one: why can't i just tell the shrink to fuck off and stop going? why once i start something do i have this feeling of obligation to keep doing it indefinitely until somebody else tells me not to?

two: scot pollard bleached his hair, proving once again that the pistons can be trendsetters. you wish you were zelly.

three: i really have no explanation, yet i feel it would be wrong.

four: moving home conveniently rids me of the shrink without having to be assertive about it.

five: somebody go somewhere with me and have a conversation, because i have the sneaking suspicion that's not possible.

six: in my mind, all basketball players named bobby are the same player: bobby hurley. this includes but is not limited to jackson, phills and simmons.

seven: on february 10 there's a tv movie on cbs with marcia gay harden that is on immediately following.. the education of max bickford with marcia gay harden.

eight: watching letterman, i think that jason schwartzman sometimes confuses himself with jack black. like when he's drumming. and also when he's drumming.

nine: tell me something good.

ten: tell me something good.

eleven: tell me something good.

twelve: i have 15 trivia questions done, so i'm going to bed.
posted at 11:51 PM

and of course of course i completely forgot/ignored that i have nba trivia due tomorrow. ngah. i suck.
posted at 4:48 PM

and of course i manage to dump half a liter of water all over my desk and pants. there must be something about thursdays. especially since i keep thinking it's friday.
posted at 4:00 PM

oh, haha. he must have read this. no wonder he was annoyed.

but this does not excuse him. it's out of his realm of concern. especially concerning me.

mmm. halal.
posted at 3:18 PM

they are just coming out of the woodwork today. i fucked up a million different things on stories today - or fucked up earlier and discovered it today - things i should have caught yesterday. and now this wb publicist calls to ream me for a jeer on er. HELLO ASSHOLE I AM JUST A RESEARCHER LACKEY I DON'T WRITE THESE THINGS. not to mention the fact that his beef was with us having the gall to wonder if something was an accident or intentional on the part of the writers. that's opinion. everything factual in the item was correct. opinion, however, can be whatever we want it to be. (granted, i knew that of course it was intentional, and i'm sure the evil ge did too because if he didn't he's unbelievably obtuse.)

i gave him the evil ge's number and told him to take it up with him. if this comes back to me, i will shit. also if i have to call this guy again for info on something else, i will shit, because he won't speak to me. jesus ass.
posted at 3:11 PM

gan eden is a nice trip to another world. today it was packed; i don't think i ordered until i'd been there for twenty minutes. the waitrushka looked harried. meat dumpling soup, bread, french fries. there was a trio of young israelis at the table next to me. they smoked incessantly. this set off a chain reaction of smoking patrons. it's going to be strange back in michigan where the smoking laws are less strict.

midway through my soup, i kept hearing things. muffled screaming and crying and yelling. i thought maybe i was imagining it, or a radio was on. then i remembered the secret room at the opposite end of the restaurant from the kitchen (the main room is small, perhaps nine or ten tables of four seats each). i twisted around in my chair and confirmed that was the source of the noise. a few minutes later waitrushka powered through the secret room door. her mascara was running. her eyes were puffy. i wonder what happened.

maybe somebody was in the secret room giving birth. or maybe somebody died. or was murdered. by this time the place had basically emptied out and there were only a few other people there with me. i had this weird fantasy of some sort of death in the family, and all the gan eden workers leave out the back to go deal with this crisis, and i am left alone in the restaurant to figure out what happened or close it up or raid the till or stuff some meat pies with traif. would i leave money on the table to pay for my meal? would i invite my friends over to have a glatt kosher party? many questions raised, none answered. i guess this is what they call using your imagination.

i totally underdressed today. it's cold out. wear a sweater.
posted at 2:34 PM

the worst thing about the challenger chronology page is not the happy picture, but the landing time. or lack thereof.

not really any work on the blocks for me today, which makes me extremely nervous. i give it two hours before i get something really hein dumped in my lap.

nin/still so beautiful. makes up for the eh of and all that could have been. i'm not one for crowd noise.
posted at 10:41 AM

it's over. it was over at 830p, finally, and the body count was a dozen quickly pulled nexis articles on the price is right, 45 minutes spent babysitting the fax machine, one slice of shitty pizza, and one accidental "are you an idiot?" look shot at a managing editor. (it's not worth going into, but suffice it to say i couldn't figure out what about the thing she was questioning she couldn't understand, coupled with the fact that i was expected to explain it and the story editor had gone home 4 hours earlier. it's not my fucking responsibility). booked to a bar a couple of blocks away where the entire nascar crew was for our long-awaited soiree. expunged bitterness from this evening and the fact that editor eric and writer rob had both left work at 6p and i had to sit and wait for their story to close, but they did not.

but free beer and free dinner is good. and tomorrow eric and i will watch the second episode of dl, for which i cannot wait.

there's a huge snowstorm in dtw. i am so, so jealous. here there will only be rain and sludge.

i need to sleep for about five straight days.
posted at 11:03 PM

I AM FUCKING THROWING UP
posted at 6:53 PM

i cannot fucking believe this. fucking bob fucking barker fucking spayed fucking neutered.
posted at 6:41 PM

this is cute. the shit i got dumped on my desk when i got to work was all eminently researchable, except for this one item emailed in by tvg bigwig ss about some guy on some show on espn who did some afc/nfc championship game demos with xbox/nfl2k2. yes, those are the specifics i was given. my call to espn goes roughly as follows:

me: "so i need to verify this info but i don't actually know anything, just that xbox and mark malone were involved."
strange pr dude named mac with part-dikembe, part-ahnuldt accent: "so what show was this on?"
me: "i don't know. something that involved football. maybe nfl2night. maybe sportscenter. maybe something else. it was a segment."
dikemuldt: "what day?"
me: "i don't know. i guess maybe friday, saturday or sunday? it had to have been before sunday's games."
dikemuldt: "was it just mark malone?"
me: "well, we think maybe there was somebody else there with him who may or may not also have been named mark."
dikemuldt: "i'll see what i can do."

so then i email the evil ge who is truly the bane of my existence and especially my wednesdays and tell him espn may not be able to dig up whatever this thing was, so be prepared for that. he forwards this to tvg bigwig ss who writes back to both of us: "mark malone doesnt host all that many segments so they're being a bit disingenuous if they're affecting difficulty."

right, i'm sure they're poring over the tapelogs because they like it. i'm sure they're poring over the tapelogs, period. hope the evil ge has a backup item that isn't too difficult to check.

(actually, i don't really care, because i could care less about my job.)

evil ed (not to be confused with the evil ge, since i actually like evil ed, and as such he does not require a definite article) wrote after i sent deadbeat email. might get to see him next weekend. that would be cool.

the shrink and i had the same stupid conversation about blah blah blah childhood and blah blah blah motivation and blah blah blah passive rebellion that we have every week. then she asked why i keep showing up, and i said because i'm supposed to. it's beyond me that people would not show up, or manifest their shrink hatred by being tardy. i still don't know what i'm supposed to be getting out of this, or why it's wrong that i don't think it's necessary or helpful. but according to her the fact that i keep showing up means on some level i want to do it, which actually i think is bull. there's a difference between wanting and hoping, and i'm still waiting for somebody to explain to me exactly what i should be talking about. i have yet to see or feel that this is worthwhile. all my anxiety and depression and shittiness didn't just magically show up a couple of years ago, or five years ago, or eight years ago, or whatever. maybe some things just are, and so there's no point in chasing down the why. we're so fixated on the why, on its existence and meaning and causes and effects, but maybe there isn't a why at all. maybe there's just is.

(which is the reason we have drugs, which i now believe are most helpful. i seriously doubt i'm feeling a bit better because i go in for an hour each week and suffer through what amounts to teeth-pulling of the brain. i could stop going next week forever and not feel any regret.)

"come on, tell me."
posted at 4:42 PM

i hate wednesdays i hate wednesdays i hate wednesdays.

the post office is very ghetto. there was a drunk man mumbling and lumbering about inside, at 930a. the usps employees kept shouting at him to leave, and he kept shouting back that he could stay if he wanted. everything is behind thick bulletproof glass. it took the package window guy five minutes to explain to me how to get my package, which is i pull down a sliding window-thing on my side, then he opens the one on his side and slides the package in the middle, then he closes his and i open mine.

surrogate families rule. i want to get on a plane right now. and not just because i hate wednesdays.

(which i do.)
posted at 10:20 AM

[jameswatch2k]: full of HATE. he was watching a dvd late, 1245a late, but i thought it ended when i went out to listen so i went to bed. and i didn't sleep at all. dozed on and off, twenty minutes at a clip, but it was pretty much bad. plus this goddamn weather has made it too hot to sleep properly anyway. i heard bass all night, but i'm not even sure i heard bass; it might have been phantom imagined bass, and i tried to tell myself that's what it was but i still kept imagining/hearing it.

grr.
posted at 9:12 AM

you get out of work at the actual time you're supposed to, for once, and decide to utilize this earliness by going to the library to return an overdue book. the local branch is open until 8p on mondays; you checked before you left, just to make sure, although the website was not able to tell you how much you owe in late fees. in the glassed hallway waiting for the elevator, you note that it smells like florida: steamy and green and badly in need of ventilation. the elevator arrives, and you walk to the train station and board the uptown local. you disembark at 110th street, walk the three blocks to the library, where you are met with locked doors and dimmed lights.

it's tuesday.

this being a sign of sorts, you take full advantage and walk south. on 105th, just off broadway, sits the abbey pub. it's old but not musty, friendly but not oldboy exclusive, and, sensing that you will not feel uncomfortable or friendless, you plop your bag down next to your barstool and order up a beer. they don't have pint glasses. this discourages you, but not enough to leave. there's a sign behind the bar that says "god might forgive you, but we will not". you look at it for a while and decide it has to do with patrons skipping out on tabs. it's not for a good hour that you notice "9-11" written beneath.

the beer is good. the bartender/waitress looks like the bartender/waitress in the realworld segments of the truman show, which causes you to inwardly smile. you take out your newyorker and read about starting central lines on surgical rotation. a woman at the end of the bar holds a dog on her lap and tells the pair of girls next to her that sometimes barney - that's the dog's name, barney or fred or possibly pebbles - likes a little drink. gin gimlet, she says, and tugs on his leash.

an old man walks in and orders a bowl of soup. "what kind of soup?," the bartress asks. "oh. um..." he readjusts his too-high tweed slacks. "what kind today?" "onion. chili. split pea." he orders split pea. it comes with oyster crackers. he dumps the full bag in his soup, turning it into a swamp of green lumps, each of them aping the inflated chest of a bullfrog. his soup does not say "ribbit." the man slurps.

a couple takes up residence on your other flank. the girl speaks inanities, the boy looks like a stretched-out dave eggers, and you ignore them both in favor of your magazine. but your left ear picks up vibrations and translates them as "intern" and "writing sample" and you realize you are maybe sitting next to somebody in your biz. the biz. so you shift your eyes to an illustration that will not require processing. you eavesdrop. you glean. you file away. she has interns to supervise. recently she had to fire one of them. she does not seem too broken up by this. you deduce. you extrapolate. she is perhaps an associate or assistant editor. they hire a dozen per summer. most of them are legacy, grandfathered in by mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and friends and acquaintances and sometimes even grandfathers, and they must be given jobs no matter what. and they know it, and they act it. she does not fire those. she fires the scrappers, the ones who made it - almost. her boyfriend attends columbia. he wants to be a writer. he doesn't think he has the goods or the experience. she assures him that when she picks interns or freelancers, reads pitches, reads queries, reads last-ditch prayers, she looks only at who they've worked for previously: esquire, newyorker, vanity fair, gq, spin - no, she corrects herself, not even spin - whomever. you think to yourself that she is a media snob. she adds a corollary: if they come from the big j-schools, from columbia or nyu, she looks closer. those applicants have a better chance. she tosses everyone else.

now you want to upchuck your big ten diploma in her girlie absolut citron tonic, along with the fresh beer and side shot of jamesons you've ordered since happy hour is drawing to a close and you must get in as many cheap drinks as you can. but you don't, because the knicks game is about to start on the tv, because she might say something else interesting. she prattles on about the boyfriend's brother and her friends and her mother and does he ever want to go to a real chinese meal? (she's non-fob taiwanese) and that her fellow editorial assistant - that's what she is, she could be you, except you swear you wouldn't be so callow - knows alllllll about boyfriend and wants to meet him.

their conversation fades in and out. the knicks game is close. the fries you ordered are perfect and fresh. you've acquired a taste for jamesons, and this pleases you, because it's writerly and you need the accouterments to remind yourself what you are. you don't flush with drink. you flush with pride.

there's a man now between you and the soup slurper. he looks like bobby knight, but that's probably just be because you have bobby knight on the brain thanks to your stupid, brainless job. he has computer problems. his printer has stopped working. he's running winxp. the bartress is giving him tips. you're not listening. not really. you're listening to the couple, and the game, and the sound of your teeth mashing potato.

but then couple is gone, and so are your food and beverages, and you've been there for two hours just thinking and listening and gaping, so you ask for the check. it's cheap. happy hour is truly a happy hour. bobby knight informs you that soup slurper has been drawing you for the past while. you are not sure how to react, so you paste a grin on your face and play let's pretend. bobby knight reaches to his right and grabs an unfolded paper napkin from soup slurper, and sure enough, there is a vague, vague likeness of you in blue ballpoint. bobby knight is all impressed with soup slurper and points out that he's done not one but two still lifes, one on each side. soup slurper finally speaks up and tells you that you look very serious and deep in thought. he wears a hat. he might be bald underneath.

