i am so fucking lazy/exhausted/tired/drained/whatever. sixth 12+ hour workday in a row, fourth straight this week. oh nascar, bane of my existence.

and onmag did indeed fold. i filled out my timesheets. we'll see if i get paid. guess i need to start pitching edubs again. sigh.

tomorrow is the last day of nascar, thank the lord. and could be the worst: the point leaders grid is closing, which is 43 drivers by 36 races huge, which is 1548 tiny 4pt type boxes to read and make sure are correct. my eyes hurt already.
posted at 11:09 PM

third 12+ hour day in a row this week; fifth total, counting the two before thanksgiving. i can't breathe, i'm too exhausted to move my eyes, and people at work keep asking if i'm okay and all i can do is groan in response. DEATH TO NASCAR.

onmag editor called me yesterday to tell me the mag was likely to fold. well, fuck me. i'm going over to their offices tomorrow to get in my deadbeat timesheets so i can get the x thousands they owe me.

sign i should move home? we'll see.

Twingo16: did i tell you about my realization at home?
oppsie1: that you know a way to get mr fab to fall madly in love with me and we live happily ever after and you are our nanny?
Twingo16: uh no
oppsie1: oh, that must have been my realization. sorry. tell me yours.
Twingo16: when i'm away, i always forget why i was so obsessed with jc in high school.
Twingo16: but then i remember that he's really fucking hot
oppsie1: because he has a soul patch?
oppsie1: oh.
oppsie1: he's not as hot as mr fab.
Twingo16: hotter
oppsie1: mr fab is devastatingly hot. yet he sometimes seems vaguely accessible.
oppsie1: like not jordan catalano hot.
oppsie1: i hope someday he comes to nyc and then you can meet him. i promise to bring you with if he comes here and we go out.
oppsie1: but you'll have to leave if he makes the international sign for booty.
Twingo16: almost my physical ideal
Twingo16: which is?
oppsie1: drops trou
Twingo16: hahaha
oppsie1: and he better not be making it for you
oppsie1: or i guarantee there will be a catfight
oppsie1: and you will LOSE
Twingo16: men tend to drop trou around me
oppsie1: you're like a good luck charm?
oppsie1: or just a slut?
Twingo16: they just become incapacitated by lust
Twingo16: just a slut
oppsie1: oic.
oppsie1: i'm going to start calling you groinmedusa
Twingo16: ew
oppsie1: i feel it's a good way to express "makes men incapacitated by lust"
oppsie1: in just a few easy syllables
Twingo16: ok
oppsie1: or perhaps just groindusa
Twingo16: but it makes me sound like i have snakes coming out of my crotch region
oppsie1: hmm. yes, i see how one could make that mistake.

posted at 11:45 PM

hello, my name is drug hangover.
posted at 8:54 AM

guess what? it turns out my cold meds are a controlled substance! hurrah! (i just took them anyway. if i stroke out, somebody call my dad.)
posted at 12:35 AM

another 13 hour day. i'm ill. i just took cold meds. i'm watching real world. i'm going to cry.
posted at 11:06 PM

there is just no limit to how much i adore matthew barrett. and sportscenter, who put together a killer segment on jacque vaughn of the hawks that ran 5 whole minutes (that's a lot). i recorded it with the aid of tivo and brough it to work to show editor eric, who was peeing his pants much like myself.
posted at 12:55 PM

arg. i just walked in from work. i feel like i'm getting sick. i feel like i hate the world, and especially nascar.
posted at 11:15 PM

finito. it is mediocre at best and i'm not sure it works as part of the game program, but it is done. tomorrow morning i rewrite the questions harvey gave me and make them hepcat cool, and then i mail in this nightmare wad of poo.

[jameswatch2k]: he just turned on the tv/dvd/whatever. just now. at midnight.

this will not stand. he has fifteen minutes before i get my nerve up and go down there.

i adrenaline rush just thinking about it.
posted at 11:58 PM

interlude: the best episode of buffy ever committed to film and television is on in syndie and i am peeing out my nose at it's perfection. it is truly the nexus of all past and future episodes, what with evil willow, oz, harmony, jonathan and the intro of anya.
posted at 8:16 PM

afternoon with jill, brunch of eggs that made me dearly need to puke, closely followed by dawsons, which made me desperately need to puke, closely followed by champion bullriding on nbc featuring jewel, which made me laugh my balls (or the bull balls) off.

it's raining out. rain in nyc is the worst kind of weather. when it rains, the whole city stinks of rot and rats. the buildings push down on pedestrians instead of reaching for the sunny sky. walking ten blocks instead of grabbing a cab or the subway is out of the question because by the fourth block your pants are soaked through with drenching bounceback off the sidewalk. everything just feels gray and sad and unrelenting. and it's worse worst when you're walking down your block, your entire body filled with dread at the thought of how you will walk into your apartment and hear bass and feel bass. jill punched me in the back this afternoon in response to something and was agog and aghast to find that my back was supremely tense and possibly knotty although we later could not find any knots and i think that part is a lie, and she wondered why, and i explained that it was because every time i even think about the bass, let alone hear/feel it, every fucking tissue in my body tenses up like i'm being attacked by scorpions or spiders or aliens.

and now i must do harvey. harvey harvey harvey. when next we trade text, it shall be done. this i resolve.
posted at 6:49 PM

it is very itchy under my nose for reasons which i do not know. i'm writing a letter to james and it is very difficult not to use terms like "fuckhead," "idiot," "moron," "jerkbrain," and "motherfucking asshole" for reasons which i do know. i've been up for almost 3 hours.

it's sunday.

happily, my roadrunner problems seem to have resolved themselves after another tech support hold session last night that ended with, guess what, a new ip. hurrah.

here's what's playing in the next 24 hours on the lifetime movie network:

930a - mother, may i sleep with danger?, starring tori spelling
1115a - death of a cheerleader, starring tori spelling
430p - deadly pursuits, starring tori spelling
615p - awake to danger, starring tori spelling
115a - alibi, starring tori spelling

insert wry observation made up of combination of [a) tori spelling b) boob job c) daddy's little girl] right here.

the torithon is broken up in the middle by the likes of jill eikenberry, laura leighton, mark-paul gosselaar, talia shire, brittany murphy, yasmine bleeth, suzanne pleshette, debbie reynolds, AND courteney cox. sometimes television is just so perfect.
posted at 10:53 AM

brian ken david seth shannon and tim (and possibly karen and jeff, i couldn't quite tell) all called my cell last night to wish me happy birthday.

i have friends.

and i can't stop smiling.

