I know I haven't talked about The Teacher and our current state of affairs much lately. I feel a little weird gushing about how amazing he is and how fabulous our relationship is. This is really what I've been waiting 29 years for. This is really it. "It."
But, he has been away for a week on a hard core camping trip (and when I say hard core, I mean shitting in the woods) and I've been missing him terribly. We have only been dating for two months but it is just so right and we fit together so well. I keep forgetting it has only been 8 weeks.
It is very hard for me to express how well this is working out. Bad relationships I can talk about forever. The good ones, all I really have to explain it is a great big smile. It’s funny how tragedy and depression is the great inspiration for most classical work. There are so many more songs and novels about heartbreak than true love. Or maybe that is just my lifelong depression talking. Who knows?
But anyway, with The Teacher being gone I’ve had some time to get a lot of stuff done around the house, which is good, since my 2nd Annual 4th of July Bash is coming up on Saturday. The garage desperately needed cleaning so when the typical July thunderstorm rolls in we can still play Flip Cup. Anyone going to be in Poughkeepsie on Saturday…it’s BYOB.
Have I ever told you about the insanity which is the smartness of my Aunt's family? No? Ok...
Well my Uncle (by marriage) is a nuclear physicist. My Aunt is a computer programer for the nuclear physics institute. My female cousin used to be a German soap opera star but is now just a mere doctor. And my other cousin just moved to Switzerland to work for Google.
I think there might have been an unfair division of genes at some point.
You probably don't know me, but only because I'm a completely new face here. I'm Phil. I come from the land of All Things Phil, and I'll be your guest blogger today, courtesy of the 20SB Big Blog Swap. A very big thank you to the Dutchess for having me here! Now, enough about me, and on to the good stuff.
I'm a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm currently living in Los Angeles, thanks to graduate school, but I spent the last few weeks in Albuquerque visiting my partner, Robert. Over the course of my time there, I discovered that my watch was acting up. I wear a pocket watch. Not because I want to rebel by not wearing a wristwatch, mind; I just hate the feeling of anything wrapped around my wrist.
My watch is unique, and not like the average pocket watch. It's pretty much the Cadillac of pocket watches: we're talking technology and style here. Open face, standard hour, minute, and second hands. BUT! It's also got a fully functional digital clock, replete with alarm and stop watch. Awesome, I know.
During my last week back home, I noticed that the digital clock seemed to be off. The analog clock would report a certain time, and the digital would report time from another dimension, or more likely an alternate reality. I wondered at first whether it was just an hour or two off. That thought was laid to rest one morning when I looked and saw that it was, in fact, thirteen hours and twenty-six minutes off.
Robert kept asking me if I wanted to go to a jewelry place and have them replace the battery for me. He's probably right; the battery is dying, and so just keeps resetting itself. I know I probably should go get the thing fixed, but part of me doesn't want to. Instead of being frustrated every time I check the time, I'm actually quite amused. It's almost become a game for me; I'll look at another clock to see what time it is, then try to guess what time will be digitally displayed on my pocket watch. I've yet to be anywhere near right. Here's what it looks like right now, this very moment, as I'm typing this:
Actual time: 12:30am
Phil's Pocket Watch Time: 9:41am
Aside from the total one-man inside joke that makes me chuckle, there's another reason to appreciate how off the time in my pocket is these days. It serves as a reminder that watching the clock is an easy way to miss out on a lot of great things in life. If you're always thinking in terms of how much time is left, or how much time until something happens, you might just miss out on some of the great moments in between.
"Yeah, you just dip the q-tip into the battery acid...and then touch it to the tooth. It'll get sucked up within the crack in the tooth and kill the nerve...no no you don't get it so sopping wet so that it'll drip on your toungue, you get it just wet enough so you don't burn your mouth, you just kill the root"
I don't think I'm nearly as petrified of the dentist as I used to be.
I don’t usually blog about work. There are many reasons why this is, but half because my employer is extremely prestigious in some circles and I have no desire of being “Dooced” out of my job. The other half is that I’ve finally learned how to not let work get to me, so I typically have nothing to say about it. I go in, I do my work, I go home, my life starts, repeat five times, insert paycheck.
But today on the other hand, has had two very blog worthy moments.
So this morning was going along like all mornings do, an hour or so of reading blogs before I motivate to do some real work, an hour or so of work then start to think about what we are doing for lunch. 11 o’clock rolls around and a real discussion starts up when someone suggests we go to the employee cafeteria. I’m sorry…the what? The employee cafeteria, you mean where people who work here go to eat lunch, for free? How is possible that I’ve been working here for almost 9 months and no one has ever mentioned this to me? Do you know how much money I’m going to save now that I don’t have to pay for lunch?
And then…
They (I have no idea who they really are) have been testing the emergency siren in our office complex for the past few weeks. It has always been the most obnoxiously loud high pitch noise you have ever heard followed by a recording “This is a test. Blah blah blah” Imagine the emergency broadcast test on your tv on steroids. Well today the siren was more like a 50’s school speaker system bong bong bong but at those decibels it sounded exactly like a moose and let me tell you, it scared the crap out of me.
