Rygar and Battletoads

I went out with Angela last night. She's lonely; failed her final and is stuck here until someone decides what to do with her, and I'm too young to drink but I'm old enough to watch people get drunk and make sure they don't do anything too stupid. She bought a bottle of wine, and we sat outside the store for her to drink it while they closed. That's the closest place where alcohol is allowed, so there were a lot of people there, with a lot of beer, and a lot of cigarettes. Angela and I were more mellow than the majority of them. One guy, a known drug dealer, bit the top off of a beer bottle and then spat a lot of blood onto the concrete for a long time. It wasn't really the kind of scene we were looking for, but we had our own conversation going and I don't think Angela, in her wined-up state, really noticed anything else. She's been trying to quit smoking, but most of her friends graduated and left, and she's still stuck here, and . . . she finally caved and bought a pack of cigarettes. (She did it at lunch, when I wasn't there. But I let her smoke them. I don't really think that it's detrimental enough to her physical health to warrant disallowing the good it does to her mental health.)

So she drank herself happy, while I was happy-hyper already. When she'd finished about half the bottle, she went inside and bought a bottle of grape juice. Then she poured it out and filled the juice bottle with wine. "Technically," she said, "it really is grape juice." I agreed. We went back to the dorms, because I wanted to try feeding off of a 3rd-floor wireless network from the 2nd floor. Something went all funky with the IP addresses (I don't really understand any of what I'm saying) and so I couldn't establish a working connection, but we watched TV in the dayroom for awhile anyway. And then Angie went and got her NES (that stands for Old School Nintendo, in case you didn't know---and yes, the letters DO match up) from her room, and I watched her blow in the cartridges and had flashbacks.

We played Mario Bros, we played Paperboy . . . Dane came down with his computer and watched, but his computer DID establish a usable connection, so he didn't play at all. And then Jessica came, around 2215, maybe, and she played, too. Evidently she's the world's greatest expert on Mario Bros. (Sure, whatever . . . so critical of everyone else . . . ) Actually, she did know some pretty obscure stuff about that game. I don't understand how people come into this knowledge. But I had a pretty non-electronic childhood, so . . . I guess I could tell you some pretty obscure things about trees, really big mushrooms, rocks, and squirrels. In case you're interested. And we all talked a lot about old games, too. I mentioned Rygar, not really expecting anyone else to have heard of it (we had a big box full of Nintendo games, most of which were pretty obscure/bizarre/not working), and Jessica (I don't think she really likes to be called that, but it's her name and I don't really know her well enough to assign nicknames) said, "Oh yeah, I played that." I complained that I'd never made it past like the second level because it was impossible to figure out, and she said, "Yeah, with that one like wall thing and you're like what the hell am I supposed to do now?" I was strangely pleased that I wasn't the only one to have had this problem, and especially that someone as well-versed as Jessica is at Mario Bros (the epitome of Old Nintendo) had been exactly as good at Rygar as I was, once upon a time. (I know Battletoads is in the title, but I don't think we talked about it ever. I may have mentioned it once last night, but that's all. It's just the other game I'm always surprised people have heard of, even though it seems like everyone's played it. So weird . . . ) But MegaMan 6 is the game I keep wanting to play. I'm sure I suck at that one, now, too, because it's been so damn long, but geez. I used to kick ass. (Yeah, yeah. Say whatever you want, right, cuz you can't prove it anyway? It's truth.)

Tonight I'm supposed to go shopping with Tasia, which scares me a little because I'm not much of a shopper, and Tasia really really is, and we're only supposed to get gold shoes for me so I can wear this one formal dress I have to a dinner/dance I'm going to, but I'm afraid she'll also try (and possibly succeed) talking me into buying something crazy, and Tasia-like, such as a miniskirt or really low-cut shirt or something that I will never wear. She gave me a skirt and shirt for my birthday last year, and the skirt is nice (long denim), but the shirt is more revealing/provocative than wearing no shirt at all. By a long shot. I've only ever worn it under other shirts, and only twice, and that was 11 months ago. Whoo! It's almost my birthday.