Piece 2.1

"The Misters Butt"

Mister Butt, Mister Butt. Welcome. Good to finally meet the Butts. Or should I say, the Misters Butt.

If someone had told me upon waking this morning "Sir, today you are going to meet the brothers Butt," I would have simply discarded that statement as fanciful monkeyshining. But here you are! Here you are, and here I am in the presence of the the Misters Butt.

Please, sit. Would the Butts care for a refreshment? Perhaps some burritos supreme from the freezer? I am told they are quite delicious. No? No? How about a drink, then. Surely the Misters Butt could not refuse gins and tonic...Fine, fine. Two gins and tonic, coming right up, one each for the Butts.

Thank you dear, yes, one each please. And tell your mother thank you from myself and the Misters Butt. No, no, just water for me. My wilder days are behind me, I'm afraid. We Justices of the Peace had our fun when we were upholding the law alongside the likes of you Butts...ah, those halcyon days, fresh out of Harvard, eager to- Ah, well, you must not let an old man meander through creaky memories. But tell me, when your father, God rest his soul, started Butt, Butt and Butt, had you any idea the family Butt would grow to be so influential? Already, you must know, there is talk of putting a Butt on the ballott. Well, we can't have a joint presidency, of course! But one Butt in the whitehouse is better than no Butts at all!

Here are some interesting things about Santa I remember from this most wonderful time of the year:
Santa made the front page of my favorite newspaper, the Chicago Sun Times. He was getting his boots shined and reading the sports section.
Anna's brother teaches english to children in a small town in Japan. When he asked them "Who's birthday is on Christmas?" they all said "Santa!" in unison.
My parents have cable, and we were watching one of those crazy news stations that try to cram as much information as will fit on the screen, complete with updates scrolling along the bottom. There was a shiny, red pulsating icon that said "Terror Alert: HIGH" hovering over the FOX NEWS logo, and behind it they were tracking Santa, probably via GPS or something, as he made his way through the winter night sky on a sleigh drawn by eight CG reindeer.
My grampa gave me a ride to the train station on Christmas, and while we were waiting in the car for the train to arrive there was an old man with a gray beard and a sports jacket also waiting on the platform. My grampa said something like "Who's that, Santa?", and even though he said it quietly and we had the windows rolled all the way up, the man turned around right then and gave us the googley-eyes and then a big smile before turning his back to us again.

Right now I am sitting on a stuffed turtle. The thing is, my bed is really close to the ground, so I have to sit on my stuffed turtle in order to be able to type comfortably. A long time ago I gave it the name Gamera, after the big monster, but I only just remembered that now. Who needs to name their stuffed animals?
Here is what is on my desk: a desk lamp; two chopsticks that were presents from Anna; a sharpie; a little bottle of Clerz Plus lens drops; two dirty, mismatched ear plugs for when my roommates are being noisy; a laser pointer (the best cat toy around); a contact lens container containing contact lenses; another sharpie; a plastic toy Kappa, which is this Japanese gremlin with a lily pad head that hides just below the surface of a pond and molests children when they go swimming; a teeny-weeny alarm clock; some trash; some scotch tape; a mint; my cd wallet that I got for free at the Fireside Bowl which came with four packs of Winstons; a stone bear from Arizona that was a present from my mom; a Marks-A-Lot permanent marker; two and a half WIP manuscripts; and a whole bunch of change. It's actually a pretty small desk, too. Oh, and I missed one of the sharpies and a pen. I have no idea how I got so many sharpies. I don't even use them, really.

Today I threw a cookie into the Chicago river. It was an oatmeal raisin cookie, I think, but I had a whole pocket full of them so I'm not sure. I ate the rest.
But when I threw it in a seagull swooped down on it from nowhere and snatched it out of the water, and then flew it over to locations unknown. It's so funny that seagulls eat cookies, I think. People don't eat seagull food, whatever that is. We don't even eat seagulls. At least, I don't.
The cookies came from Subway, but I didn't buy them. Someone at my school bought a whole bunch of sandwiches and gave them to us for free. The cookies came with the package. I think Subway is sick, but I ate it anyway. I used to work there, and even though it was clean and well organized and so on, it was still artificial and prefab and nasty, all except for the lettuce. You can't really fuck up lettuce.

