a series of short essays, snide remarks, ill-informed rants, and other "wesley-isms" on whatever i feel. let it be known that i do this primarily for my own amusement, so read at your own risk...
why am i doing this? answer the question: what do you get when you cross and elephant with a rhino? i digress... i think the only reason i'm doing this is out of a somewhat shaky tradition that i started a few years ago. what is that tradition? well...that's a hard question to answer. it's somewhat along the lines of doing a new year's post, which entails re-devoting myself back to blawging, but always falls apart like most resolutions, which explains why i don't really do the resolution thing anymore.
this won't take too long. i just wanted to get some things off my mind to start semi-fresh in the '014 (yes, the "o" is pronounced)...
i looked back at my blawg post three hundred sixty-five days ago and couldn't help but notice that 2012 "sucked butt." those were my words; i can't dispute that. a year later, i was (of course) right. i always am. so i can then write with great confidence that 2013 did not suck butt as much as 2012 did. in fact, this fiscal year was on track to be one of the best i've had in a while. however some things and some people decided to make it their mission to take that away from me, lol. insert long and drawn out sigh. i don't wanna mention any names because i know the ramifications of my words, and that with great power comes great responsibility...
meanwhile, as i'm writing this, i was brought back to one of my very first movie roles. i had grease on the netflix and this part was my breakout role that established me as a dancing powerhouse. at about 1:30 in, the guy in the green leading that pack...that's me. i know it doesn't look like me, but let's just say the make up was heavy. take a look for yourself...you'll be like, "yep, that's wesley."
anyway, i digress as usual. here's an inconclusive and non-exhaustive list of sh*t that happened in the '013 (again, the "o" is pronounced):
i moved again...and then again (and probably one more time)...this one deserves a blawg of its own, lol
i think that pretty much covers it. the year was not as good as i would have liked for it to be, and probably would have been a lot better. i did the one thing i'll probably never do again...i did not trust my instincts. c'mon, people, everybody knows that my hunches are never wrong. tupac would still be alive if he had answered my call that day. i promise i will blawg about it in the next year or so. i have closed that chapter of my life, but you know how the life of a teacher goes - pretend to be happy, then complain to anybody who'll listen, lol. it's funny how one short series of events can change someone's life for the worse. well...not so much funny...but the word i have in mind hasn't yet been invented. i'll invent it this year.
anyway, i don't have the gumption to continue because i've got things to do...but as usual...i'll get back to blawging this coming year and look forward to what's in store for me. i will recap highlights from the '013 and explain why i'm sure that the '014 will finally be a goodun. i've got my reasons. they're good. hence, goodun.
i've got big plans for the next three hundred sixty-five days, and i will try to keep everyone in the loop, while entertaining y'all with all the mishaps and misadventures that befall me and follow me every step of the way. don't suck; do better.
the new favorite color is going to be...purple? there's a reason, trust me. i was gonna go back to "hakuna matata" for this new year's mantra, but i think i'm gonna try out a new one. so...2014 will be the year that wesley is going to...eat life.
i guess i should begin with a hearty "happy new year" since this is technically the first post of the 2013 fiscal year. why it's fiscal, i know not, but i'm sure the reasons are there. first of all, i'd like to say that i made it through the new year with minimal damage. i hung out with a bunch of strangers and drank a lot of alcohol, which was probably the best way to handle it. even now, i still have a difficult time remember exactly how i got home...oh well...in the words of a wise old monkey:
in other words, i might not know what i must do from now on, but in the words of hank hill, "i'll tell you what"...i know what i won't be doing again for quite a while...
i digress, i've been meaning to blawg about this for three weeks now, and finally i have some free time...and by "free time" i mean i can't be bothered to do any work tonight. i tried, but it just was not working out for me. speaking of...i was supposed to have started working out weeks ago as well, as a part of my "thirty and fly" campaign. i actually started working towards working out, but still haven't quite moved into that next phase. i changed my eating habits, which is a pretty hard thing if you know me because i enjoy partaking in indulgent things. here's what i got:
i no longer eat carbohydrates (or most food in general) after about 8.0p because i either heard somewhere or made it up myself that the human body doesn't prefer to sleep with food in it
i no longer drink soda, except for special occasions or when i'm extremely stressed
i make sure to drink enough water and juice to keep my pee as close to clear as possible
i have a glass of water before i eat (and sometimes after) to keep from being a glutton
i restrict fried foods to maybe once a month
i think that's about it for now. i think the eating habits are a good first step, but i suppose it won't mean much unless i actually pick up a weight or do a sit-up or something. motivation is so damn hard for a primetime procrastinator like me. i best get on my game, otherwise this "thirty and fly" campaign is gonna fall apart faster than my inhibition after 4 double shots of tequila...
