I showed up the next day and set my bags on the floor next to my chair. Then I started a tape on each recorder, pressed record, and got a cup of tea from the kitchen. When I got back, one machine was on 3:00, and the second was on 3:23. I put a CD into the player, put on my headphones and pressed play. Then I picked up the newspaper and started reading the story in the top right. After two minutes, I removed the teabag and threw it away. The CD played. I read another newspaper story, and during it I stopped first one DVD player, then the other, and set up two new tapes. The CD played, and I read. Laura tapped me on the shoulder and said something to me, then I put the headphones back on and continued listening to music. I read another story.

Then I heard my name called over the intercom. It was time to meet the G-man.

I stopped the CD, put down the newspaper, and asked Laura to watch my clips. She took my seat, and I walked down the hall and turned toward the front desk, past a row of offices where stuffed shirts yell into phones all day. When I got to the reception area, I saw a tired-looking man with close-cut hair, wearing a full suit and a badge with his picture on it. "Mr. Green?" he said. "I'm Greg Delitros." It was the same voice from the phone. I scanned his face, and thought he looked about thirty-five, with something of a gee-whiz, guys, I'm an investigator! attitude. "Can we use this room? It won't take an hour," he said to the receptionist.

"Go right ahead," she said, and smiled. I looked to her for support, as though she could protect me from this weirdness, but she is Marie, the receptionist, and she had already turned her head down and was engrossed in her computer screen, unaware of my existence.

The investigator and I walked into the conference room, and I sat down in the middle chair in the row facing the entrance. He turned on the lights and shut the door behind him, and then sat down across from me. "I'm going to interview you as part of your investigation before you're granted clearance. It's a normal part of the process, so don't worry." He sounded like he was already reading from a script, but also as though the task really excited him. "Before we begin, do you have any questions? Once I start, I'll have to write down anything you say. I'm so used to these things now that I forget sometimes that you're probably a bit nervous. I always try to think of how I felt when I was first interviewed. So, do you have any questions?"

"Well, first, who do you work for, again?"

"Ah, of course. I'm with the Office of Personnel Management. I was going to show ID when we started." He flashed his badge, too quickly for me to examine it.

"OK, the OPM. And, I was never sure what end result would be. It's for a contracting position, and they told me it was some sort of contractor's clearance. You said it was for security clearance?"

"Yes. It's a national security investigation before you're granted security clearance."

"So, actual secuirty clearance? Does it transfer to any job? Like, if I apply to jobs with the federal government, I could say I have security clearance?"

"That's right. Do you have any other questions? I know you said that you're not interested in the job any more, but once the process has started, it has to continue. I checked with your company, and they said that they had requested it. It's being paid for by the taxpayers, so you might as well take advantage of it. Okay. So you don't have any more questions? Let's begin. I'll try to make it quick, so you can get back to work. So, first, do you have ID?"

I showed him my driver's liscence. "OK, good." He glanced at it, and wrote the number down. Then he peered at the form sitting in front of him and said, "So you work for Nancy Adams Personnel? From oh nine oh five to the present?" He spoke quite quickly and formally, and asked the questions like television investigators conducting a lie detector test; somehow his tone and body language implyed disbelief and even mild scorn.

"Yes. At this job site, Quality Associates." He wrote down simply "yes". "And, does anyone here have reason to question your integrity?" I wasn't sure what that meant, but I said no. He wrote down "no". "Do you work with any state secrets, or any matters involving national security?" "No." "Do you discuss matters of national security with anyone at work?" "No." "And your supervisor is Laura Paul? And is she here?" "Yes." "Good. Okay. And the phone number, 443-525-9684?" "I don't . . . is that the number I put down? Then I guess it's right." "Okay. Moving right along. From nine oh three to five oh five you worked at the Meem Library? And did anyone there have any reason to question your integrity?"

This went on for several minutes, with these same questions about every job I have had. At one point, he said, "you look a bit distracted. Are you alright?"

"Yes," I told him, "I'm just trying to follow all the numbers."

He put his pen down and said, "it's ok if it's even, say, four months off. As long as the year is correct, really. So you don't have to worry about that."

