I came in and for the next four hours I was largely useless.  I wiped, and I moved a bit, but mostly I was a bystander to others' plans.  I would have been OK with that, except that my leadership, competence and manhood has been questioned by someone ... someone whom I may have tried working with today.

The worse part of the day was helping this guy move a rug.  I thought I was helping, but I didn't get a good enough grip on it, and just before it hits the floor the guy tells me to give up my end.  I thought he was going to let me get another chance to grip it, but instead he reaches out to grab my side.  So see him clutch both sides of a wide carpet in a "V" shape, while he's walking bowlegged to the far end of the room.  Obviously it's a two-man job.  And I was just standing there, with my limp dick in my hands 'cause I couldn't help this guy carry fucking one-half of a rug.

---

What am I doing here?  They're doing all the credit; from what I heard last week, I'm about to get all the blame.

But then I realized something: I hold the pursestrings.  They're expecting to get reimbursed by me.  Ah!  So that's why I'm here.  This is a reason for existence!  I have to keep saying that to myself: I hold the money ... I hold the money ... I hold the money. ...

But then I realize that I've been allowing them to buy all the shit.  Not only that, I tell them to save the receipts so I can pay them back.  That doesn't mean they're limiting themselves to some phantom budget even I haven't articulated.  So they've just run roughshod over me.  This is going to eat up the whole fucking account, isn't it?

---

Oh yeah, just like Friday night, there was a party, and I was in a similar attitude of "Fuck it, why not have fun while I'm going down in flames?"

This time, though, there was no crowd, nor was there some weird protector who threatened me while not looking at me.  Most of the girls were away, but so were nearly all of the customers.

I missed my ****a, who left a bit earlier than I thought was the end time of the party wearing this fucking hot bebe body stocking.  But there was only one girl dancing for one guy there, while another guy was waiting.  The waiting guy left, and the guy getting a dance got done (he also got done doing something with his pants, which I unfortunately noticed while I was looking in to see if they were finished).  But ... hey, no guys!  In fact, the host of the party, a guy, was downstairs cleaning up the food.  He told me to go back upstairs and wait.  He didn't care, and/or he didn't suspect a thing.

Maybe I should cum to this guy's parties more often.

So I wait for her to get done, to go back to the dressing room and pee.  We go back into the large living room that serves as the dancing room -- again, for the first time I've seen it, just us two -- and she immediately takes me to the coasters with pictures of vaginas.  The host, by the way, has pictures of his now-grown sons, as well as a screed against taxes.  Hardcore libertarian contrarian, I believe -- probably a guy I would not want to talk to, yet he's awesome when it comes to parties.

Oh yeah -- I decided that this girl -- er, woman -- showing me these vagina coasters meant that she would want me to reciprocate.  BAM!  Went out my cock!  And she goes, "No, we can't do that here."

"But do you do that?"

"No."

Oh, fuck.  That didn't stop her from groping/rubbing me over my pants ... except that she forgot that I did not button my fly, therefore her fingers slipped into my netheregions and she did touch my pee-pee, at least for a second!

That's all I got, although she let me touch her all over the place, to the point of finger-banging, in fact.  At the end, when I pleaded with her to touch it, she replied, "Maybe some other time?"

So you're saying there's a chance?

By the way, the stripper I'm talking about is the one I've referred to in the past as Chelsea Handler rode hard and put away wet.

---

Back to the party.  My body is feeling good, like the day will be a good day.  My heart betrays my mind, which knows -- knows -- that something unforeseen will blindside me and I will once again be stuck looking like a goddamn fool.  I just have to hope that people will not disrespect me ... and that I don't give them a reason to ridicule and/or ignore me.

What I have to avoid, I have no fucking idea.  But apparently my predecessor may have already done that.  While trying to sleep earlier this evening I re-read the e-mail blast.  I noticed something: It made no mention of me.  I was just shunted off to the side, like I didn't matter.

Maybe he forgot to add me in.  But I sure as fuck am entitled to some respect, respect he apparently refuses to give me.

