Be Frank

In response the growing anti-obesity sentiment in this country, we have this anti-anti-obesity backlash from a company whose food product is about as healthy as cigarettes. It features a big fat guy called Frank that eats franks and is frank. And they came up with a new word for "fatass." READY? Here it is: "Girthy." The words "Girthy is good," meaning "it's okay to be a great, big fatass," are emblazoned all over the CTA redline cars, thank GOD. I've always wanted to endorse a hotdog.

BE BIG. BE MEATY. BE FRANK.

AAAAHHHH!!!

This is the conversation I had to have tonight with my roomate:


Jason, would you mind if we moved your tape deck so I can fit the video
game system in there?

“Where are you gonna move it?”

I don’t know, somewhere else.

“Well, then, yeah.”

You mean, you do mind?

"Well, where are you gonna put it?"

How about your room?

“There’s no room in there.”

Okay, how about the closet?

“I’m not putting that thing in the closet.”

Okay, how about your other room?

“Maybe.”

Kitty Pillow

I figured out a good use for my burgeoning winter belly.

A kitty pillow!

Haha!

Guess what I'm doing right now...?

My Laundary!!!! HAhaha! Yeah!

Spiders

I'm supposed to be writing a seven page paper on NAFTA right now, but I don't want to so...
It actually wouldn't be that bad if I could talk about the EFFECTS of NAFTA, but I have to write about how it fits into a specific foreign policy model, and I'm boring myself to suicide even writing about it right now on this blog.
I wonder if other people live amongst as many spiders as I do. They mostly keep out of sight, but occasionally they figure hey he's never squished any of us yet and they forget to hide when I'm around. There's a big bastard of a spider just hanging out on the heating duct right above my head. Once or twice, while I was writing on my computer in the dark, a spider just lowered itself right onto my screen. There are webs EVERYWHERE.
I can't decide if I don't care about it because I'm kind of a Thoreau-inspired naturalist, and like I'm just not bothered by it and am in fact a kind of dirty elitist in the sense that I view my peaceful co-existence with spiders and filth as representitive of a healthy relationship with good old mother nature; or I'm just lazy. Everytime Anna comes over she talks about sweeping all the spider's webs down. She doesn't really mind spiders either, which is I guess lucky for me and the spiders.
Man, NAFTA is so boring. I wrote a song about it as part of a presentation I have to give tomorrow in class, and hopefully it will figure heavily into whatever I get for an overall grade, because the paper isn't going to be much more than some long quotes I ripped out of some books from the library stitched together with a whole bunch of bullshit.
I wonder if anyone else has ever written a song about NAFTA. It's pretty good, actually.

Obake

My cat loves me so much I almost can't even believe it. He sleeps in my bed every night, even though I live in a shitty, smelly, freezing cold basement. He comes to visit me in my little office area because he knows I will always stop to play with him a little bit and then let him purr on my lap while I'm working. He digs his claws into me because he can hardly sit still, he loves me so much. But he never digs too hard because he doesn't want to hurt me. He's doing it right now.
Here are the top ten reasons why he is the greatest kitty that the world has ever seen:

10: He can jump halfway up the wall to try and catch the laser dot, even though he's fatter than a big, white basketball.
09: He lets me cradle him on his back and play with his little kitty nipples.
08: He likes it when I tug on his ears.
07: When you scratch his chin, he closes his eyes and his nose bunches up on his face like a raisin.
06: He's a tough motherfucker, he can kill anything he wants to.
05: He loves it when I play piano or guitar and especially when I sing to him, and he just sits and listens.
04: His name is MONSTER, and he LIKES IT.
03: He thinks any space in between me and Anna while we're laying in bed is prime real estate.
02: He's way smarter than most of the people I went to highschool with.
01: His nose is fucking PINK.

Robots in Disguise

!st Place

I'm supposed to be writing a folktale right now, but I'm procrastinating. Instead I'll write a little entry in my blog for once.
I actually wanted to do my laundary today. About two weeks ago our landlady finally installed a washer and a dryer in the apartment. I've been meaning to do my laundary since then, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I tried to do it today but the stupid door is locked! So many obstacles. All my clothes smell horrible. I can't stand it anymore, it's getting to the point where I don't even want to go out until I have a chance to wash them.
About a month ago I won a thousand dollars from this writing contest this hoity-toity club in Chicago called the Union League holds every year. I got first place, and my story was published in their anthology. Here are the initial, direct repercussions of this:
1. I got really drunk the night I found out and crashed my bike into a parked car because I was staring at the street under my feet while I was riding, thinking to myself, "I'm going to crash." I hit the ground and had to wait until these four other drunk people came by and untangled me from my bike. One of them wanted to take off my shoes, for some reason. I walked the rest of the way home, half crying, half laughing hysterically because I seriously injured my arm. It still hurts, and now every time I straighten it out it pops.
2. I paid both mine and my roomate Jason's rent with the big bucks, with enough left over for me to pay what I owed the gas, electric, and phone companies, plus a little extra.
3. I bought a BB gun with the little extra. This is something that I've always wanted. Nothing has made me feel more like an immature little kid than the experience of aquiring this thing, which I've pretty much been consistently firing since I got it monday. I spent three hours on two different websites looking at all these different air-soft guns until I finally bought one off of ebay for 40 dollars. It took a week to get here. The night before it was supposed to arrive I could barely sleep, and I had all these terrified dreams about being cheated or the thing not showing up or showing up as just a little keychain gun, for instance. I woke up extra early, but kept slipping back into half-sleep with my ears fixed on the front door, anticipating the UPS lady's arrival. Finally at noon she pounded on the door and yelled "UPS!" I was naked so I couldn't answer the door right away, and for a second I was scared I might not find any pants in time and the UPS lady would leave, but Anna knew where my robe was, so I signed for it and got back under the covers and opened the box while it rested on mine and Anna's lap. She was like "Oh, God" and made jokes about me putting together a gun before breakfast. Two words: Laser. Sight. There are little orange BBs all over the apartment now.

Goldeneye

I wrote this song about Goldeneye, the revolutionary video game for the N64, for my old band Plague of Yeti. It's called "Box of Goggles."

SHow me the scenery!
Find out if I stand a chance
Wrong guy but oh well!
One more victime of circumstance
I've got my PP7!

Point it at the bad guy's hat,
But before I shoot it off,
Some asshole shoots me in the back and I die!

Bond is a bad ass...
So is Natalia...
I will protect her...
Kill if I have to...
Destroy all the bad guys...
THen straighten my bow tie...

I am 007!
I am 007!