"OK."

"So, from four oh oh to nine . . ." When he was done with jobs, he moved on to placed I'd lived. "613 Genessee Street, Annapolis, MD, 21401. You lived there from five oh two to seven oh two."

"Yes."

"While there, did you have any contact, personal or formal, with any foreign nationals?"

I goggled at that a bit, but said, "no." What is a foreign national, anyway? Anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen? Because, well, yeah, of course I had contact with foreign nationals. Everyone does. But, well, contact? I mean, Amanda's boss at the Fashnique had immigrated from India, and I spoke to her a few times. Was that contact? I didn't really care, so I answered "no" each time. "What were you doing there? I assume you were going to Anne Arrundel Community College?"

"No, to St. John's College."

". . ."

"Isn't that on the form?"

"I haven't heard of it." He looked. "Ah, yes, St. John's College, Santa Fe and Annapolis. So they're conjoined campuses?"

That made me think of siamese twins. "Sister campuses, yes."

"Okay."

When he got to Los Angeles, he asked who I lived with, and I told him I was living with my then-girlfriend. He asked for her name and wrote it down. Then he said, "Could anyone blackmail you becauese you lived with a girl outside of wedlock?"

"No."

"While at this address, did you have any contact, personal or formal, any kind of contact, I don't care, with any foreign nationals?"

I spoke to an Armenian dude while Tiffany was waiting in line to pay a fine in traffic court. Does that count? I said, "no."

"Good. OK." After all the addresses were done, he asked me for the names of people whom I see at least once a month, and I named Scott, Jess and Anne. He wrote your names down, but didn't ask for addresses or phone numbers. They're on his forms, of course, but he didn't know that, as far as I can tell. "Finally, if I ask around about you, no one's going to say, 'Ah, Mr. Green, yes, I get drunk with him all the time?'" "No." "Or, 'Yeah, he just bought some crack off me last week!' It's okay to smile, I'm only joking."

"I guess I've had a boring life."

"Not boring, just by the book." Then he thanked me and shook my hand, and he left. I went back to my chair, put on my headphones, pressed play, recorded more tapes, and read the newspaper until my ten o'clock break. Then I slipped across the Syrian border to discuss matters of national security with foreign nationals.

Back in late February, my supervisor told three of us that another project had two permanent jobs opening up within the month. She said that she had been told to ask the three temps who had been here the longest whether we would be interested. We (Matt, Billy and I) were all interested, Matt and I particularly. We had been here since September as "temporary" workers, and were starting to feel cheated. Laura told us that she had no details on the job, but said she would tell us more later.

The next week, Laura tapped me on the shoulder and said, "can I talk to you?" and then she ushered me into the hallway. She had done this many times with Matt so that she could go into detail about why something he had done was not work safe. This time, she gave me a stack of papers labelled as a Questionnaire for the Office of Personnel Management and told me that the new job would require a type of government security clearance for contractors. I asked her if she knew yet what kind of job it was, and she said it was "on the FDA project."

I repeated, "so what kind of job?"

"Scanning," she said. I felt a bit let down, and I let her know. I didn't go to college so I could one day operate a scanner. Still, it would almost certainly have a higher salary, so I told her I would still take it if offered.

I filled out the form, and as a result everyone I had named in the form as a reference (including many of you, Kay, Scott, Jess, Anne) got requests from the gov'mint for information about me. My father got one as well. I was a bit surprised to see it, since it doesn't seem that serious of a job. I mean seriously, scanning for an FDA-contracted project, which probably means forms requesting approval for new drugs, doesn't seem like it would pose a risk to the nation's security.

A bit later, as we kept asking Laura when the position would be open (she had told us in March, maybe April, and it was getting pretty close to April), she kept not knowing anything. I told her to ask someone who might know. She did, and told us that the position wasn't open for a while; maybe May. I can't really do justice to my reaction, since I'm on a lunch break, but know that it wasn't positive.

