Chapter One: Helen Keller

I recently moved back to California after living for a year in Eugene, Oregon. I was attending the University in Eugene, studying marine biology and physics. However, this is entirely unimportant to the subject of this story. What is important to the story is the manner in which I was living. To lift a phrase from Douglas Adams, this story begins with a house.

To be perfectly honest, it was an awful house. It was built in the 1940s as a local grocery store, and was never actually intended to house living occupants. From the outside it appeared to be a relatively ugly puke-brownish two-story building, with a weed-filled yard and a gravel driveway that liked to migrate all over the lawn and sidewalk. When one entered the house one was given the distinct impression of having been suddenly plunged into some manner of dark hallucinogenic trip. The ceilings undulated and ended up on different levels from where they started, the plywood-and-nails doors barely fit into their leaning frames, and the hardwood floor in the living room featured such a prominent dip that spilled drinks would quickly rush to a central point as though flowing downhill. The fridge sputtered and leaked, the shower knobs were screwed on backwards, and the window in my room came with a baseball-sized hole in it. All in all, a horrible place to live. We called the house Helen Keller, because it appeared, in all honesty, to have been architecturally envisioned by its namesake.

But live there we did. By “we”, I mean myself and four other 20-year-old males. We had divided the rooms up according to size and desired rent, with larger rooms paying a slightly higher monthly price. Upon actually entering the house we discovered that it was not, in fact, two stories. It just looked that way. The second story was actually just a large spider-filled attic that had been put there to trick us into thinking it was two stories. The five of us were crammed into a single floor. Just to get it out of the way, here are our characters.

Beck – Me, your humble and faithful narrator. I bash on the piano and pretend it sounds nice, and read books about quantum physics because I'm a nerd. I’m majoring in Marine Biology with a Music minor and trying to figure out what I’m going to do with either of those. I am one of the more socially acceptable geeks.

Chuck – My friend from high school. A linebacker and a rugby player, Chuck is large, hairy, and surprisingly intelligent for his appearance. My first interaction with him was in Freshman year of high school, when I layed him out with a kick to the balls. We’ve been friends ever since. Chuck is perpetually single, and will do pretty much anything if he thinks it will get him laid. So far he has remained unwillingly celibate since high school.

Keith – Keith grew up in Eugene, and you can tell. An aspiring geologist, Keith smokes an amount of weed that would make Cheech Marin blush. Non-confrontational to a fault, Keith wants only for everyone to be happy. He is, as of yet, unable to actually ask for anything on the phone. This has resulted in a lot of profanity being shouted at him for a variety of reasons. Keith and Chuck once rubbed their balls together, in full view of everyone. In our kitchen. They were both blind drunk, but nobody lets this fact get in the way while making fun of them.

Eric – Eric hates his life. He lived in a room that was little more than a broom closet, and has no sense of smell. This resulted in his room being something of a toxic wasteland, which was only ever ventured into by his oblivious-yet-attractive girlfriend. Eric realized that his girlfriend was dumber than a sack of hammers, and exploited her to the best of his abilities. An assassin at Super Smash Brothers.

Beard – Not his actual name, but we all called him that. Surprisingly clean-shaven, Beard was the resident Jew of the house. Short, stocky, and good-looking, Beard was perhaps the most productive member of our household. He was loud and boisterous, and basically kept the house together. He was the spirit, if you will. He was also by far the messiest member of the house, and essentially refused to clean up after himself.

All in all, we were a bunch of sad fuckers. But that didn’t stop us from having a good time, and we lived in relative happiness until winter came. It was at this point that we realized that the house had been built with essentially no insulation, and provided absolutely no protection from the sub-freezing temperatures outside. The single-pane windows may as well have not been there at all, and the living room became an ice cave that only the hardiest of souls dared enter. We were forced to wrap ourselves in thick blankets when venturing outside of our rooms, shuffling from place to place like monstrous upright caterpillars.

It was in the darkest heart of winter that Beard decided to drop the bomb that would ring the death knell for poor Helen. It was announced to the household over a rousing game of Smash that Beard would be moving out within the next month and a half or so. He intended to take a term or so off of school and travel the country via Greyhound with his friend Casey, with only their backpacks and trusty guitars. They fully intended to be robbed and murdered at some point along their trip, and charged this inevitability with the enthusiasm of a fat kid in a cake factory. He would be finding a sublet to take his room during the time he was gone, and would be returning mid-summer to survey what was left of the house.

Over the next month as the days to his departure counted down, Beard performed a moderately half-assed search to find someone to take his room. The difficulty in finding a sublet mostly lay in the fact that it looked as though a tornado made of bombs had swept through the house. Keith and I were the “clean people” of the house, and would usually get together and give the place a spit-shine every couple weeks or so. It was impossible to play cleaning-chicken with Beard or Eric, as they could have easily lived in their own filth for as long as was necessary. The task invariably fell on the two of us.

With only slightly more than a week left to go, Beard came to the realization that he either needed to find a sublet or pay for several months of rent without actually making use of the room. Now desperate to find someone, anyone to take the room, Beard made the decision that doomed us all.

Next chapter: Enter Bond



Chapter Two: Enter Bond

Casting about to find anyone who was gullible enough to take his room, Beard finally touched upon the only person in the state willing to fill in for him: Bond. Bond was a friend of Keith’s from high school, who had come to visit a couple times before. I didn’t have much of an opinion on him when I’d seen him before, mostly because I hadn’t interacted with him for longer than 30 seconds at a time. Until this point Bond had been living with his parents on a boat, doing whatever it is one does on a boat with no friends. He had not attended school past high school and had no job.



This is Bond. Bond is the son of Mike Allred, a moderately famous comic book artist who created Madman and a couple other things I’ve never heard of. Every person Bond has ever come in contact with knows this fact, because Bond makes it a point to inform him or her within several seconds of meeting them. He also makes it a point to try to get any new person he meets (especially if they’re female) to listen to some of his music. Bond, you see, is a musician. Not in the sense that he has any sense of rhythm or musical creativity, but in the sense that he can play the guitar in an “irritating guitar-store soloist” kind of way and owns a couple very expensive guitars. He is completely and entirely convinced that he is going to be the next Jimi Hendrix, and considers himself some sort of rock god at the age of 19. In any case, back to the story.

To his credit, Beard did everything he needed to do despite choosing the worst possible person to take his room. He had all the forms ready to go for Bond to fill out, and the man himself was due to arrive any time now to get it all sorted out. He was coming from about an hour and a half away, getting a ride with his mother since he didn’t have a driver’s license. He came and went, but not before consuming a sizable portion of the food in the house (in the span of an afternoon!) and begging for free weed from anyone who would listen.

