The key

There is a man, and in this man is a banana, and in the banana is a duck, and this duck has seven toes.

Choose Your Own Adventure

You're on your lunch break, sitting under a great big maple tree on the outskirts of a public park in the City, re-reading a tattered old copy of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle. Not far away there is a little league baseball game in progress, and you are surprised by how little you mind the occasional shouting, jeering and cheering by the children and their enthusiastic, happy parents. Enormous clouds of brown dust roll over the grass toward you and you sneeze onto the page.

You close the book, marking the page with your finger right at the part where Robin is about to meet Will Scarlet, right over a beautiful woodcut illustration by the author himself of a happy man in a leotard emerging from the woods with a short sword held at Robin's chin. You look up through the branches and leaves of your tree, then close your eyes, listening to the wind through the leaves, the little league game, the trucks rumbling over the busy afternoon streets.

You can't understand why most of the people in the call center you work at choose to spend their lunch breaks in the noisy, ugly, bright break room, watching television and chattering about stuff. You spend all day long chattering to people on the phone. The last thing you want to do is spend your one free hour talking to people. That's why every day you get as far away from that building as you can. In fact, you are beginning to think that it would be better if you just never went back there at all.

In the distance you hear a siren wailing, but being that you live in a city you barely notice it. Just a mild annoyance that you hope will go away soon. Except it doesn't go away. It just gets louder. You frown, and open your eyes. You are shocked to see the ambulance rolling onto the grass. It seems to be heading directly to the baseball diamond.

That's strange, you think. You figure you would have noticed any kind of problem with the kids before an ambulance had a chance to show up. You peer through the dust, but as far as you can tell there is nothing out of the ordinary. The kids are still playing, the parents still coaching, coaxing and cheering. The only difference is that now there is a huge, noisy ambulance blaring in the grass next to the game.

As you watch, the back doors of the vehicle pop open and three EMTs spill out. While the first two run immediately to the pitchers mound, the third is standing still, in fact appears to be looking right at you. As you stand up, look at your watch, and realize that you are going to be late again you notice that he is gesturing vigorously for you to come to him.

If you go to the paramedic to see what the heck is going on, turn to page yorble.

If you sigh, figure it's none of your business and start to trudge back to work, turn to page hundo.

How To 1.2

How To Restrain Yourself From Eviscerating People Who Insult Your Master

Master is most forgiving, yes. And most wise. We need not know why he feels he must suffer the wretches to live. He would be very cross with us were we to succumb to our impulses, so we must learn to control ourselves.

In service of this, we advise the practice of several habits we have found useful.

Hunger Changes Many Thoughts

See how the jugular pulses beneath the glistening neck, how their glib tongues wag with tender delectability… how the muscle meat seems to steam itself beneath the flesh of the offenders. If we are starving-hungry, it only drives us into further frenzy, yes it does. We have found that our desire niggles less maddeningly when our bellies are full. Master often forgets to feed us, so hoarding bits from his victims BEFORE cremation is the best way to sate ourselves, to curb our bloodlust.

Gnaw On Your Tongue

Taste blood, feel pain. Let the ichor dribble from the scowling corners of the maw. It will manifest fantasies of evisceration to some degree. It will menace the offender. It will please Master.

Remember the Chamber

Keep an eye fixed on the near future. Tell yourselves, Master is trying to teach us patience. Hunger is the best cook. In all likelihood, the offenders will soon be released to our tender mercies.

How To 1.1

How To Rip Ass in Public Without Getting Arrested

Dude, these are dangerous freakin' times. Scary dangerous. Gut-stomping fascists roam the streets, enforcing some new crap-ass law that pops up every other day; people rat each other out for pats on the head; and the Great Eye is always watching, so you can't do nothing without getting in trouble. You can't even rip ass in public anymore without getting arrested.

Until now.

Listen. I got the scoop. You want to know how to rip ass in public without getting arrested? Follow my tried-and-true advice, and you, too, can steal a tiny bit of your freedom back from The Man.

Before we go any further, though, let's get one thing straight: there is only one really good way to rip ass. You need a full-blown, 25-alarm explosion. Bam! Force it out like Steamboat Willie! Chuck it like Charles in Charge! Criminalizing this activity is nothing less than an assault against Mother Nature in all her magnificence.

This being a universal zero-tolerance dystopia, you can forget about packing your cabeza with excuses. None of them are going to do you any good when the Ministry of Love gets wind of your deed and breaks out the batons. But if you keep these key factors in mind, you can keep your can out of the clink.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest...

Obviously, if no one hears you rip ass, you didn't. Sure, it would be nice if you could freely rip ass when nobody else was around. But these days, nobody's ever really alone, are they? No. There's always somebody – or something – watching and listening. You may recall the old nursery rhyme:

No more tears

From parents nor peers

The walls are mirrors

Eyes and ears

They'll see and hear

So far and near,

For years and years

And years and years...

