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January 12, 1997, Sunday

At around 5pm I awoke. There was hootin' and hollerin' coming from the living room, where housemate Steve (back just today, along with Andrew) and others were watching a football game. I joined them and started drinking budweisers. I should state that Ches has built a low circular wooden table and decorated it with pastel hued orange and blue high lights. Now nicely varnished, it looks like something stolen from the Orbit Billiard Parlour. By the end of this particular evening it bristled with empty beer bottles.

I continued watching teevee as many others showed up to join the festivities. We watched Animal Outtakes, the Simpsons and a new show by the guy who brought us Beavis and Butthead. Then it was the X Files about an extraterrestrial fungus that kills people rapidly in a particularly disgusting manner. How's that for a teevee marathon? I haven't watched that much teevee since hanging out at Nemo's House.

Deya came by. I felt like I should entertain her but I didn't know how, so ended up sort of neglecting her. It was kind of painful, not knowing what to do with her and not seeing her assimilate with my housemates and their friends. She eventually headed off to Waynesboro to rendezvous with Matthew Hart. They'll soon be in Malvernia. How fun.

I finished off some gin that was laying around and then moved on to vino when it arrived. I found myself relating rather well with the friends-of-the house, whom I normally only see in passing, since they often come over on weekend nights when I have to work. But tonight was the first night of my new schedule at Comet. Now suddenly I have weekend nights off Friday through Sunday (though I have to work 9-5 on Saturdays during the day). Having my weekends back couldn't come at a better time, what with the sudden complete dissolution of my former associations that occurred in December. Weekends are important in college towns; that is when people socialize and meet new people. Without weekends it is easy to become trapped in unresponsive unsatisfactory relationships, the story of my life this summer and fall.

The emerging party at my house seemed to be a general celebration of homecoming. Classes haven't yet begun at the University, so it is a time of revelry and restablishment of old ties with a view to forging new ones.

One of the things that kept coming up in conversations tonight that I had with University students was the subject of what exactly am I doing in Cocke Hall for hours on end each day in front of a Macintosh. And so would tell of my slavery to my web pages. There's this mystery surrounding me: I have weird youthful friends, I'm a prolific painter (or I WAS), and now I have this strangely vast web presence. Also, I'm really OLD but I don't really look very OLD.

Then out of nowhere Jenfariello appeared. She doesn't often frequent my house, but she'd come this time to see me. She had a friend, a tall blond girl named Alison with one of those rare subtlely beautiful faces capable of launching armadas. Interesting things happened at this point, but modesty forbids my telling. No, it's not what you're thinking either.

and now it is time for a fable

Adolph was a business man. He'd worked for the firm for three years and felt his time for the BIG PROMOTION had finally come. He felt that soon he would have his own office and no longer just be a worker bee in the Cubicle Hive.

Adolph's boss was named Mr. James, and he was known for his demanding, manipulative and temperamental nature. Mr. James often used sneaky office politics to achieve his goals. All his underlings viewed him with contempt, but since he was the boss, everyone always acted unctious and sickeningly polite in his presence. Adolph was as unctious as anyone, and though he had as much contempt for Mr. James as the next guy, he wanted desperately to emulate Mr. James as much as possible regarding others. Often as he drove to work, Adolph would practice the Mr. James snear while asking the rear view mirror, "And how was the weekend?". Adolph imagined that his subtle emulations were apparent to Mr. James and as such was a cause for a bond between the two men.

Mr. James had recently been forced to fire his right-hand man, a wily and capable man named Euclid. Mr. James had for years endured Euclid's malfeasance simply because he was very effective at what he did in his position as Director of Operations. But when Euclid let the Finkmeister Deal fall to the Telbert Group, it became painfully obvious just how inadequate he was for the job. His firing had created the opening in which Adolph hoped to find purchase.

Adolph was so confident that he would become the new Director of Operations that he'd actually had a new business card printed up and had secreted a box of such cards in the back of his locked drawer. Selena the secretary, however, was adept at picking locks, and had, on the day Adolph had been sent to negotiate the Berghoffen Contract, circulated one of the cards around the Cubicle Hive with some choice comments inscribed on the back.

Mr. James came walking into Adolph's cubicle one fine day and stood smiling, looking at Adolph with his usual ashy comtempuous but friendly gaze. But Adolph thought hopefully that he could see a glimmer of human kindness normally absent in those chalky grey eyes. So awed Adolph by the presence of his boss that he began to stammer incoherently. Neurons misfired in a massive breakdown of parsable speach patterns and what remained bore much resemblance to the effects of Tourette's syndrome.

"So..so...uh...um...me...Director of Operations...me...promotion...me...really?" jabbered Adolph pathetically.

But Mr. James had said nothing. When finally, in great pain and embarassment, Adolph fell silent, Mr. James calmly asked him, "Where is Gregor? I need to inform him of his new duties as Director of Operations."

A muffled giggle drifted over the cubicles as Adolph's humiliation was so dispassionately executed. Adolph said simply, "Gregor, oh, he's in billing." Adolph's face flushed crimson with jealousy and embarassment as Mr. James turned to go.

Gregor had only worked for the firm for six months and had a miserable resumé. What's more, Gregor was known to mock Mr. James behind his back, occasionally drawing rude cartoons of Mr. James, pants around his ankles, humping Selena the secretary against the file cabinet in his office. True, Gregor may well have been the most capable denizen of the Cubicle Hive. But his promotion seemed utterly unjustified. The world suddenly had become a cold cruel place where the sinister are rewarded and the righteous made to suffer.

Adolph was left despondent. The short sentence "Living is Hell," kept a constant slow beat in his mind. He could be heard muttering this out loud at predictable intervals by the others in the Cubicle Hive for the rest of the day.

something different but oddly related: risk factors for parenthood

  1. Developing a sexual attraction to someone of the opposite sex.
  2. Being alone with that person.
  3. Discovering the attraction is mutual.
  4. Kissing that person.
  5. Being in bed with that person.
  6. Groping that person.
  7. Becoming mutually naked in the genital regions.
  8. No form of birth control is deployed or
  9. Forms of birth control that are deployed are rendered ineffective consciously or unconsciously.
  10. Penis enters vagina.
  11. The man has not had an orgasm in some time (this could be due either to depression or recent sexual overindulgence).ss
  12. The man has an orgasm while the penis is in the vagina.
  13. The woman has an orgasm. This requires some explanation. In Psychology Today I read once that a woman will experience orgasm fastest with someone she subconsciously considers to be a bearer of positive genetic attributes. An indication of positive genetic endowment in men is a strong degree of bilateral symmetry, and it has been experimentally determined that women experience orgasm most rapidly with men objectively determined to be most bilaterally symmetrical. Furthermore, it has been shown that the female orgasm greatly increases the chance that a woman will conceive as long as the orgasm occurs shortly before or sometime after the man's.
  14. The woman is currently ovulating.
  15. No morning after pill is taken by the woman.
  16. No abortion is performed.
  17. Infanticide is not practiced.

All these steps require a combination of conscious and subconscious evaluations concerning postive genetic endowments on the parts of both parties. All the steps must somehow be pulled off in order for a child to easily come into this world. This isn't an easy process, but it is apparently easy enough. Witness the exhuberant and geocidal extravagence of our spreading anthropatina.

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