So I guess I don't get to whine about sleeping in a cold basement anymore because when my parents read my blog they went out and bought me a space heater. Isn't that spectacular? I am lucky to have parents that would care if I were to freeze to death in my sleep. It was really starting to get bad, too. I was sleeping in a sweater with a bright orange wool scarf wrapped around my neck, and I was trying to train Obake to sleep on my feet all night. He wasn't going for it-- he prefers my belly, as I have previously indicated.
I get to pretend that I'm really busy again at work today because... It's The Busiest Shopping Day Of The Year! Man oh man, people just can't wait to spend their money on whatever the prime time news tells them is HOT this Christmas! Remember those wiggly jiggly Tickle Me Elmo dolls? They were these little epileptic muppets that someone decided to pay the news to advertise a few years ago, even though NOBODY cared about that wretched, annoying Sesame Street character anymore. But, predictably, because the news said everybody's kid was asking about them, every kid had to have an Elmo now, and people actually started to kill each other over the last one left on the shelves! Over a doll! An ELMO doll! It was awesome.
Oh yeah, by the way, speaking of Sesame Street-- My girlfriend Anna is in the doghouse for this one, but I have a game for you: La La LA LA... One of these com-ments is legitimate, oh na na na, and the rest of them are total bullshit... Can you guess which com-ment is real and which isn't? Now it's time to play our game...It's time to play our ga-ay-ame.

You know what's grosser than gross? When you see a bum spill glistening, rusty orange vomit all over the place.
Sure, people puke, right? All the time! No big deal- but right in the middle of the afternoon on the side of a busy street, even though there is a perfectly good, urine stenched alley ten feet away? And he was STANDING UP! Knees locked, arms hanging at his sides, he just leaned forward a bit and casually horked, like his body was so used to this kind of business that it didn't need to bother with any spastic histrionics. AHHH! I can't believe I watched it! I am not going to eat for a week.
I used to see this guy around alot when I lived near there, actually. He would be in the currency exchange when I would go there to cash my paychecks, which I thought was interesting. What the heck was he doing at the currency exchange, buying stamps? It seemed pretty ridiculous at first. I mean, when you think bum, you think crazy weirdo with no friends or family or anything- like a decaying, ambling mound of hair from the floor of a barbershop. But maybe this guy was buying stamps, and he was going to go and write a letter on the back of a box of doughnuts to his daughter who's in college in Miami or something. Makes you wonder about bums, right? Everybody's got a story, but I bet it doesn't get much more interesting than what somebody's gone through to make them just give up on everything.

I discovered banana chips today. They are so tasty. Kind of smokey, like beef jerky, actually, which is kind of weird, but I like them anyway. But then I like beef jerky, too. If you have to make a choice between potato chips and banana chips, take the banana chips. Yum Yum Yum.
You want to know this crazy thing? There is a 'smoked flavoring' factory in Chicago. I'm serious. I walk by it when I am on my way over to meet with my friend Matt after work so we can work on this video thing we've been trying to finish for 100 years. I can smell it from eight blocks away- it's like salty dust in the air. You would think that would be gross, but I actually kind of like it, I think because it's better than car and bus and truck exhaust fumes. But there is a humungous vent on the wall where I guess the smoked flavoring fumes are pumped outside so the factory workers can breathe, and the whole wall just underneath it is stained black.
Right. I had to ride the stupid red line again. It's so slow and clunky that it sounds like somebody stole a whole bunch of garbage cans from Oscar the Grouch and chained them all together, and then put seats in them and dragged them through the subway.
Did you know that the word 'weirdo' is in the dictionary?

Who writes about a snow globe? Nobody, that's who.

