So, you say my blog output has been low lately?

Take this, suckas!

Now in Convenient Sauce Form

I’m eating a chicken caesar salad in Koo Koo Roo for my dinner when this kid over by the counter shouts “WATER!” and charges the soda fountain. He’s about eleven, husky, sandy brown hair, loose KROQ T-shirt, untied shoelaces. He runs with an uneven gait and appears vaguely frenzied. I glance over at his mom. She’s typical Manhattan Beach, tall, tan, thin, stretch pants. She’s placing a complicated order and is focused on the counterman. I look back to the kid. He’s putting his mouth up to the Minute Maid Lemonade dispenser and pressing the small side button so that water streams into his mouth. After a second of this he pulls back, grabs one of the small shallow plastic cups used for putting condiments into. He starts filling that up and slurping from it at the rate of about 1 slurp every two seconds. Slurp. Fill. Slurp. Fill. Slurp.

There’s something pretty weird about the kid. A couple of young Mexican Koo Koo Roo employees are watching from behind the counter with the amused look that kids have when the retarded kid in class is acting up again. Slurp. Slurp. After a moment one of the guys brings the kid a regular plastic cup and the kid begins drinking water from that.

Everybody in the restaurant is staring at the kid. There’s a peculiar, charged atmosphere.

After a couple minutes the kid finishes drinking. He puts the cup on the counter and starts staring at the bottles full of vibrant, almost fluorescent-green hot sauce that sit in the condiment rack.

The mom walks over to the kid without batting an eye and says something I don’t catch.

“Look, Mom!” he shouts. “It’s insanity sauce!”
“Is it?” she asks calmly.
”Yes!” he shouts.
“They should put a label on it,” she says.
He stares at the bottle for a second.
“It is labelled, Mom! It says that on the label!”
“No it doesn’t,” she says quietly.

This seems to pacify him and they walk to a table and sit down. Everybody turns back to their food. The kid mutters quietly to his mom.

I finish my salad, toss the trash, and glance at the hot sauce label just to make sure the kid’s mom was right. She was. I don’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed, so I just leave.

Random Strokes of Fate

So I ate at Baja Fresh day before yesterday. Order number: 69. I ate at Koo Koo Roo tonight. Order number: 69. If that doesn’t mean something, I don’t know what does.

Fruiterus

During said visit to Baja Fresh, as I started to head to work I grabbed a lime slice, squeezed it, and dropped it into my Diet Pepsi. Back at work, I finished the soda and then started in on the ice. (I’m an inveterate ice-eater.) But first I plucked out the lime slice and was amazed to see that it looked exactly like a miniature vagina. I mean, inner labia and everything.

“Hey Nick,” I says to my friend Nick, “wanna take a turn on my lime-gina?”

He was amazed and appalled, but utterly agreed with my aesthetic assessment. Since there was nobody around I proceeded to go down on the lime-gina for a few seconds, then, with a remarkable lack of concern for the lime’s pleasure, ate it. Nick watched this with pretty much the same look the Mexicans gave the water kid. After I finished, he made me write down the word “lime-gina” on a piece of paper.

Something dumb I did the other week

To amuse Nick, I was pretending to punch myself in the clitoris, in the role of the masturbating, lesbian narrator from The Color Purple, whose phrase for self-pleasure is “mashing the button.” At exactly the moment that fist touched crotch, this female boss of mine who I don’t know very well and don’t like much at all walked into the room.

“Uh, that probably wasn’t what you wanted to see,” I said. She nodded, and proceeded to watch NYPD Blue.

Wait a minute, I think I told you guys about that already?

Oh well.

Three Cool Things My Friend Nick Has Done

1. Had sex on the galleon, in high school. (Location: big half, middle level, net. Position: girl on top. Results: uncomfortable back, unpleasant net-marks in skin. Also, presumably, orgasm.)

2. Played the following game as a youngster, the rules of which are as follows:
a) Get a BB rifle and 1 friend.
b) Pump the rifle X times (where X is the minimum number of times to actually fire a BB)
c) Shoot your friend in the chest.
d) Your friend does a) and b), then shoots you in the chest.
e) Increment X by one. Repeat all steps until lifelong chest scarring ensues.

3. Accidentally infuriated a psychopathic co-worker enough that said co-worker entered the following bug into the public database:

Step 1: Make the Prince move down the hall.
Step 2: Turn left and pick up the blue health potion.
Step 3: Shoot Nick in the head with a loaded .45 without getting any of his blood on your shirt.

Finally, something I realized while watching Phone Booth starring Colin Farrel at work

I’m totally, completely over Star Wars. I no longer think light sabers are particularly cool, nor Darth Vader. I don’t feel like watching The Empire Strikes Back, at all. I am more-or-less totally over something I was pretty sure I’d never be over.

Isn’t that weird?

Oh yeah, and my story

So, it’s all done being edited. I didn’t get back the last set of proofs so I can’t send the final, finished version to anybody (sorry, Rude). But, it looks like things are on schedule. Huzzahr!