Crouch and aim respectively
Hope that nobody can hear me
One more life that i have taken!
Make sure my martini's shaken!

Down on the floor
This mission isn't over yet
Hit bad but oh well
There's armor on the parapet
My silenced PP7
Can't silence cries of agony
I don't care I enjoy it!
Noone is a threat to me!

The Yeti Rap

"Are you ready?"
Said the Yeti to the Sasquatch
"Watch what I do
And listen to what I tell you.
Centuries ago in the woods of Oklahoma
All the planets were aligned
And all the seas began to foam.
About a quarter past midnight there came from the ground
With a sound
Like Bees flying 'round
A beam of light illuminating identical stones,
Three was their number
And under the sky that day
Was conception of a plan, by these three
Our Messiahs
And with faith we would come to partake in their trials...
The rocks split apart
Three Yeti then arose
They were gaunt,
and stout,
From the toes to the nose
'We arise!' came the cry
When the rocks split apart
At last they have come, to the soaring of my heart!
I don't think I had control over the next thing that I did
But I walked out from the safety of the shadows where I hid
And what I saw
Just dropped my jaw to the ground,
Millions and Millions of Yeti all around!
Then I began the glow
and to grow
and to go to the light
With all the Yeti in sight
I began to merge
and to purge all my individuality,
Now one with the ones who became my new reality
Our knees
Touching the tips of the trees
We leapt to the seas
Now the earth is tremulous
Our efforts nearing strenuous
And their grip on life was tenuous
In the face of a great tsunami
From Japan
To Miami."

Like Tron? So does John Maynard

Some random thoughts...

Walking down the street, overhearing other people's conversations, especially if they are on cellphones, I often hear people earnestly using the adverb "really" to emphasize just how strongly they feel about something, and in fact more often than not the word is accompanied by several repetitions, like "I really really really liked that part when..." I can't help but think that I would be much more likely to trust someone's convictions if they left the adverb out entirely, and that it is the fear that most people nowadays are accustomed to lies flowing freely that drives us to over emphasize rather than trust our words will be understood and taken seriously. Also, the pretentious side of me sees it as a sign of a weak grasp of vocabulary.

Some people say that when you get old you get the face that you deserve. This makes sense to me. Our faces are so expressive so that emotions can be understood without speech- thus do they reflect our state of mind unless controlled- and over time the emotive facial muscles are probably toned just like any other muscle in our bodies. Also, the act of attempting to control facial muscles seems linked intrinsically to that of controlling one's emotions- relaxing the face is meditative.

There is this sentence my friend Karina once showed me. It is free of punctuation of any kind, and what you do is show it to someone and have them place punctuation within it. It's supposed to reveal a lot about the person's character, depending where they choose to place a comma or colon, or whether they do, etc. This is it:

Woman without man is nothing

Feminism aside, if I were asked to come up with my own character revelatory question, I think I would ask people what they think would happen if the human race produces a unified theory of physics.

More another time...

I Am Dirty

Here is my wisdom. May it aid you.

“How To Get Away With Almost Never Going To the Laundramat”