Man, I have seriously become the world’s most slacking blogger ever. But I do have a very important public service announcement to make, so I really must motivate…
Kanye West is a dick and must be stopped.
Kanye was originally scheduled to play on the 2nd stage one evening at Bonnarro but claimed that he really wanted to do his Glow-in-the-Dark show so asked to be switched to a middle of the night on the main stage. Right, Glow-in-the-Dark, conveniently on the MAIN stage. OK.
We weren’t really effected by this switch. We were there to see the rock and hippie music much more than the hip hop/pop/craptastic display of arrogance anyway. I mean, we would have caught the show if it fit into our schedule, but after a very long day in the sun full of moving our blankets from set to set, shaking our booties to awesome music and roasting in the sun, our bodies were protesting the 2:15 am start of Kanye’s show. That turned out to be a good thing.
The next morning we woke to see tons of people wearing shirts that read “Fuck Kanye” and there was graffiti all over proclaiming Mr. West Sucks. Our curious minds lead us to interrupt the first conversation we overheard regarding the issue.
2:15 rolled around with no appearance by Kanye. 3:15, 3:45, 4 am… Chants by 50,000 rabid fans, the stage being pelted with glow sticks and two full hours later finally brought Kanye onto the stage. He performed for an hour with no apology and no explanation to the delay and as the sun started to rise and his beloved Glow-in-the-Dark show became null and void he finished his set an hour early.
The next day artists all over the venue bashed Kanye for his diva behavior and Kanye lashed out. He went on Fuse and said something along the lines of The Grateful Dead are over and all the hippies need to get over it because he is the future of Bonnaroo, the worst thing you can say to 100,000 pissed off hippies.
And so, Kanye, go fuck yourself.
Update: Noelle mentions Pearl Jam below, an issue I didn't refer to here. I shall explain. Kanye was blaming his late appearance on the stage on Pearl Jam as they went an hour over their set. But if Pearl Jam = 1 hour and Kanye = 2 hours I don't understand the math.
Update 2: Best Week Ever has a hilarious commentary on how much of a douche he is.
I’ve been trying to write down all of these stories from Bonnaroo and really…they just aren’t very entertaining. I mean living, eating and breathing that lifestyle for four days was absolutely amazing, but most of it, you really just had to be there.
I saw people getting busted with a gallon of crystal meth. I saw people getting busted with a helium tank full of hash. (And if anyone can explain to me how you get hash in a helium tank, I’ll appreciate it.) I was mooned by a man in a Fred Flintstone costume. I was a victim of a drive-by goosing. I got a personal shout out from the stage. Ok, so that might have been my friend Timmy who is a sound guy for Sigur Ros, but it still counts. I saw our friend Little Miss Sunshine sit down on the ground and pee out the leg of his shorts. I shook my booty at the Silent Disco. I swayed to Pearl Jam. Metallica rocked like I’ve never seen any band rock before. Gogol Bordello was tons of fun.
But one of the best parts of Bonnaroo was the people. Put 100,000 hippies in 700 acres and they are actually really polite. There was absolutely no belligerence at all. We never once saw anyone even getting heated. Everyone said excuse me or sorry when they bumped into, which is bound to happen with that many people in such a tight location. People truly tried to avoid stepping on your blanket. It was a very uplifting experience. It is very nice to remember that human nature is really ultimately good and not evil.
I DID Find Myself Behind the Wheel of a Large Automobile
About four hours into our trip and I was next behind the wheel. My father owns a construction company so I grew up around large trucks and I learned how to drive on his diesel pick up, but this RV was certainly the largest thing I have ever personally driven. It was a little unnerving but I was falling into a comfortable ease with the monster box as we passed over the PA/MD border.
That is until I saw the flashing lights in the mirror and the sirens escorted me to the shoulder. Oh crap.
"This traffic stop is being videotaped." The first words from the officer's mouth.
I had no idea why he pulled me over, but I was informed that I was going 67 when I entered the 60 mph zone and I then slowed down to 57 and traffic was backing up behind me. I get pulled over for the most ridiculous things.
The officer asks for the registration which we don't have, forgotten at home. He asks for the contract that proves that I am allowed to drive, also left at home. He has to call the rental company, and sure enough I'm not on the contract. And it is at this point I see in the side view mirror the drug sniffing dog getting out of the cop car.
Now I don't really smoke weed, it's never really been my cup of tea and don't feel comfortable doing so unless I'm around my truly trusted friends. But La Nina's husband and the other guy we were traveling with are heavy smokers and had a quarter ounce in the RV hidden away in a safe can in the bottom of a cooler filled with Coors Light.
As the very cute dog sniffed sniffed the vehicle I spent half the time trying to figure out how I was going to get out of jail without my parents finding out and half the time yelling at the police officer to get out of the tall grass upon finding the area crawling with ticks. "GET ON THE PAVEMENT" and then he cracked a smile.
After a thorough search of the camper where La Nina and I are pretty sure the Maryland troopers rubbed our underpants on their faces a very small bag of weed was found. So small in fact that they let us go...with the weed! They must have felt so bad for us. Four unfortunate souls with a tiny little bud and nothing to smoke it with. That or it was going to be more paperwork than it was worth.
