inaugural entry

welcome to the inaugural entry of NNN, INCORPORATED! this blog is brought to you courtesy of a couple of recent developments:

1. my partner M just recently started up a blog--check it out here--and after a few days of watching him joyfully transmitting his random thoughts and cool webfinds to the world, I soon began to salivate

and

2. underscoring my desire for a forum for the posting of random tidbits, I today came across a file cabinet folder labeled "misc. personal", basically a folder created for items unable to be filed away anywhere else. alongside letters, birthday cards, and cartoon clippings I rediscovered an inordinate amount of written miscellany: funny conversations hastily transcribed while at work, weird dreams, fragmentary observations or analyses that never got incorporated into longer pieces--stuff that accumulated over the years 'cause it seemed too insightful or funny to chuck, but also too isolated to do much else with than keep and occasionally revisit and laugh, or marvel, or whatever.

looking through all this stuff today, though, I felt like it deserved an audience of some sort. but what should I do with it? maybe make some kind of zine? turn it into comix?

I still might do that.

but until then, there's NNN, Inc.

bringing you the best in marginalia.


***

today's offering is a brief conversation that I wrote down on a guest check at a restaurant I worked at about three years ago, an artsy Tex-Mex place located in an affluent part of my hometown of san antonio, texas. this particular conversation took place between me and a co-worker, a college kid who at the time was about 20, a little younger than I was. I liked this guy a lot. it wasn't sexual--we just clicked for no reason that I could put my finger on. probably because, like me, he was socially awkward and disdained by the restaurant's repressive owners. whatever the reason, I found him really easy to talk to.

anyway, he was kind of quiet and conservative looking, but he had this daredevil, prankster streak and a shitload of crazy stories to back it up. he shared an apartment with his best friend, a dude named Eli, and they were constantly daring each other to do outrageous things. once, when Jack and Eli worked at Marble Slab Creamery together, Eli dared Jack to suck on an old work sponge--and if you've ever worked food service, you know the kind I mean: the kind that sits all day in a bucket of dirty, bleachy, greasy water; the kind that you'd never, never use in your own house but since it's just Marble Slab or McDonald's, well--fuck it. so eli dared him to suck such a sponge, and jack had obliged. in another incident, jack had vomited into a large ziplock bag, sealed it up, then lain it flat inside the freezer. once solid, jack had removed the frozen sheet of puke and slid it through the open car window of an enemy: when they returned they'd find vomit all over their seat--and they wouldn't be able to figure out what happened!

jack and eli were also both vegan, although they detested vegan sanctimoniousness and rejected the label. (once a quasi-friend of jack's--resented for his indie rock good looks and secure position at Whole Foods, which had refused to hire jack--came into the restaurant wearing a shirt that read "vegan". the v-word, jack had shuddered.) once, after work, he invited me back to his parents' house to watch a video he had rented, a french animal rights film from the 1940s whose title I can't remember. in one grisly scene, a factory worker butchers a live cow strung up by the ankles, a torrent of blood raining down upon him as he slits its neck. a business major, jack dreamed of becoming the CEO of a company that tested on animals: once in power he would liberate the animals and then destroy the company from within. his politics were definitely the politics of sabotage, and above all else he valued being hardcore.

hence the following conversation, which I quickly transcribed on the only paper I had access to at the time--a guest check from my ticketbook--because it was amazing to me, because even at the time I recognized that it captured the jackness of jack, his quintessence. it was a late winter evening around february, I guess, because we were talking about Lent:

jack: so are you doing anything for Lent this year?

NNN: nah, I'm not catholic anymore. why would I do something for Lent?

jack: you don't think Lent is a celebration?

NNN: a celebration of asceticism, maybe.

jack: what's asceticism?

NNN: self-denial.

jack: you don't think it's a competition?

NNN: yeah, between you and you.

jack: no--you don't think it's a competition with Jesus? to show him that you can be just as hardcore as him?

NNN: (reflective, appreciative silence)

jack: you think I should go balls out this Lent?


***

man, I miss fucking Jack. last I heard he went out to Colorado.