29

I'm in my apartment with a bad cough, waiting for Anna to get back from a night out with our friends. It's one thirty in the morning on the very last day of the last year of my twenties. I have horrible acid indigestion, I've eaten twenty calcium tablets today, I'm chewing on one right now. I missed a promised deadline for a comic by more than two weeks, and instead of writing it with all that extra time I've had these past two weeks I've more or less shut my brain off and barely left the house. I have some reason to believe that I'll have a pretty decent job soon, I have just graduated from college. This is a very big deal to me personally, even if, naturally, it seems to be not so much to everyone I've told. All these big ideas, but when there is time to do them I have no strength of will. Is this where my mind will lie, dead in the water? This is an active age, I must keep it so.

From "Critique of Pure Reason" by I. Kant

"For we are unable from our own consciousness to determine whether, as souls, we are permanent or not. Since we reckon as belonging to our identical self only that of which we are conscious, we must necessarily judge that we are one and the same throughout the whole time of which we are conscious, We cannot, however, claim that this judgment would be valid from the standpoint of an outside observer. For since the only permanent appearance which we encounter in the soul is the representation 'I' that accompanies and connects them all, we are unable to prove that this 'I', a mere thought, may not be in the same state of flux as the other thoughts which, but means of it, are linked up with one another."

Stupid Kitty

Well he wanted to go outside and I'm like fine buddy, knock yourself out. I mean you're gonna freeze off your little toeses. The door is open for three seconds and already the kitchen is cold and I go get under the blankets while he pokes around in the snow and ice. Five minutes later he's scratching at the door and he comes running back inside and I'm like Told you man. Then I'm sitting here typing and he's looking for a warm spot on me but the old laptop's got dibs on all the prime real estate, so he perches next to my arm. His nose seems pretty interested in my breath so I open my mouth real wide so he can smell all the onions I just ate, and he sticks his whole face in there. I wait for him to start licking bits of food off my teeth because that is so something he would do but he doesn't.

Bike Blog: Ugliness and Avoidance

I could have just let him go but my instinct is to do what I can to issue consequence to obnoxious and dangerous behavior. Freezing cold it was, the coldest day so far, 15 degrees, 5 with wind that worked against progress toward being prompt to work. My visibility was reduced as I had the enormous red scarf, the first knitting project of Anna and last year's warmest gift from her to me, wrapped around my face several times so as to limit head mobility. And slowly I pass across the street at a four way stop but a white sedan with government plates does not like that I have gotten in his way and he refuses to arrest his acceleration. So close now to the destination I am riding tentatively as my toes are frozen, I can not feel them, but he hits the back of my bicycle, the back tire, the most expensive and delicate part on the bicycle, and I rush to his window, gratified to see he is pulled over. An older man with white hair and glasses, a gray face with no emotion except a slowness to comprehend the situation, I insist he exit the car and he does after babbling some things to me behind glass. I am very angry, the animated kind when I am another me behind my eyes watching as I articulate rather elegantly how easily he could have hurt me. I do not respect angry people who though wronged do not act rationally with an eye toward productive enlightenment. But still I can not help but to say belittling words to attack him as I feel I have been, but am ashamed immediately. I insist he call the police and he does slowly on his cell phone while asking me why I am swearing at him, my intent is to shame him into being more careful. Again I check my wheel by spinning and surprisingly it is fine, I am almost reluctant to believe this and know there is no need for the police because money need not exchange hands. But I say nothing but that no I do not need an ambulance when the question is relayed from the operator- I am not hurt, I say, just pissed. He is still on his phone, standing amongst the frozen and dirty piled-up snow at the corner, as I walk my bike away without notifying him. I am within sight of my job and unhappy with the ugliness I feel responsible for but as I look back he has put on a white hardhat which he has retrieved from his government sedan in order to benefit from an implied interconnection to the officer who may or may not actually arrive, both servants are they of municipality, versus I who with my karate bandana and army-style helmet and studio headphones which are strapped over my face look like some kind of lunatic participant of a polar rugby team. I assure myself that since though this man did I did not provide my name or other relevant information I can safely disappear into the alcove which protects us from the wind as we wait to be buzzed into our jobs.

DIG dug

Well you thought I was a bee, but there you have it. I am not a bee. I am a tortoise showing up without a shell, or a turtle, if you prefer. I like to think I know the difference, clear enough as day.

