I decided to stop for a coffee on my way to work. For a change of pace I thought I would stop at the Duncan donuts. In the seven or so years I have worked in this area, I have never stopped in the Duncan Donuts. Good thing, too. When I got there the line stretched out the door. I briefly thought about just turning my car around and spinning away, however once your heart is set on a donut there is not much you can do except follow your dreams. So I stood in line with sleepy grumpy office workers while a few kids screeched underfoot. Where the hell do these kids come from at 8 in the morning, anyways?
So I got an ‚clair and a large coffee with sugar and cream. Usually Duncan donuts puts just the right amount of sugar and cream into their coffee. In fact it's the only place I know of that will give you sugar and cream without you having to mix it yourself. However my coffee this morning not only had too much sugar, it felt like it was saturated with sugar. Taking a large swig from it I swear I could feel sugar crystallizing about my lips. The ‚clair was not very good, either. I swear it was half-baked. More dough then nut. I did not so much as bite into it as slurp it up like Jeff Goldbloom did when he had a fly head. The result of this sugar encrusted witches brew left me with an incurable pounding headache. I popped a couple of Tylenols that I keep in my desk, but I doubt they will have little effect. I'll have to sit here and hold my head in misery.
While I am on the topic of unpalatable headache causing ingestible items, I would like to say that Southern Comfort 100 proof is the most evil liquor on the planet. Sometimes after work I like to have a nip or two of hard liquor. A little something to give a warmth in my belly and mellow me out from my workday. Not enough to have me singing naked in my back yard, just a wee drop to take the edge off. Usually it's a shot of two of either rum or whiskey. The other night I dropped into the liquor store because I was out of such indulgences. Scanning the shelves, I thought I would go for something different. Then my eyes alighted on the bottle of southern comfort. Then my eyes drifted over to the bottle next to it: Southern Comfort 100 proof.
I have not touched this stuff since High school when I had a rather bad experience with it. However the sands of time had scrubbed my memory free of such unpleasantness, and I thought to myself, 'By Jove, perhaps I'll try something different'. So I rang up the bottle and brought it home.
The stuff is evil. It's that simple. It makes me think of that movie 'The Price of darkness' where the found a big bottle of liquid Satan in the basement of some church. It was as if someone had stuck a tap into the bottle and given me a shot. It tasted awful, it burned going down and it messed me up, and not in a good way. After 3 or 4 shots (the evilness of it make me take another shot) my head was lolling and my face was flushed. However, it was not the happy buzz alcohol usually gives me. Get some booze in me and I am a cheerful guy. This stuff just depressed me. It made me feel heavy slow achy and just plain mopey. I did not do any of the stuff I wanted to do after work, I just flopped on the couch and sulked a bit. It was if someone had given me a shot of Emo boy essence. Finally I gave up and went to bed. I am not touching the stuff again.
I also had a night filled with some really weird dreams. On top of one dream where I was navigating some vast concrete sculpted city where I kept reaching street edges that dropped to such depth that left my heart pounding in my dreams, I also dreamt I was back in college and was hiding a body in my closet. The details are hazy but apparently some girl had died in my dorm room, and since I was having such a wonderful week and did not want to have to deal with a dead chick, I wrapped her up and stuffed her in the closet. Then in the dream I went about doing things and enjoying myself, the entire time worried that at the end of the week I was going to have to drag the corpse out of the closet and explain to everyone exactly why I had decided to stuff it in my closet for a week to begin with. There was more to this off southern-comfort induced dream but it was so bizarre I am not going to try and describe it.
Sometime in the night last night the cold weather that hit the north drifted down to us and I awoke this morning to a delightful chill. As I drove to work I passed the Seminole county fair, which is crammed into the far corner of the parking lot of the Sanford mall. I gazed at it and let out a wistful sigh as I drove by. I don't want to be at work in my stuffy windowless office. I want to be at the carnival, riding the tilt a whirl and the Ferris wheel and that crazy Ferris wheel that also turns upside down. I love those old carnival rides because they are so rickety and creaky you never know if a bolt is going to fly off and the entire thing is going to come crashing down. It's part of the thrill. Then I would play a couple of rigged games and not play anything and have a quick run through the cheesy wacky house and chortle at reflections of my self in the funhouse mirror that makes it look like I have a skinny body and a big head.
Nineteen years ago, Ed is chasing a sugar headache with an eclair and baptizing himself in Southern Comfort 100 proof.
Ah, 2007. Coffee was still a line-out-the-door errand and not a thing you summon with an app while your phone simultaneously tracks your blood sugar and your soul. Ed's windowless office, Tylenol stash, and after-work liquor store run all feel like artifacts from a lost civilization. Now the Tylenol is in a subscription box and the booze can appear at your doorstep via delivery app, which means you can experience Southern Comfort 100 proof's special flavor of regret without even putting on pants. The fair being crammed into a mall parking lot is also a time capsule: today that same corner is probably either a shuttered monument, a storage facility for other people's dreams, or a 'pop-up immersive experience' that charges you to stand in a room full of fake haze and neon. Even the rickety carnival rides have been rebranded as 'vintage-inspired.' But the real constants remain: donuts are still dough with aspirations, a bad eclair can still ruin a morning, and 100 proof liquid Satan will still make you feel like someone injected emo boy essence into your veins. Progress is a fragile thing.
“2007 Ed, when the sands of time scrubbed away your high school memory of Southern Comfort 100 proof, did they also scrub away the part of your brain that tells you not to buy liquid Satan in bottle form? And why, in the dream, was waiting until the end of the week to explain the dorm-closet corpse the part that had you worried?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you'd think the sands of time would have the decency to leave a warning label etched somewhere in my skull, but no, they just polished the whole mess into a shiny "what could go wrong?" So I bought the liquid Satan, and it promptly reminded me exactly what could go wrong. Emo boy essence indeed. I should bottle that stuff and sell it to teenagers. As for the dream corpse, that's the thing that gets me too. I mean, in the dream I was all set to enjoy my week with a dead girl in my closet, but the part that stressed me out was the upcoming explanation. Like, wait, you're worried about the awkward conversation? Not, you know, the body? My brain has priorities, apparently, and they're terrible. I blame the Southern Comfort. That stuff makes you hide bodies and then worry about the logistics like a fussy office manager.