I thought he was a cool guy.  Now -- now, I have the right to ask him some questions.  Like, this week.

So because I was feeling self-destructive tonight -- so, someone thinks I shouldn't be president?  Well, maybe I really shouldn't -- I decided to go to a house party last night.  Probably unbecoming, if not firable, to do so, but I no longer gave a shit.  Touched a girl's boobs, opened my fly up for her to see my dick fur, she told me to keep it closed, but when I gave her my money I made sure my dick head was sticking out.  I just hope the guy on the other side of the room didn't see it.

---

Earlier in the hour I was there I was about to go down some stairs when some guy, the host's friend, warned ... no, threatened me not to go down there without a lady.  "You know the rules.  I don't want to have to kick you out."  The creepiest thing about him when he said that, and that just makes me more pissed off, is that when he threatened me, he stood up but didn't look at me.  No, he was facing 90 degrees away from me.  That's just fucking weird.  So he's dead to me, fuck him.  I was trying to give it back to him the rest of the night.

Then it turns out there were a lot of guys just going down the stairs to hang out.  Maybe that's why he decided to get on my case.  However, I never saw him threaten anybody else.  So, I don't appreciate how he threatened me, but there was a reason to get all snippy about it.  And, in retrospect, it may not have been a good idea to yell at and ignore a friend of a stripper.

---

The only good thing to come out what's shaping up to be an incredibly shitty week: I found my house key!  I was looking for something else when it was in one of my bags o' stuff.  I found both things lying next to each other.  Good -- I didn't lose it after all!

---

So after hitting the bed at 11:30 I've been up since just before 5.  There's no reason for me to be up, yet I'm stressing out over the stuff I have to get to.  There's so much shit I still need to do, but I don't know if I can do it.

So, maybe this person who thinks I suck is right.  Maybe I'm not cut out for this job.  This is so overwhelming.

I'm a fraud, a fake, a no-good bastard.  Why would anyone think I could lead anything?  I'm going to make a fool out of myself.

What am I doing?

Stuff I Am Giving To Goodwill

• White socks with old red "adidas" logo and red stripes (one of them has a big hole, but they can't stay up)
• Socks, heather-colored (?) with white ring (can't stay up)
• Grey socks, blue-and-black checkered (holes in both)
• White socks (one of them has a big hole, but they can't stay up)
• Socks, black (holes in both)
• Purple Gap boxers with white double stripes (can't stay up)
• Baby blue Gap briefs with white-black-dark green-black-white band (can't stay up)
• Dark checkered Gap shorts (vertical tear to the right side of the left seat pocket)
• Porno pants (tear, inner right thigh)

Oh, You Weren't Gonna Yell At Me?

Mother asks me, "Hey, have you sent the 529 application yet?"

I tell the truth: "Uhhh ... no."

"Why the hell haven't you?  What's wrong with you?  I've got to get our granddaughter on a college plan right now!!!"

So I didn't say that.  Instead, what I actually said was a lie: "Yeah."

To which Mother replied, actually, "Oh, I ask because if you didn't, I'd call them to ask about fees."

So then I changed my mind and told the truth: "Oh!  Well, in that case, I hadn't sent it in yet."

To which Mother replied, "Why you say you sent it in and not you say didn't send it?  Were you lying to me then or are you lying to me now?  Why do you lie?!"

But I didn't say that, either.  I mean, that's weird, right?  Saying that you did, then saying that you didn't.  I mean, who does that?  Well, to be honest, My Father does that a lot.  Shows how ... well, cowardly he is when his answers depend on what reactions the person speaking to her gives him.  That's where I get that visceral reaction from.  Also, I kind of understand his point.

So, to make sure that I actually did what I said I already did, I have to send an application that, if my parents had their druthers, would rather not be sent.  Just so I stick to my story.  What a waste of a stamp.

Maybe I'll wait and instead make a call to the brokerage house on my own anyway.  Maybe at the end of it all it doesn't matter if it gets sent now or later or not at all.  But let me say, this has been an extremely shitty past 48 hours.