(and thanksgiving was not as bad as previous statements might suggest. it was just the only stuff worth recounting.)
posted at 7:38 PM

yeah, i'm back. big fucking deal. it was good to be with the fam, although the extended weekend was kicked off with a panic attack courtesy of dad. i get to phila wednesday afternoon, try to relax with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandma, and then dad calls grandma's cell all hurry hurry hurry because i didn't have my phone on and didn't get his message and he needs me to go online and check the airfare websites for a cheap cheap fare he saw last week for fares from dtw<->fll because he and shelly decided right there in the car on the way to phila that we were all going on a western caribbean cruise the day after the wedding and i need to get the time off work and find these tickets all in the next 30 minutes before the travel agents leave or something like that.

and i can't breathe.

and he says i can just call work and tell them i won't be there those days, those three days between xmas and new years when the whole world wants off of work, because i am a contract worker and not a permanent employee and it's my prerogative to make my own schedule.

and i can't breathe.

and i go upstairs to do his bidding because i am so controlled by him and david harold's computer crashes every five minutes and they don't have cable or dsl, just dialup, and i don't have a login/password for travelocity, and i can't find the fare on orbitz or expedia or nwa, and i call my boss and tell her the situation and she amazingly comes through for me, and i can't find this fucking fare on any fucking sites.

and i can't breathe.

i call and tell him this, that i got the time off but if i hadn't been able to i just would not have come and we go through the dance of contract/perm again, and i finally just stop arguing because it is pointless and my stomach hurts so much and i need to go in the bathroom right right then and not come out for a long time when my eyes aren't puffy anymore and my breathing isn't labored.

which is exactly what i do.

the next day gabe tells me all the kids are staying in one room, four of us, and it happens all over again because i can't even conceive of not sleeping for a week because of three other humans in the same 10x10 space as me.

and then dad shows up and says that is not true, we will be two to a room, and relief floods, and then he tells me that we're flying spirit, and i think of how i swore i would never fly spirit again forever ever because of the nightmare cattle car to auschwitz plane ride i had with them lax<->dtw a few years ago, and i tell him that will only fly (ho ho ho) with me if he gets me some xanax and he just blinks and tosses it off like he doesn't realize how serious i am and then i have this burning in the pit of my stomach and i have to leave.

i talked with shelly about it later and she has some narco shit she got a while ago and she will share it with me i think. this vaguely reassures me but not much.

food was good, i ate too much and gained a pound thu-fri. eek! watched a lot of basketball. pistons lost, then lost again. barf.

in the car to the train station, uncle steve and aunt maribeth and grandma are all talking about what my cousins are studying in school, and how they think a bunch of them will go to law school, and i look out the window and think: i am a failure. i am a failure. i am a failure.

they don't talk about me.

they don't know what i've done.

they don't think it's good.

and it's hard for me to remember they're wrong.
posted at 7:32 PM

you can all just fucking die now. james, you can go first. roadrunner tech support, you can go second. i sat on hold with rr level 3 support for three hours as since i got home my aim and ssh sessions have been shitting themselves every three or four minutes for a second at a time, losing peer, making me crazy.

the rr people are such idiots, the problem is with my second hop and it would be solved if i was given a new ip/subnet. idiots.
posted at 2:39 AM

hi, i'm home. i was at work for 12 hours. i thought of nothing but nascar. my brain is exploding. the ads for "pedro el escamoso" on the subway never fail to make me laugh.

that is all.
posted at 11:04 PM

reasons why you should not read ntsb reports relayed in layman's terms by the likes of cnn: i did that with the 587 stuff and last night dreamed of the exact doomed path, banks and twists and sheared off tails and everything. pulled myself out of it around 7a, woke up drenched with nervous sweat. the only difference was that the flight was hijacked by a group of domestic terrorists who had a bomb shaped like a metal cube and the leader looked like vincent d'onofrio in men in black except with shoulder-length dark stringy curly hair.

no hot water this morning==suck.

so i'm about to leave for work, i'm locking my door, when the guy who lives across from james comes pounding up the stairs and thunders into the apt across from me, which is above his, which is being renovated, and thunders through the door and is carrying a huge fucking baseball bat. and then ten seconds later the man himself runs into the apt, all wearing that ratty robe and all his rings (does he sleep in them?), i assume to restrain batguy, which is like so laughable since batguy is twice the size of james, and i go downstairs and they both come out and batguy follows me outside and starts arguing with landlord steve, who has come up from the basement.

i should have hung around for hijinks and to bug steve about the noise, but i went and got a tamale instead since i was early for work. and now i seriously need to vomit. note to self: don't eat before noon, like, ever.

<greenz> marcus when was the last time you had sex?
<saintWLU> greenz: better specify hetero sex
<greenz> with marcus it can be man or female
<greenz> aninmals and your mom dont count
<marcster> greenz, yesterday
<marcster> with your mom!
<greenz> marcus really
<greenz> be honest
<marcster> YESTERDASY!
<marcster> with your mom.

posted at 10:50 AM

i suspect harlem roaches are educated and literate, because no sooner did that sign appear but i found two bastard roaches crawling on my floor when i had seen none since i got back.

watching tv with one eye on the action and one eye sweeping the apartment for bugs. sigh.
posted at 11:10 PM

despite the fact that i spent 11 hours today thinking only nascar-related thoughts, which ultimately ended with me accidentally emailing nascar driver names on the local system, either first and last name or just substituting nascar surnames for editor's surnames, kenny know something about nascar that i don't. does that mean i'm a failure, or just unable to cover all the bases? who knows.

(zours is the official candy of nascar!)

now i'm home, watching malcolm and xf from last night. i would have watched them at work but acg fucked up the tape. poo on him. the insanity of xf is freaking me out. i never thought i'd say this, but i might have to stop watching. new credit sequence==downward spiral.

landlord steve was in the basement this morning, so i stopped in to implore him yet again to kick james out of the building. steve was like "what can i do, he is an asshole." he said he'd talk to him again about the noise. it's still on right now, of course. but i can almost forgive steve because he is the source of what is basically the most hilarious building notice ever. i'm hoping he's downstairs again tomorrow, because i will commend him on the notice and ask that he put up one about excessive noise.

there are many reasons the britney concert sucked, but there is no greater mystery than why jon voight was involved.

"nothing important happened today"
posted at 10:11 PM

as jill puts it, my music fuse blew. i think i fixed it. thanks, joss.

"but don't you worry
all those dainty and dirty
emotions just go away and fade out on their own"
posted at 2:12 AM

there is swordfish in the fridge that i need to cook. i forgot i had it. i got it yesterday in chinatown. i'm a bit dubious of it but hopefully it will be good.

today is do or die for harvey pollack. so here is the plan: shower, dress, figure out what i want to cook with the swordfish, go to zabars for breakfast and riteaid for stuff and market for swordfish help, return home, harvey.

i want to crawl under my bed and not come out. i want to retire.
posted at 1:32 PM

shooting stars are cool. i saw quite a few in my postage stamp-sized patch of sky. i stood outside on the street for a while, and there were random people out who were not looking at the sky, but i was staring skyward and trying to ignore the rats partying out front who were akin to small dogs.

and there were stars, and they were shooting, and i wished i could go someplace darker to see more. and now it's getting light out, and i'm going back to bed.