In April, Billy, Matt and I all got paid to be driven in a company van to the FDA headquarters in Bethesda, where we were briefly interviewed by a woman named Vickie Vandevender and then fingerprinted by an electronic scanning machine. Again, this seemed a bit excessive, but I didn't think too much of it. It's pretty common that government jobs require fingerprinting. I was a bit pissed off, however, by the fact that the FDA project head brought along his younger brother to be fingerprinted. Moreover, his younger brother hasn't yet graduated from High School.

A little while later, I found out that there isn't even an opening at the FDA project. Not even a scanning position. Instead, they might have one at some time. This is the result of bureaucracy. It's like a giant game of telephone. Laura had never known any details about the job, and now, she found out, there is no job.

Yesterday, I was sitting in front of my two televisions, where two fifteen-month-olds were crying as their mothers left the room, then five minutes later running up and hugging them as they returned, then crying agian as they left the room, then five minutes later being really confused as a research assistant entered the room to play with them, then crying, then one last time running up and hugging their mothers. It's kind of like a drawn-out game of peek-a-boo. The NIH named this assessment "Separation and Reunion". I wasn't paying any attention to the tapes, or, rather, just enough that I could stop the recorders when the assessments ended. Mainly I was reading Philip Roth and listening to music. Then Laura tapped me on the shoulder and said I had a phone call. This has never happened before. I've gotten calls on my cell phone, which I had to rush to hang up on, but no one's ever called the office.

I took the phone, and heard a scratchy, fast-talking voice tell me, "This is Greg Delitros. I'm an investigator with the OPM. This is about your security clearance process. I'll need to interview you."

"Well, ok. Actually, as far as I know, there isn't any job here, so do you really have to interview me?"

"The government told me to interview you. I can't just call it off." This guy sounded like he was from Dragnet. "So, I'll come in tomorrow between 8 and 10:30. I'll just come up to the front gate, or the desk, or whatever you have. We'll have it in a conference room? See you tomorrow."

Now, as a temporary employee, I don't use the conference rooms; at least, not unless someone has put candy in them. This investigator didn't seem to know this. I got one anyway, as Laura went to the receptionist and told her in what I imagine to be an uncertain voice, "could one of my temps have a conference room tomorrow?" The receptionist said that this happens all the time, so it wasn't a problem.

Next time I get a chance, I'll describe the interview.

This is the face of belligerence. Belligerence, thy name is "Papu".

Dude, it's just like Rashamon!

Josh. Yeah.

I usually find the A section of the Washington Post on the front seat of my car when I go to work in the morning. I made an agreement with certain night spirits that they would place the newspaper there if I made devotions to them. The paper wasn't there this morning, and I've contacted my spirit lawyer, but that's not my reason for writing this.

Without the newspaper, I felt unwell, so I asked my coworker if I could read the front page of The Baltimore Sun. He brings it in every day to do the puzzles and read the sports section. He handed me the A section, and it felt okay. It seemed like a real newspaper, felt like a real newspaper. I smelled it, and the smell was okay. I licked it, and it tasted fine. Comforted, I began reading, only to discover that I had been handed a cheap imitation of a newspaper, something like a Fischer Price stove set. It looked like it would work, but it didn't. Perhaps the CIA prepared it for me, as part of a plan to replace my office with a sophisticaed facimile while they searched the real one for terrorist suspects. I don't know. All I can say is that this newspaper had what looked to be articles about what, at first glance, looked to be significant news. Whenever I began reading them, however, they proved to be either minor stories about small-time issues in Maryland, or else badly written treatments of a random collection of world events. The former were almost unreadable, as they lacked coherence usually provided by background context, significant information about the actors involved, or an adequate and well-ordered description of the events being reported. The latter, the random collection of significant news, read like a summary of articles written for real newspapers, perhaps to be presented as a high school history class project. Sources were sparse, analysis was nonexistant, and the paragraphs might well have been the result of Microsoft Word's summary function.

