I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat. I see you aren't aware of it. Well you must tell me, baby, how your head feels under something like that. (Uner your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat.)

Eric just called me to tell me that the ventriloquist's dummy he found in our uncle's basement is really freaking him out. He's alone in a Brooklyn loft with the dummy staring at him from a windowsill. This and other things are not good ideas.

He can't smoke in the loft, so he went to the hallway while we were talking. He can smoke in the hallway, and he really doesn't know why, but he doesn't question it. We should really go up there and visit him. He's leaving Friday, so we should really take advantage of this opportunity. I'm looking at you here, Scott.

We talked about this over the phone, and also about how he's going to a play with our aunt, to a part of town she doesn't go to. She's been living there her whole life and there are parts of town she doesn't go to because she gets lost. Then he went back inside and, he claimed, the dummy had moved.

Scott, Anne, thoughts about going to visit Eric this week?

My mother received some gifts from her coworkers, and one of them freaks me out inordinately. It is a travel game, like the magnetic chess that was once taped to Blue Thunder's ceiling. This is weird enough already, because there is no reason to think that my mother would want a travel game. Already, the explanation must be pretty strange. She was perhaps shopping at a hobby store for Crimmas decorations, tripped out on shrooms, when she remembered that she needed a gift. Her claw hand grabbed a travel game, and the next day she was still starry eyed and hazy from the shrooms, so she didn't realize what a strange and inappropriate gift it was. That's not reasonable, perhaps, but it is conceivable (proof: I just thought of it). Here's the kicker, though: it's travel tic tac toe. A metallic cylander with nine holes, and two sets of wooden pegs, one blue and one red. And a two-page rule book. For tic tac toe. This rule book freaks me out over and above the coworker, because someone had to write it, and someone else had to ask that person to write it, and there must be a shop somewhere that printed it. It's like something out of David Lynch. I can see Agent Cooper buying one for his cousin, the camera lingering over the felt box that stores the travel tic tac toe with the little glossy label that says "travel tic tac toe." Now, if the coworker's child had made this thing in shop class as a final project, I would be somewhat comfortable with its existence, but as I've already described, that didn't happen. So the existence of the thing is creepy enough. Then there is the problem of what was going through the coworker's head when she decided to give it to my mother. I fall over crying when I try to think of this. My mother says that the woman, whose name is Diane, happens to be one of her more intelligent coworkers. A quiet woman, but when she spoke to her, she seemed okay (which is more than she can say for most of her coworkers, who are rabid Bush supporters, and foreward vicious ill-conceived badly written e-mails about the tax code, and the people Clinton offed, and that sort of thing, and probably joked about the election to make my mother feel bad, and who cackle). If anyone has insight on this critical issue, i.e. the gift, please tell me, because I'm cracked up about it. I'm thinking the world is not even approaching logical if this sort of thing can happen.

Jeff still thinks about going to New York for Christmas the way I would have when I was twelve. He makes statements about how he shouldn't have to do something he doesn't want to do, and that we are just going because society makes us, and my mother could go visit her family any weekend she wanted and is thus only going this weekend because of society. He denies that computer games have anything to do with his not wanting to go, and when asked what he would do if he stayed home, he says, "what I want to do." He keeps asking if we're really just going to stay in my aunt's house all Saturday. His voice, while he says these things, comes from some treaty between his nose and stomach, so that it sounds tight and nasally, but also has a lot of breath.

When he left the dinner table, I asked my father about disowning Jeff. He said he was considering it.

Have you looked at the moon tonight? Over here it's got a pleasing cloudy aestheticly cut-off bit, and the rest of it shines through atmospheric conditions that have the same consistency of, say, a jar of vegetable oil. It's a few minutes up from the horizon, which is sloped upward from where I was standing, and is cased in trees and a few barely showing stars. The purple and diffracted light of Baltimore's suburbs overpowers anything else, but that moon is something. Look at the moon!

Almost there, David Foster Walrus. So very close. And then you will be done. FOREVER! Afterward, I will take a much needed rest, and then maybe make a sandwich or something to celebrate.

Contrary to popular opinion, I did not lose $100 at the Casino last night. Sorry to let you all down. It was really just $94.

I'd rather be sitting at home with headphones playing something swirling, perhaps drinking tea and looking at a book with pictures. It would be nice to do this until Sunday, in a sort of motive cocoon that would scratch my head and refasten the buttons on my jacket and prop up my back and sing about aphids, making me whole again before the flight home. Who cares which slit the photon went through? So what if some space has Riemann geometry? Is that cemetaire marin going to don a blue sweater and sing hymns to the hipsters? No, fool! It's not! "Also, your dreams are boring and I don't like you," it says instead. Me and my black bag are going home now, and we're going to try to forget that we have precept at 8. Maybe if I'm lucky the campus will blow up in my absense.

I'm aware no one will comment to that, so how about this: who here likes cheesecake?

Yesterday rose bright. The people were out and smiling, and you would have smiled too, even with the knowledge that you were being sappy. We sat on the balcony and smoked, and talked about sitting on balconies smoking. Someone said the words "party" and "apartments." We went, because at night it's cold and there's nothing else to do. Phone call first, because phone calls are important. Then party: Little room under a staircase dripping snow water, ash everywhere and people grinding to Michael Jackson. They charged for the beers, but I got them free because people like me somehow. Was told by a girl she hoped that I didn't despise her, even if I hated her, and I told her I didn't despise her. She's more attentive than I thought. This is the one with a face like a decaying block of cheese, who picks at her beard and makes the world dirtier. The one without the chinhair anymore told bystanders sexist jokes he "heard from me" (people here are very witty). Got a ride with a drunk beefsteak to a closed Bell, then back to drive home and shamble.

Blake has shaved his head. He looks like a disgusting British schoolboy from a bad movie. Mark Ingham was once again the inspiration for a group uglification, although this time there is no shaving kit bought from a D.C. crack dealer, and fewer Febbies. If you have a message for Blake, leave it here. If it involves his blacke jean jacket, press one. If it is about the white shirt that hangs below this jacket, press two. If it is about how funny you find his diabetes, press three.

Tim Kile put me on the guest list for the show, and then he took me and four other people back stage. Oh, by the way:

Attn: Scott White

Wyn Butler remembers you and your interview, and he said he had a good time answering your questions.

Hey guys, who wants to go see The Arcade Fire tonight at the Paramount? Anyone? Anyone?

Oh, that's right, you can't go, because you're two thousand miles away! Ha ha!

I almost passed out while shelving books yesterday morning. That was real fun. I had just gotten up from a crouch to find the proper place for some Buddhist commentary or other, and my hand refused to rise any more. I had a strange feeling, as if my body were oscillating back and forth in something like a sine wave. Then I fell backwards and hit the shelf behind me, after which I failed to get a grasp on something and so dropped to my knees and fell sideways, knocking books off the shelving cart.

Something like this happens a few times a day, although I rarely get all the way to the ground because of it. Yes, I think I have anemia.

An open letter to my throat, James.

Dear James,

I'm dreadfully sorry that I fell asleep in the smoking study room, not only for my sake, but for yours as well. I am very glad that you're still alive, and I would do anything to make it up to you. If only you told me your wishes. Why do we not speak more often? One would think it only natural, but alas, you are sadly incommunicative. Perhaps you were trying to say something when you grew that lump this last Tuesday, but I can't quite make it out. Are you angry with me? You should know by now that I don't respond well to violence. Remember those times you got me out of school whenever I wanted by pretending to be infected with strep? And then in the empty house I would eat ice cream for you to make you happy? I wish we might soon return to days like that, if only you could tell me what the lump's about.

Was it friction from the smoke, or your attempt to seal yourself and keep out the harshness of that guy's pipe? Did you raise that bump because you are happy? Is it a cry for more syrupy coffee drinks?

Anyway, I hope you read this. I never meant to offend you. Please come back to me, baby.

Your most dedicated friend, etc.

You know that part in "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" when the voices rise up like wind in a really nasty fight with itself, and there is a beat that no one has named? When the words, that periodically give way to "woo-we" and "woa-ho," send you flopping on the floor no longer searching for completion because that is it right there? That's what I don't feel like. I skipped my classes Monday. That was nice. Around four in the morning the air got close, like it was watching me. Outside was empty except for the dead leaves, all crunchy and wondering why they'd ever grown at all, and there weren't too many of them either. Every cigarette was better than the last. I did some cooking and stared at the walls, which have round corners that flop down from the ceiling like a trench coat hanging close to the floor. Time as measured by the clock passed quickly, but my mind couldn't tell. At times like these I feel like I've been left by people who have no use for me right then but will come by to pick me up when they get the chance. Not much to do but wait.

Then the sun came up around seven, and some dense orange light poured out of a hole in the sky onto the clouds. It looked more like something that ought to be reported along with the weather than it did like a sunrise. I remembered going to the harbor one night in Annapolis to watch the sunrise, but I still can't remember if I was still there when dawn came that day or not.

We don't see very many things from day to day, but we don't notice this. It doesn't occur to us, because we don't ask ourselves if we're doing anything new. If we did we'd be really bored. I want to buy a house in upstate New York with friends and record songs in my basement. They'd all be songs of transport, not the public kind, more like the rapture kind. Anyone want to go? It's cheap up there, I swear, because in upstate New York you don't need to eat. The air brings you all the nutrition you need. If you want tobacco, there's tobacco. You want liquor, so too, there's liquor. The trees are happy to have you up there, they're so fine to everyone that they pay you just to be. Body of water called the Hudson Bay, and also the Hudson River. Your spit freezes before it leaves your mouth, it's great. We don't have to go to Woodstock if you don't want to go to Woodstock, that's all up to you. Don't tell me yes or no right now, just nod if you feel it.

