This is not Peter Singer the ethicist, but Peter Singer the “director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings.” What’s more interesting about Singer in this context, however, is that a great deal of his work is on American defense and future robotic warfare, which is also, essentially, the plot to the next Black Ops game. I think we’re pretty used to thinking about think-tanks having a lot of influence on public policy, but it’s interesting also to see them getting involved in cultural production as well. And as Ian Bogost has pointed out, there’s been woefully little work on the persuasive power of video games (although that trend is certainly decreasing).

It’s intriguing, of course, as well, that the game centers on tensions between the United States and China, of which Singer has said that, “There is perhaps no relationship as significant to the future of world politics.” (here) And the major issue that Singer sees as establishing major frictions in this relationship is, of course, “cybersecurity.”

There’s a peculiar sort of play-within-a-play mirroring happening here, as well: here’s a game where US defense has lost control of its own technology, played inside a medium of high technology, inspired by US defense consultants, where the players role is to fix the problems created by proliferation of uncontrollable technology by US defense operations. It’s hard to say how China is portrayed in the game, but it’s likely they get at least some “big bad communists” depiction, because that has always sold well in the Call of Duty games. And so the game sets itself up both as the apocalyptic imaginary of Singer’s research/work gone wrong, while leaving ambiguous what lessons a gamer will really get out of it. Call of Duty is hardly an overly didactic series (A previous game makes you murder civilians in one mission, only to have your character killed at the end of the same level. The moral/ethical lesson here is far from clear.) and so I’m interested to see how the game handles the (arguably) important issues for world politics that will be its main focuses.

Peter Singer has also done work on Child Soldiers, so hopefully Call of Duty 8: Child Soldiers is in the pre-production stages…

These people have never used a soda machine with a water button before.

Think about it. They’re EVERYWHERE in Amurrica. Think about this: they’ve never even seen someone else do it. They have never even accidentally glimpsed someone accidentally tapping the water button. And then I start to wonder, “Wait a second… am I the only one who has ever used these?” I quickly dismiss that thought. You know why? BECAUSE IT’S INSANE AND THESE PEOPLE ARE ALIENS. Lost in my musings and only slightly funny internal deliberations, I look back to notice that one of the workers in Bolocco has actually left from making burritos in order to demonstrate to these people the functioning of the machine.

This is tits crazy. I chew into my burrito. It’s like a Falluja of taste.

They’re looking at the recently released water in the water cup with the eyes of a baby who just figured out that you can pick things up. There’s almost nothing more interesting these days than people who aren’t entirely adjusted to our late-capitalist times. IMPORTANT MORAL LESSON. I used to play up the rurality a lot when I met people at summer camps and what-not when I was younger, because nobody in the world will accept that Kansas City is not just a series of cow patches connected by horizontal incest.

Have you ever stayed in the Lexington airport for more than a few hours? Have you ever been forced to listen Headline News for three hours? Apparently almost nothing happens other than 1) a dog getting on a bike, 2) a dog killing a baby, 3) anarchists trying to blow up bridges, and 4) John Edwards’s trial. There are, to the best of my edification by these folks, no other news-worthy events going on anywhere in the universe.

Thesis: there is nothing more annoying than an inept pre-performance sound guy testing microphones.

“Yep, 1. Yeap. 1. Yep 1, Yep 1. Yeap 1. Yep Yep Yep. 2. Yeaaa. 1. Yep 1. 2.”

It’s like listening to a one-sided telephone call between a passive-aggressive DMV worker and someone arbitrarily listing the numbers 1-3.

A second thesis I have that I’m pretty sure is true: There is no legitimate need for the stage microphone dude.

Every group of roadies just has one guy they need to keep distracted so he doesn’t break everything during the pre-set preparations.

Choice quotes from the Das Racist set at Harvard’s Yardfest:

“Listen up you little over-privileged fucks!”

“We can’t have that, contractual obligations. SHOUT OUT IF YOU KNOW ABOUT CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS!”

“YO YO How you doing Wesleyan? I mean Harvard…”

“SHOUT OUT IF YOU’RE A WHITE PERSON!” (After somebody not white shouts: “Come on, man, what are you doing?”)

Hotel security people at the Lexington downtown Hilton suck. They also happen to look like walking molerat people. And it led me to ask, because the downtown Hilton in Lexington is a reasonably alright hotel, what on earth are security people like at hotels in shittier places? (Preempt: there are, though it will shock you, worse places than Lexington)

I’m Brad, that’s a Lord of the Rings monster, and I’ll have more later on.

The hologram, perfect image and end of the imaginary. (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation)

The Tupac appearance at Coachella as a hologram demonstrated that, more than anything else, if Baudrillard was wrong about the increasing collapse of “reality” into simulation, it’s only because we haven’t let enough time pass by. Here we have deceased Tupac performing — living, as if lending credence to the long-running joke that he is not even dead: he keeps releasing new material. The capitalist dream: the dead as productive. No life necessary to circulate, no consumption: pure excess. Tupac performs with his still-living contemporaries — using images of the formerly living, specters of a different time for their own profit. His re-incarnation is supposedly a dream of Dr. Dre’s — embracing his name, his false profession. His reincarnation is the dream of every record executive: musical necromancy. Why sign new talent? Just copy the old.