[jameswatch2k]: on my way back inside i stood outside his door. the radio/stereo/whatever is on, of course. i just want to run into him and have him ask me how it's been lately so i can say "it's been okay, but i wish you would turn it off at night" and he would say "but i don't leave it on" and i would say "i don't mind if you have it on but don't bullshit me, because i've stood outsid your door at 5a and listened and it's coming from you, there's no way it isn't" and then maybe he would start turning it off. or maybe he'd come kill me.

things like this make me want to move home just so i don't have to deal with them.
posted at 5:45 AM

i am so studious and devoted, i set my alarm for 515a to go outside and watch the sky.
posted at 5:19 AM

today was an adventure and a half with morrow by my side. started with dim sum at sun hop shing, which is not that great but is cheap as hell ($5 per person when we were done). buffy musical at my apartment, which he actually liked and i realized i could sit and watch about five million times in a row. kinsale to watch the michigan game and drink. this is where the day got severely depressing: our favorite bartender at kinsale, francis.. died. he's dead. as in, not living anymore. they found him in his apartment and ruled out suicide and homicide and just figure he had a massive heart attack or something. his father apparently did when he was 29. francis was 28.

i mean, what the fuck?

so we drank all afternoon in francis' honor and had some bar munchies and moved on to the port authority to bowl and drink more beer. my game was totally off, and i didn't pick it up until the fourth frame or so. once i found my groove i recovered to hit a 93 or so. morrow did not do so well.

and then after a pit stop for an hour or so for at another bar, i dragged him to queens to visit the arepa lady, and he was all hating me for doing it because it's like an hour trip, but we found her and i ate an entire arepa by myself for the first time ever, and they were so fucking good i should have gotten two.

the 7 train in queens is elevated, and it's really cool to watch out the windows. also cool to watch inside the windows, which was a freak show as usual: this time it was a middle-aged looking guy who was fairly well kept but was dragging a cart full of stuff with him, including a backpack, and he stuck his hand in the backpack and pulled out a large pill bottle, and from the cart he took a small tray and put it on his lap, and then he opened the bottle and poured out some rice. and then he started sorting the rice by some method that we could not figure out, but when he found enough special rice he pulled out a small vial from his jacket pocket and put the special rice inside. and then he returned everything to their original locations.

facts of life marathon on tvland>*.

to francis.
posted at 1:36 AM

good fucking christ. jill and allison and i saw harry potter and the sorcerer's stone, which was very good even if liam aiken was not in it. 1030p show, got out around 1a. 1 train to 86th, they got off, i went to 96th to wait for the 2/3. stepping off of the train i encountered a 3ft diameter splatter of orangey-pink vomit. i avoided it and walked down the platform to where i need to stand for prime exit positioning at 110th, and honestly the station could not have smelled any more like piss if i myself had squatted down and relieved myself right then and there. then i waited. and waited. and waited. and after about 15 minutes, a train came.

it was a 1.

ten more minutes went by, another train.

it was also a 1.

ten more minutes, then another train.

it was out of service.

finally a 2 train showed up. i got home at 215a.

sometimes i don't like nyc.
posted at 2:28 AM

hello, my name is worth getting up in the middle of the night.

i hate going to the shrink.

bah.

ramp up meds better offer some perspective and less persecution.

on sixth avenue there are lots of bootleg cds guys lately, and i saw some dvds in one of their boxes and i asked what dvds he had and he said "no dvds, no dvds" and i pointed at them and said "yes dvds" and he said "no only porno" and i kept walking.

Sleepy Rummy: highlighter in russian in kosmyetechyeskoye sredstvo, in case you ever wanted to know
oppsie1: that's a lot of words for a little pen.
Sleepy Rummy: its shorter in cyrillic

posted at 6:19 PM

jill is working at miramax this week. earlier in the week she had a fight with a paper shredder and lost. today appears to be redeeming itself for her.

From: jill
To: erin
Subject: Re: [Re: [Re: [poobrain]]]

oh my god i am peeing. i am going through these response cards for iron monkey and some idiot child (aged 21-24) for ethnic background did not mark caucasion but instead checked other and wrote "white."

in other news, the staple girl has more than one trick in her arsenal. she is also the owner of a laugh that sounds like she is crying. not weeping, or snuffling, but actual bawling. it's unnerving.

also, how sad is the career trajectory of amy jo johnson? first she vaults to fame as the pink power ranger, continues upward with a costar gig on felicity, and then the bottom drops out: vh1 original movie sweetwater, and finally a faceless victim of gamma carter on er last night. while she is getting some good face time playing the role of samburu kim on survivor and did an excellent job pretending to vom on last night's episode, methinks somebody needs to get herself a new agent, stat.

the spanish word for highlighter is resaltador. the french word for highlighter is surligneur.
posted at 11:54 AM

i am such a sleuth it is ridiculous. the mystery has been solved: k cramer==kathy cramer, huntington woods city clerk. the package was indeed the absentee ballot, arriving too late to be of use. hooray!
posted at 10:40 AM

i just had a brainstorm. what if the package was my absentee ballot that never showed up? hmmmmmmmmm.

more investigation pending.
posted at 10:37 AM

drama in small doses is good. the latest drama is that i got this peach-colored slip on my apartment door a few weeks ago from usps and then promptly forgot about it. i figured they would just try again and i didn't have to do anything.

wrongo.

upon further study of the slip, which i just found in my back pocket, the "large envelope, magazine, catalog, etc" sent "express mail" from "k. cramer" was instead held for pick up at the manhattanville station. it was too late to call them when i discovered this last night, so i successfully attempted to track the package with the "article number".

now, i don't know any k. cramer, nor was i expecting any sort of package, large envelope or otherwise. this could be some sort of anthrax bomb in the guise of a marykay catalog for all i know. and goddammit, i want to know.

here is the most aggravating tracking report in the world:

Shipment History

You entered ET17 XXXX XXXX X

Your item was returned to the sender on November 14,
2001 because it was not claimed by the addressee.

