“Punch me in the face; I’m feeling rowdy.”

Something about the between-times makes me restless. The whispering of dry leaves on the topmost branches, the sunlight filtering from warm orange to cool yellow, the crisp, spicy smell in the air…all of these things, these faces of autumn, play around with my sense of beingness. Perhaps because it is a time of transition, a time when one season shifts toward another, perhaps that is why I sit uneasily, unable to focus, unable to find stillness.

Accompanying this changing-state is a low level of annoyance with pretty much everything, and that’s not fair, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, as it were. Little things begin to set me off, like ridiculous and badly made PSAs, like road construction, like terrible music and the people who say and do stupid things because they refuse to (or cannot) think before they act. I don’t *want* to be intolerant, but it turns out I’m really *quite* good at it. With the shortening of days, my patience wanes like a gibbous moon.

From the hooting mental health patient for whom I would normally have empathy or sympathy or some kind of pathy that isn’t soci- or pscyho- related, I feel all the horrible, nasty things I’d *like* to say burble to the surface of my brain. It occurs to me that this must be the moraine where the evolved, monkey brain (sorry; where the created, human brain) and the protean, lizard brain (sorry; the evil, demon-created brain) exchange telephone numbers and swap camp stories. The place where my internal editor *usually* hangs out. The place where, in rows and files and entire rooms full of index cards and a complex filing system even Melvil Dewey Himself couldn’t burrow his way through.

I start saying things Out Loud that I don’t intend to say Out Loud. In Simpsonese, this is known as “quiet part loud;loud part quiet”. As I ripen, not unlike an alcohol-soaked cheese, I begin saying the Out Loud things with more and more volume. Just today, I literally had to bite my tongue to keep from saying “either take your goddamned pants off or pull the bloody things up; make up your mind, son, because buckling your pants halfway down your thighs is seriously pissing me off, and by the way, I can tell by the state of your underoos that you need to do laundry.”

I shouldn’t drive.

I know a surprising number of racist epithets, and while I certainly don’t believe in the payload of hate and insufferable intolerance/lack of acceptance that they entail, I can’t deny I find it mind-blowingly funny to spit them out in a steady, nonsensical stream which condemns every single cultural, religious, ethnic, or special-interest group on the face of the planet. Things I won’t repeat on my bournal because I know you’ll get the wrong impression and someone somewhere will write to me and say, “you know it’s really mean to call Japanese people Nips because that’s what they called them after the war and it was racist, because they *should* be called Japs” or some such nonsense which will just set me off again.

For the record, the word “Nip” comes from the Japanese word for Japan, which is “Nippon”. So go soak your head, imaginary heckler.

I have more and more difficulty hiding the sarcasm in my voice when I’m talking to the person working for minimum wage who is telling me I can’t exchange the blue shirt for the red shirt because their policy states that if you leave the store with a blue shirt you can only make exchanges for red shirts on alternating Thursdays, providing Mercury is triune with the planet formerly known as Pluto and the sign in your ascending house is Pisces, assuming you were born in Thebes. Sure, you can chalk that up to idiotic merchandising/customer service policies, but normally I’d just laugh it off and insist on speaking to the manager who is most likely fifteen years younger than me, twice as educated, and who’s on a power trip because s/he holds in her/his hands the power to DENY ME MY EXCHANGE. But in the fall, I replace the laughing it off with wanting to stab people in the eye.

“I am seriously going to throw this phone through the goddamn window if someone tries to send me a fax on this line again”. Case. In. Point. Hair trigger. Please not to tease the cenobyte. Do not poke, taunt, or throw sticks. cenobytes are known to act poorly in public.

So if I’m doing something you find offensive, (regular cenobyte wishes to apologise and indicate that it’s just a phase and that we will return to our regularly scheduled programming shortly. That it’ll be over soon. That the ‘social retardation’ setting is overheating. That please, for the love of all that may or may not be holy, depending on your philosophical belief system, do not hold it against cenobyte) bite me.


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15 responses to ““Punch me in the face; I’m feeling rowdy.””

  1. nef Avatar
    nef

    If I didn’t already love you, I sure would after reading this. I find it so amazing when other people write the stuff in my head.

    Steph

  2. rilla Avatar
    rilla

    Isn’t twitter the place for spouting off the quiet stuff out loud? That’s what I’ve been using it for.

    1. cenobyte Avatar

      Oh, I’m spouting there, too. But the things that have been coming to mind are the sorts of things that would get me kicked off Twitter.

  3. Coyote Avatar

    I find the same seething rage filled reactions kicking to the surface more often in the fall. I used to think it was because during high school I spent this time on the gridiron, destroying other human beings and without that outlet my body craves carnage.

    But maybe it’s the season.

    Oh the flip side, I keep thinking about starting a twitter account and saying things that could get it banned. Or having it turn into a TV show with The Shat in it. One of the two. :)

    1. cenobyte Avatar

      It’s not seething rage.
      It’s a constant sense of irritation.
      Like having sand in your ….

      ….HAIR, sickos.

  4. DesB Avatar
    DesB

    I have learned after this last weekend that you have a certain “je ne sais quoi” with stringing together racist epithets, and let me tell you that I nearly split my gut laughing.

    1. cenobyte Avatar

      Was I going on about the spicy Nip Noodles and the safety goggles?

      1. DesB Avatar
        DesB

        Yes, yes you were. Something to do with them ruling the world with spicy noodles?

        1. cenobyte Avatar

          Taking *over* the world.
          One wide Western eye at a time.

          …I do seem to recall spending rather a lot of time talking about sickle cell anemia versus syphilis and the relative cures for both…but that was a completely different discussion, wasn’t it?

          1. DesB Avatar
            DesB

            I do believe we went from the noodles into the Maxwell Silverhammer and that whole ordeal. Thus from there into the cures for those diseases!

  5. melistress Avatar

    This message was originally in all capitals. Not because of my crankiness but because I am at work and I need all capitals to maintain my sanity during data entry.

    But I am cranky. Severely cranky. I actually had to put myself in isolation on Monday which was the anniversary I have with Mr. Stress because if I didn’t I would stab someone in the eyeball with my knitting needles and my children were not exempt this time. Not a good day.

    In short, I hear where you are coming from. I fear, however, my state is not seasonal related.

    1. cenobyte Avatar

      God/Whatever help the mook that puts us in the same room together with some poor unsuspecting fool who keeps insisting that ‘irregardless’ is a word.

  6. DesB Avatar
    DesB

    I do have to say that around this time of year I start getting in this mood:

    http://smartassradio.com/wp-content/gallery/site-images/irish.gif

    And yes I look just like that.

  7. turk182 Avatar
    turk182

    You farted once and blamed it on your cats. God have mercy on your soul. (I’m in AA i can say God, its not real God)

    1. cenobyte Avatar

      I blame my farts on the cats *all the time*.

      I’m glad to read you’re in AA. With your pretend God and everything. Make it work.

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