the right thing to do in this situation, you decide, is to ask if you can keep the napkin. the soup slurper assents. bobby knight observes all this with glee. you mumble something about putting it up on your refrigerator, and bobby knight seems almost offended, like that's not good enough for such a work of art. (the picture is not such a work of art, despite what bobby knight thinks.) you try again and tell him you'll use it as art on your birthday party invitations. you make a show of folding up the napkin and putting it between the pages of the unreturned library book so it doesn't get mangled. you pay the bill, and while you're waiting for change you stare at the basketball game and debate whether you should say something computerly to bobby knight. and you do. you give him some advice and wonder if that will work. he's impressed.

and the change comes, and you tip the bartress, and you gather your things, and as you turn to go, bobby knight wishes you luck with your birthday party. you shake hands with the soup slurper and thank him again for such a special gift. he's already got another napkin out and is busily sketching another patron further down the bar.

it's warmer outside than in the bar. the temperature hit 68F midday; it's january. it's abnormal. a man a few doors down from the bar shouts after you as you're leaving that you don't look old enough to have been in such an establishment. but you didn't get carded. so it doesn't matter.

the busride home is mercifully quick. your apartment is clean. it's a good feeling.

out in the street somebody is shouting "mooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmm." it's loud. it's clear as a bell, the voice sure and steady. you're reminded of how you would yell in the shower when somebody inadvertently turned on the dishwasher, the water going from pleasantly warm to scalding cold - worse than scalding hot - and you would step out of the spray and blast out two notes, "mah" and "om," drawn out spidery long and strong, over and over until the temperature righted itself. the echoes would bounce off the tiled walls. you'd imagine that's what it was like at the bottom of the grand canyon, and years later, when you stopped on the southern edge on a crosscountry trip, you'd shout that magic word and turn your dreams into reality. the bathroom was a wonder of the world in miniature.

the napkin looks lonely on your blank fridge. tomorrow you'll buy a copy of teen people and rip out all the pictures of joshua jackson and justin timberlake. but for now, lonely is okay.
posted at 8:42 PM

you know what sucks? when you get up early to go the post office to claim your package only to discover that the post office is not where you thought it was, so now you have a longer trip to work and not enough sleep and no package.

today was unrelentingly boring. except for when acg shows up at my cube and stares at me for a minute in his acg way and then decides to say something. and that something is could i call abc to get a tape of some story on dna rape kits? and it is just beyond me why he would walk for five minutes to get to my cube when it would have taken him less time to actually make the call himself, and it's not like i don't have other work to do, because i do. and i've had just about enough, so i say: "you walked all the way down here to ask me to make A PHONE CALL?" and he just stood there looking cowed for three minutes and then finally said "yes, i just wanted to see you" like we are pals in his warped little acg mind. he is amusing and fun to toy with, but shit like this just irritates the hell out of me.

anyway they were supposed to send me the transcript but they haven't yet and acg keeps calling and being like 'um [one minute silence] so it hasn't come yet? because blah blah [two minute silence while his hamster brain processes] blah blah.' then he wonders if nexis has the transcript and i say i don't know but i'll check.

now did he really have to call me and suggest i check nexis when he also has nexis access and could have saved himself the time on the phone?

GAH.

i have to return a library book. this might be a good excuse to check out a bar i've noticed.

i'll do that right after i put together my femme celeb crimewave mugshot file. (was delaney posing for her high school senior picture?)
posted at 5:13 PM

in my dream this pack of boys was after me and i was hiding in rooms and garages and mesh screens and around a corner, and the ringleader, who must have been 14 or 15 and looked like somebody but i don't know who, was tracking me, toting a gun, waiting for when he would shoot and kill me. he found me but there were a lot of people around and nobody believed me that he was going to kill me, so he just grinned evil and sat and waited. he leaned back and enjoyed my panic. and at the end, he shot me right in the heart. more than once. there was a lot of blood. the gun was a flat metallic black.

there was also a dog involved and frantic emails for help. and oneness with the corner that provided little shelter and little time.

nascar nascar nascar grr.

why is this office always so fucking cold?
posted at 10:47 AM

bah bobby knight. bah nascar.

yay chicken tacos at jill's.

Sleepy Rummy: alex trebek needs his mustache back
Sleepy Rummy: he looks like such a motard without it
oppsie1: you can give him your goatee
Sleepy Rummy: you can shut up

posted at 7:31 PM

does this picture of sheryl crow trouble anybody else? welcome to the revolution, comrade crow.

we have a winner for best freep story of the year! cecil angel deserves a pulitzer for employing the following phrases in the service of news: A SINNER'S DREAM! BUFFET OF DEBAUCHERY! BAGGIES OF MARIJUANA! A HOUSE OF ILL FAME! SEX FOR A PRICE! DARK AND SMOKY WITH THE STRONG ODOR OF MARIJUANA! 30 NUDE WOMEN! SYPHILIS!

unfortunately, it kind of peters out at the end. i was hoping for something really whizbang, like THIS HOUSE OF ILL FAME WAS FLEETING! or A SINNER'S DREAM ENDS IN A NIGHTMARE! but alas, it was not to be.
posted at 4:46 PM

my ear is thwocking. it started about half an hour ago. it sounds/feels like when you have one of those diaphragmmy things that you turn insideout and set on the table and then they POP! and jump in the air. they're rubber, and brightly-colored. sometimes i want to chew on them. sometimes i want to chew on latex. sometimes i want to chew on rubber.

always i want to chew on deflated blue party balloons. the slippage and the squeaks are perfection.

the sensation is very annoying. once my ear did this for like a week straight. there's no motivation for it, nothing i did. but it was the other ear, the right ear. this is the left.

maybe there's a roach in there. i just walked into my room armed with roach spray and paper towel because i thought i saw a mr roachy on my closet door. that's about 17 feet from here, maybe less. i sprayed, and i slammed, and there was nothing there. it was an errant chunk of plaster.

it's in my ear.
posted at 11:49 PM

brian's song is on espn classic. it's a good tv movie, a classic tv movie.

also, james caan is a hairy mofo. i can't tell which is woolier, his back or his front.

also, my right big toe is fucked up.

god i love mesh shorts.
posted at 9:30 PM

my phone rang at 830a. normally i am not awake at 830a, especially on a sunday, and as such i screen my calls because they are usually either a) a wrong number b) a wrong number c) a telemarketer. this morning, however, they were neither; morrow called alllllll the way from australia, land of fosters beer, baby-eating dingoes and survivor 2, to inform me in person (so to speak, so to hear) that he has a son. i scrambled out of bed and caught the call just before he hung up.

that's pretty rad.

also morrow now has a blog. go read his conservative rhetoric/babble.

jamesons+newcastle is truly my new favorite bar combo.

spent all day with fam. grandma saw my apartment and didn't stroke out. josh is enjoying the ice age joke book, except that he reads all the jokes and doesn't understand that you're not really supposed to say the name of the joke teller. like, "manny: knock knock" instead of "knock knock". this, of course, makes the jokes better, so maybe he's actually onto something.

spent all evening with jill yesterday after badlands with cousino did not come to pass. we ended up renting the first five episodes of twin peaks, and watched the first two. except that the first two is actually the second and third, since the pilot is not included. which totally fucking sucks.

i thought i would be okay to see BOB. i thought i had a handle on the situation and the fear and the terror.

i thought wrong. luckily, jill didn't seem to mind too much when i buried my head between her back and the futon whenever he appeared.

it's the motherfucking tropics in nyc. i wore a tshirt today, sans jacket. it's january. wtf?
posted at 8:36 PM

you know what sucks? when you go to irving plaza to buy tickets to dashboard confessional and the concert is already sold out, that's what sucks.
posted at 3:29 PM

you watch o&a, because you know what's inside those 48 minutes and you want to punish yourself.

so you punish yourself

so you think about things

so you think

so you're glad it's not yesterday and you don't want to die quite as much

so you pretend it's

so you

so you

so you

so you think about things.

"and then the bridge disappears and i’m standing on air with nothing holding me
and i hang like a star
fucking glow in the dark
for all their starving eyes to see
like the ones we’ve wished on"
posted at 12:06 AM

pistons, meet the hawks. hawks, meet chucky atkins.

james, meet my HATE HATE HATE.
posted at 9:23 PM

it's tshirt time. seeing as i wear tshirts year-round since i find it impossible to root out longsleeve, winter-appropriate shirts of which i approve, i need more to add to my arsenal of faux-coolness. inbound. debating. salivating.

my hands look really scary when i make tight fists. my knuckles, i mean. they go white where the skin stretches thing over the outsized bone, the blood pushed out to the moat around each knuck. when i hold them out and away from me, turn them in at each other, they remind me of a sculpture i made during a trip to florida. or at least, i think that's what they remind me of. maybe i invented the sculpture memory, and they actually remind me of something else. maybe i'm remembering making a plaster cast of my fist. but i don't know if that happened either.

i'm unsure.

again, watch the dl. spread the dl love. here's how:

the main page
the all-important schedule

one league, one love.
posted at 6:07 PM

free movies are good. fox was doing an inhouse of ice age, their upcoming cg effort out in march. unfortunately, it treads a lot of the same ground as monsters inc (yin yang animals/monsters are saddled with small human, which at first annoys them but they grow to love; but there is evil afoot where bad animals/monsters want to eat/suck out the brain of the child, blah blah blah) with a healthy dose of the lion king. fortunately, there's a killer scene involving dodo birds that is actually worth paying for. the rest of the thing is pretty hohum, although entertaining enough. john leguizamo works it with a southparkshelly-esque headgear speech impediment. and i wonder what the score/songs are going to be; it was temptracked with stuff from american beauty and back to the future. a lot of ab, to the point where i started facepalming since every time there was a touchyfeely sad scene they played the simple piano melody from lester's post-mortem, and i kept seeing kfs lying in a puddle of blood and he and annette bening spinning around on that whirly flashback thing. and janie.

and janie.

free food and drink is also good. i came away with a snickers and a can of coke. and, best of all, an ice age joke book! it is entitled who you callin' extinct? the coolest joke book ever! and it is full of really horrible puns. the best part is that it is actually a book that will be sold as a tie-in, and lists for $3.99. that frightens me.

why why why?

it's only a matter of time until enron gains status as a suicide cult. sad, yes, but which is worse, the notoriety of being koresh or the notoriety of being responsible for a black monday?

so yeah, i feel a little better today. of course, dinner with relatives tonight will probably tear this house of cards down.

fritterVII: ebert gave "walk to remember" 3 stars
fritterVII: what a fucking tool
oppsie1: there is a god.
oppsie1: he's just hot for mandy moore
fritterVII: i've heard *one* quote in that movie, and it was the most disturbing thing i've ever heard
oppsie1: was it "gee joe, i'd like to suck your dick, but i don't want to catch genital warts"?
fritterVII: there's some part when the token black guy puts on some rap music, and she's like, "turn off that 'soul train'!" and puts on jars of clay
oppsie1: haha
fritterVII: she doesn't care about genital warts
fritterVII: I AM A STATISTIC
fritterVII: thank god for valtrex, too
fritterVII: now i can go kayaking

"and janie."
posted at 1:30 PM

wallow wallow wallow wallow.

down low: life in the d league is so good, i don't know where to start. watch it. espn/espn2, at various weird times. i will expound tomorrow.

didn't do o&a. how not unusual.

did do sushi on the way home from work (saw a fire engine, lights ablaze, out front of the building. fiyah!), because i deserved it. it was really good. it didn't really make me feel better. i charged it, because i deserve to pretend it was free.
posted at 11:36 PM

there's no water in the water cooler and i drank all my previous bottled water, there's a fire alarm going off every two minutes that warns us that they are "checking on the situation," my story is closed, fuck this, i'm going home.
posted at 5:55 PM

this is just spiraling. now it turns out that gabe made a donation (and what is that? it's such a general thing. "i made a donation." of what? sperm?) in honor of the wedding and i somehow completely ignored/forgot/whatever about this and now i look like a complete and total deadbeat. i suspect he is secretly pleased with this. their perception of me, as in of me not giving them/doing anything. not my resultant feelings of worthlessness and guilt, i mean.

this is my own stupid selfish spleeny scroogey fault.

i think i'm now in the proper mindset to finally watch the o&a i've been putting off, seeing as i feel like somebody has kicked me in the stomach five times with a jackboot, and on the fifth kick the jackboot actually disappeared into my gut, and now i'm about to puke it up.
posted at 4:48 PM

grandma is in town and took me to lunch. this is not fun because while it constitutes free food, it means i am captive for at least an hour to be browbeaten and humiliated and dressed down and lectured to about how i 1) should go back to school and get a masters in liberal arts (wtf?) 2) had too narrow a focus in undergrad (translation: wasted four years of my life and education) 3) only professionals tutor so what am i going to do about that 4) i looked good at the wedding but in the past sometimes my ass has looked bigger, thus confirming all my worst fears 5) oh and why don't you dress better? 6) oh and why haven't you called that bartender/commercial real estate agent boy you met at brunch the other week? 7) oh and what do you want to do with your life for the fifty billionth time 8) etc.

this also includes me mentioning that talk folded as more support for why the media biz is a shambles and i am getting out, and she's telling me that i am better than all those more experienced people who are now out of jobs and in the same employment pool that i am, and i point out that that is not the reality of the situation at all, the reality of the situation is these unknown souls are more experienced and are better looking on paper and better suited to whatever it is they're applying for. i might be qualified to be president but that doesn't mean people are going to elect me or donate to my campaign war chest when there are a thousand better candidates simply by virtue of track record and experience and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. well, in her reality i could apparently be president and edit the new yorker and cure herpes in my off time. would that it were her reality.

dad heard from shelly that i wanted to tutor kids. dad was all excited. dad doesn't usually get excited about any developments in my goal scheme, seeing as there usually are none other than "that life doesn't suck so much." grandma was not. grandma set right in with criticisms.

dad was excited. dad was impressed. dad was proud that i had traveled down this path of thinking. i don't know if it was because he heard it secondhand from shelly, and she talked it up all brave and fabulous, or if he would have been that way anyway. but it doesn't really matter.

i win either way.

anyway, now i feel like shit and want to go home and twitch on the couch for many hours.

