Random Observations

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

It's actually almost done this time, but I figured I'd post a preview-type thing to play off of what some people have asked about:

 

WILL Patrick and Erica see each other?

WHAT will happen between them?

WILL Patrick reveal what he wears to bed?

HOW will the members of the board take this news?

 

All this and MORE revealed in PART III!!!

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

 

EDIT: And it's LONG. I'm already at 4,836 words, and the day is only mostly done.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Once again, for reference:

 

You people had damn well better appreciate this. I hate having a good memory. Took me all afternoon and evening on and off to type this up.

 

Part IV will be up sometime tomorrow later in the night.

 

6,451 words. Enjoy!

 

2:10? It was only 2:10? I just went to sleep!! The air conditioner was so damn powerful that I woke up from almost being frozen solid. Times like that when I regret my night attire. I turned the air conditioner off, turned my CD player back on, and went back to sleep. I always need some kind of noise(like music) to put me to sleep. I woke up again at, of all times, 3:16. This time was prompted by me being too warm now, as opposed to freezing. I wished my body would just make up its mind as I went back to sleep again. Woke up at 4:30. Dammit, I shouldn’t have drank half of that Coke bottle, even though there was no real reason for me to not be tired, considering what little rest I got on Tuesday night. I remembered I’d forgotten to take my Benadryl, which is what usually knocks me out. I took my usual three and tried to go back to sleep. My watch beeped to signal it was 5:00 now, and I realized then that there was no way in hell I was getting back to sleep. I turned on the lights and wondered what I could do to pass the time until the sun came up and I headed into town. I downed some more Coke(I had the bottle on ice), since I’d actually need it now. Around 5:20 I turned on the local news to see what the weather was going to be like, and, much to my dismay, saw that I couldn’t really wear my jacket that day. I made myself presentable and went to the exercise room of the hotel after watching some of Sportscenter, just to pass more time, as I planned to wait until the hotel’s restaurant opened up for breakfast at 6:30.

 

I got into the room around 5:50. Obviously, I had the place to myself. They had weird(at least to me) versions of workout machines. Things like the bench press and leg press and such had a separate set of weights for each arm or leg. As I was setting the leg press machine, someone else, a middle-aged dude, came in. I thought I was the only person insane enough to be doing this at this hour. He got onto an exercise bike as I warmed up and stretched and stuff. Much to my delight and surprise, my legs are stronger than I thought. I managed to get 590 pounds up. I also found out my left leg is stronger, despite me being right handed. My right arm was stronger in the bench press though. I did what is supposed to be the average, that being one’s body weight plus ten pounds. I weigh 175 and got 190 up, so I guess I got an extra five. Go me. I would have done more, but the dude being in the room creeped me out for some reason, especially when he kept watching me. I went back to my room to get dressed at 6:15. Something made me not want to wait for the restaurant, so I packed my stuff together and headed for the Metro, but not before I brushed my teeth and stuff.

 

The previous morning as I packed, my grandmother tried to tell me that my toothbrush was too worn or something. She must have taken it out of my bag, because it wasn’t there when I went to look for it. Okay, I said to myself, I’ll just go buy one from the hotel store, they had all the amenities I’d need in there. The hotel store didn’t open until 7. Once again, I was impatient to get into town, so I went back to my room and did what any other rational person would do, and that’s brush my teeth with my index finger. IT WORKS, PEOPLE. Of course, past the initial smearing of paste, you have to drink a cup of water and swish it around, but it still worked.

 

I was in a hurry because I made the mistake of listening to my grandmother. She told me there were still tours at the White House, despite my insistence to the contrary. I doubted they had tours of the home of the leader of the United States now that we were at war with Terrorism, especially since our Terror Alertness Level or whatever they’re calling it was on High. Still, I listened to her anyway(because I really wanted to see it, dammit). The policy for tour tickets and such was that during the summer you went to a certain place for tickets, but otherwise you had to show up at the East Gate and people were let in on a first come, first serve basis. I figured getting into town around 7 would lock it up for me, so I headed to the Metro. I got off at Federal Triangle instead of Smithsonian now, because I thought it was the closest to the White House(Metro Center is actually). I walked in the direction of the place, but it was hard to find since so many streets were blocked off around it and the amount of greenery blocked any chance I had of actually seeing it. I eventually found it and asked a pair of security guards near the East Gate when they started letting people in. They told me there were no more tours. Greaaaaat. Here I am in Washington DC at 7:30 in the morning with nothing to do whatsoever.

