Took a road trip this Friday up to see my buddy Joe in his debut public performance in his band, Vega. They fucking rocked the house, with Joe front and center on stage. I got drunker than I've been in a quite a while and finally lost a battle that I've been winning for five years (or however long it's been that I've been drinking).

It all started at Stone. I met Ben and Dennis at Stone, and carefully monitored my sampling so that I would be able to successfully make the trip to Palm Desert. From there, Ben and I took off up the 15 to connect with a series of state highways that would take us through butt-fucking nowhere and ultimately to my demise. We stopped in Temecula for a bathroom break. I am accustomed to having an after school snack, and since we had gone right from work, it was about that time. Now, I don't know how much everyone knows, but I've been kind of a health nut lately. Salads for lunch every day, etc., etc. However, they don't necessarily sell veggies at a pit stop on the redneck side of Temecula. What they do sell are Spicier Nacho Doritoes and beef sticks. Apparently homemade beef sticks, since they were sans wrapper, sitting in a little plastic container on the counter marked with a faded orange sticker that forlornly proclaimed "2 for a dollar." My subsequent purchase and consumption of these foods is MISTAKE #1.

We get to PD, rendezvous with Joe, change into suitable garb for rocking! and then went to the local Albertsons for "supplies." I figured a 375ml flask size bottle of Jim Beam should do me just right. But they did not carry that size bottle of Jim Beam. What they did carry was a 375ml flask bottle of Sav-On brand bourbon, and for only FIVE BUCKS! How could I pass up such a deal? This shall be known as MISTAKE #2. (Also, on the way out, I notice small packs of King's Hawaiian rolls for 89 cents. "These would be good to sober me up later," I think to myself.)

On the way to the show, we stop by Circle K and buy a couple of super huge thirst quenching fountain cokes, for the concealment of our booze. Going back to the health nut thing, I NEVER drink soda, so the idea that I was going to drink 32 ounces of sugar syrup infused with cheap boubon? You got it. MISTAKE #3.

Somewhere along the way, apparently of my own volition, I bum a cigarette and smoke it. MISTAKE #4.

I need to call the Lost and Found at the bar because I'm missing a good three hours. I do remember stumbling out to the car, at this point I'm not sure if Joe was ready to leave, if I went out there and they found me later, I just don't know. I do know that I was feeling like maybe I had overdone it by drinking the entire bottle of cheap shit, in addition to the two beers I had in the bar. I remember trying to eat a Hawaiian roll, and not being able to even chew it, so done was I with sweet tastes for the night. Anyhow, on the drive home mind and body are feuding as usual. Normally when this happens with me, Mind wins. I force myself up the hill, no matter how much it burns, I finish my push-ups, and I keep my food in the stomach. This time around, Mind is far to incapacitated to fight back, but Body allows mind the courtesy of being able to say "Joe, I think you should pull over." He does, I stumble out, fall to my knees at the gutter and allow the torrential downpour to begin. Looking back, I don't remember anything about it other than I puked. And it doesn't seem that bad. And in the end, I got enough sense back to brush my teeth before bed.

posted by MAtt D. at 10:29 PM

 
today was the kind of day where I just had to come home and crack open a 22 oz. bottle of Stone from the fridge and drown the flame of irritation with sweet, sweet ale. (fuck yellow beer! huzzah ale!) I've been having this feeling lately of unfulfilledness. Now, this is a feeling entirely independant from my marriage to Alli. As a matter of fact, I can't look forward to anything more than that. I really think we're a "power couple" - we set high goals and we achieve them. We love each other endlessly and to be quite honest, I'm addicted to her. But back to my other feeling of malaise. (I must be careful and be quick for I am in the sway of the Stone already and the typos are more frequent.) I've been in a funk lately, a dark cloud - plagued, beset upon by an unshakable feeling. Now, this is going to sound egotistical in some ways, but roll with me on this, but haven't you ever felt like you were destined for something great? Like, you knew that you were going to be or do something GREAT that would be remembered for all eternity? Be someone like Coleridge or Whitman or Hughes or Shakespeare or Spielberg or Presley? Not that I feel that I'm squandering my life or anything, but I have to say, I imagined more for myself than attempting to drill the idea of metaphor versus simile into some reluctant and relcacitrant teenager's skull. I'm going to be honest with you here, (thanks probably to this potent brew I'm imbibing) I don't know if I can do this for the rest of my life. Here's the main problem - I've always envisioned myself as a great human, someone who really made their mark on the world. I can see this energy in many of my friends. I can see Joe and Ben and Cory and Dave and Jason and Aaron and Jenn and Alli all doing it. For some reason, I can't figure out how or why I would be able to do the same. This is a tempest of the soul I need to get over quickly, lest I become a miserable beast for the remainder of the school year (although, 5 weeks is an entirely doable beast-hood), and as reluctant as they are in the ways of learning, my students don't deserve that.
posted by MAtt D. at 4:54 PM

 
Recent journal topic: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Student responses worth noting:
"I wanna be an actor because if you get to be real famous and have a lot of talent to act, you may get to act with some hot ass actris like Jenifer Lopez, Salma, etc... and you also get to kiss them so that's the main reason I wannabe an actor."