(note that i will suffer through these lunches every time because that is my family lot in life and it's nice that she at least cares. and i am only presenting the negative. the positive includes the fact that her crabcakes were very good and she gave me a big bite.)

do i even have to point out how ridiculous this company-wide email is?

From: Cathy Mroczka
To: All NY Editorial
Subject: staples catalog

Will the person who has the staples catalog please return it?

posted at 3:14 PM

the new promise ring album is really good and really flaming lips-esque. these two observations are not mutually exclusive.

keep me calm.
posted at 11:56 AM

more proof that crackrock is a growing problem in nyc: the new york times has positive things to say about that 80s show. who the fuck is neil genzlinger? he needs glasses and a cochlear implant.

is irony dead? sarah tippit seems to be under that impression. billy tsangares, however, is not.

here are some questions from the back of a book called the antichrist 666 i saw a man reading on the subway today. we should all ask ourselves these important questions from time to time.

Who is the Beast?
How do I recognize his image?
What is the mark of the Beast?
What is the number of the Beast?

posted at 11:11 AM

kwik meal #5 is alive! i was walking to the trinipak cart to get lunch after shrinkage, not really expecing km5 to be there but hoping all the same, and there he was! good old mohammed. good old chicken pita. he told me that he "lost a paper" which leads me to believe that either he really lost it and had to wait to get new licensing, or maybe there was a health issue or a roach issue or something. i'm trying not to think about it because the chicken pita was as fabulous as ever. i'll go to trinipak tomorrow for curry chicken over rice.

the evil ge gave me zero backup for c&j this week. he's such a fucker. however, i'm not even angry angry about it, not freaking out. i just don't care. i'm annoyed, but i'm not freaking. this is a good thing.

i also emailed onmag editor, and feldy, and i want my damn money from damn timeinc dammit.

spam of the day:

Subject: HELLO I FUCK COWS PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE!

posted at 4:32 PM

i hate wednesdays i hate wednesdays i hate wednesdays.
posted at 11:51 AM

[jameswatch2k]: you think that maybe you're just a little inured, but then he picks a cd that is pure bass. as in, no stops, no beats, just endless, endless, ENDLESS FUCKING BASS. nothing like fucking asshole shithead to ruin a good day.

i swear to god i am like the tacoma narrows bridge and it is just a matter of time before i completely come apart.

at the movie last night, a woman sat there drinking a can of slimfast. through a straw. i find this really strange.

<vivid> fuck my uncle is such a punda
<mahn> wtf is a punda?
<vivid> you know.. i dont remember..
<mahn> you cumby
<vivid> it's funny when you say it with a paki accent
<mahn> haha
<vivid> poon-dah
<mahn> everything is funny in a paki accent man

posted at 9:48 PM

disney scared me before, but now disney really scares me.

In 2003, ABC Sports will carry the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA Finals and the BCS Championship game.

i mean, jesus, that's a lot of sports.

my life is ridiculous. i sit around for years having a private haha about the name roush popping up every so often on xf, and now i'm having a random email dialogue with roush himself about twin peaks and how cbs sucks and everything in between. RIDICULOUS.

i am vaguely underwhelmed by the strokes/is this it.

jill's friend laura is at school in dublin. apparently so is somebody else. from the archives:

Twingo16: guess who laura saw today on campus?
oppsie1: my husband?
Twingo16: yes
Twingo16: joshua jackson!
oppsie1: NO
Twingo16: YEW
oppsie1: NO
Twingo16 : YES
oppsie1: NO
oppsie1: what the fuck?
Twingo16: she stopped someone to ask him for the time and it was HIM!
oppsie1: NONONO
oppsie1: she is making it up!
Twingo16: NO!
oppsie1: it seriously makes no sense as to why he would be going there
Twingo16: he is a drama student. got me
oppsie1 : did she talk to him?
oppsie1: she totally should have been like 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!!!"
oppsie1: except maybe not so loud
Twingo16: i just looked up a fansite and his favorite vacation spot is ireland
oppsie1 : did she seriously not talk to him?
oppsie1: it's bizarre because it's so on the dl
Twingo16: yes. "I noticed American accent, and literally the SECOND he went on his merry way I said out loud to self and undoubtedly to him since he couldn't have been more than three steps away, "OH MY GOD THAT WAS PACEY!!!!!!!!!!!!". Girls, I'm just *that* suave."
oppsie1: HA
oppsie1: i pee at the thought of her actually doing that
Twingo16: me too
oppsie1: she needs to engineer another chance meeting
oppsie1: and then they can become friends in expatriotism
Twingo16: he was wearing a north face jacket and olive green cargos
Twingo16: SERIOUSLY
oppsie1: uNF
Twingo16: she should be like, pace, can you help me act out this play? i think i would understand it better
oppsie1: she should be like, pace, can you help me have this baby? i think i would like the way it looked better

posted at 12:29 PM

todd solondz is a weirdo. although i do find his preoccupation with children and rape, and the different definitions and circumstances of, a very interesting thread through his work. but dayum, he's a weirdo, and he definitely gets off on the fact that he gets these movies made, and that he provokes, and blah blah. it's like this weird(o) pretentiousness in his dealings with people who question him and the fact that he's succeeded in putting something on a screen that nobody's done yet.

stop laughing.

also i am a total fucking wuss daddy's girl, and that drives me nuts.

stop laughing.

today i saw a fat man wearing both a belt and suspenders.

soon i will relay the subway insanity from the weekend. but not now.
posted at 10:55 PM

so it turns out that my copy grief happened thanks to the spiffy new copier, which apparently has a lot of cool buttons but can't focus properly on a binding. the old copier in the library did everything without any trouble.

grr.

i spent the rest of the afternoon, which is, let's see, coming up on 4 hours now, trying to ferret out susanna thompson's age. and a weird email trade with roush that i think stems from my inability to properly parse a sentence because i'm a moron. but at least i've dropped my short-lived series bombs (dotcomedy, manchester prep) on him to much fanfare and welcome, and we commiserated and lamented the tv season, especially o&a. sigh. i suppose i have to watch the episode i have sitting on tivo sometime soon.

it hurts to think about it. bleed american not helping matters. but i don't mind.

"and i'm sorry that i'm such a mess
i drank all my money could get
i took everything you let me have and then i never loved you back"
posted at 4:46 PM

you know what sucks? when you spend three hours of your life copying tvg star trek stories and then your boss tells you to do it all over again because some of the page bindings are too blurry. especially when you haven't slept the night before.

KILL KILL KILL.
posted at 10:23 AM

napping in the afternoon teaches us two lessons. one, that i will then not be able to sleep that night. two, that i dream of things like parties with william h macy, eating with my family at a long bench-like table and my father wants to introduce me to some movie guy (not bill h, though) and my mouth is full of ice cubes that i am simultaneously trying to chew and let dribble out onto the table so i tell him to leave me alone because i'm busy. and that i wake up in a puddle of drool, my face slick.

***
Squig heard the noise crawl under his door. Bren's breathing didn't miss a beat, but Squig couldn't turn off the beehive hum of voices, chairs scraping, doors opening. He got out of bed and went into the hall. The air was cool. It smelled like cigarettes, more so than usual. He continued to the kitchen, where he found his father sitting alone, staring at the back door, dressed in dark clothing, a knit cap pushed up on his scalp like an extra head.

"Dad, you look like a totem pole."

His father looked consternated. He pulled the hat off, balled it up and stuck it in his back pocket.

"Funny, Bob."

"You're going somewhere? Where're you going? It's dark out."

"Just going out to work."

"But you already came home from work."

"Yeah, I left something there. I have to go get it."

"Oh. Okay."

"Go back to bed, okay?"

Squig stood looking at him a minute before turning to go. He saw something unfamiliar marked on his father's forehead and under his eyes.

He didn't know what to call it then. Later, when he saw it on his own face as he laced his sneakers before every game, before every school day as he dressed and combed his hair, before answering the telephone and attending the parties and breathing the every waking moment, every time Bren's car skidded onto the driveway and his mother coughed up a wad of black phlegm between Marlboros and his heart sped at the thought of a girl, he'd think about that night and wonder why his father looked so scared.

**

Somewhere in the depths of his shadow world, where he was the older brother and all the toys on the store shelves were strewn over his bedroom floor and he drank chocolate syrup instead of orange juice with breakfast, Squig saw his eyelids lighten. It was like Christmas morning mass, like the sun hitting the stained glass window right when Father McNabb slipped into the third dominus vobiscum, covering the priest with blurred circles of holy color. It pulled him to the surface of consciousness, and he opened his eyes to find that the cheap, crayon scribble-covered wood that kept Bren suspended four feet above had been replaced by his father's face. It wasn't smiling. It looked different than before. It looked sad. There were half-scabbed scratches and liquid-shiny patches where stubble should have been. Squig shut his eyes, squeezed them there for a few seconds, willing the image gone. He opened them again.

The face was still there. It spoke.

"Hey, Bobby Boo."

Saliva seeped into Squig's mouth, the slow flood he needed to grease his tongue before speech. "Hi."

His dad didn't say anything else. He ran his thumb over Squig's brow.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

He looked around the room, then back at his son, not answering for a full minute. "Yeah."

Squig didn't think he sounded like somebody who had found something. Squig thought he sounded like somebody who had lost something.

"I'm glad," he said, and let his eyelids shut again. He didn't try to reopen them. "What was it?"

"Just this thing I needed. You go back to sleep now, okay?"

"Okay."

"Don't dream anything scary."

"I won't."

"Unless it's a five-headed monster with green teeth."

"Yeah, those are cool."

"G'night, Bobby."

Squig didn't answer. Clouds covered the sun that had leaked through the church windows of his head. He drifted. He inhaled slow and exhaled steady.

He didn't move when he felt twin splashes hit his cheeks. He drifted and breathed and dreamed of rain. He dreamed of sea serpents and coffee drips that smelled like burnt chicken.

In the morning, he climbed the stepstool in front of the bathroom sink. He covered his toothbrush in mint paste and looked up at his face in the mirror. What he saw made him lean in close, nose against nose with himself. He made out a faint track down one cheek, stretching from just under eye socket to chin. His tongue confirmed its saltiness.

It was an invisible cousin of the other side, which was a rusty brown. He poked at it with his finger. Rough. He scratched at the color with his fingernail. Dried blood flaked off.

On his way past his parents' bedroom, he saw that his father's side of the bed was smooth. Nobody had dreamed there the previous night.

Squig became the de facto house captain of dreaming. He went to sleep every night wishing to wake up covered in bicolored tear streaks. He wanted slumber-smudged clown makeup to bring on funny faces and laughter and circus peanut joy and strong hands etched with paternal love.

But in the morning, he was always just Squig.

And he was always afraid.
***
posted at 2:01 AM

the golden globes were a total hoot. i have never before seen so much hideous fashion in one place. did sela's kids attack her dress this morning with a pair of scissors and she had to make do with what was left? who lets these people out of the house? luckily this was all counterbalanced with a veritable landslide of hot, hot, HOT men who must fight to be my boyfriend. and how unexpected that boyfriends ralph and jeremy were there. mmm.

did sorkin and rachel griffiths and harrison ford all share a crack pipe before the show? survey says: likely. also i do believe that david e kelley, elliott smith and richie sambora are identical triplets.

also how fucking glorious is it going to be when come what may gets nominated for best song oscar. in my vision of heaven this involves nic up on stage trading lyrics with ewan, who will serenade from his seat in the audience while sporting the magnificent hair he debuted at the globes tonight. (was he wearing eyeliner or something, though? must have been having a velvet goldmine moment.)

good news. the big scab i've had on my knee for almost a month after an incident in jamaica finally fell off. i may even avoid a scar. i'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, though.

(it occurs to me i never updated on the final word on my finger. it grew back. the divot/slice was replaced with scar tissues, which feels really weird when i press it or even just touch it with my thumb. which i do without thinking about it, because it's kind of weird cool. doesn't happen much unless i instigate it, though, because it's on the tip and not the ball.)

i showered at 430a and slept on my wet hair and wore a hat all day and now my hair looks like i straightened it. weird.

"hey
don't write yourself off yet
it's only in your head you feel left out or looked down on
just try your best
try everything you can
and don't you worry what they tell themselves when you're away
it just takes some time
little girl, you're in the middle of the ride
everything everything will be just fine
everything everything will be alright alright"
posted at 1:30 AM

[jameswatch2k]: well, i was planning to get more than five hours of sleep, but somebody had other ideas. HATE.

i don't think it's possible for a song that somehow involves crimson and clover to suck. it just isn't.

someday i'm going to get a subwoofer of my own.