I imagine that if I were to read this faux-newspaper every day, it wouldn't take too long for me to lose all memory of real news coverage. After a while, I would begin to lose my sense that anything important happens in the world; that my country's government is often accountable for major changes that affect real people; that this government has a two-party system fueled by debate between two sides of roughly equal strength; that things happenening in other countries aren't inexplicable and random events; that my own country's government studies these events and has a stake in them because the people of the country have a stake in them; that decisions of leaders in my government are often questionable and ought to be considered from many perspectives; that the changes in my own area are connected to the regional economy, which is part of the national economy, which is part of the world economy; that this sentence does not have to be indefinitely continued simply as an exercise in writing.

And indeed, the articles in this faux-newspaper seemed to be exactly that: exercises in writing. They give the impression that they exist only becasue the editor wanted his writers to generate a few articles about the events other newspapers were covering, in order to keep up the appearance that The Baltimore Sun has a staff devoted to activities other than publishing and revenue-generating.

What I can't figure out is why the CIA was able to replace every other aspect of my office perfectly, fumbling only on my newspaper. They're an information-gathering agency, aren't they? You'd think that they would excel at informing the public.

Pinstripe pants: does anyone really understand them? Are they classy, or is there, rather, something gaudy about them? Are they appropriate in some settings and not others? Do they communicate something specific about the wearer's style and taste? Are they considered to be affected, and if so, what are they affecting? Are they simply a variation on the solid pattern, or a synthesis of the solid/pattern dichotomy? I'm lost here. Does anyone have answers?

The desktop image on this public-access coputer at work is the Windows default picture of a rolling green prarie beneath a blue sky with whispy clouds. A couple distant mountains rim the right-side horizon. It seems somehow pathetic that Microsoft should choose this picture as their default, perhaps thinking that it will invite their users to connect with the coputer in a way that they cannot connect with the real landscape outside their buildings. Around this building, everything has been twisted to meet human needs. A few bushes grow in dirt patches between the parking lot and the walls, molded into brutal, low-cut rectangles. Some local birds and squirrels frequent a feeder placed outside the kitchen in the same way that residents frequent a cheap country bar. The ground itself has been formed with barricades to make flat land out of hills, and the surface is covered with straw, perhaps to save money on lawn maintenance. The sky is cut by buildings, and polluted with exhaust and flourescent lights. Could anyone possibly care to sit in this "office park" and gaze at this space like a romantic poet, trying to establish a connection with the universe? It feels more like a holding cell than "the outdoors." Without a landscape to connect with, office workers all over the country might gaze at this cheap pixellated replacement on their computer screens. Maybe they only look at it for half a minute every morning as they wait for Windows to load. Maybe some imagine themselves walking in these hills, over to the mountains to gather firewood and stream water. There could even be some among them who are inspired to believe they will take a vacation to a similar area. Who can say that there isn't at least one who wants to find the very field pictured in the default desktop image? There are a lot of people in the country. Were Bill Gates and his minions thinking about this when they chose the image? Maybe it was only on an unconscious, insidious business-sense level? Did they use focus groups? Was surveillance of Windows users involved? We want answers, Mr. Gates! Were you considering the impact of your actions on the national security? Did you stop to consider the dip in corporate productivity produced by endless office workers stuck gazing at their computer screens every morning when they could be using the time to make phone calls or respond to inter-office comminucation? Oh green field and blue sky! Come here to Columbia and save me! Take away this planned-city ugliness and squalor, this maze of suburban streets with names like "My Farts Smell Like Roses Boulevard" and "Dainty But Persuadable Milkmaid Lane"! Mountains in the distance, hurl yourselves toward the infidels! My faith commands it!

I have long known that I have more interest in experiencing the world mentally than physically, but until today I didn't realize how broadly this tendency has affected my life. First, I made the faux pas of asking at dinner if my mother knew why the roses she had set on the table weren't entirely red, and learned that they were in fact carnations. (If you know what carnations look like, as probably most everyone but me does, you will understand how ridiculous this error was.) The taunts which ensued led me to realize that I never developed an elementary knowledge of the natural world beyond what I was taught in nursery school through first grade. I don't know the names, attrubutes and functioning of pretty much anything that isn't man-made, from basic garden plants and insects to ecosystems and landscapes. Moreover, I often take it for granted that no one other than experts knows any more about biology and geography than I do. As a result, whenever I discover that my friends have wide-ranging knowledge of these things, I am shocked, and feel by turns confused, frightened, and inferior. I even feel this way when I discover that my friends have things like a field guide to wild mushrooms, as Geoff Hoffman does, or photos from the Mars rover, as Wes has on his computer. These compendiums of facts about the natural world strike me as too advanced and exotic to understand whenever I see them in bookstores and libraries, and so I avoid them. In this way, my ignorance lingers and unconsciously sustains itself. Today, for whatever reason, I became conscious of it.

