5/1/03 I attack my own dog, and that's still not rock bottom enough for me? 5/2/03 If the clean, big-toothed, white-hatted athletes made an alliance with the scurvy-dog bad-habit-having fried-brain misfits, you might expect a base level of scorn and condescension to flow from the clean-livers to the dirty stiffs. Or you might expect it to flow both ways. What you probably wouldn't expect is total harmony which is exactly what we got. "Coffee and a donut. You can't get much more clichEd than that." I meant it in a joyous way. Little grouse that says I love you. Not acerbic or snotty. The new boys for the upstairs apartment shoved my chairs and stuff right out of the way and put their futon and other stuff in place in the attic. And I know they opened my door because it was hanging open the way it eventually does if you close it but don't block it shut. I'm going to have to have a talk with them. I can share, I just don't want to be invaded or trampled. Except certain psychosexual contexts including consent or dramatic nonconsent. And I just realized: they left the back door unlocked as well. 5/3/03 Hey, it's all cool. Theyíre young and kind of cute. Cholula is my wife, and this busy box is my girlfriend. Used to be, the time it took to read a book was how long it took. Now, it's how long you have, and you're never finished. Maybe you weren't back then either, who knows. One thing's for sure: reading you do because it's so urbane of you sticks far less than reading you do because you have to find out. * Internet taught me that I don't have to spell things right or sound like an academic in order to be an artist. Fuck, I should take advantage of rejection from schools, and go ahead and be somebody else. Somebody really fucking cool, though. What the fuck. * I may not be considerate. But I'm obedient. Sort of. * Oh, I see: Internet is Starmind. I just wasn't ready to step off before now. That's why I clung to my idea of "literature." 5/4/03 Oh. I see. Yes. Right. ⁄nok ⁄nok ⁄nok ⁄nok ⁄nok... from below. The boys must be putting up pictures. At least they're artsy fartsy types. I am not talking to myself. I am not. No, I am not. Even though I think I am the I in this. And there is no one else here.... No wait. There is someone else here. If you include down there in here. Do you? Tonight, yes. Or if not, I'll try to fake it. What about this as a Point of No Return: it doesn't have to make grammatical sense. You don't have to not be misunderstood. Sounds painful. A waterslide filled with gravel. new picture for virago 5/6/03 It's not French, but it sure as fuck feels like it. It's so smoky in here you can see God. the snowflakes There goes a guy who looks sadder'n me. I don't pity him. A bevy just moved in. I dare not look them in the eyes. By covert glances I discern: the one nearest me is nutmeg brown The farthest one is ashy gray. Between those two the mulberry sits. Across from her, the louse. * Wait! I can't go yet! I haven't said, "One more smoke and then I go" yet! Okay, here goes: i made a lot of fives but i'm hunting for fours 050703 We didn't liberate them; we conquered them. Can anybody be surprised? Shouldn't everybody? * the voice of the HINT in the textual adventure game is like your conscience, your personal god, your inner voice, your character(s) 5/10/03 Cool thing about working with HTML: you can find everything you need on the net. No books to go out of date. 5/15/03 I don't have a god damned thing to say. I came up here to drink a little, smoke a little, be up here a little. And occasionally wander over to what is now the college boyz' part of the attic to peek out the window at the Total Extreme Crazy Lunar Eclipse. Our neighbors, Yoshi's people, are looking at it with a telescope. I think the college boyz are oblivious. I just have to say I'm sorry Kate's not a fucking dyke, even though I'm not surprised, because I really wish she would still be friends with me even though I'm married. God damn it. On my way back from checking out the 'clipse I bash my shin into the college boyz' coffee table in the dark. Fuck but that hurt. Son of a fucking bitch. Pain is good. Pain is good. I miss Pam & her tits. The roof of our garage as seen from here! always seems to have snow on it. The nefarious alien tower of white lightning pulses against everybody's house. The teeth of the UWM dorms glint evilly across the night sea. The eclipse is going strong; just a few more minutes until the red umbra faze. So predicted. It would be scarier if it didn't happen. or when it crashes into us Let's see what the teh-dsa has to say about all this: hey. That's what it said. So fucking fuck me. Let's give it a chance to make a transition: pour boldly. And drink your wife's silk feet. 5/19/03 Yeah, it's faster. 320 MB RAM on board the bizzy bizzy bocks. So? Gesus, peaple have dyed four les. IN a cafE with my toys & my neuroses, come here to listen, smoke Just listening. Just smoking. I got absolutely nothing to say today. Oh well. It's raining almost, and some guy down on Brady St was sawing a groove into some kind of piece of masonry. His saw shot a sluice of water all over the piece he was cutting. PEOPLE come & go and gray still stains the alley by the smoke-out window. They play good music here. I'm looking for some enlightening input. How is it you can put some things IN, take them ON as it were, and still get LIGHTER? It's wacked. But it works. Sometimes. An old gray dead rose is tucked behind a bracket next to a ventilation duct up by the ceiling. Lots of prepositional phrases, but no real syntax errors. The sentence is executed. Did the user agent render the image correctly? You tell me. Remember: the morass of mediocrity is your responsibility. I hope the picnic is fun. I hope people don't stand around awkwardly too much. Should I bring some drums? I'm glad Devin's coming. I half wish I would get a little baked. I probably won't, though. 5/20/03 Okay, doing yoga with Ann was nice, made me almost feel canine again. Now, I'm up here farting around doing absolutely nothing with a lot of little bright bits, and one more smoke, and then I go. To bed. Tomorrow=class=good workout. Next day=Megansitting. Next day=Unroutine (temp) begins. 5/21/03 Some people may have made some kind of success out of talking about their failures. I'm not one of them. When I get to the point of blah blah blah, I need to be a different kind of reporter. Have you noticed that the radio basically tells the same story every day? I mean, duh, right? But really. Think about it! They talk about the same little set of things EVERY SINGLE DAY, and there's so much else going on! What? What's going on? Tell! Do tell! Maybe my equipment is weighing me down. Maybe I need to look more (or less) agressively for the story. The story. Strikingly erotic as discipline is, no one will ever do it for you as well as you can do it for yourself. Hey, guess what? I'm having one more smoke... and then I'll go! * We joke about it, but we're really so suspicious of each other! Our marriage is like the reject kids' team. It needs talking through, patience and a sense of humor. It will win in the end, but not in the way our aggressively little-league parents (and this is not aspersion on them; they like us are doing the best they know how. It's just, times are different now. Times are different always!) thought they should teach us it should. Not in the way we expect. We will learn something. You'll be touched. Wait and see! Have some popcorn! This is a good story. There's computers and robots and explosions and car chases and wine and a lot of good belly laughs. Dancing and music, plenty of that. Move your hips with it, not against it. Part of it takes place in a movie theatre, but then (pretty early on, I think) there's a part where we go outside, squinting in the sudden glinting of incongruous daylight! 5/31/03 Well. So this is the end of May. It's gray, dingy, dismal, drizzly and cold. I couldn't get to sleep last night. I almost did, but then Ann came home earlier than expected, and my breathing changed, my alpha waves got choppy, and I stopped thinking about the things I had been thinking about. Like things it is a sin to say, and "anything can be in the cafe." And so on. Other crap like that, just flowing in and out as I oscillated toward blessed rest. Megan was rocking beside me. I had rocked her to sleep in my arms, and tho my back ached, it was good. God help me. What am I going to do.