"Snow Globe"

Oh, it’s a snow globe. Hello Mr. Snowglobe. Haven’t seen a snowglobe for a long, long time. I see you’ve got yourself a snowman in there. Isn’t that nice. Isn’t that charming. But you know it’s not really a snowman, right? Not a real one, anyway. You didn’t know? Well let me tell you. That is not a real snowman. That thing is made out of plastic. PLASTIC. The whole thing, even the little black top hat, sitting kind of crooked there on his little white plastic head, is made of plastic.
But that’s okay, right? Cause it’s snowing, isn’t it. There is snow swirling all over the place like a little blizzard. Phew, that’s good to know. That way there’s plenty of snow for that little man with the shovel to make a real snowman! Out of real snow! Oh, yes, as soon as he finishes shoveling his teeny weeny sidewalk he’s going to head straight over to that plastic snowman and kick it over into the little pine trees, and make a real snowman right there with real snow.
But wait a second, hold on… Huh. That’s not real snow after all! It’s tiny plastic chips of PLASTIC! Oh well. I guess that won’t do anybody all that much good, not if they want to make a real snowman out of real snow. Maybe we can scrape up some of the ice over there that the little girl is skating on. Why don’t we try that? Right, that should do the trick.
Wait a minute, not so fast…

Woke up and holy Jesus it was snowing. The only part of me that was warm enough was my belly, and that's because my kitty was sleeping on it. His name is Obake. It means "ghost" in japanese. Isn't that neat? You have to say it like this, though: OHbahkay. He is all white, but I got the name from this really fun video game I used to play with my friend Sean all the time. Sean was my really awesome buddy who was more punk rock than anyone who will ever exist. He died because he didn't tighten up the front wheel of his bike all the way and he hit his head on the ground when it flew off. He was a bike messenger. I still owed him a forty when he died. I wish he was still alive.
Freezing cold ride today but this time I was ready for it. Ran out of battery power so no music, but my hands were warm cause guess why? I wore gloves. I rode against the wind most of the way but I was only five minutes late to work. I wonder if the impact of thousands of tiny little snowflakes slows me down at all... Maybe I should ask Bill Ny the Science guy.
I don't like science. We invent stuff. What's the big deal?

I am at work and I am being sneaky. Boy oh boy am I busy. Everyone thinks I am answering emails about musical instruments, but I'm not.
It's coooold out today, but I like it. My knuckles felt like knotty little carrots when I was riding my bike here this morning. People were looking at me funny because I was wearing my big studio headphones strapped over my face with the chin strap from my army-man bike helmet, and I had my secret agent rear view mirror sunglasses on. But they looked even funnier than I did because they were hiding in their cars zooming around each other and honking and burning through the lights as fast as possible. This hummer the size of a UPS truck came screeching around a corner on Lincoln avenue and almost flattened this ragged old lady with an even more ragged looking walker that was held together with duck tape and bumper stickers. Someone in a big, black SUV screamed something as he swerved around me that, thanks to the doppler effect, sounded like part of the song I was listening to. One guy in a cab almost pulled out in front of me so I stared him down through my secret agent sunglasses, but then he stuck his tongue out at me as I pedalled by, which made me think he was cool.

It's two in the morning right now and I am listening to music while all of my friends are out at a party totally wasted. I decided to stay in tonight because yesterday I went out for Halloween dressed as a space pirate and I drank a whole lot of alcohol and ate a whole lot of candy, and when we got back to my girlfriend Anna's apartment I ate some of this leftover seafood soup that this guy left in their refrigerator before we went to bed at about 3:30 in the morning, about four hours before I had to drag myself out of bed and get on the stupid red line to go in to work, utterly flabbergasted that it was so packed that I couldn't get a seat so early the morning following Halloween. When I got home after talking to people who wanted to buy guitars and digital pianos and MPC4000's all day my chest started to make funny noises, and my heart jumped around in my ribcage like it was trying to get out. I went to sleep listening to my thunderstorm sound effects that I stole off the internet and woke up freezing cold because I live in the basement and there is no insulation on the walls, and I can even see right through my wall in this one spot where the cinderblocks don't match up. Now that everybody is out I get to have some peace and quiet, a treasure valuable enough to risk feeling like a loser for staying in and reading Kenzaburo Oe on the saturday night after Halloween.

Hello internet world.