Emergence of the Cicadas

Emergence of the Cicadas

Hello again everybody. All apologies for the unscheduled absence, but just as I came back from Charlotte, Geoff, Mike and Gary went on a trip to Albuquerque, leaving me to do the work of 4 people for 6 days (which took me only 22 days - I cut corners). But then I remembered the promise that I made to 23 people I hardly speak to almost 10 years ago. And so I've returned. So the cicadas are finally out. and I for one am happy about it. I was beginning to think it was all a big hoax. It was already midway through May and I hadn't seen any of the little bastards. I thought they were supposed to be blanketing the sky and shutting out the sun, eating through windows, and swarming on the roads so much that you could hit a patch of cicadas and skid on them. Well, they started to surface finally. I think they needed a rain so that the worms could show them the way to the surface. And they'll be flying around in the next day or two. They're actually relatively harmless, despite the stories you may have heard (I was alive last time they were around). They'll fly around and hit you in the head and then fly off, and then they'll come back and hit you in the head. And their rattlesnake song is actually rather peaceful sounding. Well, gimme two weeks. Maybe I'll be out there with a tennis racket beating the life out of them. Of course they're all gonna die in a few weeks. They live underground for 16 years growing until they're mature enough to come out. Then they come out, fuck, have eggs, and die. And the next generation will come out in another 17 years. Wow that sucks. So none of them hit the snooze alarm for another year I guess. What a fickle species.

Quote Of the Day 4/17/04

Keith: "I find it hard to breath indoors."
Jason: "I find it hard to breath in water."


I know what you're thinking. Jason is weird.

Hitting the 17-year snooze alarm,

Screaming Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...

Rating Volleyball Team's Practice Jerseys

Volleyball Team's Practice Jerseys

Syracuse women’s team - It's fashionable at the national club volleyball tournament to put cute sexual innuendos on the back of your shirts. It seems like a great opportunity to try to be more clever than the next team. Instead, I think most of the girls teams just try to sound dirtier and sluttier than the next team. The Syracuse women's team had big orange letters that said "HIT THIS" on the back of their shirts. On the very bottom in small print in parenthesis, it said "(again)." Apparently, last year's shirt said "HIT THIS". I'll give them props for keeping a theme and sticking with it, however bland it may be. At least it had something to do with volleyball. B-

Drexel men’s team - Theirs simply said "I gave my kneepads to your girlfriend." Now, I suppose it's somewhat volleyball related, but it's just not very funny. And if you're gonna be rude, at least be funny about it, or else you just look like an ass. D

Miami University women’s team - "All we do is BANG BANG BANG." OK. I got it. It's got the volleyball thing going on and the sexual thing too. At least they tried to make it about volleyball on some level. There was one shirt there that said "Spit or swallow, you decide." I refuse to rate that one. This one: C-

UC Davis men’s team - The logo for the NBA is a white silhouette of Jerry West dribbling a basketball inside a tall rectangle. The right of the rectangle is blue and the left of it is red and underneath the logo, it says "I love this game." Well, UC Davis' shirt had the same rectangle, except in the middle of it, there was a silhouette of a volleyball player spiking a ball and underneath it said "I love this game too." It was the only shirt without a sexual innuendo on it and it was clever and very classy. Not bad for California boys. Not to mention they paid for a two color screen. A+

Xavier men’s team - "You may beat us when we're sober, but get us drunk and we'll bang your girlfriend" They lost their way somewhere in that shirt. I think they got tired of being creative halfway through the saying. I wonder if they talked about that or if they just had to come up with something on the spot. Cause it sucks. F

Quote of the Day 4/13/04

"We hit it from every position."

-Maryland's women's team

This was the most clever of all the shirts with sayings on them, pathetic as it may be compared to the twenty-something that Steve, Keith, Justin and I came up with on the van ride back from Charlotte (you'll read them soon). At any rate, I thought it was a good balance between volleyball and sex and it's motivation enough for me to stay in touch with them. :) A

If it ain't hard, it ain't goin in,

Extendo.


Still Standing Right Here...