"i'm on my feet i'm on the floor i'm good to go
now all i need is just to hear a song i know"
posted at 10:17 AM

oy oy.

four pints and i'm not totally trashed, just in a good place; maybe my tolerance hasn't depleted like i thougt it had. then again, they were consumed between like 10 and 230a. so that's not so much.

lightweight. damn drugs.

snatch!elizabeth is cool. (not to be confused with action!scully.)
posted at 4:03 AM

ps it's snowing. small flakes, not the great big ones that i long for, but i'll take what i can get.

it tastes like clean.
posted at 7:16 PM

mission accomplished. black hawk down and lotr, hoooooo. i was worried since it was a rookie sneak at loews 34th, but it was fine; they foolishly have put their bathrooms on an entirely different floor from all theatres, smack in between the two theatre floors, which makes it pretty easy. thought both were okay, but didn't blow me away. i admire the effort put forth in lotr, and i'll go see the rest. bd was pretty much just a lot of shooting and horrifying thoughts about the awfulness that takes place every day on this planet. and the futility. and the waste. i'm not quite sure why it's supposed to be oscarbait.

especially since it doesn't have owen wilson, which i went in thinking it did, and spent the entire movie trying to figure out when he was going to show up; i actually thought maybe there was going to be an entire third act rescue extraction of ron eldard, but then the movie ended and there was a postscript about how he was released from captivity 11 days later. so, i'm just crazy.

(actually, not completely; i was confusing bd with behind enemy lines. they both have similar trailers, etc.)

some guy during lotr was coughing up several lungs and actually spitting his loogeys on the floor. it was ever so foul and then i started freaking out about a massive plague he was spreading ala the stand. i hate people.

i am in love with jimmy eat world.
posted at 6:55 PM

been up for a while. went to bed early again, so i got a good amount of sleep. it's a nice feeling. the headache i have isn't, but that's why god invented otc painkillers.

no plans today, as it turns out. i think this is going to be a me day, where i go get some tamales and spend the rest of the day in the dark. possibilities on the blocks: a beautiful mind, blackhawk down, lotr. i'm thinking papaya king for dinner to complete the day, but i may do tacos instead. or something else. or nothing.

new nba spot==pink+bobblehead. weird.
posted at 10:13 AM

[jameswatch2k]: he is unbelievable. even before the doorbell stopped ringing, he grunts "i'll cut it down" through the door and i say "thanks james" through door and retreat upstairs.

i have my doubts that it will be cut down, but i'll go worry about it in bed with my sound-squashing box fan.
posted at 12:36 AM

there was a beautiful boy on the subway home who works at credit suisse first boston according to his hockey bag, in which he was presumably carrying his hockey gear to the hockey rink at the north end of the park in order to play hockey. he was like a more genteel, fine-boned matt damon, all the broadness of matty d's bone structure filed down to an angular magnificence. even his hair was wonderful. everything was just right.

i wonder if he noticed me staring every time i finished a paragraph in the excellent story on mormonism in this week's new yorker. maybe, maybe not. joseph smith, i'm sure, would not have approved.

i really hate this sign language commercial for amerifuck dsl. it feels wrong and awful and makes me want to kill things.

[jameswatch2k]: so does he. i'm going down in five minutes, unless the dvd he's watching ends before then. highly doubtful.
posted at 12:24 AM

you know, i wrote some good stuff in college.

i wish i still did. i wish i felt like i still could.
posted at 11:06 PM

happiness is a warm paycheck.

reggie miller is ageless. i could eat his ears for supper.

(i do have a vague collection of food in my fridge, including the best yogurt i have ever had. i don't quite understand how run-of-the-mill, two-for-a-buck-fitty breyer's 99% fat-free fruit-on-the-bottom mixed berry could be so sublime, but i had it for dinner last night because i felt i should eat something even though i was lacking in the hunger and appetite and it was one of the best things i've ever tasted. of course, it could have just been that specific container of yogurt, a perfect XX ounces of unsurpassable ferment that will never be repeated. maybe i should not eat yogurt ever again, so that i'm not disappointed. so that i don't taste inferiority.

perfection is hard to accept. perfection makes you want to stop trying.

perfection is dangerous.

chicken schnitzel and vinegar-doused glatt kosher french fries keep me alive and humming.).

"well, what's the difference between fat-free and, like, non-fat?"
posted at 8:25 PM

brain falling out ears.
posted at 5:05 PM

today's scary fact: since 1991, tvguide has done some 23 star trek-related covers. four in 1993 alone. scary.

scary cool.
posted at 2:11 PM

things i like about my job:
- i can watch trl
- i can wear whatever i want, up to and including crotchless panties
- i have a 20" trinitronitor that probably weighs more than i do
- free bottled water from water cooler
- proximity to good, cheap lunch food
- i can disappear for hours, whether or not i'm in the building
- enough downtime to conduct my own business
- use of the mailroom
- a dorkycool id badge

things i hate about my job:
- everything else

watching people eat is scary. especially when the people in question include you.
posted at 4:48 PM

kwik meal #5 update: still missing. considered asking homeless man if he knew where the cart has gone, changed mind when gangrene was observed.

instead i got from the trini-pak cart which is a couple of trinidadian pakistanis who make an excellent curry chicken. their hot sauce is h-o-t. i don't know how people can eat that and say it's not hot enough. anyway, i shall be returning. good value, good food.

knee-victim antonio mcdyess sez: "I want to come back pain-free. If it's still not pain-free in February, I am wondering whether it will be worth it. We don't have a winning record. I am trying to think positive still, but I am just always thinking about my career. I'm not saying I am not coming back or trying to make a decision not to come back. I want to come back this year. I want to come back healthy and strong."

translation: "squeezing the stress ball in physical therapy is more fun than playing with this bunch of clowns. i never want to suit up for them again. please trade me."
posted at 1:00 PM

what is wrong with me? why do i not email the people i should? dinner with cousino, which was actually just beer and french fries, was really nice. it's nice to have history with people. it's nice to hang out.

well good goddamn.

my boyfriend mark did his dq duty. he is so magnificent.

it's a minidisc night. i got on this new site and now i've got a bunch of new music. i'm so psyched. soooooo psyched.

the shrink wants me to be angry at my mother, and i had a non-butt clenching conversation with my dad on the phone tonight.

i should just go to sleep.

<grep_> you should try nyquil man. it's green death in a bottle.
<nightfire> green death?
<nightfire> like.. environmentalist death?
<grep_> no, like the color of the liquid is green
<nightfire> oh

posted at 11:02 PM

kula.
posted at 8:35 PM

thing are looking grim. aside from the morning o&a shittiness, kwik meal #5 is missing once again. if this carries through to next week i'm going to be very sad. i want my chicken pita.

i might actually be done with my work for the day, but don't tell anybody. i also might be having dinner with cousino. tell whomever you want.
posted at 4:22 PM

alright, frequenter of times square, fess up. i know a thing or two about a thing or two. such as i need to get out more since everybody in the world knows NAKED WITH HIS UNDERWEAR ON COWBOY except for me.

(more proof of the uncool. although in my defense i was gone pretty much the whole time his celebrity in nyc was taking shape. actually, i'm not defending it, i don't care when he showed up, he is new to me. like when i wear my favorite shirt but meet somebody new, it's new to you. ho ho ho.)

and ps he is way less buff than he is in that picture, where clearly his head was pasted on somebody else's torso. or he's let himself go to seed lately. either way.
posted at 11:28 AM

as much as i understand, i'll never understand.

worst. day. inawhile.

puking uncontrollably with large brown chunks of HATE and rough pink bubbles of RAGE and a green liquid mess of SAD.

sigh. at least i have last week's ep still on my tivo, waiting to be watched. i've been teasing out the sitdown just to make it that much sweeter, as nypd was last night by watching last week's and then this week's.

the worst part is crying tears of ACCEPTANCE.
posted at 11:01 AM

damn. it was jessica's birthday yesterday and they put her on the teevee. crazy.

if people call me back today might not be horrible. jill faxed me the split decisions puzzle from two sundays ago in nytimes so that will keep me busy. i love this shit.

the research dept had post-holiday lunch yesterday. this involves going to this restaurant across broadway and eating mediocre pizza on tvg's dime, something i can't complain about. actually, i can complain about most of the pizzas having either pepperoni or olives on them, neither of which i eat. couldn't shove down more than a single piece anyway. on the walk to the restaurant, there was a guy in the middle of broadway, like in the middle of the street, right by trl. i think for positioning so he could get some cameratime. he was wearing a sort of cowboy hat. he had long flowing trash locks ala kid rock. he had a guitar and was singing.

and he was wearing nothing but tighty whities.

(he had written "NAKED MAN" on the back of his underwear, which seems to me a contradiction in terms. but whatever.)

the best part was that there were like five traffic cops directing traffic but not paying a lick of attention to inthebuff tannen. guess they didn't want him to give him the satisfaction.

er, you know what i mean.
posted at 10:20 AM

nobody trusts me around here anymore. just because i fucked up jack lemmon's birthday.. you know, i bet i actually got it right and he was just fudging for 76 years. boss robin calls to ask (and she is like the twentieth person to ask me today) if we can really call tombstone a "hit". okay, look: i dug up like a million goddamn clippings from nexis, it made $55 million which was a nice chunk of change back in 1994 (released xmas 93), and don't second-guess me because i do plenty of that myself.

tombstone, for its part, is really one of life's greatest pleasures, in a popcorny, silly sort of way. val kilmer is strangely mesmerizing in his sweaty, hacking coughy, whiskey-swillingly fab performance. nobody gets tb like vally mcvalval. i mean, he gets to go to a sanatorium. that's the life. plus he gets all the good lines.

ok corral movies are a lost art. wyatt earp was tedious but sort of weirdly interesting. tombstone rocked the house. kirk douglas's chin chasm steals the show in gunfight at the ok corral, plus there's a rare jo van fleet appearance. my darling clementine is a goddamn masterpiece. henry fonda is so cool. who else gets to be both abe lincoln and wyatt earp? hour of the gun is sort of weak, but the cast is good. it's just slow. (warning, bad pun approaching) more like two hour of the gun.

is it scary that i've seen five movies that recreate the same thing? plus this terrible pbs-like thing that was one of those "dramatic" recreations, like a semi-respectable rescue 911.

how come john wayne never made an ok corral movie? or clint? hmm. maybe one with clint as earp and tom cruise as doc. and the baldwin brothers will play the clantons. ohhhh shit. i'm drafting a letter to harvey right now. then i'm going to write a female stage musical called catfight at the ok corral. i picture mary-louise parker as wyatt and faith prince as doc. i'd make mary-louise doc, but she already did such a good job with slow death in fried green tomatoes that she'll probably want to explore new emotions.

i like it when my short sleeves are short. it makes me feel taller.

"boot hill, boot hill
so cold, so still"
posted at 4:53 PM

i was supposed to be asleep a while ago but instead i am helping dear brother with his entrance essay for the undergrad school of social work. what a load of crap these guys want you to write. does anybody not bullshit? i mean, really.

my wall/ceiling has not been fixed from the weekend's leak heard round the apartment. my shower tiles, however, have been re-rubber sealed all up the corner wall seams, which is weird since it wasn't like the seal was cracking. i walk in, and my toilet seat is completely closed, which is weird because i'm pathetic and don't close the lid when i leave for the day just in case the roaches want to take a bath. so obviously the mexican mafia was in my apartment doing god knows what in my bathroom for god knows why. and i lift the lid and discover that they did the most bizarre, unexpected thing: they cleaned my toilet bowl. like, i clean my toilet bowl, yes, but i know when it's been recleaned by somebody other than me. they licked the fucker spic and span.

this leads me to believe that the mexican mafia was shitting in my commode.

MY commode.

is nothing scared?

i did the online chat thing again with smartenergy. i'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say my stuff isn't even entered in the system yet so they can't cancel it. what a fucking bureaucracy. also, my chat rep was the ubiquitous brandon roberts, which morrow and i decided must be a fake name. morrow subsequently hit up the chat and who should service him but brandon roberts. he refused to admit that his name wasn't really brandon roberts, though. somebody call 20/20.

"is there such a word as intolerabler?"
posted at 1:17 AM

so last week this huckster named chris spence, who looked like a medium-sized james (where james is small; perhaps his rings constrict his growth like the way the japanese bind little girls' feet, so he would have been chris spence-sized had he not fallen in with the jewelry set), knocked on my door while i was not writing the stack attack. he knocked on the door of every apartment in the building trying to get tenants to switch their electricity (and gas, but i don't pay gas, so) from coned to smartenergy, an esco. i've been getting little brochures, put out by coned, about escos in my bill for many months now, and allegedly they are all legit and shit. they lock you into a rate for a contract period and even if coned's rate goes up, yours does not because you're not really buying the energy through coned. although you're still serviced by them.

yes, it's very confusing.

the flip side is that if coned's rate goes down, you're still paying the same rate to the esco so now you're paying more than you'd have to with coned. but i am a total pushover, and if somebody came to my door selling shares of stock in a diamond mine in south africa or perhaps an ugly nun collecting money for poor orphans, i would be hard-pressed to say no. and chris spence was well schooled in the hard sell. and i was standing there in my pajamas, because i drop my pants pretty much the second i get home from work. because i can.

i asked him if landlord steve knew he was in the building and he didn't really give me a straight answer.

so i signed up, because it seemed like a good idea at the time and chris spence promised no cancellation fees. only later did i realize he signed me up for a goddamn 12-month contract when i seriously doubt i will be living in my apartment let alone nyc, and then i read the back of the contract and it had all this shit about cancelling within five days or be subject to a termination fee, and i hit the roof. then i kept forgetting to call and scream at them, or i called after hours, and it was the weekend, and blah blah blah. so i've now been on hold with them for 30 minutes. the wait is significantly shorter for online chat support, but the customer service reps are (i pray) far more stupid.