Here is what happened earlier:

NOTICE LEFT, November 05, 2001, 10:31 am,
NEW YORK, NY 10026
NOTICE LEFT, November 04, 2001, 4:05 pm,
NEW YORK, NY 10027
ARRIVAL AT UNIT, November 04, 2001, 9:33
am, NEW YORK, NY 10001
ARRIVAL AT UNIT, November 04, 2001, 6:10
am, NEW YORK, NY 10199
ACCEPTANCE, November 02, 2001, 4:00 pm,
ROYAL OAK, MI 48068

that's right, if i had discovered the slip just one day earlier, my curiosity would be satisfied and i would not be lying awake at night wondering what kind of largely enveloped goodies i'm missing out on. and i'm even more troubled since it came from 48068, which is the main post office branch near my dad's house that all the surrounding post offices funnel into. (coincidentally, 48068 is, as far as i know, ground zero for the term "going postal"; when i was in eighth grade, a disgruntled worker walked in and shot it up - mrs young was very upset that day in science class.)

so i looked up all the k. cramers in michigan, and there is one in royal oak. kim. do i cold call her and ask if she sent me a package? i think i might have to if i want any peace. arg.
posted at 10:20 AM

i've seen a fair amount of cableaccess pr0n in my nyc days, but tonight takes the cake. i was flipping through tivo guide, and in the listings i see "virgin models" on a cableaccess channel. so i turn it on, and it turns out to be ten minutes of a bottle blond in a karate outfit with the shirt unbuttoned doing a bunch of half-hearted karate kick moves to a soundtrack straight out of the excellent nintendo version of karate kid, and she stops every 30 seconds to readjust her shirt so her boobs hang out more. unfortunately, this happened:

oppsie1: hmm
oppsie1: the music is the same, but now it's a halfnaked girl rolling around on a bed
oppsie1: this is hilarious, you really need to find it
oppsie1: it's channel PA16NY
oppsie1: see if it's on rcn
Twingo16: ahahahahah
Twingo16: i DO still have porn!
Twingo16: i feared it was gone!

now it's boring, so i shut it off.

but darby is not boring at all! the more i look at waterlogged dennis, the funnier he gets.

PABST BLUE OCEAN.

i think i forgot to eat dinner. i had frites for lunch. the frites guy was all excited to see me, i hadn't been there since juneish. we chatted a bit. surely an entry on the list of ways you know you have poor nutrition and high cholesterol. tomorrow i'm going to go to gan eden again once i make some headway on harvey, because tomorrow is do or die. and i'm doing.

on second thought, maybe i shouldn't go tomorrow, since i already have to ditch work for a couple hours to go to the shrink. goddammit, ruining all my plans. maybe i'll get a hot dog from the hot dog king. or a salad. or a glass of water. goddammit.

it was foolish, but i watched the local news after er tonight because during the show they teased a story about a woman who got shoved in front of a subway at gct. she lost part of her leg, which isn't all that exciting, but then they showed a computer representation of the flight data recorder info on 587, how the plane bumped and bobbed and listed and plummeted and i am never ever flying again ever ever.

(jill, however, kept watching.)

Twingo16: okay there is a hilarious commercial on the porn channel now

"choreographed and lack of passion
prototypes of what we were
went full circle til i'm nauseous
taken for granted
now i've wasted, faked it, ate it, now i hate it"
posted at 12:36 AM

an apartment opened up in steve's (not landlord steve, laws no) building. one was also open a month or two ago, but i wasn't in town to look at it; steve took pictures of it for me and i looked at them and deemed it to small. at dim sum he told me it was as big as the room we were eating in, which i was skeptical of, but he also told me that he thought another one was opening and he would check for me. so one opened, and i called his super this afternoon and went to look at it shortly after.

it is not as big as the dim sum room. it is small. it is small and the kitchen is in the same room as the rest of the room - it is a studio - and there are no partitions and i would have to stare at my messy bed and dirty dishes or ugly something no matter where i looked. but it is cheap, gloriously cheap, and on a high floor, and there is an elevator and a doorman and the super was very nice and didn't even ask me how much money i make or even if i make 40x rent or however much they want you to make.

taking it would mean more money in pocket, and more sleep sans james, but i think the mental health cost is too high. living in one room after living in a 1br, without even kitchen separation, is too throat-slittingly depressing for me.

here's a picture of a really rich guy enjoying the use of his own product. no, it's not sy sperling.
posted at 5:33 PM

everything was going fine in my first 20 minutes of work this morning until my dad sent me a snotty email about if i wanted my "daddy" to go to the store and buy it for me, which is related to yesterday's bullshit, and now i think i'll not be eating today, thanks.

what was i thinking?

also i had a nightmare about my mother and grandmother changing the alarm system on my house. and a subletter using my place as homebase for his apple orchard operation. and many dirt roads. and many sirens.

also the staple girl just came over and apologized for her chronic stapler usage. huh.

(of course, she then did it AGAIN.)

i could be the bigger person and not respond to the snotty email with snottiness, but i'm not feeling like the bigger person this morning. i'm feeling very small.
posted at 10:30 AM

the maraschino cherry on top was me discovering that half of what i have closing today i had totally forgotten to do. like i had forgotten it even existed, and had been existing in a little factchecking bubble where i was done with my work for the day and had only to wait for copy to kick me their corrected version. so then i freaked out and discovered that not only had i not done half, i was missing a third of it. it was gone, missing, absent, i don't know if i'd never gotten it or if i'd misplaced it but i suspect the former. so after more panicking and freaking out and hyperventilation i got a printed version from editor rob and checked it. luckily the stuff didn't take that long since it was mostly repeats of previously researched stuff in other articles.

and when i finished, i exhaled. and when i exhaled, i said "fuck the world" and strode out of the building and took the nr down to 8th street and went to otafuku and purchase takoyaki, six for $5, and daifuku for $1.49, and both were really quite wonderful. takoyaki is clingy to the insides, and the daifuku was far better than some i'd had in detroit a while ago: fresh, cold, sweet but not too sweet, and not too bean chunky either. mmm. japanese food.

five ibu==mmm as well.

there is a seminew factchecker who arrived (or rearrived) this week, and she is now in the alley. she has no stapler. she needs to get herself a stapler, because she keeps using mine, which involves her walking up behind me, sticking her paper in the stapler, and then pounding the stapler down on top of it. hard. loudly. unexpectedly. with enough noise and effort to convince me that she is actually trying to send her papers, the stapler and her fist through the floor, down four floors to the bottom of 1211 avenue of the americas, through bedrock and beyond until all three finally arrive in beijing. is she worried she won't be able to properly staple without driving force? i don't know, but it's annoying. i miss my rear-view monitor mirror.
posted at 4:17 PM

i am so full of raging fucking HATE right now. att is telling me they will not give me retroactive free minutes even though they promised 1000 nights and weekends minutes when i signed up for their fucking shittyass service in march and they never gave it to me and my dad would be much better at dealing this but he is too "busy" and won't be unbusy until friday and then on the phone he asks me what's new when I JUST TALKED TO HIM 12 FUCKING HOURS AGO which i pointed out and then he got all nasty and said he wouldn't pay for the phone anymore which i guess is my punishment for pointing out THE OBVIOUS and now i am trying very hard not to pitch a huge hideous fit in my cube, which involves much closing of the eyes so i can cry behind them, and much swallowing of the water so the lump in my throat melts a little.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

oh and i'm on the RAG and i have the MONSTER CRAMPS WHOSE BIRTHPLACE IS SURELY HADES.

text is just not doing this justice, i think i will go hide in the bathroom for a bit.

that is all.
posted at 11:31 AM

this is the music of my mornings: tinny latin beats peeping through the sounds of apartment demolition, muted exclamations of spanish swear words, and the sound of hawked loogies splattering on the floor.

landlord steve finally called and claims they will be finished dismantling the apartment across the hall in a day or two. i'm not holding my breath. in fact, i'm kind of hoping they chop another hole in my wall so i really have something to bitch at him about. the cleaning crew, as it were, might clean my apt again in a day or two. also not holding my breath about that. i told him i wanted them to wipe down my door at the end of every day. not holding breath about that either. in fact, i'm expelling my breath, because when i shut the door on my way out this morning about ten tons of dust kicked up and i've been sneezing ever since.

i know that it shouldn't, but this article amuses me to no end.

