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-How I Spent a Crummy Night in SF with a Bunch of Bilious, Drunken Fucks-
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I don't even want to write this TNiPNaZ report, actually, since Destiny has been writing so many fucking good reports and I hate him severely and wish to renounce the genre altogether.  Also, he's introducted this strange concept of "dialogue" into TNiPNaZ reports, which I can't do because I don't listen to other people, and even if I did I wouldn't remember everything verbatim and nitpicking anal guys like Splicer would get all huffy about being misquoted. Finally, it was, as the above title suggests, a crappy night.  So, why commemorate?

But, whatever.  I was at least tangentially involved in the destruction of Destiny's notes for the evening, so I bear some responsibility for making up for their loss.  In resignation I've put on my Burning Man cowboy hat and a Lamb CD and settled down and now I think I'll write this report.  If you don't like it, fuck you.  And your sister.

Thursday Night is Pigdog Night at Zeitgeist started off weird for me to begin with, in that A) I was going with female companionship and B) I was about 45 minutes late, so I'd miss the tamale lady.  Despite these handicaps I pressed on, marching through the doors of the mighty Zeitgeist to find Tressa at the bar.

[Here comes the witty "dialogue," folks... bear with me, I'm new at this.]

"Hey, Tressa. What's up?" Evan said, archly.

"Hey," said Tressa with a sleepy-eyed grin.

[Hey, that's not so hard!  Watch for more fun "dialogue" later in this report.]

Tressa was buying a pitcher of Red Nectar and I figured we'd pick up a couple of glasses and another pitcher and join her.

"Let's get Hasenpfeffer," said Amy.  For some reason she likes this tweaky beer.  I tried to discourage her. 

"Mmmmmm... how about some _yummy_ Red Nectar, instead?"  I made some yummy sounds and patted my stomach in simulated enjoyment.  Apparently she knows this trick, because it didn't work.

"I want my Hasenpfeffer!" Amy yelled, jumping up and down on her throne and waving her sceptre.  Damn.  I didn't even have any carrots handy, so we got a pitcher of RN and pitcher of some creepy yellow goo with a lemon in it.

Meanwhile, Splicer had arrived with his magic bag of expensive technology.  He got his trademark Splicy Ginger Beer and stayed to chat up the bartender while Tressa, Amy and I walked out with beer.
Splicer has a new haircut and he puts some evil fratboy gel in it too, so he was looking pretty good, but the bartender chick wasn't giving him any time.

A dull thrum filled the ears of a man staring out an airplane window at the darkening fields of America below him.  This man had nothing to do with TNiPNaZ and will not be mentioned again.

At the table already were Tjames, Paul, Kris, Destiny, Arkuat and some huge long-haired bearded freaky extropian dude named Anton.  He only talked to Arkuat the whole night and left early.  So, this is the last time I'll mention him, too.

I pushed everyone down the Zeitgeist picnic bench and sat down with Amy.  There was a little Burning Man made out of gravel on the table.

Paul had been on some weird high-school-based tugboat trip for Labor Day Weekend and had a sun tan for the first time in his life.  With his pointy nails and beard he looked even more like Satan than he usually does.  I believe that Satan is, in fact, a delicate ectomorph much like Paul.

We -- the couples, Paul and Tressa and Amy and me -- talked about that and about the tugboat trip and about my smoking jacket that I wore to Lisa's party.  Paul wore it for a while, too.

"It was huge," said Paul.

"You need delicate ectomorph size, Paul," I retorted.

"You know, I had to look that word up the first time Tjames called me 'a delicate ectomorph.'"  I kindly assumed the word he had to look up wasn't 'delicate.'

Paul and Tressa were both smoking and Amy and I were not.  Amy is quitting and I had the sympathy quits with her.  She squeezed my hand and whispered in my ear: "I want a cigarette."  Me too.

Arkuat and Anton were talking and Anton rumbled, "It makes me lose faith in causality."

"What?" I yelled.  "You've lost faith in Cosby-ality?"  This is the kind of dumb joke I love.  I don't know why.  They both stared blankly at me.

"Causality, Cosby-ality.  Cosmetology.  Caus... Oh, forget it."

So I went and mentioned Anton again.  Fucking give me a break, man. No more Literalist Fuckhead pills for ANY of you.  That's final.

Amy looked at her beer. "I don't like this Hasenpfeffer after all." Her pint was 3/4 full and there was a full pitcher of the stuff in front of her.  Sigh.  Girls.

"I'm gonna go get a bloody mary."  I told everyone at the table that Amy was quitting and not to give her any cigarettes.

Tjames was holding court at the other end of the table.  He was seated Indian-style on top of the table, looming over Splicer who had his goodies out -- his Newton and digital camera and all that stuff.
Splicer took a few pictures with his camera which should go right about ---->| here |<---- in the HTML-ized version of this report, if I bother to do one.  They are nice pictures.  The digital camera has a preview mode where you can see the picture you just took.  Neat, hunh?

