Origin of the Diner Napkin Philosopher.

It all started long ago, in a land far away - okay, so it was six or seven years ago, and it was the Brookside Diner in Hanover, New Jersey. Take all the magic out of it.

Back in the day, I had a group of friends with whom I would visit our friendly local diner. This was pretty much a nightly thing - if you don't go into New York, there isn't much to do in Jersey on a Tuesday night. You either get drunk, or go to the diner. Sometimes, you get drunk and then go to the diner, or on special occasions(like Tuesday), you get drunk at the diner. John, the owner, was quite fond of us(probably because we must have put his kids through college on just the coffee we ordered alone), so he'd let us bring a bottle of wine to enjoy with our...well, usually coffee. Of course, a cheap cabernet goes beautifully with disco fries.

Anyway, I have always been the quiet one. This isn't to say that I didn't participate in the conversation, in my own way. I would just quietly sit there, jotting down things that people would say on napkins. I am, after all, a people watcher by nature.

Taking things horribly out of context can be so much fun.

I have saved many of my diner napkins from over the years. These are some things that come up in conversation when your friends are a bunch of gamer geeks that work for Starbucks(myself included - I was a Starbucks Soldier for five years), all of whom are completely and utterly sleep-deprived.

• "Keith likes his women like he likes his Scotch - twelve years old".
• "The queen of non-perishable food"
• "Allan...why were you naked at Mom's funeral?"
• "Tweety - the anthropomorphic dildo-headed bird"
• "Thirteen Scottish men fighting a gay dragon"
• "Should we, or should we not, listen to the advice of the galactically stupid?"
• "Bryan went chasing after some big nasty dead dude"
• "Assless leather pants for ALL!"
• "If you mix diesel fuel and gasoline, you get one of the most explosive compounds known to man. Do not do this."
• "Beware the moose at night"
• "Yes, my name's Hef. Yes, I am related to Hugh. Yes, I do have his reputation...no, not really."
• "Kean University - the "K" stands for "Kwality"(later, this also applied to Shannon's Plymouth Reliant K - that is another story in and of itself)"
• "Lunch Money - the game with Catholic school girls beating the crap out of each other"
• "Glen is not an omelet"
• "Keith is not a rabid wombat!(this one is a repeated topic of conversation)"
• "The little Palitan that couldn't"
• "You can shag anywhere in the museum - the Neanderthal exhibit?"
• "Hef is the man boob god"
• "There's nothing like a blowup doll to hold your beer for you"
• "Pissing off fire escapes onto small children"
• "Don't trust the stuff leprauchans try to sell you."

• And my personal favorite - "Football teaches good, old-fashioned American values, like taking other people's property, and wearing tight pants while you do it."

Yes, I am aware of the fact that I have some very, very strange friends. After 15 cups of coffee, you'd be strange, too. of course, I'm not sure who would be considered weirder - the people I associate with for saying this stuff, or myself, for writing it all down, and actually holding on to these things over the years.

There was, however, one instance where one of my notetaking ventures came to good use. In 2005, Shannon and I had an ill-fated Memorial Day party. I'm not up to going into detail right now - let's just say that our other roommate turned it into a frathouse kegger. One of our friends in attendance(not one of the drunken frat boys) was Jayson. After all the "kids" passed out, Jayson, Shannon and I sat in the living room, just talking. It wasn't a diner, and it wasn't on a napkin, but I was once again taking notes on the conversation. I saved those as well.

On July 21st, 2006, his 23rd birthday, Jayson died of renal failure. He had been born with a liver defect, and had two liver transplants earlier in his life. Jayson was gay, and had never been able to tell this to his family. He felt that he couldn't - his family would have disowned him. Because of this, he was very depressed, and lived a very self-destructive life - he drank heavily, and got into ecstasy and things like that. In the end, as we had all feared it would one day, it killed him.

We didn't see much of Jayson the year before he died. The photo is from the last time we saw him. He came to visit Shannon and I at the porn shop just before we moved to Florida. This is typical Jayson - trying on the "Breast Enhancer Strap-On Breasts" and mugging for the camera. This was one of our last happy memories with him, as were the notes from that conversation. Even if it is just a couple pieces of paper, some random words and phrases I scribbled after a night of drinking, it is still something to keep his memory going.