Monthly Archives: January 2013

Virtual Insomnia

A couple of weeks ago I was playing Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It was your standard Team Deathmatch League Brawl, first team to seventy-five kills, you know the drill. Anyway, I’m tearing through some post-apocalyptic slum in Yemen, when I see this enemy player surprise me from around the corner. I’m playing through the Internet, so I’m not up against some predictable computer program. This is a real person out there somewhere. And I’m reloading. He’s caught me by surprise, totally vulnerable. I’m dead. I think. But he doesn’t shoot. Maybe he was reloading also. I’m getting anxious.

I’m like, come on, come on, faster, come on. But I’m too anxious, too trigger happy, and just as I’m done reloading, I accidentally hit the melee button, which, instead of firing, just kind of jabs a knife outward, totally useless unless you’re completely sneaking up on somebody. I’m not even close, which, in this case, only serves to waste another precious two seconds as my avatar sticks the knife out, recovers his stance, and then cocks his gun again. I give up. No way would I be able to recover in time.

But I still don’t die. In fact, this guy isn’t even shooting at me. He’s just standing there. Is this a glitch? Have two random Internet gamers from around the world somehow stumbled upon each other in the ruins of this burnt out virtual building, only to face each other, at the same point in time, totally unprompted, thinking to themselves, why? Enough, why play by these senseless, violent rules any longer? But then his character starts walking over and over again into a wall and so, yeah, he really is glitching. I take advantage of his apparent network difficulties, walk up really close and hit the melee attack again.

But I didn’t have too much time to celebrate, because I woke up, in my bed, the whole thing was a dream. I thought it might be a sign, like the universe telling me something important was going to happen if I woke up right then and started playing XBOX. So I did, I searched every single map for a friend, somebody ready to lay down their arms with me, but nothing happened, I just wasted a couple of hours getting my virtual ass blown up, hours that I really should have used for sleeping.

And the next day at work I was so tired and cranky, and it must have been obvious, I must have been acting like a real dick, because my boss came up to me at one point and said, “Knock it off Rob. Either stop acting like a huge dick or I’m sending you home,” which, in hindsight, I probably should have taken advantage of that, an opportunity, to go home early and sleep. But I thought, no, that’s probably not a great idea for my long-term job prospects here, and also, if I go home and sleep now, I’m going to wake up at some point in the middle of the night. I’ll lie there and try to get back to sleep, but you know how it is once you’re awake. You’re awake. And maybe I’d try and kill some more time playing video games, just until I get tired. But video games keep me up even if I’m very tired. And so yeah, I could just see my sleep schedule getting permanently altered, this, my new normal, tired and pissed off all day and video game insomnia all night.

So I stuck it out at work for the rest of the shift, really half-assing everything. When I got home, I immediately fell asleep, crashed right on the couch, didn’t even get to take my shoes off or anything. And this was even worse, because I woke up and it was close to eleven-thirty. This was exactly what I was talking about, the abnormal sleeping patterns. I had to get up. I was starving. I needed dinner. I needed something to drink. The next thing I know it’s two in the morning. I’m wide awake. I have to be at work tomorrow.

So I start playing video games, not because I’m blind to the dangers of staying up all night playing Call of Duty, but I’m freaking out that my sleep schedule is permanently damaged, like I’m going to have to force myself to stay awake for a whole twenty-four hours, this night plus all day tomorrow, just to exhaust myself to the point where I can fall asleep at a decent hour and wake up again the next day like a regular human being. And so the video games are just, one, to keep me from freaking out any more, and two, if I really do have to stay up for twenty-four hours, the only thing that will keep me awake is the visual stimulation of futuristic Internet videogame warfare.

But hour after hour, right when the sun should be coming up soon, I feel my wits starting to slip, and the next thing I know I’m back in that same corner in Yemen, holding out in some bombed out room, too nervous to head out in the open, and this guy comes in but he doesn’t see me. I should have picked him off right there, he’s not shooting, obviously reloading, but I’m so tired, so totally out of it, my thumb’s not working right and I just keep walking into this wall, over and over again, and the guy stands there for a second – I’m starting to feel that connection again – before taking out his knife and offing me with a quick melee attack.

