Saturday, June 18, 2005
The best line from Zen Shorts: "he spoke with a slight panda accent."
I've spent a good two or three hours today trying to figure out how to make my fucking Zen player work for me. For something called Zen, it can be awfully infuriating. I don't exactly feel like I've been meditating all night.
The good news is that now I have shitloads of music on the thing. The bad news is that I haven't the foggiest idea of where to go from there.
I'm feeling quite sickly from my evening with P.R., who took me to a bar in preparation for trying to pressure me to go to another bar later this evening. For someone who has a lot of girls for friends, he can be awfully insensitive. His solution to all his problems -- and mine -- seems to be to get wickedly drunk in a noisy bar. This is not my idea of therapy, but whatever. I didn't have anything beyond a single Stella Artois this evening. But I did have a lot of mediocre bar food on an empty stomach, which was a really bad plan.
He remarked somewhat gleefully halfway through the evening that wasn't it ironic how two years ago he was the one mired in self-doubt and I was the one all settled and sure of myself, and now our positions are reversed. Funny how I wasn't terribly amused by that pithy little comment.
I can't understand how the guy can make me feel as though I'm truly fucked-up in the head and a complete bore, all at the same time. I remember why we had such a falling out -- it was because we simply couldn't get along. I assumed we were really just like Carrie and Big, i.e. any relationship this painful must work out to something in the end, right? But perhaps I'd better not take my television analogies too far.
Let it be noted to all who should ever attempt this: bullying me into doing anything will make me lose all respect for you. Especially if that thing is going drinking at an insanely loud bar when I'm depressed and a bit fragile, and also scheduled to work tomorrow morning.
I got into some stupid-as-hell argument with Jack today at work about why 'irregardless' is in fact a word, despite the double-negative. Fortunately by the ending of the day we were once again feeding each other chocolate and Greek vanilla wafers and talking about comic books. Somehow his willingness to engage in banter and witty repartee as though we've known each other for a twenty years instead of a month makes him one of my new favourite people.
Katie helped me make a baby book list for Zulieka today, which was most entertaining. It turns out that they do make a lot of funny and oddball books for babies. They're also a hell of a lot of fun to read. I'll mail her the list, unless anybody has any particular desire for me to post it here.
I'm reading Michael Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom, which just arrived in the store this morning, and it's pretty good so far. It's something like The Life of Pi for children. It's nowhere near as brutal or as real or as fantastical as The Life of Pi, but it's in the same ballpark.
I have a horrible stomachache and I'm going to bed.
I hope to be soothed by my cute little Zen at some point in the near future.
Sadly, I have no panda bear friend in my life called Stillwater.
-N