 

I headed toward the Washington Monument, because tickets(which I knew damn well were still being given out) became available at 8, and it would probably take me that long to walk there. I actually ended up getting there around 7:47 or so, and sat down on a bench to wait. Some guy fed the squirrels. Another very frightening old man did his jogging stretches across the paved walkway RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. It was bad enough his shorts were so short you could see his whitey-tighties underneath. It was pleasant sitting there for those few minutes waiting. A little chilly, but still very nice. More and more joggers appeared, ranging from healthy young men to old people who were really just bounce-walking. They weren’t quite annoying... yet.

 

I made sure to sit facing away from the monument so its sheer mass and perfection wouldn’t freak me out again. Finally, someone showed up to man the ticket kiosk. He didn’t open the little curtain. Then a second dude showed up and did open the curtain, and promptly told us all to go to the other side of the kiosk. Here is where I encountered another rare mean person. I asked the man for one ticket for 1:30 that afternoon. Reasoning behind this was that I’d been up there in the morning before, but the sunrise disrupted the view of the East and thus made the picture of the Mall and Capitol from up there look awful. The man barked at me to speak louder. I meekly asked for a 1:30 ticket again. He grunted and gave me one, and NO POBO!!!ed my Have a Nice Day. I figured that while I waited to go into the Monument, I’d check out the National Gallery. Took me a good half hour to walk to it from the foot of the Monument, and I saw that it didn’t open until 10. Fudge. Okay, it would be 9 before I got to the Capitol, so I’d go look at that instead. I can walk around in the Capitol for hours, it’s just so freaking huge and purty. Guardrails blocked off the West stairwells, and there was a fence around the building itself, so I figured I’d just go around to the East entrance and head in that way. Typically, I couldn’t get in. They’re building a Capitol Visitor Center, to be completed in 2005. This necessitated the fencing off of the entire East side of Capitol hill. I asked a security guard if they were still letting people into the Capitol, unlike the White House. Smart ass responded to me saying “please tell me they’re still letting people in here” with “okay, I’ll tell you that, if it makes you happy.” He said there were tickets being given out for tours now, but they were on the Southwest side of the building, which he delighted in telling me was “allllllllll the way over there.” No, I didn’t need to hear that at all. It’s about 9:15, and since I was forced to walk around the Capitol grounds, I figured a stop into the Library of Congress would be nice. After all, it was after 9, and as far as I know, government buildings are open after 9.

 

I walked into the Public entrance and in the direction of the Public entrance inside. The guards at the metal detector asked me who I was. I said I was there to see the Library. They said there was a tour at 10:30, to come back then. I left and sat outside at one of the tables near the street to rest my feet, which were really starting to hurt for some reason. How absurd! I wanted to walk around by myself in the Library, not with some group!! After sitting there for a few minutes, a slew of Congressional Pages came out of the Library. I was almost a page myself. Fucking Academic Team coach kept me from doing that too. She always had the ear of my grandmother and thus used her to keep me from doing things that would be deleterious to the team, like going to be a page for a month or however long it was. I would have been a damn awesome page too. Anyways, they all looked at me with disdain for some reason. Guess they didn’t like Tennessee. I was wearing one of my Tennessee hats and one of my Tennessee shirts. I almost got up and beat the shit out of one who literally made a disgusted face while looking at me. Little prick. I’d swing his scrawny ass around by his standard-issue tie and throw him into traffic. You could tell that even in this somewhat nerdy job, there were still the popular ones. The sole hot girl in the group had a cluster of guys following her around, each one taking a turn to say something to her, as if they were popping in and out of a bush to fire at someone.