The closer one gets to the perfection of the simulacrum (and this is true of objects, but also of figures of art or of models of social or psychological relations), the more evident it becomes (or rather to the evil spirit of incredulity that inhabits us, more evil still than the evil spirit of simulation) how everything escapes representation, escapes its own double and its resemblance. (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation)

Not really Tupac, a zombie Tupac for our zombie political culture — and now a zombie popular culture, too. Like the wax dolls of Madame Tussaud’s taken to a new limit: not content to just see and feel the dead and famous, but to EXIST WITH the dead. There’s something wrong that the crowd can sense. Holographic Tupac as the absolute example of the dissolution of creativity. Current hip hop can no longer produce exciting talent: resurrect the dead. The cryogenic frozen Walt Disney dream for music. Less aesthetic pleasure than functional pleasure.

Here, the same with The Artist?

One talks of remaking silent films, those will also doubtlessly be better than those of the period. A whole generation of films is emerging that will be to those one knew what the android is to man: marvelous artifacts, without weakness, pleasing simulacra that lack only the imaginary, and the hallucination inherent to cinema. (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation)

Trotting out the same tired genres to convince us they still bring joy. More importantly, to convince us we are still capable of joy, still the same as before. That we can find beauty in simple pleasures. Give it all the awards: like a retrospective for the past itself, for an entire era. In reality, it partly exterminates the past. Las Vegas in cinema: signs, instantly recognizable, yet pointing at nothing. The absolute simulacra of the past. The Artist is the original without a copy. A remembrance of what was lost? Lost to whom by whom?

Cinema plagiarizes itself, recopies itself, remakes its classics, retroactivates its original myths, remakes the silent film more perfectly than the original, etc.: all of this is logical, the cinema is fascinated by itself as a lost object as much as it (and we) are fascinated by the real as a lost referent. (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation)

There is no longer a real, only The Artist. Only holographs of Tupac. The Wachowskis took The Matrix from Baudrillard: perhaps mining Baudrillard is the perfect place to find another cold million. A million that cannot be anything but cold. “The Matrix is surely the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce.” Baudrillard seems to be the philosopher only the simulation could produce.

This artificial memory will be the restaging of extermination – but late, much too late for it to be able to make real waves and profoundly disturb something, and especially, especially through a medium that is itself cold, radiating forgetfulness, deterrence, and extermination in a still more systematic way… (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation)

1. Sober
2. Eating

Nevermind that. The Kong is our temple and the other people there are basically just extras in the continuously unfolding drama of my life. They’ve also almost certainly made the mistake of ordering a food that is not Scallion Pancakes. Novices. Reform yourselves.

I’ve noted before that I’m convinced a good bit of the time that Harvard is hiring people to populate my collegiate existence. They’re obviously type-casting, otherwise I wouldn’t so frequently sit in class next to a big green gelatinous monster who I have to keep looking at out of the corner of my eye because she runs a serious risk of expanding exponentially in mass and consuming an entire 1950s city. Or the kid taking notes on European philosophy next to me just looks a less elegantly painted version of Edvard Munch’s Scream painting. Harvard’s b-list is so rough that a lot of times I think my desk would cut a better figure in a dress. A Series of Unfortunate Events? It was an allegory for dating at Harvard. Dane Cook had this joke on an old cd I listened to in middle school about the fear of looking down at Skeletor while you’re banging some chick, but that’s probably most people’s idea of a successful night on the Cambridge hotties circuit.

So we’re at the Kong. When you enter the Kong, you leave a few things at the door: a small part of your wallet, your dignity, your ability to coherently use a restroom (because, let’s be honest, this can get pretty debilitating, and it’s not like you just have trouble with motor skills, or something else: it’s a total breakdown in the ability to even engage, mentally, the concept of restroom), and any risk of productivity. One of my friends had a paper to write. This paper is not getting written until tomorrow.

We’ve got a pretty good crew tonight. Everyone is looking sharp and their eyes are hungry for the spoils of victory.

Or a cough-syrup-y, chalky Flintstones vitamin-y fruit doom-drink bucket.

“Scorpion bowl? Ok.”

As we gradually make our way through a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas presentation of scorpion bowls — where more just keeps appearing and new people show up and races between SBT (scorpion bowl teams) happen then people vanish and the world is sort of spinning and everyone is laughing but deep down they’re also crying and wondering what in God’s name they possibly did to bring this upon themselves while congratulating the person next to them and no one really wants to continue but everyone is waiting for one brave soul to wave down Kevin and put up two fingers to indicate we are after more — the night passes by in a flash.

Kevin, our loyal Sancho Panza-type character who is probably one of Hollywood’s best method actors and realized that the Kong is the perfect place to hone his trade, waits nimbly to refresh our supplies. It’s unclear to everyone involved why we deserve this punishment.