A short time after Bond had gone, Beard looked over the paperwork he had left behind. It turned out that he had done nothing except put his name on the top line and leave the rest blank. Beard, irritated, called Bond as soon as he could.

“Sorry man, like, I fuckin’ forgot. I’ll be back again soon though man, so it’s chill.”

Beard attempted to stress the fact that the paperwork needed to be done by the time he left in a few days, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. The paperwork did eventually get done, but after a day or so we received a call from the renting agency. Apparently every single one of Bond’s references hated him. Nowhere he had ever lived would vouch for him, and every job he had had (a couple dishwashing jobs) didn’t even want to talk about him. All of the people living in the house ended up having to sign a paper saying that we accepted the consequences of letting him live with us, despite being warned of his less-than-stellar track record. We did so, if only to make Beard and Keith happy.

Keith, you see, had blinders on when it came to Bond. Despite the fact that everyone had clearly come to loathe Bond even by this early point, Keith operated under the assumption that we were all as enamored with him as he was. Due to the fact that Keith would get worked up over small things (“Easily heinoused”, as Beard put it) we could never really voice our opinions of Bond to him as explicitly as we might have liked. We dealt with it. In retrospect we should not have, as this was only the beginning. Beard apologized profusely before he left, leaving Chuck, Eric and I to fend for ourselves against the newest member of our household.

Next Chapter: Bond is Retarded

Chapter Three: Bond is Retarded

The title of this chapter is more succinct than you might think. To put it bluntly, Bond is the least intelligent person I have ever had the misfortune of coming in contact with. Hands down. I am actually unable to fully articulate how deeply, deeply stupid he is. Chuck and I theorize that this is due to the fact that he began smoking weed with his father at a very young age, and has not actually managed to progress past the mental state of a ten-year-old child. He is unable to do the simplest of math problems without having a look of concentration cross his face, and has not, as of yet, been heard to use a word above a fifth grade level.

Bond is one of the only people I have ever seen who could be described as having “smoked themselves stupid.” If Keith consumes a large amount of weed, Bond easily triples his intake. He is literally never sober. He usually buys a couple 40s every night, and often starts drinking at around noon. This is, of course, by himself, alone in the kitchen. He spends hundreds of dollars on weed and alcohol every month, which will become an important point in a later chapter.

Shortly after moving in, Bond began lurking in the kitchen outside the living room, listening to Chuck, Eric and I have conversations. The three of us are pretty intelligent guys, despite an unfortunate predilection for jokes involving cocks and the many uses thereof. While we talked about whatever the current topic was, Bond would come into the room every 45 seconds or so to ask the definition of a word we had just used. After being told the definition he would repeat the word to himself twice and say “Man, I’m gonna, like, learn a lot here. This is chill.” He would then promptly forget the word and never use it.

There are three words that make a disturbing number of appearances in any conversation one endeavors to have with Bond. They are “Like”, “Fuckin’”, and “Chill”. They usually appear one or twice in every sentence he uses, which are often ended with a forced “huh-huh” laugh. I’m not sure what the purpose of this odd form of punctuation is, but he certainly seems to like it. “The laugh” is usually used after something he thinks is intelligent or funny. Bond, you see, is the kind of idiot that does not realize he’s an idiot. He possesses a sort of arrogant idiocy, if you will. He postures himself as a sort of debonair ladies-man, a musical raconteur with a sharp tongue and a wit to match. This is, in a phrase, completely fucking untrue.

At one point, Chuck and I were in the living room watching TV and talking about the planet Saturn. I’d just read about the weird geometric cloud patterns over one of the poles and we were essentially just shooting the shit about it. A strange thing to talk about, yes, but we’re geeks. Bond ambled in and planted himself on the couch, just in time to catch the tail end of the conversation.

“What are you guys talkin’ about?” he asked in a way that said he was more interested in watching Bill O’Reilly shout at people on TV.

“Saturn, there are these weird shapes in the clouds that form geometric patterns.”

“What? What’s that? Huh-huh.” He looks at me for a moment.

“Saturn? The planet?”

“What? There’s another planet? What’s it called?”

“…”

Both Chuck and I decided to leave the room at that point.

Looking over this chapter, it almost seems as though Bond is a pitiful creature. He is, but he deserves far less sympathy than the story so far might lead you to believe. He may be unattractive and borderline retarded, but he certainly doesn’t need to have anyone feeling sorry for him.

Next Chapter: Bond is a Dickbag

Chapter Four: Bond is a Dickbag

As in “A bag of dicks.”

“Dickbag” is only one of the many silly things that spring to mind when I try to compress Bond down into a single word. Doing so is difficult because, like I said earlier, it’s hard to accurately articulate just how much of a dickbag he is. I almost feel as though I’m doing him a disservice by attempting to describe him via text. I wish I could bring everyone with me and have them observe him for a week or so, so that they might see what I’m talking about. In addition to being an arrogant idiot, Bond also happens to be an oblivious asshole. He’s the kind of guy who you find yourself looking for excuses to escape from after talking with him for more than a couple minutes, just because he makes you so goddamn uncomfortable.

Back just before Bond first moved in, I met a girl. Prospects being what they were in Eugene, I counted my blessings and tried to see what would become of it. Shortly after we became friends, the B-man moved in. Chuck and I were heading over to the girl’s house to watch movies with her and her roommate, when Bond announced that he was going to come with us. He left us with no room to discuss the matter (Keep in mind that we were trying not to offend Keith by snubbing his friend). We piled into my car and headed over there, in notably darker spirits than we had been a mere five minutes before.

On the way over Chuck and I talked about her a bit, and I said that I might ask her out at some point in the near future. Bond heard this and immediately announced that he was going to try too.

“What?”

“You know, like, I need a girlfriend too man.”

“Bond you don’t even know her.”

“Yeah, but, like, fuckin’, whoever hits on who, man! Huh-huh!”

“… Whatever.”

We arrived and greeted each other, and Bond set about laying on the most absurd display of a retard mating ritual I’ve ever seen. He made it a point to cockblock as hard as he could the entire night, regaling her with stories of his amazing music and his comic book father. He expounded on how Robert Rodriguez was considering making a movie out of the comic his father had created, referring to him as “Robbie” as though he were a close personal friend. She was unimpressed but remained polite. Eventually the roommate turned in for the night, leaving the four of us alone. Bond was still laying it on thick, leaving Chuck and I no choice but to leave and bring him with us. We were his only ride, so he’d have to come with us, right? If only.

