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TheCourtyard
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Name: Daniel
Country: United States
State: Maryland
Metro: Silver Spring
Birthday: 4/3/1988
Gender: Male
Interests: NOVELING, because secretly writing about people you know is sweet revenge; SINGING, a cappella for I play no instruments [well]; PEOPLE-WATCHING, though people tend to all look the same; ARCHITECTURE, but in moderation - not that I'd make it my job; SMART PEOPLE, of the hot variety, because wit only goes so far in bed.
Expertise: Finding inspiration; singing "jum-jum"s and "ba-ba"s with the Faux Paz; donning the black wig and turning emo; obsessing; drawring; Silver Spring (this ends in "-ing"); making small talk; listening; cuddling; loving.
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  danielbig12
Member Since:
11/3/2003
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| this year in me A year ago I was a misunderstood filmmaker; two years ago I was such a sap I decided to start a band with my [then-six-year-old] brother; and three years ago I found out the girl I liked already had a boyfriend. It is very convenient having all of these important life milestones laid out for me - on the Internet, no less. I realize that I've been doing this for over three years now, save for the past four months, where I more or less fell off the face of the Earth.
Tonight after midnight, I walked down to CVS to buy some soap. It is exam week; a lot of people have 8 a.m. exams tomorrow morning, and College Park is dead. It is depressing, and I didn't see a single person until I left campus. Everyone seemed to be at CVS, in line for Red Bull. On the way back, I decided to walk past Allegany Hall, a dorm with these huge leafy bushes in front of it. "Hello!" said a voice from the foliage. "Uh, hey," I said, moving closer, trying to make out the figure squatting on the ground. Maybe it was somebody I knew.
I saw she was holding a phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and I figured she probably wasn't talking to me. Then I heard the trickle of water, and noticed the dark puddle on the ground between her legs. She wasn't laughing or crying; she wasn't humiliated or proud, but maybe surprised. And so it's come to this, I could see her thinking.
"I'm in front of a dorm, peeing in the bushes," she said to the person on the other end, putting a cigarette to her lips. "And some guy is walking past."
I tried to walk faster. Three years in College Park and I've never seen a girl peeing in the bushes in front of a dorm while smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone. You'd think it happened every day here from the way she acted. I was horrified as a freshman, green about college and overly self-righteous about everything.
"Who's walking past?" she kept going. "Just some random-ass guy."
"Yo, tell her Dan Reed is walking by!" I yelled. She didn't hear me because she was still peeing, and I was embarrassed to have seen it.
These are the stories I will tell my kids one day, when they ask what college was like, and this mythical place called College Park, where even the night before 8 a.m. exams you can find people too drunk to enjoy God's gift of shame.
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| dan is bringin' the drugs  For quite a while this afternoon I was hopped up on a drug known to me as Percocet. Upon popping the little, bitter pill, I knew only one emotion: "useful." I did a great many efficient things in the minutes following, such as making a phone call, checking facebook, writing an e-mail, and checking facebook again soon afterward.
I have been in the house for at least two days now, having had my wisdom teeth removed on Thursday. I remember little of the surgery save for the smalltalk I made with the dentist as he shoved the IV in my arm, explaining that there was valium seeping through the little tube that went inside of me, and I thought of The Princess Bride and Prince Valium, and . . . then I was swollen, being led to the car, which was parked next to a trash can with a sticker on it for a local band called The Spotlight, and they were everywhere, I thought, even on Main Street in Laurel.
The Percocet is a glorious drug, and do I ever feel inspired as it courses through me. On occasion, I will want a cigarette to bring me down from the pillowy heights, but the doctor insists that I cannot smoke for it will loosen the stitches in my mouth.
And I do not want those stitches loosened, for I want the healing to be quick and effective, so I can get up without feeling faint, and drive the car without going limp at an intersection, and eat foods other than the applesauce. God, I love the applesauce. I bought twenty-five dollars worth of applesauce and pudding in preparation for the surgery, but I am already tired of both. | | |
| i got tha hongry for illegal chicken When I am behind the counter of the shop, or hiding from the cameras through which the corporate office is watching me, I will be stricken by the unavoidable club of Tha Hongry. I begin to savor for something more than ice cream, or even a fro yo.