I look to my right and my friend has placed my cardigan over his face like an Urban Outfitters Cosby ghoul. I’m not even interested enough to ask why so I just take a picture and turn away. It’s like numbness to war. It’s not really like that at all, just a false gravitas that the Kong naturally invites.

“Two more scorpion bowl? Ok.”

There comes a time during every SB journey where I have to make an Odyssey of my own. I need to stand up first, that might be the hardest part. I also need to walk a few feet, descend the staircase, and walk into the restroom. This is not an adventure for the light of heart.

(for ironic atmospheric purposes, there are a few Asian men standing outside my dorm room at this moment taking photos of a church and probably me as well.)

When you’ve been Konging, or have let the spirit of the Kong get inside you on a normal night/day, your RPG skill-setting for “Stand Up” descends back to 0 super quickly. Think about little kids who are first learning to walk taking the original few hesitant steps. It’s that. Exactly the same as that. First, you know, even though they aren’t actually, that every single other person in the world is staring at you, waiting, with fiendish mouths dripping with blood, for you to make a mistake. Nobody is even interested in their own lives at all: YOU ARE ALL THAT MATTERS. So the self-consciousness seeps into the activity itself and it becomes even more challenging. I do what feels like rushing headfirst through the front of the Kong, kind of like a ram racing to headbutt another one, and manage to make my way to the bathroom.

When you’ve been Konging, it kinda feels like time itself, and not just your situational awareness, has ceased to function. So as I’m in the bathroom I become increasingly sure that my grandchildren have already grown up and buried me, that my friends have long since left the building, and that I am probably lost inside a bathroom vortex in the basement of a Chinese restaurant in a city that has only recently become my home. So I text everyone:

“Bathroom.”

Which, in my head at least, was enough to signify to them that I was still alive. But in reality it was just to convince myself that I was still connected to the same reality that everyone else was. I make it back upstairs, looking through my text messages on the way back up.

A lot of times people sit around and try to think up a business that would help them get rich quickly, but then they give up in the end because they can’t think of anything good. I’ve never understood that, here’s a business I thought up this morning which would literally be a life and relationship-saver for me:

It’s an application on your phone. Your phone kind of senses that you’ve been Konging — maybe through the gyroscope it figures out if you’re swinging it around in figure-8s and shit — and then self-limits itself to two functions: it can take pictures and it can update your Facebook status. That’s it. Nothing else. Twitter? Oh heavens no. LinkedIn? Not a chance. If you try to open up the text messages section, especially if you click the “New Message” button to anyone who might even be on the edge of another gender, the phone kind of passively aggressively brings up a message that says, “Hey, Brad, are you sure you want to do this right now?” Because I think we all know, even me, that I don’t.

Unfortunately no one has invented that function yet. Sorry everyone within cyber communication reach.

So, we get our bill. Holy Excel spreadsheets, that’s a lot of money.

“I am so destroyed right now.” One of our Kongpanions confirms that my friend said that at least twenty times.

We pay, and in the process I’ve probably bought two years worth of Kevin’s acting workshops up on Tremont, and then we all choose to Level Up our “Walk” skill and head out. Or stumble out, because “walk” or “stroll” would be linguistically giving us a little more credit than we probably deserved. And I have to use the restroom again.

“Is he dead?” ask a group of people standing outside the Kong. Since each of us is equally certain this remark is directed at themselves, nobody responds. We rush through the frozen tundra streets of Cambridge. A group of three people walk by us:

“The Queen’s Head is closed.” The Queen’s Head is a bar that Harvard runs frequented by grad students. None of us were even thinking about going to the Queen’s Head. It’s maybe the last thing on anyone’s mind, because the list is only three items long and includes:

1. Bathroom

2. Laugh

3. Sleep

So I shout back at them, “OH!” because it seemed like the only reasonable response that could simultaneously thank them and refuse any sort of conversational possibility.

We finally get back to my dorm. It has been decided that we will watch television. But first, I unlock the door to the communal restroom. One thing first: the Thayer communal restroom is a generally civilized place. We have a “Poop Only” stall, and we have generally come to an agreement that the first stall is for quick business transactions with the third remaining as a kind of “Anything goes, just don’t die in there” free-for-all. Except there’s one wrench thrown into the general machinery of our little United Nations of Urine legal system: serial pisser.

Serial pisser probably exists everywhere, but that motherfucker shows up some time in the middle of the night almost every other day to just ruin one of the bathroom stalls. He’s barely even trying to hit the toilet, and he might actively be trying to pee at the ceiling, like he thinks he’s communicating with God or something. Regardless what he’sactuallygoing for, he’s doing one thing well and that’s treating each and every bathroom stall like a pre-schooler treats Fingerpainting period of art class. “Each and every” stall, you ask? Yes. Because serial pisser is not just pleased to do his devious deeds in one of the stalls. No. He wants to make sure that when you walk into the bathroom quickly on your way to class, swiftly throw open the stall door and look down at the mayhem there, you will not just be able to go to the “other” stalls, because serial pisser has destroyed those two.