which i guess brings me back to the original story. i guess i should start way back in november or so. i was sitting at home, up to no good as usual, and got a mysterious phone call from a good acquaintance:
good acquaintance: hey wesley.
me: hi.
good acquaintance: listen, one of the guys on our volleyball team can't make it, and your name came up. can you play in a tournament with us?
me: sure, when is it?
good acquaintance: saturday.
me: as in the day after tomorrow?
good acquaintance: yes.
me: okay.
good acquaintance: cool, thanx. oh, by the way, just so you know, it's a NAGVA tournament.
me: a what?
good acquaintance: NAGVA, the gay volleyball league. but there are a lot of straight guys who play in it, so it should be cool.
me: okay.
let me start by saying that for some reason, when it comes to playing indoor volleyball, i'm all about it. i tend to hate playing outdoor volleyball for various reasons, including, but not limited to...
the weather sucks (wind, rain, heat, cold, anything will kill me)
playing in the sand is like being stuck in a state of perpetual slow motion
said sand is actually quicksand
mosquitoes like dark meat, but they absolutely love the flavor of me and are not afraid to let it be known
there's no telling what's in the sand (broken glass, dirty needles, those burrs that we black people call "stickerbugs", etc.)
liquid plumber stays in business solely behind all the sand clogging my tub after coming home from sand volleyball
after playing sand volleyball, i look like a piece of fish, breaded and ready to be fried
the list really goes on and on for quite a long way. anyway, the point is that between the months of march and september i don't really play much volleyball because indoor isn't too popular during the months of what crazy white people refer to as "nice" weather, but is really miserable weather. so when september finally rolls around, i'm so excited to play that anyone who asks me to play with them will almost always receive some sort of "yes" as an automated response.
person 1: hey, wesley, do you wanna play on a team on mondays?
me: yes.
person 2: hey, wesley, we need another guy for our tuesdays team...
me: i'm in.
person 3: hey, wesley, you know the wednesday league is starting up...
me: i'll play.
person 4: hey, wesley, are you on a team for thursdays?
me: i am now.
person 5: hey, wesley, there's a tournament this weekend.
me: i'm there.
person 6: hey, wesley, are you playing open gym friday?
me: of course.
person 7: hey, wesley, are you playing open gym saturday?
me: well, i'm playing in a tournament, but i'll be there sunday.
and that's pretty much how it goes at the beginning of indoor volleyball season. the prospect of being able to play again gets me as giddy as a schoolgirl. but my thing is this; i never EVER realize that playing in all those leagues and tournaments is approximately the same as paying three bills. sh*t adds up...quickly. so i guess it could be argued that september is responsible for driving me into a state of mixed euphoria. i'm elated to play, yet i maintain a constant state of financial despair and dysfunction. oh well, that's life.
and speaking of financial despair...i gotta throw this one in for free. i was doing my taxes this past weekend (not too many people know this, but i can do taxes...one of my many purposefully hidden talents) and apparently entered a wrong number in a box. when i saw that i owed the IRS seven thousand dollars (yes, my friends, US dollars), the next few words that came out of this mouth were...
for a second, i thought i had tourette's because that sh*t was just f*cking uncontrollable. i went all the way back to square one and finally figured out that i put that damn number in the wrong box. i fixed it and everything was as it should have been from the get go. i was seriously gonna have a heart attack and have to move out of the country...oh yeah, i was on my way back to japan...
i digress...majorly. that was a whole blawg's worth of digression. meanwhile, back to the NAGVA tournament. i ended up playing and had a great time. they asked me to play with them in new orleans during the martin luther king holiday weekend. i told them that i would. yada yada yada, time went by, and it was time for the tournament. i will introduce a new cast of characters now.
there were four of us in the car for the road trip. the captain of this trip was "lance." he's a follicle-challenged fellow who is the kind of gay guy who will punch you in the face while screaming at the top of his lungs. he also serves as the queen of fashion, as he is constantly reminding me of all my faux pas actions. i'd gut check him, but he's bigger than i am. besides, his screaming is more effective than ella's singing, if you know what i mean. speaking of singing, also in the car was "divo," a proud member of the two hundred club, yet is always talking about how he needs to lose weight because he ate too much. my response every time he brings it up: "what am i, blind?" rounding out this zany cast of characters was "wii." he was a polar opposite of lance and divo. while they are out there and stoopid, wii was more reserved and logical in his thinking. possibly because he's asian, but you know how i feel about that; we're never gonna beat those people.
well...the first thing is that divo loves to sing...a lot. so does lance for that matter. when lance sings, i can't help but hear this:
bless his heart. in his mind i know he thinks that he's the next keith sweat. sorry to burst your bubble buddy; my ignorant and trouble-seeking brother trip has that avenue quite covered. he's the minor issue here, though. divo sang literally the entire eight-hour trip. i'm gonna end this part one blawg with a video clip of what divo thinks he sounds like, and what he actually sounds like. part deux will be up soon, because i'm now tired.
this one's a quick-for-free; i've gotta get stuff together before i leave. while my life was spiraling downward, here's a snapshot of what else was going on around me...