Andre totally ruined my karaoke night

I hadn’t heard from Andre in months. Our last falling out was it, it had to have been it, because we’ve had no contact since. I didn’t want to defriend him on Facebook, because I didn’t want him going around showing everybody how petty I am. But I didn’t want to see him either, so I just completely blocked him. Every once in a while I’d write something and he’d like it, but fuck that guy, that doesn’t count as contact, I guarantee you it’s something meta, like he’s liking it to be ironic, to make fun of me.

One time we were all hanging out and I was talking about how meta some show was, and Andre just calls me out, right in front of everybody, “What does meta mean?” Come on. And then I had to make up some answer, and then somebody else in the group said, “Well, you were right about that show being meta, but that’s not what meta means, so you’re obviously just repeating something you read online.”

Andre totally set me up for that. The rest of that night I tried to act like I wasn’t pissed off, because I’m not going to give anybody that satisfaction, which was why when he came up to me and said, “Hey Rob, are you OK? You look pissed off,” I got super pissed, enraged, and I told Andre to just do me a favor and leave me alone.

And he did. That jerk. I think I need to change my whole group of friends. Everybody’s taking Andre’s side. Two weekends ago I sent everyone a text, “Let’s do karaoke night,” and everybody said, “Sounds great! Let’s do it!” Guess who shows up? I don’t know why I’m even asking, because the answer’s going to be obvious. Andre.

“Who invited that guy?” I asked nobody in particular, but both Dave and Jeff actually answered, they were both like, “Yeah I sent him a text and let him know we were all meeting up.” And they both did it independently. I organized this whole thing. So now Andre walks in and he immediately gives a high-five to Dave and Jeff, and then he comes over to me, like, “What’s up man? What’s good?”

What’s good? Not a lot. Not anymore. I was really working on that song “Ariels” by System of a Down, for karaoke. As soon as we got to the bar I wrote it on the paper, gave it to the DJ. Half an hour, forty-five minutes later, Andre shows up. I didn’t even see him write anything down. Or even go to the bar. He’s there like ten minutes, someone just hands him a Yuengling, and all of the sudden the DJ’s like, “Let’s give it up for Andre!”

And he gets up there and it’s “Chop Suey,” also by System of a Down. And he fucking kills it, the low parts, the high parts, everyone’s going nuts. And now, what, I’m supposed to get up there afterwards and sing a different System of a Down song? One that’s clearly not as difficult? An hour goes by, two hours go by, the DJ doesn’t call my name. Whatever, it’s for the best at this point. This whole night’s been a bust anyway,

Andre’s just standing there, like there’s no beef, like he didn’t intentionally blow my Halloween costume last year. I went up to him and I was like, “Andre, I got the greatest idea for Halloween. You wear a shirt that says ‘Andre’ and I’ll wear one that says, ‘The Giant’,” because I’m so much taller than him, “It’ll be great.”

Because I wasn’t thinking that anybody would really dress up. I didn’t think it would be like a real costume party. Nobody told me anyway. So he shows up to the bar in that black single-strapped singlet, that curly black wig, and everybody’s like, “Andre the Giant!” and I’m just standing there with this stupid “The Giant” t-shirt that doesn’t make any sense. I went up to him and I was like, “What the hell?” and he was like, “Yeah, I didn’t really get what you were talking about. That didn’t make any sense. I thought you just meant Andre the Giant.”

What an asshole. And we’re just standing here, everybody’s having so much fun, everybody’s having such a good time. I was just going to peace out, fuck this shit, fuck this bar, fuck this group of friends, and on my way out the door that DJ comes on the stage, “It’s going to be pretty hard to top ‘Chop Suey,’ but here to give it a shot is Rob with ‘Ariels!’” And I thought, well, maybe I’ll get up there, give it a go, I had been practicing, but nobody clapped or anything, and I think I already made too dramatic of an exit, I think, I don’t know who was paying attention, but I’m guessing everybody saw it, because this bar isn’t really that big.

Ode to the McRib

I live right by a McDonald’s. The other day I noticed a new sign, it said that “The McRib is back!” So I walked right inside and ordered one. I love the McRib. I love everything about it, the delicious pork taste, no bones, barbeque sauce, pickles, onions. “Sorry sir, but the McRib just came back today, so, yeah, we can sell you one, but we don’t have the bread.” “That’s fine,” I said, trying not to betray my disappointment, “I’ll still take it.”