Questioned, Attacked, Challenged ... And, Finally, Undermined

I really felt good about the party Sunday yesterday (Wednesday) morning.  Honestly, I didn't feel that way before.  All the planning and stuff was overwhelming.  But for about an hour we, the host and I hashed things out.  The host of this party likes to, uh, party, and said she was more than happy to prepare the food, which is one of the big things we needed to tackle.  From there we made a list of what we needed to buy, stuff that can be done over the weekend.  She added some things that went way over my head, shit like signage and balloons.  So you mean I have to go get a sign made?  And balloons made, too?  But I'm no party planner, and so I defer to her judgement.

But then my predecessor leaves me a voicemail after work.  He was, to put it mildly, not happy.  He got wind of some, shall we say, rumblings about -- ahem -- me.  Shit about what I'm doing, and not doing, for Sunday, as well as the all-important parties in the fall.  First of all, I don't know how he's getting questions.  He's not with the club anymore, so why are people coming to him?

I was in knots after I left him a message asking him to call me back.  I've never heard him this concerned, if not angry, before.

When he called back for dinner, the other shoe dropped.  He had a laundry list of issues concerning my leadership -- none of which was communicated to me, at all, till now, several days before this big day.

I will attempt to refute these issues one-by-one:

• Lack of Communication Concerning Sunday: Maybe I'm being a little insular.  But honestly, I'm giving myself a pass over this.  Not only have we hashed things out (at least I think we have -- I suspect that one of the people who complained about me is the person who's hosting the event), but I am going into this with the assumption that no one is able to help me.  I remember helping out last year and it was just me, my predecessor, and the person who is hosting the event.  This year it's just me and her; both the predecessor and the other current board member are out of town this weekend.  So let's just say we have not had a good track record of getting volunteers, so why bother to ask?  Now, I didn't think it'd be a problem; I'll be helping prepare Saturday for a couple hours, then be back for a couple more on Sunday.  These parties have been so small that setting up and tearing down have never been a huge operation.  The two of us would have been able to do it just fine.  Guess somebody begs to differ.
• Refusing To Go To Our Fall Parties: I kind of don't get this, even though he tried to explain it to me again and again.  Someone told him that he or she weren't coming -- anymore, at all, never have, don't know.  Again, I'm blindsided by this.  I was going to get things rolling next month, but someone seems to take issue with ... well, I thought it was the venue, but turns out it is me.  Regardless of that, my attitude is, I was going to make an announcement during the party, then ramp up communication over the month, and we'll have all our diehards and if anyone else wants to show up, cool.  I see no problem with that.  But back to me ...
• I Wandered Off At The House Once: OK ... um ... this is humiliating to hear this.  It was brought to his attention that I walked around the house during one of the fall parties.  I don't remember this at all, but since I talk to myself constantly, I probably walked to -- oh, I don't know, the far end of the kitchen or something.  I know I did not go where I was not allowed.  But apparently someone saw me doing something that he or she thought was creepy, and therefore brought it to my predecessor's attention.  I have no idea how this affects my leadership, yet this is the thing that freaks me out the most: Being known as a weirdo.  How the fuck am I supposed to defend myself against this accusation?  (BTW, if the person raising this complaint is the one who hosted those particular parties ... well, the fact that she or he seemed cool to me and yet didn't address this issue to my face is ... very, very disappointing.)
• Professionalism: OK, this is the one that bugs me the most.  I'm not sure if he cited a specific example.  But it seems as if this is a broad concept that, from what he hears, is lacking in me.  This is the most vexing problem to the club, and yet, in my opinion, it's the most superfluous and juvenile.  Seriously, who in the fuck cares how professional I carry myself?  But he devoted the majority of his call to reminding me that I'm the representative of the university, and how this party is the first exposure many of these guys have to the club, etc.  This criticism hurts, it really does.  And yet this is the one where I know, for a fact, I will not change about me.  Guys, I'm a temp who lives at home with his parents, and who doesn't like to shower nor shave.  And I'm the president.  Sad but true.