(in my famous tone of haughty derision and mock surprise) wow, the world was supposed to end...again. this time the people of the world turned to the mayans, who allegedly had the whole thing planned centuries ago. and wow, the world was lied to...again. didn't anybody read the bible? does the phrase "like a thief in the nite" mean anything to anyone besides me? if you don't know what that phrase means, well...you best look it up.
so, here i am, working on yet another pre-new year blawg. i just read over the one that i did exactly one year ago, and...
it's funny how much three hundred sixty-six (yes, 2012 was a leap year) days can go extremely differently from what you expect. who knows? maybe it has some sort of connection with that whole "like a thief in the nite" theory... as it turned out, 2012 was not the year i was desperately hoping it would be. it's not to say that no good things happened. in fact, a lot of great things happened over the last year.
i moved (again). moving seems to be a yearly thing for me. i think i'm just one of those people who gets uncomfortable being in one place for too long. yeah, i think i'm gonna go with that one. school was...wait, i'm talking about the good things that happened. i traveled across the country again, made a few more friends, visited some great old friends, weddings (not mine), babies (again, not mine). hell, i can't think of anything else.
to be quite honest, 2012 sucked butt overall. it wasn't because of anything overly bad happening. i think if i had to put it into one word, that word would just have to be...disappointing. things just disappointed me in 2012. trust me; i'm not being petty or childish about this one. it was truly a disappointing year, which is why i'm throwing some extra chips onto hoping that 2013 will be at least a little bit better. oh, i've got me some plans for 2013. you know i'm serious when i start treating the english language as if it's spanish...you know, with all the reflexives. silly sh*t like, "i'm gonna get me" or "you need to get you" when everything is already implied, making that extra subject marker quite extraneous and virtually worthless. it just adds emphasis. that reminds me...so many grammatical crimes were committed in 2012 that i almost had a minor stroke. in school, cece alone occupied a gigantic amount of my time.
i digress, i've decided to break down my goals in life into an intricately planned series of steps, with one step leading to the next. with my on again, off again personality, i think that's the best way to get sh*t done. that being said, the road to achieving step one will begin NOT on 1 january, but quite possibly the week after. what are these steps?
haha, that's the beauty of 2013. i have decided that it will be a year of mystery. insert "oohs" and "aahs" here. no longer will i put things out on the table (except here of course, when i feel the need to commiserate about the mundane minutia of everyday life). my goals are written down and locked away in a place so secretive, i'll probably forget where it is before february begins. i know you're now dying to know what the list is. don't worry; it's not anything out of the ordinary (not all of it). it's not a bucket list, either. that one's publishable because i've become a very boring person. as a matter of fact, be on the lookout for said bucket list later on in the 2013.
so, with the list in place, it can be said that i have some big things in store for me in the 2013 fiscal year. i'm almost excited about it, or at least i will be when the 2013 rolls around.
so to recap (because i've started yawning and if i keep on blawging i'll never get off my arse to get ready to leave and drink off what's left of 2012)... this year sucked butt, i'm keeping to myself in 2013, and all will be well.
i'm off to scrub 2012 off of me, then off to the 2013... wish me luck, lol.
okay, church is over, i've fed myself, and am here again before i have to grade papers and get lesson plans ready for tomorrow. i'm taking life one day at a time, especially now since i'm older. i've got a random, yet very prominent graying hair on my chin...front and center. when my hair goes gray, something strange happens. it turns a reddish hue first, stays that way for a bit, then poof...white as snow. i want to yank it out so badly, but what the hell...
so anyway, school life is different this year. last year THE fourth grade team consisted of cece, trip, harvey, and me. we had a lot of ups and a HELL of a lot of downs. we spent more time down than up. this year, harvey has moved up to be with the fif grade (if you knew who was on the fif grade team, you would know that "fif" is the best way to spell it). unfortunately for him, that means that he's had to deal with the same monkey ball sh*t from last year, including, but not limited to...anpanman and his old ugly b*tch arse mama. i've made a bet with...myself...to try and piss her off in a very inconspicuous and covert way so that she knows what's going on, but can't prove it at all. then i can swoop in and go in on her, making her out to be the crazy definition of ugliness that she is. so far it's going well. i'm even involving the kids, although they don't know...nor will they ever...
