Nnekay.com

As many of you know I currently work in a public library. What most people don’t know (because nobody visits their library) is that libraries are filled with insane people. Completely nuts-o bananas. I’ve seen the range of slightly paranoid to so insane that it seems like some of these people are faking it. Today I had one such encounter and have decided to share it with all of you.

So I’m sitting at the desk minding my own business when a shady ass character starts fiddling with the photocopy machine… he’s hunched over with his hood on, using my unique spidey senses I can tell he’s going to be a weird0. As I watch him pull random shit from his shit-filled pockets I wonder if he’ll be a selfsuficient weirdo or a needy weirdo. I begin praying for the first option. I start my “avoid weirdo” routine: avert eye contact, talk to co workers, look busy. I then notice that he’s hobbling his way towards the desk and I buckle in for what weirdness is about to follow.

 When he gets closer he smells of urine, this is normal for the library, but I still don’t understand it… it’s cold to have pee on you, plus if you’re a guy all you need is a dark corner- honestly it’s very easy to avoid peeing on oneself- but for some reason crazy homeless people cannot get this basic daily task down. Anyway, he’s covered in dandruff- which is another oddly ubiquitous trait among the “people of the night” - what is weird about this man, is his giant freak-o mole wart thing quivering on his lip. This combined with a dandruffy face and stringy beard gives me the ultimate heebie geebies.

He coughs. I back up.

Apparently, Pee-Pee man needs help with the photocopy machine because he want to photocopy some of the shit that he’s pulled from his pocket. While I was previously busy avoiding his eye-contact I failed to noticed that he had pulled out a receipt from Lucky’s grocery store, smoothed it out and placed it in the appropriate place for photocopying.

Me: so you wanna photocopy this receipt

Warty McWart-Wart: yea, front and back

Me: there is nothing on the back

Wart Town: yea, i still want to photocopy it.

Me: ohhhh kay, well did you put the change in

Warty: yes

Me: well all you have to do is press start- see… that big green lit up button?

Warts-a-lots: oh! I forgot that part.

What the hell…? So I sit back down at the desk and pray that smells don’t attach themselves to things… because smelling like hobo pee is no where near any of my life goals. As soon as he finished making all of his copies- he hobbles back towards  the desk and staples all of his receipt copies to some of the other shit from his pocket. He then asks me- as if his life depended on it- if i could print out a listings of all the bank of americas in NYC… there are a billion of bank of america’s in NYC. So i print out 15 and hand it over. He seems pleased with that, then asked for all the bank of americas in Baltimore. Once again i think that there must be a billion in Baltimore as well and print out five for this guy. He proceeds to staple this to some more of his weird shit from his jacket then adds the whole lot back to his pockets and hobbles into the sunset.

Why do dairy products have to jack me up?

I’m not the only one either. If I were writing this rant for for something reputable… say like TIME or NEWSWEEK… I would then insert a quote about “A billion and three Americans are effected by Lactose Intolerance” (quote by Doctor Smarty-McSmart-Smart) but nope- this is my shitty blog and I’m going to let the two people that read this take my word for it. Lot’s of people… except for blondie white people from England… are lactose intolerant.

This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if it were only involving milk- big tall icy glasses of milk. I’m sorry that’s just not appetizing to me- It’s like a giant fart in a glass. But no, old milk equals cheese- and I, along with thousands of lactose intolerant people love cheese. Melt it, spread it, shred it, peel it- slice the damn thing off the block and I’ll eat it. 

I love cheese. 

But me and cheese have an abusive relationship. I don’t know how or when the affair started, but I have always given my all towards cheese. It was fun at first, pizza, cheeseburgers, the occasional cheesecake with berry topping. I don’t know what I did to hurt cheese, but soon it began to lash out against me. It started with an innocent gurgle. Something I overlooked as a minor love bump. Then the gas…it was funny at first, but soon transformed into heartbreaking pain. Yet, I still kept going back to my beloved cheese- hoping that the good times would overshadow the bad. I hit rock-bottom in a bar room bathroom swearing off cheesy lasagna as if it was that final cocktail on my twenty-first birthday.

Nothing is worse than stinking up a gender neutral bathroom in a college town.

Nothing!

But still I’m trapped. Trapped in that deadly cycle of intestinal pain. My only solis? A pill that sometimes works if you take it at a specific time.