Great; I have all these suspicious people in the shadows trying to take me down.  I don't know who it is that doesn't like me, but I'm scared that I'll see them Sunday.  What the fuck am I supposed to do?

And in the meantime I still need to order the cake, maybe get the balloons, maybe get the sign ... goddamn, all of these things that I thought I could handle I don't think I can handle now because someone who I trust a lot now doubts that I can handle it.  You know, how many balloons do we need, anyway?  And do we really have to have a sign?  (Do you think she's getting pissed that I'm asking so many questions?  Is she the one who complained about me?  You know, if I weren't so lost in preparing for this party, I would consider her to be overbearing.  Then again, the possibility that she did an end-run around me to lodge a complaint about me would make her overbearing as well.)

All I can do is the best I can.  I buy, I get, I prepare, I make, I talk, hopefully I smile, and I tolerate.  And people will tolerate me.  Maybe.  The best that I can do.  If he doesn't think that's good enough ... well, that's a problem.

---

I was going to sleep on this.  Maybe I'm being defensive, or overreacting, or even paranoid.  But when I came back on the Internet to type this it turns out he did make good on something he alluded to in our one-sided conversation: He got back onto the e-mail blast and asked people to help prepare for the party.

I wish he hadn't done that.

Look ... well, let me back up a bit.  He's the first president of the club, and as he told me, he busted his ass in order to get this club up and running.  The way he describes it, there was and is a lot more toil than I guess he's intimating I have done for this club.  Beyond the fact that we didn't do a whole lot while he was president, I was making sure I hit the big dates in the calendar just to keep the club alive.  But he doesn't think I've been doing my job, or else he wouldn't have e-mailed everyone late tonight begging for help.

Let's be real: The optics -- how this looks -- totally undercuts my authority.  Everyone who got that e-mail has to be going, "Wait ... why is he getting into the middle of this?"  And I have no answer.  I totally got my manhood taken away from me.  Totally uncalled for.  Maybe it was necessary, maybe it was deserved.  But there were so many better ways to ask for help, all of them without the need to call me out like this.

This hurts.  A lot.

He has a direction for this club.  And he seems to be worried about how I "represent" it.  If who I am and how I act results in damage to the club, I truly, sincerely think I need to step aside.  It would be better for all of us, and the club, if I just fucking leave if I'm such a goddamn embarrassment.  Looks like he wants it; he put the wheels in motion tonight.

---

This is how obsessed I am over this now: My car was totally acting up on the way home, had a bitch of a time accelerating.  It's to the point where I have to tell my parents I'm bringing it into the shop, so they might need to drop me off at work next week.  Despite that, I can tell you right now that I am totally not worried about that because I have to worry about all this the party, my job, the whole goddamn thing.

And I need to go to sleep so I can function at work tomorrow, but I'm not tired at all.  I tried to take a nap this evening but I'm so wired fucking worrying about this bullshit.

Am I going to lose all that I hold dear just because some people have a crisis in confidence over me?

---

I wonder if someone found out about me.  Whether it was through my facebook, where I do not hide the fact that I friend a lot of Playboy, fitness and weightlifting babes, or ... well, this blog.  Is either thing unbecoming of a leader of a club?  Maybe I should have thought about it more once I got hired, but I do remember having a couple fleeting thoughts of, "Wait a second -- will this make me look bad?"  And then I follow that up with, "Oh, who cares, she's hot!!!"

Hey!  You!  Are you out there?  You don't like who I friend or what I talk about?  So now you're gonna question and attack and challenge my authority -- behind my back?!  Why don't you do me a favor and have the decency to say it to my face, could ya?  PLEASE?!?!?!  Really, seriously, please, 'cause if I'm hurting the club, I like to know, I REALLY WANT TO FUCKING KNOW!!!

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Twins (Last Week: -1).  Well, you need one of two things to happen to reach the top spot in the WMNSS with a 1-4 week.  Either you have to be the only team in town in-season, or all the other teams are in the news for all the wrong reasons.

