I don’t know, what the fuck do you want from me? Just kind of in a funk, lately. Not pervasive, rather it sort of floats in and out of my day. Tired. Burnt out. Expressed the idea to my wife yesterday and her response was immediate, logical, and undeniable: I haven’t had a proper vacation in who the fuck knows how long, and I work myself to death. Always busy. Always tired. Always distracted.

Case in point, I write the above paragraph at 2pm during my lunch break. But, here I am, now! It’s 7pm. I have surfed time, space, commuter traffic, a half-assed workout, and a dog walk to rejoin this act of writing. I’m just, you know. Tired.

But! Hey! It’s Monday Morning Commute! By way of Tuesday. Despite being slathered in a melange of malaise, I’m actually looking forward to some shit this week, I’m actually consuming some pop culture I’m enjoying this week.

Join me in the comments with your own pop culture proclivities, thoughts on existence, gifs of furries farting on cakes. I don’t give a shit.

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It’s the Weekend Open Bar and goddamn am I happy to be spending it with you.

Long weeks seem to be relative, you know? Like cock size, intelligence, and the amount of pseudo-beef in our CancerBurgers™. So, despite the fact that I had Tuesday off (America, baby!) and today off (teaching schedule, baby!), I’m still heartened it’s the Weekend. I think most of my brain-gut-tumult this week was the result of Sam starting her new job. She was segueing from the former one, and acclimating herself to the new one.

A pervasive talent of anxiety is the ability to just straight fuckin’ OpticBlast that shit all over myriad elements of one’s own life. Money stressors? OpticBlast! Papers to grade? OpticBlast! Wife starting a new job? OpticBlast!

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I’m a sucker for the Fourth of July. Or at the very least, the notion of it. As someone who is both a recluse *and* has to fucking work on the 3rd and the 5th, I imagine I won’t be doing much literal celebrating. But, the holiday gets to me.

Maybe it’s the programming from growing up a KidBot during the end of the Cold War and into the Myth of a New Golden age, but I have to admit — there’s a twinge of excitement at the idea of Seared Flesh and American Flags.

It’s the sort of deep-seated, inextricable programming that pops up from time to time, attempt to defy it as I may. The same programming that has me unconsciously doing the Sign of the Cross during a Catholic wedding or some shit. Which, has happened, and as it happened I looked appalled at my own gestures like I had a fucking Ghost Hand.

So here I sit, melancholic for the old days when I Believe In Things, and Celebrated Stuff. So here I sit, melancholic for the days when folks used to come around these parts, and spend the Weekend Open Bar with me.

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Hello, friends! Denizens of the Space-Ship Omega! This is Monday Morning Commute, by way of Tuesday Evening. Why the tardiness? Why the general silence on the blog?

I’m glad you (didn’t) ask! I just blitz’d a weekend in Maui for a best friend’s wedding, and well. Coming back to reality after two days in paradise requires efforting on several levels. Readjusting to timezones, readjusting to the perils and praxis of regular life, yadda, yadda.

But I can’t complain.

I’ve discovered the answer to a question I’ve been asking myself since last year, when I knew I would be going to Maui. Is thirty hours of travel in the span of four days, and thousands of dollars for said travel, and missing teaching two incredibly intensive summer classes, worth forty-eight hours in paradise, for a best friend’s wedding?

Unequivocally, yes. 

But this, right here! It’s the weekly column where we share what we’re up to, on a given week! I’ll share my own findings, as I rattle around in the befuddled muck of my consciousness, trying to figure out not just what I’m up to, but what day it is, what time it is, this and that, this and that.

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I ain’t having an anxiety attack, though! Don’t let the headline fool you. Just popped into my head today, when I was brainstorming headlines. A headline for what? Why, the one, the only, the perpetually poorly written and only intermittently published: Weekend Open Bar!

That’s right! Come one, come all and grab a seat here. Here! In the rotgut, mind-melting tavern aboard the Space-Ship Omega.

Once seated, then what? Glad you (didn’t) ask! Share what you’re up to over the next couple of days. Don’t matter if you’re fortunate enough to have them off, or unfortunate enough to have to continue your grind.

All are welcome! Share, share what you’re playing! Share, what what you’re reading! Share what you’re watching, eating, contemplating. Anything and everything goes here, so long as you keep it very tight butthole (the existential state, regarding your own butthole, go fucking wild, I encourage it).

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It’s been a minute, Space-Ship OMEGA. A hot minute, since I’ve dusted off and rolled out Monday Morning Commute. For that, to the three dedicated community members we have, I prostrate (and if you’d like, prostate) myself before you and beg forgiveness.

