O Beautiful, For Spacious Skies
See, I told you butthumpers that I'd be updating this piece of shit more often.
You think I'd LIE to you?
You should all know better than that.
So I got the final ETA on my Saturn. Next week, supposedly it will be done. I went to the doctor today, and I found out that the pain in my neck was actually caused more by moving into the new house than it was the accident. Apparently, because my neck was stiff from stress, when I lifted heavy shit like the 35 gallon aquarium, it caused a minor sprain in my neck. The jerking around from the accident just irritated it. So tomorrow I get to start my course of muscle relaxers. I remember what happened the last time I took those.
The last time I was on muscle relaxers was back in 1994. I was still living at the Asylum on Hodge, and I had recently sprained my back while working at the Supermarket On The Border of Hell. I remember taking these things before bed, turning off the light and lying down on the bed. Next thing I knew, the alarm was going off, and I'm lying like a pool of human fucking pudding, and I have 30 minutes to get to class. Two weeks on these things was more than enough, and they put me on them for a month.
So sometime during week three, I took my medicine and went to bed. I woke up the next morning to the sound of the alarm, and I quickly threw on some clothes and headed out into the hall to wake up Jimmy. I walked out in the hall, and the lights were all still on, and Paul's door was open. I figured one of the cats may have finally successfully figured out how to use a doorknob and let it go. Hey, when you're high on muscle relaxers, anything makes sense.
I went downstairs, and I found Elliot sitting in the hall with a video camera on his lap, the sound of tape rewinding emenating from it. He looked up at me with big, bloodshot eyes and says, "I don't know how you slept through that."
"Slept through what?"
"I...I really can't explain it, but I have it all here on tape, just in case."
"Just in case of what?"
"Just...in case."
At which point, Jimmy's head appeared around the corner and he shouted, "HE'S UP!" At which point, he and Paul came running into the hallway, both wearing nothing but a smoking jacket, bikini underpants, a hat, a pair of sunglasses and a dead fern jammed down the back of their underpants, sticking up like a flag.
"OH MY GOD MAN YOU HAVE TO SEE WHAT WE DID IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL OH MY GOD FUCK YOU HAVE TO FUCKING SEE THIS SHIT"
I looked at their faces. Pale, drawn; eyes crazed. Something went very, very wrong here, and I was not quite certain what it was. So they harassed Elliot into putting the tape in the VCR in Jimmy's room, and I was suddenly assaulted by ten minutes of Paul and Jimmy dressed like they still were (but without the ferns), jumping around, dancing to Public Enemy and shouting like a couple of crazed street preachers. The audio-visual assault was more than my addled mind could handle at that point, and I staggered out of the room somewhat nauseous and horribly confused. I wandered outside and decided to just leave it all behind me and go to class without the three of them. I figured it was probably for the best. Anyone who asked me where they were that day, I just responded that they weren't feeling themselves and decided to sleep it off.
I got home sometime around 4, and the entire house was silent, like a neutron bomb had gone off in the basement. I poked my head into Jimmy's room, and he was passed out, the TV blasting CNN over his snoring. Little bits of paper and dead fern were scattered around the room, as well as loose cigarettes, bottle caps and the occasional odd item like a marble or a pencil eraser shaped like a cartoon character. In the center of the room, the clown-head bong flashed slowly in the twilit darkness. Upstairs was silent. I slipped into my room and took a quick nap. About two hours later, I woke up, lit a cigarette and listened for movement. Still nothing. Another half hour or so passed, and Elliot came out of his room. He looked rested but still somewhat weary. He walked down the hall into my room, saying, "So I bet you really are waiting for the explanation for what you saw this morning."
"In a way, yes. In another way...not really."
"Well," he said, sitting down in my desk chair, "the trouble all started when Jimmy came home from work..."
Apparently, what had happened was that Jimmy had been working in the Pharmacy at the drug store he worked at. Because they were short-handed, Jimmy volunteered to help out. He would count pills and print the labels and that sort of thing. That night, instead of stealing his usual carton of cigarettes, he also slipped two 500-pill bottles into his bag. One of Ritalin and one of Prozac. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with Ritalin's effect on people over the age of 17, it makes you extremely hyper. It almost has the opposite effect that it does on children. Anyway, so Jimmy came home and told Paul that he had "a few pills" and that they should go to the A-Plus on the corner and get something to wash them down with. Naturally, they decided on Old English 800 Malt Liquor. So they each bought two 40oz bottles and head back to the apartment for a night of revelry. Once they got up to Jimmy's room, he pulled out the pills and set them on the floor. They took two of each and washed them down with the malt liquor. Then two more. Then four more.