Yet, I could never give up cheese. So I guess I just have to be prepared to swallow my bitter (and chalky) pill for the remainder of this cheese lovers life.

Because the lazy bastard invented the leaf blower.

I hate leaf blowers.

I think they are stupid. Okay, that wasn’t very intelligent, but man if I could burn all of them in one blazing fire- like they did with disco records in the 70s I would, and I would dance around that fire until I passed out from electric smoke inhalation.

They are the worst invention of the 20th century- worse than Belly Chains. Why? Because belly chains aren’t loud- unless you’ve attached a bell to your belly chain- which is weird, and I hope that I never run into a person with a belly chain, let alone a belly chain with a bell.

Back to leaf blowers, first and foremost they are incredibly loud. Like, stupid loud. I say “stupid loud” because they make pretty much the same about of noise a jackhammer makes and a jack hammer is breaking up cement… not blowing leaves. The damn things looks like a jet pack, and all it does is just blow air. Do you need that much equipment to blow air? Vacuums suck air and they’ve designed them to make less noise- why can’t the same technology be applied to this damn machine, only in reverse. If humans can design bridges, and cell phones, and computers, and microwaves, why can’t we make a quiet leaf blower… leaves are light….it’s not like you need to design a machine that will blow away rocks. If I had a pile of leaves in front of me right now, and a hot guy walked by and I breathed a little heavier, the leaves would blow into the guy’s face- because leaves are light. Mind you, I wouldn’t even have to make a loud HHAAARRRRRGGGGH noise. Nope. So why. why. why?! Must leaf blowers sound like they are about to propel the user to the outer layers of our ozone.

Have you ever looked at how inefficient leaf blowers are…with a rake you just gently move the leaves into a neat happy pile, then shovel them into a bag. Leaf blowers blows the damn leaves willy-nilly until they are in the neighbors’ yard, the street, or in my face, causing me to have an allergy attack for the remainder of the day. Yesterday, I watched as the leaf blower operator of the house across the street blew the leaves from the yard directly into the garden of the next door neighbor. I was disgusted! He saw me staring and shrugged. HE SHRUGGED, like he was saying, “sorry, ma’am, it’s just the way of the leaf blower.”

The damn things are so loud, the leaf blower operator has to wear headphones to block out the noise (to blow leaves… seriously?!) so this prevents him (it’s never a woman) from noticing you’re coming his way. Meaning if you see a leaf blower operator up the street prepair to have an allergy attack, stingy leaf particle eyes, and an aggravated leaf blower operatator who seems royaly pissed to turn off his idiodic dumb machine and stop blowing leaves everywhere for half a second as you walk by. Half of these operators don’t even stop blowing the leaves… because they are jerks. It’s like the machine has taken them over and made normal decent human beings into jerky allergy inducing loud machine welding maniacs. buh.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, because the damn things will never go away… people are lazy and anything that prevents a little manual labor will be kept around for a long long long time. Fuck… if I had the choice of a leaf blower vs. a rake… my lazy ass would probably pick the blower.

I have been stuck in the roughest, darkest, bramble of writer’s block- so deep that for the past couple of days I’ve steered clear of even venturing online for fear of getting stuck in front of the computer screen…

Nothing is more horrible than sitting and staring at a blank screen. A blank screen has potential for so much, yet doesn’t provide any help whatsoever. I’m pretty sure I, Toni Morrison, and various college students have all starred at the same blank screen, yet the products of these empty canvas’ are vastly different. Sometimes my blank screen will lead to pretty cool stories, while other times the only thing I can create are dumb poems or silly song lyrics:

Cause baby your HOT

Hot like ICE

And sugar your cold

(so cold!)

Cold like FIRE

And your making me nauseous

With DESIRE.