 

I figured they were headed for the same entrance I had to go into, so I followed them once they were far enough to not notice me. I found the entrance, but there was a sign up saying that you needed a special ticket to get into the House gallery. I already knew this, and I didn’t want to sit in the gallery. I wanted to go to the Rotunda and stuff. I saw the general tour tickets were closed for the day. In short, the last hour of walking was pointless. The security guard had warned me that the tickets were probably gone anyway. I should have listened to him.

 

So I started going back down the Mall, except on the South side this time. I happened upon the Air and Space Museum, but it didn’t open until 10, and it was 9:30. I looked around for somewhere I could eat something or get something to drink, preferably something that would give me a kick of energy since I knew I’d need it. No eateries, but a small coffee shop-ish place was sitting on the West end of the Air and Space museum. I looked at their menu, and a cappuccino appeared the most appealing. For some reason, I forget that cappuccino tastes like shit, except it’s hot, so it’s hot shit. As I waited for the beverage to be made(before I remembered that it tasted awful), some guy asked me if I went to Tennessee, making him the second person that day(one of the White House guards had asked me also). Rather demoralizing to tell people I didn’t go there. It took me a half hour to drink my hot shit. The cafe and the tables were in the shade, and when a wind would come up it felt like it was 40-something. Refreshing, but unexpected. While I waited for my hot shit to turn into drinkable shit, I wrote FO SHEEZ~! on a page of my notebook, intending to take a picture of me holding FO SHEEZ~! up next to some monument in a picture and put it up here on the board, as well as writing www.thesmartmarks.com and taking a picture of that too. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a scanner, so the act was pretty futile.

 

I finished my (now cooled off) shit and went back to the front of the museum. It took a while to get in because of the security checkpoint at the door. There was really only one reason I was in there, and that was the Einstein Planetarium. I love planetariums, even if when they go all black and show just tiny speck-like stars I have another Washington Monument-like freakout. I think big things just scare me. The vast expanse of space terrifies me. Anyways, it was $7.50 per ticket for the planetarium, and I saw the 10:30 show. Only 20-25 minutes long, but was damn good. The soundtrack ruled too. Techno pulsed as the show took the viewer through the valleys and canyons of Mars. After it was over, I kinda hung around a little bit before leaving the museum at 11. It’s the one I’ve seen EVERYTHING in, and it was starting to look a little crowded in there. Erica tells me they’re going to move it out to some place near Dulles International. I think they need to. There were planes almost stacked on other planes in there.

 

Across the Mall I walked to the National Gallery, and boy did it warm up while I was in the Air and Space Museum. The National Gallery had the toughest security, making me take off my ring, watch, bracelet, hat, check my bookbag in, and belt. I told the people manning security checkpoints during the whole trip that my belt would set off their metal detectors, but they still acted surprised when they went off. I didn’t mind the security at the National Gallery so much except for the bracelet part. That thing is hard as mofo to put on by myself, and I usually need help to put it on. That’s why it had been on my arm for five months before that day. It only took me ten minutes to put it on, and I was ready to wander around the National Gallery finally.

 

I naturally gravitated toward the Neo-Classical section, since it is my favorite school of art, along with Romanticism. I almost fainted upon seeing a David painting of Napoleon in his study. There was a tremendous Ashcan school collection there as well. Lots of Bellows paintings, which I admire for their vitality and gritty qualities. I made my way downstairs to the East/West Building concourse, the East building being the Modern Art building. The concourse had the cafeteria within it. I had chicken strips, fries, and a SIERRA MIST~! for $7.40! Insanity!!! I sat near the window that had the triangular waterfall effect outside. One thing you’ve gotta say about I.M. Pei, he loved him some triangles.

 

By now, I had acquired a mean limp from how much my right foot specifically was hurting from walking. Some woman looked at me funny. I think an old person thought I was making fun of them.