Rendar was doing them, and then he was maybe doing then, and then it seems life sped up and he simply wasn’t doing them, and I should have intervened. But, you know how it goes. Life speeds up, the mind slows down. It’s Monday evening at 10pm and I could idly blink at the TeleVisor, or I could activate the neurons. Lethargy always, entropy claims, I choose not to fight the great unwinding.

Anyways, hey! I hope you’re still here. Anyways, hey! I hope you’re still down to play the old game of Monday Morning Commute — where we share the various distractions, dalliances, and distillations that are helping us combat the weekly drudgery.

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I and four hundred thousand of my closest strangers huddled in front of our computer screens, anxiously awaiting the reveal of a “brand new experience” that had been hyped beyond belief. While grandiose claims and clever commercials are pretty much a staple for large title releases these days, this was the first time I had been so personally affected given just how much I have been invested in the original game. To establish some context, over the last three years I have spent 2,310 hours actively playing Destiny. I have completed over 309 raids, including 242 hard raids (where you can’t be revived if you die). The real number is considerably higher, but the game only records the first time you’ve completed each raid on each character each week, so it’s missing all the raids I’ve done for no loot to help someone else. I have played 4,158 PvP matches in the Crucible, where I have killed 47,166 guardians and been killed 49,662 times. Oh, and I am the 400^th ranked Sparrow Racer in the entire world. *flex* Basically, while other adults are out under that burning sky-ball thingy in the company of other human beings, I am playing Destiny.

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My wife turns thirty this weekend, Saturday to be specific. It’s a weird sensation, knowing that she has shacked up with me for life, and been with me since she was literally twenty. Spent her golden years with a guaranteed Garbage Lord. It’s nice though, to chart our progress together, to check off life events together, and even more specifically to get high, eat cookies, and watch Workaholics together.

It’s nice, it’s quaint, it’s quiet.

I like spending time with her, and I like spending time with you folks, you denizens of the Space-Ship Omega. So let’s hang out at the Weekend Open Bar. Pass some marginal time within our comfortably marginal existences together, as we are lucky enough (or not lucky enough, the grape press of industry is whittling away our off-time) to have the next couple of days off.

So comrades, what are you doing this weekend? What are you watching? Eating? Reading? Thinking about? Anything and everything goes, so long as you adhere to the sign above the Tavern entrance: Thou Shalt Not Be A Douche.

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I come to you, friends, from the Precipice of Doom. That’s right, I’m awaiting Bateman to pick me up in his charlatan chariot, and whisk me away to Montreal with the majority of OL for a Bachelor Weekend for a mutual friend. I come to, you, one Bateman-on-his-phone away-driving-100mph from the obliteration of Space-Ship Omega. I’m being dramatic, but I do anticipate witnessing some *shit* this weekend, the eye of a mellifluous maelstrom.

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I wasn’t supposed to be upset that Russell was dead.

Pops and Mahma explained to me when we first got him, years back, that he was mine to look after. After all, they reasoned, it was because of my begging and pleading that they agreed to go to a breeder in the first place. While it was true, Pops admitted, that we all fell in love with Russell’s soft whimpering and pouty eyes, he was mine to look after.

And that meant, in their parental estimation, not only enjoying the benefits but also dealing with the baggage. And to do so with the grace and poise for which our family — the Eldertons — was known.

So, needless to say, Pops and Mahma were none too thrilled when they found me cradling Russell’s body on the morning that I found him, gently and peacefully, dead in the backyard. I was crying, and they were disgusted, but I told them that Russell was my best friend and they should honor my feelings even if they didn’t agree with them.

I wasn’t supposed to be upset that Russell was dead, they told me. I was supposed to know that Russell’s lifespan, given his breed, was going to be short, they told me. I was supposed to stop crying, and when I collected myself I could go back to the breeder and get a new Russell, they told me.

But they’d never told me that it was risky for me to get Russell in the first place. They’d never told me that something’d gone awry when I was programmed. They’d never told me that I’d been glitch-maxxed for empathy.

I wasn’t supposed to be upset that Russell was dead, but he was more than just a human being to me.

He was my best friend.

—-

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE!

Now that you’ve survived another one of my brain-damaged attempts at drivel fiction, it’s time to discuss the upcoming week’s activities.

What’re you going to do to curb the blow of another workweek? What’re you looking forward to? What’s getting you jacked up and ready to embrace existence?

I’ll start.

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