Brandon Roberts: Thank you for contacting SmartEnergy. My name is Brandon Roberts. How may I help you
Erin Podolsky: i would like to cancel my service with smartenergy and go back to coned
Erin Podolsky: i anticipate moving in the next few months so a 12 month contract is no good to me, i don't want to have to pay the termination fee when i move.
Erin Podolsky: i just signed up a few days ago
Brandon Roberts: Ms. Podolsky, Smartenergy has gotten rid of the early termination fees, do you still want to cancel this account?
Erin Podolsky: that's not what it says on the back of my contract
Erin Podolsky: my contract says i will be charged $35 for early termination.
Brandon Roberts: Ms. Podolsky the contract you are currently holding does not reflect the change made effective Dec 15, 2001
Erin Podolsky: is that new information available online anywhere? i'd like to see it myself.
Brandon Roberts: Yes, you may go to www.smartenergy.com and view this information.
Erin Podolsky: i looked on the site and did not see it anywhere, can you give me a specific url?
Brandon Roberts: The url I gave you previously has that information
Erin Podolsky: that is a large website
Erin Podolsky: i looked through it to the best of my abilities but could not find the information about no termination fees
Erin Podolsky: what specific page is it on? like www.smartenergy.com/nofees.html or something?
Brandon Roberts: I apologize I do not have a specific url
Erin Podolsky: in that case i would like to cancel my account, in my experience things that customer service reps tell me are not the same as seeing a written contract.
Brandon Roberts: May I have your account number please?
Erin Podolsky: is that the number written on my contract? it is XXX. i do not have my coned acct number available, it is at home and i am at work.
Erin Podolsky: if you need my coned acct # please tell me how late the online chat is open today and i will try again later.
Brandon Roberts: You can access this feature until 8:00pm tonight, is there anything else I can assist you with?
Erin Podolsky: no thank you. have a nice day.
Brandon Roberts: Thank you for considering SmartEnergy for your energy solutions. Do you have any further questions or concerns at this time?
Brandon Roberts: We hope that we have been helpful. Thank you for your interest in SmartEnergy.
Brandon Roberts: Have a great evening

i'm very proud of myself for being so anally polite and stilted. aren't you? and how fake a name is brandon roberts? that's almost as bad as todd vogel.
posted at 6:22 PM

meat dumplings with soup from gan eden==yum. and i got a stereo extension cable from rat shack, finally. but on my way i discovered something potentially really really bad: kwik meal #5 is MISSING. it wasn't there last week when i went looking for it, but i chalked that up to it being 530p and dark out, even though their sign always says open til 9p or so.

i will continue checking throughout the week, but this could be really really not good. crumb.

so the plan is to make a man out of leslie nielsen and write a dramatic vehicle for him in which he plays a recovering alcoholic who must repair his relationship with his estranged narcoleptic son's family after the son buys the farm but the twist is that the father slipped up on his sobriety just once and in that instant hit and run his son, who was sleeping in the middle of the road. it's going to be called between a woman's legs. and somebody might eat ant poison. or arsenic. which in the 1953 joseph cotten film a blueprint for murder are one and the same.

or i'll just do nanowrimo next year and the protagonist will bear an uncanny resemblence to leslie nielsen.

Wainstead \ [to oppsie]: btw i've decided to stay in nyc
Wainstead \ [to oppsie]: but i need a job soon
Wainstead \ [to oppsie]: or freelance work.
the bob-rob oppsie [to Wainstead \]: i hear mcd's is hiring.
Wainstead \ [to oppsie]: you can tell me more over lunch
[the next day]
Wainstead \ pages: yesterday you mentioned someone was hiring... mcs or something like that...?
Wainstead \ pages: and i forgot to ask you over lunch
You paged Wainstead \ with: whaaaa? i did?
You paged Wainstead \ with: who's mcs?
Wainstead \ pages: i don't know. that's not the right acronym. i think the acronym started with an 'm'
Wainstead \ pages: sounded like you said 'mcs'\
You paged Wainstead \ with: i'm honestly blanking.
Wainstead \ pages: shit. it's not in my buffer.
You paged Wainstead \ with: any other context?
[erin goes through her buffer]
You paged Wainstead \ with: oh.
You paged Wainstead \ with: steve.
Wainstead \ pages: i think it was the tail end of our avalon conversation right before lunch... and i asked about anyone hiring, like tvguide or whoever...
You paged Wainstead \ with: the bob-rob oppsie [to Wainstead \]: i hear mcd's is hiring.
You paged Wainstead \ with: MCD'S, STEVE.
Wainstead \ pages: aha! mcdonalds!
Long distance to Wainstead \: the 808 state oppsie facepalms.

"who's the one who loves you like i do
forgiving after all you've put them through
i'm the one who looks the other way
and one and one and one is
yesterday"
posted at 4:53 PM

my street is always covered in dogshit. the sidewalks, i mean. people do not know how to clean up after their dogs in harlem, or even how to curb them, and there is invariable mashed-up dog doo tracked all over the block as people step on it and drag it and ride over it with scooters or laundry carts or hoopties or whatevers. i step carefully when i walk, eyes always on the ground, avoiding the mess as best i can. it's almost a joke, really. yesterday i left for chinatown and observed a perfect mound of turd in the center of the sidewalk as i walked to the subway. it was impossibly symmetrical, like a road wrapping around a mountain. and as i passed it by, i bet myself that by the time i returned, it would be smashed by some idiot who wasn't looking where they were going, spreading pestilence and shit all over the block.

i won. the pile was decimated. people are pathetic.

this may or may not be a lowkey week. i don't seem to be down for that much on the sked, but i have my doubts that will continue. one thing i'm working on was written by.. hochman. i should email him. although i'm sure i'll have to soon enough. swoon. hochman.

dream last night was really evil and full of rejection and wrong movie times and sand and large, sharp-shaped objects. gah.

ted demme has followed in the footsteps of such luminaries as hank gathers and reggie lewis. oh well.

i'm now severely paranoid about shrink skedding. i've got a meeting at 3p on wed, which i will get back for in time unless i get run over, but what if i get a surprise meeting during shrink time? scary thought. brings much worryation.

the word of the day is: contretemps.
posted at 1:22 PM

it's the mountain challenge: shawn kemp vs desagana diop. the title decision is going to kemp, given that portland is up 30 points, 82-51, with 6:26 to go in the fourth quarter.

jill and i made dinner. spinach salad is so my new fave. i could eat raw spinach til i'm green in the face. also a glass and a half of fresh milk. except then i had huge stomach trouble when i got home, so wtf? i'd say perhaps i'm becoming lactose intolerant except that i believe that affliction is a myth.

aw. it's so cute when he proves he's his father's son. and when he brings us the Best Article Lead Ever.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush fainted for a brief time in the residence of the White House Sunday while eating a pretzel and watching a professional football game on television, the White House said.

having to work tomorrow sucks. not having to spend the day worrying about extracurricular writing doesn't. goodnight world.

oppsie1: i wonder if i'm becoming lactose intolerant
oppsie1: which would be amusing if i believed it was an actual thing
oppsie1: but i think it's bullshit
Sleepy Rummy: you think lactose intolerant is bullshit?
oppsie1: yes
oppsie1: it's made up
oppsie1: by THE MAN
oppsie1: to sell more pills
Sleepy Rummy: i see
Sleepy Rummy: kinda like add
oppsie1: yes
oppsie1: i drank like two big glasses of milk at jill's and now my stomach is like destroyed
Sleepy Rummy: i guess diabetes could be too
oppsie1: but who knows what caused it
oppsie1: diabetes is a rumor that started with lee harvey oswald
Sleepy Rummy: a ploy by the snack food industry to sell more snacks
oppsie1: yes
Sleepy Rummy: time to boycott hostess
oppsie1: it was the insulin dispenser on the grassy knoll
Sleepy Rummy: maybe the milk was sour
oppsie1: it was brand new
oppsie1: i opened it myself
Sleepy Rummy: interesting
oppsie1: and it tasted fabulous
oppsie1: i doubt it was the milk
Sleepy Rummy: maybe it was bootleg foakley milk
oppsie1: haha
Sleepy Rummy: jill bought it on the street corner
oppsie1: milf - almost as good as the real thing

posted at 11:55 PM

this could yield a ridiculous level of humor.
posted at 5:16 PM

and go to chinatown i did. enlisted swain to meet me at sun hop shing tea house, which is sort of a divey coffee shop kind of place except it's a tea house technically. shitty service, slow emerging carts, dirt cheap dim sum. total cost for the two of us after six dishes and full stomachs: $11.60. dumped in an extra couple bucks for tip. travel time was 30 minutes each way, thanks to excellent timing of trains. steve and i talked about moving and working and stuff, and i yet again laid out a bunch of my reasons for leaving. and they're good reasons. but then i have a weekend like this one, and it all seems so crazy.

but there are no wrong decisions. only life lessons.

steve might start writing reviews for bedford. he said i should send my resume and stuff to his friend rae as well and see about freelancing, but i seriously doubt the money i'd be getting would outweight the embarrassment of the whole situation from nearly a year ago. although it could almost be comic if i did everything under a pseudonym and a hotmail account and nobody ever knew it was me except steve and rae. but i'm too honest for that.

even if you are not a basketball fan, i cannot implore you enough to watch shaq attempt to singlehandedly eat brad miller. (video available at far right of the page.) my original theory, before i found out about the fight but after i knew that the bulls beat the lakers, was that eddy curry and tyty had each attacked one of shaq's stanchion-like legs, bitten deep, and refused to let go until the end of regulation. that turned out not to be true, but i think what really did happen might actually be more entertaining.

and now i watch ball and read ellroy. could there be a more perfect sunday? doubtful.
posted at 4:27 PM

animal planet is showing garter snakes "mating". i think this is because they can't say "fucking" on regular cable. here's a great play-by-play from the hostess:

"so imagine 50000 males with terminal itchy pants and only 5000 females. what you get is chaos! pandemonium! a writhing, slithering, primeval frolic where they form what is called A MATING BALL."

this is highly bizarre. i can't believe they show this shit on a tv channel that shows a lot of stuff for kids.

wah. i want to go to chinatown again.
posted at 11:59 AM

it's early. it's hot in my apartment, despite my lack of radiator. gah.
posted at 10:54 AM

you can just fucking die, gabe.

i recorded the pistons-hornets game, sat down to watch, put "don't tell me who won the pistons game!" in my aim away message, and then my brother im's me. i thought it was about bowling, so i unhided my message windows, which i always keep hidden when i'm away.

not so much.

Sleepy Rummy: what the fuck is with the pistons

Auto response from oppsie1: don't tell me who won the pistons game

(tv.)

Sleepy Rummy: lose like 12 straight then win by almost 30
Sleepy Rummy: fuck
oppsie1: you are SUCH A FUCKING ASSHOLE
Sleepy Rummy: dont read this
oppsie1: I HOPE YOU DIE
Sleepy Rummy: rofl
Sleepy Rummy: sorry

sigh.

you know what would have been cool? if survivor ethan hadn't been able to regrow his beard for whatever reason, and they had to put him in a fake beard. yeah, that would have been pretty cool.
posted at 12:22 AM

after last night's gastronomical genius, today provided a perfect follow-up. after the leak disaster, and after landlord steve called to gently berate me for suggesting that there needs to be a better system for how to get in touch with people when disaster strikes - what if it had been a pipe?, i ask; call the fire department, he says; huh? - i met sheri at gct and we moseyed to chinatown to kill time while waiting for jill to get her thing together and meet us at new green bo. by the time we got to ngb, though, we weren't all that hungry. why?

for $2.80, we ate the following delicious street food: three good-sized pan-fried turnip cakes; a large baked bbq pork bun; five fried dumplings.

ngb was soup dumplings and scallion pancakes for another $5. wallet so happy. not happy enough to give to charity though. we're sitting there eating and this brutally ugly nun wearing glasses scraped from the bottom of an 80s 'free frames' bin walks into the restaurant and goes from table to table soliciting donations. i know i should be a better person and give more money to charity, but i gave a fair chunk for a working girl like me to a couple of 9/11 funds and that's going to be it for a while. and aside from that, don't come asking me to give a dollar to poor unloved orphans when i'm eating my dinner. because what am i going to say if you get right up in my face asking for donations? don't be gettin all up in my face, you nunny biznatch.

if it's tonight, i'm going to say "no, sorry." scary nun stood there for a second staring at me - she seemed to be directing the question at me, and left alone the chinese couple sitting at the large table with us, so wtf - and then said:

"god bless you, SIR."

(emphasis mine.)

i was wearing my pistons hat backwards and my hoodie and looking very 12-year-old boy, i guess. needless to say, i was greatly amused. i think the last time somebody did that to me was at brighton during general swim. when i was 8 or 9.

on the train i saw a crazy man with no index finger doing sums on the back of a business card. his totals were all wrong. like 150+150+25=450.

time to find out if the hat brought good luck or bad. go team go.

