Happy birthday?

It's my birthday, according to facebook, and apparently I'm twenty. This came as very strange and unsettling news, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. I don't feel like I'm twenty, I certainly don't look like I'm twenty (deli clerks still think my learner's permit is fake when I try to buy cigarettes), and I'm frankly struggling to think of a single think I've done over the last five or ten years of my life. I believe I went to high school, but I may very well have not. It's all kind of a blur.

Today has been refreshingly uneventful, which does, I suppose, speak to the fact that I have changed somewhat since previous June thirtieths. Two years ago, for example, I recall that an anonymous friend of mine and I bought several bottles of wine in the afternoon, and after getting sufficiently tipsy, bought two plastic swords from a costume shop and had an hour-long duel around the streets of Greenwich Village. In previous years, as well, I've always had a massive party planed, and I would usually spend the day of my birthday advertising the event and acquiring sufficient booze. I am having a little party for myself next weekend, but I plan on it being a little more low-key and a little less stressful than previous years.

I've resolved, anyway, that today should actually be my eighteenth birthday, since going backwards in time is considerably more fashionable than going forwards. This gives me college to look forward to, and a very long list of exciting things that I want to accomplish during my last two years of being a teenager. I hope I get them all done!

It also means that twenty years from now, I'm going to be negative two. This is a very exciting prospect.

-Matthew

Bugs!

Bugs! I'm not particularly fond of them, but they do seem to enjoy my company quite a bit. About two weeks ago, I started to get something of an infestation of them in my apartment, so much so that I've had to keep each room supplied with a small pile of napkins, or "murder weapons" as most bugs refer to them. They've mainly been the harmless unintelligent kind that hangs around lightbulbs, but about a week ago, I discovered one in my bathroom that was a cut above the rest. It was about the size of my fist (a slight exaggeration) and it was so damned intelligent that when i came at it with my shoe, it recognized the potential threat and darted out of the way - the thing eluded me and hid behind the toilet out of my range of vision. Armed with a shoe, I waited for a good half hour for the thing to emerge, but it was clearly full aware of my intentions and stayed out of my sight. I quarantined off the room by stuffing a towel in the gap under the bathroom door (mind you, this is the size of bug that just closing the door would prevent it from exiting a room), and stuffed another towel under my bedroom door, just in case it broke through my first line of defense. I slept rather uneasily that night, jumping every time a hair on my leg moved, but luckily i discovered the next morning that the thing had not eaten my towels and was presumably still in the bathroom. I spent a considerable amount of time hunting for it over the next few days, but to no avail.

I've developed a sort of Moby Dick-Captain Ahab relationship with the thing. I gained a certain respect for it, as I believe it has for me. We disagree on a number of issues and lead very different life styles, but I think we have a sort of mutual understanding with each other. The thing is so large and intelligent that I'm half expecting to come out of my bathroom one of these days and ask me for a beer. I believe that it could develop into a very strong friendship, were it only not a bug.

I figure that there are three possibilities as to its current whereabouts. The first is that it died contently behind my toilet, fulfilled in its life's mission of scaring the shit out of me. The second it that it crawled back through the ventilation system from whence it probably came. The third possibility, of course, is that it still waits behind my toilet, waiting to catch me unaware.

This should not, by the way, dissuade anyone from entering my apartment. Just be prepared to carry a shoe with you when you go to the bathroom.


-Matthew

Bloggidy Blog Blog

Bloggidy blog blog blog.

I have a new blog!

I had an old blog.

But I got rid of that blog.

Because I wrote some things that I most likely shouldn't have on that blog.

So I had to take down that blog.

And pay somebody $250 for a broken hand-blown Murano Italian glass decanter!

(A poem by Matthew R)



My first real post will be the one after this, but I will explain here the meaning of "Yummy Sweet Crayola Crayons." It was my first (and last) magnum opus - a forty page book (that is, 20 pages of folded construction paper, most of which was illustrations) that I wrote at age 8. It concerned Denny Duck, who's only real want in life was to eat his Crayola crayons. But pretty much everything, from dragons, to aliens, to Native Americans, got in the poor duck's way. I think we can all sympathize.

More to come soon,
-Matthew