anyway, i digress. trip, as we all know, has moved to another school, which is literally down the street ("skreet" as harvey would say) and around the corner from the school. the two of them have been replaced by wreck and maybelline. the team is very different from last year. of course, cece and i are the returning cast of characters, while harvey maintains a recurring role. trip has been downgraded to more of a guest star, as he shows up on occasion. luby is somewhere in between harvey and trip, though i can't really define it. most importantly...she is still the same "take control of everything and leave you wondering what the hell you were doing in the first place" sister. i really like this new team, even though the dynamic is different. at first i thought it was going to be weird or boring, but i was (for once in my life) proven wrong. the new THE fourth grade team is still the best team in the school.
hmm...what else? lot of stories on the kids to come.
my berfday weekend was last week, and boy did i have a great time...and a terrible time. i refer to it as the best worst berfday ever. the official party was lunch at gloria's and fun at six flags. when i tell you it should have just been gloria's...
gloria's was a lot of fun. first of all, let me start by emphasizing that i absolutely HATE mexican, salvadorian, cuban, spanish, whatever...i don't care for hispanic food...at all. i chose gloria's because they make a kick ass margarita, and i'm apparently a people pleaser. i like to think that the things i like are so eclectic and idiosyncratic that nobody else likes them. that's why i keep them to myself. anyway, a lot of good friends showed up. the biggest surprise was harvey. i just didn't think he would come. trip and luby showed up, although i have the strangest feeling that she would rather have been shopping for her kids. anybody who was anybody was there.
if we can't do anything else, we can have a good arse time. and i think gloria's was a great time. it had to be, because i think i keep writing the same thing over and over again, that it was a great time. well...afterwards, four of us went on to six flags. it was x, seefuzz, big daddy, and me. that was when the fun started to deteriorate...
from left and then clockwise...me, x, seefuzz, big daddy...not pictured: fun
the first thing that put me off was the fact that we had to park in the next city because everybody wanted to celebrate my berfday along with me. it was a good mile from the car to the park. fortunately for six flags, we parked in the green lantern section, who everybody knows is my favorite superhero.
i can't begin to go on about how many people think that batman and even iron man are superheroes. if i really sit down and think about it, i can say that yes, they are assets to the justice league, and they have credible reasons to be there i suppose. but i will stick to my guns that neither of them are true superheroes. they're heroes, i'll admit, but not superheroes. iron man is a wisecracking dying guy with a lot of money and something to prove. batman is a unhealthily grieving guy with a lot of money and a chip on his shoulder. without the gadgets they are just ordinary people. i still posit that the wonder twins could take them out.
my kids at school are always talking about batman and iron man and how they're their favorite superheroes. i keep going on and on and on about how they are so in the wrong about that. finally, after ten weeks of drilling it into them, they are finally out of that mindset that batman and iron man are superheroes, and have come into the truth that they're heroes with brains and money.
i digress...anyway...the first ride we decided to get on was called pandemonium. it wasn't the most thrilling ride, but i wanted to ride it, and well, it was my berfday. we waited in line for literally two hours before the girl got on the speaker and announced that we were going to have to wait a bit longer. apparently, somebody threw up...on the whole damn roller coaster. it took a good forty-five minutes for them to clean it up. so we finally get to be on deck, and by "on deck" i mean we were next to being next to ride. the same girl then announced that the ride was shut down due to technical difficulties.
excuse me? what the hell kind of monkey ball sh*t is this?
"but feel free to ride any of our other rides, and as always, thank you for coming to six flags," she said. nothing steamed my piece like that did. i was not right for the rest of the night, and even though i paid sixty dollars to wait in line just to watch the damn sun go down, i just wanted nothing more at that point than to go home and salvage what was left of the day.
i was in a pretty bad mood for quite a while, and i'm sure it got through to the others. so what? it was my berfday, and if i wanted to feel sh*tty, i should have that right. things eventually got better, though. we rode the teacups, and the sombrero, two rides that were not quite as thrilling as...say...superman or the texas giant, but it was something. i also got a caricature:
my eyes are beautiful, aren't they? and to think that i paid sixty dollars just so i could wait for an hour to pay twenty-five dollars for this picture. i mean, who wouldn't call that a great time? big daddy made the teacups worth riding with all his hoopin' and hollerin' and rantin' and ravin'. he truly is fun bobby. if he doesn't have anything to drink, he's as boring as the day is long. but give him even an ounce of something and he's almost as funny as me. i just lol-ed.
oh well, i need to stop now and get some work done it just doesn't get done. i'm older now, so i'll try to blawg more. after all, trip has been putting up posts of his own left and right...meaning once a month or so, so i can't let his dumb arse get ahead of me. he's younger, so i think technically he never will.