At least 726 birds and other animals have been hit by aircraft at Kennedy over the past decade, according to Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) records obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

Most of the incidents at Kennedy happened at Runway 31L, where Flight 587 took off. Pilots using that runway reported 139 incidents, at least 62 of which involved gulls. Other animals included barn owls, larks, sparrows, homing pigeons, a peregrine falcon and a jackrabbit.

a.. jackrabbit.

i stayed up obscenely late and now i feel like ass. i think for lunch i will go down to 9th st and search out otafuku, where they allegedly have good takoyaki. i have not had takoyaki before, but they sound divine. teriyaki boy has them too, but we all know that teriyaki boy is sketchbomb. eatsquid, however, is not.

free dvds acquired yesterday: beach party, citizen cohn, willow. free dvds acquired yesterday that i will likely ever watch: one.
posted at 10:21 AM

i also have new (to me) dashboard, and i've discovered/remembered the reason i haven't been listening to music in my apt, which is that i'm only getting left channel sound out of my laptop. the reason is that the extender cable that makes it so i can plug my laptop into my receiver while lying on the couch is busted; i plugged the cable in without the extender and it was in gorgeous, full-bodied prologic.

i will visit rat shack tomorrow and right (channel) this wrong.

also, the fan action is working out wonderfully. i was telling dad about it tonight after i told him about the shrink and he said this weekend i should go to sharper image and buy one of those noise machine clocks and he would pay for it, so i could sleep. so i'm going to do that, because it'll probably use less power than the fan going all night, and i'm cheap, and my bills are high.

"i'm missing your laugh, how did it break?
and when did your eyes begin to look fake?
i hope you're as happy as you're pretending"
posted at 1:35 AM

so i'm watching the buffy musical, and it makes me cry to think about that things like this exist in the world, and i exist to watch them.

and to think that all i do is watch.

and not create.

just watch.

i haven't listened to any music in a long time. it's just been kind of gone. (loss of interest, loss of pleasure.) i've got new jacko and britney and mgb and sloan sitting on my hd and i haven't even moved to touch them. i haven't plugged the minijack patch cable into my sound card to listen on my speakers here. i'd make some fresh minidiscs tonight, but i left my md player at work. i'm sure a janitor will steal it.

just watch.

Twingo16: i think spike's character fulfills the hole that exists since luke perry cannot be in the show
oppsie1: of all the things that have tumbled out of your brain, that really ranks right up there.
Twingo16: in what category?
oppsie1: i'm not going to specify.

"where do we go from here?"
posted at 12:06 AM

after i returned from lunch, ethan was sitting here in the alley, so we talked for a while. he is the same as ever, except married. and except he's on staff here. ON STAFF. WITH BENEFITS.

what. the. fuck.

(not that i necessarily want to be on staff, with benefits. you know me, employmentphobe extraordinaire.)

lunch was with morrow. lunch was parfait parfait parfait. we went to gan eden, this uzbek place deep within the third floor of a jewelry building over on diamond row. we walked past jewelry-making sweatshops and wholesale stores, up up up, until we reached a door marked "restaurant" with a mezzuzah on the frame. it is glatt kosher. it is windowless and brightly lit with fluorescents. it is absolutely divine: he had the lunch special, which was two kabobs over rice with soup, and i had chicken schnitzel with fried potatoes, and there was freshly baked bread, and tea, and the dishes were beautiful, and i was in heaven, and it is literally 50 feet from the entrance to my building. i will be going there often, as i informed the proprietress who served us. because it is cheap as all get out, and i am in love.

"ha ha ha. dying tickles!"
posted at 2:30 PM

IT'S HIM !!

i have not spoken to him yet, but we just got a group email from michael about him. scary.

in other news, somebody please explain to me why the fact that paul mccartney witnessed both the 9/11 and flight 587 disasters from the tarmac is worthy of cnn's newscrawl below the screen? anybody? bueller?
posted at 12:45 PM

i am totally fucking freaking out. my cube is the first one in the alley after the un-cubed alley workstations, three on either side, where interns and a factchecker or two camp. i'm totally blocked from anybody sitting there, unless they walk by my cube to get to the cubes deep in the alley behind me.

boss michael was just setting up a new factchecker in the un-cubed section, and i'm pretty darn sure it's ethan from ew. i'd recognize his laugh (giggle? twitter?) anywhere.

why does this make me so nervous? why is my stomach churning? maybe i'm shaking because i'm hungry. although i don't feel hungry, like my stomach isn't clamoring for food, i just desire to consume consume consume like a good american.

maybe it'll turn out not to be him. i'm too petrified to peek around the corner; i'm going to have stephijo do recon for me.
posted at 12:19 PM

i'm already thinking about lunch. i've been thinking about it for an hour. how sick is that? i want either uzbek across the street, or street food in chinatown. with morrow.

the plight of ling ling amuses me to no end.

((merlin)) decadently mutters, "Ling Ling has to work hard to meet the zoo's and (our) visitors' expectation of him. o/" 70's porn music o/""

posted at 11:04 AM

61 words of harvey pollack+a trace amount of alcohol+reading+box fan set on medium==dreams about plov and gan edan+8 hours of sleep in my very own bed.

this fan thing in the bedroom is working out really well. perhaps my couch days are over.

(famous last words, i'm sure.)
posted at 8:39 AM

so this is what it comes down to: putting off listening to harvey by watching seventh heaven, flipping channels and crying for no reason other than i have no food and the bass is frying my insides, and nobody wants to see me tattooed and naked, handfuls of dry cheerios with my right hand, swigs of goldschlager with my left.

i think i'm ready to do some work now.

i wish i had some knish. a good potato-mushroom knish would much improve the situation.
posted at 10:17 PM

editor eric says the story is not closing today after all. this does not surprise me.

now, procrastinate at work and get free dinner, or procrastinate at home and watch free tv?
posted at 5:49 PM

it's 515p and i finished checking this story about nascar's "youth movement" two hours ago and it hasn't even made it to copy yet. it's supposed to close tonight. i am never getting out of here. i am sick of nascar. (not news, i know.)

today, as most days seem to be, is a big pile of suck and dread and impending whateverness. i went to shrink's office and back an hour ago; took 45 minutes roundtrip, uptown subway, crosstown bus, office, crosstown bus, downtown subway. so now i have unexpired medication to take. don't know how much it matters or not.