Things like that are a waste of space- but sometimes you just have to clear the clutter to get to the good stuff, like a Tootsie Pop (even though I do enjoy the whole candy experience the Tootsie Pop provides). When I find myself starring at the blank screen of a computer- it sometimes is as scary as thinking about the universe. Why is thinking about the universe scary, Nnekay? Well, the possibility of something being so infinite and endless is freaky… kinda freaky cool… but still freaky all the same. It’s the unknown, and it’s an unknown that I’m alright with keeping that way. As a librarian it’s my job to figure shit out, when someone has a question, I’m supposed to find the answer. I make unknown things known… and half the time the answers to really cool questions are lame… or super confusing… like a magic trick… when you find out how they actually did the illusion… damn it’s almost like finding that box of baby teeth, and realizing that the Tooth Fairy is as fake as Beyonce’s hair. So therefore I sometimes get scared the answer to the mighty question of the universe will be really lame or confusing. Seriously, if I die and God sits me down for a lovely chat about protons, I hate to say it, but I’m gonna be kinda pissed.

So yea, a blank computer screen is like the freaky universe question, because there the possibility of what is produced on that screen will either be lame or really cool. In fact, half of the crap I barf on my screen will be rambly, long winded or just weird… like that “song” I wrote. Half of those will be halted before completion, this is where the true pit of writer’s block of despair resides… the Land of Broken Stories. Ask any writer- even though it’s hard for me to classify myself as a “writer”- and they will have an assload of half written, kinda completed, beginnings of, ideas, brainstorms, etc. etc. etc. For every blog I’ve written there at at least ten false starts. But, I can at least continues if I finish one…this past week, the Greyhound dropped me off right in the middle of the Land of Broken Stories. When my ideas feel through - I asked the people around me for help on topic ideas:

bar-b-q

lizards

bananas

sexually transmitted infections are too stigmatized in our society

One thing I’ve deduced is that you can really tell a person by their preferred blog topics. Anyway, I’ve come to end of this blog, meaning that I’ve finally broken free of my block… I’m not saying that this is a particularly good blog, but at least I’ve cleared some of the clutter and have gotten that much closer to the chocolaty center.

There comes a time in every twenty-something year-old’s life when they look around at their work environment and say, “Really… seriously… this is what it’s like being an adult?” Even if you fully enjoy your job as a daredevil stunt flame dancer for a traveling circus- you’re gonna have a day when things just aren’t settling right. You feel a little off, and the whole- “when I grow up…” phrase seems like a load of crap.

Grow up… phhhhhfff…. what the hell does that mean anyway?!

I’m currently 25 and I seriously don’t feel more grown up than I did when I was eight. Sure me and my friends would talk about growing boobies and if Ricky DeMonte had Cooties, but honestly I still feel like the same person. Not some sophisticated version of what I used to be.

Farts still make me giggle, and I swear I even get grossed out over kissy faces some boys make at me.

So the question is- when will I fulfill that feeling of actually “growing up,”?

Some say that you never grow up, and that it’s good to remain young at heart. That’s a load of crap too- because I hella don’t want to become that Man-Child type of stunted adult. Man-Child- as whimsical as it sounds is either a weirdo or a slob.

No thanks.

So when is it?! Thirty. I guess, but I’ve met some thirty pluses- and I’m gonna have to say no to that theory.

I don’t really have an answer, nor do I think there is an actual answer… all I know is that I never became the international super star I swore I was going to become when I “grew up.”

Yet, I suppose I still have some time.

I was a little kid in the early 1990s, it goes without saying that a lot of things happened between then and now. Yet, since you’re experiencing each day one step at a time, the changes don’t register until one day it just hits you: wow- that memory I had was dated.

Today this happened to me.

I was sitting back spacing out, like I tend to do in my downtime, when I started to remember one of my fondest memories. I was just a Wee Nnekay at the time, and riding in the back seat of my family car. Whenever we would go on any sort of trip I would spend the majority of the time staring out the window. I have always, and probably will always be an avid observer, especially of people. I love looking at what people are wearing, their expressions, and how they interact with one another. I almost decided to major in Sociology when I was in college, but decided I would much rather watch people than help them. The irony is that librarianship is the ultimate undercover social work. Anyway, as Wee Nnekay starred out the window, I spotted what I thought was the most beautiful teenage girl I had ever seen in my advanced 6 or 7 years of life. She was black, stylish, and totally in her own world. As I remember, the spaced out adolescent was calmly strolling down the sidewalk clutching her binder close to her chest and smiling to herself. I thought that her demeanor could have only resulted from getting asked out on a date by the man of her dreams. I remember hoping that one day I would be that dreamy teenager strolling aimlessly down the street.