The second realization came while reading The Geography of Nowhere, a $14 impulse purchase at Barnes & Noble which enriches my awareness of modern culture every time I read it. Tonight, that enrichment was of a different sort: in the middle of a chapter about the short-comings of suburban architecture, I realized that my knowledge of the man-made world is as severely limited as my elementary natural science. I have become increasingly aware recently that I have a poor-to-nonexistant mental picture of most colors beyond the simplest ones (red, blue, green, etc.); in addition, I now realize, I get almost no associations from any sort of word describing the building blocks of physical objects. While I was reading, words like "vinyl", "clapboard", "corrugated", "split-level", and "cupola" were very nearly meaningless to me until I looked them up. They served only as audial flourishes in sentences, like "la la la" in a song, the only difference being that I could tell they were nouns and adjectives intended to convey meaning. Somehow, it had never occured to me that I had a systematically dismal physical vocubulary. This extends to my memory of spaces and objects, even familiar ones. While reading, I was struggling to think of examples of the things Kunstler was describing. For example, while referencing common simplistic additions to cheap ranch houses, he mentioned "a fake portico à la Gone With the Wind, with skinny two-story white columns out of proportion with the mass of the house, and a cement slab too narrow to put a rocking chair on . . .." I couldn't think of any houses which met this description. Then, when I went for a walk to smoke a cigarette, I saw one: my own.

These two areas of ignorance combine very nicely with my atrocious sense of direction and my neuroses surrounding food and clothing. I am considering making a list of physical terminology and studying each term, first in a dicitonary, then an encyclopedia, and finally in technical manuals. Perhaps it is not too late for my unconscious mind to realize that I have a body, which exists in a three-dimensional world.

Flagg is restless. He circles the computer chair like a shark around a boat, making sure to rub his tail on the underside of my legs so that I cannot fail to notice his presence. Then he pads hurriedly to the back door, and when he reaches it, he scratches his paw on the galss a few times and then stares out into the barren field that is my back yard. Perhaps he wants to hunt all those little blades of grass bending in the wind. Maybe the fading light draped over the hills has caught his eye.

Now he turnes, takes a few steps toward me, and then arches his back while yawning. His jaw clicks shut, and he arches the other way, stretching his back legs. Then he walks over to the side of the chair, looks up at me with longing and angst, and sets in punishing the fabric. Then back to the window briefly, then over to me to look up and make a little "mrrgow!", then back over the window to scratch and imagine his freedom.

Back over to me, staring into my eyes as he scratches the back of the chair again, trying to communicate his pent-up and long-suffering whiney nature, to exercise his rightful power over me despite his inferior physique, his general shortness and his puniness. But he fails. I have no pity for this cat. He will get no dashing journey outside. He will eat no birds and field mice, nor become a dragon to things even smaller than him.

Hey gaiz, catzzz.

I've heard it said that March goes in like a lion, but I don't see it. Where are its paws? Where is the lion swagger, the boldness and confidence? What is it entering, anyway? All I see is a dead landscape continuing to be dead. Is it a dead lion? Might I expect some roaring from the next world?

I am coming to Santa Fe on March 31st. I will not be painting the town red, because it is already excessively red. Perhaps I will paint it silver.

Wow, I must not have been thinking about much for the last two months.