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that not everyone can really get away with this. Some people just really fuckin stink. Not much they can do about it- they just do, and it sticks to their clothes even if they’re out swimming in a chlorinated pool and they only just throw on a t-shirt real quick to go out an get more beer. Could be their diet’s got way too much beef in it, who knows.
Anyway, you know who you are if you smell like garbage all the time, so you might as well just stop reading this because it’s not going to help you. All you other people, though, you should listen up, because if you’re anything like me just about every surface of your room, and maybe even some of the common areas like the kitchen table or the couch has dirty clothes flopped over it. And you probably have more clothes than most people, at the very least more t-shirts and socks, because the more you have the less often you have to wash them. Good for you. You may even have a small collection of other people’s socks, if your friends are one of two things:
1. Not too concerned about their personal belongings remaining in the proximity of their person, or
2. Really fuckin sick of your feet smelling like vomit and fritos every time you come over to watch The Simpsons or CSI or something. (Note: I don’t care if you almost never have to take a shower because you sweat ice cream or your skin is made out of lilac petals, your feet are going to stink like death if you don’t change your socks for a week, even if you are just sitting around your apartment downloading internet porn all day.)
Right. So. To begin with, lets hammer out the details. First of all, certain types of clothing last a little bit longer than others, as far as how long it takes for them to become unwearable. We’ve already touched on the socks a bit, but we’ll get back to those. Just remember the main thing with socks is that you can usually wear them for three or four days in a row before the soles start to get stiff from the dried sweat, unless you have shoes that don’t breathe very well, in which case that could happen after only one day. You can prolong the life of a single sock by simply turning it upside down, so the softer cotton is on the bottom of your foot and the black, soiled part is on the crest of your foot.
The next logical article to address would of course be shorts- but I’m going to save that for a little bit later. They get their own special attention.
In fact, let’s go from the top down. We’ll start with sweaters. Sweaters, they are great, because you almost always wear at least one or two shirts underneath. Let that be lesson number one: Multiple Layers Act As A “Buffer” For Your Stench. Since the weave for a sweater is much more sparce than most other clothing, if you have to you can just wave it around outside for a second if its carrying that musty, rusty-iron dirty laundry smell. Take it by the shoulders, give it a good flick to shake the lint and dust free, being careful to “avert your head” so the dust doesn’t get into your eyes and lungs, and then wave it in the breeze for maybe a minute. Trust me, you will be smelling like Jesus only wished he could. And another thing about sweaters is they don’t wrinkle. Honesly, I can’t tell you how many times I was running late for something, digging through all my piles of dirty laundry and a sweater saved my ass. Not everybody is a sweater person, but I highly recommend you have a couple of them laying around.
Next come the button-downs. You know, dress shirts. Again, these are advantageous because there is another shirt underneath (see Rule Number One.) And they mostly look real sharp- all you have to do is button yourself up and the whole package is 300 percent neater. It’s like making your bed. No matter how much crap you got lying all over the place in your room, as soon as you make the bed the place neat as a showroom floor at IKEA. But the problem with dress shirts is that they get wrinkled easily. It’s the only item of clothing that can give you away at-a-glance. There are a couple of different ways to get around this.
First, if you have to take a shower anyway, you can hang the shirt up in the bathroom, preferably right on the other side of the shower curtain from you, to steam it out. This will also attack the stink, if there is a stink, which there more than likely is. Steaming your shirt in this way will slightly relax the fibers, so the sharp creases of the wrinkles won’t be as obvious. Plus, because you yourself are freshly clean from your shower, there is the illusion that you have actually just washed the shirt, too, and you might be able to go through the whole day happily deluded in this way.
Next, there are ways to actually physically cover a large portion of the surface of the shirt. Remember: this is a dress shirt. You can accessorize. That’s what they’re for. So let’s say a few weeks ago you went straight to MacDonald’s after work. Don’t know why you would do that, but let’s just say. Actually, forget MacDonald’s. Let’s forget that such a place even exists. Let’s say instead that you went up to Demon Dogs, that tasty hotdog joint right underneath the redline. So you order yourself a nice, big, double dog, and you have them drown it in that yellow shit someone somewhere decided was cheeze, and then you pile on all kinds of onions and peppers and tomatoes and shit. You grab a stool over by the window so you can watch the people waiting out in the cold for the bus, even though there is this huge white sign with big black letters that says “CTA Commuters, feel free to wait inside.” And you’re munching on your cheezy double-dog and fries, absently dipping your hand repeatedly into the paper tray, not really paying all that much attention to what you’re doing because one of the guys waiting for the bus is talking on his cellphone so loud that you can hear him through the glass, and you are fantasizing all kinds of evil things to suddenly happen to him. Like the bus hops the curb and flattens him against Demon Dogs, or sparks from the redline fall down on him and he catches fire because his cologne is flammable, and he has to run away screaming while the person on the other end just keeps on saying “Hello? Hello?” The bus comes and he goes off to bother someone else, and by then you have finished your double dog, and you don’t feel like finishing the fries, but when you look down to see how many are left, you notice cheeze has drooled all the way down you shirt.
Napkins, even if they are soaked with water, will not remove all of the evidence of this when you find it weeks later. There will still be dark splotches from the oil they pour into that crap. This is why God created TIES. The wider the better, never mind if you think you’d look like a square. That’s right, wrap that thing around your neck and let it hang down over your cheeze stains, and noone will ever know the difference. In fact, they, whoever they may be, will think you are the kind of guy that goes that extra step to make an impression. How about that.
And let’s not forget suit jackets. Talk about sharp. When you’re wearing a suit jacket, your dress shirt can be wrinklier than your gramma’s gramma, and you’d still cut a fine figure under light scrutiny.
Moving right along, we get to the t-shirts. There are two different kinds of t-shirts: The t-shirt you like, that expresses your personality in some way, and the strictly functional t-shirt. The function of a t-shirt, again, is covered in Rule Number One.
Both kinds of t-shirts are functional, when you get right down to it, but the key is to have plenty of them. Because for the best results, it is a good idea to get into the habit of wearing TWO t-shirts at once. This may sound silly and redundant if you aren’t used to the idea, but think about it for a second. Double the buffer, first of all (Rule Number One.) And second, you already have your wardrobe picked out for the next couple of days. If you are going to be seeing the same people tomorrow, just turn the whole ensemble inside out! Now you still have two t-shirts, and there you are with a whole new outfit. (If you don’t like wearing t-shirts inside out, then you can take the extra step to readjust the outer layer, but you should be aware that wearing t-shirts inside out is not forbidden ground. Who cares? It doesn’t look all that different, really. And it will hide other cheeze or coffee stains, for the most part. Don’t cheat yourself by limiting your options.)
This brings me to Rule Number Two: Who Says You Have To Change Your Clothes Every Day? Especially if you are NOT going to be seeing the same people two days in a row. What’s a day but hours stacked onto other hours?
But if all of your t-shirts are disgusting because you have been following the first two rules for weeks (good for you), then there is no alternative but to take them to the bathroom sink. This process is easy, but it will be covered here later on, so hang in there.
Pants. Let me take a second to say what a wonderful word is “Pants.” I really like to say It, over and over. Pants pants pants pants pants.
Depending on your personal preference and monetary situation, you may have any number of different kinds of pants. Some pants don’t last long after many days of consecutive duty, some pants can go practically forever without ever being washed at all. The longer they can go without being washed, the more difficult they are to get clean when they start to rot, if they can get clean at all. But the key here is that pants can be worn every day, just like your shoes, if you do it the right way.
Whatever kind of pants you like, whatever you do, don’t think that white pants are sharp. They’re not. If you buy white, or even light colored pants, all you’re doing is wasting your time and cash, and you end up looking like Don Johnson from Miami Vice, which is NOT sharp. It’s LAME. Go with dark tones. Dark tones will hide almost everything, and even if there are visible stains they usually blend in well and it looks like you live an active lifestyle, which is respectable and interesting.
Right. So, like I said, some hold up better than others. Denim jeans are the most rugged, were in fact originally designed, at least according to my eighth-grade history teacher, Mrs. Steidle, by Enrico Levi, who also invented the cotton gin, to stand up to the rigors faced by the wealth-seekers of the Great American Gold Rush in 1492. He made more money than most of the bozos out there ripping up the earth and draining the rivers in search of gold, because they had to give it all to him, because he had such great pants, when they found their flimsy cotton pants were hanging off of their asses in shredded bits and pieces.
So jeans are great for long term use, but they are difficult to wash. You can’t really get around having to throw them in the washing machine, and usually if you wear them like they were designed to be worn, which is to say, all the time, they need to go in more than once, and the next thing you know you’ve been sitting in a laundrymat for hours, wondering who the hell thought it was a good idea to seal the television behind a plate of plexiglass so no one could turn the damn thing off, or at least turn down the volume.
If you’re like me, though, jeans aren’t really your cup of tea, as they say, so for the most part you have cotton, wool, and polyester to choose from. You are not reading this if you wear silk or leather pants. Corduroy is another option, I suppose, but I don’t know anything about corduroy pants, and I’m not even sure how to spell corduroy, so forget them. Of the three, polyester is the most sturdy, wool the warmest, obviously, and cotton the most comfortable.
Like I said, wool pants are nice and warm when you are outside, but you end up sweating them all up when you are sitting inside for any length of time because they are too warm. After only two days they start smelling like a dirty sock, and that’s no good. And they’re not very comfortable, anyway. In fact, I don’t think very many people even really wear wool pants. Stay away from them, too.
Cotton pants are okay, but they wear out easily (and they are usually more expensive.) Eventually that faded spot on your knees or you ass will fray into a little tear, and then the tear will open into a small hole, and then the hole will widen everytime you wear them, and then they are no good. Holes in denim jeans are alright, because it looks like you earned them, but holes in cotton pants look dumb.
Which leaves polyester pants. Polyester pants are made from scientific chemicals, and they don’t biodegrade. Like plastic. Seven million years from now, if the sun hasn’t swallowed up the earth, any galaxy-trotting alien archaeologists digging through the endless mountains of fast food containers and plastic water bottles will find pockets of polyester pants planted in the ground like rose-bulbs all over the planet. If you don’t believe me, try dropping your cigarette in your lap once. The burning cherry just pushes the material out of the way, leaving a little cauterized hole that never gets any bigger.
So polyester pants can last at least a lifetime. But we are talking about more than just hardiness here. Let’s not forget about the smell. See, polyester doesn’t breathe very well, you end up stinkng them up after a few days. They stink in their own, special way, especially from the crotch, because that’s the warmest place on your body. It smells like when you leave the dishes in the sink for way too long and there is that slimy, brown film coating all of your plates and siilverware. A eye-stinging, rotten, invasive smell, like dead cats covered in their own dirty litter. Bad, bad, bad. The heat drives the smell out prematurely, too, so you have to stay on top of it.
Which brings us back to the bathroom sink. When you find yourself sleeping naked because every single article of clothing you own, with the possible exception of that stupid ankle sock you have no idea why you keep in your dresser drawer, is utterly unpleasant to behold, let alone wear, there is no alternative but to do some washing. Sorry, you have no choice. Pick out the clothes that you are going to wear tomorrow and haul them up to your bathroom. An extra pair of socks wouldn’t hurt, while you’re at it. Turn on the water, adjusting it to a comfortable temperature. Do NOT plug up the sink. The water is just going to get filthy, and you will be working against yourself if you let the clothes sit in a pool of dirty water.
Now stuff the pants into the sink. Soap is not necessary. After they have absorbed as much water as they will hold, keep them under the running water and begin to knead the pants by grasping them with both hands, with your fingers fanned out as wide as possible, and then squeezing them closed as if to make a fist, thus wringing much of the water out. Watch with satisfaction as the water turns black. Then release the pants, allow the fabric to briefly soak up more water, grasp them in another spot and squeeze again, but this time slightly raise the pants from the surface of the bowl as you find a new grip. This will allow the filthy water which has begun to collect to drain away. As you continue to knead the pants pockets of air will form and you will see tons of little bubbles boiling out of the fabric as you compress the pants. This is good- the bubbles will help to loosen the dirt, and it makes a cool gurgling noise, like if a bear was trying to breathe through a stuffy nose.
Soon the water will begin to turn from black to brown or gray. When this happens, just toss them into the bathtub and repeat this process with the rest of your clothes until you get to the socks. There is no way that you are going to get all of the filth out from your pants, so just be happy with them not smelling horrible anymore.
Your socks require a bit more attention. They are going to stink much, much worse than anything you would ever want to go near. Turn on the hotwater and just throw them in the bowl. Don’t even touch them- leave them alone for a few minutes. The air in the bathroom will start to get a hint of the stink because the rising steam is carrying it up. Deal with it. The socks will be plugging up the sink. Let them. After the bowl is just about filled, turn off the water. You might have to add some cold water into the steaming soup of socks before you can plunge your hands inside. Then pull the socks away from the drain and let the water seep away. Turn the water back on, adjusting the temperature so it is comfortable again. This is the only part where you might benefit from a little bit of soap, although it is definitely not necessary. Black soles of your socks are not ever going to look nice and new. It’s way too late for that. But if for some reason you are struck with an unexplainable desire to attack the stain, you may grab the bar of soap that is sitting half sogged in the striated shelf situated just below and to the right of the medicine cabinet. Planting the sock lengthways along the surface of your palm, rub the soap on the black stain until you feel little or no friction. When you are through messing around with the soap, hold the socks one at a time under the water and begin to squeeze them repeatedly. There is no need to wait for them to reabsorb water between successive squeezes- the socks are small enough to become resaturated almost immediately following each squeeze. If you soaped them up, then continue to do this until the bubbles that fall into the sink pop right away- they do that because there is no more soap to preserve their curvature.
I know it’s probably getting late by this point, because you have undoubtedly waited until twenty minutes past the time you told yourself you needed to go to sleep before admitting that this washing procedure had to be done. One last thing, and then you are ready to go to sleep. You need to know how to wring them out.
You have to wring out your clothes as best as possible because you are going to let them hang dry in the bathroom, and there is only six or seven hours for them to do that. The last thing you want is to put on wet clothes. (Although most articles of clothing will dry against your body heat in only a few hours.)
Each article of clothing can be wrung in a similar way, so I’m going to use the socks to illustrate. This is a very meditative motion. It can help you in all kinds of ways you can’t even guess at right now. Think “Paint the Fence” or “Wax the Car.” In fact, let’s call this section “Wring the Sock.”