Surely he at least follows the law of “Poop Only”? Forget about it. Serial pisser considers no common laws sacred except for the one and only tenet that he lives by: There Will Be Piss.

I walk into the bathroom and as I head into the first stall, I’m shocked to find that somehow levels of human decency have been maintained. No sign of serial pisser. But then I think to myself, in a moment of absolute existential dread:

“Wait a second… Serial pisser always strikes at night.”

It’s 12:49 am.

“And he is never seen by anyone else.”

I am all alone.

“…What if I am serial pisser?”

And I stand there for a little while just considering the issue, mulling it over slowly, entirely unsure whether and how to proceed. One of the things about post-Kong decisionmaking is that you become functionally incapable of actually coming to succesful conclusions, and thus incapable of finding any sort of satisfactory resolution to the issue in my head, I decide that the only thing that can really be made certain here is that I don’t follow in his evil footsteps. With the utmost care, I escape, leaving the bathroom acceptable for future occupants.

We get back to my room and put on a few episodes of Portlandia. As my friend slumps to the floor, he rasps:

“Where are the bitches?”

None of us knows the answer to this question. If we did we probably all wouldn’t be here.

“Where can I vomit?” asks one of the people in the room. Where can I vomit? is sort of a silly question at the end of the day. Obviously the answer is literally “anywhere”: it’s not like my dorm room is some 1984-esque anti-vomit punishment zone where you will be tattooed and sentence to death for a bodily process that is largely beyond your control. And yet at the same time, the answer is obviously also “nowhere” because I don’t want my 2 feet by 2 feet room to be covered in the foul stench of the stuff that is so bad that your grotesque internal organ set-up can’t even handle it.

“Um, you can like, use the recycling bin.” Sorry, Harvard recycling service, choices had to be made, and you were the ones who lost.

“Wait though, maybe I can find a bag.” So I stand up and, like I’m some incredibly handsome David Blaine/Chris Angel hybrid monster person, reach into a huge heap of my own dirty post-debate-tournament clothing and, still inexplicably to me and everyone around, pull out a vomit-ready plastic bag which I hadn’t even expected to find.

“You should use this.” Fortunately none of the above-mentioned devices needed to be used. There was no in-dorm internal expulsion. But I notice that this friend is standing up, or doing something sort of akin to this:

And so I get up.

“Do you, uh, need to use the restroom?”

“No.” Yet he continues to move towards the bathroom without the key.

“Oh, well, I, coincidentally, have to go too.” And so we go, but it’s hard to even explain how strange it is to go on a journey with someone who sort of refuses/is incapable of actually acknowledging your presence even as you know that they’re 100% aware you’re right there.

All of these repeated indications of the practical necessity of using a key to get into my room and into the communal restroom should have been obvious, to the perceptive readers among you, as a set-up for the inevitable story where the person forgets to take the key with them or their cellphone as they sleep walk out into the hallway in the middle of the night. You probably recognize that, after having already made a decision that will result in their being locked out of the room, they also cannot even get into the bathroom because it is locked. You likely guess that they made the first obvious choice which is to haphazardly and randomly climb the staircase upwards in the vein hope of discovering another place where fasteners and clasps don’t stand in the way of the #1 bus to Urinetown. You also, recognizing that this is not the kind of story with heroes or success or anything of the sort, know that this individual will not find that magical zone, and will instead descend the stairs again and stand outside of the room, knocking softly for twenty minutes until my poor roommate has to get up and let him in.

You probably already knew that story was coming.

We have reached the nothing.

Sometimes when I wake up after a night at the Kong, before I can do anything except check the text message friendship Hiroshima I engaged in the previous evening, I close my eyes and try to decide if my body can be distinguished from a giant turd. And, sensing slight movements in the outer extremities, realizing I can blink, and that my head is capable of at least rudimentary thoughts like “thirst” and “parched” and “I feel like the Cambodian Killing Fields,” I realize that I am still, on some level, a human being, not a giant ball of crap. But don’t be confused: I still feel like a giant ball of crap.

Or, as our late night walker so aptly summed up this morning: “I don’t know if I can walk.”

My name is Brad, I went to the Kong last night, and I probably did a lot of things I didn’t even remember to write here. I hope you enjoy your much better life.

In what felt like fate’s ultimate joke on me, during my recent trip to Norman, Oklahoma our airline assistants were two women who probably chose American Airlines after being turned down at the Golden Girls second-string extras audition.

I should get this out of the way first: American Airlines is a ball curdlingly bad airline. Want to eat food? You’ve got to pay for it. What are you paying for? A slightly bigger and name-branded version of the same peanuts or pretzels you used to get for free. Why? Because American Airlines is bringing you cuisine. THEY EVEN HAVE A COOL NON-WHITE CHEF TO TELL YOU THAT! YEAH! ETHNICITY! Getting on a flight too early and too much of a rush to get dinner, @suospeaks and I were excited to devour the freely available snacks that we’re used to eating when flying on airlines run by civilized individuals (JetBlue, Southwest, shit, even Delta). “Not so,” says American Airlines. Welcome to the Pooptown Junction! (Ironically PTJ is actually American’s most frequent destination abbreviation)

I’m not the most patient person. I do my best to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when folks are just not doing their jobs well and it causes incalculable delays, I get kinda antsy. So as I’m waiting for almost two hours for the two flight attendants to slowly — and I mean slowly. Think about molasses flowing down an almost-flat surface — push the Ds-and-noms cart toward me, I’m getting kind of annoyed. I’m hungry. I want some noms and I’d like a D. But then I think to myself, “Well, come on, Brad, don’t be mean, everyone has slow days.”