So here's what I do, friend, if I'm walking down the street and I get the notion I'm about to blow my cork: I wait a few seconds until the next Acquisitions truck rushes down the street for a fresh load of Freethinkers. Just as it zooms by me, right when the sirens are at their loudest: Ba-DAM! Unless someone is staring right at my ass, watching for my speed suit to puff out like a quadruple amputee trying to escape from a steam tent, I'm all good.

Evasive Maneuvers

The above method won't work if you happen to be out on a Sunday. Oh, yes, you can rip ass on Quietude Day: The day of the week when the fascists are listening their hardest for the sounds we train ourselves all week long to hide – smooch sounds, laughing, cursing. Ripping ass. I'm telling you straight, dude. I do it all the time.

Remember: If you are nowhere near the epicenter of the ass-ripping by the time anyone's senses zero in, you have successfully ripped ass in public. In other words, rip ass on the move.

Letting one fly while suddenly changing direction is a one way to pull this off. As you approach a tight corner, make sure no one is following directly behind you. Wait until the exact moment when you reach the point when the avenues converge-then unleash, turn 90 degrees, and keep walking. Watch with silent glee as your fellow pedestrians are too traumatized to figure out exactly where the offending ba-doom came.

Other great opportunities to rip ass on the move:

When you are sliding down a brunch, lunch, or "dunch" pole.

When you are jumping into a chemical inoculation bath.

When you are being beaten anyway, in which case you'll want to try to time ass ripping to coincide with the officer's grunts.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Ripping ass on the move works well enough, but we spend most of our days indoors. Between Info-Condensing, Historical Erasure, and Ideological Indoctrination classes, you probably find yourself sitting around in public places a lot, surrounded by people who would sic the Torture Brigade on their own mamas for ripping ass.

What to do?

The sounds of blowing out your sinuses and ripping ass are very similar in depth, pitch, and volume. Carry a hanky around with you, and time your ass-ripping so that it coincides with honking out your nose. Be sure not to pull this maneuver if you are sitting very close to a colleague, because the vibration in the seat will give you away.

Accuse the Accuser

Any one of these strategies involves a certain amount of risk. But stay calm, Chilly Willy-if a fellow citizen suspects you of ripping ass, follow this script and watch them clam up:

Them: "Did you just rip ass?"

You: "No way, dude. That was you."

It's our word against theirs, right?

Congratulations. You've just enriched your life by eking out the tiniest sliver of daily freedom. May there come a day when those Party creeps get recalled back to whatever-the-hell dimension from which they were spawned. Until then, let her rip, soldier.

Eat More Bananas

Where is it? Where the fuck is it? Okay. Okay. I need to chill. I probably just put it someplace. Think. When did you have it last? Fuck. You have no idea, do you.

Why am I opening this drawer again? I’ve already looked in here thirty-seven times. It wouldn’t even fit in here! Why on earth am I still digging through all this junk when I know there is no way it could be in here?

The cats? No... I guess they probably wouldn’t mess with it. They just play with those balls, and the laser. And that wire thing. And anyway they mostly just lay around. Fatasses.

Wait. Wait, I took a bunch of stuff to the storage space. Yeah. When was that? Tuesday? That was, um, two days ago. No wait. Today is Friday. Three days ago. I guess I might have accidentally stuck it in with some of that stuff. Aw, man. I don’t want to go all the way down there. Shit. I guess I’d better at least look. What a nightmare.

Of course. Of course it’s not here, because I came all the way down here, and the only time I do that is for NO REASON. God damn it. I spend half my freaking life looking for shit. What a waste of time. I must be retarded in a certain way. I must have something. Or maybe I need to eat more bananas. Bananas always make me feel smart. I bet they’d help me remember shit.

You know what I bet? I bet she put it someplace. She’s always moving my shit around. What the fuck? I bet she got home and put all my shit in all these random fucking places that-

No. No. It’s not her. It’s you. YOU. Don’t go blaming. Sure, it’s happened once or twice, but mostly you just throw your shit wherever. Maybe you should pay attention to stuff. Get your head out of the clouds, or out of your ass, or just wake up or something. If anything, she knows where I put it.

Fuck. I can't believe- Wait a minute. Haha! FINALLY, god damnit! Jesus. Alright. How much time did I waste with that shit? I don't even want to know. Fuck.

Cool. Alright, where are my keys, I gotta get out of here.

Big Day

I don't feel like writing something clever right now, so I think I'll just catalogue my fun day.

