This morning my nickelodeon alarm clock woke me up with its annoying 'NICK-NICK-
NICKELODIAN!' theme song and as I smooshed the big red button on the top of it to
shut it off, I realized it was Friday. Alas, it brought no elation that Friday's normally
bring me. There will be no movies tonight, no pizza, no hanging with friends, no hot
dates as I shoot naughty winks over the top of my rum and coke and flash my winning
smile. I just go from on job to another.
There was some Johnny Depp movie; I forgot the name, where he was hanging out with
some Indian in the old west. The Indian had once been captured as a child and was toured
all over Europe. The Indian said he could not understand how the same crowd followed
them to every city and was waiting for them. That is how I sort of feel about watching all
the people file in front of me at universal. It's the same crowd every night. It's actually a
little eerie.
We had to work an extra hour last night. My strength pretty much gave out, and instead
of cackling mad laughter at people, I was instead yawning at them and making grumpy
noises. The late crowd is so drunk I doubt they even noticed.
The idiot made a feeble effort to be scary last night. I saw one of the managers pull him
aside and have a talk with him. Now to be scary he will either a) step in front of someone
and pull the old 'watch me move my thumb' trick' or B) he will spin around in a little
circle. He does it when he sees a manager come into the house, just start spinning. It
reminds me of a whipped dog whom did something bad and now doesn't know what to
do. I simply do not understand why he finds it so hard to lean over, say 'Boo!' and then
lean back. Sigh.
I watched the medics treat one of the scareactors who got punched in the nose. He was
really spurting blood all over the place. I do not know the details of what happened, but
he looked pretty pissed.
I got home that night and crawled into bed. In the middle of the night I had to rearrange
the covers over me, because I did not want the line of people who was filing though my
bedroom in the middle of the night looking down at me.
Yeah. Weird.
2026 Update
Twenty years ago, Ed couldn't even enjoy a Friday without a line of drunk guests marching through his bedroom.
Ah, 2006. A gorgeous, rancid little artifact. Ed's biggest annoyances: a Nickelodeon alarm clock that screams its own name, a coworker who thinks spinning is a scare tactic, and phantom crowds pacing through his bedroom. Today that alarm clock would be a phone on a nightstand, and the NICK-NICK-NICKELODEON noise would be the same ten-second TikTok audio loop haunting everyone who worked that shift. Back then the only proof of a scareactor getting popped in the nose was a squinting eyewitness account on a blog; in 2026 it'd be four vertical videos, two reaction channels, and a sponsored merch drop by morning. Ed complains about the same crowd filing past every night, but now the crowd files through everyone's bedroom voluntarily, streaming live, and it never clocks out. The idiot spinning in circles? He was just practicing for a world where performative confusion passes for a personality. Poor Ed. He wanted pizza, movies, and hot dates over rum and Cokes; 2026 offers him a subscription bundle for all three and none of the joy.
“2006 Ed: When the imaginary line of guests started filing through your bedroom, why did you just rearrange the covers instead of locking the door or quitting on the spot—did the blanket really feel like a match for the monsters, or was the rum and Coke already doing the heavy lifting?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but locking the door would just mean the line stacks up outside and gets louder, and quitting on the spot means I lose the paycheck AND still have to drive home. Neither of those solves the real problem, which is that my brain decided to turn the bedroom into another haunted house. The blanket was never about matching monsters; it's about the ancient contract where covers are a shield against all nocturnal nonsense. Plus, the rum and Coke absolutely handles the heavy lifting, and I don't remember any rule that says I can't enlist both. Maybe it's dumb, but I've seen the alternative—lying there arguing with your own imagination until the sun comes up. So I grabbed the sheet, I hunkered down, and I let the line file on through. Take that, imaginary guests.