So I look around. The crowd of hungry wolves around me are all also drooling and staring at the progress of the cart. I’m not alone. History lesson #1: everything becomes more acceptable when everyone around you is doing it. “Would you jump off a cliff if he did?!” was a frequent kindergarten retort. Well, honestly, yes, if a group of a bunch of people had just jumped off a cliff and I was inexplicably hanging out on a cliff with nothing better to do and could reasonably justify their behavior to myself, I would consider it. Everyone is hungry.

So the sluggish pace of the cart continues. I watch ten minutes of an episode of an ABC sitcom on the iPad of a dude across the aisle in front of me. There are like, some cheerleaders, and there are also some Southern people. I get bored. I look back at the cart.

Same place. Tits on a cracker. I consult the “American Airlines Food Menu.” Multi-ethnic superstar chef guy suggests I try the cheese plate. I love cheese plates. I order cheese plates rather than dessert at most restaurants. When I go home for breaks, my mom makes cheese plates. Cheese plates are my smack. “Fuck yeah, cheese plate,” I think to myself. Things are really turning around. Maybe they even have Manchego (that’s always on cheese plates in Kansas City for whatever reason, maybe it’s really common, I don’t know). Manchego is the only kind of not-generic cheese I can think of. I’m no cheese expert, I just love the taste of that shit. I look back at the cart.

It hasn’t moved. Or maybe it has. It’s hard to tell. When you’re far enough back on a big plane it always seems like you’re looking down the hall of The Shining and it just continues forever. I can kind of make out the faces of the flight attendants now, at least. Maybe if I had some binocs I could see better. Binoculars are one of those items that you literally NEVER have when you could use them. If you do, you’re probably teaching 6th grade physical science or you’re a pedophile at the playground. They’re getting closer, I swear.

I look back at the iPad. Some show is still happening, but I’ve totally lost the plot line by now, and I can’t hear the sound anyways. On the shitty TV at the roof of the plane some NBC programming is playing. NBC seems to have inked a deal with American Airlines to be the main programming that everyone is forced to watch. The problem, for NBC, is that nobody watches those piece of shit TVs that are installed on American Airlines planes because they are always tinted a distinct shade of piss-yellow and poor Chinese peasants would probably refuse to watch them because of their low-quality. I don’t need HD on the plane — in fact, I don’t even want to watch TV on an airplane anyways, so they could just do away with the TVs. But if you’re going to install something that is basically inevitably in my line of sight every time I look away from my crotch, at least don’t force me to watch Parks and Recreation in fuzzy sepia-tone.

They’re almost here. I get the menu back out again. I look at the cheese. It looks pretty notch. I get out my credit card. It’s broken in half. I remind myself that I should probably get a new one. I won’t because honestly I don’t know how credit cards work and I’d have to remember to tell my parents to do it. It’s getting pretty precarious though, the card is barely staying not-ripped-in-half.

“Hello, honey, would you like a beverage?”

Jesus, this woman is like eighty.

“Uh.” I need to re-orient myself. You have to act differently when you’re talking to older people. Except she’s dressed kind of slutty. Name something worse than a slutty 80 year old. You can’t.

“Are you all serving food?”

“Yes we are.”

“Um… is any of it free? LIke pretzels?”

“Nope, you can buy anything on the menu though.”

“Oh. Ok.”

Pause.

“Can I get the cheese plate?”

“We’re all out of those.”

ASIAN HERCULES!

“Um… what about… can I get the potato chips that come with the sandwich?”

“No, those only come with the sandwich.”

“Well I don’t need the sandwich. Can I just get them alone though?”

“Nope, they only come with the sandwich.”

“I don’t eat meat. What if I paid for them alone?”

“Sorry honey, they only come with the sandwich.”

It’s like arguing with an eight year old.

“Ok, um… I’ll just take the hummus I guess.”

“That’ll be [insert way-too-fucking-much-to-pay-for-hummus price here, because I was too flabbergasted by how much I had to pay to even register the cost].” I hand her the credit card.

“Can I also get a cran-apple juice and coffee?”

“Sure.”

So I eat my hummus and slurp up my juice, saving the butthole-delight coffee for a little post-meal filler.

DING DING. (not the Law and Order noise, the plane noise)

“The captain has turned on the fasten-seatbelt sign, please return to your seats.”

“Uh, hello, hi–” I don’t know why but the “Captain” always seems like he was caught totally by surprise by the fact that there are other people in the plane whose lives are totally and entirely under his control on-board the plane. “– this is your Captain speaking, we’re going through a rough spot pretty soon, so hang on for a little while and we should be out of it before long.”