Last night had a date night with Anna. Went to a Turkish place called Cousins, overtipped the pseudo bitchy waitress, then went to see King of Kong. It was awesome.
Went home. Wrote in my blog after Anna went to sleep.
Did some other stuff.
Went to sleep.
I woke up at some point.
I jogged around the cemetery next to our apartment. My legs are hurting a lot these days, and I'm not sure why. It could be the weather change, it's bone pain and I broke my leg a few years back.
Took a shower, I think.
I watched Scarface. My sister bought it for me for Christmas one year. She always buys me great presents.
Watched some Scarface extra features.
Made some coffee. Drank some. Reheated leftovers from Cousin's. Ate them.
I worked.
I checked my email fifty times.
Cleaned up the house.
Pet the cats.
I watched some of Ronin. Not a great movie, but it has some interesting stuff. Got to be careful not to watch movies during the day. Total escapism.
I met Anna at the Grocery store. We spent 70 bucks. The grocery store is expensive as fuck.
Made some dinner for us. I had a crabwich, Anna had veggies and fake sausage crumbles.
We watched some of the first episode of Deadwood season three. Bullock beat the crap out of somebody again.
We convinced ourselves that Mr. Chillynose was missing and spent ten minutes looking for the fat bastard. Found him stuck behind Anna's drafting table. When I tried to dig him out I knocked our Cylon off the bookshelf and it smashed into what seemed like a million pieces, but after messing with it for awhile it's not so bad. Be good as new soon enough.
We rode our bikes up to the Metro and met Matt for the Midlake show. He bought us the tickets as a wedding gift. The show was perfect.
Walked Anna back to Lawrence and went to Matt's to play chess. Close game, but he won in the end. I got to excited about a pawn march.
Came home, checked all the emaily type stuff again.
Played a Midlake song I'm into.
Logged onto blogger.
Started this blog.
Finished this blog.

Surf and Turf

I wasn't really sure what this clever rhyme signified until this past week, which I spent with my wife on a honeymoon on an all inclusive resort in Mexico. Every meal was a "free" gourmet affair, which lead us to all sorts of interesting palate experimentation, and me to a newfound love affair with meat. I don't usually eat that much meat, and actually I was a vegetarian for quite a while, but hey, I was in Mexico. Mmmmeat. Yum Yum Yum. Surf and Turf.

Actually, the ultra fancy long-pants-only French/Mexican fusion place we ate at most of the time called it "From the Coast to the Ranch," but at one point one of the waiters said to me, "The surf and the turf again for you my friend?" and I put two and two together pretty quickly. Sssteak. I wish I was eating some right now. And they cut and twisted all the shrimps together in this sort of mobius strip arrangement that was kind of mind boggling, but it made for a nice and hearty gordian knot to chomp through.

Not much of a dessert guy, either, but every time we went there they brought out these delicate pastry creations, all on a big tray for us to select one. At one point I found myself eating hazelnut mousse with a chocolate spoon out of a chocolate bowl shaped like a headless fat man wearing a tuxedo. When I shared this observation with my wife, she said "Yeah, I heard you say 'I ate my spoon,' and then you just stopped talking."

And man, room service was totally included, too. Nachos. In. Bed.

Back in Chicago now. I had peanut butter on a spoon for lunch today.

Mars

The latest thing to blow my mind is this photo book of Mars I found at the library. It's brand new, so far as I could tell. It's this huge coffee table book full of glossy full color photos of Martian landscapes taken by the most recent rover.

This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like it's time to reevaluate the human condition. For the first time in history we can go to a store and leaf through a book filled with photos from another planet! I mean, there have been pictures of Mars and other planets, including some pretty breathtaking ones of Earth, taken by satellites for years. But these are pictures taken on the surface, of rusty rocks and rolling martian dunes, and close-ups of odd geological formations printed in false color for mineral analysis that look so familiar and alien at the same time that it invokes this odd sense of vertigo. The most bizarre thing, possibly, and the one that really drives the whole thing home is that there are all these pictures the rover took of its own tracks. You can see where it disembarked from its solar platform and wheeled around exploring the vicinity, zig-zagging treadmarks in the rusty dust that has probably remained undisturbed for billions of years. Those are human footprints in a way, but so much more cold and remote... Maybe it's the knowledge that the conditions there are so hostile that no life could possibly exist that makes it so intriguing. Or maybe its all that space that separates us from there. In any case it hits me in the gut like not many things do.

When you say, " ... "

What you really mean is that there is something that just doesn't seem quite right about this guy, like what you were doing is what everyone does, which is to get all the ink and paper information straight, to make sure there is no glaring reason to dismiss the very idea, which you don't expect to find given that the recommendation came from someone you both respect and admire, someone you love and to whom it caresses your self respect to make honor-bound promises, bound as it is to the notion of appearing favorable in her eyes, but to see if you have a good feeling about him, and to feel out a rapport. Were you to analyze what that feeling would be comprised of you might say that for starters Is this a person that 1., others will draw a favorable impression from?, and 2., Would others look more favorably on me by contextual association? But a rapport eludes you because he is taciturn and vaguely arrogant, and his attempts at friendliness feel as if they are projected through a thick shell of self loathing, though such specific characterization of a person is not among your particular arsenal of deductive faculties, and you allow yourself to become distracted following a perfunctory goodbye, assuring yourself that you will examine the scenario further when you have some time to dissect the conversation, say, or at least contemplate that one specific moment when he somehow tipped you off balance and you felt rather vulnerable, which surprised you; but the right time takes its time coming and before long the initial unanalyzed impression becomes the definitive one, and when it comes time to make a real decision you find that you have already come to the conclusion that it just wouldn't be a good fit, again without specifically articulating to yourself why but confident enough with your instincts and in the end the comfort afforded to you by at least this much power over the events that coalesce above the roiling chaos of world to formulate your life that you need not complicate it further with the elements of sincerity that would lead to any reason other than " ... " .