 

Into the Modern Art Museum the moving walkway took me. There was some special Egyptian exhibit going on that I didn’t care to go into. I don’t understand why Egyptian stuff is always shoved into an art museum instead of some kind of history museum. The reason the Egyptian materiel was in the MODERN Art museum was because the Modern Art museum also held special exhibitions, like a Matisse cutout exhibition I didn’t go into either. I discovered as I walked around that museum that I’m developing a great appetite for Modern Art. I used to deplore it for being minimalistic and lacking actual talent going into it, but for some reason, I appreciate it much more now. One piece of sculpture was on the floor of the entrance to the Modern Art wing, and it was a bunch of stones arranged to look like a big filled-in circle. The name escapes me at the moment, but there were people standing around it, holding each other’s hands. I thought it may have been some whacked-out Christian group at first, but it was just a tour group with the guide explaining the function of such an arrangement of stones.

 

It was about 12:15 when I left the National Gallery, and I sat beneath a tree next to the Mall to relax my feet before I started the walk to the Washington Monument for my 1:30 sojourn into the obelisk. The walk would take a half hour, so I rested for fifteen minutes before I started the walk. I watched a shirts v. skins game of Ultimate Frisbee on the Mall, and tried to avoid getting trampled by two older men who were practicing their own frisbee technique beneath the trees. One was just throwing and catching normally, the other was practicing special catches and throws. I’d like to note that Clinic’s Walking With Thee and Radiohead’s Kid A provided perfect background noise for walking and taking breaks.

 

At 12:30, as difficult as it was to leave the downright delightful atmosphere of the Mall, I began my walk back to the Washington Monument. Here is where my annoyance with joggers hit its peak. It’s the middle of the day. DON’T YOU HAVE A JOB OR SOMETHING ELSE TO DO???? Even worse are the ones who tell me they’re coming up on me. This would be considerate if they were on a bicycle, but they’re a 50-something year old man who’s jogging only slightly faster than I’m walking. “On your left!” I felt like turning around and clotheslining them. Maybe the brief surge of adrenaline would help me forget about my foot pain. Maybe drop my bookbag and USE THE KNEE on an oncoming jogger. Why are the men’s shorts skimpier than the women’s??? You could tell the seasoned joggers from the wimps because the real ones wore, you know, REAL SHORTS. The jabronis who were just starting out wore the ones that had the absurd split in the side of the leg and were usually neon.

 

At 1:00, I reached the hill on which the Washington Monument stands, and I was rather parched, so into the refreshment booth I went. Another SIERRA MIST~! and I was good to go. A lot of pigeons were around the tables at which people ate and drank, and these birds are fearless. The birds of Washington DC should be used in the War On Terrorism. These birds will walk up to a person and ask for, nay, DEMAND food. One particularly mean man tried to stomp on the birds when they went under his table. A middle-aged couple sat at the same picnic table I was. They may have been annoyed by how loudly I was playing my Club Nation America album, but it wasn’t that loud, so I doubt it. Maybe they just didn’t like my appearance, damn Tennessee haters. Straws and lids aren’t allowed on the Mall due to litter concerns, so it took me just long enough to finish my SIERRA MIST~!. About 1:25 I walked up the hill to the monument and got in the 1:30 line. Much to my dismay, the middle aged couple was going up at the same time as me. They chattered with a Park Ranger Volunteer who was way too stupid to wear an official uniform of any kind. But I’ll get to that later. The other people in my cluster of the line(since groups of eight or nine are sent up at a time) included three Germans, two guys(one with a lot of piercings) and one girl, myself, the middle-aged couple, the retarded Park Ranger, and some other people I can’t remember that well, they were college aged.

 

People were kicked out of line because they didn’t understand that you needed a ticket with the correct time on it. People with times as late as 4 were showing up in the 1:30 line. There was a Barney Fife-ish Park Ranger conducting the line and people going into the Monument. I almost wanted to act like Wakko from Animaniacs(the best animated show of the 90s) and scream “Don Knotts!” As my cluster of people was allowed to go into the monument, we were stopped. There is now a small room built onto the monument for security purposes. It has metal detectors and X-ray machines and stuff, the usual. It was during this waiting outside the building period that I discovered one of the German guys was really a girl. Hey, she had short hair, a load of piercings, and really loose clothing, sue me!