Why not just wait a day? If you don’t have the McRib bread, why even advertise, “McRib!” Why put it back on the menu? How about a sign that says, “McRib … coming soon!” I love McDonald’s, but I wouldn’t have gone in right that second had I known they were only selling something like a McRib, something that kind of looked and tasted like the McRib, but didn’t give me the whole McRib experience.

Part of what makes the McRib so unique is its unconventional shape. It’s like an oval. The bread is almost this mini baguette. It follows that it must be sold in a fitted rectangle box. The cashier handed me my bag, I brought it home, opened it up, and it was a regular square box. I didn’t know what to expect.

It wasn’t the same at all. They didn’t even put it on a regular bun, like a Big Mac bun or a Quarter Pounder bun. They put it on one of those specialty buns, something used for those fancy sandwiches that nobody ever orders anyway. It tasted good. But I was so annoyed. Every once in a while you’re at a barbeque in the summer, and there’s always tons of hamburgers and hot dogs, and it always happens, but towards the end of the party, there are always like five hotdogs left but all of the hotdog buns have been used up. But you’re so hungry, it doesn’t matter, you say to yourself, I’ll just use a hamburger bun. And then when you eat it and it doesn’t satisfy at all your craving for a hotdog you stand there, swallowing the last few bites, staring at that empty paper plate, thinking to yourself, huh, that doesn’t make any sense. It’s bread and a hotdog. Why does the shape at all alter the eating experience?

I don’t know. I don’t have any good answers. But it does. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that some bites are going to be too heavily stacked with meat whereas other bites are going to be way too much bun. And with the McRib, this is simply unacceptable. I want every bite to have exactly the same proportions of pork, pickle, onion, sauce, and bread. Haphazardly throwing it on same knockoff artisanal loaf didn’t even come close to making it work. And let’s not forget about the rectangle box. It has to be a rectangle box. I could just tell that my McRib patty was forced in the square box, like it didn’t fit at all. The whole thing was a mess.

I went back the next day and had myself a McRib proper. What a relief. I was worried that my not so stellar McRib experience might have ruined the McRib for me altogether. But it didn’t. And that’s good, because the McRib is only a temporary item. Like I don’t know if there’s any pattern to when they bring it back, but when it comes back it’s like having one of those dreams where there’s a totally new room in your house that was always there but for some reason you never went inside, and now that you’re aware of its existence, you’re making all of these plans, like maybe it can be a game room, or a work area. You’re dream brain is filled with possibilities. But then you wake up and, bam, it was a dream. No dream room.

It’s the same with the McRib. I don’t know how long they’ll keep it back on the menu, but it’s never long enough. I promise myself every time the McRib comes back that this time I’m really going to make the most out of its availability. But I’ll always only ever buy it four or five times, tops, and then just when it’s there, just when it’s earned a place on the forefront of my consciousness, so when every time I get hungry, I automatically start thinking, McRib, I’ll walk into McDonald’s and it’s like, “Sorry, no more McRib.” “What? None? You don’t have any more McRibs? Come on. You have to have something. Nothing? I don’t care about the bread, please. Please!” McDonald’s, why do you have to do this to me? Why can’t you just keep it on the menu full time?

I’ve been toying around with the idea of doing a little project similar to that movie Super Size Me, but instead of eating only McDonald’s every day for a month, I’m going to limit myself to just McRibs, every meal, every day for a month. I don’t think it would be bad. I’m pretty convinced that the only reason that filmmaker suffered so many negative side effects was because he was wasting too much time on weird menu items, like salads, apple pies and ice cream cones. But just the McRib? That’s got everything. Meat, bread, vegetables. I could do it. And I’d love it. I’m going to go to McDonald’s right now just to make sure it’s still on the menu. I’m not going to order one though, because I’m so stupid, I got hungry earlier and I went to Subway. I totally forgot about the McRib. And how could I? I’m telling you, that’s how it is. It’s a dream sandwich, elusive, by the time you wrap your mind around it being there, poof, it’s gone.

Hanging out with a bunch of scientists

Science has taught me so much. The other day I was hanging out with a bunch of scientists. They told me they just figured out how to solve the majority of the world’s energy problems. The only problem was, as one of the scientists was explaining to me her proposal, she was talking way too fast, and at one point she said the word “gas,” and I don’t know if it was her accent or if she just misspoke, but it sounded a lot like she said “ass,” and so I started laughing. She got all upset because I was laughing way too hard.