Rejection Slip

I got one from McSweeney's today, and how about that, it's a nice little post card, with a personal not of encouragement in sloppy handwriting from the editor. And it only took five months. I'm going to hang it up on my refrigerator.

So it goes

Vonnegut, you will always be my favorite human.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

...

"My late Uncle Alex Vonnegut, my father's kid brother, a Harvard-educated life insurance agent in Indianapolis who was well read and wise, was a humanist like all the rest of the family. What Uncle Alex found particularly objectionable about human beings in general was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy.

He himself did his best to acknowledge it when
times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in
the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and
Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, "If
this isn't nice, what is?"

I myself say that out loud at times of easy, natural
bliss: "If this isn't nice, what is?" Perhaps others can
also make use of that heirloom from Uncle Alex. I find
it really cheers me up to keep score out loud that way."

Shop Local, Pt 1.

I'd never temped before, but I had a friend who told me this place was looking for someone and I'd been out of work for about three months so I figured I'd give it a shot. So I went to their website and spent like 45 minutes filling out this really serious profile, and uploading my resume, and then I gave them a call and they told me to come in and take a few tests. One of the tests was a typing test. The other two were to be like the exact same tests I had to take to test out of the one and only class in college that I really just couldn't stand, the only class I ever withdrew from, "Foundations of Computer Applications." This is also the only class I failed in highschool, resulting in a summer grounded to the neighborhood. I just can't make myself give a shit about computers.

But I have to admit that I was somewhat stoked for the typing test. I like typing and am somewhat proud of my typing ability, being that it's a skill I forced myself to learn in recent years, and the opportunity to test myself was attractive. As it turns out, though, I can type plenty fast and accurate when I'm writing whatever I want, but the tests require that you retype something already written. The difference in my resulting word count was pretty severe, so I figured I'd better practice. I pulled up the clock on my computer and waited for the second hand to hit the 12 and then typed as fast as I could until it went around full circle. I must have done fifty separate word counts. Around and around and around went the hands on the clock until I realized that three hours had passed. I had a hard time believing that I'd been doing that for three hours, but there it was- the hour hand used to be over there, and now it was all the way over there. And all in all I didn't get any better, and in fact I did way worse on the test, by something like 15 words I think.

But they hired me anyway. Ten dollars an hour, doing data entry at a place called Shop Local. You know, those junk mail ads everyone gets. Yeah, that. My job was to import information from pdf ads into a database. I was never really clear on exactly what that was doing, but I'm pretty sure it was so the information popped up when you settled your mouse over this or that particular image. Anyway, the idea was to do it FAST. They wanted some really heroic productivity, so I had to keep myself jazzed on coffee all day long. The end result was me sitting in one spot for seven hours at a time, listening to music and clicking my mouse like a maniac. After the first day I did pretty well, and so they gave me 35 hours. I picked an early shift and happily settled myself into a routine.

The main thing to be happy about, at this point, other than the fact that I got to listen to music while I was working, which was awesome, was that after 330 I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to without being preoccupied. Three months leading up to this point I'd felt stressed out or guilty if I was doing anything other than looking for a job. And four years previous to that I'd been in school, which meant that if it wasn't summertime I felt stressed out whenever I was doing anything other than homework or studying. Now that I was getting up nice and early at the same time every day I could just find a seat on the train and crack open a book and forget about everything for duration of the commute for once. And I could watch a movie or play video games or go out for a beer when I got home, and hey no problem.

So that was nice.

After a couple of days my stop, the intersection of Lake and State, proved to be the Central Nexus point for what appeared to be the entire city's white collar working population. A savvy red-line rider, for example, would be sure to board the third to last car, because the doors opened right at the base of the escalator. Unfortunates aboard other cars found themselves on the outskirts of a groggy sea of under-caffeinated commuters rocking laterally as they oozed to within visual range of the bottleneck.

