Illicit Cheese

I’ve got stuff to talk about today and I don’t know where to begin. I’m reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and I’ve got about 100 pages left of 1170. I’m in the home stretch. It’s not bad. The problem for me is that Rand basically crafted this piece of fiction as a vehicle to expound her political beliefs. Definitely not the first time this has been done, but the first few 100 times it was done, it was done better. In the Fountainhead, the novel was character driven. I would say AS is more political dogma driven and the characters are just vehicles to this purpose. That is my one huge issue with the book. That was until I got to “the speech.” I don’t want to spoil the book for someone who may want to read it (or the movie which I think is in production). Suffice to say, there is a speech at the end of the book and to put it mildly, getting through it was excruciating. I’m through it, bring on the denouement. (spelled right the first time, I’m good!) Ok, so I’m reading through this speech and randomly interspersed in the text is the phrase “blank-out,” sometimes it appears as blanks-out. I can’t figure out what that means. I can’t decide if the publisher was somehow censoring certain words or if it’s just part of the speech. Seriously, when blank-outs appear, it seems totally nonsensical from the context. I have no desire to go back and figure it out and a google search was useless as well. It’s annoying and totally baffling. On deck, I’ve got Kurt Cobain’s diary. Hopefully there are no blank-outs in that.



I had a couple more things to mention about Lolla. I totally forgot to talk about the concessions. I didn’t consume that much there, at least I tried not to, but I was shocked at how reasonably everything was priced. A quarter of a lou Malnati’s small pizza was $3. That was the bargain for me. I pretty much subsisted on Lou’s cheese pizza the whole weekend. That was a good thing. I also had a pulled pork sandwich, that might’ve been three bucks, and a mini meatball sandwich was 2 or 3 bucks. I think a can of beer was 4 bucks. Water was 2 bucks and you only had to buy 1 cuz you could refill at any of the water stations located around the park. I don’t think T shirts were a good deal, but I have so many Ts and they are such a waste. I can really only bring myself to buy a T if it’s $10 and the money is going to a band that needs it. Overall, logistically, financially, sonically, the experience inside Lolla was very pleasant. The crowds weren’t too bad either. Foot traffic made it a little tough to get from one side to the other, but other than that, the crowds weren’t overwhelming.



Ok. Now to the good stuff. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get to the crazy dating night I had last night. Well all online. It started rather innocently with an IM exchange with the girl I mentioned yesterday who I hadn’t made time for. I sent her an IM at about 6 or so, and I was surprised to get a quick response. She was responding from her cell phone. Kinda crazy, she seemed up for talking whereas I wouldn’t have been if someone was IMing me on my cell. I don’t even know how to set that up. We chatted for a while, it went pretty well. She works in Oak Brook, which is a stone’s throw from where I live. I told her we def need to grab a beer sometime to which she replied, “After a day like today, I need some booze!” Guess she had a tough day. Eventually the connection got all messed and I wanted to go for a run, so I did that. This girl is also into punk, so we have something in common there, we’ll see. There’s another girl who messaged me off of match, she’s into punk too, but I can’t decide if she might be mildly mentally challenged. Safe to say I’m not that interested in her. There’s another girl who is into burlesque and open relationships, I had a message thing going with her and she bailed, I dunno what I said, she was cute though. I have no idea what I did to start garnering all this attention, like I said before, maybe some women are trying to line up foot-warmers for the winter, and they are starting early.



There’s one woman who checked out my profile on Match, I had checked out her profile as well, and I just can’t bring myself to message her. I can’t do it, because there is only one thing I want to say, and I’ll get to that later. On her profile she has like 14 pictures and among these pictures are: a pic of her scuba diving, a pic of her deep sea fishing, a pic of the giant marlin she apparently caught, a pic of her on a snowmobile, a pic of her running in a race, a pic of her skiing, a pic of her apparently landing after skydiving, a pic of her at a cubs game, and a pic of her somewhere tropical. She’s really cute, she looks great in all the pix, but I dunno, she just seems too active for me. If I messaged her, it would probably go something like this, “I like your profile, you seem really active. Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just think it would be funny if you somehow got a picture of yourself in a spacesuit as if you had just landed on the moon. You might have to go to the Smithsonian to get something like that, but it would be absolutely awesome.” I dunno. I tried to think of other things to send her, but I can’t in good conscience send her a message without mentioning the fact that she has a million crazy-active interests. I mean who would be a good match for her? Jacques Cousteau? James Bond?



I saved the best for last, I had a first last night (that sounded confusing). I should’ve been in bed, as all good boys should before 10. Instead I was back on OKCupid. I was reading somebody’s journal entry that was really pathetic. It was sad. Then a window popped up and somebody had instant messaged me; first time for that, I don’t even know how to send someone else an instant message. She said hi, I said hi. She said she was at some concert. I always assume the best, so I’m thinking it was someone good, she says she was in Hinsdale (a town close to me, and her, she’s in LaGrange). She saw the band 7th heaven. I surmised from the discussion that she had a few drinks. She was all like, “I didn’t want to come home.” I’m like, “ok.” She sounded like she was all amped up, but out of nowhere she says, “I’m tired, I’m going to bed.” And that was it. So a few minutes later I went and checked out her profile. She was not attractive, but not awful, and quite possibly mentally challenged. Her profile indicated that she was still on line. I’m naïve. I know it, and I accept it. I was way slow on the uptake there, she was looking for a hookup. She wanted someone to meet her out and who knows what. She bailed on me (I def was not going to go out, I ran, and didn’t eat dinner, bed was calling). I’m sure she moved on to find some other dude to hook with. That’s the story. Pretty weird. Lotsa crazy stuff in this day and age