well, here i am...officially a year older. i know there have been a few discrepancies in the past about my age, so i'm gonna clear up any confusion that there may have been up to this point. i don't know exactly how it got started, nor do i know exactly who started it. as i think more about it...i think the government may be to blame; they may have made a mistake on my birth certificate. at any rate...i am now officially old. thirty years' worth of old, to be exact. i've been asked how it feels to be in my thirties many a time. well...i feel...old. it wasn't too far from midnight on 29 october when my back mysteriously started hurting, a couple more beard hairs turned gray, and another centimeter of hairline decided to recede. damn...what the hell does forty have in store for me...death? i'm telling you...after you hit thirty, it's just the loss of one bodily function after another...on your slow march towards death.
i kid, of course. sometimes the losses come in bundles, not always one at a time.
meanwhile, so much has happened since the last blawg. for one thing, school has started. the tenth week of school has just ended, which leaves about twenty-six of them left. if we survive, then we'll be alright. the board of education in this godforsaken school district is determined to exterminate the passion of every teacher within a seventy-five mile radius of the administration building. i don't want to go too far into the details, but it sucks butt. our workday has been extended, which is weird because the kids still come and go for the same amount of time. the extension is for teachers only. what do we do with all this extra time? meetings. an infinite amount of meetings, all day, everyday. i'm like...what the hell could we possibly have to talk about every day for the next one hundred eighty days? oh well, we have to take the bumps along with the bruises. i don't think i used that one correctly.
teachers complain all the time, and i'm not really one to complain publicly. i figure...pretend to be happy, then complain to anyone who'll listen. that's always been a thing of mine.
also, i found out that i've actually got people who have been eagerly waiting to read my next blawg. wow, that makes me feel coveted, even in my old age. so, shout out to a woman i will call "rapunzel." she's a fellow writer, and works at the school as well. she's a little more of a real writer than i am, but i ain't no punk when it comes to putting words on some paper. anyway, rapunzel, this one's for you...
school so far has been...different. trip, luby, and i are no longer the close siblings we once were. maybe we got used to each other and the newness wore off. maybe it's because trip was shipped off to a different school. maybe it's because we stay so damn busy we just have no more time for each other. things are too different this year. we don't hang out like we did in the past. in addition, there's no real turnover in this school. i think i've mentioned this before, but a good percentage of the teachers at the school have taught for at least thirty years, which is coincidentally my age. they have been teaching for as long as i have been alive.
the newest addition to our staff that is remotely close to our age (and by "our age" i mean trip, luby, and me) is "dj." what to say about him? he's the new coach, and well...more on him later. i don't really know him that well yet, but he seems to have me pinned down as the one at school who is "the clown." me a clown? that's impossible. i'm too serious of a person to even be considered a clown.
the kids this year have been one hundred thousand times better than them sh*ts we had to deal with last year. they're also much smaller on average. last year there were kids who wore a size twelve in men's shoes. not boy's shoes...MEN'S shoes. what? i don't wear that big of a shoe, and i'm an old ass man. one kid, "bundt," has freakishly small feet. one of our two new teammates, "maybelline," commented on bundt's feet: "one day he gon' tip over and fall if he keeps jumping up and down like that."
oh yeah, we have a new team this year. cece and i are still there. it's like a new season with a couple returning characters and some new ones. maybelline is one. the other we'll call "wreck." the best thing about wreck is that he doesn't need that. by "that" i mean pretty much anything...especially a microphone. he has a very booming voice that can carry across the ocean if he wanted. in our many meetings, whenever he has something to say someone will pass him the microphone, to which he will always reply, "oh i don't need that." it's hilarious. and his voice reminds me of paul lynde, the original center square on "hollywood squares." i can completely imagine wreck saying any of the following:
the resemblance is uncanny between their voices. i can't really explain it, but if you ever heard wreck talk, you'd wholeheartedly agree. too bad paul lynde never said "oh i don't need that." or least not on camera...
oh bother, i gotta go get ready for church...this blawg really has no beginning, nor does it have a real end, so i feel comfortable stopping here and continuing later when i get back home.
before i start, i just wanna let everyone know that i still have a couple blawgs or so left that pertain to NYSP, so stick around for those. the school year is rapidly approaching, and i may even become inspired to chronicle that part of my life...as i always say i will do but always fall off...but for now, recent events...
so, my allen league volleyball team played for the championship a couple days ago. this is a very significant event in the life of my volleyball family because...well...remind me to blawg one day about "the great cuss fest of 2009." long story short: we lost the allen league playoffs to a team to which we should not have lost, all behind some foolishness. yeah, i think that's a pretty good way to sum it up. the details, though, are wonderful. it's one of those times that you have to look back on and laugh about, but at the time it's the furthest thing from funny. that was the event in volleyball history that cursed us, and since then we had never again played volleyball in allen until now.