You’re supposed to fasten your seat belt after an announcement like that, but let’s be real with each other. Nobody needs to have their seat belt on unless the plane is legitimately crashing, and at that point everybody is screaming, shitting their pants, making out with their pre-board “last-chance-makeout-plan” person, praying, or all of those at the same time, so seat belts become a little “unnecessary.” So I don’t put on my seat belt. The plane starts shaking and shit like angry titans are dancing on the wings or something and before I know it all of the coffee is all over the table and seat where it was before.

The women did not give me napkins.

I am a mere two feet from the back of the plane where the not-free food, napkins, and 80 year old attendants are. The plane is turbulent, but I’m willing to take the risk because even if it means sudden death, I really don’t want to die feeling like I pissed my pants. I stand up. The dude in front of me is still watching that fucking show on his iPad. I think it’s been going on for like three straight hours at this point.

I move to the back area. The two women are seated and buckled in to their weird fold-down safety seats and I think one of them is about to open a lunch box.

“YOU NEED TO SIT DOWN!”

“I, uh, spilled stuff, I need a napkin.”

“THE PLANE IS VERY TURBULENT RIGHT NOW!”

It’s not like we’re crashing.

The other one pipes in, “WE’RE ALREADY BUCKLED IN!” as if that’s some sort of ontological status that would be difficult to undo.

“Yeah, it’s just like, the coffee’s everywhere, you know? Can I just grab one?”

I should be clear, I didn’t even expect them to get it for me, I just wanted to grab a few myself. All I needed was their approval for my James Bond-style fast-thinking. This much they appear to have missed.

“WE’RE ALREADY BUCKLED IN, YOU NEED TO SIT DOWN! THE CAPTAIN SAID–”

“It would be quick, I just need a few. I’ll grab them–”

“WELL I’M NOT STANDING UP TO GET IT!”

God. Damnit.

So I walk — and walk is an exaggeration, I “step” — the — literally — two feet away from her face where the napkins are and grab a bunch. I move back to my seat and sit scrub up the shitheap coffee sludge from the leather and sit down. I explain the story to the guy next to me. He laughs. He recognizes their incredibly poor quality of service too.

The flight attendants do not stand up until we land. Picking up the trash, which they had failed to do before they raced to their safety seats and caused the coffe-tastrophe, will have to wait until they decide it’s sufficiently safe to stand up.

After the seat belt sign is turned off, and every fat businessman within twenty yards jumps out of his seat to be the first to grab his unwieldy black suitcase from the overhead compartments and antsily hops around waiting to burst out of the plane, I wait to get my shit. As I walk past the Skeletor stewardesses, they thank me for flying. Normally I smile meekly and thank them for whatever, because I’m polite and shit.

Not this time. The hummus was the kind you can get at Costco.

I’m Brad, I’m never flying American Airlines again if I can help it, and this is still my blog.

2. Future of the Left

3. Bleached

4. Bear in Heaven

5. Screaming Females

I was hanging out with a few younger friends of mine during Spring Break in Kansas City — “You have friends?” Ha ha ha, no but really, I’m using that as a reason to explain why I’m alone at a Melting Pot on a Tuesday night, give me a break. We got a little bored — because it’s Kansas City and that’s what happens to you at every time of the day — so one of them suggested going to the Melting Pot. It’s 9:10 pm, fuck it, why not? And I remembered all the times in high school when my friends and I prank-called the MP to complain about explosive, debilitating diarrhea brought on by being under-coached in chicken-cooking — the MP does not handle this problem well if you keep yelling and refusing to be compensated with a gift card.

My friend’s family once had a fight in front of a charming Melting Pot waiter, so we asked if the same fellow was working tonight. “Yes, would you like to request him?” — I didn’t know you could even do that — “Yes,” my friend says, in-between nervous laughs.

When we arrived, the maitre’d informs us that our server will be with us shortly and directs us to the back, next to a woman who looks like she is permanently on the verge of breast-feeding her baby. After just a day ago turning around in my rock-like Frontier seat on a Boston-to-Kansas City airplane to come gaze-to-gaze with a breast-feeder and feeling strangely guilty about it, I was not prepared to deal with that shit again. I refuse to look at the liminal-breast-machine, because the heads attached to them always treat you like you’re doing something wrong, and race to the restroom. At any given MP, your chances of finding the bathroom are one in five. It is a maze. You have to navigate past the Asian family. You cannot be sidelined by the music. Good luck.

Inside the bathroom is some deeply soulful music about being in love and making love, which seemed “ill-fitting,” to say the least, to #1, but whatever, you do what you have to.

While I’m gone, our waiter arrives to the table to find two girls:

“So, you requested me, huh?”

“… Our friend did.”

“Oh, I see.”

Upon arriving back at the table, he turns to me:

“Do I know you?”

“Uh… no, I don’t think so?”

“Oh, ok.” He blinks, eying me with a queer smile, clearly a little weird-ed out and confused. But so am I. He asks us what form of chocolate we want.

“Well, what is your favorite?” my friend asks.