On Sunday I drummed with Tim Kile. We are going to be the best ever death metal band out of Santa Fe, particularly since Tim's songs are not at all like death metal. In fact, he sounds a lot like the Arcade Fire. He has a strong idea of what he wants each instrument to play, and even told me what kind of beats he wanted. This makes for a tense jam, but seeing as he knows his shit, I bow to him.

Oh, and by the way, Tim assumes "Laika" is about a former member of the band, whose last name was Alexander. He was older than the rest, and for a while was the only thing keeping them together. He left eventually in a state of dissolution and anxiety.

Did you know that I'm not particularly liberal? Turns out I'm center-left. The Socialist Party, they're liberal.

Furthermore, did you know the word "liberal" used to be applied to capitalists, the "new men" in the late 19th century who figured out how to make a lot of money out of nothing? Marx used the word to refer to capitalists.

I'm also not progressive, apparantly, because, according to neo-cons, the end result of the Democrats' policies would be a fixed, permament, unchanging social state. It would just stop after a while.

Go figure.

There seems to be a problem here. The trees are white and pink instead of green. The bushes all have yellow leaves. The ground screamed and split with pain. Overnight Santa Fe turned into a wasteland. For the last six thousand years this area had a tropical climate, people lounged naked by the water and ate berries and pomegranates, wildlife flocked here for relief and earth love. And then, sometime around 4 a.m. this morning, everything died at once. The police found signs of a struggle. Every animal with tear ducts is crying right now with a deep body groan that's sending the grief of the earth up to God. Who turned out the lights? Who turned out the lights?

I did it. I wrote a first semester essay on Hegel titled "Hence Certainty: or the 'Gist' and Kant on LSD-25." I even quote Morrissey. I so win.

A bit of poetry on my blog:

Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby,
Can't buy a thrill.
Well, I've been up all night,
Leanin' on the window sill.
Well, if I dieOn top of the hill
And if I don't make it,
You know my baby will.

Don't the moon look good, mama,
Shinin' through the trees?
Don't the brakeman look good, mama,
Flagging down the "Double E"?
Don't the sun look good
Goin' down over the sea?
Don't my gal look fine
When she's comin' after me?

Now the wintertime is coming,
The windows are filled with frost.
I went to tell everybody,
But I could not get across.
Well, I wanna be your lover, baby,
I don't wanna be your boss.
Don't say I never warned you
When your train gets lost.

I believe the last post was ironic, but I'm not really sure at this point. At any rate, although I technically included the words "Thanks, Anne", I should repeat it in a better context. It was very nice of you, and I appreciate it.

And I'm still in the library, two hours after the end of my shift. I need a car badly. Scott, if you want to drive Blue Thunder out here for a last hurrah and give it to me . . . . Hmm. It occurs to me that there's not logical way to end this statement. Ah, yes: if you and Anne want to drive Blue Thunder out here for a last hurrah and then give up UMBC, we could pool our resources to rent a practice space. Then we could be a band together, and immediately start making money (and perhaps music) because that is what bands do. And then I wouldn't need a car at all, because I'd be cool and people would ask to give me rides, and I wouldn't have to work at the library, and I wouldn't even have to go to school.

Some people would have assumed that I didn't fix my comments because I couldn't, having absolutely no knowledge of computer language, web site programming, the ins and outs of blogger's "Templating" (I assume that's how it was done), or just what the problem in the programming was in the first place. But Anne, vicious and conniving plotter that she is, knew better. I was obviously just being lazy.

Thanks, Anne. It's nice to be able to consciously ignore your comments, rather than just hoping I was doing so.

*
lest i give the misimpression that it took me over an hour to figure out greg's password and fix his blog, i would like to point out that in the time intervening i made dinner, took a walk, fed the cat, fed the dog, watched the cat beat up the dog, wasted a halfhour of my life i will never get back watching basic cable, knitted a scarf, wrote a song, smoked six cigarettes and had tea and gingersnaps.

man, i'd forgot how hard blogger sucks. five minutes to load a page and counting. there is not enough cock in the western hemisphere for blogger to sufficiently satiate its sucking.

la.

*as you may have figured out, this was not, as advertised, posted by greg. we now return you to your regular, albeit dull, programming.

Je suis assis en une chaise peu confortable, pleurant la perte de mon chaton. Il partit cette matin, parlant que il allait chercher sa maman. Eh bien, je dis; portez la moi et je la choierai. Mais mon pauvre chaton n'est pas revenu, et je deviens tourmenté.

Il faut que je vais; Bob Dylan est sur le couverture de Newsweek.

Chances are I am more tired than you.

Wow, I've really let this blog go. It's gotten old and withered in my absense. In case you were wondering, nothing has happened here. I saw the Pixies, but this can't be said to have happened in Santa Fe qua Santa Fe. (In fact, I saw the Pixies in Denver, which is definitely not Santa Fe.) But I don't think anyone reads this blog for news. So here is some ranting:

There are some excessively ugly people here. I'm looking right now at a guy with long, mildly balding, unwashed brown hair, wearing a red-and-black checked fake flannel jacket. He's got a face like a portrait of the word "hypocrite." He is often smiling a drooping leer of a smile, a self-satisfied ass-wiper's smile, a giggle-suppressing "look at me, everybody, I'm ugly and I think it's cool" smile. His face is flabby in odd places and has wrinkles reminescent of a heroin-addict's arms. Maybe he shoots up in his face. Ultimately, he reminds me of a petulant five-year-old who farts a lot and smiles at everybody in the room. I think this guy's over forty, but can't tell. A few days ago he came into the study room where I was reading, splayed himself out on a couch in his socks, and coughed every thirty seconds. They were little dry flu coughs, which made me want to go get some tea and immerse my head in warm water for several minutes just to get rid of the forehead tingling and chest clenching these coughs were eliciting. If you've ever had anything scrape off some of your skin, not realized it, then looked down and seen what just happened, that's the sort of feeling these coughs elicited. And his cheeks have disturbing pools of saliva, which make his voice sound wet and moldy. The guy just looks like a diseased rat, is all I'm saying.

Also, how might I listen to music more frequently? I've found lately (like, for the last year) that I feel like I "don't have time," which is ridiculous; I have lots of time. Please advise.

Mr. Bibey substituted for Ms. Dougherty in our math class, and spent half an hour pontificating about how unlikely it is that the Lorenz transformation equations prove anything, and that we shouldn't believe in no principle of relativity/constant velocity of light schtick. "Here's this 26-year-old postal clerk telling me that the station-master on the embankment and the conductor on the train which is moving at 'very fast' velocity are both going to see light moving in a spherical wave? No way! It's gotta be like an ellipse for the conductor, doesn't it? How the hell could we both see the same thing? I may have a two digit IQ, but there's no way this punk, with his poofy hair, is gonna convince me. Hippies are gone, buddy. Spherical wave. Yeah, right. Bull shit, Einstein! I'll bet you anything it's not going to work. Look at those equations! They're not even symmetrical! Here, I'm going 'all-in' like it's Texas Hold-em. And now, of course, someone's going to put up these equations and prove me wrong." Thirty minutes he did this, while the class just stared at him. I was slack-jawed and stupefied with the innecessity of his speech.

Another class for which my parents paid $150.

In senior lab we do an experiment based on an experiment of Robert A. Millikan's, which he described in a book called The Electron, a guide to social dating among homosexuals. We have a machine called the Millikan Oil-Drop Apparatus, made by Pasco. This experiment is that hardcore, unusual, complicated, and Necessary, that we couldn't rely on our normal, fucked-up equipment. Basically, we look at tiny drops of oil (far less than a millimeter in diameter), through a microscope with a cross-hair grid. The drops of oil display several modern night-club dances, put on clothing designed for the opposite sex, grab each other by the buttocks, lisp a lot, and like to drink Hypnotique. One lab partner observes the swaying of one particular oil-drop's hips, and the other lab partner times its oscillations with a stop-watch. The frequency of hip-sways, omega, is determined, in an attempt to discover what song the drops are dancing to. According to seniors who graduated last year, most found that the song was "Smack My Bitch Up" by The Prodigy. Others guessed "Ladykiller", by Lush. Advance reports claim that this year the oil-drops have gone goth, acting as though they didn't even have hips with dance moves such as "Digging the Grave" and "Closing the Lid". We'll need to observe the drops for several hours, some times as many as fifteen, in order to get the most accurate information about how the drops tire, and to make a fluid chart. Fluid charts usually get about as complicated as you'd expect; these drops are always horny.

This is the first experiment we've done at St. John's that I can appreciate. Usually I enjoy them about as much as pulling iron filings that have lodged themselves in my leg, but this one has an obvious educational value. For once I feel secure about the purpose of lab at St. John's.

Things I am happy about:

1. Camel Wides. They have the feel of a straw sucking up really delicious soda, soda that lasts for at least five minutes of dizzying consumption.

2. Infinite Jest, which is the most entertaining book I have ever read. This at least suggests (not verifies) that everything Anne says is right. Speaking of:

3. Anne is blogging at her pre-Cayman pace (even if it is more downtrodden information than normal . . . wait, no it's not); and even Scott is picking up steam.

4. The unidentified insects that like to sneak in to my house when I'm not looking don't seem to like going on my mattress very much. They prefer to die quietly by the side of the mattress, where I find them in the morning and shriek.

5. Einstein and Hegel make good sense. Just imagine Kant on LSD-25. (I plan to write my first semester essay on Hegel, and to call it "Kant on LSD-25".)

6. There is a tutor here, Mr. Carl, who went to grad school with John Darnielle. He relates that John was really into Latin literature, pre-modern history, and performing as The Mountain Goats before anyone had heard of him. I am trying to get Mr. Carl to renew the acquaintance, so that John might come for Reality, or at least stop in New Mexico on a tour.

That's a complete list of things that make me happy right now. It accounts for roughly 3% of my time. Maybe 4% if I keep getting Camel Wides.