well anyway, heading up the original team is the captain, who we'll call "he-man" for obvious reasons. there's also x, my bestest volleyball friend/event coordinator, another recent friend we'll call "barbie" (again, for obvious reasons...it's no coincidence that she's married to a guy we'll call "ken"...they're both life sized), of course there's myself, and the last two are going to be called "monica" and "chandler." more on chandler to come. well, he-man sustained a huge injury a few weeks ago, forcing him to sit out the rest of the season. taking his place was "marco," who's pretty good at volleyball. i was gone for three games, and monica and chandler were out for a week or so due to our various adventures (or misadventures in my case...see any blawg relating to NYSP). we had to have subs, but they're irrelevant to anything right now so i'll mention them no longer.
it was a pretty important game, so i (against my better judgment) decided to invite trip and luby, my siblings, for our big nite. barbie's husband ken was also in attendance, as was he-man and his wife, "she-ra." so we had us a good cheering crowd.
now, if i haven't already mentioned it, trip, being the arrogant son of a b*tch that he loves to be, thinks that he's god's gift to anything athletic. every time i mention that i've played in a game, he always says that we could have done better if he were on the team. god forbid i tell him that we lost a game. it doesn't always happen, but hey...every now and then sh*t happens. that's when he really goes off and says that i'm an idiot because i didn't call him to play. well on the nite of our championship, i gave him the chance that he so sorely had been wanting all this time. i kept giving him a volleyball and telling him to jump on and play.
me: here's a ball. let's see what you got.
trip: nah, i got the wrong shoes on.
luby: those shoes look great.
me: huh?
luby: oh, i'm on the phone.
trip: these clothes aren't good to play in.
luby: i need to buy my boys some new clothes for school.
me: well, don't wait until my berfday to do it.
luby: oh, i'm on the phone.
me: c'mon, brother, this is your big chance to show us all your incredible talent.
luby: yeah, this is your time to shine.
me: don't pay any attention to her; she's on the phone.
luby: no, i'm not. i'm talkin' to trip.
me: good god, i'm in the twilight zone.
so trip declined every invitation to play...as i thought he would. keep that in mind for what's to come. so our team played this team of jackarses that had been so rude in every past game that karma hit them hard. they only had five players on the court, which put them at a disadvantage. and with them being the team of rude people that they were, we took full advantage of their disadvantage. the game went something like this:
i mean...damn. they couldn't stop us. any why would they have been able to anyway? i had been watching the men's and women's volleyball matches in the olympics, and i don't usually tell anyone this, but i have this weird power to pick up skills just by watching them. it's like a strange ability osmosis thing. at any rate, because of all the games i had been watching, i ended up having quite a good game. i was as good as chandler or better, because when it comes to volleyball, he's simply the best there is...except for that nite. that nite, volleyball was spelled w-e-s-l-e-y. it was a good game.
i must also mention our referee, who had gone for years without a name. we finally, more like inadvertently, found out her name. i'll leave it out here, but it actually turned out to be a good thing. we had known her from years ago when we played in allen, but she had always been known as the chain-smoking b*tch who didn't know what the hell she was doing. she has this really raspy voice and says things such as:
"in there..." when the volleyball is in bounds
"out there..." when the volleyball is out of bounds
"this way..." when one team gets the point
"that way..." when the other team gets the point
years ago, we were in the middle of a rather long rally, when the whistle suddenly blew. we all looked at each other, and then to the other team, who looked back at us. nobody had done anything wrong, and we all looked to the ref. her response..."sorry, i took a breath." she took a breath. by the way, this is what she looks like:
she doesn't even drive; she just floats around on a nicotine-high cloud of ecstasy. oh well, right? whatever floats her boat...and doesn't rock mine... barbie apparently has this connection where she can get cookies for free. it's some random thing with her grandmother...
and it's a damn good thing, too, because this got the referee on our side. most people couldn't really tell by just looking at her, but this lady is a b*tch on the volleyball sideline. that referee whistle gave her too much power that went to her head...straight past the nicotine and to her head. or maybe the whistle had nicotine in it; that would explain why it never left her mouth.
i digress. the point was that we won. during the game, every time i would look to trip and luby, luby would applaud/cheer/encourage and trip would say "you suck." i can accept that, and my heart is still open. besides, i wouldn't really expect anything less from him and his ignorant arse. when the game was over, though, something peculiar happened.
we went to celebrate at a place called pluckers, where i decided to take a macaroni and cheese tray. it was random, and don't really know why i did it, but i did it. does that make me a criminal? maybe just a miscreant. it's not like i haven't been called worse. by the by...what constitutes a "date"? trip, luby, monica, chandler, x, and i had a conversation about what makes a date. they were criticizing me because what i called a date wasn't really a date by their standards. i will always think that i'm right, unless i'm wrong. and i may be wrong, but i doubt it.
