Frog was instant messaging me.

“I’m out of cigarettes,” his message read.

“Your legs broken?” I asked.

“Jello”

I decided to give him two, but I didn’t feel like walking downstairs to give them to him, and he obviously didn’t feel like coming upstairs to get them.

“I’m throwing two down the stairs. Jello your ass to the bottom of the stairs if you want em” I told him.

I went to the top of the stairs and threw the cigarettes down. Shortly after, the door opened, and Frog scurried in there like a crab, snatched them, and scurried back out. He reminded me of Gollum.

I went to bed.

I was out eating with some of my insane roommates, and I happened to pass by a bulletin board with a bunch of business cards and flyers and whatnot on it. There was one card on there with a nice looking lady’s face on it. She looked so friendly that I took the card and put it in my pocket.

I keep it in my pocket and look at it now and again because she looks so happy and friendly, and it makes me feel good too. If anyone seems upset or agitated I show it to them also.

People seem to think this is bizarre. I don’t think it’s that strange. Everyone says I should call her and just actually be friends with her, but I don’t want to ruin it, you know? I’ve met people who have seen me looking at the card and know her, and they say she’s a super fun person and all that, but I don’t want to tell her about it.

THere’s no way someone could hear that someone else had been using their business card as sort of an oracle of friendliness and not take it the wrong way.

Anyway, is that strange?

Walter and I packed an entire drumkit and my acoustic guitar PLUS my entire electric rig into the back of his subaru.

“This is one full car, Chim!” he said in his german accent. The german accent had become a running joke with us since I had talked to a German woman on the phone and she called me Chim.

I got in the car and shut the door, and Walter hit the gas. We were heading up to town. We both had doubles that night whose locations coincided, so I made him take me and all my gear along in his car. I hate driving.

“You’re fucking me up you know, I’m going to be late”

I played dumb.

“For that I am smoking one of your cigarettes,”

We pulled up in the back alley which had the back doors for our separate clubs. The Bangladeshi guy who parks the cars there walked over and opened the driver’s side back seat door of Walter’s car.

“No!” Walter shrieked. “God damnit, Sassan, you’re not supposed to open that door. Takes me forever to close it right and roll the window up.” He had gotten in a wreck before and smashed the door up, so he bought one to replace it. IT was red. The rest of the car was grey. I told him to keep it locked, but he hadn’t listened.

Sassan gave him a look. Walter and I unloaded a fuckton of gear from that little car.

We each went inside and set our gear up. I taped my effects to the floor and ran all my cables and whatnot. When I got back outside Walter was just emerging from his club.

“He just opened that door right up, nothing I could do!” he called at me across the alley as I was walking out the kitchen door of my club.

“Let’s go, Chim!” we piled in.

We drove for a bit to our first gigs.

“Can’t he see that door’s red?” Walter asked. “He just opened it right up!”

We pulled up to Walter’s early gig, and piled the drums out. I shook his hand and tore ass out of there in his car, because I had to go pick up some shit from the music shop before my early gig in an hour. I got about 15 minutes down the road and my phone rang. It was Walter.

“Man I left that bass drum pedal in the trunk.” he said.

“I’ll be right back”

I whipped the car into the parking lot of the music store and went inside for some strings and a fuse for my amp because I had blown it a few nights ago.

There was some jackass there talking to the jackass behind the counter about some stupid guitar he was thinking of buying but would never use, and here I am running low as hell on time to get to my gigs. I felt like jabbing them both in the neck with my finger.

Finally Jackass A got tired of blabbing and Jackass B asked what I wanted. He didn’t have the fuses. He started flipping through a catalog to see if they even carried them.

“Look man, If I can’t get them right now I don’t want em” I said.

He looked offended and shuffled over to the register with my strings and his silly hairdo. He bent over to punch the keys of the register and I noticed huge flakes of dandruff in his hair. Jesus Clarence Emmanuel Christ in a burlap sack man! GET ON WITH IT. He punched at the keys with the slow determination of a 70 year old man playing chess in the park. I hopped from foot to foot.

Finally Flakey McSlowpants finished ringing me up and I headed for the door. I jumped in Walter’s Subaru and drove it and its red door as fast as I could back to his gig. I ran inside and handed the pedal to him, then ran out.

“He was just cussing you!” Vishnu yelled at my back as I ran out. Vishnu is a drummer, but he plays guitar at that one gig. Don’t ask me. His real name is Chris Jackson, but he went to some spiritual camp and renamed himself Vishnu. For all that spirituality he can still be a real prick. He’s very touchy about people touching his stuff, or him, or getting too close to him. He’s an odd duck.

So, I tearass out of there and screech up at Home Depot, because I still have to get that fucking fuse. I go inside, grab 5 for me and 5 for Jrock, whose fuse is also blown, pay, and then hop back in the car and tearass to my early gig.

It’s Valentine’s night, so there are yuppies hugging and smooching one another there at the gig while I’m trying to load in. They are clogging the stairway like a fucking scene out of a ralph lauren catalog, and I’m about to drop my shit. I make it upstairs just as I drop it all. All the couples there stop talking and look at me. I wave, and start unpacking. They go back to talking.

I set all my shit up and start to change my strings. I have just enough time and the ones on the guitar are dead as all hell. I clip them all off and reach in my jacket pocket for the ones I bought from Flakey McSlowpants. The package feels funny. I look at it.

HE GOT ME THE WRONG FUCKING ONES.

At that point my head exploded, shortly followed by my body, all of my gear, walter’s car, the Vinings neighborhood of Atlanta, and the entire universe.

I was sitting at the table with Becky and Trina waiting on a pizza when I decided to go up the street to the bar and buy myself a pack of smokes. I jumped up from the table and walked out.

As I was walking down the sidewalk I heard the sounds of a trivia game being played at one of the little bars there. They had put one of their speakers outside to try to bring in more people.

“What made Hootie cry in the song ‘I only want to be with you?’” she asked.

Well, I happen to know that song. I tried to think of the line she was reffering to, and I remembered just as I was getting to the door. I pulled the door open and turned to the right to face the stage, cupping my hands around my mouth.

“Dolphins!” I yelled at the lady running the game on stage. I gave her a big smile and a thumbs up, as if to say “I did good, huh?”. Her face fell into a glare.

I shut the door and walked down the sidewalk toward the bar with the smokes.

“Nevermind that question,” I heard the lady say over the speaker. “Someone’s just RUINED it for us.”

I ran up the stairs to the other bar for my smokes, giggling like mad.

I have had 4 hours of sleep in the last 36 hours. My head hurts.

I am about to get in my bed and it’s going to be really comfortable. I can’t wait!

Tonight frog was in the kitchen with a plate of cooked shrimp, peeling them and eating them over the trash can.
I ate one.

I sort of have a problem with shellfish in that it takes too much work to get a little bit of food out. Still, I don’t want those evil bastards from the sea thikning I am scared to chow down on them should they get out of line.

Take that, aquatic fuckfaces!