when we all decided this apartment would be our next we packed our knick-knacks, tchotchkes, and futons into egg-crates and loaded the whole lot onto skateboards as our means of transportation. skating, and scooting the damn mess up the outlandish hills of san francisco-- we were, of course, moving to the hilliest part of this beast of a city: nob hill.
if you're stalking me, please don't waste your time scouring nob hill as i have cleverly lied to everyone reading in hopes to send you in the wrong direction. my actual headquarters exist on the far stretches of pier 38, by the ballpark and rusty pipes.
we made it, thank the lords of moving-- else i could not sit here and write about the odyssey-- with all of our fine furniture and thingamajigs, except two cans of lighter fluid and my pan's labyrinth dvd which were all stolen by one homeless pyromaniac with an amazing taste in film.
naturally, we were staring something of a financial fiasco in the face when this all went down. travis' mother had swindled 500 some odd dollars from his account and simon and i forked over whatever he was short in a last minute attempt to remain un-homeless. any san francisco resident has likely run into the issue of disappearing money and i can't pretend this was new to me.
in that flurry, we opted to do what any american would do: steal internet from our neighbors until we had all gotten our feet in firm ground and could afford to pay for wifi and all that was required to make it work.
and the list of options was full of wonderment: wireless networks flying into our apartment with names so clever they could win a contest if there were a reality tv show based around the uniqueness of wifi account titles.there was zomgbears!, two bros one apartment, grandpa bing, peensy net, date my pewpew, and more.
but they were all locked with wpa's, weps, and other w-words that meant impossible-to-crack-passwords. i tried all my best guesses-- i tried "password" i even tried "guest" and none of those genius words were the key.
the only open networks were titled "78923", "groundcontroltomajortom", and "$ cant buy you class"
and, like every one of you, we went with the most obvious choice: groundcontroltomajortom. to those few who will lie and say they would not have chosen the network named after a great bowie pop-song, i call your bluff-- you are a damn liar and i hope you die a lonely death. everyone loves bowie and everyone loves bowie-homage-based networks. fact.
my glass is dry of jameson, so you will have to excuse my kind self for an equally kind moment. this should only take two or three stumbling minutes.
so. i'm back and the point is this: let me read where we were.
yes, groundcontroltomajortom was amazingly named, but only a fluke. you see, it would load a webpage that was not my standard homepage-- no-- it was a page that asked for a login and password. it was a grand tease.
at this time "$ cant buy you class" was flickering in and out and the only remaining option was the very robotic "78923" which not only worked, but worked well enough to download an entire season of quantum leap. it was like a stray dog that never pooped on the carpet and always looked real cute in front of any girl you brought home-- well-behaved and in line with our lives-- it became our favorite stolen internet immediately.
till yesterday.
i don't remember the exact details, though i can assure you they were boring, but the internet went out just after my last email to my temporary boss. i'd sent him a cartoon goat because he was waiting on one more dragon rendition and i wanted to see his reaction.
it's weird when the internet disappears. lie all you like, but you sweat when this sort of thing happens. you sweat, then you look at your phone for any missed text messages, and then you sweat some more. you might check your list of available networks or turn off your computer, but it's all done in a sort of fake-calm panic.i did all that and the internet was still gone.
as a last resort, i tried out the only other open network: $ cant buy you class. and as it turns out, $ can't buy you good wifi either. the experience was like being sent back to 1997, when dial-ups were considered too fast to handle.
but i dealt with it-- i had emails to send and emails to receive-- all while secretly awaiting the return of our trusted 78923 network and all of its magical powers.
it never returned.
instead, a new network opened. one, quite aptly named, i can see you...
i fear it is time to buy our own internet. we've been financially stable for some time now and laziness is a no-good answer for this sort of nonsense. i'm in the process of working from home which means the internet can no longer be stolen.
but that's another day-- perhaps tomorrow-- tonight is a night of whiskey-drinking. my dragon has passed all the critiques and reached delicious fruition, which puts me at step ii: draw the finalized dragon in ten different poses and costumes.
i may be too busy to post here as often as i have, but only for a while. now, i know you all love hearing about when i go through a horrible breakup, get fired from my job, or generally get fucked by the bank-- the stats show it-- but i hope, for once, you're rooting for the well-being of me and my dreams.
even if my dreams involve copious amounts of whiskey and mistakes.
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