It wasn’t even that funny. But you know how sometimes you’ll be listening to something really boring, something that just keeps going and going and going. It was a long speech, and it’s kind of my fault because, I don’t normally hang out with scientists, so I thought, OK, I’ll immediately introduce myself to everybody and then I’ll jump right on in with the heavy science questions. I read the paper enough to know what makes the headlines, and here I was, asking the scientists something about the Higgs-Boson and hydrocarbons and hydrofracking and hydrocortisone and I could tell that the group was impressed, here I was, a total science layperson that somehow had his finger on the pulse of contemporary science.

But I blew it. I gave out this misrepresentation of myself and it bit me. I tried really hard to look her right in the eye, to make a face of deep concentration, not at all betraying that I had no idea what she was talking about. I’d make a face every now and then as if I were somewhat confused, I’d bring my finger to the air like I might interrupt her for some clarification, but then I’d act as if whatever she had said just clicked in my brain, and that now I got it, and so I’d lower my finger, relax the expression on my face somewhat, and nod slightly, like saying, “Ah, yes, I see,” without saying anything at all.

But you know how scientists are, they just keep talking and talking and talking and talking like oh my God this is so interesting, and I haven’t even begun to get warmed up here, I can’t believe you haven’t taken a seat yet because this is only the introduction and once I get this projector running we’re going to be busy with Powerpoint presentations for the better part of the afternoon. And pretty soon I found myself focusing almost entirely on me, on my reactions to what she was saying, on my carefully dramatized facial expressions, and once I realized this, that I had completely lost any sort of grounding in whatever she was talking about – and what was she talking about? It felt like such a long time ago – I started getting self conscious, not just about my face and my facial expressions, but also my breathing, my blinking, my posture. Was I giving anything away? Should I have at any time added anything, like a question, an “Ah, yes,” but verbally? Was I expressing confusion when I should have been expressing understanding, or vice versa?

But she didn’t stop, and she didn’t look at all bothered, so I assumed everything was going along swimmingly. In fact, I don’t think she was even talking to me at all at this point. She was kind of looking at me, but looking through me. And maybe it was hard to tell because the more she lectured, the more it became obvious how engaged she was in the sound of her own voice, in her huge lofty ideas, about whatever it was that she started talking about in the first place.

So here we were, her talking, to me, but not really, and me, standing here, listening to her, but not at all, and not even for her sake, because she was on a totally different plane of reality, her body at this point merely a vessel for the pure science running through her brain and out of her mouth, completely oblivious not just to my face, to my expressions, but to everything, my posture, possibly my existence. Me, I was at this point focusing solely on making sure that if any of the other scientists were watching us, because I’m sure they’d have been at one point themselves an audience to this woman’s lecturing, they’d look at me and think, goddamn it, that guy sure surprises us, so engaged in what she’s saying, so clearly grasping everything.

But I wanted to make a break for it. The whole thing was getting exhausting. My facial expressions felt like they weren’t even working anymore. I was stuck in my head to an extent that I couldn’t even tell what kind of a face I was making. And just as I kind of tried to get back to the sound of her voice, to maybe find a way back into the conversation, to ask her to clarify something, to change topics subtly, something more on my level, something about TV maybe, that’s when it happened, that’s when she said “ass,” I’m sure of it, or, I was sure of it. I was sure enough that I didn’t stop myself from laughing at all, a big laugh, abrupt. She stopped talking. Nobody else laughed. Everybody looked uncomfortable. I was definitely uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” I told her, “I thought you said ass.”

That’s enough. I’m done.

That’s it, no more, I’m not going to work today. I’m going to wake up nice and early, take a shower, go downstairs, I’ll make my coffee like I always do, and while the coffee is brewing I’m going to take my dog Steve for a little walk, and then I’ll come back, drink my coffee, I’ll eat my breakfast, and then I’ll just sit there and wait.

And finally my phone’s going to ring, I’ll pick it up, “Hello?” “Rob, it’s your boss. Where are you? It’s eleven thirty. You’re fifteen minutes late. Lunch service is going to start soon. I want you in here now.” And I’m just going to say, “Sorry boss, but the answer is no.” Click.