You know how, over the summer, I occassionally said I wasn't doing anything? How being in school gives me enough of a format that I could do things in it, even though I had less free time? I was lying, like I normally do.

Can I have some of my readers' opinions of hippies? Let's have an archetype, shall we? Tie-dye t-shirt with loud-colored unmatching pants, walks around barefoot either out of laziness or pleasure, eats a lot of raw food, showers maybe once a week, at least on a first-name basis with marijuanna, smiles more than average person, knows everyone in a quarter-mile radius, often found sprawled out almost to the point of uncomfortableness, rarely or never shaves, messy, greasy hair, likes Bob Marley a LOT. Some opinions, please? Your opinion need not be of the archetype specifically, but of what you associate with that kind of person, what other traits you think they'd have, stories about hippies and you, etc.

Let's have some comments.

A freshman came up to the library desk looking for recent reports on the college by faculty members. He was interested when he read about such reports in a book on the college from 1954. He checked out The Meaning of a Liberal Education, and will probably read it. Awed by the fact that I'm a senior he asked with sheer, giddy, fresh-faced optimism, "Do you feel like you're any closer to the Truth?" Well, do I?

This is a first. Blogger is currently working faster than hotmail or gmail, both of which aren't loading at all. I'd write them a letter, but I'd need to open up another e-mail account.

My less boring thoughts lately have mainly been about people greeting people and forming relationships whether or not they care. Yesterday I watched my friend Geoff Hoffman walk through the administration building, going from office to office, chatting people up, asking how they were, listening, responding with sympathy. He would sit down and wait politely for them to get off the phone, and then chat for a few minutes, ask how things were going at the club, whatever. It was genius, it was beautiful, it was inspiring, it was hilarious. He was bumming a cigarette.

If I could ever get to this level of ingenuousness and affability, I would feel a huge load of inadequacy slip off my shoulders. Most of the people here have superb people skills, with varying levels of inauthenticity and shallowness, so I have plenty of models. I would also develop the ability to read people, and would write better characters. So this is all very boogie.

Oh, and a message to Anne: Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. This is not me asking you to send Blonde on Blonde. This is me asking you to listen to it. I am reading Infinite Jest, as I said I would. Now it is your turn.

I am alive. I frequently wake up in the morning and have a cigarette. It tastes like freedom. I have a record player, and records by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Ramblin Jack Elliott, Cisco Houston, The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, New Order, Van Morrison, The Smiths, Neutral Milk Hotel . . .. Life is reasonably good.

My main source of protein this week has been Taco Bell, which is emerging as the curse of the traveller. This will probably wear off within a month as my mind realizes that I once again live here, and there is real Mexican food if I want it. I can then get back to making milkshakes my main source of protein, even if Denny's is the only diner out here. I don't care. I can get a blender, or an egg beater, or a milkshake machine, or an ice cream truck, or a manservent if I want.

If you're reading this, I miss you viscerally. I think of you and you only for hours before I can fall asleep, and you make it safe to leave the house. I just wich I knew who you were. Leave a comment, why don't you? And tell me what you want to hear, because I'm past my prime of blog writing, and can no longer come up with much of anything on a regular basis.

It definitely isn't June anymore. It's not even last Monday.

Jesus Christ you guys Monday I am out of here so hardcore like you would not believe. Good goddamn, Santa Fe, here I come. I was so right last year when I considered that it would be best never to live at home again. So right.

Art is grand, but most writers and musicians have forgotten what art is. Saying that art is dead is passé, every generation does that; but it seems every generation is somehow right. Name me a recently written book that has enough passion and innovation to give new reason for living. Try to recall a movie from the last decade that has made you look up and say, "goddamn, no one has ever made anything like this before, and I am jealous!" (Let us think of Evangelion and smile every so often.) Play me a song not written by Jeff Mangum (thank God for Jeff Mangum) that brings some previously unknown part of you to tears. Extra points if the song is not by John Darnielle, or Bob fucking Dylan.

Where is our D. motherfucking H. Lawrence? Our Fyodor grandholyshit Dostoyevsky? Our Franz shitlicking Kafka? (My, what kind of people will find this page through Google?) Our Gustav cocksucking Flaubert? They do not exist! People aren't even named Fyodor, Franz, Gustav, or D.H. anymore! How can we have artists with such mundane names as Chuck, David, or Neal. We can't.

My God, I have just spent an hour looking through reccomendations Amazon has made based on my account, rating stuff, clicking on "I own it" or "Not interrested" . . . how addicting and sad.

I may drive over to Scott's house just to use his stereo. My old stereo, a clunky three-disc changer with pretty good speakers, is in the dump because it started eating Bob Dylan CDs. I respect its taste, but it wasn't asking my permission first. The CDs would slide under the plastic case that was supposed to hold them up, and I could hear the player licking them and getting closer to Bob Dylan than any machine has a right to get. It hasn't been reliably reading CDs for years now, anyway, and both of its tape players were broken. The radio never got good reception, either.

Jeff's old stereo had been on the porch for two years, since the last summer Eric stayed here. He would sit out there at night listening to Ella Fitzgerald and jamming with the cats. He's long gone, to bigger and brighter porches where the spiders don't go and the people all know "Howl" by heart; the CD player was nearly unused. I took it into my room. For a while it was great. Though it was built in 1994, it read burned discs, self-released discs, slightly scratched discs, and Smiths CDs, all things that confused and angered my old CD player. For several days, however, the disc drive has revolted and refuses to open, and I am very sad. The player seems to have rejected my taste in music, and is holding out for the good old days of swing. Now no one is appreciating Bob Dylan.

I think it would be pretty sad to go to Severna Park just to listen to music and maybe use the swing set, but tonight I may do exactly that.

A message to Blake, who does not, as far as I know, read my blog:

You shouldn't have told my cat that you wanted to kick him. He hasn't left the spot by the porch door where you drunkenly brayed at him that you hated him, and swung your leg unsuccessfully in his direction. You thought he was an ordinary cat, I'm sure. If he were an ordinary cat, no harm would have been done. But this was Mulder you insulted. He has been fuming for more than a day now. He's collected some dead bugs and formed them into a makeshift Blake pincushion, and he's been swiping at it and muttering, "Who do you think you are, kick at Mulder, don't even live here, I will eat you, meat, meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat! You goddamn puny bastard, you, I am bigger than you, I am huge, and you are going down, kill kill kill kill" etc.

Well, Blake, you've made my life pretty miserable. I can't sleep now because I hear Mulder. You've gotten the Japanese all in a tizzy. They're expecting an attack, and they didn't send the last check. They seem to think we've let Mulder out, and based on the chatter they're picking up, I can't blame them. You had better come back here and apologize. Japan has been investigating uranium enrichment, and we all know how dedicated the Japanese can be once they have a project.

Hey, is Anne still on that cuh-raaaaaaay-zee 5 ayem schedule?

I am starting an over-ambitious novel, which I have done three times before. This time, however, I am plotting and working out characters beforehand. The story was inspired by a dream, and the attempt is inspired by the song "Novelty". It will be awesome or, at worst, incomplete. I will see if I am capable of any sort of poetic narrative, which has been generally absent from my writing. I can attribute this to lack of trying, because this is my podium and I can say whatever I want.

My first cigarette of the day now tends to dull the information sent by the nerves in my limbs and face, rather than making me float.  Have I graduated to addict from "afficianado" or something?  Also, why do I have the urge to talk to the bitter, mean walrus who has the weekly night shifts at my 7-11?  The woman has grey hair, a bulbous body, and facial expressions ranging from annoyed grimace to disdainful scrunch, and was bothered that I made her stop mopping for a minute to sell me some jades.  And yet, as another side effect of that first cigarette, I felt some slight affection for her and wondered if she might appreciate a customer talking to her to lighten the gloom of a tedious and uninspiring job.  What is wrong with me?

I have a place in Santa Fe now.  This is good, even though I was somewhat looking forward to wandering the streets of hippietown with a bag full of CDs on my shoulder, looking for a place to circle and lick my hair before going to sleep. 
 

I will be living in a guest house.  My father originally misunderstood this term.  He thought it was like the servants' quarters.

 

My place is not far from the ironically named Santa Fe river, which is now nothing but a dusty culvert for most of the year.  The house is one of many bumps of adobe sown into the landscape of foothills, pebbles, tough and ugly bushes, long and angled shadows, and druggy college students.  I've seen a picture of the lawn.  It looks like a nuclear test site, and maybe it was.  This is New Mexico, after all.  The dirt has been baking all summer, and is ready to freeze and crack this winter. 

 

The nights are long in Santa Fe, and the bars are western-themed.  The moon frequently has a very pretty ring of light around it, the stars are far more visible there than in this smogy and bright area, and it's the first place I was able to see the Milky Way.  During the winter it was usually cold, but not too cold; and in the spring the sun shat its blinding rays upon us and I stayed inside for most of the day.

 

Anyone want to visit me next year?  I'll build a guest house to the guest house if someone comes.

My always expanding opinion of Jess Castle:
 
Jess qualifies as "a pretty cool guy," and yet, when my mother asked if Jess is "nice," I said, "no."  It never really occurred to me before, but Jess really isn't nice.  Neither am I, for that matter, as my readers would likely agree.  Jess and I are assholes.  This term often means one who makes himself look bad in the view of qualified judges of character.  In this case, however, it means we often think badly of other people.  We are qualified judges of character with a lot of cynicism.  Jess's descriptions of people he doesn't like are often howlingly funny.  He tells me that I, too, have a talent for describing people I don't like with exceptionally unflattering terms. 
 
I had previously thought of myself as liking "nice people."  This is not true.  Scott, you are nice, and I like you.  However, I probably don't like you because you're nice.  If you weren't nice, I wouldn't like you any less. 
 