“I think my current favorite is actually the special.” My other friend opens her dessert menu to inspect what “the special” signifies. Our requested waiter closes it on her. “Don’t look at that, they totally ruin it. Let me explain.”

I think “the special” included raspberries and milk chocolate and peanut butter and other stuff — which sounds like Poop Town Junction — but honestly he described it in such a slow and sultry voice that I had an impossible time focusing. Imagine the Inside the Actor’s Studio guy explaining how to assemble a chair. I cannot stress enough how simultaneously soothing and creepy his tone is: affected, definitely, but somehow also natural. He spoke the way you would expect a tired b-grade porn star to talk.

“We’ll take the special.”

“Great, I dig it, I’ll get that right out for you.” And then he looks us all over, quickly, before walking away. To say that we were feeling a little awkward would be something of an understatement. It should be noted here that our waiter is a pretty decent-looking dude. You wouldn’t be too surprised to see him wearing a striped polo shirt in an Abercrombie catalog, or, once again, distracting a horny co-ed from her enormous physics book in her peculiarly neon-colored room.

So this doesn’t seem mean-spirited, because it isn’t, just creeped-out-spirited, I will also indicate that he hooked us up on chocolate. Normally the melting pot chocolate dessert thing includes like, 1/8th of a cheesecake, 1/6th of a brownie, 2.5 strawberries, and a marshmallow — amounts that are so small that some under-paid, “illegal” worker is forced to go out of their way cutting them up into unusable chunks. But we got a thousand of everything and were told to just “let him know” if we wanted anything else. Our Fondue pot, which is normally filled with so little chocolate that it’s more like a chocolate puddle than a lake, was probably high enough that you could drown in it. That’s a weird descriptor. I don’t know why I said it. Drowning with flavor.

At this point, I explain that it was in fact my parents who had previously had him wait on them and called him one of the best waiters they had ever had.

“Your parents must have really liked me.” That’s not a sentence that anyone can ever say without sounding like a) a serial killer or b) your brother.

“Yeah, they really did. Apologies if it was weird earlier.” Nervous laugh.

“Yeah, it still is a little bit.”

“Ha, yeah…” And then he’s off again before we know it and we start devouring our chocolate and our billion marshmallows and strawberries and bananas. It tastes like heaven. It’s probably the taste of a year less of living, but nut-sacks, sometimes you just need it. Before too long, our guy is back again. Attentive: yes. No one could ever faithfully say this guy does not pay attention.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“Do you think we could get some more fruit?” I really love strawberries, and how often do you get to dip them in chocolate? None often. Even if the weird electronic music in the background and the neon-infused Rothko-meets-Bacon-meets-Target paintings dotting the walls are combining to actively deflate any turned-on-ness that the fondue is supposed to engender in me, I’m hungry for more. He kneels down to be at roughly eye-level with the table.

“No, sorry.”

“Oh, alright.” You come to expect very little from these people. They can be stingy bastards.

“Yeah, sorry about that, maybe I could ask.”

“Well, is it actually inconceivable that you could get more?”

“No, it isn’t, I’ll grab some.” Flip-flopping like a Romney-Kerry hybrid-monster-machine.

“Oh, sweet. And could we maybe get some apples too?”

“Oh fuck yeah. Nobody ever asks for those with the chocolate, man.”

“Yeah… I like it. I usually save them.” For some reason I want him to know that I have eaten at the MP before. Why do I seek his approval?

“Lemme get all those out for you all. Anything for you ladies?” Still sultry, still surveying the table like he’s a paid social cartographer.

“No, thank you.”

“Alright.” Pause again, then departure.

He returns with the apples, more strawberries, and, tits in my mouth, he even brought un-asked-for-bananas. God damnit is he good at this job.

“Thank you,” I say out of the annoying habit I’ve developed of thanking waiters and waitresses for literally anything they do. This ends up creating troubles when I forget to not thank them for things they have messed up. “Sorry for the drink confusion.” “Thank you–” “What?” “Sorry, I meant, it’s ok…”

“So, how old are you guys?”

“18,” they lie.

“20,” I truth. “How old are you?”

“I’m 21.” He looks like he’s probably older, but who knows? “Where do you all go to school?” My friends don’t respond, so I pop in:

“Harvard.” I probably whisper it.

“What?”

“Harvard.” He steps back, literally, taken a-back.

“Oh. Shit man. Harvard?”

“… Yup.” It’s hard to tell who is making this conversation more awkward. It doesn’t help that even when he seems taken a-back he’s still using that sultry porn voice on us. I know you’re asking: “But wait, is his voice sultry?” Yes, yes it is. Just keep it in mind. “Sultry voice” would be one of his favorite things. “Where are you in school?”

“I go to UMKC. Double-majoring in Chinese and Economics.”

“Cool,” chime back the people around the table who are not him, as we awkwardly stare up at our MP-Adonis.

“Yeah, I only live like ten minutes away from here if I walk.”

“Convenient.” When at a loss for words, my first thought is always to state things that are incredibly obvious with a slight air of intrigue. It works surprisingly well.

