particular order...

3. "Irrational Exuberance, Russia Style" Location: Somewhere in PA. Date: July 2002.
This story originates on a summer evening right before my friends and I were off to college. After eating at a local "Eat N Park" (aka Eat N Puke, Park N Eat) about 5 or so of us were chilling in the parking lot. One of us said, "You know, I have a bunch of alcohol left in my room and I can't leave it behind for my parents to find." You've got to remember that in high school booze is a highly valuable commodity that isn't easily obtained. It's hard to just throw stuff out. Given that we had only a few days left before school, we needed a drastic solution. Some Einstein suggested we drink during the day. Us other Einsteins thought this was a capital idea. We planned to meet at a friend's house around noon, get hammered, and somehow sober up and return back to our homes. Turns out all but 4 of us bitch out. Whatever, pass me the bottle.

A quick aside- It seems that high schoolers like their hard alcohol. I believe there are two reasons for this. One, it's easy to conceal. When you're underage stealth is key. Two, beer and whatnot is an acquired taste. I remember hating beer as a freshman in college. However, at these random parties all they had was natty light kegs- pretty much the ND staple. I remember just forcing it down and eventually I began to like it. Back to the story.

I think we had a bunch of booze at their place but all I remember having is Smirnoff vodka. Standard issue 80 proof. We sat down at their table and I began to throw back shots chased with Sprite like it was my job. I wasn't getting paid by the hour, I was getting paid by the ounce. And this rapid-fire, almost continuous inbibation is why I am classifying this experience as a "drink." After a while I start to feel really good. From a pure physical standpoint it was perhaps better than I've ever felt while drinking. I said "This is awesome. Why the fuck haven't we done this a million times before!" Well, young self, you will shortly find out.

Within 30 minutes I start to feel really shitty. I get these debilitating stomach cramps. They force me to sit on the couch and lean forward with my chest against my legs. This lessens the pain.

Let me give you an idea of how drunk I was and how much pain I was in. My one drunk friend, Pippet, for some crazy reason decided to take handfuls of ketchup and slap my back. I didn't even really care. All I cared about was keeping the cramps at bay and riding it out. So Pippet is just there sitting next to me and rubbing condiments on to my white shirt like a madwoman. All I could really muster was a faint "wtf, please stop" or two. Pippet just ignored me and refused to relent.

The fact that this all occurred in the middle of a weekday makes the whole scenario even more ridiculous. Through the grace of God Himself I recover from the cramps somewhat but am still feeling quite crappy. We eventually called our high school and left a voicemail which was the collective chanting of "we love lesbians!" This exemplifies the randomness of the day and the devastation of drink #3.

Picture Time

I uploaded some pics I took on my phone.

Here our deck that I climbed on to. This pic gives you a better idea what I was up against.

Here is Sadam. He's still alive, apparently.

St. Wasted's Day

I went home to PA on Friday. Here be the occurances:

• On Friday P-Diddy and I met our friend David Vogel at a bar named The Fox and the Hound. There were a couple chicks that came and sat right next to us and wanted to chat it up. We were pretty rude and didn't even bother to humor them for a minute. P-Diddy and I did, however, challenge Vogel to spit some game at the girls when he claimed that he had "mad game." Mockingly I dubbed him Milton Bradley because he has so much game.
  

• My friend Mack P had people over his house on Saturday. I brought over some Keystone and Guinness and we started drinking early (~5). We played pong throughout the night. My teams (including the infamous Team Hardcore- Me, P-Diddy, and the aptly named Cups) were 9-0. The last game was a pain. Our ghetto setup got changed somehow and moved from 9ft to ~10.5ft. I like 9ft the best because I feel like it fits my natural stroke. I'm fine with playing longer distances but the problem with the setup was the the ceiling was too low. Because I have a high release and put a lot of arc on the ball, I hit the ceiling multiple times and was forced to laser it. I somehow managed to hit a redemption shot and we won it in OT.
  
• Reading the above makes me wonder if I take pong too seriously. Wait, there's no such thing.
• Some random peeps from high school showed up. They brought 40s. I grabbed an OE and it was all downhill from there.
  
• We went to Tom's Diner really late. I for some reason ordered a ton of food- the "country breakfast," and 2 orders of bacon and 2 orders of eggs. That's like 6 eggs plus a bunch of other stuff. I didn't mean to order this much. There was some confusion in the loudness/dunkedness. The waitress was being a bitch and claimed that I would never eat all of that. This pissed me off and I started to pump myself up so I could eat it all. I mean, seriously, what kind of waitress mocks you for ordering a lot? Doesn't that help her? Good Lord. When the food comes I realize in 3 bites that I have no chance of finishing. My friends help me out and I still can't finish it. All of the booze and this huge egg sandwich that Mack P made me was just way too much. All of that food did sober me up pretty well, however.
  
• When we get back to Mack's everyone is gone and the door to the other half of the door is locked. I break in with a credit card to get my jacket. I learned later that it was locked because someone was in there with their lady friend. Luckily my timing was good.
• P-Diddy was semi-macking on this one girl that showed up. However he was cockblocked by one of our old schoolmates. He was not happy.
• I went on facebook and went nuts. I may have called one of my old college friends a "dumb bitch" on her fb wall. This was not good. Facebook should require a breathalyzer.
• Somebody stole Mack P's stove's knobs. This was not cool.
• Late in the night Vogel was sitting in a chair. I went nuts and started to kick out the posts below the seat that held the chair together until it collapsed beneath him.
• I woke up with so many scratches on me. My elbow was all scraped because I fell up the stairs. I also had scratches all over my forearm and hands because I was playing with "Balls", which is one of Mack P's rabbits. Yes, I was playing with Balls.
• While we are out at Tom's I was in one of my belligerent smack-talking modes. I kept calling people proletariats or "proles".
• Also, fireworks were set off randomly.
• Team Dynasty is 8-0 (5-0).
  