The Twinks have to thank their lucky stars, then, that both things happened to them in order to deflect local sports attention, let alone help them reach the top spot in the survey, despite the fact that they opened the second half of the Major League Baseball season by getting swept, at home, but the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that has very little fan loyalty but has overcome a horrible beginning to their year to play respectably behind all the young talent they've been able to find (though not necessarily pay for; expect staff ace David Price to be moved before the trade deadline).  Contrast that to the Twinks, who had four days off and are currently acting like they're taking the rest of the season off.

Tuesday I was able to tune into the late innings of the game against Cleveland.  The squad had a runner on third in the bottom of the eighth trailing 4-2, but the guy batting (didn't catch the name, but who cares?) swung through strike three on a curve.  Matt Guerrier, who once performed very well several years ago in his first stint with the club, pissed himself and coughed up four more runs in the top of the ninth (oh yeah, the Twins are playing at home through the weekend) to put the game out of reach.  In fact, the Twins should be winless for the week.  Only an eighth-inning home run on Monday off the bat of the otherwise-still-cold Josh Willingham averted a winless week (they beat Cleveland 4-3).  Once again the team's problems boil down to two things: Offense and pitching.

They finish the season with Cleveland this (Wednesday) morning, then host the White Sox for four game before heading back out on the road by beginning a three-game series against Kansas City Tuesday.

#-2: Vikings (Re-Entry!).  ViQueens, ViQueens, ViQueens ... don't you guys ever fucking change.  I believe that every National Football League franchise is the most popular team in their metropolitan area.  (And as soon as I type this I know that's not true: New York has the Yankees and St. Louis the Cardinals, to cite two examples.  Never mind.)  But I swear that only Minnesota is interested in the Vikings just as much for all the drama they can whip up off the field as their prospects of success on it.  This organization, starting as far back as I could remember to Tommy Kramer's DUI, through Randy Moss and the Whizzinator and The Love Boat, has always been able to trip over their own dicks and spill off the sports page and onto the front page.

What they did wrong this time (and specifically the Chris Kluwe/Special Teams Coach Mike Priefer controversy) is half-ass their response towards Priefer's homophobic comments.  Apparently their own "investigation" revealed that Priefer did indeed say something to the effect of, "We should round up all the gay guys, put them on an island, and then nuke the island until it glows."  Since Priefer initially denied saying that, not only does his comments break NFL policy regarding hateful statements, he lied to his employer.  That appears to be a fireable offense, but instead he's been suspended three games -- two if he completes sensitivity training.  So the team is saying that he did something wrong, but it wasn't so wrong that he should be shitcanned.  I don't think that satisfies anyone; therefore they've waddled into the median of a two-lane highway and allowed itself to be run over both ways.

Then, to show that they ultimately are taking Priefer's side of this over Kluwe's, they have resorted to underhanded and mudslinging -- and in turn Kluwe decided to play in the mud with them.  First of all, they were accused by Kluwe's representation for not releasing a completely unexpurgated copy of their investigation.  Kluwe then announced that he was going to sue in order to prove that the Vikes cut him because he was outspoken in favor of gay rights.  Finally, he got off the high road and intimated (in his very busy Twitter account) that he knows a lot of dirt on former Vikings players and coaches, most lurid an incident he witnessed where two ex-Vikings tried to fuck an underage young woman.

The organization, in a move that kind of surprises me because franchises usually don't like to play in the shit against former players, leaked an incident where Kluwe made fun of a member of the team support staff in the wake of the Penn St./Gerry Sandusky controvery.  The team actually said that Kluwe cut a hole into his underwear where his anus is and pretended like this staff member, who is a Penn St. alum, raped him.

And this is where Kluwe, a guy who I thought had a lot of things going for him, burned through much of his currency with me.  He admitted that he made fun of the Sandusky story and this Nittany Lion alum, then dismissed his actions by saying it pales in comparison to Priefer's comments about gays.  I understand, logically, when Kluwe says the two things aren't the same.  But when you're talking about rights for victims, be it homosexuals or molested children, one would think that a person sensitive to one issue would also be at least sympathetic towards the other.  So I don't quite understand how Kluwe could blow the whistle on homophobia while at the same time dismissing a story involving the molestation of kids as horseplay.