“I think I’m gonna stay here, man. You guys, like, go on without me.”

We blinked at him for a moment. He had not, as of yet, asked the girl if he could stay. He did so now and she gave him a look before slowly saying he could stay on the couch if he really wanted. He did, and was just inviting her to go down to the hot tub with him when we closed the door.

I fumed on the way home with Chuck. Profanity was used by the both of us. We questioned Bond’s sexuality and intellectual integrity. He somehow made his way back the next morning, swaggering and giving me a superior look. I later found that he had slept alone on the couch after she had to make him stay out of her room.

Shortly after, she became my girlfriend. I’m just awesome like that. Time passes, etc. This story is not in chronological order, but instead organized by topic.

About a week after this, I came home one morning from spending the night at her place to find my room ransacked. Like, “Nazis-looking-for-the-Grail-Diary” ransacked. As I put everything back together, I noticed that only one thing was missing: A bag of mushrooms I had stored in my sock drawer. It was around this time that I noticed a horrible droning sound coming from Bond’s room, combined with what sounded like Bond chanting into an echo mic. The droning sound was a series of three chords being put through several horrible-sounding filters, and it sounded like he was also slamming on a kick drum at the same time. Finding Keith in the kitchen, I asked what the hell the noise was.

“Oh, Bond’s tripping on mushrooms.”

Well, that explained that. Since I had no real evidence against him I couldn’t do anything about it, but I made sure to keep careful track of where I put things in my room from that point on.

One night, MY GIRLFRIEND and I were curled up in my bed just drifting off to sleep at about 3:30 in the morning. Suddenly, the front door bangs open with a crunch that says someone has just kicked it in. Bond stumbles inside, screaming and shouting about how he’s going to rape everyone in the house and demanding everyone present their assholes to be molested. Now, Bond gets drunk every day. This is a fact. But this time, he was drunk. And loud. And stupid. Don’t forget stupid.

I pulled some pants on and opened my door, telling him to keep it down. He looked at me as though he was surprised I lived her. I shut the door and walked back to my bed.

“Hey BECK!”

A pause.

“Is your CUNT in there?”

Oh no.

“Are you FUCKING your CUNT in there?”

I open the door again and look at him swaying on the spot.

“Yeah, you’re FUCKING your CUNT aren’t you! Your BITCH!” He’s screaming this at me across the living room.

“… Shut up, Bond.” I go back inside.

“Yeah, you go back in there! You fuck your cunt! Fuck it! Fuck your cunt! Yeah!”

I give my girlfriend an apologetic look and turn around again, coming out for the third time. I walk up to him and stand less than a foot from him.

“Say anything else and I’ll put you down. Get it?”

Now, I’m not a big guy. But I’m a lot taller and faster than Bond, and he was blind drunk. He looked at me incredulously, before dropping his head and stumbling past me mumbling incoherently. He went into the kitchen and sat down, staying very quiet as I went back into my room and fell asleep.

Chuck told me the next day that he had been woken up by Bond’s shouting and had gone out to see what the problem was. Bond then went on for about 25 minutes about how he was going to “beat my ass” and how I “stole his girl from him”. She found him revolting, I might add. He apparently went on at great length on all the “history” the two of them had had together. Chuck never found out what the “history” was, only that it existed. She denied anything. Not that I was really worried.

I hate Bond.

It's now past 2 AM, and I think I should probably go to sleep. I've got more to post in the morning.

Next Chapter: Bond is a Rock God

edit: I like to switch between past and present tense a lot, apparently. Don't write at 2 in the morning, kids.

Chapter Five: Bond is a Rock God

As I’ve said, Bond considers himself to be God’s Great Steaming Gift to music. He can constantly be heard in his room shredding awesome super-rad power chords on his Airline guitar, tossing his unwashed hair to the unstoppable musical power. He makes it a point to open his windows as wide as they’ll go as he “rehearses” (for that is what he calls it), so that he can flood our hapless neighborhood with the musical revolution. Bond was the kind of musician who was convinced that everyone else in the world was clamoring over each other to hear his dulcet tones, on top of being too thick to understand such plebian concerns such as “noise laws” and “neighbors shouting at us to shut the fuck up” This activity had almost gotten the cops called on us several times, and only when more than one of us went to his room to tell him to shut the fuck up would he actually stop. Often he would realize that we were pounding on his door to get him to stop and pretend that he couldn’t hear us.

I play the piano, like I said in the first post. I don’t mean to sound like a dick or anything, but I’m probably in the upper spectrum of people who can do so. Bond enjoyed nothing more than waiting until he could hear me playing and coming out to do one of two things: Lay down some sick jams (three chord power ballads) on the acoustic guitar loud enough to drown me out, or turn on the TV to something like Flava of Love in an effort to offend me into leaving. Bond and I, you see, had come to the realization that we absolutely hated each other by this point. The trouble with Bond being a loathsome cretin, however, was that he fully and totally believed he was right in every situation, this one included. As far as he was concerned I was just being an asshole for the hell of it. In any case.

If Bond on the guitar was annoying, it paled in comparison to the fateful day when he brought home a full drum set. He had a gleam in his eye like an evil child who had just figured out a more efficient way of tearing the legs off of crickets. He somehow managed to cram the set into his room (How he did this I’m not entirely sure, I actually went into his room a grand total of once.) and set about bashing on it with something that sounded like his face. This went on. And on. In fact, I’m not entirely sure it ever really stopped for the rest of the time I was there. If Bond was home, he was either drinking and smoking, shredding sick BMX tricks off the tree outside, flooding the neighborhood with his amazing sound, or beating incessantly on the drum set. The drums became his new toy, making lesser things like conversation impossible.

Bond liked to throw parties. He called them parties, but what they were was far more depressing. His parties involved him inviting his friends over (More on them in the next chapter) and buying a vast amount of shitty beer. Often he would manage to wrangle some swamp-horror of a girl into coming, who would then smile weakly and look for an escape as he attempted to drag her into his room to “listen to his music”. Bond had a G4 he had figured out how to rig a mic into, and had set about recording his amazing music. Girls he convinced to come into his room during these parties would be forced to listen to his “songs”, and then… Well, we’re not actually entirely sure. What we do know is that they’d often leave shortly after.