my milk is rancid. i could not have cheerios this morning.

my scalp is very itchy. i hate cold weather for that, love it for everything else.

i got chicken over pita from kwik meal #5 today. it was so far beyond outstanding, i was blissed for five minutes. the rice was perfect. kwik meal man (apparently one "md rahman" according to a new sign he has out front, claiming that he is "formerly of the russian tea room" which probably means he was once a busboy there) asked me if i'd heard about the plane crash and we chatted about the sorry state of the world for a moment before he handed over my vittles and i handed over my $4.50.

since 9/11, i now put on cnn every morning when i get up so i don't go to work in a newsless haze, oblivious to whatever might be happening aboveground while i ride the rat-infested rails. so this morning paula zahn was doing some relative fluff piece under the camoflage of america strikes back and then she reported the plane crash and then i started flipping channels, narcowarmth spreading over me, swaddling my panic in need-to-know hunger.

i do this because i am so afraid things will happen when i'm not looking. this is not news, either; this is why i sleep so lightly, with such difficulty, and only in a proper horizontal, bedlike environment. not a car, or a plane, or a schooldesk. because what if something happened, and i missed it? how do you recover a lost moment when every moment is a lost moment the second it passes into and out of existence? how do you account for blinking when you are called to judgment for your years? how do you account for sleep and for sneezes?

how do you account for being too scared to open your eyes?
posted at 5:15 PM

new details emerging, obviously my early ones were.. early. so, we'll see.

no tv in cubicle==suck.
posted at 10:17 AM

plane crash. 15 minutes ago. in queens. cbs reporting an american airlines 767 out of jfk.

homes on fire. all the networks showing their jfkcams, showing huge plumes of smoke.

i would sit here all day, but i have to go to work. i hope they don't shut down the subways while i'm on the train.

sigh.
posted at 9:36 AM

you don't know horrifying until you realize while watching sportscenter that you know every single winston cup driver in their rundown of today's nascar race.
posted at 12:41 AM

it just gets more and more scary how much jill and i are platonically meant for each other. good thing we found us.

Twingo16 received D:\evan dando-hard drive OUR SHOW.mp3.
Twingo16: evan dando. ha.
Twingo16: ps i finally know a ben lee song
oppsie1: ben lee wrote that evan dando song.
Twingo16: really? that is very weird then that i just brought that up
oppsie1: indeed.
oppsie1: we were separated at birth. scary.
Twingo16: i am beginning to think yes
oppsie1: life is strange.
Twingo16: thanks again for your computer brilliance tonight
oppsie1: you're welcome. call any time.
Twingo16: oh i will
oppsie1: it's really my pleasure. i perversely enjoy that shit.
oppsie1: it's like.. a solvable problem.
Twingo16: i know what you mean
oppsie1: like math.
Twingo16: that's why i used to like math so much
oppsie1: OH MY GOD JILL
Twingo16: okay NOW I AM SCARED OF YHOU
oppsie1: WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END
oppsie1: this is really getting obscene
oppsie1: maybe you should just get a sex change and we can get married or something.
Twingo16: GET OUT OF MY BRAIN
Twingo16: ew
oppsie1: that was a joke.

posted at 12:27 AM

pleasant valley sunday: dim sum with jeremie, sheri, steve; fixing ze cable; movie with cousin josh and aunt laurie; dinner afterward with them; fox sunday programming with jill and allison; fixing ze computer problems of jill and allison; coming home to discover the one episode of sports night i missed is now on my tivo.

yeah.

(mitigation: the pistons lost by a scant 2 points. bull. we should have won instead of fucking things up and letting bonzi wells fuck us again.)

ps today is the last binary date for a long, long time. 111101 hells yeah.

oppsie1: evan likes naked tattooed women?
Sleepy Rummy: if they just happened to be on the wall in front of him, then yes
oppsie1: i've always wanted a tattoo, that's just one more reason.

posted at 11:23 PM

wow. i just called twc to swap starz for encore (they charged me $2, assholes), and it literally happened 20 seconds after i hung up with them. sweet! can you say a movie channel devoted entirely to westerns? i can.
posted at 3:25 PM

hmm. probably dumb, but i just told the guy that lives downstairs across from james that dtv/cablemodem was now available in the building. he and i have talked about dsl before and i was on my way upstairs and he came out of his apt and saw me and told me that he had ordered dsl and was waiting on verizon and i just couldn't in good conscience let him continue with that doomed plan, so i told him the good news. he started hooting and hollering and thanking me, and i figure it's good to have legacy friends in the building (put it this way: his apt has not been renovated by landlord steve). hopefully it won't affect my speeds too much, but now the word is on the street about dtv in this area. dumb. eh.

my ip has changed since yesterday. the lease is only 24 hours; i might give twc a call and see what the dilly is with getting a more permanent ip. probably no can do.

these ibm ads with tony from blossom really trouble me, especially when i think about how the last time i saw him on tv he was dying in a hospital bed on nineoh and kelly was weeping like the little coke fiend that she once was.

so ct was roommatey goodness. we spent the afternoon at costco, and i decided that since i hadn't really gotten myself a present since minidisc in june, i would get myself something fabulous and i toured the dvd section for a while and ended up purchasing a fourpack of cetaphil. now i will never run out of soap, no matter how dusty my fucking apt gets. then we made this swiss pumpkin recipe thing from ruth reichl's book and i am very sorry to report that it FUCKING SUCKED. it was terrible, not through any fault of ours. luckily we had tuna and swordfish steaks on the grill to make up for it, and boy were they fantastic. and then i slept in sheri's wonderful bed, and it was wonderfully quiet (although after my confab with james the other day, it's been decently quiet at night and i've had a few good nights of sleep, amazingly; i'm sure it will all go to shit tonight), and we got up and took the train to nyc and chinatown and love love love.

train thoughts: does britney have a breast trainer? like somebody to make sure her boobs don't stretch or fall? i bet she does. it's such a key part of her.

and the panic threatening about work that i keep forgetting rears its head only every few hours.

quake.
posted at 3:11 PM

i'm watching alf!! life could not be better.

except i need to tear myself away so i can shower and dress and pack and pick up tamales and catch the train to greenwich and enjoy suburban bliss with jeremie and sheri. hooah.
posted at 9:19 AM

cable modem rules!!! rules rules rules! it took me literally 30 seconds to plug everything in and get going, i didn't even need their stupid cd or instructions. how much do i rule? just about as much as dtv and cablemodem.

it is insane how many channels i have. INSANE.
posted at 11:38 PM

harvey pollack and i did our interview today. i talked to him for an hour and a half. or rather, he talked to me. the man does not shut up, but it's hard to tell him to stop and move on to another topic because he's old and storied and so very very awesome.

the shrink this week was maybe a little better, maybe a little worse. we have dumped drugs for drugs that do not conflict with other drugs. now i can stop smoking. hurrah. it's interesting. we have yet to tap the subject of my rampant work panic and self-esteem issues. of course, i haven't really mentioned them yet. oops!