Since seeing that girl, I have revisited this memory several times, but not until today I noticed that she was wearing a lime green sweater dress, matching scrunchie, ankle socks, and keds. Whoooa. Talk about flash back. Until this point the memory had always been: sharp dressed girl- looking dreamy. Now it will forever be changed to: 1980s/90s dressed girl- probably stoned. Of course my happy wistful feeling I got from watching her stroll down the street will never go away.

I never became that girl, but I’m okay with that. Along with revisiting the memory I used to think up scenarios of what had become of her. At the time it was more recent- “I wonder if she went to prom with that guy that made her so dreamy.” Then as time went on I would place her more in the future, “She’s probably studying art and fashion in New York” After my little trip down Memory Blvd. today, I just hoped she burned that dress.

It’s funny how this complete stranger of a girl effected a little part of my life without even coming into contact. Living by an elementary school I pass multiple kids on a daily basis, now I wonder how many of them are going to remember the frumpy and rushed lady who will eventually only exist as the dated and rushed lady in their adult memories.

Several times a week, when I’m not saving the world, you can find me sprawled out on my torture trap of a Target couch, pulln’ on a beer, scratching my ass, and basically replacing my excellent public education with horrible VH1 dating shows featuring sub par “celebrities”.

Nothing lifts my self-esteem more than screaming hoochies.

No matter the show, these “ladies” kick, yell, and back stab all to get “their man”- some dude who is either wearing a slapped on wig-bandanna combo or a giant gold spray-painted clock. Perfect examples of the male species, I might add.

True, these shows are slow moving train wrecks which captivate the bored TV observer, yet there is something in these programs which reflects our “normal” dating behaviors- a fun house distorted reflection, but a reflection all the same.

One of my main observations happens to be:

Women dress up and parade around not only for their object of affection, but for each other as well. In fact, a compliment from a well dressed lady is equal if not more affective than from some dude.

Here’s the rational : Women, even the dumb ones, are more analytical. After an encounter, a woman will replay every little word, grunt, or body language in her head. Then she will analyze it. She will then bring this to her round table of girlfriends and discuss.The friends will analyze it, and finally they will combine both interpretations to reach an overly complicated conclusion. Stupid women, usually reach dumb conclusions- but the process is still the same.

Even the female hormone, estrogen, plots things out- ladies who live with each other end up syncing their periods for a reason- it originates way back when wild cave women didn’t want one inheat woman to get all the attention. The hormonal cave lady would give off a particular smell, the other cave ladies would sense it, this would then jump start their hormones- thus placing them all on the same page- so no sexy cave lady in the pack would get more attention than the others.

And that was all subconsciously.

So you see, women are programmed to compete with one another. If a hum drum chick see a sexy woman, something tiny goes off in her head that says, “that bitch has something I don’t,”

Then the inspection begins: “Is it the shoes? No, I had those last year-her legs are really pretty, I wonder if she uses shimmer lotion. Wow that skirt is short- slut. Her boobs are completely fake, what a pretty color of lipstick, but she has a snaggle tooth, nice hair- I hate her.”

Yes, ladies check each other out. Hardcore.

Most of the time when a lady likes something on another woman she’ll keep it to herselves… or if she’s catty… she’ll shit talk with her other bitchy friends.

BUT

There are those rare instances when a woman who is in the same age range as another woman and is a complete stranger will bless that lady with a compliment. This wondrous event never happens, so if you ever find yourself the recipient of this Halley’s Comet of a compliment… treasure it.

See, I believe in a “womanhood” and that all of us should stick together, but the fact of that matter is, when a beautiful woman enters the room, ladies are not going to rejoice in her beauty- they’re gonna secretly call her a bitch behind her back. The easiest explanation is that is all stems from that damn estrogen pitting women against each other in competition for some grunting cave guy.

Yet, here’s the twist- women love to travel in packs. We to go to the bathroom, the mall, movies, drinks, dancing… all of these things together. And when our cycles sync up, it’s usually one of the first indicators that these women are some of the best friends we have. We view these women not as competition, and compliments run a plenty. So if we’ve been able to change a defense mechanism into a form of sisterhood, then the hard part is over. All that’s left is ego. So I say let loose and give that beautiful stranger a compliment- you’ll find that she’s probably not as bitchy as you first imagined- and how else are you supposed to get new style tips?