Shortly after the arrival of the drum set, Bond set about forming a band. He had himself on lead guitar (of course), one of his friends on backup, his cousin on drums (more on his cousin next chapter), and Keith’s girlfriend Nora on keyboards. The formation of this hell-sent Voltron of musical terror caused Bond a greater joy than I’ve ever seen, and seemed to do nothing more than reinforce his already colossal ego. He could be heard loudly discussing how “We’ve, like, got a really unique sound, man.” (they didn’t) and told Chuck and I that he was going to be more famous than all of us. This may very well be true upon further reflection, but it’s much more likely to be in a “registered sex offended” sort of way rather than an “incredible rock god” way.

Chuck, Eric and I took to calling the band the Unique Sound, since they were perpetually unable to come up with something to actually call themselves. They rehearsed loudly, every day. It was to the point where it completely shut the rest of the house down for several hours in the afternoon, since it was literally impossible to communicate without resorting to silly hand signals. We did our best to take it in stride, often “rocking out” in the living room while Bond shredded yet another sick riff. We did this to keep ourselves from going insane.

At one point, Bond announced that he had gotten a recording contract. This blew our minds. When pressed for more information, it turned out that he actually just knew a guy across town with some recording equipment and instruments. Our minds quickly reverted to an un-blown status and we listened for another several minutes as he went on about how excited he was to finally be “making it big”. We ignored him and he eventually went away.

Later, everyone else had left to go do things and I was alone in the house with Bond. Shut up in my room so I wouldn’t have to risk coming in contact with him, I heard him loudly talking in the living room with his “record agent”. He was comparing himself with the likes of Led Zeppelin and Jack White, and laying down the parameters for his album. His dad was going to draw the cover art for it, apparently, and it was due to be a “like, just like a fuckin’ kinda stoner rock album, man. Like, there don’t even need to be lyrics or anything like that. Just like, pure soul. Y’know? Huh-huh. Yeah.”

Unfortunately for Bond and the Unique Sound, I’m not sure their album turned out all that great. Or turned out at all. I myself have two high-level contacts into the recording industry (I won’t mention who they are since it would sound like I’m namedropping, but they’re big), and Bond likely would have shat himself trying to get into my good graces if he’d known. Too bad.

Next Chapter: Bond Has Friends

Chapter Six: Bond Has Friends

Does he ever. They’re the kind of friends who you’re likely to get thrown in jail with. Not because you did anything clever or awesome, but because you’re all too goddamn stupid to not get caught. Bond’s friends, you see, take after him in a pretty bad way. There were several of them from what I saw, and they all seemed to fit the “loser stoner asshole” mold pretty well. They came in varying degrees of dishevelment, betraying a lifestyle that likely consisted of little more than trying to figure out where to get one’s next bag of weed. They would flood the house en masse every few days, consuming everything there was to be consumed like a swarm of stoned locusts before retreating to Bond’s room to “jam”.

“Jamming” was what Bond called “playing every instrument at once and hoping they happen to be in the same key”. At least, that’s what it really sounded like. It’s entirely possible he was actually trying to summon demons in his room or something, since the cacophony that resulted would likely be good for little else. People who were not of stout heart and hardy eardrums would be forced to flee to quieter areas of the house or neighborhood.

The most entertaining of all of Bond’s friends was his cousin. His cousin was about 6’2”, weighing probably about 280. It’s possible to be these dimensions in a healthy way if you, say, eat right and lift incredible weights. The Cousin (I never actually learned his name), however, was 280 in a “guys I eat at Jack in the Box every day sort of way. He was fat, covered in emo tattoos (nautical stars and the like) and was the most perfect caricature of a redneck I’ve ever seen. He would arrive almost every day in his big-ass pickup truck, take Bond to the local liquor store, and load up on alcohol of an incredibly cheap variety. They would then return and consume all of this alcohol, while “jamming” in Bond’s room with The Cousin on drums. Often, they would then hear of a party across town and drive there in their stinking-drunk state. I considered calling the cops a couple times as they drove away, but decided that if they got into a horrible accident I didn’t really care. It would certainly be tragic if they took someone else with them, but hindsight is 20/20. Especially when it comes to giving Bond any sort of leeway.

The Cousin was a thread unto himself. If Bond was the least intelligent person I’ve ever encountered, The Cousin hovered somewhere around second or third. He constantly wore a brimmed hat cocked at a jaunty angle on his head, and could often be heard loudly discussing his favorite topics: “This bitch I fucked last night oh man she was so drunk”, his truck, and getting bitches drunk in his truck so that he could fuck them. All in all, he was a pretty loathsome individual. But you expected that by now, right? He attempted to sound smart every once in a while, usually in the form of “*book title*? Wuzzat? Like, some sorta Hitler book or somethin’?” He and Bond would then laugh and laugh. Oh, how they laughed.

I began to hate my life.

Next Chapter: Bond Is Angry

Chapter Seven: Bond Is Angry

When I was in Eugene, I smoked a fair amount of weed. I’ve not smoked in months, but I really didn’t have anything better to do at the time. I had a rather nice waterpipe forged in the fires of Mount Weed by our very Shivadas, which was the centerpiece of our living room. Bond, upon his arrival, decided that the bong (Which we had named Treebeard since we’re all nerds) was, in fact, his. He could always be seen using it, often knocking on doors to beg for more weed. These requests would invariably be followed by “the Laugh” as though it somehow made the request less awkward or stupid.

One day, I took one for the team. Bond was horrifically drunk again, and I ambled into the living room to take the slide-piece from the bong. If you’ve never used one before, this is the part that holds the bowl and is removed to allow unrestricted airflow. I pocketed it and put it in a safe place in my room, then walked out into the living room to see what happened. Terribly passive-aggressive, I know. But I couldn’t pass up the chance.

It didn’t take Bond long to notice that the piece to his (my) beloved bong had gone missing. “Wuh… Where is it, man? What happened to the piece, man?”

“I dunno, maybe you lost it.”

“But… But it was just right here!” his features took that of a kicked puppy.

“I have no idea, I haven’t smoked for a couple weeks. You must have done something with it.”

He cast about the living room, as though expecting to see it on the floor somewhere. From here he moved to ransacking the living room and kitchen, making sure not to actually put things back where he had flung them from. He began shouting increasingly louder throughout this time, beginning to form the idea that someone had stolen it. I wonder where he got that idea.

This went on for days. Bond searched the house high and low and came up empty-handed every time. He had moved on, by this point, to outright accusing everyone of stealing the piece for some reason or another. He was absolutely correct, of course, but I took acting classes in high school and was easily able to convince him that I was as oblivious as he was.

“FUCK! WHERE’S THAT FUCKIN’ PIECE, MAN!”