Outside, people from the brown and green line trains spilled out into the street as well, and swept eastward toward Michigan Ave. I’d seen the mad rush of businesspeople’s bobbing heads dramatized on tv plenty of times, but even though I’d lived in Chicago for a decade I'd never used Lake regularly or at that hour, so this was all new to me. At the corner I waited five people deep for the light to change, in a herd that spread out eleven to fifteen people wide. A new layer formed every thirty seconds or so as people joined us, like continuous drops of oil joining a pool. When I realized that pretty much everyone was headed into the same building as I was I found myself doing little things to reinforce my individuality to myself, like swinging my arms out like a kid pretending to be an airplane, or tightroping the potting partitions in the courtyard leading up to the revolving doors, beyond which a doorman greeted everyone with a smile and a “Good morning,” which for the first couple of days I returned with a nod and a smile of my own until I noticed he never looked me in the eye, as if he’d guessed (correctly) that there was no way I was going to last longer than a week.

DJ Butthole

Do you guys do this?

I'll be thinking about whatever I happen to be thinking about, and because like most of you I'm sure I am spending most of my days within arm's reach of the internet, and in particular google, a phrase in my head will strike me interesting and I'll google that exact phrase in quotes just to see how many hits I get. Like I was thinking the other day about boats, for no other reason than just because I happen to like the word 'Boats' right now, and the phrase 'boats for shoes' came into my head, and it seemed like such a ridiculous and random thing I had to wonder if anyone else had thought to articulate exactly those words in exactly that order, and all I had to do to find out was to google it in quotes. So I did, and I got 12 hits, one of which was for a lyric in a song by a musician called David Haykan.

And speaking of muscians, or non musicians, I don't know many djs but I tend not to hold them in very high regard, unless they are spinning for a good hip hop group. But I saw (was forced to see) an ad for some dj on myspace, and was reminded of how I think dj's don't help their case by naming themselves DJ This or DJ That. I think it sounds pretty silly, like a rock band naming itself Rockband Genesis, or Rockband Survivor. Along that line of thinking I started wondering if there was a DJ Butthole on the internet somewhere. And guess what? 7 hits.

I Miss Working at the Library

Shifting! Shifting!
The books from row to row
We grab and pass
And pass and place
So the shelves’ll not overflow!
We shift on 3 We shift on 5
Good Dewey, be our Master
Turning the library upside-down
While Roland says “Please, go faster.”

I am the grabber, my paws are wide
I grab seven books at a time
They make me sneeze by their dusty hides
Whether fiction, reference, or true crime!

Shifting! Shifting!
The books from row to row
We grab and pass
And pass and place
So the shelves’ll not overflow!
We shift on 2 We shift on 4
Good Dewey, be our Master
Turning the library upside-down
While Roland says “Please, go faster.”

Me, I’m the passer, from ye t’thee
My arms spread about like a seagull
I try to keep pace peripherally
My givin’ and takin’ be equal!

Shifting! Shifting!
The books from row to row
We grab and pass
And pass and place
So the shelves’ll not overflow!
We shift on one We shift on all
Good Dewey, be our Master
Turning the library upside-down
While Roland says “Please, go faster.”

True, I be the placer, the last in line
I have the sharpest vision
Keep’em in order, that duty be mine
And measure with cardboard precision!

We shift We shift We shift We Shift
Between our games of chess
I’ll Grab!
And I’ll Pass!
And I’ll Place!
And I’ll Grab!
For how long? Well, it’s anyone’s guess!
The books are stacked and carts are oiled
Except for the ones with the wheels
Take yer places! Prepare to shift !
Let’s earn our extra meals!

Don't Like Summer

I'm not trying to be excessively negative, but just to vent. As such, here are the top ten reasons why winters in Chicago are way better than summers (off the top of my head, in no particular order):

1. Everywhere you go in Chicago during the summer someone is cutting something with a circular saw, all day long. The only sound I can think of that is more unpleasant than this unholy screech is the dentist drill.

2. In the winter you can warm up by wearing sweaters, moving around and going for walks. In the summer you are screwed unless you are dead.

3. Sleeping is much easier/nicer when buried under 25 blankets.

4. The streets are safer in the winter, because there aren't as many disenfranchised, destitute, amoral opportunists wandering around looking for targets.

5. You can ride your bike along the lake path in the winter without having to dodge forty thousand errant volleyballs and worry over life after an involuntary manslaughter conviction because of the dumbasses who let their little kids wander around unsupervised.

6. There are fewer people out during the winter. In the summer all you can think about is how the world's problems are all directly linked to way too much human-fucking.

7. Cruising while playing indiscernable hip-hop in bolt-rattling car audio systems goes up by 400%.

8. Assholes with Harleys they've finally been able to finance think they're being subversive by setting off all the car alarms as they tear down the streets in a desperate effort to recapture the vague elements of their youth.

9. You can't go to the lake without being nauseated by the stench of exhaust fumes from whatever kind of fuel is used in motorboats and jet skis.

10. Even more cars everywhere.

Note- Snow is nice, but so are green leaves on the trees, especially when they are rustling in the wind, so those two things sort of cancel each other out.

