STRANGE WORDS AND LATE NIGHTS

It's 10 p.m. Monday -- 48 hours straight of High Life beer and pounding away at this damn article on the design of housing developments. Working on the thing between classes, teaching assignments and football has been tough, physically and spirtually. I even lost faith in my self for a second after I got the second revision back. I mean, if I can't move into a foreign region of the country in August and then write a 2,500 word article on the design of housing developments -- a topic I know nothing about -- what the hell good am I?

Hmm, maybe I need to increase the pace and take the entire article on a ridiculous turn that no one could possibly see coming. Maybe announce in the bottom third of the thing that one source regularly confers with Benjamin Franklin on all matters of exterior design concern, but never interior. He's got Aaron Burr for that. Then wrap up the whole piece with a stern warning about sound mental hygiene being what's really cool.

No, that's no good at all.

And if this whole dead line thing with an 8 a.m. class looming isn't enough, I'm still the target of several would be cock smokes.

Twenty-four hours ago, I was taking a long pull off my Miller High Life, celbrating the nailing of one transition graf that really should have been much easier, when my phone started skipping around and vibrating all over the desk. The name on the phone screen said Hoffman, but I knew better. It was an unwashed Frenchman looking to derail my recent progress.

I cringed. Maybe Dianna could take the call and tell him I was doing pilates in the basement? I thought. Shittt, he'd never believe that. Not because it isn't an outstanding lie. No, it's good. She just wouldn't be able to deliver it.

"Hoff, how bout those Birds?" I said.

He's already in the middle of a tirade, the gist of which seems to be that I'm an asshole. Oh, untrustworthy too.

He rattles off the number of drinks he's had while watching the Eagles game and part of the late game. There's a pause while he waits for me to sound impressed. He's drinking Scotch these days and desperately hopes that powerful, brown liquor will wash away the stink of the Seine and the morning's anal lube.

Maybe I don't sound impressed enough.

He starts making bold claims that he's been carrying my blog.
"Yeah, you sure do Hoff," I tell him assuringly. "You're a special guy. Nobody else is as good as you."
His mom paid us to hang out with him in college and part of the deal was we had to take a weekend couse in calming him down from these shame spirals he gets in. I only receive a pension from her now, but I figure I owe the lady a free be.
He says that he's been talking to Matt Dunn and Matt agrees that he's been carrying my blog. (Sounds like Matt may have taken his own course in dealing with the mentally unstable.)
I don't know what to believe though. Could Big Daddy really be in league with this filthy rablle rousing Frenchman?
"I'm renting Beaches tomorrow and have a nice cry," he says thickly. "My lawyer will have a field day with this. Write that down you son of a buitch. I have this from not only my attorney but from Los Papas Grandes as well. He's so big he's plural. "Cry Baby Bryan Hoffman said he's going to sick his lawyers on me."
I'm pretty sure that last line is him imitating me.
This is followed by grabled nonsense, something Alexis Smith..."he smells like cabage."
He gets upset and called me a "gip." Under intense questioning, he admits that he doesn't know what the word means. No definition.
"You've been riding me since day one," he suddenly exclaims.
He catches a burst of momentum though and starts spinnig yarns about how he's carrying this blog and he hasn't seen a decent comment on there from anyone else. He feels like, "Cock of the Walk."
"Fucking A pell there's no one else in the running," he shouts. "Matt Dunn's comments, not funny, but he's pretty big. Forget I ever said that."
So he immediately bad mouths his ally. Ahh, that's how come I can afford not to take him seriously. Frenchmen always turn on their allies when things get tough.
Hoff, begs me not to mention the comments he's made baout Dunn. He fears retribution.
"I need to go dude." I say.
"College football is for fags and you can quote me on that."
"I sure will."
Well I've found just the right tempo from "The In Sound From Way Out," so I should probably get going.