Eric and I sat in the living room playing Smash while Bond tore up the kitchen for the seventh time. A large jug of water sat on the kitchen table, and it apparently offended him for some reason or another. With a swift strike he smashed it from the table and it shattered to the ground, covering a good portion of the kitchen floor. He looked at it for a moment.

Eric and I had paused the game by this point, staring at him. “You can clean that up any time you like.” Eric said calmly.

Bond turned and walked away, locking himself in his room and turning up his music. Several minutes later The Cousin arrived, sporting a new foot-high spiked Mohawk. He looked at the mess in the kitchen as well, opting to follow Bond’s lead and ignore it entirely. He went into Bond’s room and could be heard bashing on the drumset a moment later.

Finally, Keith came home and asked Bond what the mess was about. Bond pretended as though he couldn’t hear him and said nothing. Keith cleaned it up by himself.

Keith cleaning up after Bond was a very common occurrence, and this act would be repeated many times. I gave the bong to Chuck when I left Eugene, and Bond never did end up finding the piece he wanted.

Next Chapter: Bond is Crazy

Chapter Eight: Bond is Crazy

Eventually, it got to the point where the house became a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland. Keith had moved out and Chuck had gone home for several weeks, leaving Eric and I alone in the house with Bond. We decided that the best way to deal with this unfortunate fate was to never, ever leave our rooms unless absolutely necessary. The living room degraded to a horrible state, and Bond roamed most of the house by himself all day. Beard came back at this point, only to quickly leave and move into a new place after he saw how far Helen Keller had fallen. Here are pictures.



This is the living room. This is one of its cleaner moments at this point.



Another shot of the living room. Note the moldy plates and ant-filled styrofoam containers.



This is Beard. He stopped by for a while after he got back from his whirlwind tour of the country. He left shortly after.

I’m not sure where Bond’s friends went at this point, but they stopped coming over. Even The Cousin made gradually sparser appearances. Bond took to wandering around the house talking to himself, as though he was having a full two-sided conversation. He would sit in front of the TV watching Carlos Mencia and narrate the show to himself.

[Mencia makes a retarded joke.]

“HAH HAH! THAT’S GREAT! THAT’S LIKE… THAT’S LIKE THAT ONE THING!”

It got worse. He would play music in his room loud enough to be heard at all points of the house, then leave his door open to let his room function as a sort of large, smelly amplifier. He would then walk around the house shouting “OH MAN I LOVE THIS FUCKIN’ SONG! GENIUS, MAN! GENIUS! RRRRRGH! I LOVE THIS SONG!”

I was afraid. If either Eric or I ever heard Bond active in the house, we would make it a point to stay in our rooms as long as necessary to avoid having anything to do with him. Because of this there was nobody to clean up after Bond, who certainly couldn’t be expected to do it himself. The living room and kitchen were covered in trash and empty alcohol containers, and the house developed a series ant problem. During this

Bonus Story: I wasn’t sure where else this would fit, since it’s not long enough to form a chapter in and of itself.

I was in the kitchen once fixing up some tasty eggs when I overheard the conversation Bond and Keith were having in the living room.

“It’s like, I fuckin’, like, I got no idea how to live on my own, man!”

“What?”

“I like, I don’t know how to live! Keith, will you take me grocery shopping, man? Please, man, you gotta help me.”

“… Grocery shopping? It’s not that hard. You just get bread and eggs and stuff you need.”

“But, like, I got no idea! I don’t know how! Dude you gotta help me!”

“…. Allright, we’ll see after I get back from class tomorrow.”

“Chill, man. I gotta learn how to live on my own.”

I don’t think they ever went grocery shopping.

Next Chapter: Bond Is a Kung Fu Master

Chapter Nine: Bond is a Kung Fu Master

Bond is the kind of person who, despite having absolutely no formal training, is convinced that he can beat the ass of all comers. He tells this to anyone who may or may not even be listening. He expounds on the fights he’s gotten into (which never seem to have any concrete details to them) and refers to himself as a sort of unstoppable juggernaut.

Chuck is a big guy. Like, in the “I’m Irish and I can drink you under the table and then kill you” sort of way. I would not want to fight Chuck without resorting to both polearm weapons and incredibly cheap tactics. Chuck has a remarkably cool temper, and can take quite a bit before he gets pissed off enough to resort to physical violence. Despite this, he was a football linebacker in high school and plays rugby in college. An all-around hardcore bastard.

Bond is short, pudgy, and has probably never worked out a day in his life. He also seems to revel in unwittingly causing anger in everyone around him. When Chuck brought home a large medicine ball one day, Bond’s eyes lit up when he saw what could potentially be a new toy. One drunken night he stole it out of Chuck’s room, repeatedly bouncing the heavy leather ball on the kitchen floor. If you’ve ever used a medicine ball, they don’t bounce. They hit the floor and transfer all of their kinetic energy immediately. When combined with a shitty floor like the one in our kitchen, this resulted in every horizontal surface in the area suddenly bucking their contents like an angry stallion.

“Don’t.” Chuck said.

Bond did it again, harder.

“Seriously, cut that shit out. You’re going to break something.”

Bond picked up the medicine ball and did a basketball pass to Chuck as hard as he could from a few feet away. Chuck is big and strong, but that shit hurts if you’re not ready for it. He caught it and set it down, just in time to see Bond barreling towards him in a sort of lopsided drunken form tackle. He sidestepped and grabbed Bond’s arm, placing a hand on his back and shoving him forward into a cabinet. Bond slammed into the solid wood and tottered for a moment before hitting the ground. Chuck leaned over. “I said don’t.”

Bond shut up.

Several weeks later, Bond challenged Chuck to a straight fight. Chuck was aghast.

“Wait, what?”

“C’mon man, I’ll kick your ass.”

“You’re being serious right now.”

“What, scared?”

“Well, no.”

“C’mon man! Like, let’s go!”

Bond had dropped into a sort of Gentleman’s Boxing stance, as though it would have helped. Chuck outweighed him by a good 40 pounds of muscle and had longer arms.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah! No, wait. I’m gonna go get drunk first.”

Bond turned on his heel and fled into his room, then called his cousin and left with him. Bond kept postponing “The Fight” for a series of increasingly transparent reasons, until Chuck stopped asking about it entirely. I think Bond was grateful.

Shortly before I left Eugene, Beard came back to the house with the intention of getting his furniture back. You see, he had left his bed, dresser, desk, and nice old record player in the room with the explicit understanding that Bond would return them whenever Beard asked. Bond, as usual, pretended this had never happened.

