"Mothafuckin' swords and shit?!"

First, let me apologize for the lack of recent entries. I was in Vegas for a week and wasn't in the mood to sacrifice Life Equity by dicking around on the internet, and I just relocated to a new apartment in Kalamazoo with my buddy Chris. I should be completely set up in the next couple of days, and will resume my regularly scheduled intermittent blogging.

I'll write up a Vegas trip report soon, but for now I don't have a ton of time so for now a brief anecdote from a few years ago will have to do. Anyone reading this should know I probably spend at least a few hours a week thinking about this, or talking to Chris about it. Which is sick.

Background:

When I was in highschool, there was a slight overcrowding issue for a few years, so we had to send kids to the Perry Center campus for various classes. I had an English class there sophomore year, and it was brutal. The facilities were ancient (generations upon generations of Grand Blanc kids have had preschool classes, there, including yours truly), and stupid-uncomfortable. The worst was the bathrooms. Since Michigan gets frigidly cold during the winter season, schools have to be equipped with blaze-capable heating equipment. For some reason, the 2nd floor bathroom at the Perry Center was usually about 110 degrees when the heat was on. After my first trip the 3rd day of class there, I vowed never to return. A friend of mine once confided that he wasn't feeling well, and- though he was making a Yeoman's effort to keep it together another hour- was going to have to take a more-than-brief detour to the Perry Center combination Bathroom/Sauna.

He turned his back to me, and walked down the hall towards the restroom, head hung and shoulders slumped, like an inmate walking down deathrow. He emerged a few minutes later, sweating fiercely, hair matted to his head, looking like he'd just given birth. (I later learned this wasn't far from the truth.)

Chris's little brother Zazz was desperate one afternoon, unable to hold himself together any longer. He flew into the bathroom, and slammed open the nearest stall door...

Inside where two of my classmates, Alvin and Stanley. Alvin whipped his head around, looking 1-part abashed, and 2-parts furious. According to reports, he was dressed like Samuel L. Jackson in "A Time to Kill," complete with sweat-soaked wifebeater. Zazz stared in shock for a few moments, before Alvin exclaimed:

"Hey maaaaaan! You think we in heeah, playin' mothafuckin' swords and shit... SWORDS AND SHIT?!"

I first heard that story a year ago, and haven't stopped thinking about it since. In my mind, the funniest part is that Alvin actually REPEATED the "SWORDS AND SHIT?!" phrase. "Well, Alvin, the thought had never crossed my mind, but now I cannot stop thinking about anything else."

This story recently got new life a few months ago when I started having dreams about it. Instead of Alvin and Stanley, new characters were in the stall, including Samuel L. Jackson, the Dad from Friday, a pair of beat poets (one of which, I believe, is Bart Simpson from the episode in which he fantasizes about steal Homer's Miracle Hair Growth solution), a polar bear and a grizzly bear, two midgets (dwarves?), erstwhile USC Offensive Coordinator Norm Chow, and most recently (and my personal favorite) Minh Ly and Chau Giang.

Just imagine Chau (or Minh), speaking their particularly confounding versions of broken English, saying "...mothafuckin' swords and shit... SWORDS AND SHIT?!" If you don't laugh, you're probably normal, and I'm the weird one.

There's a group of us who can pretty much consistently bring a room of the others to a screeching halt if he just walks in and shouts, "Swords and shit? SWORDS AND SHIT?!" My life is so awesome.