The Peruvians make a chicken that I am quite enamored by. It is called Pollo a la Brasa in the Spanish, but I do not know its meaning in the English. There are a great many Pollo a la Brasa restaurants in this area, and they are not hard to find. When the smell of the rotisserie wafts into your nose holes, there is little you can do to stop yourself from swerving across several lanes of rush-hour traffic to reach the source of such a smell.
For a year, I have longed to eat a Pollo a la Brasa that was nearly the stuff of legend. The restaurant was called El Pollo Rico, and it made Wheaton a legitimate place to be in, as opposed to just that shopping mall where a fellow was stabbed two years ago. I have had serious Tha Hongry for it, despite never having eaten there.
But, alas, El Pollo Rico was raided by Immigration last week, and its owners were thrown in jail for harboring illegal aliens. I cannot help but wonder if the Immigration people are vegans, and they do not approve of chicken that falls off the bone. My heart is broken! If it is a crime to make such a spectacular Pollo a la Brasa (as I have been told it is), then perhaps I am a criminal, too, for wanting to enjoy it. | | |
| sometimes a frozen yogurt is called a "fro-yo" Today was a banner day at the shop, in which a great many things were scooped. One gentleman, however, ordered a frozen yogurt. It is not scooped but rather forced through a complicated and frightening machinery, one that takes three hours to clean, as I did this morning.
The gentleman entered the shop with his nose turned up. "It smells like a sewer out there!" he exclaimed. But this is Montgomery County, I thought, we have exported all bad smells to Virginia. "It smells like ass!" the man continued.
I sprinted from behind the counter and out the door, to where the construction workers and stroller-pushing mothers were making their daily progression. As I took whiffs of the putrid air, an emo boy walked past the store. Bleached-blonde hair, studded belt, confused smile: a fine specimen, increasingly rare and rarer still on the clean streets of Rockville.
"Yes!" I yelled. "This is not a good smell!"
The emo boy stared at me, perhaps alarmed that the smell of ass would bring tears to his eyes. (Or was he comforted?) I returned to the store; as the emo boy continued to stare at me through the windows which lined every inch not already covered in ice cream, I made the gentleman a frozen yogurt, which he enjoyed thoroughly.
In time, I forgot that smell, but I remembered the look of horror on the emo boy's face, and the glint of the sun in his belt's studs, as I recalled the story to anyone there being paid an hourly wage to hear it. There are times, I realize, when God makes the street smell like ass, but only so you are impelled to go out and smell it, thus stumbling upon the other glories of His creation.
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| i have become curious about television, and baltimore A life of scooping and blogging has proved far crueler than I originally anticipated, despite the free goodies I eat on the job and the many interesting and powerful people I meet on the blog. There has been one thing that gives me solace, at least of a momentary variety, and that is the Box.
The Box sits atop the television in our family room, and when it is not tied up by my brother or step-father, I will wander downstairs to explore the hundreds upon hundreds of magical channels. One of these channels is called The N, and in the evenings it plays a program called Degrassi, which seems to involve a number of frustrated, sexually active teenagers in Canada. I assume the Canadian accent, for all its shortcomings, must serve as something of an aphrodisiac, and I long to visit such a place where it is spoken.
But I will be missing Degrassi tonight, for I am attending one of my emo bacchanals this evening, in Baltimore. The band is called theAUDITION; they seem hostile towards spaces and Traditional Capitalization, and I find that rebellion intoxicating. The lead singer is tall for an emo boy, which is comforting after the minor crisis I had last summer upon seeing how short Chris Carrabba is.
The show is in a part of Baltimore that I am not familiar with. That part is called "Everything That Is Not The Inner Harbor." I am scared about the neighborhood, in a suburban sort of way, but I remind myself how afraid I was to visit the 9:30 Club for the first time, and how it was actually in nice Towson that my car was nearly broken into, and I do not feel so bad about Not Inner Harbor Baltimore.
After all, Not Inner Harbor Baltimore is north of here, which means it is closer to Canada, and whatever makes the teens of Degrassi so horny. Yes. Perhaps love can be found in Baltimore tonight.
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