Beard was not pleased. They debated about the subject, which essentially amounted to Beard repeatedly bashing his head against the thick brick wall of Bond’s tard-logic. Bond had decided that he wanted to keep everything in the room, and had no valid reasoning behind his decision. They came very close to blows at this point, and Beard eventually had to threaten to call the cops to get Bond to return his furniture.

When we removed it from his room (the only time I’d been in there) I saw that Bond lived in utter filth. A thick line of furry black mold surrounded the bed (“What? That’s mold? I don’t think so, man. Whatever, I’ll just leave it.”) and trash covered most of the carpeted floor. The bed had several dubious stains on it, and even the ceiling had a sort of strange, viscous substance stuck to it. We got out as quickly as possible.

The next chapter will likely be the last (aside from short anecdotes that I might spit out as I think of them), so it may take me a bit longer as I read over it and edit it a bit. It’s… Basically the reason I posted this thread in the first place.

Next Chapter: Bond is a Ladies Man

Chapter Ten: Bond is a Ladies Man

You’ve all heard about Bond being an asshole to my girlfriend. You’ve heard about the poor girls he drags into his room and forces to listen to his music. What you have not heard about, however, is The Girl.

I call her The Girl because much like The Cousin, I never cared enough to learn her name. She is short, fat, and has a face eerily reminiscent of those flat-nosed cats that you always see in pet stores but nobody ever seems to actually own. In a phrase, she is pug-ugly. Bond met her about a month and a half before I moved out, and she started spending more and more time at our place. This was much to the discomfort of Chuck, Eric and I, and we quickly learned that she was of an intelligence level roughly on par with her male counterpart.

The Girl was from Portland, apparently, and made it a point to include “your rich daddy” into almost every conversation I ever heard the two of them have. These conversations (which they would loudly have in the living room while sharing 40 of cheap beer) were shocking in that they uniformly displayed a stunning lack of intellectual thought processes. I mean, if you put two idiots in a room you’d think they’d eventually talk about something intelligent. This was not the case. Bond’s topics of conversation were limited to his Unique Sound and how he was going to be famous, as well as his love for shredding sick 20” BMX bikes. I don’t know what a 20” BMX bike is, but it can’t be good. Her side of the conversation usually consisted of sycophantically agreeing with him.

Bond and The Girl liked to have short, loud, nasty-sounding sex. To their credit they would often turn the music up in his room while they bumped uglies, but this didn’t help much. It was at this point that I realized that certain girls should really just stay quiet during sex, lest their partners be led into believing they had been tricked into having sex with a palsied yak. After these 120-second escapades, Bond would swagger into the living room looking pleased with himself, beaming at everyone as though daring them to ask why he looked so happy. We would always ignore him, and he would then begin dropping hints until everyone had left the room.

Several days after the first time we heard them having loud, gross sex, I heard Keith and Bond having a conversation.

“Hey man, like, those condoms you gave me were too fuckin’ small. They fuckin’ broke.”

“They broke?”

“Yeah man, huh-huh. Guess my dick’s just too big.”

“Wait, what happened?”

“Well, like, I made her take the morning after pill again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, like, she got way sick after the first two times so I was like ‘oh man I’m so sorry’ and shit.”

“When did she take them before?”

“Uh, one last week, one on Monday, and one today.”

It was Thursday.

Bond later related this story to all of us without being asked, and I interrupted him.

“Hold on. I just have to ask. Are you absolutely sure you’re using these condoms right?”

“Yeah,” Chuck chimed in. “Most condoms can stretch far enough to fit your whole arm.”

“No man,” Bond retorted thickly. “My dick’s just too fuckin’ big, okay? Huh-huh.”

“I don’t know. I mean, they stretch to an insane degree and only ever really break if you use them wrong.”

“Look man I don’t want to talk about it! Just get over it! My dick’s just fuckin’ huge, okay!”

He got up and left the room, leaving us to stare at each other in bewilderment. “Did that really just happen?”

Several days later, I heard him telling Keith how insanely in love with this girl he was. At this point they had been “going out” for about two weeks. A few days after that, he was relating the story of their breakup, and how he had told her he never wanted to see her again after yet another possible pregnancy.

So I moved out. It was pretty much without incident, though I was itching for an excuse to get into a fight with Bond before I left. He stayed in his room, however, and avoided me until I had returned to California.

Last Friday, I received the call that prompted me to make this thread.

“Hello?”

“Beck?” It was Eric.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Look… There’s no easy way to tell you this.”

Oh shit, someone had died. I owed several thousand dollars. Bond had gotten a record deal. Something horrible had happened.

“What’s wrong?”

“Bond got married.”

“What?”

“Bond got married.”

“No. I refuse to believe you.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re. Shitting. Me.”

“I’m not kidding.”

Bond had borrowed 40 dollars from his friend to catch a Greyhound up to Portland, where he had reconnected with this girl and gotten married the next day. In a donut shop.

A donut shop.

I can’t make this up. The happy couple returned to Eugene and are living together in Helen Keller. Eric and Chuck both report that they both have rings and have loud, disgusting sex in the shower pretty often. After returning to Helen Keller, Chuck braved the house outside of his room and went to ask Bond a question.

“Hey Bond?’

“Whatup, man.”

“Hey, did you guys get a pre-nup or anything?”

“A what? What’s that?”

“You know, like in case you get divorced.”

“Don’t worry about it man, we’re gonna be together forever.” He said, turning away to enter his love den.

“Ahh luuuuuuuh view!” he crooned as he opened the door.

“Ah h luuuuuuh view!” came the lilting reply. The door clicked shut, leaving Chuck alone in the kitchen.

Bond Allred is married at age 19 and is living in Eugene, Oregon. He is already expecting a child and intends to be a rock god. He plans to be with this girl that he met about two months ago for the rest of his life, producing children that will one day become members of the society he has worked to degrade.

Sweet dreams.

Bonus Story: Bond is a Contributing Member of Society

Bond held two jobs, as far as I know, during the time I lived with him. Both were dishwashing jobs at local restaurants. Nowhere else would take him, since the only references he had were bad ones. He would get horribly high, go wash dishes for several hours, get drunk at the bar after the place closed, then bike back home and get more drunk and high. This continued until he decided not to go to work anymore. His place of employment called him and informed him that he had missed two shifts in a row, then told him that he could have one more chance if he came in to work that night and stayed for a full shift. He assured them that he would.

He did not.

He was terribly offended when they fired him over this. Chuck relayed the conversation to me.

"It's like, if they give me shit for missing two days---one that I thought I called in sick for, it's like, I don't even want to work for them. You know?"