“WRING THE SOCK”
Fold the wet sock in half and grasp one end with your right fist, leaving no part of the sock peaking beyond your pinky finger. Close your arm and raise it so that the elbow is pointing out directly in front of your chest, keeping our palm side up, as if you were about to lift a heavy set of barbells. Then, scoop your left hand toward your chest, under the part of the sock that is dangling beyond your thumb, and grasp it. Make sure your left thumb is touching your right thumb, and, gripping the sock firmly now with both hands, push the sock away from you, gradually unfurling both of your arms and bending your wrists, so that when the motion is complete your elbows are locked and each respective wrist bent in the opposite direction from its position at the beginning of the motion. As you do this water will stream out- be sure to leave the right wrist above the left. This is so that the wrung part of the sock is above the as yet un-wrung part, and gravity will not be re-sogging your work.

“SHORTS” (Disclaimer- this is not the nice part, as it mentions unmentionables.)
Here are some important things to remember about your shorts, if you want them to last a long time without having to wash them:

-Have lots of them.
-Remember what your mama taught you: Be sure to wipe your ass good and clean after heavy business, or any business at all.
-Why wear them to bed? Get soft sheets if it bothers you.
-Don’t eat things that make shit dribble out of your ass when you fart, like taquitos or just about any kind of meat typically used in mexican food.
-If you have to masturbate outside of the shower, use a sweat sock or a load rag.

That about covers it. Too bad we aren’t covered in fur like apes or cheetahs. Then none of this shit would be necessary, get me?