Cherry Garcia

So I told Anna I was going to buy a pie, just because I thought it would be a funny thing to say, and it was. "I'm gonna go buy a pie. Do you want a pie?" I wasn't thinking she would say much, because we aren't in the habit of buying pies. I don't believe I have ever bought a pie, in fact. But actually she nodded to indicate that yes, she would like a pie, and I could tell that she meant it. But I was only kidding, I just wanted to say 'pie.'

And so I was in a pretty good mood on my way back from Reckless Records, because I gave them my resume because they are opening a new store downtown and they were nice to me, and I like riding my bike in the rain, especially now that I bought a fender and gritty water doesn't get flung onto my butt anymore, and I was on my way home and I thought, How would it be if I were to actually buy a pie? That I think would be extraordinary. I like doing extraordinary, unexpected things for Anna. It keeps things interesting. So I locked up my bike at the Jewel that was on the way home and went in to get a pie.

The thing is, I really only wanted a French Silk Pie. I think I even specified this at the time of mentioning it to Anna. I don't usually like sweet things. But there must have been a party some time recently, or a holiday during which at some point I sampled and enjoyed a French Silk Pie, because I had a very specific craving for this pie. No other kind of pie interested me, which was unfortunate because they didn't seem to have my pie.

I thought maybe a Coconut Cream Pie would do it, because in fact I at first mistook this for my pie. But I couldn't recall whether Anna liked coconut -- she can be pretty fickle these days. And anyway not many people like coconut; it's one of those things, like hot mustard or tequila or water chestnuts: some people can't get enough of it, but most people stay away.

I kind of deflated somewhere in there. I wasn't going to find an appropriate pie. So I instead grabbed some vine-ripe tomatoes, because we definitely like those, and they don't last long in our house. And then I figured this would be a good opportunity to replace all the Chex Mix I ate most of before she had a chance to have much of any. And while I was at it, I found a half-pint of Cherry Garcia Ice Cream, my favorite ice cream. I haven't bought it the past few times I've visited the grocery store, so this time I guess I deserved it.

But something was missing. After a minute I decided on some tater tots. Who doesn't like tater tots?

At the register I forwent the eXtreme value item of the week, 'yogurt' coated fruit snacks. The cashier was a young and attractive girl of indiscernable ethnicity. When she saw that I was standing there the look on her face said that she thought I was very cute for a split second but realized suddenly that actually I wasn't. She rang up my ice cream first and sent it rolling down to the bagger, a guy with long frizzy hair and acne, who caught my eye with a grin and a nod. "Hey, that's good ice cream, right yo?" "Yeah," I said. I told him I've tried a lot of the flavors but I always went back to this one, which seemed like a dumb thing to say, but he was being friendly so I wanted to be nice. "Yeah, but yo, I mean the brand." It took me a minute to figure out that he meant Ben and Jerry's, and it wasn't until after I paid and he gave me this kind of wink-wink nudge-nudge look and told me to enjoy my Ben and Jerry's that he was a stoner, probably into the Grateful Dead, and had taken one look at my grocery pile- Three tomatoes, a huge bag of Chex Mix, some Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and a bag of frozen tater tots- and he'd assumed that I was either stoned out of my mind or soon would be. So there it is: My palette has not evolved, apparently, in the last ten years; I am still eating like an 18 year old guy just out of his parents house when left to my own devices.

Next time I go to the grocery store by myself I'm going to buy carrots and broccoli, and maybe some hummus. And now that I think about it, every morning this week I've been wishing we had milk for my granola cereal. Hurm.