Pause.

"So I said fuck that shit I'm gonna get my last pay check and tell them to fuck off, they are so disrespectful".

His second job lasted just as long, but I'm not sure about the details of it.

After I went home, I found out that Bond had not actually paid rent as of yet. Not once. His entire paychecks were going to weed and booze, and Keith had been eating the cost of having him live there.

Bonus Story: Bond is Smart

Another one from Chuck, sent to me via IM and translated into a more readable format.

They were watching King of the Hill, just Chuck and Bond. Just two buddies. Trouble is, one of the buddies hated the other buddy with most of the fibers of his being. Anyway. Chuck made a comment about how he really enjoyed the show because it's about "average, salt-of-the-Earth" people. Bond did not understand. He thought Chuck had just made that turn of phrase up. He pressed Chuck to explain it.

"Well, salts that aren't Sodium Chloride are very common in the dirt. You know, like common minerals."

"Minerals?"

Bond was confounded. "I don't get how people are like minerals, man."

Chuck told him to Google it and leave him alone.

onus Story: Bond Hates the Piano

My room looked out on the backyard of Helen Keller, which wasn't really as nice as it might sound. The backyard was covered in a thick layer of mulch and discarded beer cans from Bond's parties, as well as an old grille that had probably not been cleaned since it was first purchased in the 1950s. Bond had dragged a couple old chairs out there, which sat mouldering in the elements and receiving occasional use from those brave enough to touch them.

Often Bond and a friend would sit out there and discuss pithy subjects like "9/11 was totally the government, man. I know it. I heard George Bush is actually a lizard-man in disguise." "No WAY!" "Way."

Once I was reading on my bed with my window open when I heard him and his friend Chris come back there and crack open a couple frosty PBRs. Bond was complaining.

"I like, went to all the neighbors around here and asked if they could hear us playin' our jams and shit but they all said they couldn't."

"Oh yeah?" Chris sounded uninterested, as though he'd heard this story several times before.

"Yeah, like, I dunno how they couldn't hear us. Some of 'em said they heard this really good piano playin' comin' from over here though, which is such bullshit."

Chris made a noncommittal noise.

"Yeah, I mean, that guy is such a douchebag." He had apparently forgotten that he was sitting right outside my window. Perhaps he didn't know I was home. I smiled to myself and kept reading.

Bonus Story: Bond is Afraid

I just now got a call from Eric.

"Hello?"

"Beck?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you... Did you post about Bond on his dad's message board?"

"What?"

"Bond just came in here and he's really freaked out. He said you wrote a really detailed story about him with chapters and detailed conversations. Stuff about the house and his marriage."

"Uh, yeah. That was me, but I didn't post it on his dad's message board."

"Well, he's really freaked out about it now. Apparently he thinks you're stalking him or something."

This is especially funny since I'm about 650 miles away, and couldn't conceivably do anything to him even if I wanted to. Considering that I'd have to see him again to do anything, I'm pretty sure stalking him is out of the question.

Eric seemed pretty amused, and wanted to read this thread. Unfortunately it seems that the forums are closed to non-registered people at the moment. Here's hoping I don't get hit with a restraining order.

Christ, I didn't think my comment would turn the thread into a pity party. I'll live, guys.

Slightly different style on this one, since it's completely fictional.

Bonus Story Which is in No Way Based Off of Real Events: The Unique Sound Gets a Gig

Frond (an entirely fictional character) and the Unique Sound were excited. "Overjoyed" might be a better choice of words, to be honest. At last, they had booked a gig. From the sounds of it they actually stood to make a good deal of cash off of this deal. Maybe I'd misjudged them all this time, I thought to myself. I guess someone thinks they're good enough to give them money.

The date grew closer, and the Unique Sound practiced at volumes still as-of-yet undiscovered by modern science. Flora (a similarly fictional character) had swapped her keyboard for an accordion, and the introduction of bongos and a tambourine filled out the percussion section quite nicely. It was a delicious musical smorgasboard, to put it concisely. Those of us with unrefined ears could do little more than adopt our usual strategy when faced with the daily musical revolution: Flee.

Finally, the day arrived. Unfortunately, most of the band did not. Frond, Flora, and Freith were the only members of the band who were not waylaid in some manner. Not to be deterred, the trio set out with a pair of acoustic guitars and a freshly-polished accordion. We stared as they left in high spirits, giving each other forlorn looks across the living room as the front door clicked shut behind them.

The three of us made use of the silence as best we could, but I think that deep in our heart of hearts, we missed it.

Much to our joy, the Unique Sound Lite returned about two or three hours later. Looking strangely put-out despite our shouted adulations, the Dream Team settled onto the living room couches as they cast their instruments aside. The riches were divided among the members of the band: One dollar and thirty cents apiece, with the remainder (The total amount was approximately four dollars) quickly disappearing beneath the couch cushions. We asked, confused, where they had been asked to play.

It turned out they hadn't been asked to play anywhere. They'd set up on a street corner at the local weekly market. From the sounds of it, they had been paid to go away. But hey, they reasoned, at least that hippie lady gave us each a cookie.

Bonus Totally Untrue Story: Frond is Kind-Hearted

A common activity in Helen Keller was watching the History channel. Often it would start with only one person, then as people passed through the living room it would gradually turn into a good half-dozen or more (including any friends who happened to be over at the time). At one point, a documentary about the deep south around the turn of the century was on. Frond arrived and began watching, scoffing incredulously.

"I don't get how people can be like that, man. It's like, why all the hate?"

Attempts to explain how racism is passed down between families and such over a long period of time are made.

"I don't buy that, man. If I had lived there during that time I wouldn't have been racist."

"If you'd been born there?"

"Yeah."

"You wouldn't be racist if you had been born and raised in 1890s Alabama."

"Nope."

We tried to convince him otherwise, but it did no good. He was set in his beliefs and there wasn't a thing we could do about it.

Frond Has Ideas

"George Bush did 9/11."

"What?"

Frond had appeared out of nowhere, intent on starting a conversation with me in the kitchen. This was not a good opening topic.

"Yeah, man. And he's going to try to make himself president-for-life."

I politely told Frond that he was full of shit. This was a common conversation topic overheard among Frond and his friends, but he hadn't tried to have it with me as of yet.

"No, seriously dude, I know it's true. I watched a video on it."

"Stop. That's retarded. Tell me why you think this."

"No man, just, like, just wait until Justin (a friend of his which is in no way based off of a real person named Dustin) gets here and he'll explain it to you."

I was not happy with this, and told him so.