Poor Data

This is the best sci-fi kiss ever:

Hugo Chavez

Hey, have you guys ever heard of Hugo Chavez? He's the president of Venezuela?
Chavez won his presidency in a free election in 1998 with 60% of the vote. The working people like him because he is trying to put control over more of the country's wealth back into the hands of the people. The American government supported a failed coup against him in 2002, right after he was elected, and now there is a propaganda campaign against him in the american media.
I myself was wondering about what kind of a leader he has turned out to be. I'm still not sure he was totally genuine, but he seems to inspire strong, real emotions resembling love in the venezuelan people, something I can't possibly imagine any other leader in the world, with the exception of Nelson Mandela, of course, doing. I talked to my friend Ingrid, who is from Colombia, about him. Her parents are in Venezuela now. I'd just seen a short news bit on him on the BBC News, (channel 26 at 10pm every day of the week, for you Chicago people) that said he is trying to keep foreign investors out of the country as much as possible. He believes that this is the new way powerful countries conquer other, smaller ones: By getting their greedy fingers in control of their industries and fucking up the country's economy, polarizing the classes and making them dependent on the big guys. He is 100% right on the money, so to speak. By foreign investors and businessmen, he is of course referring to rich American people- they who acquire new territory in the same way they run a Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise. I can't wait until countries start getting renamed after all our dopey corporations. Then I will at last be able to root for apocalypse conscience-free. Anyway, I asked Ingrid about this kind of idealism, and she expressed a dislike for Chavez. She thinks that the people in Venezuela don't have the capabilitity for taking control of and running their own industries. I guess we'll see.
Here is this other guy's opinion on Chavez, in case anyone else is wondering if he's really a good leader. I want so hard to believe that he is.
Here is another person in whom I would love to have faith: Barak Obama. Read his speech transcript from the democratic national convention on my friend Jesse's Blog!

Hoofing It

I've been riding my bike to work everyday lately because I just got the thing fixed, but before that I was walking home in order to try to save a little bit of cash from the CTA. They just raised the fare again, so now five bucks can only get you 2 rides.
I was walking on the bike path along the lake. It takes about two hours, give or take. I have the odd ability to read and walk at the same time, something that is pretty much essential when you are trying to ignore all the energetic yuppies playing their after work volleyball game or talking on their cell phones whilst rollerblading. Scoot scoot scoot. From a distance there are hundreds of volleyballs popping over the artificial horizon line the web of nets create, and as you walk by the games the popcorn metaphor that comes to mind is reinforced by the popping sound made by the perpetual clapping coming from one game or another when the ball falls out of play. I gave myself a bit of a giggle when I imagined all the volleyballs suddenly turning to solid stone in mid air, cutting the projected arc short as gravity yanked them all straight to the ground. I could hear the cries of surprise and pain as this or that well toned, kenneth-cole-sunglassed day trader made a desperate dive to save the ball for the team.
On one of these walks home, at one of the sailboat piers, I saw fish in the lake for the first time like ever. The sky was purple and filled with thick, solid clouds because it was about to rain, so I was trying to walk kind of fast, but I couldn't keep myself from standing there and staring into the water at them. They were HUGE. I have no idea what kind of fish. Maybe goldfish, because one of them was the color of rust. They were hanging out about three feet below a scummy island of trash that had collected in the corner of one of the docks. There were wine bottles, empty bags of chips, beer cans, and thousands of cigarrette butts bobbing in the lazy waves, left in the water by the seasons upper echelon enjoying the summer evenings in their boats safely at dock. As I watched a mallard even waded through the muck, testing out little pieces of unidentifiable human castoff for edibility. I've lived in Chicago for 7 years and the first time I see fish in the lake is under a floating island of garbage. Isn't that awesome?
I'm on my bike now so I can't really read while I commute anymore, whichi is kind of a bummer. So far this summer I read Hell's Angels, by Hunter Thompson, Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami, and The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. Suicide was a major theme in the last two books. Hm. And Sylvia Plath actually comitted suicide, like, a month before that book was published. It's sad.
But I do get to listen to music while I ride. I secure the headphones over my face with the strap of my helmet, so it looks like I'm wearing a football helmet. Lots of people smile at me when I ride by them, except for when I also where my secret agent rear-view-mirror sunglasses and a dust mask, too.
But I'm getting sick of my music. I need some more. Any suggestions? I like all kinds of stuff.
But I still miss walking a little... Owell. There are good things and bad things for everything.

I just found out that I can create hyperlinks!

I took the metra train in from the suburbs today because I went out to visit the P's and I was too lazy to go home last night. It filled up pretty quick but nobody wanted to sit next to me, and the conductor didn't ask me for a ticket. It was kind of like being invisible, which is what I usually want to be when I have to take a train full of crazy commuters and wailing babies. Actually, usually I wish I were in another dimension where everything is covered in soft grass and nobody says stupid, moronic things like "That girl's ass was sweet!" or "Who's a baby? Who's the baby boy? Who's the baby boy?" So, anyway, that saved me five bucks, and I figure that's the universe's way of telling me that I'm going to need five bucks at some point in the near future, which means I have to carry it around with me and not spend it, which is going to be pretty difficult considering I'm practically flat broke.

Oi, i'm exhausted. Nothing much to report today...

So have a BIG AMERICAN SANDWICH!

MMMMMMMMeat!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMeat!

My mom came into town a couple of weeks ago and my gramma and grampa took us all out to a steakhouse for dinner. What an american dream, the steakhouse is. I'm not a vegetarian- I was for a few years, but I fell off the wagon on a road trip to Florida when I ran out of money and was more or less obliged to eat the leftovers of my friends' cheeseburgers. But I don't really eat meat unless the opportunity presents itself, maybe because it's kind of expensive and I've gotten into the habit of not buying it when I go to the grocery store, I guess... But I still can't imagine making sure to include it in every meal, even though my parents always did while I was growing up. So I sometimes forget how a great deal of the rest of the country just doesn't consider a meal complete without a major helping of meat to round out the plate. But man, a steakhouse! I ordered a "rack of lamb" figuring, hey, I like gyros. Everyone else got a steak except for my annoying aunt Nicole who is three years older than me and is constantly whining. She got chicken, which she sent back to the kitchen after asking everybody at the table if it "looked pink to you?" When the food came I felt like a viking feasting after a successful pillage: There was so much meat on the table that its surface seemed to be made of glistening, half charred flesh, and we were all sawing away deeper and deeper into it with absolute confidence that more was on the way.

I Can't Believe It

I can't remember why, but I once had this girlfriend and she and her two roommates liked to buy these humungous, industrial sized garbage bags. They were these big, black monsters that could fit like six bodies inside easy. They'd stuff the thing in their little blue garbage can. When the garbage was spilling out all over their kitchen floor they would pull it out- only, the thing was so huge it would only be like a quarter full. So guess what they would do? THEY LEFT IT THERE, sitting in the KITCHEN, filling it up with garbage ALL WEEK until it was full. And when it was, when it was so full of garbage that they could barely wrap a twistie around it, IT WAS TOO HEAVY FOR THEM TO TAKE OUT! Ha Ha Ha! So long, Baby!