"When I grow up I want to have a job. Maybe a lawyer cause of I don't know. Maybe cause it's fun and I can listen to the stupid stuff that people do. If not a lawyer than a judge same stuff."

"I want to be a pyschiatrist when I grow up for adolesents. I like to try and help people and I like to listen to what they have to say. I like helping people with probs like me."

So we have a guy who wants a job that will get him some ass, another student who wants a difficult job that would be fun on the basis that you listen to the stupid stuff people do, and lastly a student who wants to hang out with psychotics all day. One word for all of them - TEACHER. ...uh, except for the getting ass part... I wouldn't know anything about that. *opens drawer to put oversized lollipop away, reveals rags, bottle of chlorophorm, handcuffs, report cards with A's on them, and medicine bottle with the word "Rufies" scratched out and "TicTacs" scrawled underneath*

So, engagement is going well. I've gotten used to referring to Alli as my fiance almost as quickly as I've gotten used to saying "yes, dear. whatever you want." (I think she reads this page, so I better watch where I go with this. I'll be in the doghouse before I ever get my dog.) But hey, you know, we're a chill couple... let's see how we do together forever.

posted by MAtt D. at 11:28 AM

 
If you haven't already seen it, check out the piece of superdense carbon I used to seal my fate with Alli. BLING BLING Y'ALL!
posted by MAtt D. at 10:38 AM

 
Cross-posted to Matt and Alli (remember that one?):

I don't remember meeting Alli. That is to say, I remember very well the first night we met, but how we came to talking is very fuzzy in my memory. I know we talked, danced, and laughed. I remember being fascinated with the idea that she went to an all-girl Catholic high school where they had to wear uniforms, right down to the plaid skirts. I remember being so amazed by it because it was the kind of thing I associated with the past or fiction - surely places like that couldn't exist today could they? But they do, and that's where she came from. I remember it as the first or second night of freshman orientation at school, the night of the harbor cruise - a mixer wherein all the incoming freshmen from certain residence halls were put onto a boat and floated about San Diego Bay in order to get to know one another. There was a dance floor inside and probably horrendously loud music, most likely whatever rap song was popular. I remember laughing with her at all the people who barely knew each other grinding and sweating it up like a Roman orgy on the dance floor. I remember dancing with her at a safe distance, and secretly wishing I could get in closer like the people we were laughing at. I remember being fascinated with her smallness, a trait I still value, cherish, and worship today. I remember talking to her out on the deck and watching San Diego drift by. I gave her my number and my room number on a pad of paper, as I did to every girl that night. I had delusions of becoming a "player" in college, leaving one-night hook-ups in my wake. But I remember that she and I talked longer than any other girl I met that night. Moreover, when we got on the bus to take us back to school, I stopped her in the aisle and told her that she should come visit my dorm room sometime - not in any lascivious way, just a friendly way. I don't know what inspired me to say it to her, but I certainly didn't expect her to take me up on it. At the end of that night, I didn't feel like the slick ladies man I was hoping to be, I felt more dorky, rejected, and lonely than ever before. But she did stop by the next day. We walked up to campus, checked our mailboxes. From there, the friendship grew to what it is. Still, I don't remember meeting her. I just know we talked. I have no memory of being introduced, shaking hands, the panic of remembering someone's name throughout the first conversation with them. I just feel like I've always known her, that she and I have always been talking, dancing, laughing together. And it's that feeling of always having known her that makes me want more than anything in the world to always know her, and that's why on Sunday, April 10, 2005 I asked her to marry me.
posted by MAtt D. at 9:09 PM

 
THIS IS JUST A WARNING - OVERSIZED SHEEP ON THEIR WAY!!
Oops, that's "big news" not "big ewes coming soon..."

and sorry about the bad punnery.

posted by MAtt D. at 12:56 PM

 

RIP John Paul II

For those who haven't heard, Pope John Paul II has passed away. Regardless of how you feel about Catholicism or even organized religion in general, you have to admit that it's always a sad thing when someone who has done more good than bad in this world passes away. Let's just leave it at that.
posted by MAtt D. at 3:19 PM