I gave that boy an axe and all he could figure out what to do with it was throw it straight into the garbage. That’s all you got, buddy? I’m like who’s gonna give up against that thing, noone now that we think about it. I clicked forward until the battery light went out and lost general track of things. You give me a light and I’ll cast some pretty strong shadows for you, strong enough to get you thinking, at least. What a guy would do with string in his pocket. Not too much.

I left for college with a raincloud over my head that rotted my clothes and made my breath smell like tangerines. Lightning I saw strike out right from the center of it, just over my head, and all I had time to do before it cracked my beetle collection in half was open my eyes just a little bit wider, like if I let more light in the information would be clearer and easier to utilize. I half expected molten asphalt to come gurgling out of the chasm it made, stinking like tar and burned hair- I even coughed. But there was only this extended moan, like a pressurized breath escaping from the lungs of a roomful of asthmatics. It rolled over our ears and set our eyebrows up high enough to balance plates on. It made our mouths peel back over the surface of our teeth. It would have reminded anyone watching from afar of dominating g-forces or waves of flame from a nuke.

Biking Blog

Once again, I am supposed to be writing a research paper on Immanuel Kant and I am just monkeying around on this thing. I'm tired, it's a half hour before my bed time and there is no way I'm going to write it now.

I almost fell trying to ride up the bridge at Halsted and Chicago, because it was raining and my tires were slipping and sliding.

I was trying to cross Montrose right after I left my apartment and I was in the oncoming traffic lane. There was this huge semi truck bearing down on me and I had to get in the right lane but there was this car going really slow toward me there. I kept looking back and forth between the truck and the car, trying to figure out what to do, but the car was going at just the right speed so that I couldn't cross safely and I couldn't tell if he was going to let me go, like he was close enough so that I was just waiting for him to go so I could get out of the path of this big truck. I kept looking back and forth, because it didn't look like he was going to let me cross his path but he wasn't speeding up to pass, and then the truck is getting pretty close and I yell at him to go, and as he finally passes in front of me he's waving at me and he's got this big grin on his face, like he was doing it on purpose. I thought maybe he was acting cavalier like that because he was suppressing accountability for putting me in harms way, like he was slightly embarrassed that his indecision was putting me in enough danger that I had to yell at him and this was his way of dealing with it. But I couldn't help but to suspect that he really did do it on purpose and he had just some kind of dickheaded prejudice against bikers, something I catch wind of from other people on the road sometimes. And I'm like so pissed that I try to ride him down and fantasize about breaking off his mirror with my u lock. I mean fuck.

I really just can't believe how disgusting the air is, and nobody else seems to care.

I'm too tired to write any more.

The Dish Ran Away With My Dinner

There was a duck living under my ranch. i waited every day for something like that to break up the tone of the evening conversation, but all I had to go on was a red and black spider torso and a humid kind of mossy smell that made me think of the lake when it's too warm for winter. The frozen bluffs I used to crawl around on probably wouldn't support my weight anymore, and that would be fine except that what I've been trying to do now for the past six months, ever since the city got evacuated and the air raid sirens didn't warn us anymore before the bombs blew right in our faces, is fish a little bit with this old fishing pole I dug out of the back of a plymouth voyager. Annie told me not to get excited when I saw the walgreens across the street wasn't on fire anymore, because all I was going to find in there would be jars and jars and jars of ladyfingers, and those things have like not nutritional value in them whatsoever, like I might as well be bringing toenail clippings back for both of us to eat. Earl said that he had to do that once, eat up all his toenails. He's all scarred up because of this fire, and his eyes are yellow from drinking too much rum. You can see his collar bones, his clavicles right through the Chicago Bears t shirt he always wears. He said he figured that since it was something that grew from his body from eating food that it probably had at least some kind of vitamins or minerals in it. So he'd bit off his fingernails and his toenails, too, whenever he happened to notice that they were bitable, and suck on them for awhile to get them soft so they wouldn't poke at his insides. Then, he said, he'd snuffle some salty snot into his mouth and swallow the whole mixture, down the hatch. "It got specially bad when this one time I caught myself bitin them down even over the skin, and not just waitin. Then's when I knew I'd been forgetting to hustle me up some food." He asked me to buy him a steak with my food stamps and I was like how the heck are you gonna cook it? and he said he could get probably four or five bucks for it. I was in the grocery store for too long and he came in to look for me, and I just gave him four dollars I was going to use to buy a spatula with.

RAAARRR!

"One 12-year veteran fired his weapon 31 times, emptying two full magazines, Kelly said."

Quote of the Week

"People who live in bamboo houses should not throw pandas."