back to the peculiarity. after we were done at the pluckers, everyone was about to go their separate ways, myself included. trip and luby were at a standstill. something was happening along the lines of luby deceived trip into driving her car all the way out to allen under the premise that she was going to drive back. well, when we were done at the pluckers she said, "you know i'm not driving." it somehow got under trip's arrogant skin and they had a long standoff where neither of them got in the driver's seat. at any point i could have just gotten in my own car and driven home, but as the oldest and wisest of the three, i decided to stick around and try and work things out. but...BUT...that's when i found out something quite disgusting (that's not really the right word...more like unappealing) about trip.
me: thanx for coming out to watch, you guys. i appreciate it. i hope y'all had fun.
luby: we did, and you were really good tonite.
trip: it was fun. you...sucked. when are you gonna come to my next game?
me: seriously, what did you think?
trip: you played w...you sucked. when are you gonna come to my next game?
me: you're not gonna admit that i actually know how to play volleyball?
trip: you just said it.
me: but what do you think?
trip: i can't tell you that you're...that thing that you just said.
me: good at volleyball?
trip: yeah, that thing.
me: are you joking?
trip: no. so about my next game...
luby: hello? hey girl...
i found out that through an extension of his arrogance, trip is completely unable to give someone a compliment when said compliment comes with the reality that someone exists who is better than him at something. it was totally unbelievable. are you f*cking kidding me? i was so upset that he couldn't give me a small compliment about something that's very important to me because he is that stuck up. he claimed that this is something that's been a part of him for a long time, but who the hell cares about the back story? not i, said the main character. he plays baseball and softball, and since we've known each other, we've never been to each other's games. we made a deal that if he came to mine, i'd go to his. but to put that in front of a simple "you played well." i would have even been fine with "you're not too bad." the fact that he was unable to say anything other than "you suck" almost made me pull out move #72, which would've definitely made sure luby was going to drive.
so after some insistent prodding, he finally had enough time to come up with the excuse that he was going to compliment me in a "blog" that was planned as a surprise, and that i had just ruined it.
excuse me?
i haven't heard such sh*t come out of anybody's mouth since president clinton said that he did not have sexual relations with that woman. so apparently, his mind can't function in such a way that he is able to compliment someone orally, so he has to go sit somewhere and plan out his words carefully like he's shakespeare or t. s. eliot. how much planning and thinking and organizing and drafting and revising and editing and publishing does it take to say..."you played well."? i guess for him it takes a hell of a lot of it, because unless he's about to extol my virtues in an epic about how well i can play volleyball, he's going to pretty boldly miss the mark. the funny thing is...i'm not even fishing for huge compliments. it's just common courtesy. when i go to his game (because i am obligated to go per our deal), if he plays well i'll tell him. of course there will be the "you suck" and the "i could've done better than that" and the mandatory "too bad i'm not on your team..." but at the end of the damn day, if the n*gga plays well, i'll let him know. i'm not so proud that i can't tell someone that they are good at something.
i've blawged about how awful i am at basketball. people who know me know damn well that i can't pass, dribble, shoot, play offense, play defense...i can't even warm the bench right. therefore, i don't fool with basketball. when it comes to it, i'd tell someone they're good at basketball...NOT because he's better than me (even though it's assumed), but because (and this might come as a shock) he's good at basketball.
so trip...you don't need to fake a "blog" about how good you think you want me to think you think. for the third time in my thirty-four years of life, the few feelings i keep hidden have been hurt. so congratulations, brother, you did well.
meanwhile, what a happy day...today i move out of the halfway house. i should explain. remember how i wrote in a blawg a long while ago that i go through roommates like toilet paper? if not, then go back and take a stroll with me down memory lane...
what a great stroll, right?
so through an intricate series of unfortunate events and oddly-timed coincidences, i ended up moving out of my lavish townhome apartment with "kramer," a fellow teacher, and into another apartment with chandler. i guess it would effectively make me "joey," but i'm wesley. how you doin'...?
the apartment, though, is finally ready to move into, but for a month i've had to stay in chandler's old apartment, which i called the halfway house. so that's what the halfway house is. now i can live again. oh happy day.
sorry about that, folks. i had to wait a good long while before i had enough time to myself to continue blawging. to be honest, i really haven't had the passion for blawging like i used to, which i guess could be attributed to pure laziness, or perhaps a complete sense of apathy on my part. i've recently come to the conclusion that i just don't wanna do this anymore. it's really quite sad.
anyway, back to the great laundry caper of 2012. the last time we left the scene jerome and i were on our way to the bank and he was getting an innumerable amount of texts about a laundry card. well...and this is just ridiculous...jerome was supposed to have been using the card that wanda bought because he gave her two dollars to put on it. wanda had received the money from him, but never put it on the card, which could put her in the position of a thief in certain cases...this being one of them. however, let's not forget that wanda had thrown extra money on the card just in case someone else needed to do laundry.