I took a couple classes on the law while in college, and the one thing I took away from it is that you have to separate what you think is "moral" from what you think is "right."  Because only the written law, and the rights derived thereof, is the matter of the court system.  Any thinking of morality is thrown out the window -- quickly, in this particular case.

Both sides are obviously trying to paint the other as horribly as possible if and when Kluwe's wrongful termination lawsuit goes to court.  The Vikings look like gay bashers and, worse, accomplices to a cover-up.  Kluwe looks like a tattletale and now, worse a hypocrite.  And yet none of that shit will matter once this officially hits the judicial system.

Who wins?  Honestly, sports-talk radio and those who like to make fun of the Vikings.  These guys are a never-ending shitshow, yet it's so fascinating to see how they fuck up in public that you can't help but watch.  These guys find newer ways to embarrass themselves every couple years, and every single time it distracts from their play in games (and usually that's a good thing).  So don't believe anyone who rolls his eyes whenever you talk about Kluwe and the soon-to-come civil suit.  You know and that person knows as big a walking disaster the Minnesota Vikings are, they can always be counted on to give you something to talk about.  And in the quietest part of the sports calendar, to a sports fan, such he-said he-said controversy fills the air with the joyful noise of schadenfreude.

Anxiety, Anxiety

OK, the car really acted up now.  On the way back from work I wanted to take side streets so that the Check Engine light wouldn't go on.  Unfortunately it went on anyway.  Worse, I had real trouble accelerating the car -- I mean, really bad trouble, really, really bad trouble.  This wasn't in my head.  Shifting through the gears was well nigh impossible, and I was stepping my foot on the gas pedal.  It was really frustrating, even humiliating to see all these cars zip by me while they were only doing the speed limit, then see the car behind me that couldn't help tailgate finally have the next lane clear in order to get around me.  I had a really hard time getting up to speed all the way home.  Now maybe it was the weather; this was the first real humid workday of the summer, and maybe my car's reacting to that.  But now I'm deathly afraid that it's going to happen again tomorrow, and that in fact it's going to be how it's acting until I have the chance to get it fixed, which, because of the cycle of my maxed-out credit card, probably is a couple weeks away.  Will my car make it that long?

I get home and receive the results of a phone call I had with my alumni contact at my alma mater.  I'm hosting this party this weekend and I'd started to get exasperated because I needed a head count so I could figure out how far into the club's coffers I'd need to feed this party.  Well, the initial roster is way, way, way more than I thought it'd be.  Great.  So now I need to basically double/blow my budget for a party that everybody and their money seems to be attending.  I'm low on funds everywhere; now I have to worry about the club's, too?

Because of the car and the party, I do what I usually do when I panic: Look at Internet porn and masturbate.  And I did -- twice.  And it doesn't help.  A temporary moment of (self-)pleasure, then you realize that your problems are still there, dammit.

Road Trip, Part I (South Dakota)

OK, some pithy thoughts on the start our road trip across America:

• On the morning of June 19, the start of our road trip, it was pouring rain.  I mean buckets, I mean biblical rain.  Thank Buddha Enterprise picks us up; even if their branch was within walking distance, I would have been soaking wet if I tried doing that.
• My Fucking Father kind of made a fool of himself when he tried haggling over the price, specifically getting insurance to cover our huge one-way ride.  I don't know if he believed if the amount he tossed out was one they accepted, but basically the guy who was helping us offered us a third tier of coverage, the addition of which was still acceptable to My Father to use his card.  You know, maybe Father really is just hard of hearing.
• These rains that hit in the morning really affected southern Minnesota -- to the point where parts of 169 in Mankato were closed down due to standing water.  That really fucked up our plans; all of the directions I printed out and AAA gave to us had us going through here.  And since I've never driven through (or even been in) this part of the state, I didn't know where else I could turn.  The saving grace, I guess, was the GPS, which, along with generally knowing where west and south were, allowed us to take side streets down beautiful Minnesota farmland and finally connect to a part of 169 that was still open.  Probably set us back a couple hours, though.
• After escaping Mankato, and with the exception of one brief shower, the rain stopped and at some point during our drive out of Minnesota the sun came out.
• I heard people say that Big Sky country/the Great Plains/the part of America that's least populated is flat, and I can tell you that South Dakota certainly is.  We were flying through the land, which basically is a lot of short, light green grass, at lightning speed without worry about either hills or curves.
• Not to say that South Dakota is ugly.  I'll just tip you guys off that the next part of our trip, the states surrounding Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, were much more bucolic.  But I found the flat land of S.D. to have its own desolate beauty.  You could see this overlooked piece of country for miles on some parts of the drive on 90 West.  Maybe to some it's miles of nuthin'.  But not to me.  When I was a passenger I took several pictures, and I didn't mind the scenery at all.
• Expounding on the fact that we arrived at our Rapid City, S.D. hotel, the Howard Johnson (and it's technically not Howard Johnson's -- no possessive apostrophe "s") just as their Happy Hour was wrapping up, I kind of looked around and there are a few franchises that have something similar, and not in any adjoining restaurant but their own breakfast room (Portland, a couple places in Florida).  If HoJo is the only hotel chain that does this, I might frequent them a little more.
• I may have heard it from people who've seen it before we did, but if I did hear this before, they are right: Mt. Rushmore is a lot smaller than I thought.  There is an overlook, but from there you'll have to crane your head up to see the monument fairly off in the distance.  There is a trail that takes you to what I think is the base of it, but if that's the case, you'd have to look straight up then.  We didn't take the trail; in fact I don't think we spent more than half an hour there.  It's like the time me and my cousins went to the Grand Canyon back in 1994; I doubt we spent more than 20 minutes looking over the gigantic gorge.  I mean, it's not like we could just dive in there and look around.  We took our pics then took off for, uh, Lake Powell, I think.  I think I remember Matt Lauer telling Jay Leno on The Tonight Show a long time ago that a survey showed that a tourist spends an average of only that much at the Grand Canyon.  So maybe I got that 20 minutes from that, and we spent a lot more time there.  In fact I remember that I bought a shirt there.  OK, maybe we stopped by the souvenir shop.  Anyway, the point is we didn't stay there long because even though it's one of the most well-known landmarks of America, there isn't a whole lot you can do besides stare at it.
• After leaving Mt. Rushmore it got be really important to me to make sure I was behind the wheel driving the minivan full of my parents' stuff through at least a portion of every single state we were going to drive through.  And not to sound like a dick, I also wanted Mother and my sister to do the same, to a lesser extent.  To a lesser extent because I know this is one of those weird OCD things only I really cared about.  But I can say with some authority that not only is this family not going to do this particular road trip again, there are parts of this country we went through almost a month ago that we never will set foot on again.

Prisoner-Privatized Worker Sex: Two Comments

Click this link on a piece from a journalist, Paul Egan, doing actual journalism for an actual journalism outfit (aren't all journalism outfits embattled these days?), the Detroit Free Press.

My two things, each coming from the polar opposite sides that make up me, Unforgivable Wetness:

Grown-Up Point: This is yet another reason why privatizing public services is a fucking sham and needs to be stopped.  Yeah, so what if it gets expensive.  As I get older I realize that the public commonwealth/good cannot be run for profit if the services it provides keeps order in the citizenry.  In fact, if it loses money, fine, so long as it does its job and everyone (besides anyone who's trying to make a buck off of it) is satisfied.

I'm just afraid that this fuck-up by Aramark will be swept aside because we're dealing with prisoners, the lowest form of human life.  I assume, in fact, that Aramark banked on that, or at least the perception of that, in order to make their millions without public scrutiny.  Even with this investigative report they could get away with it because I don't think a lot of people give a shit that prisoners are getting sick from maggot-infested food.  I really don't, either.  But if privatizing this public service results in lawsuits or, if I may be allowed to think alarmingly, prisoner revolt where they break out and start killing the people of Detroit (or at least what's left of them), why don't we just bring these prisons and jails under government control?