Splicer was also looking at Pigdog mail on his Newton.

Arkuat set some money on fire.  The first one he tried, Tjames snatched away and kept.  ("Doubling his net worth!").  He got one going, though, on the next try.  It was some political thing.

More pitchers came.  We drank them.  Time passed, a drum keeping cadence as we pointlessly march towards annihilation.  Ah.  Anton left, lumbering away from pigdog into the Singular future.

Splicer: "Who was that guy?"
Me: "An extropian friend of Arkie's."
Splicer: "He didn't look like an Extropian."
Me: "Didn't you see the little icicles hanging from his ears?"

Someone else came, a hillbilly with a battered hat and a big beard. It was Sunah, ferchrissakes!  She'd dressed up like a man because she doesn't feel comfortable coming to a bar alone as a woman.

She took off her hat and beard and Tjames tried them on.  Paul said he looked Amish.  Splicer took pictures of him and then everyone put on the beard and hat and Splicer took many pictures, which would go right ---->| here |<---- if this was an HTML-ized report, which it is not.

The beard was weird.  It looked like a merkin.

Sunah said something about wanting a kiss.  Amy said she should do it, and Sunah said, "There's no one at this table I want to kiss."  Ouch!

I ended up on the other side of the table, away from Amy.  I think I wanted to talk to Tjames.  People said stuff that was funny, I guess.

See what I was saying about not paying attention much?

We set some Mentos on fire.  Mentos don't burn, they melt.  I got flaming melted sugar on my hand, and it hurt like fuck.

I got up and bought a pitcher and another bloody mary (Bartender: "I hope she appreciates this!" Me: "I don't care if she appreciates it, as long as she gets drunk!").  I put a few dollars in the juke box,
which made me happy for a while.  Juke boxes are cool: everybody has to listen to the music you like.

I got back and sat down.  Everyone was standing up, which in my theories is one reason things got weird.  Standing up makes people tense and it gives them the illusion of mobility and Potential! Action! which slouching on a bench does not.

I went across the street to the liquor store to buy peanuts but they only had one bag so I bought a bag of bar-b-q flavored sunflower seeds too.  The Spice Girls were on the MTV Music Awards on the TV in the store.  Everyone was staring at it.  The Spice Girls are real dead fish in a live performance, if you ask me.

I went back and sat down.  I'm really overusing that sentence, but, then again, that's what happened.  I can't fight the truth.  Then something happened that Amy has enjoined me not to talk about but I
don't think is such a big deal.  But it made me real grumpy, so I went and took a walk by myself.

I went up a street and there was a guy standing in a doorway.  He made a gesture, pointing into his doorway.  Then, he made a gesture like he was giving head.  Who woulda thunk you'd see a deaf-mute troll on the streets of San Francisco?  I demurred and walked some more and chain-smoked about 8 cigarettes and then came back to Zeitgeist and sat down.

Binky and MAJ were there.  That put our total at 12 people for the night, which tied us for the TNiPNaZ record.  They were really energized from Burning Man.  Tjames and I and I assume everyone else is way burned out.  Maybe it's a dehydration thing.

Tjames: "I could have survived Burning Man without finding out that Splicer isn't Jewish."

Amy came over and we smooched some. "Smooch yer gal!" said Tjames. This is what some yahoo blockhead at Burning Man had yelled a lot. It's not a bad idea.  Splicer took some pictures of me and Amy kissing.  They should go --->| here |<---.  He took some long exposure shots, too, so we had to kiss for about 10 seconds.

"Uh, could you guys not move around so much?"

MAJ said, "I don't know why you guys even showed up here." Me and Amy.

Amy: "Oh, we're not as bad as we usually are.  And we already had sex, like, 10 times today."  I love a woman who exaggerates about my sexual prowess for me so I don't have to.

MAJ: "Why don't you come join the conversation with the rest of us?"

Me: "Make yourself more interesting and we will."  I was belligerent.

MAJ again wondered why we showed up.  I told her that I am the Lord of Thursday Night.  Tjames said that I was the Mighty Silverback and I did a gorilla dance on the table to prove it.

"You've been practicing that in front of the mirror, haven't you?" said MAJ.  Har de har har.  God, this is getting to be a long report.

Then Arkie put a peanut shell down the back of my shirt.  Butthead. "Tjames made me do it!  He put one down my shirt, and said it was you!"

"Arkuat, I am not one of the people at this table that you can fuck with right now.  Imagine a Venn diagram.  The set {Evan} does not intersect the set {people you can fuck with}."

He apologized profusely and came over to help get the shell out of my shirt. I realize now that I was using my Mighty Silverback powers for evil instead of good.  Everyone was getting riled up.

Destiny and I talked about Perl.  I told Destiny he seemed to be a one-trick pony with this quote-server thing.  He needs to diversify. I should talk, though -- I haven't written anything fun in Perl for a
while.