On Strike

All the garbage men in Chicago went on strike, so guess what Chicago did?
They dumped all the garbage into a baseball field! SORRY, baseball fans!
I'm not much of a baseball fan myself, but my uncle is, and he was like "Yeah, and they dumped in the White Sox field, right where it belongs." He said that because he likes the Cubs, which is this other baseball team in Chicago. Don't ask me why people would hate a whole team of baseball players just because they play on the opposite side of town. The only difference I can really see between the two is that the Cubs fans are all annoying and wear blue and think it's such a big DEAL that they are on their way to go and watch baseball, and White Sox fans just seem like regular city people who like baseball and just want to have a nice time. But all the fancy people like the Cubs, I guess because they think they look fancier in blue, so they dumped a whole buch of garbage in the White Sox's baseball field, which used to be named after these people called the Comiskeys, but now it's named after some dopey corporation.
See?
Play ball!

Fraggle Rock

What is wrong with people who make T.V. shows, man?
There was this show I used to like alot when I was a kid called "Fraggle Rock." It was about a whole bunch of little puppets with punk hairdos that lived underground. Whenever they needed advice about something they went up to the surface world to visit the "Trash Heap," which was this humungous mound of garbage wearing horn-rimmed glasses.
See?


If that isn't evidence that our children are being corrupted, NOTHING IS! I wish I was a little kid again and that show was still on so I could scream at the T.V. "GARBAGE CAN'T GIVE YOU ADVICE BECAUSE GARBAGE IS DISGUSTING AND IF YOU FOLLOW IT, YOU RETARDED FRAGGLES, THEN YOU ARE THE STUPIDEST PUPPETS EVER!"

Here are five things you can do to someone who tosses cigarette butts on the beach as if just because its got sand it were a big ash tray:

1: Fart on a sandwich and then give it to them.

2: Wipe your butt with their jacket.

3: Shave their cat, or if they have a dog dye its hair black but never admit it and say their dog ran away and this is a new dog.

4: Fart on their pillow.

5: Wait until they are sleeping and then tell a doctor they have gangrene on their toes so he will surgically remove all of them.

I Had A Dream

I'm not a religious dude, but if I was I would be like "WHY GOD, WHY DO YOU HATE ME? WHY DID YOU MAKE ME HAVE A DREAM THAT I WAS TRAPPED UNDER A HUGE VOLCANO OF ROTTEN, STINKING, SHITTY GARBAGE? WHY, WHY, WHY DID YOU MAKE THE VOLCANO ERUPT, SENDING ME AND MILLIONS OF TONS OF GARBAGE INTO THE ATMOSPHERE, SO THAT WHEN I FINALLY LANDED ALL I COULD SEE FROM ONE HORIZON TO ANOTHER WAS GARBAGE, AND EVEN THE AIR THAT I BREATHED CONTAINED MICROSCOPIC PILES OF GARBAGE? I HATE YOU, GOD! YOU TOTALLY SUCK ASS!"

I Just Remembered Something

My dad likes to order pizza sometimes, and when he does his favorite thing is to order a "garbage pizza," which means a pizza with just about everything that is socially acceptable to be on a pizza, like onions and green peppers and black olives and pepperoni and blah blah blah. When I was a kid this didn't bother me so much, but now I feel like I just swallowed a whole lake of diarrhea. I can't believe people get away with eating things that are named after garbage. If I had my way something like that would be punishable by a big, fat fist to the jugular.

Rock Bands

I didn't know this until today, but it turns out there is a band called "Garbage." There was I guess some confusion over what I am trying to talk about here, and some people thought I was ripping on their favorite band or something.
I just want everyone to know that I don't mean any band called "Garbage." I didn't even know there was such a thing. And this isn't some kind of crazy metaphor or anything. I'm really talking about garbage, the kind that you throw away or avoid on the streets.
But I also just wanted to say: What the hell kind of stupid moron would name a rock band after something that sucks so bad? You might as well call yourselves "The Dumbass Retarded Shitfaces Who Are Too Stupid To Realize They Are Big Butt-Hairs," because that's what you must be if you think it's cool to call yourselves "Garbage." You could call yourselves TDRSWATSTRTABBH if that's too much for you to remember, you ass nuggets!

Outer Space

I am SO STEAMED I can't even believe it. I feel like setting fire to my face and screaming until my eyeballs fall out.
There is so much garbage everywhere that there is even garbage in OUTER SPACE! Look!

OUR PLANET IS LIKE A GIGANTIC GARBAGE DUMP! IT'S DISGUSTING!
It's not bad enough that there is garbage in the oceans where we can't even see it without scuba diving, but people keep spitting it into OUTER SPACE, TOO! AAAAAAHHHHH!! If I were and alien and I was looking for a nice planet to visit and I saw earth from outer space I would say, "Hey, let's get the hell out of here man, look at all that garbage! No way we want to even go near that place! What a dump!"

I Heard A Rumor

I heard a rumor the other day that one day we will all be heating our homes with garbage. WHAT??! NO WAY!! NO way am I going to go digging through big piles of trash to keep warm! That makes me want to barf all over myself! I would rather freeze my face off a hundred times than have to depend on garbage for anything!
A better rumor would have been like, "Hey, you know what I heard? I heard that garbage totally sucks." and I would have been like "You bet your ass it does, that rumor is absolutely, 100% true!"

Attacked

Today I was attacked by garbage!
My messy neighbors leave garbage in the alley, and it was so windy outside today that empty soda containers and junk mail and cigarette-butts came and swirled all around me while I was reading about black holes in my back yard. What am I going to do, man? garbage is everywhere, and now it is trying to KILL ME, following me around like a fat baby that wants more cookies!

Garbage Is Tricky.

Don't be fooled by garbage that doesn't smell like horrible rotten bodies. Garbage isn't always going to be so obvious about how much it sucks so bad. Sometimes a big pile of garbage might even look like it has something in it that you can use, like a mop or a toaster, but stay away from it! If you are a garbage picker then go shoot yourself forty-seven times and never talk to anyone again, because you are a dumb elephant's butthole!

Garbage Makes Me So Totally Sick Man.

I saw some stupid guy the other day and he said Hey man, what are you talkin about? Don't like garbage then go home! and I said well fuck you, garbage is the worst and I don't have to listen to you if you are going to say mean and dumb things you stupid idiot shitface!

Sometimes Garbage Is Ok.