And maybe he’ll try calling me back, I don’t know, maybe he won’t. I’ll still answer it. I’m not rude like that. Everybody’s always texting anyway, and so I’m always interested in hearing another person’s voice, even if it’s only my boss, calling just to make sure that he heard me correctly the first time. “That’s right boss,” I’ll confirm that he did hear me correctly, “I’m done.”

My wife’s going to get so pissed. “You just quit your job? What’s wrong with you? How are we going to pay any of the bills?” and I’ll just take it all in stride, enjoying my coffee, thinking about all of the free time I’m about to have, to really just sit back and enjoy, and I’ll tell this to my wife, I’ll say, “Honey, think about all of the time we’ll have now to spend with each other, you should do it too, just stop showing up for work and do the same thing.”

So she’ll calm down eventually and when she does, she’s going to definitely see it my way. Maybe her job won’t call her up for a few days. Maybe they’ll just say to themselves, “Huh, this isn’t like her at all. I’m sure she has a perfectly good explanation as to why she hasn’t shown up for work all week.” And she will. The explanation being, “My husband and I aren’t playing this game anymore. Done. Done-zo. No more work. Find somebody else to transfer line two to accounts payable. We’re done.”

And the bills might pile up, sure, and eventually the cell phone service is going to get cut off, and, yeah, it’ll take a while, but the city will eventually file all of that paperwork and that judge will order the marshals to forcibly evict us from our home and, whatever, that’ll take some time. Maybe something lucky will happen before we get the boot. Maybe we’ll open our arms to the universe and the universe will open its arms right back, that warm universal embrace you always see people posting about on Facebook.

Sure, we’d run out of food, eventually, but again, that wouldn’t be for a long while, because we have so many cans of tuna, so many packets of dried pasta and beans. One time I read about this lady who survived a whole winter trapped in some house only eating an apple a day. She went crazy and didn’t make it out alive, but I don’t think it was the hunger that did her in, that’s the point I was trying to make.

Actually, that’s a little morbid, maybe, we’ll run away before they kick us out, before the credit cards get cut off, we’ll find some commune somewhere, something a little culty but just slightly, nothing dangerous, none of that weird group ritual stuff like you see on TV, just something in the middle of nowhere where everybody farms and maybe gets together at night around a big communal campfire and they sing songs and pass around some old guitar that one of the older members brought from when he left his life back behind, and maybe there won’t be a B string, but we’ll make due, humming and singing along to stripped down bare-bones versions of all of our favorite nineties alt-rock hits.

And whoever winds up moving into our abandoned home, back here, back in our future-old life, or our current life, they’ll still get notices from all of the credit card companies and cell phone providers and cable companies all with variations of the same message, “Pay up.” And you know how bill collectors are. They try to collect a bill. They can or they can’t. If they can’t, they sell it to somebody else for a little less, somebody who might be a little better at collecting. The more times it gets sold, the better the collector, but also the more dangerous, the crazier, the ones really willing to take those extra risks to collect. And so these new tenants will get all sorts of threatening letters, knocks on the door in the middle of the night, “Pay up you deadbeats!” written on a note wrapped around a brick and left outside the front door, the message here being, next time maybe we’ll throw this through the window. Or maybe we won’t, but the next level of debt collectors that we’ll be forced to sell your debt to, they’re definitely going to throw it through your window, and maybe it’ll be on fire.

Enough of that harassment, enough bills, enough of this modern world, it’s all enough to make anybody want to skip town for a while, to get away, to go live on some commune somewhere, whatever, I’ll even take a crazy cult commune, even though I said I’d prefer something a little on the normal side, it’s not like these communes advertise on the Internet, and so if you’re looking for one, you just take it, because what are your chances that you’ll find another one any time soon, before your supply of tuna runs out, and those dried beans, you didn’t really think about eating them on the road, how hard it would be to find a stove, somewhere to boil them for a long enough time to where they’re tender, palatable, and so, yeah, you probably should have bought canned beans. But canned tuna, canned beans, do you know how demoralizing that can be, eating everything out of a can, every day, meal after meal, regardless of what’s inside, it always has a touch of that can taste, like something metal, like something that’s been in there for a long time.