 

More security hijinx, as guards once again NO POBO!!!!ed my telling them it was my belt causing the detector to go off. Our little group of people sat in the lobby of the monument, waiting for the elevator to take us up. I actually wanted to go on the stairs so I could see the different dedicated stones and stuff, but I guess they don’t let people onto them anymore. The stairs would have killed me anyway. Since the Washington Monument was built before air conditioning was invented, they had big fans keeping the interior cool. For some reason, the Germans(especially the she-male) were enamored with the big fans, taking pictures of the fans, posing with the fans, hugging the fans, and so on. I thought maybe they were just joking, but even with my menial knowledge of German, I knew they were just plain dumb. The sad part was that I had to move for their fanfest. The fan was next to the life-sized statue of Washington that stands in the lobby, and I was getting a picture of it.

 

The elevator finally showed up, and the ranger inside told us the various facts about the structure, and actually caused a near-panic from the Germans by saying it held itself up with its own structure. They thought that there wasn’t any mortar or anything holding the stones together. I was the only person who laughed at the quasi-jokes the ranger made. We got to the 510 foot mark and disembarked from the elevator, and, just as always, the view was tremendous. I managed to get a picture of each direction except the West pretty easily. For some reason, everyone wanted to look out of that window. It was in the next ten minutes or so that I encountered the most enraging and exasperating cases of human retardation of the whole trip.

 

FIRST CASE: Lo and behold, there was a big fan up here too! More pictures of the FAN~!

 

SECOND CASE: A nine year old punk who literally shoved me out of the way so he could get a video shot out of the Western window. This little bastard thought he was some kind of tour guide, as he described everything he saw with the camera using “Ladies and gentlemen” and crap like that. Really expensive camera too. His father shoved me out of the way too. I guess he wanted to be close to the genesis point of his son’s future in documentary filmmaking. Here’s something I don’t get: why bring a video camera? The sights of Washington DC are pretty much all static objects that don’t move very much.

 

THIRD CASE: The middle aged couple and the “Ranger” (read: volunteer stooge with a uniform) then bump me out of the way as soon as I try and line up a picture when the kid leaves. They look at the pictures above the window from 1920, 1950, and 1999 that are posted to show how the city has changed. The Ranger looks at the picture and looks out the window, then repeats the motion. She then say something that gives me a conniption fit still: “Wait a second, that isn’t here now, how could it have been there then?” The middle aged couple also wondered the same thing. THEY HAD NO CONCEPT OF A PHOTOGRAPH.

 

FOURTH CASE: Remember the kid and his father? Well, here comes mom and grandma! Mother comes over to admire the view, exposing her Southern-ness immediately(“My gawd, lookit that view!”). She then looked down to where a large American flag had been rolled out the previous day, but it was being rolled up now. She panicked, and went to find her mother. “Momma! You gotta see this!” As she ran off, I tried to get my picture, but right before I got the shot, here comes “momma,” covered in makeup and sounding even more hick-ish than her daughter. “Oh mah lawd, they taking the flag ‘way!” she exclaimed after butting me out of the way. “Can you see?” she asked me, and I nodded , because I could see. I couldn’t see out of the window, but I could see.

 

I am well aware there are two windows on each side of the monument, but the other West window was occupied by another couple. I finally got my picture and went downstairs to the 490 foot level to catch the downward elevator. The big screens were still in the Ellipse, but no one was watching them anymore. Rather depressing, and the last thing I saw from up there before I went down to the elevator. Here I ran into more idiots.

 

FIFTH CASE: A man saw a special on D.C. monuments two years ago, and proclaimed himself an expert. Among his earth-shattering facts was the Washington Monument having its groundbreaking in 1783, and no one really knows when it was completed, but the various people in the group ventured that it was completed anywhere between 1850 and 1985. Never mind the fact that there was information about the monument all around them, as this was the section meant to actually memorialize the man it was built for. To these stunades, it was just a big observation deck named for George Washington.