"god bless you, sir."
posted at 12:18 AM

jesus fucking christballs. so i get up at 11a, roll into the bathroom, roll out of the bathroom, grab a drink of water from the fridge, roll onto the couch, turn on the tv, watch tv for five minutes and then take note of an odd sound coming from the direction of the fridge. every so often the fridge will make knocking noises that are perfectly normal. the odd sound was not the same sound as the typical knocking. it almost sounded like rain falling on my air conditioner, an audible-yet-flat sound that is part water and part metal.

i got up to investigate.

here's a poor ascii representation of the layout of my apartment:

       ___
 _=___|ba|_
|         _|
|   br   |
|        |
|------| |-| |_
|        _   X_|
|   lr   :   |
|        : k |
|_==__==_:_=_|
X - front closet
: - open bar/counter between kitchen and living room
= - window

it became immediately clear that the sound was not originating from the fridge. it almost sounded like - hey, waitasec! what's that shiny spot by my front closet door? let's see, i'm hearing water sounds, it looks like there's a puddle creeping out from under my closet door, and i now observe rivulets of water coursing down the wall above the closet, originating from a weird sort of molding about halfway between the top of the door and the ceiling, a length of about 3.5 feet. i open the door.

the plinking sound is coming from the nasty, brown-colored water that is falling into the mop bucket i keep in the closet.

and then more rivulets appeared. i panicked and ran around (as much as one can, given the size) like a chicken with its head cut off; i couldn't remember my landlord's number, the nominal super was awol, i had to throw my pots under the doorframe, and what the fuck was i supposed to do?

i got my head together and ran upstairs. pounded on the door of the apartment above me. after a minute this welfare case answers the door and is like 'what is it' and i say 'something is leaking into my apartment.' then i notice a puddle on their floor, by their fridge. so i point at it. she peers back through the haze of smoke and shouts to some guy 'did you leave the water on?' at which point i totally flip and go back downstairs.

the water stops falling a few minutes later.

i leave two panicked messages for landlord steve, then wash my dishes. clearly this was god telling me that i should not have left dishes from thanksgiving in my sink.

now, this could have been a lot worse. the relative amount of water was small; it fell over the doorway and not in the closet so nothing in the closet, which contains most of my nice clothes, was touched; it was not a burst pipe, which i have no idea how i would have coped with that; i had just gotten up, i probably wouldn't have heard it if i was still sleeping; it started off falling in my bucket, and i probably wouldn't have heard it or noticed it as quickly if it was just falling on the floor.

this does not make any of this okay, however.
posted at 12:02 PM

and there is no better way to cap off an evening at jewel bako where (had i paid) i spent a high percentage of my monthly income. jeremie and sheri treated me for my belated birthday, which is ridiculously generous of them. morrow is going to kill me when i tell him about it all: walked in, they remembered me from our past visits. omakase: a mille feuilles of toro and avocado with a dollop of black caviar on top; half-circles of ankimo atop a slice of daikon; other stuff i forget; sashimi that included a tiny bowl of beyond-fresh octopus, which was stunning; sushi, much of which i'd had before with morrow but that is not a bad thing. for dessert, a chestnut flan. and for drink, a tasting menu of sake, which was an unbelievable deal and brought us some half-dozen different sakes, all of which were phenomal.

but really, there are no words to describe. basically, jewel bako means consecutive hours spent smiling in between mouthfuls.

friends rule. yeah.

FILTHY RICH FILTHY RICH i will be.

in the times square station on the way home there was a man playing a guitar leaning against a metal beam pillar thing. when i walked by him i realized he was actually singing into the pillar. i'm still not sure if it was for the echoey acoustics or because he was crazy and a non-exhibitionist exhibitions or both or what.

and there is no better way to cap off jewel bako than with nba2night on espn2. ben wallace fro back in effect, yall.

does kenyon martin have tourette's? perhaps chris jackson - excuse me, mahmoud abdul-rauf - should give him a call.

i'm still in love with mark cuban, but i haven't upped the pictures yet. deal.
posted at 1:39 AM

there is no better medicine or antidepressant than nsync/celebrity in true stereo.

mmm.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

i don't care what you all say, this is so on my 2001 top ten. expand thy musical horizons and open thy mind.
posted at 6:55 PM

this is your brain on SUCCESS.
posted at 5:08 PM

i have an hour and a half left. i am 75% through my wordcount. i am running off the energy of two frosted strawberry poptarts and a litre of water. i've been at this for less than three hours thanks to a not entirely unexpected in a general sense research request that sent me burrowing through nexis for two plus hours. i am unbearably nauseous.

i'm hitting the wall, and i'm 500 words and an entire theory short.

oh god oh god.
posted at 3:37 PM

i am such a fucking slacker. i taped survivor so i could work, then did no work, then watched it two hours later. jesus ass, what is wrong with me.

now i'm watching the rerun of knicks-mavs tonight. walt frazier, who was doing commentary with marv albert, referred to wang zhizhi as a CHINAMAN. on potentially national television, since the game was carried on tnt but i don't know who did playbyplay for that, and definitely in the greater nyc area. this cracks me up. here is the comedy it yielded. not there's anything wrong with that.

oppsie1: ooh, the chink is playing
oppsie1: oh my god
JamesMorrow123: wait what?
oppsie1: walt frazier just called him a CHINAMAN
JamesMorrow123: who chinkplay what?
oppsie1: there's a chink on the dallas mavericks
oppsie1: he's 7ft tall
JamesMorrow123: no way
JamesMorrow123: NO WAY
oppsie1: i will tell you what he just said
oppsie1: i'm rewinding
oppsie1: one sec
JamesMorrow123: what sort of fucking chinese genetic enginerring project did he come from?
oppsie1: "the mavs team personify the evolution of the nba. they have a canadian player in nash, a german player in nowitzki, najera a mexican, and now the chinaman checks in"
oppsie1: you think that's bad
oppsie1: there's another one
oppsie1: yao ming
JamesMorrow123: HAHA
oppsie1: the government is still refusing to let him leave china to play here, he plays in their pro/communist league there
oppsie1: he's like 7'6"
JamesMorrow123: i'll bet they're coming up with batallions of those tall chinkies in china to invade america with
oppsie1: yeah
oppsie1: they have a farm
oppsie1: they grow them in vats
oppsie1: it's like an xf episode
JamesMorrow123 : no, woks
JamesMorrow123 : giant wok babies

also mark cuban currently looks suspiciously like conor oberst, which makes me want to marry him post haste, and not just because he is FILTHY RICH and owns my favorite team aside from the pistons. i took some pictures of the tv since i have no tv capture card in the hopes that they will turn out. this weekend i'll try to up them to my computer and put a side-by-side comparison up. if i ever finish stack, anyway.

here's the only string of two or more semicoherent sentences i've managed to put together tonight.

That's when Allen Iverson came to town. He and Stack were to be the backbone of the Sixers' backcourt, and that first season together they averaged 44.2 ppg, one of the highest-scoring tandems in the league. But Illadelph wasn't big enough for the two of them.

oh lordy, i'm in trouble.

oppsie1: i am gross. here's what i ate today:
oppsie1: 1030a: red bull
Sleepy Rummy: ugh two in one day
Sleepy Rummy: thats not right
oppsie1: 1130a: two leftover stuffed grapeleaves
oppsie1: 5p: shawarma pita
oppsie1: 930p: red bull
Sleepy Rummy: thats bad
Sleepy Rummy: you should eat something before bed
oppsie1: i have no food
oppsie1: except frozen mushroom barley soup
oppsie1: and nsync funfruits
oppsie1: jesus, i need to be commited

"also, dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. asian-american, please."
posted at 12:43 AM

it is done. 20 minutes of interview, 40 minutes of transcription time. 2300 words of interview, 2000 words necessary for finished product.

now all i have to do is write the damn thing.

i rewarded myself with shawarma from a cart with a shawarma spit. i could be dead this time tomorrow. beware.

mutha fucka.

KeefKeefKeefKeef: so my mom was like
KeefKeefKeefKeef: "I did a search for your name"
KeefKeefKeefKeef: "and spelling bee"
KeefKeefKeefKeef: "and saw that oppsie had something on her page"
KeefKeefKeefKeef: "but then I clicked it and it wasn't there."
KeefKeefKeefKeef: so THANK GOD FOR THAT
oppsie1: good thing she hasn't figured out google cache
KeefKeefKeefKeef: that too.
oppsie1: and google hasn't reindexed my site yet.
oppsie1: why on earth was she searching for tht
KeefKeefKeefKeef: just wanted to see if there was anything out there.
oppsie1: scary
KeefKeefKeefKeef: yes.
oppsie1: scarier still that she's searching for keef and not keith
KeefKeefKeefKeef: no, you have it as keith
KeefKeefKeefKeef: you have my real name
KeefKeefKeefKeef: god dammit
oppsie1: oh you're right
oppsie1: foo on me
KeefKeefKeefKeef: you should change it
KeefKeefKeefKeef: while you're looking at it
oppsie1: yeah?
oppsie1: to what?
oppsie1: he-man?
KeefKeefKeefKeef: keef
KeefKeefKeefKeef: that too
KeefKeefKeefKeef: "my friend he-man keef"

posted at 5:45 PM

in the shower i got soap in my left eye. i trip out of the tub and look in the mirror and my right eye is like cherry bomb, fire engine red. capillaries busting out all over the place. i look like a goddamn halftime pothead. i have no idea what the deal is. maybe there's some secret tunnel conduit between my eyes running through the bridge of my nose.

now i'm wearing my glasses. hate glasses. hate glasses. they're like three prescriptions behind my contacts. i really need to see what kind of insurance coverage i have for my eyes.

bah.

i dreamed about getting new sneakers. white adidas, with midnight blue stripes. slept like 5 hours. bah.

bah.
posted at 9:25 AM

uncle morris called at 1030p and i thought he was mr fabulous so i said "mr fabulous!" and then i realized it was not him and that he had reneged on his promise to call me and that it was in fact my uncle, who thought i had identified him as my brother and not mr fabulous since they share the same name.

then he told me about his trip to hawaii for 15 minutes. snore.

THE GODFATHER OF SOUL has been bumping some serious shit tonight. sigh.

fact: night or day, rain or shine, the southwest corner of 50/7 will invariably smell like rancid ass. i can't figure out why: there's never any visible garbage, just a shitty deli/convenience store sitting there. but it truly smells like an elephant wandered over and shit in the water supply. actually, i think it smells more like a rotting vegetable bin. strange. sucky.

i swear i will start transcribing at 1130p.

JamesMorrow123: hang on i have to go buy some paper towel
JamesMorrow123: i've made a huge mess.
oppsie1: ...
JamesMorrow123: defrsting the fridge. i flooded the house
oppsie1: what is wrong with you?
JamesMorrow123: i've never done it before.
JamesMorrow123: brb gotta mop
oppsie1: idiot
JamesMorrow123: this is such a fucking sitcom i live in
JamesMorrow123: work-at-home husband tries to do something nice for wife and destroys home in process.
JamesMorrow123: i need to buy more paper towel
oppsie1: i can't believe you went out to buy paper towel to fix this mess
oppsie1: i'm imagining all this and feel like you should be moving in fastforward to a honkytonk soundtrack
JamesMorrow123: i got a fast-moving upbeat gospel-blues soundtrack kicking right now
JamesMorrow123: chorus of about 80 black women backing up this one blues guy: "EVVVYTANG GONNA BE AWWRITE!"
oppsie1: in my brain i am laughing so hard at you
oppsie1: you should get together with THE GODFATHER OF SOUL
JamesMorrow123: hmmm claire has a JB album i could throw on
JamesMorrow123: PAPAS GOT A BRAND NEW BAG (OF PAPER TOWELS)

posted at 11:27 PM

and an hour and a half after dinner is order, it arrives. i can't believe this spinach pie cost $6. good thing i'm not paying for it. i'm throwing it out.

die jonbon die.
posted at 8:52 PM

death to the evil ge. jon bon writer, who is nice but i've never had a conversation with her ever, just called and chewed my ear off in hysteria after the hack job the evil ge did to the story. i feel bad for her. i'm impressed that she's standing up for herself and is going to be all mad with him after she calms down a bit. i should take notes on how to fight for your right to storrrrrrrrry.

voice.

panic work mode is lessening since i've gotten most of the answers i need. today i ate a frosted cherry pop tart in two sittings.

(this is your brain on trying not to think about stackhouse.)
posted at 4:11 PM

let's see, publicists not returning my calls, new shit closing today on top of old shit closing today, need to get away for two hours for shrink, yeah, i'm freaking out.

twitch. twitch.

ugh.

-------------------text pasted by viper to Emrys' Tavern-------------------
Mrs. Jordan, 42, cited ``irreconcilable differences'' with Jordan, 38, the former Chicago Bulls star who now plays with and has a stake in the Washington Wizards.