Jess has above-average intelligence, and he makes efforts to build on it.  I respect that.  I couldn't say why.  I suppose I subconsciously think of him as a useful resource, likely to be a good person to know in the future.  There are probably other, less selfish reasons, but I don't know what they are.  It's similar to cats: do I like cats because they provide me pleaseure, or because they're "cute?"  I dunno. 
 
Intelligence gives people the option of having complicated and enjoyable discussions, of course.  That probably has a lot to do with it.  But I respect the fact that Jess builds on his intelligence (studies national issues and philosophy with equally scrutinizing care).  Why should I respect this?  Hell, what's respect, for that matter?
 
So, if anyone has comments on Jess, namely, those two of my readers who met him last night, please give them to me.  I study all of you all of the time, just so you know.  You are never alone.

Things Scott could have done in New York in addition to eating at McDonald's:
 
1.  See a movie that's also playing at the Harbor Center.
2.  Look into a mirror.
3.  Exercise.
4.  Talk to his brother.
5.  Clean his glasses.
6.  Buy The Capital.
7.  Pet a puppy.
8.  Go to sleep.
9.  Masturbate in a bathroom stall.
10.  Obsessively button and unbutton his pants.

Vet go "hello, cutie." Midnight go "rwarrrrrr!" Vet go "That's alright, I've got magic fingers. Let me just get you out of there now . . ." Midnight go "Rwrarrrararrrwrraarar!" Vet go "Shit! Sedate her! Sedate her!"

Here's to Scott, who cannot tell a lie and didn't have to chop down a cherry tree to prove it; to Scott, who is a model of a struggling artist; to Scott, whose mere existence gives me pleasure. I hereby dedicate to you the meatless supreme pizza I am heating up. Now please, blog already. I've been going to sadpanda several times a day in hopes of seing another post, however small it may be. I am even glad to see your new comment (which is awesome, as usual). Please think of me, and all your fans.

And now I've got a pizza to attend to.

Tonight I was driving home from D.C. on 97 north. The road splits a thick forest, winding past gaps and ditches, over bridges and up hills. During the day, I usually speed by; Maryland forests are pretty boring, unless you're walking in one. I have never driven there at night, however; and, although it still wasn't visually impressive, what with the darkness and all (I could only see about ten feet in front of me, and not at all on the sides), when I saw a 40mph limit sign, I decided to go 30 instead. Lot of deer around here, I thought. Within ten seconds of slowing, a deer appeared in my headlights and slowly ambled across the road. If I had been going 40, she would have died.

This is my 100th post. Unlike most of its predecessors, this post is written mid-day. Sunlight's falling on the mouse pad and keyboard, having been strained through the window screen as if by cheese cloth. Ray Charles's group is smearing keyboards and horns all over the living room; they are drenching the carpet and furniture, and the funk content in the air is even higher than when Flagg walks by.

Jeff woke me at 11 this morning and shouted at me to look at highlights from last night's game between the Yankees and the Red Socks. I watched as Derek Jeter caught a ball and, propelled by inertia, tumbled head-first into the stands. I saw the two home runs hit in the twelth inning. I heard the fans exult, and saw the team rise up and devour each other in a pile as if they had just won the pennant. Then Jeff left, and I went back to sleep.

Jeff has been a fan of the Yankees since the early 1980s, when they sucked. My father has been a fan since the early 1950s. Some time in the last forty years he has developed a neurosis that whenever he watches them as they are playing, they begin to lose. He knows this cannot be, but he believes he is cursed. Jeff tells me that every time he calls my father in to watch, when the Yankees are up the the ninth inning, things begin to go wrong. The oppossing team begins to get a few hits, and Rivera turns at the camera to shake his fist. When my father passes by the tv when a game is on, the other team gets a double play against the Yankees, or the Yankees begin making errors.

He tapes the World Series when the Yankees are in it, so that he doesn't have a heart attack. He stays up at night if he has heard that the Yankees have lost, thinking about God knows what.

The pop-psychological diagnoses are, of course, fascinating, but I find the symptoms themselves to be intriguing enough. This is a man who uses reason in most every aspect of his life. He is not religious. His biggest faults are quickness to anger and excessive worrying, but he rarely displays fear. And yet he experiences an intense and irrational effect on events that are taking place hundreds of miles away, which prevents him from taking joy in watching his childhood team.

Whenever Jeff sees the Yankees losing, he gets sick to his stomach and turns the game off. He also gets feelings about what Yankee batters are going to do at the plate, and he is frequently exactly right. "Gonna ground out at second. Gonna get a hit way into left field. Gonna hit it right down the line for a triple." He has no such ability to predict the performance of other teams.

For those who don't know, my family is from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and my father was born in 1951, long before the existence of the Mets. They are not Yankees fans because of the team's outstanding abilities, or because it is trendy. They do not have a hatred for the Orioles, but simply feel no connection to that team.

That is all, 100th post.

Why do I like cheese so goddam much? Why does my mouth water whenever I see cheese? When I wanted to go vegan, why could I give up milk and eggs, but not cheese? Am I addicted? Is that it? I'd rather not live than be a slave to cheese! I will not give up my fight. I will become free! Unless . . . perhaps I'm being too rash. Perhaps it's not that bad to be a slave to cheese. Maybe I should just bow down to my master and serve him better.

Grandparents here. So very, very hungry.

I wrote a letter to the Washington Post last night about the Supreme Court's decision in Michael Newdow's "under God" case. Now that I type it here, it occurs to me that, in the letter, I probably referred to "in God we trust" by mistake. Oh, well. They'll fix that if they want to publish it, right?

The letter responded to an op-ed on the 21st by William Raspberry, who is generally liberal, and who nevertheless supported the Supreme Court's ruling. He compared the ruling to a "no call" on a slightly questionable play in a basketball game. The idea, he says, is not to interrupt the rhythm of the game for an issue that doesn't necessitate it.

I tried to present the view that "under God" is one of several disturbing customs in government which infiltrate public life, such as swearing on the Bible in court and for inaugurations, and the habitual statements politicians make about their religious faith. These are symptoms of a subtle but wide-spread religious (read: protestant christian) influence on our government's worldview. It may be small, but I think it is significant and a good place to start in bringing this issue to light.

Did you know that Tom DeLay has a sign in his office saying "This could be the day," referring to the Rapture? How does a man like that become the House Majority Leader? John Ashcroft compares himself to the biblical Daniel, saying that he doesn't let public opinion influence his decisions, and instead looks to his religion (which, by the way, is Pentecostal). Bush chronically refers to evildoers in his speaches, and describes the world as a struggle between good and evil.

It's a lucky thing none of these people are in positions of power; not being Jews, they are not allowed into the real decision-making. They're just a bunch of troublesome goyim. Public elections, after all, are just illusory, and have no influence on policy-making. Nevertheless, I long for a day when running for public office doesn't necessitate reassuring voters that you are religious; when the debate over social services doesn't center around whether it should be the church, and not the government, to provide them; when reason, and not religion, rules the people's opinions on abortion; and when public schools don't even consider prayer, posting the ten commandments, or having students hear "one nation under God" every weekday, nation-wide. It's a bad sign that a majority of the country is opposed to the smallest of these changes.

I have recently found out that my house is bugged. We've had the typical ants every summer, and the front door lets in moths and spiders rather regularly, but this sort of bug was different, more insidious, electronic . . .

I contacted the government, asking them what to do. I got an e-mail from Karl Rove, in which I was informed not to panic, that this sort of thing happens all the time, and that the best thing I could do was put on a twenty minute press conference with an advisor whom the public seems to like, but not to appear myself.

I present to you my Secretary of Whining Noises. Ask him any questions you like.



Ladies and gentlemen of the press, you have twenty minutes.

How the Mustache Club won last night

Roger, though awesome, is a bad communicator. I might dub him The Weak Communicator, but he would still compare favorably to Reagan. He sent me four e-mails since January, each one containing, at most, five lines. However, since he is awesome, this means he usually includes the most important information anyway. His last e-mail told me that he was no longer planning to get an apartment in Maryland with me as his roomate; he's moving to Houston. He left no phone number. When I tried his old Baltimore apartment a month ago, I left a message and got no response. I called again two weeks ago and his number had been disconected.

This Friday, he responded to my last e-mail in a manner that I would not characterize as timely, giving me his "dear old granny's" phone number, and saying that it was the easiest way to reach him right now. He was in Ocean City, and told me that he would be returning home Sunday at 9pm. He didn't say where home was.

At about 8:30, I called his granny. She told me that he had just left to visit a friend, in Eldersburg if she remembered correctly. "Ellicott City?" I asked, and she said yes, that was it. Not too much later, while I was on the phone with Eric, I saw Roger's white Altima through the window, and a very long-haired Roger getting out of it. I went to the porch to greet him, no longer processing what Eric was saying to me. We grinned at each other and I let him know what was going on with the phone. I sat Roger in the kitchen, said goodbye to Eric, and got my most important possesions: a purple lighter and a pack of cigarettes.

My father currently believes that I don't smoke. I told my mother that I still do, and even submitted to silly questions with varying levels of answerability ("Why?" "How many do you smoke a day?" "Where do you plan to get them?"); my father, however, has threatened to stop paying for college the few times he's become aware of my smoking, after which I convinced him that I'd quit. So he gave me an equally silly rueful acceptance that I was going with Roger, whom he considers a health risk.

I returned to the kitchen, where Roger was playing with Mulder. He was wearing a black Harley-Davidson t-shirt with a colorful swooping eagle on it, and a dark pair of blue jeans. It's impossible to see Roger without thinking, "that man is awesome." I suppose even his family members are not immune to his charisma. As humans, it is our birthright to walk upright; for Roger, more-so. His hair is immaculate, and seems more like a rockstar accessory than dead skin cells. His voice insinuates itself into your consciousness, causing you to immediately trust him for more than he's worth. Mulder, who already likes everyone who walks in the door, swooned and said, "Dear sir, if I ever have the honor of accepting a scrap of meat from your hands, I shan't forget it." Roger didn't seem to notice.