 

Elevator comes, down we all go, a French couple next to me feeling each other up and talking in a sultry manner until I’m about to scream at them to get a damn room. I decide to head back to my hotel. It’s about 2:40 in the afternoon, but I’ve been on the go for the last eight hours. My feet are absolutely killing me now, and just to screw with me further, the Metro doors in my car DIDN’T OPEN at my stop. A very attractive Asian girl and I looked at each other and said “what the fuck?” at the same time. Same as what happened the day before, Got off at the next station, headed back. I limped into the hotel, and asked if the mall Erica had told me about was close to the Metro station in the area. The helpful dude at the front desk pulled out a map and I saw it was virtually on top of the Metro station. I thanked him and resolved to go later.

 

For now, I went up to my room, threw my shoes off, and relaxed. I called home and no one answered, so I left a message. I then fished Erica’s phone number out of my wallet and called her. We spoke for an hour or so while I watched Canadian Bacon on HBO. We set up how we’d arrange our meeting the next day, and decided on her meeting me at the Vienna/Fairfax Metro station at 4. From there, we didn’t really know. Not much chatter of any real consequence. Eventually it became painful to hold the phone up since I’d had my bookbag on all day and my shoulders were killing me. I reaffirmed how good the mall was one more time before I decided to go to it, and she said it was good, and that was good enough for me. We looked forward to seeing each other. In a nice little twist, my demented brand of humor and gutter mind gradually rubbed off on her when we somehow got on the subject of flavored shampoo. Don’t ask, I don’t know either. Maybe it was flavored soap. I can’t remember, it was flavored something. I suggested that it’d be a way to make going downstairs a bit more pleasant for guys, and she said something that made me cringe about plugging up the works down there.

 

Like I said, it actually became too painful to hold the phone any longer, so I had to say goodbye and hang up. It was 5. I rested for another half hour and then put my shoes back on to head out. No bookbag though. This was a mistake since I had to ride the Metro in silence, but I couldn’t carry that thing around anymore. The Metro ride was uneventful except for the sheer number of people on the trains at 5:35 in the afternoon. Finally, I reached my destination:

 

BALLSTON!!!

 

Yes, the birthplace of the name for the stuff we won’t discuss. The mall was the Ballston Commons Mall, and according to Erica, it ruled all. It ruled so much, I couldn’t find it. They had managed to make a mall look like a normal building, with a very small sign above one door saying “Ballston Commons Mall.” On the streets in this VERY nice suburb of Arlington, various vendors tried to sell me watches, sunglasses, rings, hats(some of which I considered buying), and anything else you can think of. The Ballston Commons Mall was indeed impressive visually, even though its elevator system was under renovation.

 

By the way, a motto for Washington D.C. and surrounding areas: “Always under construction!”

 

The place looked great as I said, but the store selection wasn’t all that great. You think three floors of stuff would yield something nice, but nope. I finally came across a Suncoast Motion Picture Company, but found their stock of anything I liked to be lacking sorely. There were three nerds at the counter discussing Anime. I like Anime too, but these were high-quality nerds here. I knew without looking that one was fat, and another had too much facial hair than possibly looked good on him. Sure enough, I was right. They had some nice DBZ shirts on sale for $9.99, but I didn’t want to disrupt their conversation or anywhere near them with any kind of Anime-related merchandise. Fye was literally one store down from Suncoast, so I went there next.

 

