Christmas in a submarine
My coworkers are huddled around a computer monitor when I come in to work this morning, looking at the latest gaming systems on the internet. This is the great diversion in an endless system of diversions. Which one is best, they want to know, but I have no idea. I don’t play games, I tell them. I don’t do anything, really. My life is more like an endless hustle through a monotonous maze of banality and meaninglessness. I don’t tell them this, but they deduce enough from my mood, I’m sure.

I finished my Christmas shopping last night, with the dexterity which seems to characterize success for me. The main objective, I have gathered, is to make it out of the store before the neon lighting imparts the state of confusion that has you making illogical choices and buying things they sell to you on late night tv. And so I have economized my time spent among the masses, mirthfully wrangling a parking spot from the old guy with a clenched jaw. Ha! I want to shout out at him. You suck.

Getting back to the house, I flop down on the couch and deliver to my roommate what is apparently my sense of holiday cheer. Fuck Christmas, I tell him. It really is so gross. And you always end up getting the wrong things for people, as they in turn give you items evocative of laughing out loud. “Well, what do you want?” he asks me. Oh, dear god, I think to myself. I don’t really know. Intangible things, mostly: a kiss on the mouth, a piece of mind. I try and think of an answer that doesn’t verge on making me look totally pathetic. I can’t really come up with anything. But it occurs to me now that I should ask for a gaming system.

So stuck up/ I wish you’d to stick it to me

Three things that happened this weekend, in no particular order:

Some girl at the Palais Royale enacted a top rope Superfly Snooka wrestling move, jumping from the pool table onto our head, crumpling our form all together and imparting some sort of cranial injury to our already cracked and world weary head. For some strange reason we have taken to furthering such acts of debauchery, and goaded her on to further jumping on people, calling out some complicated chant from the chair she was standing on before plummeting on the unfortunate victim below. When asked by a patron why she was engaging in such perilous behaviors, she supped from her drink and encouraged them to do the same, which we did.

Having exhausted the entertainment value in sending some girl over the edge, we departed for some other den of ill repute. What at first seemed like a rather childish waste of time at the ye old watering hole number 1 actually turned out to be time well spent, as we narrowly avoided being shot in a drive by shooting on the walk to the Fuze Box. Clearly, had we left moments earlier, we may have been victims in a rather senseless act of transgression which had the whole block crossed off and three victims sent to the hospital. It seemed to cast a bad light on an already sketchy night, and defeat seemed imminent. However, once inside all was quickly forgotten. And it’s funny how one minute you can be contemplating the crushing nature of death and the grim imminence with which you will likely be crushed like a bug, and the next moment all logistical consideration is thrown out the window as you enact insane dance moves on the dance floor. We will admit: we are new to dancing and so do not understand the prevailing etiquette with which this ritual is situated on, and so were pretty psyched to be able to just kick it to you right there on the dance floor. It’s the whole Less Talk, More Rock tenant we were supporting, presumably, and we will continue to do so vigorously, as long as you, uh, don't feel like talking to us.

Saturday, at some thrift in Suburban Place Point 2000: a 5 year-old girl in a Salvation Army seized on us and offered up what is apparently her sizable dismissal of the male gender. “Eww,” she said, “You’re a boy.” This precipitated an impressive demonstration of her ability to count to nine, brashly standing at our feet and doing this repetitively, over and over (and later, some guy who was apparently her dad spontaneously tackling her older sister, much to the consternation of everyone in sight. “I’ll always be bigger than you,” he remarked, picking the girl off of the floor. “So don’t you forget it.” Clearly this person missed his calling in the NYPD.) It's a scary time, sometimes. But such are the perils of locating sweet pants.