The hour badly spent

Thanksgiving is frankly more of a hassle than not, and becomes more so as I get older. It’s come to be that there’s too much stuff to do on these "vacations" for me to actually enjoy them. And then there are so many reasons I just plain don’t enjoy them.

First, it takes on a Thursday. We all know what fucking Thursdays are like, what they do to you.

Second. Airline travel.

Third. Being home = not all it’s cracked up to be.

Let’s get this one out of the way: everything there reminds me of an ex. It was an appallingly miserable, painful relationship. I’m happy it’s over. I would be MUCH MUCH HAPPIER without that unseen presence lurking around. You know exactly what I mean. The abrasive familiarity of old haunts. The ticket stubs you stashed away so you’d never ever forget that one night on the town. The casual inquiries from mutual friends ("Talk to so-and-so lately?" "No." "Oh. She and I just had lunch together the other day." "Really? How did you keep it down?").

Let’s get this out of the way too: I just don’t do the family thing. Everyone wants me to see everyone else during the few days while I’m there, whether or not I feel like driving 20 miles across town to make small talk about "studies" and "what are you going to do with your hair." Then I’ve got another frenzied rush through traffic to LAX, where I can tuck myself into a plan.

Fourth: I read Eclipse (book 3 of Twilight. Chaste is the new porn), and man, that book is nothing but looooong.

I’m sorta glad that’s over with. Smallville picked me up in Kansas City. She probably couldn’t register this at the time, pumped full of cold medicine as she was (way to operate heavy machinery!), but it was just great to see her. I launched right back into my information compulsion, oversharing the minutae of Starcraft battle strategy. Since she didn’t pass out, I’ll have to assume it was entertaining. Back in Manhattan, everyone’s apparently sick. The same pukey head-cold bug has apparently hit all of Kansas, and seeing as how I don’t get any (a) sleep or (b) vitamins, my only hope lies in whether or not contraband Adderall boosts the immune system. My fingers are crossed. It’s good to be back.

To be fair, it’s easy to write like Shane Oram. You hardly even have to say anything! But you’ve still got to use a bunch of words.

Hopefully, we all enjoyed the break from school, the time with family and the chance to eat (too much) good food and relax with a book or an Xbox controller. Perhaps we called friends to tell them how much they mean to us or made mental lists of the things we are grateful for.

Chances are, however, that something important, something we might never think to be thankful for, was left off of those lists — the Bad Things.

The Bad Things are those horrible occurrences in our lives: the bombed tests, the breakups, the blizzards (the icy snow kind, not the cookie-dough kind), which make us wish we were someone else in an alternate universe where problems have yet to be released from Pandora’s Box.

"Icy snow" and "cookie dough" are kinda cute, which rescues this column from the level of Shane Oram’s soul-destroying pomp. However!

The Bad Things are painful. They mess up our plans; they rearrange our futures. On the surface, it doesn’t make sense to be thankful for something so disruptive and undesirable.

But as ridiculous as it might sound, the Bad Things in life are often the reason that a multitude of good things occur.

For example, when a child grabs a tray of cookies fresh from the oven, he receives a deep burn, a Bad Thing. His hand feels like a million bees stung it at the same time, his mother is furious that he didn’t stay away from the tray like she told him to, and he still hasn’t gotten the cookie that he wanted. But at the same time, the child has learned valuable lessons about the nature of hot metal and obedience to his mother.

Et cetera, et cetera. Columnists are always trying to act like they’re our parents. "Eat your vegetables." "Don’t inhale that sweet, sweet powder." "Don’t have sex with your relatives." Maybe it’s better when they stick to fixing capitalism and eulogizing chivalry? Or should that be the other way around?

[K-State Collegian]

Everyone knows I’m pretty flakey. Still, my movie-nerd friend, Silver Bullet, made sure to remind me that I had promised to go with her to her sister Erica’s wedding in Palm Springs.

"Sure. Again, when is it?"

"June something."

June something took place last week. Wednesday night we picked up the groom’s brother Donnie and the groom’s brother’s wife Palim from the airport at 11 at night and right away headed to the little resort town.

We got there two hours later, dead tired. Silver Bullet and I checked in; the room was massive. We sat around, amazed at its sheer amazingness. Then we fucked and conked out for the night.

Her phone rang sometime Thursday morning. Erica was perkily inviting us down to the pool for drinks. And swimming, one assumes. We were still groggy and tired, so no. She hung up and we fucked again, which I was almost too sleepy to do at all, and didn’t even have the presence of mind to make her get on top. Thanks for nothing, doggiestyle.

We woke up for real much much later.

"Is it really noon?"

"It’s the curtains. Hotel rooms always make you feel like it’s twilight outside."

Silver Bullet’s phone went off again; sister still bugging us to come outdoors and socialize, so we did. The pool seemed kind of small for a pricey resort in the middle of the desert. This disappointment, however, was mitigated by the open bar and the fact that everyone was dressed to show off as much skin as possible, which I believe is the only upside to California weather.

Donnie ordered me a vodka tonic, then a screwdriver, then another one, which I noticed they made with tequila instead of vodka. Strange, but best to do as the natives do; in Russia, vodka make YOU!

When we were done swimming, Silver Bullet and I walked around in search of a place to eat. The town is really just a big strip mall and everything looks the same. We settled on a Mexican place. The food wasn’t terrific and neither were the margueritas but at least they were big. Evidently I sucked mine down too fast, because when we got back to our room I lost my lunch.

Then I slept.

I woke up hours later, groggy again, but in time to get ready for the ceremony.

"Hey, if you still feel sick you can just hang out in the room during the wedding. I’ll come back afterwards."

"No, I can do this. This is why ya brought me right?" I got dressed and we walked down and across the street to wherever the ceremony was taking place (my memory’s a little tequilic) and took our seats.

So. The wedding happened. Priest, walk down the aisle, speech, kiss, yadda yadda. I’m sure I was supposed to be feeling something — everyone else looks happy and moved or whatever — but I think the tequila was feeling it for me, leaving me to sit around and be bored. When the thing was done everyone walked further up the street, to a bar and grill where reservations had been made. Still bored, I decided the time had come to start shit.

"So, most of your sister’s friends are assholes, right? Which one is the worst?"

"Christina."

"Which one is she?"

"You see the girl back there in the blacknwhite dress? She’s blonde. Yeah, her."

Later on I sat down with the rest of the family — well, the ones who seemed drunk — and asked the same question: which one of Erica’s friends was most turdish? Christina was universally agreed upon as the most vile, smelly turd in the entourage. Awesome! Although I prefer to actually know and associate with gossip targets (it makes the feel gossip much juicier), this was exactly the kind of thing I’d been waiting for! Besides the sex, of course. Sadly, only Silver Bullet was willing to provide a concrete example of said turdism:

"Once I overheard her say something really mean. It was kind of behind my back, but the way she said it, I know she meant me to hear it."

"Well?"

"She said, ‘if I were as fat as Silver Bullet I’d probably kill myself.’"

It doesn’t get much more douchey than that, does it? Silver Bullet is about the nicest girl I know (most of the time); you’d have to be pretty mean to insult her like that — just condescension, no provocation. Maybe Christina should just kill herself anyway.

"Thing is, she used to be really fat. It took time, but I’m pretty sure she only lost that weight from snorting coke."

"Whaddya mean used to be? Also: cocaine is a helluva drug!"

"Are you still drunk?"

"Fuckin tequila. Yes."