As we got into his car, we asked each other catch-up questions about school and plans. He's told me before that he felt like he had no one to talk to when I went back to St. John's, because he mostly hangs out with blank-minded hipsters. I recognize a repressed glimmer of intelligence in Roger, but he doesn't make any definite use of it. Our conversations about the present, which should be the most fluid material for conversation, peter out after a few blanket statements. I let it go for now as he asked what I wanted to do.

"Would you like to drive to Annapolis, see if we can get Scott?" I asked.

"Sure."

We drove a bit and I asked questions about how he's living his life, what he thinks about it, how he might be more ambitious. He responds fairly well to this sort of thing, and I suppose it's what he means when he says I'm someone he can talk to. He's the opposite of my brother Jeff, who doesn't even understand the intent of my prods to get him moving, out of the basement, more mentally active. In the background, the stereo played Et At It, a meandering trickle of experimental guitar and keyboard.

Once we got to Annapolis, Roger manuevered around the many West Street detours and found a parking garage that was free for an hour. Then I called Scott from a pay phone on Maryland Ave. His father came on.

"Hello?" he said in his nervous Jimmy Stewart voice.
"Hi. Is Scott home?"
"Who's calling?"
I told him as Roger said, "twenty-one and they still ask who's calling . . ." I waved my hands in resignation and heard the affable Mr. White calling out, "Sco-att!"
Scott sounded like he was on sleeping pills as he said, "Hello, Gregsford."
I told him we were on Maryland Avenue and asked if we could pick him up. I had woken him up from a nap. "Why are you there?" We could come, he said, but he'd be wearing his bedclothes.

A little bit later, we pulled up by his driveway and saw a light go off in the living room. Scott came out wearing a white t-shirt and plaid shorts. I had instructed Roger to lightly joke about the bedclothes, hoping that Scott wouldn't take offense. Instead, Scott returned to the house to don his pants, and we were off.

We went back to Annapolis, listening to Crispen Glover's oddly intoned rap about masturbating, and parked by St. John's. We got out and looked at each other; Roger and Scott have only seen each other a couple of times, and I never know how they'll interract. They always do pretty well, though. We went uptown to find a bar. The first place we passed was hosting some sort of porch party. There was drunken and exuberant shouting, loud lounge music, bright lights, Annapolis twentysomethings. Obviously not the place. As everyone knows, it's not cool to be loud without an explanation. We went on, and as we approached West Street, we were accosted by a group of maybe a dozen very drunken celebrators, clapping and chanting, who called out, "our friend just got married!" We applauded and said congratulations, and then the group grew closer. A woman stepped out and said, "Are you guys in a band?" One of us, I don't know who, said yes, and she asked, "What band?"

"We're The Mustache Club," Scott said. "Our motto is, Gotta Have a Stash."

"Oh, cool," the woman said. "Are you headed for that bus?" She pointed at one by the Ramshead.

"No, we have our own bus."
"Yeah," Scott said, "The Awesome Bus."

"Yeah?" She smiled. "We're on the other awesome bus. We're going barhopping. Do you guys wanna come with us?"

We glanced at each other, and before we had consulted beyond shrugs and bemused grins, we were following the drunken revellers. Roger moved up ahead toward a group of the guys, and the woman who had invited us along talked to me and Scott. The group continued to clap and chant, and occasionally called out, "Yeah, Mustache Club!" "Mustache Club!"

The woman's name was Brienne, or maybe Rienne. Scott was talking to her openly, and I was too bemused and embarrased to say much to anyone. Brienne, we learned, was the bride. She was wearing casual white clothing, and looking bony. How were we supposed to run this? What if they found out we weren't a band? What the hell were we doing, anyway?

As we went along, a bulky guy wearing a grey shirt asked our names. Scott told him, and he said, "No, man, your moniker, not your real name." I forget what Scott told him, but we all laughed. "That's Roger, and this is Gregsford," he said, pointing at me. Brienne and another girl, probably her sister, came up to me. "What's your name again?" the sister asked. "Greg, but some people call me Cicada." They both laughed and made a chirping sound. "Greg's the shy one," Scott told them, and Brinne swept over to me, put her arm around my shoulder, and shouted consolation about how she's shy too, and most people don't know how to react at first, but eventually, etc.

We got to the first bar, where a post-rock band was playing. Scott, who had been recording the conversation and calls during the walk, passed his tape player around asking if anyone had words for posterity. I didn't hear what people said. The guy with the grey shirt handed us all beers, which was the first tip-off that we were getting a free ride tonight.

Roger and I sat in a booth near the bar. Scott stayed with the tape player for a while and came over when he got it back. We drank and asked each other what the hell was going on. Scott was grinning and looking elated. Roger seemed used to this sort of scene, although from what he said later, his thoughts were pretty similar to mine: "What are we supposed to do? How are we going to get out of this?"

A few of the guys came over and chatted with us, though I couldn't hear them over the music. One of them brought us more beer, and we thanked him. The man silently clapped me on the shoulder and went on. Scott passed his tape recorder around, asking for our thoughts. Then he asked for a cigarette and told the mic that he was smoking.

Brienne came and sat at our booth, looking happy to see her band. I couldn't hear much of what she said, so I probably had very inappropriate responses. I was overwhelmed by the group, most of which was dancing right next to the real band with some bizarre hands-in-the-air-hips-gyrating moves.

Then Scott and I went to the bar and got two shots of vodka, because they didn't have ouzo. It went down very smoothly; since it cost Scott $4 a shot, it had better go down smoothly.

Not much later, the group started to leave, so I quickly finished the third free bottle of beer and we went out. "Let's hear it for our band! Mustache Club!" We began walking toward another bar, this one by the market. For the first time, I noticed that two guys in the group were talking with British accents. Scott asked where they were from, and the younger of the two said, "We're from Kent. It's in southern England . . . just south of London." They commented a bit on our area, saying it wasn't like in the movies, where each section of America was stereotyped. I didn't know whether to believe they were in England, thinking: if they believe we're in a band, how do I know they're not trying to impress us by "being from England"? I gradually became convinced as they had realistic and identical accents, which they never "dropped," and their responses to questions about England seemed immediate.

In the second bar, Scott and I sat on stools, Roger on a baby chair. We shouted conversation to the two Brits over the average bar juke music. The wedding group kept smiling at us whenever they saw us, and giving us free bottles of beer. We still had no idea why they were bringing us along, but we asked no questions. They were treating us like VIPs.

I asked the younger Brit why he thought the Darkness was so popular over there, and he said that they were the only group with any style. He talked to Roger about what kind of music we played, and Roger told him that we were not, in fact, in a band together, but that he played keyboards in a group called Tra La Log and D.I.G.I.T.A.L., and that Scott and I were in separate bands as well. No one else in the group found out, at any point, that we weren't actually The Mustache Club.

After a bit of conversation, most of which I couldn't hear, we began to leave this bar too. Scott found Brienne near the entrance and began apologizing for recording without her permission. I had missed some comment abaout it, apparantly, and Scott was very upset. Brienne looked tired and seemed less excited than she had been before, but she said that it really wasn't a problem; she had just been drunk and emotional when she confronted Scott. She told him not to worry about it, but Scott apologized again. "Really, it's all right."

We went to one last bar, which was the first place that carded us. I didn't have my wallet. "How old are you?" the bouncer asked. "Twenty one." "Twenty one on the nose?"

He told me to wait outside so his manager could ask me a few questions. Once the group was all in the bar, the bouncer just asked my birthday and the place I was born, and then allowed me to go in. He didn't need his manager, apparantly. "I hope you're not lying to me, man."

In this last bar, a white band with steel drum and guitars played a song for the new couple, something about how "you've never looked nicer," and we all got more beers. The group still grinned whenever they saw us, murmering, "the band!" Roger danced with Scott for a bit, and then The 'Staches sat on the stools and watched. I wasn't aware of how long we were in this bar. I was getting very tipsy: I think I was on my seventh drink. I was smiling, but starting to feel very insecure. I wasn't alone, apparantly, since we looked at each other, briefly decided that it was time to go before they got mad at us, and said our goodbyes. The group responded as if we were close friends. We got firm handshakes, offers to sleep at their house, pats on the back, hugs from the girls. As we left, Brienne pulled me close and repeated what she had said earlier about shyness. I understood no more of what she said this time, but smiled, nodded, said something strange. She kissed my hand, an odd new trend among girls; I kissed hers back and left.

We walked back to the car badly in need of a business lot, but instead made use of the beautiful St. John's campus. In Annapolis, the world is your bathroom.

Scott, as usual, took up the voice of our subconscience. "I hope those guys don't see us again. That was really weird. What do you think they wanted? Did they really think we were a band?" We didn't know the answers to these questions. I attempted a few of them, saying they were just looking for a good time and it didn't matter to them whether we were a band or not. They got to extend their generosity and have young companionship on their bar hopping.

We went to the Double TT, which is the only appropriate end to any night.

I don't wish it were the sixties, but I do wish something would happen.

My parents came home last night, and they took me clothes shopping. I got more threads than a tapestry factory. I got more threads than a 50x50 American flag. I am now the best dressed man since Morrissey. It's a good thing, having parents. I doubted it before, but damn if they didn't buy me more outfits than are in the army. Shame I couldn't smoke in front of them, though. By 8 pm I was getting a splitting headache from lack of nicotene. I began to have hallucinations of cigarettes. I would close my eyes and see smoke curling into knots and drifting off to attack a nun. By nine, my stomach started to revolt. I could swear its grumbles were saying, "Hey, man, what do you think of Joe Camel?"

My parents retired at midnight, and I went to my room and listened to my $2.99 copy of I (thanks Scott for having Dustin sell me a demo. I don't think I tell you you're cool enough. You're really cool). After about a half an hour of waiting for my parents to fall asleep, I got my cigarettes and went for a walk.