Rekord Keapin

• Friday my coworker Kimbo had a charity drink-a-thon. $25 for 3 hours. Naturally, many of us became over-served.
• When I walked Big Red out to a cab I was carrying a half-gallon of milk. So picture me chillin at a street corner chugging a large container of milk at 4 am. Ridiculous.
• 4/5 in beer pong. However, we were 4/4 in games remembered.
• We had a 3-person dance party in front of the TV way late at night for absolutely no reason other than that we were drunk and immature. P-diddy danced so hard that he ripped his pants. Now that is intense. The rip was seriously over a foot long on the inside of his leg.
• The loudness of our party somewhat angered D. He came down at one point in the night and said, "I'll save you 2 hours. Big Red is gonna scream 'whoooo!', P-diddy is gonna say that his pants have a hole, and JD is gonna be doing the robot and poppin' and lockin'." The sad thing is that he was completely correct.
• I determined a new way of living and decision making- WWHBD. I.e., what would Humphrey Bogart do? More than likely he would bogart that shit.
• Went to Jack's on Halsted on Saturday. Was awesome.
• ND got fuckin screwed today with the shitty NCAA tourney draw.
• I created a linear equation for evaluating females. I'm not going to post it but if you inquire I may be able to explain and/or show it to you.

Mr. Jones

I recently found out Mike Jones is coming out with a movie. Let me guess the plot: At the beginning hoes didn't want him. As the movie progresses he becomes hot. The conclusion is hoes are all up on him.

The names have been changed but the problems are real

Just as a note, I'm beginning to change the names of the people in all of my stories regardless of how devatasting I deem the entry. I've generally done this but haven't been consistent. In basically all cases you can ask me and tell you who it was. Also, the names will change from story to story. Just FYI.

Weekend

Just for record keeping purposes:

• Friday one of my coworkers held a house warming party. It was a lot of fun. We chilled at her apartment then went out to a Karaoke bar near where I used to live. One of my friends was a little tipsy and people kept giving her drinks. P-diddy (one of my friend's nick name) and I took the initiative of taking her drinks and drinking them. The problem with this was that a.) I ended up drinking some weird girly drinks and b.) I got drunker than I wanted to. I wanted to limit my intake b/c I had a "hot date" at noon on Saturday and needed to have my ish together.
• At the bar P-diddy did the whole "hit the beer bottle to make it overflow" thing to our friend Mark. Mark thought that, for some reason, if he put his thumb on top of the bottle that it would prevent any from coming out. However, he learnt quickly that the pressure was too much to handle and a stream of beer flew 8 feet in the air and doused some girl at the bar. It was devastating and I quickly ran from the scene. The scene was reminiscent of the part in Super Troopers where Farva gets wasted and sprays beer all over the place while screaming "Farva's number one!" repeatedly. We made sure to tell Mark he's number one.
• My one friend kinda-sorta almost got in a fight with a bouncer. That would have been interesting.
• S Dot came over on Saturday. The usual hilarity ensued. We drank a bunch of OE and played pong. We then went over to Mike's house to a party. Since I started drinking at like 3, I was hurting pretty bad and had to hold off drinking for a while. I felt like clowning it up that night so I was dancing quite a bit. Quite ridiculous.
  

Placeholder

This is reminding myself to write an entry on HPT. Don't have time now.

I would just like to express that I am down with that street vernacular, yo.

Don't be all insolent and shit up in my countenance, or I will bust a cap in your person. Pursuant to said policy, all haters will have to chill thier roll.

Even the blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes...

...and sometimes, out of pure dumb luck, he finds two.

Interesting Night

After work I went out with some work peeps and I almost busted a devastating joke. It went like the following. Female person who shall remain nameless: "I think I'm going to take the L home today. I'm not used to riding the train." I was about to say, "Yeah, you're used to a train being run on you!" Had I said the above, it would've been disastrous. And amazingly hilarious. Everyone there would've gone home and told their friends about it. Damn you tact.

Early Adopters

My friends and I were all about ghost riding before ghost riding was cool. Remember that.

Nanner

Today I replaced my friend/coworker's phone handset with a banana when he was out. I then called him as soon as he entered his cube.


I was going to buy a shirt with the above on the front but a.) it's somewhat insensitive (I'm not that immature these days) b.) I don't look good in black shirts, and c.)19/20 people wouldn't get it. However, it's very fucking humorous.


Gallent from Highlights is a smug bastard.


I thought of the worst. alarm clock. ever. On weekdays, it awakens its victim by playing a "Cha-Cha Slide" lyric. Specifically- "Go to work." Not only does it play a part of one of all time's worst songs, it commands and mocks you by telling you that you need to go to the office. You're gauranteed to shoot youself.


Since when did the word "nasty," as in "good at something," appear in the common vernacular? I missed the memo. Damn PC Load Letter. I would appreciate comment on this.