The newspaper also said she was seeking permanent custody of the couple's three children, their 25,000-square-foot home and half of the couple's property.
---------------end of text pasted by viper to Emrys' Tavern----------------
viper says, "wow.. way cheaper to have her killed"

posted at 10:46 AM

i'm all for humor buffy when it's done well, but i have to say that tonight's episode had me puking within the first five minutes. it was so out of the preset path of the season - and not in a good, surprising way - and so out of character for buffy herself that i couldn't get behind it in the least. i mean, fine, she wants to get away from herself for a while, fine. this was just so ridiculously forced. like obnoxiously bad. ugh. i'm so annoyed. i watch buffy to be tortured by what can't be for me. it's in a sad, sad place right now, and that's where it should stay for the time being. you can't teleport yourself out of where you are; you have to climb up out of the murk one vampire at a time. the quick change is not the believable change. it's a joke, and not a very good one.

don't play tricks on me.

so after that shitstorm, jill and i watched the pilot/premiere ep of that 80s show. it is quite possibly the worst thing ever commited to single camera sitcom tape. it makes inside schwartz look like goddamn seinfeld. we were clawing our eyes out. (but it does amuse me that this is what brittany daniel is up to these days. won't be up to it for long, though; i give it three weeks, tops.) stay far, far away.

i have to transcribe stackhouse. feh. i don't want to. feh. somebody do it for me. feh. feh feh feh.

..maybe i'll just go to sleep.

"so once when i was six, i did."
posted at 10:28 PM

[jameswatch2k]: i fixed the phone line problem and called to check my messages just now. there was a doozy of a message left by landlord steve, a good 60 seconds long, in which he spooges all over my answering machine with joy that begins with the following: "james brown is moving!" this time he swears it is happening, he saw the paperwork himself and james got his credit fixed with some organization and blah blah blah. end of this month or next, he says.

all this time i never knew the bastard's last name.

i'll believe it when it happens. he's been quiet lately. i expect it to end soon.

DANGE-UH!

(god i love mystikal.)

hi shkoo.
posted at 2:15 PM

i gave in and got a hotdog for lunch. from the hotdog king. and it was worth every nitrate: crispy on the outside, salty soft on the inside. the right amount of spicy brown slathered along the western edge, the bun wonderbread yummy.

yes, i like hotdogs.

i don't like walking on hot coals. but i'm willing to learn how.
posted at 11:58 AM

sj just announced to the alley at large that she is getting sick, and that makes me want to shackle her to her chair and clamp a surgical mask on her because i will be so fucking goddamn shitass bitter if i acquire her disease after so neatly sidestepping that of jeremie and sheri.

GRR.

i have sickness rage. also my wrist is achy. the definition of achy is 'afflicted with aches.' this amuses me.

perhaps i will find inner peace playing this game. or at the all-star game.

i find this entry in the dictionary also amusing:

hat·mak·er
Pronunciation: 'hat-"mA-k&r
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
: one who makes hats

i find pretty much anything shaq says also amusing:

"I always try and come back with a fabulous performance whenever I have to sit out for whatever reason. Usually when a tree has been chopped down as much as this tree has, it gets rest and the chlorophyll replenishes itself."

posted at 10:38 AM

several things: i dreamed of screwdrivers and french toast and stolen vicodin for breakfast, and not being able to finish jonbon in time for the close; i woke up at 459a and every hour on the hour thereafter; but in between i slept like the dead.

goodness me, i am tired.

what is the deal with this dell kid? he troubles me. but not as much as the fact that anderson cooper, late of the mole, is now on paula zahn's morning cnn gig wearing a PINK SHIRT. and not pale, mild pink, but completely obvious pink. i mean, wtf? that shit should be outlawed on television news.

rip, jordan marriage. rip, dave thomas.
posted at 9:03 AM

the copy hath finally arrived. it is overlong and contains such gems as:

[sic]
For while the mega-successful albums Slippery When Wet and follow-up New Jersey, didn't please the critics, who accused them of being a fleeting mtv icons and jon a pretty boy, were beloved by the fans.

and is overlong and will probably get chopped in half, but i have to start working on it now. puke.

also mr fabulous emailed after being mentioned in these hallowed pages. coincidence or conspiracy? i may never know.

oppsie1: i'm going to see carson daly's new show tonight.
npoo: oh, i'm jealous.
oppsie1: i'm psyched except that the guest is alicia keys
oppsie1: who makes me puke
npoo: oh barf - she sucks
oppsie1: i have yet to find a single person who does not have that response to her.
npoo: that headgear is just so tired
oppsie1: she and nelly furtado should be locked in a room with mariah for all eternity.
npoo: and she's boring
oppsie1: it'll be like sartre's no exit.
npoo: oh my god, nelly retardo may be the single most vile person on the planet...and remember, i've been to the south a few times.

posted at 4:44 PM

the fame of darby grows ever larger, creeping along the newsprint backbone of this nation with the unstoppable fervor of a presidential sex rumor.*

so i'm waiting for the copy for this shitty shitty bang bang jon bon jovi story i'm supposed to be checking that's closing tomorrow, and editor the evil ge (not to be confused with writer the evil mm, who is not the writer on this story anyway) said i would get it before noon, and now it's two hours and 38 minutes past noon and the jon bon bonbon is nowhere in sight or inbox. if this prevents me from going to the taping of last call with carson daly (translation: the only way to enjoy this show is to get very drunk beforehand) tonight with jill and allison i will be greatly angered. even though the guest is alicia keys, who makes me want to puke even more than the thought of broccoli covered with cheese.

in the phone messiness yesterday (of course it's not just that i'm a poor interviewer, but that also my good phone tap for some ungodly reason channels radio signal in my apartment, rendering it useless unless i want to tap morning drivetime and not stackhouse) i rearranged my phone connections at the nid and apparently neglected to properly reconnect my answering machine. it's lonely, hearing the rings tunneling through copper and finding nothing on the other end when i call to check for messages which aren't there anyway since nobody loves me, not even mr fabulous.

* - teeth-grindingly bad metaphor of the day.

Sleepy Rummy: how was stack
oppsie1: mrghaohf adshald fhaliudf akjsdf hakjlsfh
oppsie1: that's pretty much a good assessment.
Sleepy Rummy: heh
Sleepy Rummy: what did you ask him
oppsie1: "did you get a new tattoo?" "no."
Sleepy Rummy: rofl
oppsie1: "oh. *nervous laughter*"

posted at 2:38 PM

on my walk to the subway i discovered that the rain had finally shifted to snow. i suspect it will shift back again in short order. i need to get a new umbrella. still.

and i forgot to put on a belt today.

and i'm starving. my morning hunger is completely tied to being vertical. i'm never hungry in bed, even when i sleep late. either that or it's a work response, or it only happens early morning and when i sleep late i'm sleeping through it.

yeah, this is fucking fascinating.
posted at 11:16 AM

bad dreams. going away to camp along with cousin zach and i couldn't find my backpack frame, and there was an odd selection of fruit and i consumed slices of grapefruit and sugary-sweet lemon. then i had two plane nightmares: flying over the water past cape canaveral and the spaceship is landing like a launch in reverse, just gently settling down on the horizon, and we're flying so low, so low, and the sea is choppy and we're flying lower and then a huge wave comes and we can't outrun it and it covers the plane and man and machine drown. the other one involved taking over my brother's plane ticket to jerusalem, except it involved a short connection hop to chicago, and i was totally flipped out about having to fly for so long. i don't think i ever got on the plane, though.

bah. on the plus side, i'm sleeping pretty heavily and consistently and last night i just did earplugs and no fan, which was nice. the fan has been blowing shmutz. i should clean it (difficult) or buy a new one (less difficult, $20).
posted at 8:56 AM

i survived. barely. my index finger is hosed. i had to clamp the suction cup tap on the receiver the entire time and now my finger doesn't work. my brain sends signals to it but it doesn't respond. it shakes.

kind of like my brain itself.
posted at 6:50 PM

it's showtime. the worst thing is that i feel i can do a decent job writing it if only the interview would be done by someone else. i know what the article is going to be. it's actually talking to him that's scary. it's talking to anyone; how i choke at brunch, how i choke on the phone, how i choke with people i don't know.

choker.

can't breathe.
posted at 5:53 PM

oh sweet jesus. pistons pr kevin called and told me that stack would phone around 6p from minnesota. oh god, oh god. i am not ready for this.

i had brunch with my grandmother's half-sister, her husband, and two relatives whose relationship to them was ambiguous at best. i suspected there were removals involved. one was the film critic for the nation, and his wife, and their three year old named jacob who used my leg as a scratching post for his dirty shoe and now i need to wash my pants. but the kid was cute, even when he crapped his pants while i was eating my french toast and his dad dragged him off to the bathroom. the other was a boy my age named aaron who is in real estate and probably has a great salary and tends bar at a place downtown which he invited me to and gave me his card and he reminds me of someone but i haven't figure out who yet. vaguely gillin, but sounds like he's smoked for 20 years. i might drag jill down to the bar one day. but i think he probably thought i'm a loser, since i had to admit i just go to the movies and hang out with a couple of friends and have no life.

because i'm fucking goddamn boring, and i don't know how to interview basketball players or anybody else on the planet.

there was a very large man on the subway home with a big ol' bible and a cross and a word to get out to the world. he was loud. and large.

"the lord say: jesus is the head, you the body. i'm a jesus freak!"
posted at 1:50 PM

man, those were some crazyass dreams. my cousins including me were divided into two teams of sorts and battling in the subways. we had trains to use against each other in a sort of driveby style. when i saw the lights coming from down the tunnel, i was scared. there was strategy. i think the ultimate goal was death.

and there were others: an episode of ricki lake or somesuch where the girl had a mouthful of braces and the tv sked said there were two kathleen turner movies on one right after the other.

and others.

winter storm watch tonight! wooooooooooooooooooo! snow! snow! snow!

(because i got excited, there will be no snow, only miserable sleet that will drench the bottoms of my pantlegs.)
posted at 9:41 AM

the thing is, tenenbaums is a cornucopia of quirk and loveliness and excellence, and i will see it again both because it is a cornucopia of quirk and loveiness and excellence but also because in the middle of the movie there was some sort of emergency down in the front row that made it look like people were silently jumping on a football tackle pile, and it was utterly silent but people kept going down to check it out and eventually a large mass of five or six people dragged some woman out of the theatre who perhaps was having a baby or a seizure or a kidney stone, i don't know because it was never explained and we didn't even get free tickets for the distraction, as well as the fact that the guy next to me kept infringing on my personal space and making me insane and distracted again. but that's not really the thing. the thing is, it is a cornucopia of quirk and loveliness and excellence, but it doesn't hurt me like rushmore. it gets there a couple of times: richie needling himself in the hay, anything with little gwynnie (now that hurts me to admit; damn you, gwyngwyn, damn you to hell for making me like you just a little), and possibly kumar's pants. and i feel sad, which is how i like to feel after movies. but it's not enough.

i am a masochist.

rushmore is still my rushmore.

i wish i was blonde so i could wear black eyeliner as a symbol of my unexpectedly tumultuous inner vacuum.

"i'm going to kill myself tomorrow."
posted at 12:05 AM

the nba store is part mecca, part devil. the unis are beautiful, except for the fact that the shorts - not even the jerseys, just the shorts - cost $100. but they feel so good, just grabbing a fistful of mesh. i heart mesh. i also heart throwback goodies, which they had a decent amount of. no hoodies ala online, but they did have a certain headcovering that, while not really good for the winter months, is fo shizzle the bomb. yes. yes, yes yes.

feldy and i had dinner in queens, at ali's. mmm eel. mmm rabbit. mmm lamb. mmm ali's. sadly, the arepa lady was not in residence when we swung by 79/roosevelt. i was very sad. i am still sad, but slightly less sad given that i gobbled two outstanding tamales a few hours ago.

fresh air is good. it's warm today, in the 40s, and the air is dry and the rain is far away. after tamales i wandered around broadway. at the market i toured many foods and noticed that all of them repulsed me. huh. and i finally got a library card. i don't know why i didn't do it sooner. library cards are a necessary tool of life. so now i can go on living, or something.

but i think my third sign has made itself apparent.

i'm not sure how i feel about that.
posted at 4:03 PM

nba trivia for may 2002 has been smacked down and taught a lesson. can you say boumtje-boumtje? because i can.

BOUMTJE-BOUMTJE.

i need to become very rich. actually, i think i'll hit up the nba store on my way home from work in search of a logo'd winter hat. maybe boumtje-boumtje will be doing an instore.

oppsie1: dammit
oppsie1: i am physically unable to pee
Twingo16: okay grandpa
oppsie1: haha
oppsie1: i'm having bladder impotence
oppsie1: performance anxiety
Twingo16: oops i forgot to watch trl
Twingo16: good thing it is on every day
oppsie1: i feel like i should have a witty response but i'm just going to let that stand.
Twingo16: did you go to pee, gramps?
oppsie1: yeah after i drank half a liter of water and then sat on the can for like ten minutes singing 'big girls don't cry' to myself.
Twingo16: that is truly the saddest image ever
oppsie1: die.

posted at 5:07 PM

let's see, it is 1020a. where was i 12 hours ago? if you guessed sitting in this very chair, you'd be right! by the end of last night's blear i couldn't figure out if i loved joan or hated her. gah. help me, please.
posted at 10:19 AM

this is the story that never ends, lalalalalalalala. here are some gems, circa when mariah carey blamed her eating disorder on joanie in rolling stone and rosie o'donnell show:

from some british guy's article on the divine miss c in you magazine:

"Last year I probably went up a size or two because for the first time in my life I took a vacation. Joan Rivers, at the Oscars, said 'Let me see Mariah. Everyone says you gained weight'. I was like 'You did not just say that to me on the freakin' red carpet at the Oscars'. You know what's really sick about that? The message we're sending to kids. Besides, I had a white dress on. And white makes you look bigger. I've lost weight since then but only because she sent me into a tizzy. When I was a little girl I was real thin. But muscular. I wasn't born to be a waif. She almost made me have a weight issue."