Jobs I Don't Have

Jobs I Don't Have

So the trip to Charlotte was about par as far as volleyball was concerned, great as far as my strep was concerned, and awesome for this little humor column I got going on. I could probably go on for the next month on stupid comments, busted pick-up attempts and sexual innuendos. But in the interest of getting to bed sometime tonight, I'm gonna cut it off at one story.

So we were sitting at the scorers table watching Providence College play their game. Jason was talking to one of the players on the bench and was impressed that they had such a good team with an enrollment of only 4,000 students. I told him that I knew a lot about the school because I had actually applied for a job there last year. In fact, the person hired in what would have been my position was this chick just out of college. There was a girl who fit that description sitting on the bench with them who I assumed went with the team as a team liaison. So I told Jason that I knew so much about the school because I had applied for that girl's position. Jason wouldn't leave it alone at that and continued to fraternize with the guy on the bench and this is what he found out...

Quote of the Day 4/12/04

"If he applied for her position, he applied to be one of the player's girlfriends."

-Some guy from Providence College


Yeah. And I didn't get that job either. :(

Eating solid foods again,

Swallowing Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...

Rating Things That Suck About "The Strep"

Things That Suck About "The Strep"

Eating - OK. This is the obvious single most annoying thing about not being able to swallow. You obviously can't eat anything. Not only is chicken soup recommended to get you well again, but now it's the only thing you can squeeze through your stirring straw throat. I may as well have a chicken soup IV going straight into my stomach. It would make it easier. And I can't even choke down OJ yet. At least not the "some pulp" kind. After I was done a few gulps, I had a lot of "some pulp" hanging onto my Adam's Apple wordering what to do next. So it's apple juice and chicken noodle soup fed intravenously for now. I'm gonna try to have some Easy Mac tomorrow. They're small and lubricated enough. Even without the vasoline. D

Kissing chicks - Yeah, so at least I have an excuse now for about another week. I guess I can stretch that excuse out for a few weeks to make my ego feel a little better. Of course this only applies to chicks that know I have strep. Everybody else is fair game. That's a lot of power. If I don't like somebody, I'm just going to try to get close enough to make out with them or at least stick my finger in their mouth. I think there may be a flaw in my problem. And don't try to make any gay jokes here. I already tried and none of them are funny. B+

Sleeping - This is tough when you can't swallow believe it or not. I mean you don't think about it, but you probably just inadvertantly swallow your own mucas and crap about once or twice a minute without thinking about it. Picture the pain of being hit in the throat by a Mac truck and it's older sister every minute. That makes it tough to sleep. So I cancelled everyhting I could this weekend and pulled this "sleep when I can" routine where I just lie in bed and whenever it doesn't hurt too much that I can't stand it, I'll doze off for an hour or two (note the time I'm sending this and I have to be back at UMB at 5:30am to drive 9 hours). Then I'll be up for as long as it takes to get back to sleep. So this fucks up an already fucked up sleeping schedule. Kinda like flying over to France and working the graveyard shift every other night. Maybe. I have no real base of reference. F

Work - Yeah, I still have to work. My doc asked me if I needed a get out of work free card or whatever it is, and I was like "No thanks. I got a REALLY important wiffleball game to ref tomorrow." And I wasn't kidding. It's the championship game. So I can't even get out of work when I can't swallow and I have a needle in my arm with a tube that runs straight to the Campbell's Soup factory (I can't afford Chunky's after those damn antibods). So yeah, I still had a full 10 hours of work today. I'm leaving for Charlotte tomorrow with the mens club volleyball team for 4 days. My mom asked if I could try to find somebody else to go and I was like "I can't even get somebody to cover a wiffleball game, you think I'm getting out of a 4 day trip." Yeah. And then the wiffleball game was a forfeit. Karma. C

Quote of the Day 4/6/04

"She probably prescribed you the wine cooler of antibiotics when you needed a doulble shot of tequila and a punch in the face."

-Mikey McAngelos


Yeah, but it came in a keg.

Getting down with the sickness,

Dusturbd.


Still Standing Right Here...