Who else? NINJA

Bad Kitty

Mister Chillynose was mad at me this morning because I locked him in the bathroom because he keeps eating Mouse's food. He waits until he knows I am engrossed in something and then I hear the tinkling of kibble in the bowl and I turn around to see him eating as fast as he can to get as much in the belly as possible before I catch him. He also eats looking up, which is bizarre because if you think about it most cats look pretty happy when they're on the munch, but not if they have to watch out for daddy who's going to lock him in the dank, cold bathroom. As soon as I get up he runs off with food still in his mouth until he finds a place that's hard enough for me to get to that he can drop it on the floor and eat it properly. Even as I drag him away from it he's still chewing. He is, needless to say, a fatass. I read something for the research paper (that I didn't do that was due today for the class I skipped to write a song, don't tell my girlfriend) on Immanuel Kant about disciplining children, and how for example it's useless to punish a child for lying and reward her for insert good deed here because then the kid will grow up making decisions that are designed to bring in personal reward and avoid punishment as opposed to running her life with dignity and self respect, and that one should instead treat the child with contempt and inform her that people are now no longer going to believe her. This is wise advice, and I will remember it for when I have kids, but it doesn't work on cats because they are too stupid to know the why of things, they just know that certain things make you lock them into the bathroom. Anyway, I felt bad about it sort of but I didn't know what else to do. I let him out after awhile and at first he was really mad at me and kept looking at me really pissed and hiding, but then later when I was laying on the couch reading about Erik Larsen in Punk Planet he came and perched on my chest in front of my magazine and kissed me on the nose with his nose, which in case you didn't know is how cats tell you they really love you. And so then I was looking at him and trying to figure out, if I don't like being hard on him, what the heck can I do? and I decided well how about nothing, because he's a cat, and if any being should have a free pass in life it should be a house cat, even if he also rips up all my furniture and pisses on the floor when I don't let him out and eats bits of fried chicken from the neighbor's dumpster when I do.

Quote of the Week

Jim Munroe, DIY zine publisher and author of the novel Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gas Mask:

"Corporate specialization fragments a project into several pieces and creates lots of cracks for things to disappear into."

Check out his site: http://nomediakings.org/

Fast Food Nation- Loved It

I appreciated that Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser made a point to show how people deal with having their eyes opened to harsh realities. Too many overtly didactic movies get caught up in the message without portraying an interesting spectrum of reactions. Being presented with Bruce Willis' character's arguments and Patricia Arquette's character's apathy goes a long way in preparing people interested in fixing things for what they are up against should they attempt to enlighten people who are invested in maintaining the status quo. In true Linklater form, Ethan Hawke's character doesn't dissappoint. The central theme, that there is an industrial machine detached from humanity that is gobbling up decency on the planet, is one that was reinforced by the end credit roll in a pretty awesome way. Best line in the movie, from the most interesting character in the movie, played by Chris Christofferson: "The machine doesn't give a shit." Don't go to see it if you want character driven drama- the many separate storylines don't allow the characters to get up to full steam. Do go to see it if you want to see a movie that does a great job trying to get Americans to be honest about their role in the great many problems we are all going to have to face up to sooner or later, from suburban sprawl to teenage pregnancy.

Fog

Okay, so I wonder if we'll see positive changes now that the dems got more power. They don't seem all that different, but it can't be worse than what the Repubs have been up to. What the hell did people think was going to happen? You vote on "values" you get idiots that don't give a shit about you.

Biking Blog

Being tired is no fun, it makes everything hard. I have a very fat cat who will scratch at the door incessantly an hour or two before I have to get up. I want to turn him into domesticated sausage.

Two fancy tour buses climbed the torn up hill with me on Halsted and Chicago. When they pulled ahead of me their enormous tail pipes were at eye level, and it was hard not to think of buttholes spewing poison gas in my face. I ordered a respirator on the internet, but my friend Dominick says it's going to be pretty tough to breathe through that thing while I'm riding my bike. When I got to work there was a guy eating a sandwich in a huge truck, just idling right in front of the door. It was upwind, and the exhaust fumes were so thick I had a lot of trouble locking up my bike, which is a rather complicated operation, or at least I make it so. I kept coughing and giving him dirty looks because there was no reason for his truck to be on.

I Cannes, I. Kant

I just got back from a rally against George Bush, and boy are my ears tired.

Biking blog

Two old men walking together along the border of the marina, one of them describing something shaped like a box with his arms. I ride by and know I'll forget about him in a few minutes and never think about him again.

constantly worried about the quick release on my front wheel popping while I ride at high speed, and the wheel flying off and the forks digging into the pavement and my skull smashing. That's how my friend died.