Mapquest

I was filling out a profile for the Chicago Works website. They want you to give them all information about you that can be verified on paper, from ss# to every apartment you've lived in for the last ten years, and during what times. I wasn't sure how mandatory this information was but I considered it interesting and a bit of a challenge to see on one screen all of the addresses I've had during the last ten years because I've lived here in Chicago for just about that long, and I've moved on average every one and a half years since then. The first two or three were pretty easy, but then I started having a hard time remembering the specific number of the addresses, and after I'd been working on it for about forty five minutes I pulled up mapquest to try and jog my memory by finding the addresses of businesses I remember to have been around there. Eventually it got to the point where I was trying to remember the number of the address when I lived on California street in between Armitage and Milwaukee, and there just wasn't anything right around there, and if you go to mapquest you can switch from a graphic map to a satellite view of the neighborhood, which any of you who have done this recognize as being pretty cool and not a little bit creepy, and I was looking around for my apartment, the apartment I lived in with Sean and Kile until Sean died in a bicycle accident and we had to move out, but I didn't have any where to go because I hadn't contributed to the security deposit and anyway I was pretty fucked up and out of my head by the death of like my best friend ever, he was only 24, a year older than me and five years younger than I am now, so I figured out how to gain access to the rooftop- this was spring, going into summer, and I decided that all I had to do was build a shelter for myself and I would be fine. The day we moved out Kile and I hadn't finished packing up our things because it was the last day of the month and we thought we had one more day but the landlord, who was really cool about the whole thing and let us out of the lease way early, showed up with his handyman and started cleaning and re-painting the whole place while the new tenants, these three college guys, were moving in. I managed to arrange for my friend Matt to come and help me pack the rest of my stuff into his car, where it would stay for months, but I had to wait until he got off of work and so I was sitting in the hallway, surrounded with all of my junk, including what remained of the groceries I wasn't willing to part with, like milk and butter and potato flakes, and I was pretty hungry so I decided to use Sean's fry daddy to cook me up some potatoes. I knocked on the door to my old place and asked the landlord, who was cleaning out the refrigerator, if I could use the outlet just inside the door and he was like "Of course, man, don't worry about it." I had to scrape out some pretty serious congealed grease left over from late drunken nights when Sean would dump an entire bag of Aldi tater tots into that fry daddy and gobble the shit out of them, sharing of course. In case you don't know, by the way, those things are already mostly grease because they are supposed to get nice and crispy without the benefits of a fry daddy. I say this only because whenever I think about that fry daddy I get a pretty clear image of Sean clutching his guts with his fingerless bike gloves, his pimply shaved head going from pink to green, but never once uttering a word of regret, if for no other reason than because there were five more bags of Aldi tater tots in the freezer. Once I got rid of as much goop as I could I dumped in the milk and butter then everything else, but I before I had a chance to eat them Matt showed up and we stuffed my shit into his car and then he took me to Home Depot where I made a copy of the key that I borrowed from the landlord that granted me access to the door on the side of the building the led to the stairs which led to the balcony in the alley where I could climb up these ancient iron rungs built into the brick and open this trap door to what became for the next four months or so my home sweet home, the rooftop. Living up there was a bizarre experience, sometimes nice, like one day when it was really hot and I got home from my new job-training at the phone company and I was eating peanuts and reading Catcher in the Rye, like cracking open the shells with one hand and holding a book with the other, and eventually I noticed a seagull had perched on the ledge next to my head and I was like "Sorry, man" when I realized all I had left were salty shells, and then I looked past my book directly up at the sky and there were hundreds of them circling directly above me, higher than I would have guessed a seagull could circle. I had to lay down mostly while I was up there, especially during the daytime, because I didn't want people to see me from the street or other buildings over the lip that bordered the rooftop, but that was okay because there wasn't much to do except read and I do that mostly laying down anyway, and I built a secondary shelter that was mostly a kind of shading lean-to, and from up there I had a really kind of picturesque view of the sunset, such as it was being orange and fucked up looking from city and airport pollution. Sometimes it was pretty harrowing, though, and one time in particular there was this storm, a rainstorm so violent I found out later it was some kind of record breaker in Chicago, and the next day shit was blown all over the place. I'd seen the clouds massing over the lake to the east before I went to sleep, and even then the wind was starting to pick up, but it was when I woke up in the middle of the night to what seemed like the building beneath me shattering, lightning ripping through the sky, my hands already gripping the frame of my shelter from the inside, I thought for sure it was going to carry me off but I was really paralyzed with fear, a real primal, animal fear that made me recognize the importance of a nice, cozy, environment controlled apartment. I was scared. There was this, though: I had Sean's pager, it was the only way anyone had of getting ahold of me. He had for reasons unknown decided to leave not a message identifying himself but a sigh, so sad and resigned it hurt to hear it, but still I wonder if somewhere in some phone company computer that sigh still exists, even now I almost wish I could remember the number and call it and hear his voice, if for no other reason than for it to make me cry like I did so many times while he was dying on that hospital bed for four days. With the storm raging around me, violently sucking and pulling the plastic bags and the not-so-waterproof shower curtain I decided to use as a ceiling, the pager buzzed, three times in quick succession, and risking death I dug it out of my pocket and via its tiny lamp I saw that it was Caroline, Sean's girlfriend, who had helped me gather the materials for my shelters and even donated to me a potted tree, which we struggled up the rungs one night and which I sometimes watered with my morning urination until it died of loneliness, trapped as it was on what may as well have been to it the surface of the moon or the polluted tarmac of an airport. Though I had no means of contacting her, between the seven digits of her number there was implied a message of both a refuge and more important a human connection, which did much to draw me back from the fear I felt in the face of the elements. Eventually the violence of the storm moved off to the west but the rain came heavily down, and tiring of arcing my body away from the consistent drool of the rainwater that seeped through the tight fibers of the shower curtain no matter how many times I smacked the bulge away I decided to chance sleeping in the basement of the apartment. There was a rug down there for reasons unknown in a dingy room with no door. I slept as best I could amongst the paint cans and old air conditioners and filthy tools and other cast off utilitarian items, jumping to my feet all through the night and darting into a small adjoining room every time I heard a sound that seemed closer than the general din of the tenants above me. I lived there until one night when my parents came out to the city with my uncle who lives in Florida and my brother and sister and c few cousins and we all went to of all places Kingston Mines, a blues club in Lincoln Park and a place I would never have gone to except under those exact conditions, which were apparently the ones that led to me getting drunk for the first time with my parents and watching my dad order "Two cum dogs!" at The Weiners(sic) Circle amidst an atmosphere of good-natured insults flinging back and forth between the employees of The Weiners Circle and its drunken patrons, after which point I ate my cum dog and said my goodbyes and went home to my little moonscape to find that I'd been ratted out or discovered and all elements of my illicit domicile, including Sean's old messenger bag filled with clothes and my water-logged copy of Catcher in the Rye, wiped clean and clear, and I sat there, drunk, staring at nothing and then my hands and then nothing again, until I sought shelter at a friends place in Logan Square, who was home but couldn't hear me, and so I slept in relative comfort and safety on a lawn chair in his back yard, blotting out the constant wailing of sirens of all kinds with my discman and Crashing Waves sound effects CD on repeat. Eventually I remembered that I'd lived right above a little food mart back then, and when I found that I got the exact address and I found the image taken from all the way out in orbit and there was me, laying on the rooftop, reading a book probably. If only I'd have known the exact moment when that picture was snapped.