NO it's not. If you think garbage is ok then you should go away and stop talking. Many people suffer because garbage ruins their lives. I am one of them. Garbage is ruining my life and I hate it. Don't be fooled by people who say garbage is cool. Garbage is not cool, it sucks!

I Got In Trouble

It wasn't my fault! Nobody ever told me it was illegal to beat the crap out of garbage bags!
My parents were going to throw away my old aluminum t-ball bat, so I said NO WAY, I can use that thing! So I took it home and I was going to just leave it near my door in case some nut tried to break into my house and I could whack him with it, but then I saw that my neighbors left a whole bunch of garbage bags filled with GARBAGE, JUST OUTSIDE MY DOOR!! I was so angry! I started running as fast as I could toward the garbage bags, swinging my bat over my head like a flag and the next thing I knew banana peels and dirty diapers and half-eaten tacos were flying all over the place, and then cops were wrestling me to the ground. They said I was screaming "GARBAGE! GARBAGE! GARBAGE!" like a lunatic, but I can't remember that too much. They didn't arrest me because the neighbors didn't want to press charges, but they made me pick up all the garbage even though I was barfing all over the place. Oh, and they took my bat.

Once upon a time there was an incredibly fat little boy who liked to play with trucks and little plastic army men. Every day the fat little boy would wake up when his mother would be getting ready for her job at the grocery store, sticking pins in her hair and wiping makeup all over her face, and he would get out a bowl of Apple Jacks and make some toast and eat until his mother gave him a kiss on the top of his fat little head and told him "Be good, Fat Little Boy, Mama's gotta go bag some groceries," and then he would drink the pink milk from his cereal bowl and wipe his mouth and get ready to play with his trucks. He had all kinds of different ones: trucks that were supposed to haul garbage, trucks to take his army men to battle, trucks that carried consumer goods and dirt and just about anything that you could think of that would need a truck. He even had a special toy truck that was designed to carry around other toy trucks.
One day he was playing with his trucks outside in the dirt, while his Apple Jacks were still digesting in his gurgling, fat belly, when another fat little boy showed up to play with him. This new fat boy had been watching the first fat little boy playing with his trucks for many days, and now he had finally worked up the courage to come over and introduce himself- because he liked playing in the dirt, but also because the first fat little boy had so many different kinds of trucks that he thought for sure they would have fun playing together.
"Hi," said the new fat boy. "My name is Philip the Woobler. Wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble wooble..."

This guy Adam just came over to my house and offered to buy me cigarettes and beer, and to watch his new copy of "Beast Wars- the Second Season" on DVD. He used to be my friend like six or seven years ago, but then for some reason that I was never able to get straight he decided he hated my guts and spent the next half-decade talking all kinds of smack about me to our mutual friends. But a few weeks ago he came over to hang out with my roomates (our mutual friends) and he started being nice to me again, giving me a cigarette, and giving me a ride out to this party in Logan Square that would otherwise have taken me like 100 years to get to. I guess he wants to be friends again, which I guess is okay, even if I think Beast Wars is really hokey.
By the way, I have been getting some hatemail lately, which I am not sure I really understand. I thought I was being really nice, but it turns out there are some people out there who think that's "lame," or "faggoty," and just because I can't see them when they communicate with me via the internet they threaten to do weird things to me. Weird, violent, disturbing things. Don't believe anything they say.

"If I Had a Laser Gun"
By Patrick James van Slee

I wish I had a laser gun. Laser guns would be so fun. If I had a laser gun I would shoot things with it all the time. The best thing about having a laser gun would be that no one would believe how cool I was, having a laser gun. If there was a problem, and I couldn't reach the problem, I could shoot it with my laser gun. My laser gun would have tons of ammo and adjustable settings, so I could shoot things and not hurt them if I wanted to, like birds or my friends. My friends would not get mad at me if I shot them with my laser gun.

This was a question on my science test last week:

"The earth orbits the _____ once a year."

Today is St. Patrick's day, when Irish people commemorate the day that St. Patrick got rid of all of the snakes that were plaguing the country by wearing lots of green and getting incredibly drunk as early as possible. I have some friends in Ireland. They tell me St. Patrick's day is not very pleasant in Dublin. My friend Niamh says "St. Patrick's Day is bloody knackers day out." A knacker is kind of a cross between a drunken fratboy and a violent soccer fan. I saw lots of them when I was visiting Niamh in Dublin, actually. Any given weekend resembles downtown Chicago when the Bulls won their "3-peat" - Very drunk assholes spitting and vomiting all over themselves, roughing up their girlfriends, beating the shit out of each other, setting garbage on fire... And there is plenty of garbage all over the streets, mostly junk food containers and beer cans and water bottles. And I mean every weekend. St. Patrick's day must be pretty amazing to behold.
I have a four-leaf clover. It was a gift from one of my old flames many moons ago. I keep it in a really nice hard bound copy of "The Hobbit." I forget what is significant about four-leaf clovers. Do I get to have a wish, or is it just good luck? Maybe I should write to the Lucky Charms cereal manufacturer. They seem to think that red balloons and rainbows are lucky. I never knew that. Does a whoopy cushion count as a ballon? Most of them are red. Maybe they mean only marshmallow balloons are lucky.
Anyway, if a four-leaf clover is supposed to give me a wish I used it up a long, long time ago, many times over, and it sure as hell didn't come true.
I once read a story about a boy who idly wishes on a unicorn horn that everything his parents are gossiping about downstairs while he is drifting off to sleep would become the literal truth. The whole town gets pretty confusing the next day- for instance, one woman called "Minerva" ends up with a tongue that is literally hinged in the middle and flaps on both sides. Every time she says something, a wierd, other-worldly voice chimes in with a cynical follow up.
So there's this redneck guy in the town who apparently annoys the boy's parents by always saying things like "Golly, ah shore wish ah had me some bacon right about now" or "Boy, ah wish it weren't so darn hot" or "Ah wish m'daddy'd give me some cows." The boy's parents say something like "If wishes were horses..." So the redneck ends up getting a whole bunch of horses that run wild all over the town until he eventually gets them into a corrall and decides to sell them and stop saying "I wish" this and that all the time.

My left eye is swollen today. Well, not the whole eyeball- just the eyelid. It looks like I have a disease and now no one will talk to me. They are all afraid of becoming diseased like me, I guess. I can't really blame them.
I was late for work today because I had to microwave my socks. They were still wet from washing them last night. I actually just took them in the shower with me to wring out the stink. I did that to my pants, too, but they dry pretty quickly because they are made out of polyester. Polyester doesn't really breathe very well, though, which is why it's important to clean them at least a little bit every once in awhile. They smell awful if you don't. Like farts and rotten garbage. Anyway, it took about ten minutes all told to get my socks dry enough to wear out. I had to take them out every two minutes to release the steam- it gets stuck in the microwave and keeps the socks damp if you don't do that.
I was afraid the fuse was going to blow. Lately the all the power has been shutting off when I turn on the microwave or the toaster.