"I'm not waiting for Justin. Tell me now."

"No, man, just wait for Justin to get here. He knows all about this kind of stuff."

As could be expected, Justin never showed up and Frond locked himself in his room to avoid further conversation. Eventually, getting Frond to believe progressively crazier conspiracy theories became something of a game. Chuck managed to get him to believe that the moon landing had been staged. The Holocaust was dubious. Lizard-people running world governments behind the scenes were not entirely ruled out.

"Don't you believe in anything?" asked Chuck, exasperated.

Frond looked smug. "I have ideas."

Fictional Addendum: Libel and Lawsuits

A couple hours ago, I got off the phone with Chuck. The shit has hit the proverbial fan, so to speak. In the last small update, I said that Frond may be attempting to skip out on paying his rent by moving out with his girlfriend. It turns out that this is entirely true. After assuring Chuck that he was not, in fact, trying to evade paying rent, Frond moved out and did precisely that.

It came to Beard to contact Frond yesterday and try to get him to pay August rent. Predictably, Frond decided to argue and attempt to weasel his way out. Beard informed him that he was still on the lease and had not gotten a sublet to pay rent instead, and was as such required to do so himself. Frond refused outright and hung up.

Beard was unfazed. He went directly to the renting agency and told them the story, at which point they gave him the contact information for Frond’s cosigners: His parents. I believe you can see where this is going.

Frond’s mother answered the phone, as Beard tells it, like a sixteen-year-old girl. I’m not entirely sure what this means, but I can assume it involves an annoying inflection and drawn-out vowels. Beard began to explain the situation (Making sure to remain much more polite than he regularly would be, of course), but she stopped him. She called her husband to the phone and gave it to him, audibly saying “It’s that Beard kid” as she did so.

Beard began to explain the situation anew, but was cut off halfway into his first sentence.

“Stop. Before we discuss anything, you’re going to give me the name, address, and phone number of this Beck guy.”

Beard, taken aback, asked him why. Frond’s dad told him that he is filing charges and suing me for “slander”.

His dad is filing a lawsuit against me for slander.

First off, this is ridiculous. His dad, apparently, doesn’t know the difference between slander and libel. Secondly, I can name seven people off the top of my head who would be willing to go to bat for me and swear, under oath, that every word I have written here is true. Beard, bless his soul, insisted repeatedly that he had no way of contacting me and that he didn’t know my address. The conversation was able to move on to the subject of Frond being a deadbeat tenant.

His father point-blank refused to believe this. He claimed that the last month’s rent had already been paid (it had, by Beard. In September.) and that Frond owed nothing since he had moved out. When this was shot down, he insisted that Chuck had threatened Frond and his wife with physical violence (an outright lie) and that Frond had moved for their own safety. Beard, ever a prince, called him on this fabrication and received a profanity-laced vow that he would not see a single cent of the rent owed to him without a lawsuit.

At the moment, I’m laughing. There’s not a single way this can turn out well for Frond or his father. Frond has repeatedly lied to his dad about what has been going on, and it looks like it’s about to come crashing down around him should he actually decide to take any part of this situation to court. Keith has been contacted, and is reportedly “disgusted” with the way Frond has been acting. Personally, I just think it would be entertaining to hear this entire story read out loud to a courtroom. (NOTE TO INTERNET DETECTIVES: That is not an invitation, idiots.)

Strange how much havoc an internet post can cause.

Note: Do not under any circumstances contact anyone involved about this. You will not be funny, you will not be cute.

Bond is a Technical Wizard

More often than not, someone could be found sitting in the living room of Helen Keller. Usually they would be watching TV, playing video games, sleeping off last night's drunken antics, or soliciting gay sex from passersby. Often a combination of these four. The Living Room Sentinel varied from day to day, but on this particular day I was the lucky winner of the Bond Lotto. I don't actually remember what I was doing out there, but it's more than likely that it was profoundly unproductive and had little relevance to the story.

As would often happen, Bond came trudging out of his room at around 1:00 in the afternoon, clearly having just woken up not five minutes before. He sat on the other couch (The living room had two couches forming a 90º angle) and, as was his custom upon waking up, began smoking weed. This was neither rare nor entertaining, but I suppose it served to grant him a slight judgmental reprieve from what happened next.

Dropping his pipe on the couch (the cushions gradually accumulated a number of burn marks from him doing this), he stood up and walked across the room to start up Keith's XBox. When he pressed the button, however, he was perplexed to find that the system didn't start up as he was used to. Instead, the front LED flashed green and orange and the screen stayed blank. He stared at it, unsure of what to do.

After the "Are you fucking your cunt" incident, Bond and I rarely spoke. In fact, each of us essentially pretended the other didn't exist. As such, he didn't ask for help despite the fact that I was sitting right there watching the entire situation. XBox support says that a flashing orange and green front light means that the AV cable is unplugged. This makes sense, when one considers the vast octopus's garden of game systems that surrounded the TV. It was customary to turn on a system and find it unplugged, at which point one was obligated to sift through the jungle of wires behind the TV while mumbling obscenities at the mother-bitch who dared unplug your system of choice.

Not Bond, though. Instead of rummaging around behind the TV like a normal person, he decided to come up with his own solution. Narrating to himself, as though to assure himself of his own genius, he outlined his idea. "Oh, fuckin' chill!" he said. "I know what this means!"

Tell me, Bond. Tell me what it means.

"This is, like, one of those things where it's got every old Nintendo and Sega game on it."

I'm not kidding. I don't know how he came up with this. However, he seemed confident enough in this idea that he called a couple friends to come over and play with his new toy. The XBox, he told them, had somehow gotten every old Nintendo, Genesis, and arcade game onto it. He didn't specify how, but one assumes it was probably the work of gremlins.

Before they arrived, however, he realized that he still had the dilemma of getting the AV cables plugged in. He set to work, diving into the quagmire with all the finesse of a retarded man-ape. Pulling wires free left and right, he went about his electronic surgery in what seemed to be a trance. Unfortunately, after a couple minutes of work he didn't seem to be getting anywhere at all. I had nothing more interesting to be doing, so I stayed in the living room (I must have had a book or something) and watched out of the corner of my eye. He kept at it, trying with all his might to figure out how to plug the XBox into the back of the TV.

For twenty minutes. I swear I'm not exaggerating. Hell, if I were making this up I'd have chosen a more believable number. Finally, he gave up entirely and went back into his room. His friends arrived and the Unique Sound began rehearsing its latest disphonic drone. I don't think he ever ended up playing those Nintendo games.