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VC'S "BIG ANNOUNCEMENT"; 4TH OF JULY HIJINKS
Greetings, friends of Beta-7! Hope your 4th of July holiday was a blast! Mine was, well…interesting anyway, but I'll get to all of that in a bit.
First off, some news...just saw on ign that VC has some "big announcement" about ESPN NFL Football planned for Monday. Hmm...when I saw that, my "glass half full" side thought, wow, maybe they're actually going to come clean and admit that this is a dangerous product that messes up people's minds. I mean, there's been like zero advertising for it, so maybe they're planning to shelve this thing after all. Then I realized, who am I kidding, these are the same people who have been giving me the runaround for three months now, and who have surely already pumped millions of dollars into this thing, and as we all know, money is more important to these people than the safety of the public. So...it'll be interesting to see what kind of corporate double-speak comes out of their mouths on Monday...
So Rob invited me to this BBQ yesterday, which was thrown by a friend of this guy he works with. When he asked me at first, I was like, you're kidding right? I mean, I've barely left the apartment since these blackouts started, and now he expects me to actually go to a party? He said come on, you need to get out and have a good time for a change. I said yes, I could absolutely use a good time, but getting arrested for tackling someone at this party was not my idea of a "good time." He said, come on man, you just had a blackout the other day, so you probably won't have another one for a while. Then I tried to explain to him the whole concept of "random" and how I haven't figured out what triggers these blackouts and that I could have one at, you know, ANY TIME.
He kept nagging me, so to get him to shut up, I said, "Okay Rob, I'll go to this party, but I'm wearing elbow pads, knee pads, and my bike helmet just in case," thinking there's no way he's gonna want to be the guy who shows up with a short-bus-lookin' mofo like me, but he just said, "Alright, get dressed, I'll be there in 10 minutes." Click. Damn.
I was so nervous on the way over I had stomach cramps. I kept telling Rob I changed my mind and to turn around, but he was just like, no way man, you're having some fun today if it kills you, and I'm thinking, great wording there, jinxmaster. In the dude's driveway, I'm practically hyperventilating, thinking there's no way I can do this. I mean, going to a party where I don't know anybody is hard enough, even without wearing a helmet and having a tendency to random fits of uncontrollable violence. Rob said don't worry though, these people are all cool, and he'll stick right by me the whole time in case something goes wrong.
So we go in and most of the people there are already hammered. This one big sweaty guy runs over, puts his arm around me, yells, "YEAH! THIS MOTHERF***ER IS READY TO PARTY!" and knocks on the top of my helmet. It was kind of embarrassing at first, but it also kind of broke the ice and made everybody laugh, which was cool. I laughed too. After a while, I was kind of having fun messing with these wasted people's heads, telling each person a different reason for the helmet and pads ("Thought it was a Halloween party"; "Top secret NASA experiment"; "I parachuted into this party, didn't you see?"; "What helmet?" etc.) After a while I realized the real reason probably sounds just as ridiculous as these made-up ones, so I said to one guy, "I beta tested a video game that messed up my brain and now I have these blackouts where I think I'm a football player and start tackling people," but I don't think he even really heard me, cuz he just said, "That's cool, man," and went back to twisting fuses together so he could light 10 fireworks at once.
Actually met a really cool girl at this party, or I guess I should say "woman" since she's 24 (!) Her name is Janine. I was off in the side part of the yard, just talking to Rob, and she came up and said, "I dig your look, man. I like the statement that it makes." I was like, you do? Rob kind of eased away, and I gave him this look like "Don't you dare leave me here alone," but he just winked and nodded. He wasn't too far off though, and I could see he was keeping an eye on me, so after a while I actually chilled out and talked to this girl for a while. Actually, she did most of the talking, saying how on this day of independence, we're really not so independent at all, and my "statement" of needing to be "protected" from our own government was "right on." I was like, cool, thanks, I'm glad at least one person here gets it (?!?). Then she said, "I can see in your eyes that you have an artist's soul." Uh, yeah, oookay. This chick is totally not my type, kind of a hippy-dippy, but she's pretty hot and really nice, and I must admit the whole "older woman" thing does intrigue me...and at least she doesn't smell like b.o. and patchouli...
Janine ended up giving me her phone number, but I don't know if I'm ready to really get into something like this with all the other crap that's going on in my life right now. Doesn't seem like her whole "peace and love" vibe would jell with my whole "random violence" thing, but we'll see what happpens. At the very least it was cool to be out of the apartment, talking to a girl, getting digits...for the first time in a very long time it felt almost like I was normal again.
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Posted by beta-7 at July 5, 2003 01:02 PM
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