“Where do you all live?”

“Oh I live really close.”

“I live a few minutes away.”

“Cool, cool, yeah I live with four other dudes.”

“Uh, cool.” There’s a pause that lasts slightly too long.

“Want me to refill your water real quick?” I’m mainlining this shit like I’m trekking through the Sahara in order to look preoccupied during this conversation. I take a break, straw still in my mouth, water actively satisfying my insides.

“Yeah, that would be great.”

“I’ll go get some.”

“Thanks.” FUCK I DID IT AGAIN.

Because of our arrangement, I’m sitting next to one friend, looking towards the cul-de-sac of the room, while my other friend is seated across the table, solo, looking out into the restaurant. As our waiter walks away, he puts one finger up to his lips and gives her the “quiet” motion. Does anyone know why? No, no one knows why. Is anyone surprised? No, no one is surprised.

He refills our water, arriving precisely as I’m being photographed eating fondue.

“You asked her to take a picture of you eating fondue?”

“Uh… yeah.” Why am I letting this motherfucker embarrass me? I can’t help it. Embarrassment: success. I want to shush myself in shame. It isn’t even a good picture, I notice a little later.

“Can I sit down with you guys?” He barely waits for an answer and sidles up next to lone member of our group across the way.

And after this, he proceeds to say an incredible amount of things which would probably drag on slightly in conversational form but can be distilled into these three areas:

1. His and his roommate’s plan to create a free (though they are, of course, debating whether to use targeted advertising) global social network, combining Skype, and some Foursquare-type locational awareness device in order to provide some service I was utterly unsure about, but it might become free because people ought to be able to use it and they intend to spread it around the globe so much that it will break down national governments. Because this guy is sort of an “anarchist,” he repeatedly informs us. He is clearly either dumb or naïve, since rule #1 of web start-ups is that you never give your idea to a Harvard student before it’s copyrighted and operational because they will Zuckerberg the shit out of you.

2. His absolutely misanthropic feelings about his workplace including a) how he “isn’t racist” but can’t help getting annoyed at a certain racial group because they don’t tip and always ask for too much, b) how all the people who eat at the MP normally are morons because the MP actively extorts money from you, makes you cook your own food, and all the while the entire staff is laughing at you from the kitchen, c) how all older women hit on him repeatedly and consistently, going so far as to dip his finger into chocolate to feed them, because, as he repeatedly also tells us, he is attractive, and d) how incredibly easy his job is and how one of his co-workers who is in her 9th year is basically the Michael Jordan (my description, not his) of MP waitressing.

3. His peculiar life plans, which include going to Southern California for a residency in an undisclosed medical field at an undisclosed medical school (even though Chinese and Econ double-majors places him in a weird situation for medical work) while simultaneously trying his hand at modeling and acting before age “makes” him “ugly.” Which, we should be sure to realize, he is currently not, because his dimples are found attractive by everybody. Also, visiting a series of different national Occupy movements, of which he is tangentially a part, and visiting different European countries, including Greece where, after I suggested it might not be the best time to visit, he concurred and replied that he was hoping to get arrested so that he might stay there forever. He clearly intended this as a joke. I was unconvinced.

After explaining all of this, as well as many other things which I’ve almost assuredly forgotten to recount, he notices that the bill has not yet been paid. Since we are very likely the last people in the restaurant, he takes it up to be bill-ed. (I have to admit here I’m still almost entirely in the dark about how restaurant payment machines work. And while I’m at it, how the fuck do credit cards work?)

Our loyal misanthrope returns. He turns to my friend and I on one side of the table:

“I hope you all won’t be offended if I ask your friend here for her number?” We aren’t, in fact, we’re mostly surprised because she had been laughing for almost the entirety of the meal. I suppose this is what the “quiet” finger-gestures were about.

“Well, I suppose I’m a little upset I didn’t get it,” I say, because it’s comical to pretend to be into this guy, to him, because like, obviously everyone is pretty into him, and like, why not this random dude eating Chocolate-due at 10:43 pm on a Tuesday, right? He can’t find the piece of paper where he had previously scrawled the number and has to write it down on a little strip of napkin, which inevitably means it will be difficult to read. He laughs at my joke.

“This is why I asked about your ages earlier, because these fifteen and sixteen year old girls are always trying to give me their numbers and it’s weird.” Because he is basically Brad Pitt, or Odysseus, or Obama, or all of those things combined into this superhuman waiting-sex-robot-man. It’s ironic because the girl he is giving his number is seventeen.

“I’m hosting a party this weekend, if you all want to come. If it’s before your break ends?” I’m honestly honored he’s even invited me. This guy, in all his peculiarities, is nicer than a good chunk of the ass-bandits floating around Cambridge.

“Unfortunately I leave on Thursday.”

“Ah damn man, well, you two can come then!”

Almost like he’s literally referencing this:

(hat-tip to @hodgytweets)

I know who I will be requesting the next time I eat at the MP, and every time after that.

My name is Brad, sometimes I eat at the MP. Sometimes the chocolate isn’t the best part.