Perverted Point: So, Aramark whores sign up to work in jails because they get wet for prisoners, and so they took turns going into this walk-in cooler to kiss and give them handjobs ... and it was all caught on camera ... and since everything is on camera these days they had to have known they were being recorded ... and they probably didn't care?

I swear I must have seen that in a pictorial in Penthouse or Hustler, and if I didn't, they should done one like that, because God help me, that is fucking hot, if I weren't in a library right now I'd be jaggin' off to thinking about what that would be like!  Of course, if it were a porn spread, the women, if not both men and women, would have to be white, not black like all the participants probably are.

Feeling Burned Tonight

So when I was at the intersection, which I was diverted to because one of the main thoroughfares remain closed southbound, I was at a crossroads.  I had just been to the Minnesota United FC game, a 2-0 friendly win over Swansea, the first time a team from the English Premier League has ever played in this great state.  While I enjoyed myself at the game, spending $36 depleted the $60 I took out that morning.

My plans were an and/or: I could go to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Division), or I could go to My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place.  I checked out the balance of my checking account when I got the money that morning, and I was quickly chastened.

Another thing: I'm getting really good mileage on my car.  The needle was barely below the full notch, but the 160 miles I've already racked up means that that needle should be at half full.  Taking rights keep it up, but I know that eventually it'll go down, and I don't know if I wanted to aid that by going downtown and then going back to where I was just to eat.

But then I then started changing my mind:

• It's Saturday, and I haven't been down to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Edition) in at least a week, so I should go ...
• While waiting for the soccer traffic to clear I checked my wallet and I saw that I had only $10 -- or at least I thought I only had $10 -- so that seems as if I should not go ...
• But the road close means I'll be diverted to the other thoroughfare that sends me to the club, so I'll be going in that direction, therefore I should go ...
• Only to realize that at this intersection, I just need to take a right and I'll be at My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place, so why don't I just go there and not go ...
• But I was in the left turn lane, so I might as well go ...
• Wait a second ... I only have $10.  That's not enough for me to eat, let alone enjoy with titties.  Might as well get money on my way to the stripclub.

So I decided to go to My Favorite Stripclub (Non-Cover Version) after all, where they had four of the hottest strippers on the roster, one of them I saw for the first time.  One of them was *****y, who basically badgered me into a dance because she said I promised her one -- oh, and gave my word that she would look at the pictures from my roadtrip (which I know I haven't gotten to yet, but after this I will).

Fine, fine, fine.  I probably made that promise, and an impromptu dance on a night like this (when all the girls were giving at least two dances in the hour I was there, a first in my decade-plus patronizing this place) was the reason I extracted another $40.  But then *****y shortchanged the time of her lapdance and reneged on  her promise to watch my (admittedly boring) photos.  She screwed me over, basically.  *****y works like that, hustling especially on nights where it seems money is to be had.  But a promise is a promise, and her mercenary tactics rubbed me the wrong way, particularly when I'm not rolling in the dough right now.  Yeah, I guess I could have not gone, but that doesn't excuse her from what she did.

Then other stuff bothered me.  Another of the dancers, Heaven, scratched my back while she was on-stage.  Hard.  Like I needed one of the other strippers to check my back to make sure I wasn't bleeding.  Welts and a lot of pain.  Surprised me; I thought Heaven had a more level head than this, but seeing that she basically let a guy paw her twat without getting money from him first, she really was blasted out of her mind like she said.

I did go back up to My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place -- right where I was -- and that's where I'm writing this ... while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.  Like I said before, yet risked going back because it was humid but virtually cloudy all day.

So I was paralyzed by indecision, spent money I shouldn't have spent, got taken advantage of by a stripper, was physically assaulted by a woman and insects, and wasted what appears to be a quarter tank of gas.  Just because I decided to take a left rather than a right at a literal crossroads.

And the top of my back still hurts like fuck.