Around this point, Elliot came home and went in to see what the two of them were laughing about. He saw what was going on, and the first thing he thought was "Get this all on tape, so that when the cops show up after they are dead, I can say, 'officer, I had nothing to do with this.'" Instead, he got an entire tape of the two of them running around dressed in bikini underwear and smoking jackets, talking like a couple of crazed street preachers to each other and acting like it was some kind of late-night talk show. The show ran the full duration of the tape, with a few breaks in between. There were shots of them up-turning the bottles into their mouths and washing down about five to seven pills with a gulp of beer. At several points, they tried to wake me up by pounding on the door and the walls of my room, but I was out on muscle relaxers.
To this day, we still do not know how the two of them did not die. The best explanation I ever heard was from my wife. She said that the Ritalin and the Prozac probably counteracted one another, and the alcohol slowed down their systems so much that they were metabolizing it all so slowly that they didn't end up reaching a toxic level. As long as they kept drinking and peeing, they were keeping themselves flushed out. She still maintains that it's a miracle they didn't die.
Now.
The videotape in question still exists. It is kept under lock and key and only brought out on special occasions. The last time I saw it was when my wife and I first started dating. She had heard about the tape from me, and she bugged Paul and Elliot until they finally gave in and showed it to her. Most people don't last through the 10-minute introduction.
She sat through the whole two and a half hours.
Paul claims that when his nieces and nephews reach a certain age, he's going to show it to them in order to teach them the horrors of drug abuse. "THIS is why you don't want to do drugs. Now go get me a fucking beer."
I was going to write something about the 4th of July and all that, but I guess I got carried away at the mention of muscle relaxers.
Oh, as a side note, I never finished the round of muscle relaxers they put me on. I sold the last week's worth to Jimmy for a carton of cigarettes (stolen, of course). He took one and threw them away, saying that he couldn't get a boner for three days after taking one, and that kind of thing was just too scary to consider fun.
You think I'd LIE to you?
You should all know better than that.
So I got the final ETA on my Saturn. Next week, supposedly it will be done. I went to the doctor today, and I found out that the pain in my neck was actually caused more by moving into the new house than it was the accident. Apparently, because my neck was stiff from stress, when I lifted heavy shit like the 35 gallon aquarium, it caused a minor sprain in my neck. The jerking around from the accident just irritated it. So tomorrow I get to start my course of muscle relaxers. I remember what happened the last time I took those.
The last time I was on muscle relaxers was back in 1994. I was still living at the Asylum on Hodge, and I had recently sprained my back while working at the Supermarket On The Border of Hell. I remember taking these things before bed, turning off the light and lying down on the bed. Next thing I knew, the alarm was going off, and I'm lying like a pool of human fucking pudding, and I have 30 minutes to get to class. Two weeks on these things was more than enough, and they put me on them for a month.
So sometime during week three, I took my medicine and went to bed. I woke up the next morning to the sound of the alarm, and I quickly threw on some clothes and headed out into the hall to wake up Jimmy. I walked out in the hall, and the lights were all still on, and Paul's door was open. I figured one of the cats may have finally successfully figured out how to use a doorknob and let it go. Hey, when you're high on muscle relaxers, anything makes sense.
I went downstairs, and I found Elliot sitting in the hall with a video camera on his lap, the sound of tape rewinding emenating from it. He looked up at me with big, bloodshot eyes and says, "I don't know how you slept through that."
"Slept through what?"
"I...I really can't explain it, but I have it all here on tape, just in case."
"Just in case of what?"
"Just...in case."
At which point, Jimmy's head appeared around the corner and he shouted, "HE'S UP!" At which point, he and Paul came running into the hallway, both wearing nothing but a smoking jacket, bikini underpants, a hat, a pair of sunglasses and a dead fern jammed down the back of their underpants, sticking up like a flag.