By the time I had gotten to the bridge at the end of Main Street, I had smoked at least six cigarettes but I still wasn't satisfied, so I continued walking. A man approached me from behind and asked if I wanted to walk with him. He fumbled witht the cork on his bottle of wine and only managed to break it, so he got a pen out of his bag and pushed the cork in. We kept walking, passing the bottle, and he began to talk incessantly. He took me for a musician, because of my sterling Malkmus hair, I suppose, and asked if I knew any of his friends.

"You don't know Bobby Dent? You look like the kind of guy who would know him. How about James Trenton? No?"

He told me about getting beat up on the streets of Baltimore, first by two guys who were pissed at him, and then by the cops who came by to break it up. They put him in jail for five days because they thought he was on acid, he said. He told me about being the only member of his family to graduate college, which he had just done at the age of 27; about his truck driving Republican father; about how all the women in his family had been raped; about his plans to move to England and teach at a school for retarded six year olds; about how he was writing music that would properly fuse rock and hip hop, "not like that Limp Bizkit shit . . .". We were getting into Catonsville, so I told him I had to turn around.

It took me about forty minutes to get back to Main Street. After the shops, as I started heading back up the hill, four guys passed me going the other way. "Hey man, you're a fast walker. We passed you about twenty minutes ago." I grunted and kept on going.

Message to Bridgie: Man, I'm sorry I didn't read your comment until just now. This is the first time I haven't checked that every day, believe me. I just haven't been in houses with internet access. I wrote the last two messages in the Evergreen library, which wasn't open when I was typically awake anyway. It would have been really cool to hang out.

Also, this must mean I have more readers than I thought. How did this happen? I suppose there's just that much boredom in the world that my blog is considered readible. Perhaps there are millions reading my blog! If so, I'm really sorry there isn't more content. I'll start trying to lead you all, soon, and maybe we can create something really cool; like a geodesic dome, or a preservation chamber for people like Billy Corgan and Robert Smith so we can have them in their fallen, awesome state forEVer.

So, I'd just like to give a shout out to Bob Dylan, who, for all I know, has been reading this thing for over a year. You're really cool, Bob, and it will be a sad day when you die. I will morn Jewish style, only instead of a year and a day, I'll just found Highway 61 again and bum up and down it for the rest of my life, screaming to passerby about your genius. And I'll start a tribute band called The Whining Poets, which will include Morrissey, John Darnielle, and Stephen Malkmus, and we will rock your songs to massive bar gig success. It will not be fitting tribute, either option, but then there is could be no fitting tribute. So please don't die.

Boogie times in Olympia. Watched Eric's Shakespeare class perform A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is actually better with bad acting, as I would not have guessed and you would probably not have guessed either, but Shakespeare knew it. I've been riding around on city buses, the 41 line, going to and from Evergreen State College to see what the art fags are up to on both sides of town. People here buy some strange, diverse cars, and they commonly sing on the streets for themselves and play odd-looking instruments. Eric often plays his harmonica and sings Dylan.

And there is a lake called "Capitol Lake," usually referred to as The Lake or My Lake. There are seals in the lake, who come out mainly at four a.m. and flip around in the water. The town is full of majestic views from on high, looking down great hills and over bridges with epic movie shots onto house tops and lush forests and deep brown dirt. This is essentially Maryland but more compact.

Yet, according to Eric, this town is Death. He still searches for cool people, but so far whenever he's found one it turns out the person is from Maryland. The residents are very wigged out, wear hipster clothing and slouch around being local. Lots of smiles and vacant conversations about happenings. The bars have stylish neon designs and are the kind of place chronicled in indie movies and internet hip-posts. Eric's classes are laughably, cryingly bad. His Blake class has seminars that remind me of the early months of freshmen year, when no one knew what to do and so spouted theories and spoke authoritatively to the open air without conversing. The teacher is a real flake hippy willow chick, who mainly teachers poetry workshops with exercises that mix high school and party games. She doesn't talk much, just nods encouragingly.

I wouldn't mind living here, though. I rather like death. I thought that's what hipsters are supposed to exonerate, anyway.

So I'm totally in Olympia, Washington right now. I had a fifty-five hour Amtrak ride up from Albuquerque, which should totally be a band name, totally, Up From Albuquerque, I like it, I totally do. I rode first the Southwest Chief, great name, and then the Coast Starlight, not such a good name, and not such a good train, either. Amtrak rents Union Pacific's lines, and are thus forced to stand aside for all of Union Pacific's freight trains, which unionpacific their fannies on down south with dull regularity. Our train spent half the time sitting by the side of the tracks, and the passengers got to stare out the widthy windows into small patches of trees and rocks and little round bushes you in the east would not recognize. We were staring at the sort of place I've dodged away from trains into. Not much goin' aaahn. And so, over night, while I was adjusting and readjusting the seat, trying to find a comfortable sleeping position, not finding it, and sleeping somehow anyway, and waking up smelly, the train lost SEVEN HOURS.

The next day it moved in spurts up the coast, literally on the coast for some beautiful stretches, and as my odors grew, I read and tried to avoid the loud mother and her louder four year old. Their usual schtick was to run back together from the café with soda and buckets of grease stuffed into the form of hamburgers, the mother chiding the girl and the girl crying "Mommy, how can I make it up to you, how can I be good for you" and the mother saying, loudly, "do you have to be so loud? Why are you so loud? loud, loud loud!" The girl also played "Baby," a game which consisted of her shrieking in a mimic baby cry repetitively and the mother saying, "Whay are you crying like a baby? You're not a baby." (I'm not being sarcastic, mind you. This really was a "game" the girl played.) The girl was mildly overweight, dressed in tight pants and ill-cut shirts with miss-matched colors, crooning at every other little girl that passed, "You my friend!" and the other little girls running away. The mother was monstrously fat, kind of like Jabba the Hut only bigger, and wore a tank top that had a "provocative" hole in the back, and which displayed her blue bra.

I was seated near the connection between trains, and my car had a door that slid closed as if it were retarded, squeeking shut as slowly as possible, taking about a minute and a half, leaving revealed the banging and rattling and clinking and huffing of the space in between cars to shout at us as we tried to sleep. The attendents made maximum use of this door between the hours of midnight and eight a.m., and courteously made no announcements, so that no one would know what station it was, or if we could have a cigarette break.

Ah, cigarettes. I've made up with you since I got back on the ground, now haven't I? In two days I was able to get maybe one cigarette every eight hours. There was no smoking car. There had been on my previous Amtrak ride, which led me to believe this trip would be better than a Greyhound. And maybe it was for all that. Next time, however, I will get a sleeping car, which even has a shower and paid meals. As it was, my underwear were fused to my ass by the time I got off, and I mainly ate microwaved Gardenburgers fused together with grease.

And now I am in the home of American Indie. Eric has grown progressively weirder. He now wears a head scarf, a bracelet and rings; still has a shaved head, and still wears clothing much too big on him, for he is still bone thin. His apartment has two identical cats, a mother cat and her son cat. Both are black and bug-eyed and huge. The mother cat has nine distinguishing features on her belly, but otherwise they are a perfect pair. The mother is called Salome, and the son Babylon. My brother never managed to get his Nebiru cat. It's ride kept falling through.

Eric has five very tiny rooms: two bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and the nonesuch. The apartment's probably intended as a single, but he has a roommate, whom I've not met yet. He's fed me mainly peanut butter so far, which is what he generally eats all day. He has found no job yet, but makes some money modelling for thirty six bucks a pop, which he gets roughly twice weekly. (No, it's true, really. Everything I've said.)

I'll be leaving here next Tuesday on a plane for Chicago, and then will drive with crazy Will back to Maryland. See you soon, Scott; Anne, don't drown; Noah, I don't believe you exist anymore, but if you do, shalom. If I don't write again soon, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs.

I had my don rag today. I got my junior essay back, and my tutors commented on it. One seminar tutor said, "I was impressed by Mr. Green's understanding of Kant's logic, and his clarity was excellent." The other said, "I thought Mr. Green was very good at coving up the parts of Kant's arguments that he didn't understand, and he did this particularly with the logic." I don't know who was right.

My language tutor noticed that I was separated from the other students socially, but said that when I entered the conversation, we talked to each other well. What he doesn't know is that I despise the other students . . .

My lab tutor gave back my paper on James Clerk Maxwell. You may think I meant "Clark", but indeed, his middle name is Clerk. This should be a lesson to us all. My tutor thought my paper was incomplete. Perhaps this is because the paper is incomplete. I lost some sleep over it so I could say I tried. It was written between 3 and 5 a.m. Wes was able to give me just enough insight into the electro-magnetic theory of light for me to produce three pages on a treatise thousands of pages long.

And math.
And math.
And math.

It's surprising. I did well in math. I was told that I ought to trust myself more on the complicated proofs, as in Newton. This despite the fact that he only thinks I would do well because I understand calculus, which is like thinking that because I understand how to govern a flashlight, I should trust myself to be a Senator.

Oh, and then the ship finally came to dock, and walking off the deck came Bob Dylan. He lit a cigarette, donned his sunglasses, and smiled. I have no more classes, and the Dylan in me is happy.

"The film features a singer who joins a rising band, only to accidentally cause their deaths. After making a pact with the devil, the band returns from the dead, and become highly successful."

Has anyone here head of Emir Kusturica? Director of Time of the Gypsies and Underground, two of the most awesome movies ever made? One does wonder, one does wonder.

It is getting tired here. I am one of the last hold-outs of the original credo, sworn in blood, that we will never die. Weariness has rendered me even more useless than I ever was. I am awake every night at two a.m., frantically attempting to correct my amassing and horrible errata. My face looks like that of a losing boxer's. Even getting a small bit of food is a daunting effort, and I think I might soon question its necessity.

The college has replaced the edges of every table with shards of glass, razors, cactus needles and salt. I have not been able to lean anywhere, on anything, for weeks. The legendary dust of New Mexico, second only to the hills of Idaho, and followed closely by the volcanos of Montana, has collected under my window, and so every time I try to air out my maggot infested room, I must prepare to whoop and bellow and cough and hawk and wheeze.

The library fired me on Monday, and then rehired me as jester. It is now my job to entertain the board of visitors and governers, putting on a smile with red paint and pretending that the wrinkles are made out of putty so that I don't disturb the childish minds of the my customers. I am forced to dance on pained feet, and wave my strengthless arms in the air, to turn my death thralls into a caper, and make mirth with lungs that are tired of breathing. My tears usually erase my painted smile, but the ignorent bourgeois audience assumes that I am converting from jester to clown, and calls out innocently, "yes, show us your misery and your foppery, make us laugh by causing yourself pain!" And so I do, and when they see me, they begin to sense the destitute and exhausted plight of the Student. As the realization, such as they are able to understand it, drizzles over the heads of my imbecilic audienc, some of them throw money at my feet and cry for my forgiveness, but the money is always fake, given them by their handlers to make them pride themselves on their riches, of which they are in fact being swindled daily, and so I am left with nothing.

There is a new regulation in the dining hall that, after every meal, all students must vomit up what little they were able to eat. This is collected and turned into dog food, by which Aramark, our contractor, turns a significant profit. I lose nothing from this decree, as I never ate there anyway, but still, the injustice rankles in my breast, and brings tears of outrage to my already wet eyes.

As I left my room to write this, my one allotted missive to the world, which I intended to use by begging for charity but instead have filled up with nothing but complaints, stern-faced men were carrying my bed sideways out of my door. They said they would replace it with an iron bar fastened to the walls and draped over with canvas.

The hope of Maryland is now all that keeps me from complete despair. If anyone has taken my cats, or removed the moisture from the air, I hope that what I have written above is enough to make him want to reverse his deeds. Please pet Flagg for me; rub him well and with diligence, for he is and has always been very dear to me. Give him whatever extra scraps of meat you can scrounge, and try to keep him free of flees. Glance with kindness on Mulder once in a while, too. He may not deserve it, but he has made himself mildly less disgusting to me by means of his loyalty. He has written to me every day, although most of the content of his letters has been removed by the auditors. Still, it has provided me with my only news for these many long months. Perhaps you might spare him one or two kicks a day on this account.

As a last entreaty: I have found it necessary to sell all of my possessions, including my beloved collections of curtain fabric and car decal stickers, in order to buy my passage home; and this small income proved to be insufficient. If any of you could find it in your hearts, or perhaps in your purses, which is more likely, please send me a few pennies. It would be the work of divinity if I don't have to sell my ass somewhere in Tenessee to pay for the final leg of my trip.

The seminar was on Smith. Adam, that is. Every one was a bit jittery, but we were all pretty sure, because the seniors hadn't doen Lola's yet. That's where they make their money, right? They can't do it before they make their money! So it can't be, could it? Of course, there are balloons in the freshman seminar down the hall . . . and somebody saw seniors mixing drinks in the faculty office twenty minutes ago . . . and a bunch of seniors were seen driving down Camino Cruz Blanca in the back of a pickup truck porting a keg of beer . . . but still, Lola's hasn't happened yet, so how could it be?

We talk about sweatshops, with an air of absurdity, because there was nothing in this particular reading that would lead one to talk about sweatshops. Tairiffs, yes, how much France sucks, yes, but not child labor or Nike. I tell them all this, but they don't listen. They almost never listen to me. I make a comment and the conversation stops, my tutor says something like, "But isn't he also talking about how we should have no qualms about importing, as long as the price is cheaper?" And I say, like, "Yes, but it's in reference to developed countries. Last I heard, there weren't any sweatshops in Holland." And she says, "But it's not such a leap to apply it to a debate that's still going on today, is it?" And I say, "No, but we would have no support from the text if we want to talk about it. If we want to talk about it anyway, fine." And she says, "That's understandable. But suppose--"

And then a phone rings. People look around to see what asshole forgot to turn his phone off, but we soon realize that everyone is looking around. Finally, the guy in the corner (the prematurely balding blonde Texan with freaky jaw bones, as a matter of fact) opens the cabinet and takes out a tiny gray cell phone. "Hello? . . . He wants to talk to Mr. Green." The class laughs, and the phone is passed to me.

"I thought I told you never to call me here."

"Camm autsihd," I hear Jess Castle say. "Ant tell suh clas to continyu see conferzation."

I leave the room and there is Jess, dressed all in black, with sunglasses and a blue neck scarf. His friend Angus is also there, wearing the same get-up. They pull me into the corner and say, "Take ov your shirt and your chaket, hmm? Ant put on zis sun dress." They instruct me to put my arms through the neck hole. "It iz sleefless, yah. Klaus, look at the big girl!" "Yah, he is zo pretty! Now go back into see classrohm and tell zem to continyoo see confersation. Ve'll be there in a few minuten."

I go back in. The seminar is talking about machines and labor. I sit down and people laugh nervously, explosively, still trying to control themselves a bit. "Hey, pretty lady!" "Mr. Green, what are you doing later tonight?"

"It's becoming increasingly obvious. They said to continue the conversation."

Amazingly, people actually did continue to talk about Adam Smith, though in the silliest possible manner.

After a few minutes, my shoulders were getting very cold and I was wondering if Jess and Angus were actually coming. I was looking down at my lap and Mr. Coker-Dukowitz looked over and said, "It's showing, but don't worry, it looks good." Hmm.

In come Jess and Angus. "Hello, seminar. Vee are prospective tutors, and ve're goink to be takink ovah your seminar tonight. I am Klaus, and this is my partner Klaus. Vee are gay lovers from East Berlin. Hm-hm-hm-hm! Olt tutors, please go to Lowah Commons. Come on. Get aut."

"Do you mean 'old tutors,' or 'legitimate tutors'?"

"Vee ahr Cherman. Vee mean 'olt'."

And there was much drunkeness and spilling of baby formula.

Nobody told me, but apparantly Earth Day is now a celebratory holiday. Campus food service put out plates of barbacue fare out by the fish pond, and everybody is just sitting around and chatting. There are banners, and a band is out on the balcony. If our voice mail were working, we doubtless would have received a chipper message about it from Vivian Duran, the consumptive switchboard supervisor. It is like croquet, only small and pathetic, and it doesn't make me want to cry quite as much.

A message to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Why do you have to suck so much? Everybody else makes sense, so you're obviously just not trying hard enough. Although it might be better for you not to try harder. I sure wouldn't want to see what shit you come up with.

What's all this crap about a "critique," anyway? Are you a movie review? I mean, Siskel already got a replacement, so it's not like you're going to make any money doing it. Or are you going to bring in your obvious old-time Chrisitain values and say that money is bad? Maybe you should get out more, talk to some other books and get some perspective on things. Epistemology will only get you so far, and in my house it'll just get you kicked out. Maybe if you weren't so "in German" and everything. But no, you had to go and sprach Deutch. Really mature, you putz.

Are you aware that you serve no purpose? Nobody reads you to learn anymore. You are certainly rather heavy, and usually bound with stiff blue covers, so I could use you as a weapon if it came down to it, but then, if I had to, I could use my ass as a weapon.

I used to keep a picture of you by my bed. I used to snuff in the fumes from between your pages, rub your blistering protective plastic library layer, and reach my ecstasy. I used to respect you, look at you as my equal. You seemed to solve so many problems, and now you just keep making new ones. Please die, and take your foul-smelling transcendental logic with you, priori I break your nose.

Did you know that your are badly written? Yes. Your paragraphs, though seemingly full of meaning, crumble under any scrutiny. It may take six perusals to pin you down, but once you're down, boy, you don't have too much to say. Figuring you out is like learning Ugandan just so I can talk to the guy in the dry cleaning store. You drain most of my time, and in the end you're just a regular guy. Now I know why Hegel hated you. Why don't you get a job filing insurance claims?

And if you could be so kind, Critique, would you give me a topic for my seminar essay? It's getting desperate here.

Lecteur, c'est peut-être la haine que tu veux que j'invoque dans le commencement de cet ouvrage! Qui te dit que tu n'en renifleras pas, baigné dans d'innombrables voluptés, tant que tu voudras, avec tes narines orgueilleuses, larges et maigres, en te renversant de ventre, pareil à un requin, dans l'air beau et noir, comme si tu comprenais l'importance de cet acte et l'importance non moindre de ton appétit légitime, lentement et majestueusement, les rouges émanations? Je t'assure, elles réjouiront les deux trous informes de ton museau hideux, ô monstre, si toutefois tu t'appliques auparavant à respirer trois mille fois de suite la conscience maudite de l'Éternel! Tes narines, qui seront démesurément dilatées de contentement ineffable, d'extase immobile, ne demanderont pas quelque chose de meilleur à l'espace, devenu embaumé comme de parfums et d'encens; car, elles seront rassasiées d'un bonheur complet, comme les anges qui habitent dans la magnificence et la paix des agréables cieux.

-Compte de Lautémont

Reader, it is perhaps hatred that you would have me invoke at the outset of this work! Who told you that you wouldn't sniff it up, bathed in innumerable pleasures, as much as you could want, with your proud nostrils, wide and thin, upturning your belly, like a shark, in the beautiful black air, as if you understood the importance of this act and the equal importance of your legitimate appetite, slow and majestic, the red fluxes? I assure you, they will delight the two unformed holes of your hideous muzzle, O monster, if at first you always set yourself to inhale three thousand times the horrible awareness of the Eternal! Your nostrils, which will be limitlessly dilated with sublime contentment, with unmoving ecstasy, will ask nothing better of space, having become embalmed as with perfume and incense; for, they will be satisfied with a perfect happiness, like the angels who live in the magnificance and peace of the pleasant skies.

-Compte de Lautrémont

Word to the wise: Anton Chekhov

These Camels are causing all of my problems. Not the living ones--those are cool. It's those tubes with tobacco in them, the little orange filter with white splash-pattern specks, the curling paper as the cinder rides against gravity, and the smoke, oooh, the smoke . . . all my problems. Why am I running out of money? I spent hundreds of dollars on cigarettes in the past year. Why am I always tired? Smoke is fucking with my oxygen intake. Why do I nevertheless stay up later than midnight? The seratonin is confused. Why don't I care about anything? It's not as good as a cigarette.

This is also why I have nothing to say, ever, when I'm writing: I'm inside, and thus not smoking.

I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. I don't want to be in school right now. People, I'm not kidding. I really don't.

"Look at me, I'm a blog entry."
-The above blog entry was written by Dave Eggers

I should very much like a snort of Adderal right now. How delightful would it be to blow congealed blue powder out of my nose for a few days, to grind my teeth helplessly despite the water I might drink, to experience distate in regarding food of any kind, and to have great bouts of wonder at the spectacle of ants like Euclidean points turned into a spectacular diagram of Maxwell's equations, bursting from all points onward to infinity, scrambling over the tiny grooves in the pavement, getting bogged down in the dusty pebbles, staring blankly at their perverse existence with a quietly posed question on their rapidly twitching mandibles, for crushing. La.

Behold speaks the sign, and it is too late to heed its message in any useful way. It really says, "you are a jackass." It was designed by Russian surrealists in an ironically ironic statement protosting the Danish pop invasion. They trusted in numbers and were disappointed. Freaky Wedding by a good five paces. Bland up to his ears, but a good runner. Reports have come in from Athens, they've decided on the shape of the phantom letter and it looks something like a mouse on fire. Twist, kneel, revive. Then suddenly a pair of disembodied sunglasses, pure reflecting surface and no frame, floated over and crashed the party, drinking more punch than most men can without becoming punch. The guy in the overalls gave them the nod, and they danced most appropriately, given their social standing. All were delighted. The clock struck three, and it was time for the night watchmen to poke his head in. The flashlight struggled to get a grip on the mass of vibrating slime in the south-east corner, then inverted and blinded the poor man, who was advised to mediately seek a doctor. The draperies combusted, having previously been dipped in sulfur to celebrate the occasion, and the Spaniard contingent rejoiced with great plosives and weirdly accented vowells. The mailman threw a missive through the parlor window; though a great partier himself, he didn't like the looks of this scene; and the letter sank diligently, aware of its duty, and landed slyly and precariously on the least crowded edge. "Check it out," cried Lady DeLaune, "he's barracking." And indeed he was.

There were, however, a few more vapid guests, who had never heard anything played without a hot mama beat, and they missed the reference entirely. The soirée ended nonchalantly on an unharmonious chord.

I have eight weeks of school left. I don't know where I am. There are old ladies in all of my classes, and they like to bring me cookies and teach me physics. By studying their wrinkles, I get ideas about erosion; by examining their hair, I notice the nature of the wavelengths; the light reflected from their oversize glasses teaches me about electro-magnetic fields. A different one accompanies me back to my room after each class, and I have to show her how she could get home. Don't read that the wrong way. I'm watching you.

If there were a way to change your structure such that you could be the biological parent of puppies, would you do it? They would have some resemblance to you, but would definitely be puppies. But maybe there are risks involved. There are usually risks involved.

A word to the wise: Leonard Cohen. (And girls, in case you didn't know, he's from Canada! Isn't that cute? He jams sometimes with Sarah MacLachlan and Joni Mitchell! Isn't that fun! Neil Young and three members of The Band went to high school with him! Isn't that great? Radio stations called him occasionally in the mid-nineties and asked him what he thought of Barenaked Ladies and Our Lady Peace! Isn't that just amazing? It's so fun I might just bust a gut when I hear him say "about" in "So Long, Maryanne", oh me oh my, yes. Well. I've done soiled myself with laughter.)_

I woke up this morning dreaming of vampires. I blame Martin's server.

They only had to touch me and I was infected. They had gravelly hands. They were, perhaps, ninjas.

Telegram Sam, you're my main man.

This Dylan lyric (upper left) and the next one (tomorrow), by the way, can never be topped. The job of poetry was done once they were written. Don't believe me? That's your problem.

Another word to the wise: Joan Miro. With a little grave accent over the "o" of "Miro" which I can't reproduce here. But if you're wise, you already know what I mean.

I am editing Noah's essays and feeling that great optimistic idiosyncratic ball of love that is Noah. This man wins like no other. He has more truth than an encyclopedia. I want whoever taught him to play to be my teacher as well.

A word to the wise: Paul Klee.

The failure wakes up just at dusk, so that the sun is sinking over the mountains, even farther west than he is. Some nights are crazy, minor epics in themselves, but most are like caverns. Life falls into them and looses its way. Small actions, amounting to nothing in themselves, reverberate against the water and the stale air and waft back in little puffs of doom. Thoughts ram themselves against the looming walls everywhere pressing in, in, they just go up forever, those walls, no opening, no ceiling, they have nothing to hold up so they become loads pressing down and toward and against and upon. And then there are the zombies. Sometimes I hear them bumping into things and calling to each other about beer and dance clubs and pool. Every so often, they catch me and hold me down and commence eating, sapping, but I can escape them when I want to. Usually they just make a spectacle of themselves.

It is spring break. I am now at the library, working for $8.50 an hour, and God only knows how I got here. There is a man who was in my seminar last semester, sitting at a desk ten feet away from me, reading. He has several books open. It is doubtless intellectual stuff, stuff I ought to know by now and probably never will. He is trying to show me the Way, but I doubt that I can follow. He has been here since nine o'clock this morning. I wonder how much of his life he's devoted to learning. I have failed to complete any of my projects. Perhaps this is because I always took on too many, but perhaps I never had a chance. Variety is bad. Distractions are bad. It's just me with my ambitions, and that should be enough, but I'm all alone and lost. I've been reading old e-mails and getting wistful. I never knew these people, and I don't know them now. It is particularly interesting when they are replies to my own e-mail, and they neglected to delete my writing. I've said everything and nothing in the past five years.

Faulkner had it figured out, but then again he didn't. Kerouac never had it figured out, but sometimes he did. And Kant. Ah yes, Kant. Even now I haven't shamed myself enough to actually work on Kant. Anyone for Latin flashcards? Do you know how to play Go, and would you like to teach me? Isn't sunlight strange, the way it beats everything into submission?

The Moon Pays Cash Money
In the back alleys and barroom brawls
Where everything happened I once thought real
One night a chimney puffed gray bricks
And the sad faces stared at the dart board
Pierced it every once in a while
Three men sat at a broken table
One in a cheap suit with torn pockets
One in what used to be a pea coat
One in soot stains and charcoal beard
They drank hard liquor in succession and grinned
It might have been pain but I think it was show
They were looking nowhere in particular
One winced and waved his hands and opened his mouh
And after a pause for effect said,
"There's a guy in my building playing anti-brain-waves.
They come out of his speakers at two in the morning.
It makes no sound but it wakes me up somehow."
There was a wait and then another man spoke
(This time I believe it was the one in the suit)
"There's a place in New Jersey with unlimited parking.
I drive out there each Sunday and have a look.
After a couple of hours I drive back home."
For a second I think the guy in the pea coat looked up
Then he caught himself, had some liquor, and grinned.
"My mother yelled at me often when I was young.
One day I stood in front of her with empty pockets.
She took a long look at her shoes and never yelled again."
Then the man with the soot or maybe the one in the suit
Put some money on the table, tied his shoe and left.
The other two sat for a few minutes more
Then followed suit, or soot, payed and got out.
I go back there now for a few hours each Sunday
Sit on a bar stool and think of my empty pockets
Then go back home and wake up at two in the morning.

How does one react upon realizing that one knows, has always known, "I am not a genius"? It's such an obvious thing to realize that it shouldn't have any effect. Nevertheless, I am aware that I will never be inspired to write anything special. I might write good books, but I will never produce a classic. I'll never be a masterful songwriter, either, or a genius at playing an instrument. I'll never be part of a brilliant group of friends who say such witty things that everyone listens. I'll never revitilize science, or anything much that doesn't relate directly to me. There's no chance I'll become a brilliant artist, whether I start training myself or not. I won't develop a system of philosophy, probably at all but certainly not one so radically new that people want to study it. I couldn't become a brillaint chess player, or get rich off the stock market, or become a worshiped national figure, or make perfect movies. I don't have the potential for any of this.

This shouldn't require much of a realization. People like that must just know what they're capable of, whether they do it or not. I only feel special when I'm around miserably poor people, such as many of the juniors on this campus. Even there, I'm judging based on too little information to know that I am verifiably smarter than any of them, more capable of grand action. It is likely that I'm not.

Is there a support group for people without creative passion? Wannabes Anonymous, perhaps? But then, the "anonymous" would be too cruel. Aspiring Creators United. Mediocre National.

Still on some level I believe that if I put enough time into it, I might get there. There's a level of work required, and no one is necessarily excluded. Ah, puritan work ethic, come back to me in a perverted form. Maybe, though. It's possible that I could decide, willfully, to become capable of great art. The fact that I haven't yet made this decision, and that most people make it when they're young, and unconsciously at that, the fact that it doesn't seem like a decision at all . . . that's nothing! You can do anything you want, right? Shit. Didn't they teach you that in Elementary School? Originality is just premeditated passion. Great work not only can be willed, it must be. Talent is undefinable, and probably along the lines of fortunately stumbling upon a certain kind of brain activity which which everyone is potentailly capable of.

Yes. Tomorrow, we win.