Figured out how to hop just before a big bump or crack in the path, don't have to pull the whole bike with me but time it so my weight is up and I can still keep control

speaking from my diaphragm, I can control my speech better

organize my mind with a planner keeps thoughts in places easy to access, reduces mental clutter, able to remember things better

"What's with that guy, why is he so unfriendly?" This has been said about me multiple times. I am sorry. I pushed the taciturn thing too far. There will now be a backlash

Read about suicide again. Ug, how stupid and embarrassing. Still I can't decide what sort of thing to write?

The sensual is to ever present, it undermines my ambitions.

I have a lot to say about gender, but need to organise my thoughts on it before I talk about it again. people are starting to get the wrong idea.

Easy doesn't enter in to adult life.

Plenty of Time

There is never enough time to do everything you put off all those years, all those idea you have that you'll get to one day. That is no new theme. I guess if you're making logical decisions about how to spend your time and are never idle just because it would take too much effort to get started, or underway, and you still have all these things you never got around to doing, that's okay.
I spent the summer writing about nonsense, and it didn't help my brain out at all. If it's to be strong then it needs to work hard.
It's after eight and kids are playing in the alley. They shout a lot. The buildings contain the sound, give it to me. Everything else is unusually quiet, though. I notice when the kids shut up. I can almost hear the ringing in my ears over the keys typing. THere are thumps vibrating from somewhere in the building.
Anna is on her way to TaeKwonDo, here on referred to as tkd, because I don;t like to type tae kwon do. We went to a barbecue party a couple of weeks ago on our bikes, it was really far out west. I didn't like riding on the streets, but it was worse riding with her. He bike is slow and she is overcautious. She will not ride through yellow lights. Twice she said she heard something fall off of her bike. I couldn't tell what it was, but I don't trust that piece of crap she rides so we more or less got rid of it. But now she has to walk to tkd in the dark, which is not good for my peace of mind so I go to pick her up at least, three times a week, which is nice. Her instructor promotes people into higher belts even if they are fat and out of shape and can't remember the moves very well, and I think it's to keep people coming back. She has complained of this also. Everyone wants to just say they are a black belt. One day a young guy wasn't in class because he got beat up. His tkd skills didn't help him at all, he said. He wanted to know why, and the teacher said it takes time. But I watch that class when I wait for Anna to be done and they mostly don't look like their hearts are in it. But maybe I just don't understand the way martial arts are taught and learned.
We went to make some dinner over at a friend's place, a couple we like to double date with periodically. Anna and Gavin were cutting vegetables, the knives were pointy and cold and hard steel, pointed at one another. I know it's because there is something imbalanced in myself that makes me feel this way, but while I watched them cut onions I had to force myself to trust Gavin not to stab Anna in the eye. He is a good friend and would never dream of hurting anyone, but because that possibility was there of Anna getting violently killed and because of what I think that would do to me I had to calm myself down. I always think about how easy it would be to seriously hurt someone in the kitchen. Then I worried as I watched her cutting the peppers, because it looked to me like she was not paying very good attention and that the knife wasn't very sharp, which is more dangerous that way. I thought then that that was the same thing, and I wasn't trusting her to take care of herself. I wondered if it also tied in with a lack of respect I had for her, which I suppose is possible. That is not a very good way to treat people, I thought. Like they are not even capable of cutting vegetables, like I would have to intervene in order for it to be safest and most efficient. And as I watched she cut herself on the thumb, and I saw the blood right away, under the soft orange light it was the exact same color as the pepper. Considering all that neuroticism I was flying with a minute ago I thought I would cringe or get mad at her or something, but I really just felt like it was no big deal. Still grasping at a way to justify all that worry I tried to think of when it would be a big deal but all I came up with was the days before immunizations and antibiotics, etc. Still, I don't think I'll ever not be nervous when someone points a knife at Anna, in even the most innocent of ways.
A number of years ago I ate a dose of mushrooms with a couple of friends and had a pretty dark trip. Another friend of ours, Sean, had recently been killed and this was the first time I'd done psychadelics since. It was night, there weren't a whole lot of people around, and Erik and Matt and I were hanging around and about Erik's apartment in logan square. I went through a pretty tough couple of hours, becoming convinced that people were all angry and greedy and lost and sad, and decided at one point that the only reason I shouldn't commit suicide was to remain strong for my other friends, in particular our friend Caroline, who was Sean's girlfriend. Around the time that I lost the ability to communicate with Matt and Eric I tried to shake off the effects of the drug by taking a shower, but I succeeded only in finding myself imagining the water to be my own blood flooding into the drain because of a picture my ex girlfriend had shown me before we started dating of her dead in a bathtub splattered in fake blood, and soaking the hell out of Erik's bathroom and ruining all his toilet paper because his water pressure was pretty strong and I don't think I shut the shower curtain all the way. I was still fucked up when I got out of the shower. Erik's kitchen was pretty disgusting, and because drugs always give you grandiose ideas about prfoundly fixing your life when you are in ino condition to act on them I decided that the only way to fix my disgusting life was to start cleaning it up right away, and I filled up Erik's sink and started washing his dishes and stuffing glad bags full of all the crap he had everyhere until Matt came out and said something like Man, it's his place, and I could see he was right, and I was freaking out. I tried to control myself, I tried to make a joke. I had this knife in my hand. It was serrated, and was forked on the end. It seemed to me to be the most ridiculous knife I had ever seen. "Look at this knife!" I said. "Look at this knife." I suppose at that point it was pointed right at Matt, or at Erik, or wavering at both of them, who were both standing in front of Erik's room on the other side of the kitchen from me. WBEZ was in the background, coming from Erik's alarm clock radio. I remember it felt like I knew her, like I could almost pinch her lower lip if I reached out to try because I could see her so well, and her voice represented what all of us in the whole world were feeling now that we were all forced to live in such an immoral a world.