i think i should try and mention all of the people who had some sort of stock in this damn card...
wanda
jerome
tootie
jeanette
kwame
"patty" (another newbie who has throat problems)
"blossom" (yet another newbie)
twilight
katy
those are all the ones of which i can think right now. i can't really count all the people who have a claim to use the card because there are so many that i can't count them all. i only know of a few. in fact, i think that wanda and i are the only ones who have laundry cards at all. i know i used mine, and the rest of the staff here uses hers. that could be a large part of the mystery.
so...as jerome and i are driving, the texts that he's getting are saying something along the lines of, "the card's here when you're ready to use it; you just need to put money on it." the next text is reading, "so-and-so is using the card right now." it was pretty much a tennis match of texts that went back and forth. he was asking why, and the replies were not giving the answers he needed.
meanwhile (and this happened before jerome and i left for the bank...i'm skipping around as i remember things like a terrible quentin tarantino movie), kwame (who's also my roommate) wanted to do laundry. although he claims to have had stock in wanda's card, i have reason to believe that he really just had his word to go off of instead of any actual money, because wanda had not received any money from him. i had two dollars on my card, and told him that if he wanted to use it, it was fine. he said okay, and i gave him the card. before i left with jerome, i gave kwame two extra dollars and asked him to put it on the card when he went, because i could foresee myself needing to do laundry later down the line. he took the money and i left with jerome to go to the bank.
so the story starts to come together. the back story is filled in a little bit more. jerome and i are en route to the bank, and he's getting random texts that go one way, then twist and go a completely different way. i'm starting to wonder why he even involved himself in that pyramid scheme anyway. so here's where the story gets a little more complicated. i told jerome that he could use my card, to which he replied:
jerome: yeah, i think i'm gon' do that because this craziness right here don't make no sense...
we got back from the bank and went into the lobby of the dorm, where a few people were, including kenan, who is coincidentally as ignorant as the day is long. that's right...he's twenty-four hours' worth of ignorant. i don't wanna digress too much, though. jerome is looking for wanda to make sure that he still has money on his card. he didn't wanna use my card just yet because he still had (to the best of his knowledge) two dollars on the "community card." if you want my opinion, that thing was more of a "chance" card from monopoly because you never knew who the hell had money on the card.
after at least twenty minutes of searching, he finally found out that wanda did not even have the card. it had been passed to jeanette, who had already used it to do laundry for her, katy, and twilight. patty and blossom had also already used the card. the only person who had not used it (to my knowledge) was kwame. well, apparently, kwame was running some laundry card game. he had gotten a hold of wanda's card, you know, because he claimed to have put money on there. remember, though, he had my card as well. so kwame is sitting pretty with two cards, both of which had money on them.
jerome: where's your card?
me: kwame has it.
jerome: kwame? why does he have it?
me: i gave it to him because he needed to do laundry.
jerome: but he had wanda's card.
me: he did?
jerome: yeah, so you're saying he has two cards? what the hell he gon' do with two cards?
me: do twice as much laundry?
jerome: man...
it finally came to the surface that kwame did indeed have two laundry cards. jerome had finally given up on getting wanda's card, and started looking for mine. meanwhile, he was also looking for his two dollars back because, well, he was entitled to it. we finally found kwame, because jerome was determined to get to the bottom of the situation. he was in the lobby.
jerome: say, who card you got? (jerome, unfortunately, had a slight stroke which destroyed the part of his brain that controls grammatical correctness)
kwame: wanda's. why?
jerome: you don't got wesley's card?
kwame: no, i don't have it.
me: i'm gonna have to call BS on that. i gave you the card before we left to go to the bank.
kwame: oh yeah, i didn't use it.
jerome: well who card you use?
me: yeah, whose card did you use?
kwame: i used wanda's because i had money on it.
me: where's mine, then?
kwame: i don't have it.
me: but i gave it to you. i don't have it, which must mean that you still do.
kwame: oh yeah, it's in the room where you left it.
me: (sigh)
i pick on kwame a lot. i mean, why not? he's like a little brother. it's his first time here, and my third. i feel like it's my job to guide him along and help him out, kind of like how james did with me two years ago. by the by, i'm going to see james at the end of the week. i'm so excited i'm going to use an exclamation mark!
so anyway, jerome and i went back to my room and finally found the laundry card. i gave it to jerome, and he did his laundry. kwame did his laundry. my laundry was already done. every other person who laid stake in wanda's card got their laundry done. and the caper was solved...kwame tried to steal and extort laundry cards.
sidebar...i had to almost use the same move i used on kel a year ago to get my two dollars back from kwame. i believe it was move #33, but i could be wrong. i've learned so many more moves since then that it's hard to keep up.