THERE WERE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE DANCE SECTION!!! PRAISE BE TO LARGE METROPOLITAN AREAS!!! Sorry. I was just really happy. The problem with picking out a good Techno or Trance album is you don’t know what 95% of the work on the album sounds like on a consistent basis. I decided not to buy anything since I couldn’t decide between roughly twenty different albums I wanted. I left Fye and looked for a clothing store I might like. I saw two with promising names, but they turned out to be mostly FUBU and Enyce type materiel, which I really really don’t fit with. So no freak clothing stores. I happened upon an Internet kiosk that charged a dollar for five minutes. What the hell, I wasn’t going to buy anything that day, so I popped a fiver in and checked my mail and how the boards were doing. Some people may remember me coming on to make one post in the DJ Jeff Hate Thread. I mostly just looked around the different boards and then headed off to check my mail, of which I had none. I left with four minutes left on the money I’d put in, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I looked for an arcade to dump some money into, and found one. NO SKEE-BALL????? Argh. They had a DDR-ish game where you had to wave your hand in certain areas to correspond with dance steps. I guess it’s DDR for the gamer who doesn’t want to get sweaty. Nothing in the arcade really grabbed me by the nuts and said “PLAY ME!!!” so I just said “NO POBO!!!” to the change machine that was beckoning me and walked out. Back to Fye I went, because I came here to BUY SOMETHING, DAMMIT. I decided on The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells(which I had every song of on my computer, but I like buying the album anyway) and This is Trance 2.0. I told the guy at the counter(who looked like I would at 18 had I not radically changed my appearance when I was 16) that it was odd I could get one album for $19.88 or however much it was but a 3-CD set of Trance was $17.88. He said it was a shame, because Trance was good stuff too. Interest officially piqued. We struck up a conversation about the lack of respect electronic music gets and how where I came from a friend of mine and myself were the only people I knew who listened to this stuff. The store manager at that Fye was actually a DJ. All three of us discussed our favorite DJs and mixers and they were surprised someone from such an anti-techno area would know so much. I eventually said toodles and left to go back to the hotel in time for Smackdown.

 

I always open CDs before I get home. I don’t know why. Waiting at the BALLSTON~! station, I opened This is Trance 2.0 to find a FOURTH CD inside!! It was good stuff too. What turned out to be four albums for only $17.88. Wow. Great thing about loving techno and dance music: It comes cheap.

 

Smackdown was pretty good, with the Angle/Mysterio match sticking out in my mind. I was also glad to see MATTITUDE~! in full effect. The wedding was well done I thought, even if it had some speed problems, like being waaaay too slow at times, but the revelation of Bischoff as the Justice of the Peace was SO AWESOME. Even though I read the spoilers, it was a mark out moment, big time. I called my father during the show, and he, sure enough, asked me if I had a good time that day. I told him yes, despite my feet killing me, and he was glad, despite not wanting to hear any real details about it. I called mother and grandmother again. Grandmother called the freaking hotel because she thought I called at eleven that morning. Don’t ask why, the logic of the senile is different from ours. She didn’t think to check the message I had left. She checks and responds to messages even when they’re old ones, but the one time she doesn’t check is when I call. Argh. For dinner, I was going to eat more of the pizza from the previous night and heat it using the heat lamp in the bathroom. There was a problem with this though. The heat lamp’s effects only traveled so far. I needed to get the pizza box up higher in order to heat it I discovered after sitting it on the floor didn’t work. I managed to get the little thing that you lay shirts and pants on so they don’t get wrinkled into the bathroom and put the box on that. Still not high enough, but the wax paper in the box was getting warm, so I knew I was on the right track. I couldn’t think of anything else to use, so I looked around the room. I used the Pobos on top of the safe to give it some more height. I just realized I could have used my suitcase. No less than five fifteen minute heat lamp sessions later, I had cold pizza still. I ate two more slices with a couple of cans of Coke from the vending machine outside of my room and looked in the TV listings for Blind Date.

 

NO BLIND DATE???? Wait a second, it’s on the local WB!! Woohoo! FUCK!!!! The hotel doesn’t get the local WB! But what was this on the local UPN after Smackdown? It was called Xtreme Dating, and boy oh boy. This was a dating show like no other. It took what MTV does with Taildaters to an extreme, in this case giving the female on the date an earpiece that a pair of people who know the male can talk to her through as they watch the date progress. The host was HOT. She was digging a weird guy they had on there too, which gives saps like me some hope. Anyways, at the end of the date, the male waits for a limousine to pull up at his house. If it’s the girl he went on the date with, then he wins some kind of getaway with her or something, I don’t really remember, because the guy, to no surprise whatsoever, never won. The girls talking into the earpiece absolutely destroyed him each time, and every time either guy would say or do anything, they’d contradict it somehow or say something bad about him. If the male was unsuccessful, then the two people who sabotaged him appear in the limo and they get some kind of prize, while the guy is humiliated and gets nothing. A dastardly show to be sure. What guy would willfully go on there? He’d better be one with NO skeletons in his closet and an assload of confidence and ability. Where do I sign up? I lack confidence, but I’ve got oodles of ability! So, having gotten my dating show fix for the day, I looked around for something to watch, and stumbled onto Howard Stern. I don’t normally watch him, but they had some Playboy lingerie model on there, and she was actually genuinely beautiful, as opposed to being hot or fine or whatnot. She was very nice too. After the show, she demonstrated why they were real. Fun viewing. Too bad I was nodding off.