it's been a total basketball day. when i wasn't interviewing harvey or pretending to spill my guts to the shrink, i've been doing nba trivia. there was a massive confusion of miscommunication with my editor and it turns out i have 20 questions due last week. oops! but i did it. i did it.

morrow and i went to dinner at pio pio last night, which is peruvian rotisserie chicken, then to kinsale, which is shots of jameson's and pints of newcastle. good night? yeah. yeah, it was.

i am so fucking sick of nascar. as reward for finishing trivia and working on nascar, i am going to twcnyc's office on e23rd to exchange my crappy crap analog cable box for happy hap digital cable box and cable modem. then i'm going to dinner at uncle morris'. then i'm going home and praying that i will be calling earthlink to cancel dsl forever (forever ever?).

oppsie1: okay, it's your responsibility to come up with trivia questions for me since you got me inebriated last night.
JamesMorrow123: what is the average length of the penis of an nba player?
JamesMorrow123: who has the most out-of-wedlock kids in the nba?
oppsie1: you so bad
JamesMorrow123: who was the first nba player to have his wages garnisheed for child support?
oppsie1: how many times has lamar odom used the excuse "because i got high"?
JamesMorrow123: HA
JamesMorrow123: "shoulda made the free throw, but I got high..."
oppsie1: who can eat more donuts in one sitting: shawn kemp, john "hot plate" williams, oliver miller, charles barkley?

posted at 5:46 PM

how to get on erin's top ten list of unacceptable: be my landlord and leave a message on my answering machine saying "i have good news and bad news, well there is no bad news really, just.." and then go on to say that i can only flush my toilet once before you replace the pipe behind the toilet, unless i want to fill the tank myself. yes, that's right, i just peed for the first time since last night when i got home from work, because i came home to find the pipe that goes to my toilet missing and a giant hole in the wall behind the toilet leading into the next apartment. also six inches of dust and grime and soot underneath the back of the toilet which, since yesterday, has floated all over the bathroom and covered everything, including my soap and toothbrush and brush and fucking everything and is slowly making its way into my bedroom. was i warned of this before it happened? answer: no. was i woken up this morning by the sound of jackhammers and drills and noise that sounded like it was right there in the room with me thanks to the hole in the wall? answer: yes. the people who lived across from me moved out a week ago and landlord steve's renovation of the place with the use of his mexican mafia is underway and it is pissing. me. off.
posted at 10:12 AM

had a nice hourlong lunch with jill that culminated at the post office, where i had my very own bin of overgrown mail to collect. my bag now weighs about 300 lbs because it has a month's worth of magazines in it. and a paycheck from inside stuff! a surprise. i love money, yes i do. i also love that i think the league really will pay for nba league pass on digital cable. this is all good. i was watching the wiz-celts game last night on tnt and the lead singer of extreme did the anthem, and i could not stop chuckling. my pal max came in a while ago to tell me he just got digital cable and it is like crack cocaine, and we had a nice chat about how dtv rules. max is my pal. why am i not writing for tvguide? i should work on that. good for resume, good for wallet.

jill is working at kingworld today, which makes me think "KINGWORLD" when i read it.

i finally called harvey pollack. again. he was there, but on the other line. he finally just called back, and we are doing the interview tomorrow. i feel a bit better about it. he's not so bad. i can do this, right? i can do this.

his wife is in the hospital with cancer. that makes me sad. poor harvey.

julius irving is not a phila native, nor is billy cunningham or hal greer. thanks harv!

ah, ingmar.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Veteran Swedish director Ingmar Bergman recalled Thursday how he had abandoned his vow never to make a film again.

``I suddenly realized I was with film, I was pregnant,'' the 83-year-old movie icon told a rare news conference called to publicize his new film to be made for television next year.

``I was like Abraham's Sarah who finds herself banged up. It was extraordinary and completely unexpected. It was as astounding as it was fun to feel this lust coming back to me again,'' said Bergman, creator of films such as ``The Seventh Seal'' and ``Fanny and Alexander.''

posted at 4:38 PM

[jameswatch2k]: a great miracle happened here. it was quiet last night. i slept in my bed. i slept for 7 hours. i slept without waking up.

heaven.

(coincidence that i am off shrink meds now? i don't know.)

part of my dream involved a sewing machine table in the oval office that housed a fold-out bed, and i was told to use it. gwb walked in and was nonplussed by my presence. huh.

today is hardcore nascar day. i hate nascar. HATE NASCAR.

south park last night was off the hook. seriously.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEEFYPOO.
posted at 11:30 AM

dermo at 915a worked out well; i got to work right on time, armed with a new scrip and ammo to switch antideps when i see the shrink again friday. drug interactions BAD. loss of appetite GOOD.

my absentee ballot never showed up, but the measure passed anyway. glad to not be doing my part for democracy. snort.

[jameswatch2k]: the man and i had a shakedown last night; i was on the verge of sleep but just couldn't get there, even with drugs in the system and on the couch with the fan on the second highest setting, because of the noise factor. so at 1215a i went down there, rang the doorbell, and out he came in his nappyass robe and chipped teeth. "but i'm not listening to the stereo, i'm watching the tv!" he said. i said i could hear it anyway, it was the bass, and that the tv still goes through the subwoofer you fucking idiot. okay, i didn't say that last part, but i thought it. i also begged him to turn everything off when he goes to bed at night, which he claims he does but i know i'm not hallucinating hearing bass at 4a, low, low, very low, so whatever.

but it was quiet when i woke up at 545a. we'll see if it lasts. i have my doubts.

"i don't wanna wait for my trapper keeper to be over"
posted at 10:21 AM

i think i just heard gunshots. four quick ones. it could have been a car backfiring, but it didn't sound like no backfire i'd ever heard of, so say what one more time. and i wasn't the only one suspicious - i saw a few heads poking out of buildings out in the street. but it was more than five minutes ago and i haven't heard sirens, so i don't know what the deal is. weird.

nypd blue>*
posted at 10:37 PM

so basically i'm too tired to sit around blogging, if that makes any sense. i am too fucking tired, and trying to get my head together is even more tiring, and i can't figure out if the drugs are acting as a sedative or a stimulant because last night i got very tired after i took a pill but i only slept for two hours before i awoke at 4a and couldn't fall back asleep until 530a. i can't figure out if it's normal tiredness or medication tiredness, because the only drowsy medicine i ever take is benadryl and even that doesn't have much effect. i am immune, and i am awake, and i am tired.

and i have to do nba trivia, which i've been putting off and the wolves are starting to howl outside my inbox.