Independon't

Rebel yell is a song I was trying to remember the melody for, so I searched in the card catalogue, you know, the dewey decimal system, for a book that would direct me toward an interpretation of this dream I had the other day, the pillars were ornately carved and placed in mystical ways, and on a plate on the platform they guarded like sphynxes were the silhouettes of the charlie's angels and Anna and I had to choose who we were supposed to be, and I held my hand down long enough on the one on the far right for the change to travel up my arm, but my face was bloated and splattered with acne like a David Lynch characature, but when I looked at my crotch the polyester pants shined in the glow, and Anna was old and whithered and gaunt.

Tai Cheetos

I know moves now that will push your soul right out of your butt. Don't even try to attack me because I already know you are about to do it, and then you are in trouble, buddy. I rode the biko today and it made me ten minutes late to class, because the trees were really sneezing this morning, which was no good no good and when I sat on the dancefloor in my polyester pants I left sweaty buttprints I tried to hide and so did the me in the wall that is a mirror. Unfortunately I will be in Boston when the Tai Chi lady teacher will be buying all the wine in Chinatown for the class to drink, so sad. I will miss the drowned duck and the mooncakes, I don't know what those are either but this place has the best ones for the autumn festival for the Chinese, wheat fire.

Vile Mile Und Waggomac

I gave up after fifteen minutes because no one ever thought to teach me how to clean the dirt out from underneath my toenails, as much as I wanted to wait I thought there would be a bang and that would be the end, all I would be able to think about would be understood if it needed to be. But I couldn't help but see the horse's lips curling upwards into a smile, even though I wasn't really going to give him the carrot. I just rubbed it on the rusty bars until they were wet and there was no more friction and cracked it in half and tossed it into the pen, one end of it plunked right into a pile of manure, that was really funny. And the horse was too stupid to be mad at me, at least that's the impression I got. I don't think those guys on the corner were talking to me when they said vanilla ice cream, I'm pretty sure they were not, but I had the flannel tied under between my breasts you know and my belly was showing, like I wasn't thinking I'd run into anyone just going out to talk to the horse, cause Rick was out of town and I was seriously considering just getting out of there, I'm so sick of every day the only thing there is to do is get into a truck and drive to Walgreens, I mean I know I should be appreciative or whatever, living so close to the mountains, and the river, but that river is really just more like a stream you know and there isn't even any fish in it or nothing, and you can't camp over there because that's where all the guys go down to shoot their guns at like nothing, they just like to hear them bang bang bang I guess. I mean it's really just frightening when you have to hear that all day. And plus the mountains are so pretty and I love it, and I think it really does give me a sense of peace, the kind I never got to have when I was living in the city and there were just sky scrapers and leering guys thinking you just couldn't wait to bend over and take it from them, like they know. BUt after awhile the mountains are so far away it's like they're just this part of the air, you can't touch them and it never gets any better than just a bunch of pretty mountains in the distance, and clouds, even when you climb them you see its really just more dirt and cactuses and rocks and heat, and you still can't touch a cloud.