Continuing with the aforementioned posting of my old blogs, here is one of my first blogs on Myspace, written from my very first apartment back in ‘05.

Hello and welcome. My name is Jeeves, and on behalf of the Obstreperous One, I’d like to thank you for coming. We appreciate your attendance to this candid extrapolation of His thoughts, and hope you find this meeting both informative and interpretive. Feel free to help yourself to cookies. There are none here, but The E would like to encourage you to eat more cookies, because it will make you feel good; consequences be damned. After the meeting, you’ll find a short survey listed on the back of the comment card in front of you. If you would take one hot minute to fill it out and drop it in the box as you leave, our Host would feel much appreciated.

And now, without further ado, todo, hoodoo, or that voodoo-that-you-do (so well), I give to you: Eric.

Hello everyone. Please excuse the notecards, as it has been a while since I’ve done this. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a perl programmer with a penchant for prediliction. And to those of you that know me, I graciously extend the fist-shaped ‘rock’ of friendship — may you tap it with yours, always. Solid.

Apartment living has its foibles. Some of these are universal, some are not. (Actually I’m certain that many aspects of living are augmented by my own actions and perceptions, but I’m not here to play Obviousman: I’m here to rock out with my rocks out. (The ‘rocks’ of friendship. (Perv.))) And in my 2 months of living in an apartment ohf mein very own, I’ve discovered a few of these aspects, one which I now pass on to you. In no particular order of import. Or export.

The “Giving Out Cookies Makes You Seem Weird” Aspect
When I first moved in, I thought, “Hey, why not make some cookies for the neighbors? You know, make friends.”

(Pause for mocking laughter… two, three. Continue.)

It wasn’t until later that I came to realize, through a friend’s counsel, that:
a) We no longer live in the pleasantville world of the ’50s, where neighbors wave to each other in the morning with Enzyte smiles, give each other Jello-Molds of Welcome, and cheer happily as Jimmy scores the touchdown and marries Sally the cheerleader
b) The giving of things to strangers always results in them making Assumptions, most likely none of which are what you at first intended.

However, this is a strange head of mine to live in, and thus an off-kilter thought became shambolic reality.

I baked an explosion of cookies, following closely the recipe emblazoned upon Nestle’s classic package of semi-sweet chocolate chips. They were beautiful, my cookies. They rose in golden brown mounds, bespotted with still deeper brown, like happy Japanese groundhogs exploding into the yellow sky of the oven to say “Oh, hello! It’s super happy fun cookie time GO!” Their scent sweet like the breath of Chokula, Angel of Snackables, and their molten forms I placed onto paper plates to assist delivery. (Close runners-up for delivery methods: hand, bag, basket, and headhunting spear.) And with 4 plates of deliciously fresh cookies, I left my the world of 202 behind me and approached the mysterious realms of 203, 204, 205, and 201.

It was 9:30pm on a Monday. A day that will live in ignominy.

I approached 203, knocked, and stood with a nervous and forced smile upon my face. Inside I heard scuffles, a whisper:

“It’s himmm!”

I wondered at this statement. Who is Him? Is Him me? And if so, how could they know I’m Him when they don’t even have a spyhole in their door?

The door aforementioned opened the slightest amount possible as to provide communication. I was able to make out a single, sexless eye.

“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m your new neighbor in 202. Just came by to say hello, and to give you these.”
“Oh.”

There is a brief pause where nothing is happening. The eye is regarding. The smile is being forced. And then the door opens just enough to allow clearance of an arm.

An arm with which to grab my golden groundhogs.

As these were taken, and the door was closed, I was able to snatch a glimpse of a small child in the background. She was clasping the long arm of a bear, whose slumpish form rested upon the ground, far from the wide and glassy eyes of fear that stared at me. That stared… at Him!

(Allegedly.)

As the door closed, a voice echoed in the strangelove cavities of my brain:
“To roads diverged in a wood, and I /
I took the one resulting in everyone thinking I’m a f*cking weirdo.”

Turning with that same strained smile on my face, I did what you should do with any injury, no matter how severe. I walked it off. Back to my apartment for more cookies, and then out to 204 for my second insurgency.

No answer. The door is decorated with two small American flags, which makes me think “elderly.” My suspicions are confirmed when no one answers the door. Either this person has gone to bed already, or has left this life behind forever.

In any case, they’re missing out on cookies.

The next door opens to reveal a middle aged gentleman. He is holding back the smells of curry, the sounds of sitar, and the forms of several small children. I tell him of my person, and of my purpose. He responds simply.

“Yes.”

I offer my platter of tastibles to the gentleman.

“Oh. Perhaps I will take just one.”
“No please, they’re all for you.”
“Oh.”

He pauses, and I insist with a thrusting of my arm. He takes them.
“Thank…” he begins, but the last word is muffled by the closed door.