[public] marburg: The second beer I make will be some sort of fruity ale I think. Or, perhaps, a flavored porter or stout.
[public] marburg: one or the other.
[public] Nash: You do realize you have an obsessive compulsive disorder...right?
[public] marburg: i have no beer idea beer what you're beer talking about

posted at 9:04 PM

nascar sucks my big fat tit and i want everyone to crash so i don't have to research them anymore. harvey wasn't home. i left a message.

supersigh.

jacko claims he is not wacko, but i suspect otherwise.

the nifty rebrane says, "i had a jehovah's witness come to the door the other day"
the nifty rebrane says, "but she didn't tell me what she was, she just gave me a magazine and left"
the ookiemouth oppsie [to rebrane]: was it somebody in a fat suit?
the nifty rebrane says, "it was a woman.. but i'd consider it more likely that she was mj than a fat guy with buck teeth, a mustache, an afro, and a voice two octaves too high"

posted at 3:10 PM

supposed to be doing harvey pollack. don't want to do harvey pollack. not today, not ever. fuck.

KeefKeefKeefKeef : oh yeah, the stats guy
oppsie1: yeah
oppsie1: i really need to prep for it
oppsie1: help me think of stuff to ask him
KeefKeefKeefKeef: Soo do it, sucka
KeefKeefKeefKeef: "How much does it cost to poop on your lap?"
oppsie1: i'm supposed to do a 400 word intro on him before a bunch of all-star trivia
oppsie1: HA
oppsie1: he's 78 so he probably poops in his own lap
KeefKeefKeefKeef: That's cool

posted at 2:51 PM

i've been having very strange dreams the past three nights. none of the lit says anything about vivid dreams as a side effect, but there's some fucked up shit coming out of my head. last night's involved a small girl biting off my nose at a burger king frequented by mentally impaired people that was doubling as a cookhouse for some sort of drug like crystal meth or crack, and i was there because i was in ann arbor and needed to stop and eat and i was driving my grandmother's car but it wasn't her car and when i came out from bk the car had been stolen, so i called my dad to come get me and he did about an hour later and that's when the girl bit me, and dad's car got stolen as well and we both went upstairs to try to track down the cars which involved a map. and i also was responsible for two tiny babies, no larger than my hand, who were seated in one of those triangular plastic sandwich containers like you get from a sandwich vending machine, and they drowned in their own urine before i could find the proper diapering materials.

wm says, "poor guy."
wm says, "his last name is schmuck"
the boy band fan campgod . o O ( well, that beats being Al Gizeera of Al Gizeera Mercury-Dodge :) )
wm [to campgod]: heh
wm [to campgod]: maybe they sell the geo jihad? :)

posted at 10:07 AM

[jameswatch2k]: i hate life.
posted at 1:20 AM

saturday SATURDAY saturday. morrow and i are going to chinatown CHINATOWN chinatown. then it's off to aaron's for football, then jill and allison are coming over to watch mscl.

oh my god.. do i have a social life?
posted at 11:57 AM

the shrink was.. a shrink. somehow the time passed. i still don't like talking to people i don't know in a "therapeutic" setting, because i feel i know exactly what's going on in my head at any given moment and what the reasons for it are, rational or irrational, so what's the point of throwing hundreds of dollars at an outside caller? that's what i have friends for. and friends are free.

however, friends do not prescribe antidepressants, which the shrink did.

(the shrink is not yet my shrink, in the semantic sense of the article modifiers of the noun.)

back again for another hour of uncomfortable seat-shifting next friday.
posted at 11:20 PM

watched a bunch of tv tonight, sat around freaking out about tomorrow, both workwise and shrinkwise. how am i ever going to get all this done? i'd come back after the appt but i won't be able to get in the building; i could ask robin if she'll still be there at 6ish, but i don't want her to know i'm gone that long. but i need to get back in. fuck. if i get an id card.. fuck.

fuck.

er was really scary tonight.

and michael jordan is one fine lookin' fella.

headache developing. time for drugs.
posted at 11:52 PM

i'm still at work. i'm about half done with the story now, so i might duck out soon. nobody bothered telling me the pizza was here, so i missed out on getting a can of coke.

christ, my life is mundane.

oppsie1: guess what
oppsie1: there's a race in nascar/winston
oppsie1: called the hooters 500
fritterVII: i find that hard to believe
fritterVII: what kind of a crossover audience do they expect to find?
oppsie1: lesbians

posted at 7:49 PM

a longtime factchecker apparenly up and quit yesterday, so i got her cube. i've settled in pretty well, starting to decorate a bit. there was a phone fiasco stemming from the fact that the phone here is labeled as one extension, but really it's another extension, which i of course didn't figure out until after i'd given the number to like five different people.

including the shrink, with whom i have an appt tomorrow afternoon. it was going to be totally cool to skip out on work because i'm on a slow nascar boat to china, but about an hour ago robin dumped another nascar story on me that's closing monday. it's huge. kill me now, please. so this means i basically have six hours to work tomorrow. i think this means no web browsing, no im, no tf. can i do it? i can do it. i can put my head down and do it.

talking to the shrink is another story. 90 minutes in the room with her. oh god.

oy.

the nifty rebrane exclaims, "oh boy!"
------------------text pasted by the nifty rebrane to Emrys' Tavern------------------
California Governor Gray Davis says he has received "credible" information that major bridges in the state - including the Golden Gate Bridge - could be targeted for attack. He said that information "from several different sources" spoke of a possible attempt to blow up the bridges during the rush hour between 2 and 7 November.
--------------end of text pasted by the nifty rebrane to Emrys' Tavern---------------
the parasitic oppsie [to rebrane]: they're putting that info out because they want to resurface the bridge road and want everybody to stay off of it.
the nifty rebrane says, "they're not going to close the bridges"
the nifty rebrane says, "which is a good idea, really, because just closing them would be worse than most terrorists could do"
the nifty rebrane says, "having the bay bridge blown up would sort of be a blessing in disguise"
the nifty rebrane says, "although it would make it much much harder to get to ikea from san francisco"
the nifty rebrane says, "and thus the economy would collapse"

posted at 6:36 PM

it took us 2 hours to get home. goddamn subways. goddamn goddamn. jill and i went to her sister's place in brooklyn to enjoy halloween, which consisted of me demolishing everybody at scattergories to the point where i felt i was going over the top, and me freaking her sister out with the following tale:

so jill and i have been friends since our days at edubs. she is fabulous and we hang out all the time, but i had yet to meet her sister. so last night was the golden opportunity, and we're sitting on the train to brooklyn and talking about stuff and her sister went to michigan but we only overlapped by a year, and jill mumbles something about her sister interning for miramax while at school and suddenly a light went on in my head. a highbeam, a foglamp: i know her sister. her sister ran the campus chasing amy screenings i attended in 1997. her sister handed out the coasters i have in my jacket pocket because i am a loser who doesn't clean out or get new coats. her sister's name is on the poster box i have sitting in my bedroom in detroit that i stare at when i sit on the floor talking on the phone.

i know who her sister is, four years before i ever met jill.

what the fuck?
posted at 1:10 AM