Johnny Rockstar

I’m sick. Yesterday morning I woke up with a sore throat, and by 9:00 I had that nasty, run-down, achy feeling all over my body. It’s a super busy week here getting ready for Life Plus University though, so I didn’t want to go home early. By the time 5:00 rolled around, all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and zone out. When I finally got home I prepared for an evening of doing nothing by turning on the Xbox and grabbing a six-pack of Vernors, a bottle of grape juice, two breakfast bars and bag of grapes. By the end of the night I had drank half the Vernors and all of the grape juice, plus several glasses of water. While I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that flushing the body with liquids is great when you are sick, I now know to vary those liquids a little bit more. It seems that much grape juice in a short span of time has quite the negative effect on the digestive tract. About three quarters of the way through the bottle, I began to notice the effects. But not wanting to get off the couch or drink any more pop, I continued on. Though not nearly as horrifying a result as would have been obtained from drinking a gallon of apple cider, I definitely don’t plan to reenact last night’s grape juice debacle any time soon.

Posted by Johnny Rockstar at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There’s not a lot to do in Batesville, so when Kathryn visits we tend to watch a lot of movies. This weekend was no exception, and Saturday afternoon we went to Blockbuster. I wanted to rent Out Cold. It’s not the greatest movie ever, but I was in the mood to watch something with Zach Galifianakis in it. And when that’s the mood you’re in, you don’t have many choices. It wasn’t on the rack, so I went to the front of the store to ask the clerk but couldn’t bring myself to actually ask, on account of the fact the only clerk on duty was currently breaking up with her boyfriend and I didn’t want to interrupt them.

Instead of Out Cold, we picked up The Ex and the first disc to season one of Arrested Development. Then, we wandered around the store pretending to be looking at movies and watching the drama unfold through gaps in the movie racks, while we waited for the break-up to finish. Well… I was watching the drama unfold through the gaps; Kathryn was being polite and trying to ignore them. We had just about made a complete lap around the New Releases when the guy finally left, but we thought it might be rude to go up before she had finished crying, so we checked out the previously viewed movies on sale for a couple of minutes.

The moral of the story is don’t rent The Ex. Don’t be fooled by the fact it stars Zach Braff; it’s not very good.

Posted by Johnny Rockstar at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There are many reasons I don’t particularly care for the South—the rampant racism for instance. Aside from the prolific number of rebel flags I see flying on poles, hanging from eves, plastered to bumpers, airbrushed onto tailgates and tattooed on arms, another aspect of southern living I don’t like is dealing with the weather… especially summer.

I have two major issues with summer down here. The first is the unrelenting, oppressive, sweltering heat (if that’s not enough adjectives I’ll also toss in sticky, unbearable, constant and hellish). Before I went home for Bourke’s wedding we had spent two weeks consistently above 100 degrees; 110 with the heat index. If you haven’t experienced prolonged exposure to it, let me assure you that there is nothing quite as unrefreshing as a warm breeze on a hot day. Literally, the only time I spent outside during that time was when I was forced to travel to and from work. Fortunately it’s cooled down a bit since I’ve come back. Now it’s only in the mid to high 90s.

My second major issue with summer down here is that it seems to be the chicken-harvesting season. Three or four days a week I get stuck behind a semi hauling stinking, dying chickens to the Pilgrim processing plant. If I’m really lucky, we’ll get stopped at a red light and I’ll have to sit next to the reeking mess for a few minutes, digging my nose into my sleeve and trying desperately not to breathe through my mouth. There is no stench on this earth like that of several hundred foul fowl caged together on a muggy day.

Posted by Johnny Rockstar at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night I went to bed around 11:00, slept restlessly all night, then woke up this morning a little after 4:30 so I could drive from Memphis to Batesville in time to shower and change for work. Considering I had been on overdrive the past several days with wedding stuff and visiting friends and family, it’s safe to say I’m pretty damn exhausted right now. I can’t wait for bed and it’s not even lunchtime yet—I’m in for a long day. But it was worth it. I thought about recapping the whole trip, but I decided against it. Instead I’ll just say it was one of those experiences that make me stop and think, “So this is what it’s like to be an adult.” I mean of course, what it’s like to be an adult aside from the fact that my mommy got my plane ticket for me.

One of the nice things that happens when you have a cool camera is that lots of people want to play with it. So, between people playing with it, Ryan acting as my personal cameraman and my own picture taking, I have well over 300 hundred pictures to sort through. Since I my photo album here is still down and not coming up any time soon, and since the pictures are massively high-res, I plan on weeding out the really bad shots and burning everything else to discs that I’ll mail out. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll add you to the mailing list.

Posted by Johnny Rockstar at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The drive from my work to Kathryn’s apartment takes about 2:40. That’s plenty of time for thinking about nothing in particular. Last night, at about the 2:20 minute mark, in a conversation I had in my mind with an unnamed person I had this to say:

“You know what? I hope that when I die not a single tear is shed. I hope people look at my life and say he was a great guy who did some good things with his life, and right now he’s in heaven drinking sacramental Zimas with his main man Jesus. I hope people don’t cry over my death, I want them to celebrate my life. I hope at some point somebody says ‘Remember that time that prick stole fifty bucks from me and never paid it back?’ And I hope ten minutes later somebody else says, ‘Remember that time my wife walked out on me, so Johnny took off work to spend the day with me drinking beer and playing video games?’”

From there it just kind of trailed off and repeated itself in various ways.

Posted by Johnny Rockstar at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think part of being an adult is coming to terms with the fact that most of the mail you receive will be bills and junk mail. This is opposed to being a child when most of the mail you get is birthday cards and video game magazines. I was excited yesterday when I had a decidedly “kid mail” day; I opened my tiny little mailbox and found it stuffed with three comic books, three movies from blockbuster online and one do-it-yourself magazine. That is to say one magazine that covers do-it-yourself projects and ideas, not a magazine that you make yourself. There were a few pieces of junk mail in the mix too, but for the most part it was a damn good haul.

Posted by Johnny Rockstar at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When I was pulling into the parking lot at work today I watched a woman go to the vending machines behind the building and buy a breakfast Pepsi. Just the idea of drinking 20oz of liquid sugar for breakfast made my stomach hurt. Then I remembered my old neighbor down here used to drink a can of Mountain Dew every morning; I guess he didn’t like coffee but still wanted that jolt of caffeine. Maybe it’s because when I was growing up pop was a Friday night treat, but I just can’t grasp the concept of Coca Cola as a breakfast beverage. It makes my teeth ache just thinking about it.

Though I must admit, on the extremely rare occasion I have both things available, my all time favorite breakfast consists of leftover wedding cake and a glass of Pepsi. It’s been so long since I’ve experienced that particular joy, it might turn my stomach into knots if I tried it today. These days, every morning my breakfast consists of a Kellogg’s blueberry breakfast bar and a cup of plain ol’ black coffee. I’ve experimented with the mixed berry flavor, but it just isn’t the same.

Posted by Johnny Rockstar at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)