This has been a terrible week. Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. I suspect it will continue for a few days, as I can't shake the feeling that I'm like some sentient cold slot machine that must fulfill its quota of zero payouts before sliding back into the tropics.

To this gripe, I have a case in point. Had to go into work today. Not to the office, but to one of the facilities I'm working with. Got there about an hour early, and so to avoid being "that guy" who hobbles around the lobby until it's time to punch in, I stood outside for forty-five minutes, smoking cigarettes and nervously checking my text messages, even though I knew I had none. So, we hit 9:55, and that was close enough for me to make my elevator-assisted ascent to their office. I'm taking my last drags, and with mere seconds to go before I'm in the building and off to work, what happens?

A bird shits on my arm.

Now, I was hesitant to tell this little story, because technically, the last blog entry was about shit. I'm not trying to create a new trend for X-E; this was purely coincidental.

So, I'm standing there, happy that my hour-long bake in the sun was nearing its conclusion, and all of the sudden...I feel it. I didn't even need to look down to know what had happened, but I did, and it was the blackest, most tar-like bird shit the history of bird feces. It looked like Courtney Cox's open wound after Skeletor blasted her in the leg in the live-action He-Man movie.

Now, what do you do when a bird shits on you? If my reflexes and impulses are to be believed, the first thing you do is scan the area to make sure that nobody else saw what happened. It's one thing to be shat upon; it's another to be shat upon with an audience. Somehow, even in the heart of Times Square, nobody noticed. I quickly rubbed my forearm against a nearby wall to take care of the excess, then did away with the rest with what I swear to you was a napkin sent from God himself, which just happened to be laying in the back of my work bag, even though I've never carried napkins or tissues in my life.

Long story short, even after arriving an hour early, I was ten minutes late to work. Aside from needing to wash off any remnants of this most foul turn of events, I was also convinced that another bird --or perhaps the same bird-- had secretly shit on my back as well. So I lurked around the lobby for a few minutes, trying to catch a glance of my back in every not-a-mirror-but-kind-of-reflective surface I could find. Fortunately, I was just being paranoid. Even during a bad week, it's not easy to get shit on twice.

After describing my awful morning to the person I was working with, he told me that it's good luck to be shat upon by a bird. I've heard that before. Maybe I even believed it. Now that I've been there, though, I'm going to have to disagree on that one.

I actually feel a little bit better now that I've confessed. Thanks for listening. I'll be back tomorrow with a review of a Battle Beast or something.

Posted by Matt on 08/07/2007. E-mail me!