March 20, 1999.

For some reason, my brother was watching 2 different movies on 2 teevees when I walked in tonight. Not knowing if he ever planned to return, I spent 20 minutes surfing to a background of that perfectly odious movie, Titanic. There is nothing original or exciting I can say to damn this movie farther than it has already been damned, so I'll just skip the usual vitriol. I'm told that the critics hated It's a Wonderful Life when it came out (back in the dawn of time)...perhaps Titanic will affix itself to a major holiday as well, and we'll be treated to a yearly viewing of the cartoonish plot mechanisms at a time when we're too old to have any say over what we watch. Just glad to be out of the nursing home and all that.

And I wonder why I spend so much time alone.

Last night I wanted to take advantage of my parents' absence and do something safely scandalous...so I convinced the Boy to come stay the night. Yet while I was ready to have my youthful rebellion passport punched (so to speak), he was considerably more nervous...and so we had a sleepover party instead.

It was a miracle that we were even talking to each other at that point in the evening, since we'd indulged in an hour-long fight about my attitude towards Magic: the Gathering. I wasn't in the mood to master the intricacies of a spell casting duel (yuk), but I'd blindly promised to do whatever he asked and I wasn't about to compromise my honour. The resultant passive-aggressive campaign was a tour-de-force, if I do say so myself. It was so effective that we gave up play after 15 minutes, so effective that I had to deal with a good case of self-loathing on top of his justifiable anger at my machinations. I hate finding these depths of horribleness in my psyche, hate knowing my potential for supreme bitchdom (and not just the playful bitchdom that's so in fashion these days).

So we fought for as long as we could maintain the stupidity - for it takes a lot of idiocy to be serious about an aborted Magic campaign. I think an hour is the maximum time we can be that stupid...but if I had actually left during that time, it would have dragged on a lot longer.

I really wish there was a maturity shot, like a course of hormone treatments which would ensure that I leave this kind of childish behavior behind me for good. Damn it!

"So you're a grad student? How come you can put a man on the moon, but you can't make my socks smell good?"
"I don't know."
"Ah, nobody's blaming you. Here, hold the wheel while I scratch in 2 places."

- homer & the babysitter