 

Off the lights went around 12 and a very deep and fast sleep greeted me.

 

EDIT: Fortunately, I remembered this before too many people read the article...

 

This Part's Musical Gem: Starry Eyed Surprise -- Paul Oakenfold featuring Shifty Shellshock of Crazy Town on vocals. The only thing I've ever liked that Shifty did. This song WILL have you singing along and/or moving by the end.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

(Patrick Spoon)

[Guest Incandenza]

You realize everyone's waiting for the girl, right?

[Guest Cancer Marney]

I just hit Ctrl+F and typed "Erica." No interesting results, so I skipped it.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Gee thanks, really makes the remembering and typing worth it.

 

Why is everyone waiting for that part? I mean, there's no way in hell it's as interesting as you're all making it out to be.

 

If you're going to skip stuff in the future, you don't have to actually say it.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest Ken]

Too much time. Way way too much time.

[Guest Incandenza]

Well, I didn't skip anything, but most of us are hoping for some really juicy stuff with Erica, letting us live vicariously through someone else's infinitely more interesting life. It's sad, I know.

 

Anywho, you're a fine writer, Kotz. You can make the extremely mundane very interesting. (And that is a compliment, even if it doesn't read like it.)

 

EDIT: For the future, you might wanna stick it all in one thread.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Gee thanks, really makes the remembering and typing worth it.

Well I didn't ask you to. And you should go to the USHMM while you're here, and the Smithsonian Air and Space. The Freer and Sackler galleries are great, too; the Fountains of Light exhibit is always fantastic, and the Japanese prints were just put up. The girl and I went to see them a couple of days ago.

 

Why is everyone waiting for that part? I mean, there's no way in hell it's as interesting as you're all making it out to be.

We have high hopes for you, young Jedi.

[Guest Spaceman Spiff]

So, I gather you like SIERRA MIST~!

 

And Planetariums rule. Pretty much anything relating to outer space/astronomy rules.

 

And get to the chick. SUSPENSE~!

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

For future massive undertakings, it will all be kept in one thread, but since I've already done half of it like this, I figure I might as well finish it like this. I'm also just going to start calling this Kotzenjunge's Story Time or something, because I've realized I have an assload of stories to tell all of you that are actually MUCH more interesting than this.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest Spaceman Spiff]

"Kotzen's Story Time Happy Hour"

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

No, considering some of them involve lots of drinking and/or vandalism, that might not be such a good title.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest J*ingus]

Could you eithr shrink or abandon that huge street map in the future? It always stretches the screen out, and I have to shift back & forth to read every sentence.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Odd, the screen stays normal for me. I guess I could find a smaller map or something.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest DeputyHawk]

i agree with incandenza, you do have a way of making the mundane entertaining. the wandering round d.c. alone brings back memories, i spent three months travelling the states alone on greyhounds (absolutely fantastic experience) and keeping extensive journals of each new place i visited. i miss doing that a lot, but i just seem to have no time anymore to document my memories and experiences. sad. i for one am enjoying just hearing about city and the people you encountered, i'm not that fussed about waiting for erica. very interesting read, thank you.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Gee, thanks. I didn't know I was able to do this, I really didn't. Guess when I get actual interesting stories in Kotzenjunge's Story Time, they'll be REALLY entertaining.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

 

Oh, by the way, no Part IV until tomorrow. I'm tired as a bitch.