“Well,” I console myself, “only one more to go. It can’t get much worse than this.”

Oh, young fool! So childlike, so out of touch, so hopelessly idiotic! Mistakes, it seems, are like stones. Kicking one out at the wrong time can cause an avalanche of catastrophe.

At the last door, a tall man of Eurasian descent greeted me. I gave him the same spiel, almost word for word. His response?

“Oh, so you live alone?”

Author’s Note: I think it’s safe to assume that no matter who or what you are, someone else, somewhere is moreso. If you are attractive, there is someone somewhere who makes you look like a fish-eyed gremlin. Conversely, if you are the forsaken result of a failed experiment in genetics, there is someone, somewhere, with just one more white-headed pimple than you. It was at this precise moment that I myself met someone who gives a weirder first impression than… myself.

With my expert conversational-ninja skillets, I deflect.
“Just moved in this weekend.”
“Oh ok. Just you then?”
I’m weirded out completely. I don’t want to answer. This is a foe too great for even my ninja powers! So instead, I give a nondescript noise. A sort of ambivalent humming grunt. Then, as a non sequitur, I give my name.
“My name is Eric.”
“Noonan.”
I know not whether this is a traditional greeting, a curse word, an invocation of gods, or actually his name. Thus I respond in kind, (which, I think you’ll agree, would be appropriate in any of the above cases.)
“Noonan. Yeah, so these are for you.”
“Oh ok, thank you.”

I try not to sprint back to my apartment.

That evening I reflect in my bed. No matter how I try, I cannot fool myself into thinking that the evening’s events were a success. As they say, Hindsight is 20/20.

Well let’s hope so. That way I can tell when Noonan is sneaking up behind me.

Back in the day I had a MySpace page. I have some tales about MySpace and my experience with it, as well as the gray day when I turned my back on it, leaving it weeping in the window of a brownstone apartment as the snow fell and I stepped into the taxicab below without looking back.

I’ve been urged to repost my MySpace blogs for posterity.

I begin now, with my first ever draft of my MySpace “Profile”.

Enjoy.

Approximately 78HF years later, Eric Springer was born in a hospital in North America. His birth was a rather clumsy and messy affair, (as the result of an equally clumsy and messy affair approximately 9 months previous,) and the first sounds that met his ears were the deafening screams of his mother.

This is his tale.

YOU ARE COMPELLED TO READ MY BLOGS, MORTAL!
Profile views as of 12/12/05: 15,161 and you.

When I was born I was hit in the head with a maul. Well, not a maul per say, it was more of a small hammer.

Let’s start this over.

When I was born I was hit in the head with a maul. I mean hammer — sh*t. Anyway, moving on, it happened because there was a goat in the delivery room. Ok it wasn’t really a delivery room in the traditional sense, because I was born in a barn in Mexico City. Doesn’t add up? Ok you caught me — it was Tlaxcala. I just figured you wouldn’t know how to pronounce Tlaxcala so I said Mexico City. Yeah I don’t know why, let’s forget it. Anyway, when I was born I was hit in the head with a hammer in a barn in Tlaxcala because a goat was trying to eat the hayage upon which mi Madre was seated. Sorry, I mean lying. Like she was prone, because she was giving birth, right? Ok.

I fibbed about the goat too. It was a Javelina. Like, a wild pig. Anyway.

When I was born I was hit in the head with a hammer in a barn in Tlaxcala because a Javelina was trying to eat the hayage upon which mi Madre was prone. The doctor was waving the hammer and struck me. On second thought, he wasn’t really a doctor. He was like, this ranchero named Juan Juan. Ok ok, his name wasn’t Juan Juan but that would be cool if it was, huh? “Juan Juan the Hammer-Waver.” But it wasn’t Juan Juan, it was Juan Huevos, whose real name was Jon Dexter, some guy from California that left for Mexico because he wanted to discover himself and he thought Mexico was the place to do it. Also I think he wanted the cheap prescription drugs. He was a weird guy. But he liked surfing. Not that there was much surfing to be done in Tlaxcala, which I learned later. Anyway I didn’t want to say Huevos because it means “balls.” It also means “eggs,” yes, you’re right.

Eggs and Balls.

When I was born I was hit in the head with a hammer in a barn in Tlaxcala because a Javelina was trying to eat the hayage upon which mi Madre was prone. Juan Huevos was waving the hammer and struck me. He was trying to get the Javelina away from the hayage.

I’m trying to stop lying.

“This was Brett that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing.”
- Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises

“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.”
- Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby

“[...] you cannot stop me, cannot stop us. Try to stop us, you pussy! You can’t stop us from singing, and you can’t stop us from making fart sounds, from putting our hands out the window to test the aerodynamics of different hand formations, from wiping the contents of our noses under the front of our seats.”
- Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius