Happy Birthday?

As a kid, the countdown to my birthday was a long, drawn out event. I got excited when I realized that my library books would be due on my birthday, or after it. I got excited when the milk's expiration date was after my birthday, or when the calendar flipped over to August, and you could see the sixth with a big circle around it, with exclamation marks.

Now, my birthday doesn't have quite the same zest it once had. I had even forgotten about it until my mom called last night, saying that they're thinking about coming down and visiting me, and seeing if I was busy. I said I didn't have anything planned (I don't work on Mondays) and it took me a few moments to remember that, hey, I'm turning 23 in a week.

I'm not entirely looking forward to it. It's one thing to be a 22 year old college graduate who's futzing around, looking for a career, but that recent-graduate status is slowing turning into 'graduated last year.' I know that for everyone over the age of, say, twentyfive, the difference is barely noticable, semantic even, but it's kind of a big deal.

I don't really have a career, I work hourly. I don't have an achieved master status, which is kind of resulting in a half-identiy crisis slash quarter life crisis. Sure, I'm hoping to go to grad school next fall, but I can't really call myself a student anymore. I'm just someone else in the uninsured, paycheck to paycheck workaday grind. And it's not a whole lot of fun.

I don't know why, but the birthday is the big symbol for all of that. And poo on that. Longtime readers will note that my birthdays have always been shitty, from me getting into a car accident to developing food poisoning to my dad having a heart attack the day before. So I'm thinking about lying low and not celebrating my birthday, and not making the switch to twenty-three.

Or how my dad puts it "I've been turning thirty-nine for the past fourteen years!"

SuperFaggy

I'm not speaking to Initials at the moment. He doesn't know it yet, since I just decided not to speak to him about a half hour ago, and he's at work.

Last night I was called into work for about three hours, because someone went home sick and they needed someone to help out. While I was getting dressed and ready for work, Initials was lounging on my bed, watching a Simpsons rerun and pigging out.

As I bent down to give him a quick peck goodbye, he leaned up, spilling his Fanta on my bedsheets, and before he got a chance to grab it, it rolled down a fold in the bedspread and soaked the bulk of my bed.

I was running late, so I asked him to do a quick load of laundry: I left him the key to the laundry room, showed him where I keep a roll of quarters (turns out, it was not in my pocket nor was I happy to see him at the moment), and asked him to throw a few more things into the load: my towels and my jeans, which had not been washed for a while.

He agreed to do it, and I went to work. When I got back, the bed was made, the towels were dry and hanging on the rack, and my jeans were folded nicely and put on the little shelf thing where I keep them, and I was pleased. I didn't really have a need to put on any of the jeans that night, and so we went to bed. Wink wink.

So I woke up this morning when Initials did, and sent him off to work while I lounged in bed and half watched "Finding Nemo" while trying to go back to sleep. When I did finally wake up and get dressed, I got pissed.

All of my jeans had shrunk, to the point where I only have one pair that fits, and even then they're so tight I can barely fit my wallet in the pocket. They're not so tight that someone could tell that I was circumsized, but they are tight enough to distinguish the bulge between my pubes and my junk. They are super-faggy jeans, and they're all I have until payday on the 31st.



I'm super not pleased.

I probably will end up speaking to Initials, don't worry. That is, if I'm able to guilt him into paying for the Simpsons Movie tickets tonight.

Juicy!

I was sworn, repeatedly to secrecy, but I can trust you guys, right? I mean, you have to promise not to tell anyone. I mean it. Even though no one who reads this has any clue as to the identity of anyone I'm going to be mentioning, you still have to promise. It's just too good for me not to tell anyone, I can't be expected to keep a secret this delicious to myself. Ok.

Jenna and Matt have been fooling around.

I know! Incredibly juicy, right? You have to promise not to tell anyone. Pinky swear.

Memo to My Best Friend's Boyfriend:

If you are at a bar, and call your girlfriend slash my best friend slash my roommate starting August 15th, inviting us out because you foolishly are out of money until the bank transfers funds at 12:01am and you've started a tab for until then, it's a good idea to mention that the bar is having a white party. Well, not a real white party, but you know what I'm getting at. You can't even feign ignorance, since there is a big sign above the wall saying "White Party, Monday Night: Dress in all white and get 50% drinks" and white balloons are covering the ceiling, and all the bartenders are wearing white wigs, and they're only serving light colored drinks (aka no Coke as a mixer).

You might have been wearing a light grey polo shirt so you kinda fit in, but she was wearing a black tank top and I was wearing a dark blue button up shirt, and we were like the black holes of the party, the only ones not head to toe in white. And both of us have pure white ensembles at home, so that we might have blended well with the crowd and not stuck out like George Bush at a Mensa meeting, and we could have gotten our alcohol for cheap.

Sure, you may have paid for the drinks (and thanks for that again) but it's the principle of the thing.

Again with the Slightly NFW

All right. By now we all know the drill.

I read a hell of a lot at my new job-- at least a book per shift, and sometimes two. Other than the reading, my job isn't much to write about, and for the past week, neither has my social life.

Well, that's not true. I saw an advance screening of Rescue Dawn, which wasn't very good. It's basically just fortyfive minutes of the Viet Cong torturing Christian Bale, and then another hour and a half of Christian Bale trying to escape from the prison. Worst part is, when they torture him, they don't even take off his shirt.

It's not even hot torture, just historically accurate torture. As Stephanie Tanner might say, "How Rude!"

Anyways, instead of writing down a long laundry list of the 32 books I've read since the last time I did one of these posts (June 20th), I've been photoshopping the book titles over the naughty bits of cute guys, since sex sells. These are the last six books I've read (or rather, six of the last seven books I've read, since Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood wasn't really worth recommending).

The books I've read since Sunday:
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow


Sanctuary by Faulkner


Absurdistan by Gary Shtenygart


Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen


Midnight's Children by Rushdie


The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon



I recommend all of these, both the guys and the books.

3 and a half Random Facts

1. My new favorite expression is "That's a metaphor for my penis." Sure, it's simple and rude, almost like "That's what she said" or "Your mother," but I still like it. E.G. "He was eating a slice of turkey when the phone rang. The turkey is, of course, a metaphor for my penis."

2. I think Bob Dylan is the most overrated living artist in any medium.

3. A new Mac store opened in town this weekend, and because Initials is one of those iFanatics, we showed up early Saturday morning to stand in line in order to gawk and such. I got a tshirt and free popcorn, so I didn't mind. Once I got inside, I had two different computers crash on me within five minutes, while I was trying out different applications. I stumped a total of 4 Mac geniuses with the problems I had with their models.

And yeah, I felt sickly proud of it.


3 1/2. It's not really a random fact, but an interesting observation that all of the attractive people on NameMyVote are Democrats, and the ugly ones are more likely to be Republicans. Just saying.