Regression

Here is what I just told myself after I drank a cup of coffee today:

"All you have to do in order to motivate yourself to work hard to find the right JOB that you really like is to remember what it was like when you were stuck in THAT PLACE, making a living but profoundly unhappy and disgusted with yourself, feeling older every minute and lamenting every opportunity that flung out of your grasp like sparks being driven forward by your slow drag into the future."

Because you know what? I woke up really early today, 530 in the morning, because Anna gets up at that time every day, and I chose not to go back to sleep today because I was feeling pretty good about being piled under the huge orange and yellow afgan and the army surplus wool blanket in the half light of the morning, it felt a lot like I was on a little boat on which by way of accepting my persistent invitations Francis P. McMuffin joined me, stretching out his lithe little body like an arctic seal while I fidgeted with the space between his toes. And last night I was reading this old book I got when I was in junior high, a fantasy novel about magic and dragons, because that's pretty much all I read back then, and eventually I turned on the light and picked it up again. I was reading this book, starting somewhere in the middle and moving around alot a little bit at a time feeling pretty good, perfectly content with my escapism until I realized that what i was doing was regressing, guiding my psyche to settle back into the mentality of a 13 year old boy again that found so much pleasure in pretending that he was in a faraway place with all the comforts of the imagination, which can be good in the sense that a lively imagination is important to a youthful outlook on life, something which I sometimes fear is losing its battle against the cynicism I get from reading the news every day, but I think we grow up for a reason and even if I don't know what that reason really is I get hints of it when as I'm reading this book I'm catching bits of extremely bad writing, and as much as I skim around to what I vaguely remember to be my favorite parts the annoyance starts to stack and I become less and less able to just let some of these pretty serious writing offenses slide, like overuse of one-sentence paragraphs and clumsy scene descriptions and poorly hidden, ham-handedly delivered exposition, which to a certain extent needs to be forgiven when you are talking about fantasy or sci fi storytelling, because alot of sweet real-estate in a book needs to be sacrificed for setting to be established, but still. And it's that at least that makes me go *phew*, at least I'm not still that little boy and indeed I have grown up. And so I got to thinking that the problem is that maybe what just I and possibly many others, because at this point there are so many people out there, meaning alive on this planet, that the odds of someone else sharing your exact personality flaw are pretty good, but maybe what I was doing is forcing my self into a spiritual comfort that due to the fact that it is borrowed from my youth is really just complacency, and I was about to say unproductive complacency, and I was about to say that that would be redundant, but if you think about it, and you are me, the idea of being unproductive is pretty complex, which is to say that it would be a long and tedious endeavor for me to make a comprehensive list of what i would and would not consider to be a productive use of my time, which is to say that there would be a lot of qualifiers and examples of certain things that might not actually be intuitive, and even trying not to go into it I'm already rambling so suffice to say (sts) I think I always know when the hell I am wasting my time and when the hell I'm not, even if I don't (am not motivated to) act on the information, and the primary direct and indirect cause of my self-loathing depression versus my self-congratulatory complacency is the degree to which my actions contribute to or detract from my self respect, and the key is to find something that falls somewhere in between, which in my case would be overlapping, ongoing projects of a creative nature.

Take That, Future Me

Take that, Future Me

I'm just going to sit here

And spoon mayonnaise into my mouth

And jerk off instead of looking for a job

And there is nothing you can do about it

Fuck you

Ha.

Yeah.

Take that, Future Me

I'm think I'll have another scotch

It's not that late

And while I'm at it, I think I'll get the good stuff

The landlord is full of shit, anyway

You think you can do better?

Good luck, my friend

Cause you can go to hell.

ME TOO

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 80% The Flash 60% Supergirl 58% Hulk 55% Green Lantern 55% Robin 55% Iron Man 50% Catwoman 50% Superman 45% Wonder Woman 43% Batman 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

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