I'm at my new job right now, or actually one third of my new job. I got in trouble today because I didn't put all the labels on straight and sometimes I was stamping the books in the wrong places. Oh, well. I guess I'm not a genius after all.
I can't make up my stupid mind about how much time I need to think. In my other job I had to talk on the phone all day to people, and my biggest bitch was that I never got to think about the things I needed to, like I didn't have time to process shit. But now I have this job where everything is nice and quiet, and I don't have enough shit to think about. What the hell is wrong with me?
This place is like crazy quiet, though, which is super nice. They are almost afraid of noise in there. I'm not even supposed to talk while I'm stamping books. In fact, there is another girl working here, whose name I forget, sitting about six feet away doing the exact same thing, but we completely ignore each other. My boss talks so quietly that I have to ask him to repeat himself sometimes. And he takes a hundred years to say anything. He rolls his eyes behind twitching eyelids, wriggles his lips to fish for the right words, and then whispers them as quietly as possible. I end up staring out a window while I'm waiting for him to tell me something. I also find myself talking extra loudly and acting a little more crass just to balance things out.

Here is another one:

pvsleembira: have you ever had dumbo gumbo?

proreverb: is that elephant droppings?

pvsleembira: no
pvsleembira: it's gumbo with elephant meat instead of seafood

proreverb: sounds good
proreverb: prob illegal

pvsleembira: no, actually. a loophole

proreverb: cool

I get to instant message people at work all day. I can talk about anything I want. Here is an example (I am pvsleembira).


pvsleembira: do you like garbage?

horickzzounds: i've met butch vig

pvsleembira: who?

horickzzounds: of garbage
horickzzounds: ?

pvsleembira: that's a band?

horickzzounds: yeah

pvsleembira: OH.

horickzzounds: what were you talkin about

pvsleembira: you know, garbage. do you like it
pvsleembira: I hate garbage

horickzzounds: garbage sucks
horickzzounds: why do you ask

Wow. I think this was the coldest its been ever, like in the history of the earth. I rode to work this morning, listening to the Ruins, basically pumping my legs for dear life, just trying to generate enough heat to keep from freezing to death and falling off my bike. I got to work in record time, I think like 17 minutes, and just sat at my desk for fifteen minutes without moving at all. I didn't even take my helmet off.
It was even worse on the way home, because it was much, much windier and there was no sun for me to pretend I was being warmed up a little. My legs were on fire both from the exertion of riding so hard and from winburn. When I got home I burrowed under eight blankets and passed out.
When I woke up, my legs were still cold, but I felt like a hundred bucks!

Geez, I guess I kind of let this thing go. I didn't realize it had already been ten days since my last blog entry. I had to type up so many papers for school that the skin under my thumb gradually tore away from the thumbnail. It really hurt, even when I wasn't typing. Oh yeah, and it doesn't help that I have to do stupid data entry at work. I hate data entry.
Last night I got kicked out of the Bottom Lounge. I'm really not much of a dancer, but when I drink a whole lot there is no stopping me- I was flailing all over the bar like a maniac, and I ended up knocking over a table and breaking it. It was the bartender's fault for making such good Tom Collinses. Oh, well. I had some agression to work out. It was a good thing anyway because I was out of money.
I decided to go visit Anna in D.C. at the end of the month. It should be fun. I can't wait to do something illegal in our nation's capitol. She says that just about all of the businesses use the fact that they are in our nation's capitol as a selling point- Like, "The best hotdogs in our nation's capitol" and "Larry Van Pickett's used car dealership has fourteen different locations in our nation's capitol."

I can see my breath right now, even though I have the space heater on at full blast. I've got my orange scarf wrapped around my neck and I'm wearing this wool overcoat that I forgot I even had. I think I'm going to sleep in them.
My friend Matt Streets said that I could have his space heater too, because he lives in a basement apartment that has a wonderfully toasty metal pipe running along the ceiling in every room.
Last night I went to sleep at midnight, but I woke up exactly two hours later because I ate some bad leftover Christmas lasagna for dinner, and it didn't want to be in my belly anymore. Holy Jesus, I really thought I was DYING. I mean it. All I could think about was a pack of slimy yellow gremlins hacking at my stomach with little shovels.
I couldn't get to sleep for another two hours after I killed all of the gremlins, no matter what I tried to do. I tried counting popsicles- first green, then yellow, then blue... But that just made me bored. I tried doing some calistenics to burn off some energy, but after about three minutes I felt ridiculous so I stopped. Eventually I just wrapped myself up in my blankets again and planted my head about an inch away from my space heater, and the next thing I knew I was knocking everything off of my desk, blindly scrambling to find my alarm clock.

Guess what I'm doing right now. I'm smoking a cigarrette. Yes, that's right! I am smoking a cigarrette after wasting about an hour and a half playing video games. And later, when I feel like it, I think I might drink a beer. And while I'm drinking a beer I'm going to eat some nachos and say some swear words.

For about another half an hour it is going to be the first day of the year, of 2004, so...
Well, today I had to say goodbye to Anna for awhile. She will be in D.C. for three months, completing her final stretch toward becoming journalist. I gave her about fifty kisses and said some clever stuff, but when someone you love leaves for awhile you have to say goodbye to them every day that they're not with you. I like to think that it's noble to understand that two people will be separated by great distance from time to time, but I know such stoicism won't make the blankets rise and fall with her breath, nor will it play strip poker with me.
We took some pictures of ourselves this morning with her new camera. In one of them she is strikingly serene and beautiful. Maybe it is the gentle smile just behind a quieted expression she wears, as if just then coming to terms with a profound understanding of the clockwork of the universe. It’s a look I've never caught on her before. I wonder that the expressions on our faces are a way to differentiate between consecutive moments- that they are directed nigh imperceptibly to reflect an undulating soup that is our character by our hearts so multi-faceted such moments can be as different from one another as the people on a subway car, and sometimes only the shrewd, quick eye of the camera can capture a state of being that may wash over us like waves from a rare wind.
But anyway, by the time I see her again, which I think will be at the end of March, hopefully I will have huge muscles and a beard like a christmas wreath, and she will have gained two hundred pounds and gotten some religious tattoos. Man, that would be nuts.