***

Transcript from Mariah Carey's Live Chat with Foxnews.com 11.25 p.m. ET (1725 GMT) December 10, 1999
MEXICO CITY — Recording superstar Mariah Carey chatted live with Foxnews.com on Friday, Dec. 10th. The following is a portion of the transcript.

dgpinedo asks: Mariah,what is your workout routine,you are in great looking shape.
fox_news_mariah_carey: Stress. LOL
fox_news_mariah_carey: And Joan Rivers.

god, i couldn't make this shit up. also mr lehman is about to turn 80. i think. maybe. goddammit.

JoStephi: did you get a kwikmeal?
oppsie1: au bon sourceofallpain
oppsie1: aka au bon evil mm
oppsie1: she is so bizarre. she sends me this email with joan's pr guy's number and says "he can be difficult"
oppsie1: he was a total doll to me. she is demented.
JoStephi: ha!
JoStephi: you go
JoStephi: maybe evil mm has alzheimers
oppsie1: no i think she just has menopause

posted at 3:23 PM

i believe this is what they call hitting the proverbial bottom of the proverbial barrel. i just had to call up the great-grandson of the founder of lehman brothers, who i independently determined is 80 about to turn 81 from a variety of print sources and paper chases, and ask him if he has ALZHEIMERS. "no." "okay, um.. how old are you?" "i don't remember." "not even a ballpark?" "i don't remember." "what's your birthday?" "january 14." "what year?" "i don't remember." "you don't remember?" "1960."

HATE. JOB. HATE. JOB.

<Lupines> Cristina Aguilera's ex-gf made a videotape of both having sex.
<negxor> she's not a lesbian
<negxor> is she?
<Lupines> Sorry.
<Lupines> bf

posted at 1:26 PM

[jameswatch2k]: so guess who has bad credit and was refused rental in the welfare apartments? that's right, even hud doesn't want james. landlord steve, for reasons which i do not know, does, or, at least, won't evict him. yeah. this is a real fucking surprise, i nearly had a heart attack from the shock of it all. snort.

it was quiet last night, though. i slept without the fan for the first time in weeks. i give it three days.

hmmmmm dashcon.

oppsie1: http://ga2so.com/images/fark/kitchen.jpg
Sharpeee11: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
oppsie1: did you get any yet?
Sharpeee11: yup
oppsie1: where?
oppsie1: was it everything you dreamed it would be?
Sharpeee11: oh yes! at a drug store
oppsie1: oh god
oppsie1: drugstorenog
oppsie1: do you have a nog supply in the fridge? are you drinking your lunch?
Sharpeee11: no
oppsie1: be careful.
oppsie1: you don't want to become addicted.
oppsie1: then you'd have to go to alanog

posted at 10:24 AM

my prayers have been answered! not only did greta van susteren ankle cnn for foxnews (maybe i'll see her in the lobby on my way to work!), but the unthinkable has come to fruition. this is the happiest day of my life! as you can probably tell by all of the exclamation points i'm using! i am afire with glee!

Jar, Jar, Jar: 'N Sync's "Clones" Cameo

At last, someone has stepped in to replace Jar Jar Binks as the target of derision from Star Wars fans the world over.

Brace yourselves: The boys of 'N Sync will have a cameo in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones. A Lucasfilm spokeswoman confirmed what Star Wars fan sites had been buzzing about for days, saying the fivesome will appear briefly in a "big scene."

[etc]

wow, mike miller of the orlando magic has terrible, terrible hair. he needs to take a cue from his whiteboy compatriots and grow it out into a floppy, nashian mess.
posted at 7:43 PM

so i think ifwhen i move home, my new job will involve plutonium.

i dug the shrink's number off my pill bottle, which was thankfully correct, and she is indeed on vacation and i don't have to go til next week. yay!

i dug mr fab's number out of my email and left a message on his cell with all my numbers. he probably won't call.

i invited darby to x's wedding, to which he foolishly agreed to escort me. shh. don't tell what i'm cooking up. other than heroin.

i got another aggravating crushlink hint, just when i thought i was out.

i think it's good to know about vertical integration.

i have "big girls don't cry" in my head.

i need to eat lunch. i will call y.
posted at 1:28 PM

so it's not even 11a and here are the six ways to fuckday my morning already sucks:

- i left my id card in my apt and had to call up to get in the building and will have to do it again if i want to get out and get food
- it's possible i left my id card in detroit when i emptied out my bag before the cruise, which means very bad things
- i can't remember if i'm supposed to go to the shrink today
- i left her number at home so i can't call and ask
- i walked in to find i'm checking a story on joan fucking rivers written by the evil mm that is closing tomorrow
- i got jack lemmon's year of birth wrong in the tribute issue which is a total fucking moronic idiot braindead shouldn't have happened mistake
- my hands are covered in toner since i had to fix the printer five times already in the past hour
- my back is starting to peel from the sunburn i got on the cruise, which covers a small portion of my back in bright red screaming capillaries but doesn't hurt anymore

[jameswatch2k]: the note was gone from the door when i left for work this morning; the music, however, was still on. so one of two things happened: he read the note and ignored/couldn't really read it because he's illiterate/whatever and left the stereo on; or somebody else removed the note, like his buddy across the hall. either way: grr.

oppsie1: god i am an IDIOT
fritterVII: *blink*
fritterVII: this job seems to be having effects on your self-esteem.
oppsie1: it's a stupid monkey job
oppsie1: therefore i should not be fucking things up
fritterVII: actually, monkeys are surprisingly skilled at nba trivia.
fritterVII: provided it's about players who have hurled their feces at the audience or furiously masturbated in public.

posted at 10:57 AM

also on the plus side is that running the fan all night every night does not seem to be adversely affecting my electric bill, as i just got one that was one of the lowest ever. so at least there's that.

okay, going to go try to pass out. clean sheets, all that.
posted at 2:00 AM

[jameswatch2k]: godfuckingDAMMIT.

James -- It is 1:30 AM. I rang your doorbell twice but you did not answer. Your radio is on TOO LOUD. I don't know about you but I have to work in the morning and can't stay up this late every night. Maybe you are asleep. In that case, please TURN OFF the radio before going to bed. THANKS

i just taped that to his door. i'm so very sick of this.

on the plus side, there's a new miss cleo ad in which she says to a caller, "did you get strep throat a great deal in your late teen years?" perhaps the caller wanted to know where her tonsils disappeared to. also there is this hilarious always maxis ad where this chick is at the opera and the narrator says "if you've been sitting a while, did you know that on your heavy days, the minute that you stand up, your flow could increase up to 2000 times?" and the fat lady sings. but no fat lady jokes.

save me, art bell. save me, please.

***
Running hard, running with lungs that felt as if they had colander holes poked in them, oxygen leaking out in spaghetti-thin squirts, Squig rounded the corner so fast he thought that if he stopped short his sneakers would squeal on the sidewalk. They'd lay down tracks like the ones covering the driveway from Bren's 1970 sunburst yellow "here's the bucket here's the rag those're the original hubcaps so you goddamn better put some spit into that shine you're givin' 'em or I'll goddamn give one to you" Plymouth Superbird, mark his gravesite, or beatingsite, or whatever, with a black rubber epitaph. He checked his flank. Ryan was nipping at his heels, propelled by many hours spent in weight training under the tutelage of Mr. Orness as well as the conviction that Squig had keyed his car in an act of revenge for several imagined treasons known only to Ryan himself. Squig would later learn that Ryan had apparently, unbeknownst to him, told several inquiring junior girls that he was a bone man, as well as cheated off him in algebra. Neither of these revelations would bother Squig, who had more pressing things to worry about, and especially not now, when he had Ryan and his metabolically enhanced biceps to worry about. Up ahead he saw a shadow stretching across the street, and as he turned left around another corner he nailed its source as a recess, cool and inviting and dark enough to hide in. Squig, master of simultaneous motion, licked his lips in time with his pumping legs and shouted back at his pursuer in a last-ditch distraction campaign.

"RyC - wasn't - me -"

"Don't bullshit me Squig cos Dinardi fuckin' saw you ya fairy godmother-"

"Dinardi's - out - sick - Wasn't - me -"

"YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD THE SECOND YOU SLOW DOWN YOU BASTARD CHILD TURDBRA-"

- the last bit of which was cut dead by the slamming of an ancient oak door behind him, chiming a low tone of amnesty. His ragged breath hitched its pace to the fast-disappearing sound of Ryan's stupid feet, slowing until he felt wrung-out normal enough to check out his improvised refuge. It was stuffy, and dark, and pin-drop quiet. Clicheville hit: The silence was deafening. He shook his head.

Quiet places frightened him. No, that's not quite right: Foreign places that harbored a whiff of trespass fear within them, borne by the sheer weight and strangeness of their quiet. Where he perhaps ought not to be, where his step could be discovered and used against him. So, not all quiet places. But given the right conditions, Squig could sniff out a church of silence any time, any place. Cemeteries, of course, went without saying, their manicured lawns grown of death-mulch and decomposition-fueled greenery inviting slumber and respite. At his father's grave he was never sure which ached more, his heart or his gut.

"If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

"I don't know."

"Close your eyes and think about it, Bobby. Tell me what you see."

"I don't know."

"C'mon, I haven't got all day."

He took a deep breath and put both hands on the kitchen table, tiny flesh-colored buoys in a sea of yellowing Formica. "Okay."

His father stared at Squig's scrunched up eyes, his own registering amusement at the effort of thinking written in wrinkles on his forehead. "So?"

"I had to imagine me there before I could report back to you."

"What's the report?"

"There's trees just about forever anywhere you look. They look like Christmas trees, but huger. Giant Christmas trees. And the ground is soft and cold and dry, and the whole place is sort of dark. You can't see the sun. Just a bajillion trees."

"So one falls."

"Yeah. One falls. But it knocks over another, and that knocks over another, and that knocks over another, and like a million of the bajillion fall over. Not just one."

"Huh."

"There's no sound." Squig dropped his voice to a whisper. "It's scary quiet, like the earth could swallow you up and nobody would ever know."

More affecting than headstones was the unexpected emptiness of a deserted classroom in the late afternoon sun, or a chatter-starved basement at one of Brian's momsgoneaway keggers. The crawlspace under the back porch. The attic, musty and spider-rich, holding onto the house's heat like a secret. His street in the middle of a snowstorm, the rest of the world tucked away safe in their houses slurping Scrabble tiles and hot cocoa. A streetlight-lit basketball court, preferably asphalt but, really, any surface would do, the lightbulb filament on its last legs, casting just enough glow to cover the three-point arc, leaving the rest of the court and the world beyond its neat white lines inked in shadow, weakly beaming through the sleepy visible-breath hours just before a late-November dawn. The ball was optional. The residual hurt was mandatory.

Solemn spaces. Quiet places. They threw a flurry of punches at Squig's most base level, turned him into a dying man ready to loose bladder and bowels just before the last gasp of breath. His pulse would accelerate, his stomach would gurgle, and he wasn't sure whether to sit or stand, whether to piss or shit. The silence bore pressure, and pain, and when he felt its pounding footfalls steadily approaching in the distance of his mind he knew he had to find a bathroom, quick, immediately, before the lonely oblivion of the place overtook him completely. And if he did relieve himself and then returned, it would start again. Quiet turned him into a 14-year-old losing his cherry, over and done in a matter of seconds, ready to go again in half the time. The fingers of mausoleum calm caressed him in places no one else dared touch, bringing with them a torrent of exalt and worry and hope and urine.

This out-of-the-way Spruce Street chapel with its apostle-laden stained glass and neon-lined fake sky, a bizarre amalgam of past and present papaldom - this utterly obvious house of worship - destroyed him. Squig felt like an idiot for having these feelings in such a place.

idiot, idiot, you're so boring, big boring copycat, are you gonna tell, gonna go crying wah wah wah to Momma

The commonness of what his body had chosen made his cheeks burn. Its previous selections had at least carried an air of mystery and distinction - locations that others might choose for their moments of epiphany, but most likely not. But this? The only thing special about this place was his solitude, the fact that not another soul was present. A tapestry of quilt panels, stitched together, quaintly cloying, covered the western wall. It looked the way he imagined the place to smell but could not quite pinpoint as a single scent; it looked like it was sewn of lively knitting circles and echo-soft laughter. It seemed woefully out of place in the midst of mahogany, raw rock and mortar. His organs seized.

There was nothing he could do. The helplessness made him turn away from his stomach to look toward heaven. When he turned to go, he discovered his legs would not carry him. They ached with the sleep of the devout and the still. He crashed to a pew, the clatter of body on wood reverberating throughout the room, and waited to be swallowed up.
***
posted at 1:31 AM

johnnie morton, will you marry me? we can do it live on the tonight show and jay leno can officiate. and you can bake the wedding cake.
posted at 12:25 AM

oh, and i changed my sheets for the first time since last year.

yuk yuk yuk i'm so fucking funny.
posted at 11:59 PM

send haiku postcards to the haiku postcard foundation. send death threats to ted harbert. send money to me.
posted at 11:53 PM

mmm spinach pie. mmm lamb chops. mmm grand cru. mmm pinot grigio. mmm moulin rouge. mmm the princess diaries.

mmm.
posted at 10:48 PM