Killing Ants with Sledgehammers

Killing Ants with Sledgehammers

I'll get to Vegas in a little bit. Unfortunately, there's not much to tell. I didn't kill any hookers, bang any maids or even accidentally graze my hand along some 17-year-old's ass. I dyed my hair, lost a lot of money and all I have to show for it is a container which at one time held a $25 long island ice tea which took me two days to finish.

Anyway, I went to see the doc today, which I've honestly never voluntarily done before because of something that wasn't an obviously ruptured Achilles tendon. So I told him it caused a good deal of pain to swallow and it didn't seem like it was getting much better. He told me he'd swab my throat but because I'd been on antibiotics for the past three days, he didn't think that any sort of strep stuff would show in the results. Oh yeah, so I got home Friday from evil Joe's birthday thing and within about an hour, my throat went from normal to like the size of one of those coffee stirring straws. And no matter how lubricated it was with water, it felt like sandpaper grinding against even dryer sandpaper whenever I swallowed. At about 5am, I contemplated swallowing some Vaseline to ease the pain, but it turns out my roommate used the whole tube last night (I didn't ask). So at this point, I figure I got the strep and now I have to do something about it. And I didn't even get it the cool way. So I go to this ghetto clinic (that's what it's called) and I sat in a room from 9am until the doctor finally showed up at 10:45 (and I'm not kidding about that). She finally came in at 11:30 and woke me up, took a throat culture which I'll get the results of tomorrow, and left for another half hour. She came back at noon and gave me three prescriptions for pain, sleep, and the actual cure and didn't even tell me what I had or what to do or anything. It was really weird. I went to Giant and had to wait another hour and a half for them to take things from a big bottle and put them in a little tiny bottle with a neat little label on it. Hell, you can skip the pretty label if it'll get me out of there an hour earlier. Anyway, I went to pay for them, expecting them to cost more than I could probably trade my car in for now, and the total was $33. They were each $11 apiece. Well shit. I had that much in cash. I was gonna get better and it was cheap. Awesome! Until I got home and tried to take this antibody that looked like something you'd put in a horse's ass to calm him down. I mean she knows I can't open my throat, what's with the fuckin mondo pink elephant pills? So I didn't get better. And I know it takes at least an hour or two for the antibods to set in, but after that weird voodoo Saturday ghetto clinic thing, I thought I'd go see my real doctor. Or at least somebody without Tarot Cards and Rudraksh Beads in his office. So when he got the test back positive for strep after being on the meds for three days, he said something like, "Whoa, that's fucked up." OK, he really said some stuff that had words that I don't know what they mean in it, but it all meant "that's one doozy of a virus you done got there." And it also might be complicated with the flu and he tried to sneak the word "mono" by me. Like this is the perfect storm of throat sickness all gangin up on me at once. Bullies. So he prescribed these other antibods for me and I asked him what the difference was. He said that you don't have to kill an ant with a sledgehammer. I like this guy. So apparently, whatever I have is something you'd need to kill with a sledgehammer whereas I was trying to squash it with my thumb before. You can't squash an evil cat with your thumb, but you can sure beat it dead with a sledgehammer. I'm getting off track. Anyway, so where was I? I'm sick. Oh yeah, I went to get the new drugs. I realized another difference between the two meds. I went to pull out my $11 cash and there was an extra one on the front there. They cost $111. I didn't have that in cash. Shit, I wasn't sure if I had that kind of credit limit. But at least they are smaller less intimidating drugs. And if anybody needs a horse sedated, I have some extra pink enormo pills now.

So I was telling Keith that I might not be able to go to volleyball nationals with him because of all this strep shit (I'm supposed to leave Wednesday ~ 7am). I also told him that I didn't want to get anybody else there sick because that would make for a really shitty time for everybody else too. So he told me to just bring the drugs and I could share them. But that didn't seem practical because I'd have to cut them up into 12...

Quote of the Day 4/5/04

"Just take all of them now so you will be better by morning"

-Dr Donoway


Funny, that's the same thing the voodoo lady said.

Down With the Sickness,

Strepping Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...