Nothing's on, so change the channel

Man, some days are just boring. Like check it: yesterday I could not stop moving. I was at work and no one was coming in (nothing unusual, recently) but I was unable to distract myself severely; I must have caught ADD. When I was able to get an internet connection, I soon exhausted my internet time, as I read damn near every article I could and I was not about to distract myself at ESPN.com—no I’ve been there (for like 4 and a half hours) and done that. Plus there’s only so much rap related info you can ingest. I got to the point where I checked all my statistics on tracksite (whatever it’s called), the site that monitors how many hits my site gets. I usually check my hits once a day, where they’re coming from, how long folks are on and what they’re clicking. It gives me an idea of what works and what doesn’t. Usually the conclusion is: anything works. I can put a track by Sam I Ain’t “Bitches & Weed” and cats will download it. It’s fine, people have their own taste, some like J Hood, and some don’t! I’ve become the latter. But tell my why Apathy’s still sitting at 9 downloads? He’s fucking sick! Back to my unnerving twitchiness, so as bored as I was, I dug deeper into tracksite: time zones, entry clicks, this, that—you get the point.

So I tried writing. If you write, you may agree with me when I say the daytime is a terrible time; nothing creative comes. Sometimes I’m able to churn out what I like to call “filler” (and yes I am completely capable of producing filler—Jay Z Blueprint 2nd disc!). I had an idea that I was going to explore further, so I sat down and typed the first sentence, ““Kanye West disputed the Nielsen ratings on his past CDs, “Yeah if you count CD-Rs, man I went 25x platinum!”” And then I realized: that is garbage, straight up! Like, the idea is still funny but what more can I say? I mean I could really see Kanye saying that, couldn’t you? But sometimes I can’t stand some of the shit I come up with. Yeah, I’m critical of myself but you don’t want to know of some of the shit I’ve written that you’ve never seen. After that, concentration waned and failed to hold a flicker of the clock’s second hand. Still ain’t nobody came in for coffee.

So… reading? No, not books. Books are for keegs. And yes, that’s geek spelled backwards pluralized afterwards so as not to wreck the sound of my newfound creation. I took up the New Yorker, my favorite magazine, and tried that. I swear that shit can make me read something I’m not remotely into but then sometimes, I’ll stare at the page and look at. Or worse, I’ll re-read the same paragraph four times because my mind read the words but while it was sifting through the words my other part of my brain wasn’t paying attention and after each paragraph I’d say out loud, “Fuck, not again!” Or worser yet, I’ll pull a Chris Farley, courtesy of Almost Heroes, and feel like there are too many words trying to be crammed in my noggin, so much so, that I feel a slight headache. My manly response to all this: smack. I threw the magazine on the ground, ripping the front page all the way up until the first, of the third, staples. Trust me, I was bored, I couldn’t even read the cartoons.

Then, I contemplated how the previous night when I was watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, that I so laugh more at the jokes when I’ve had a few drinks. It wasn’t an epiphany. It was more of a life check, one of those “Damn” moments you have about yourself and say “Tisk, tisk”. I mean I know when under the influence I am even more easily amused but man, I am that easy? Some of what I laughed at was the jokes the writers write that are so dumb that they know the sane viewers will be like “WTF” but it’s as if the writers try to stretch and see how far they can go with their jokes, like gauge how stupid they can sound sometimes. I had a nervous laugh about it.

Then, I took my frustration outside. I sat down and tried to space out, clear my mind. That didn’t work. Then an ant crawled on my leg and I smacked the shit out of it. I looked down and a chocolate chip was just chilling there and like 47 ants were grubbing. I did count too, or tried to. Man, ants just don’t stand still. I began to fuck with the ants. I didn’t kill them right away. I tortured the ones who’d grabbed a piece of the chocolate. I poked these miniscule ants with the end of a broken stick. I missed on some and they dropped their piece and dipped. I followed them though and saw to their death. Soon I got overrun by ants; it was like a battle scene from Troy. I drowned them out with a few cups of hot, boiling water. That’s what you get, bitches!

The day would not pass. This seriously was the boringest day ever. Wednesday, May 9 will live in infamy.

Later on in the day, my brain, wrought with some sort of static wave, a wave that hindered any focus, inched closer towards a respite. Oh, brief respite, where art thee? Something was blocking my thought process, nothing could come in. I sat in the shade, in one of those green outdoor chairs, the ones with the built-in armrest, and relaxed. I was paranoid. I flinched at any sound that sounded like tires rolling through gravel and screeching. Every fifteen seconds I’d get up and out and turn around. Finally, my shift was through.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m through a b.s.y sort of day, I turn up the volume on my car stereo and just blast. I really don’t care what it is, just as long as it blares. “Kill em with da 9”, “Nigga what”, “Red Monkeys cos’ 48k”, “Hoes know me”. When rappers yell that, I don’t know how to explain it but it just eases everything, every-little-fucking-thing in your life halts and the music breaks out of your speakers through the windowless windows and the dude next to you, in his business shirt and tie, in his few year old Passat, is listening to Dave in the Afternoon on Light 107.9 talk about how beautiful of a day it is and how everyone should enjoy it because it is 87 degrees in Minneapolis and it’s just so Minnesotan (with an accent mind you) to blame the weather people for being mistaken that it was going to rain today so Dave and the gang are getting their jabs in at Sven the pretty boy, hired by Kare 11 NBC because, well, the good looks, the Swedish name and he may in fact be a tease (ahem gay), who told everyone to “Tote your umbrellas tomorrow, it’s going to be a rainy one!” last night but you didn’t listen and with your early morning haste, no thanks to that snooze button who torments you 12 times even though you decided to set it 30 minutes earlier and thus tormented yourself, forget to take heed but now your doing your little “I told you so” dance, laughing it up with Dave and the gang but then I pull up to the stoplight and Pimp C/Z-Ro’s “Murdurah” enters their ear and they glance over at me. There I am, bobbing my head, mouthing, not singing, every other line “expendable… crazy… glockcoma, yeah I said glockcoma, bitch I got a glock and I’ll put you in a coma… lyrically…” I’ve got one hand on the wheel, laid back, chilling—challen! I’m challen, homie! While he’s a tad disgusted that he can’t hear Dave and the gang, he inches up waiting for the light to change. Blam! (sorry, I don’t know the type of sound that a light makes when it changes). (Blam! Double blam because I just want to agonize you all the more if you’ve read this far. The end is coming, shortly). I speed off, leaving him in the dust just to brake hard one block down at the next light.

And if you want to know, he changed lanes, right behind me. When I got home, I changed and went to YWCA. I know it’s the “W” but hold your lesbian jokes until the end and I just might add a few too. Exercising helped beat the shit of this day—you’ve really got to concentrate when lifting or else you’ll do 200 sit ups and consequently puke. I got home and cooked some beef mole enchiladas sin frijoles. Sin frijoles negros porque—my Spanish stops here—I fart like mad the next day. No joke! I spared myself for today and I thank myself. Man, how a good meal can shut your ass up (and some beers). And hooray, I didn’t go online looking for music for one day! Damn, that felt good. Being away for one day is beautiful, it can’t be described. Then the Jazz had to make the Warriors look silly, c’mon Baron!?! I later fell asleep to some Tom Waits, waking up sometime in the night feeling as if some one was fucking with me. I was tripping, they were the headphones.