Tjames came over and he didn't have a glass so I dumped out an unclaimed pint on the ground and poured him some beer.

"Alcohol abuse," yelled kris.

I said, "Ah, put a sock in it" or some such lame retort.

"Someone should teach you a lesson in respect for alcohol," said Kris, glowering.

"Too bad there's no one at this table who could teach me a lesson in anything," I said, pointedly.

"You're mouth's writing checks your body can't cover," said kris.  I thought this was kind of funny.

Kris got up to leave sometime after.  We're going to his house tomorrow night.

For some random reason Amy and MAJ started fighting across about 10 people.  They were crazy (Arkuat: "Cat fight! Cool!") and threw seeds and peanuts and gravel at each other.  It was ugly.  Amy threatened to cap MAJ.  Full and empty pitchers of beer were brandished.  Tjames and Destiny got up and sat at another table.  I believe this was hypocritical: this is the world we have created and we need to endure it.

Things calmed down a bit.  I talked to Binky about the Hillbilly Camp idea for Burning Man.  He got excited.

"It'll only be good if we do really crazy Hillbilly stuff."

"I was imagining a lot of hillbillies in lab coats with a big Spock and lots of porn."

"YEAH!  A big Spock statue made of papier-mache porn!  And we put all kinds of explosives in it and BLOW IT UP at the end! YEAH!"

Tjames has been looking into flame-thrower technology and I'm investigating robotics.  This could be a good Burning Man next year.

Amy had been talking to Arkuat and I heard her say, "No, I think I'll kiss Evan instead."  And she did.  I glowered at Arkuat and threatened to set him on fire if he ever hits on my girl again.  He denied things
profusely with a guilty look in his eye.

Amy's a good egg, though, don't you think?

X had shown up some time in there and was doing Henry V stuff again. He's Falstaff.  He's got some production and everyone should go see it and throw things at him when he gets on stage: "AOL lamer!"

Apparently MAJ and binky have already seen him perform in "Faustus." Cool.

X said some funny shit that I forget.  And, I gotta wrap this fucking report up, soon.  Oh, but Splicer took a good picture of X looking through a pitcher of beer, --->| here |<---.

I got up and came back and Tjames was dancing on the table.  Splicer took a picture, which should go --->| here |<---.  Tjames tried to set Destiny's notes on fire, but destiny pulled them away in time.  He then tore them up himself.  It was weird.

Did I mention Paul and Tressa left?  They left.

My memory is kind of fuzzy here.  People were standing and I got up and stood with them.  Me Tjames and Splicer: the Thursday Three. Tjames said Arkuat had been hitting on him.

MAJ stood up and we complained to her that she never got naked at Burning Man.  We figured we'd spent a collective $1000 and traveled 400 miles to see her naked, and no go.  She apologized and offered to get naked right there for only $300.  What a gal!

Amy and X were passionately discussing acting. "X is hitting on your girl," someone said.  I told them that that's the way X talks to everybody -- right up in your face.

We had no beer, so I went up to get some pitchers.  As I was in there, Tjames came up to the bar.

"Splicer and Arkuat just got in a big fight."

"What?!"

Then Arkie came out.  He was in one of those, "Who me, angry?" attitudes.  Apparently there was some miscommunication and Splicer kicked Arkuat or vice versa.  Half the people were hovering around the bar and then half were outside still.  Arkuat went back outside and so did the male bartender and then Arkuat got kicked out.  It was pretty funny, actually.

X, to MAJ: "Do you have a driver's license?  Because you're the soberest person going back to the East Bay, so you should drive."

Arkuat marched out of Zeitgeist with great dignity.  MAJ and binky followed.  I guess somebody drove home because Arkuat posted today and so seems to have full use of his limbs.

The bartender came back to finish my pitchers. "Sorry, had to throw some guy out."

"Yeah, one of our friends!"

"Well, he was getting belligerent."

"With _another_ one of our friends!"

I went back out and sat outside.  It was just Destiny, Splicer, Tjames, Amy, X and me now.  Splicer was sputtering and overcomplicating things in his explanation.  I still don't get what
happened.  Amy started dozing off in my lap, but we had two full pitchers to drink.

The girl bartender then came and rousted everyone outside.  The bar was closing.  We went and hunkered down inside for a while, frantically drinking our brew, but she eventually found us and kicked us out.

Destiny took Tjames home, and X came with me, Amy, and Splicer.  When we got to the Mighty 4Runner of Doom, the rear passenger window had been smashed in, and someone had taken my briefcase.  There were some pills and a notebook and my Pilot and the robotics book in there. Fuckholes.  There was tinted black glass everywhere, too.

We got home and went to sleep and got back up and continued to lead our lives.

If I forgot anything, please feel free to straighten me out, although I can't believe anyone would read this all the way.

~ESP