"OH MY GOD MAN YOU HAVE TO SEE WHAT WE DID IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL OH MY GOD FUCK YOU HAVE TO FUCKING SEE THIS SHIT"
I looked at their faces. Pale, drawn; eyes crazed. Something went very, very wrong here, and I was not quite certain what it was. So they harassed Elliot into putting the tape in the VCR in Jimmy's room, and I was suddenly assaulted by ten minutes of Paul and Jimmy dressed like they still were (but without the ferns), jumping around, dancing to Public Enemy and shouting like a couple of crazed street preachers. The audio-visual assault was more than my addled mind could handle at that point, and I staggered out of the room somewhat nauseous and horribly confused. I wandered outside and decided to just leave it all behind me and go to class without the three of them. I figured it was probably for the best. Anyone who asked me where they were that day, I just responded that they weren't feeling themselves and decided to sleep it off.
I got home sometime around 4, and the entire house was silent, like a neutron bomb had gone off in the basement. I poked my head into Jimmy's room, and he was passed out, the TV blasting CNN over his snoring. Little bits of paper and dead fern were scattered around the room, as well as loose cigarettes, bottle caps and the occasional odd item like a marble or a pencil eraser shaped like a cartoon character. In the center of the room, the clown-head bong flashed slowly in the twilit darkness. Upstairs was silent. I slipped into my room and took a quick nap. About two hours later, I woke up, lit a cigarette and listened for movement. Still nothing. Another half hour or so passed, and Elliot came out of his room. He looked rested but still somewhat weary. He walked down the hall into my room, saying, "So I bet you really are waiting for the explanation for what you saw this morning."
"In a way, yes. In another way...not really."
"Well," he said, sitting down in my desk chair, "the trouble all started when Jimmy came home from work..."
Apparently, what had happened was that Jimmy had been working in the Pharmacy at the drug store he worked at. Because they were short-handed, Jimmy volunteered to help out. He would count pills and print the labels and that sort of thing. That night, instead of stealing his usual carton of cigarettes, he also slipped two 500-pill bottles into his bag. One of Ritalin and one of Prozac. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with Ritalin's effect on people over the age of 17, it makes you extremely hyper. It almost has the opposite effect that it does on children. Anyway, so Jimmy came home and told Paul that he had "a few pills" and that they should go to the A-Plus on the corner and get something to wash them down with. Naturally, they decided on Old English 800 Malt Liquor. So they each bought two 40oz bottles and head back to the apartment for a night of revelry. Once they got up to Jimmy's room, he pulled out the pills and set them on the floor. They took two of each and washed them down with the malt liquor. Then two more. Then four more.
Around this point, Elliot came home and went in to see what the two of them were laughing about. He saw what was going on, and the first thing he thought was "Get this all on tape, so that when the cops show up after they are dead, I can say, 'officer, I had nothing to do with this.'" Instead, he got an entire tape of the two of them running around dressed in bikini underwear and smoking jackets, talking like a couple of crazed street preachers to each other and acting like it was some kind of late-night talk show. The show ran the full duration of the tape, with a few breaks in between. There were shots of them up-turning the bottles into their mouths and washing down about five to seven pills with a gulp of beer. At several points, they tried to wake me up by pounding on the door and the walls of my room, but I was out on muscle relaxers.
To this day, we still do not know how the two of them did not die. The best explanation I ever heard was from my wife. She said that the Ritalin and the Prozac probably counteracted one another, and the alcohol slowed down their systems so much that they were metabolizing it all so slowly that they didn't end up reaching a toxic level. As long as they kept drinking and peeing, they were keeping themselves flushed out. She still maintains that it's a miracle they didn't die.
Now.
The videotape in question still exists. It is kept under lock and key and only brought out on special occasions. The last time I saw it was when my wife and I first started dating. She had heard about the tape from me, and she bugged Paul and Elliot until they finally gave in and showed it to her. Most people don't last through the 10-minute introduction.
She sat through the whole two and a half hours.
Paul claims that when his nieces and nephews reach a certain age, he's going to show it to them in order to teach them the horrors of drug abuse. "THIS is why you don't want to do drugs. Now go get me a fucking beer."
I was going to write something about the 4th of July and all that, but I guess I got carried away at the mention of muscle relaxers.
Oh, as a side note, I never finished the round of muscle relaxers they put me on. I sold the last week's worth to Jimmy for a carton of cigarettes (stolen, of course). He took one and threw them away, saying that he couldn't get a boner for three days after taking one, and that kind of thing was just too scary to consider fun.