Today, someone came to the DVD recording room and told us that a truck had arrived at bay five and they wanted to know if we could help them unload. I went down there and found three-fourths of the men who work here walking onto the truck and lifting bright orange shelf sections, each one ten feet long, then placing them in a pile inside the storage room. I lifted a few myself until the group decided to form a line to pass the shelves down. Two of the men took it upon themselves to break from the line to do the piling, and every time we got one of the parts to them we had to wait as they set it down, three of us still holding the next piece of frigid metal in our rapidly reddening palms. There were probably sixty of these shelf parts. I don't know what QAI is plainning to store on them, but at this place, for all I know it could be in preparation for the predicted surge of warrant applications to the secret FISA courts. Guys, this is such a weird office, you have no idea.

When the orange shelf parts were done, we moved on to the eight massive bookend-like shelf holders, five feet tall and crossed with support bars. Each of them were so heavy and large that they took two men to carry, and we had to lift the next one progressively higher as they piled up, eventually to shoulder level. These parts were unloaded rather quickly, after which we all stood around and watched as two guys, one the son of the company owner and the other who looked like he came with the truck (work gloves, checkered white and black flannel jacket) moved yet more orange ten-foot shelf parts off of the truck and into the storage room. We were all wearing business clothes: dress pants, button-down shirts, a few ties. We took no precautions against injury; were we to keep this up, eighty percent of us would probably be taken out within a month. I wonder if I was the only one who felt absurd imagining the job of construction workers and moving men, thinking of the cheesy, metal guitar-filled music they listen to, the kind of food they eat, the way they probably interact with each other, the way they see the world. My arm muscles felt slightly sore, like after going to the gym, and my back ever so slightly strained. I could imagine the effects of time and repetition, causing the upper body muscles to grow taut, and eventually causing the back to go out. I imagined how, the next day I came in to a job like that, I would have my gloves, and shortly thereafter, upgrade to work gloves as I noticed tears in the leather of my more bougie ones. Maybe I'd even get a flannel jacket myself after awhile, though not black and white checks; and work boots and jeans.

When I came back inside, I went to the lunch room and couldn't help but classify the workers by age and strength. I, a pack a day smoker who works out maybe once a week, felt myself having scorn for the weak people I saw all around me, the results of sedentary work and automobile travel. I sat back and watched my psychology as it took masculine pride in a job well done, felt a love and attachement to the "foreman" son of the owner as he walked into the breakroom, wondered what the 'oomen thought.

And now I go to buy a pack of Camels and then return to my office chair and newspaper, perfectly happy to be doing so.

The Washington Post's top story continues to be the existence of an incredibly cute baby panda in the National Zoo. This time, it is on the front page. I have been unable to find the picture online, but trust me, it is very cute. Awww.

I have "Jeff's iPod" (those words just look so wrong together) back in my pocket, where it belongs, so we can make the switch anytime you want, Scott. It's waiting for you with all its Fresh-Seam, Untroubled-Hardrive glory. Also, if you're reading this, Scott, why don't you sign in to your old blog and post something? Even just random keyboard strokes, or part of a Hypinion thread. Your fans are patient, but throw us a bone, here.

Today, one of my coworkers, a puzzling and nauseating rube named Billy, turned to the supervisor and said, "Okay, I want to test your acting ability. I'll give you an emotion and you try to--"

"What are you talking about?"

I turned to Billy and explained this normal human reaction, as I so often have to do. I chose to explain the simplest of the many reasons what he had just said was absurd. "It's considered polite to ask permission before making a request like that."

The other reasons for the absurdity are that even if he had posed this "test" as a request, it would be inexplicable, since he had given no introduction; that, as soon became clear, he was seriously looking for us to portray deep emotions as accurately as possible, which would erode the defensive wall between public self and work self; that his uninvited request, without reason or warning, disrupted whatever each of us had been doing; and that Billy is himself absurd.

He is the newest worker in the office, and ever since he came, there has been a noticable increase in the already present tension caused by cabin fever and bizarre activity. He is both a childlike simpleton and an extrovert, which leads him to break into every conversation in the most painfully awkward and uninformed manner possible, while at the same time being entirly unaware of why people don't like it when he does this. Example: two people were talking about politics yesterday, and how they think there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats (a harmful illusion which originated with the rhetoric of Ralph Nader and the Green Party, and from there made its way into the discourse of ignorant people everywhere). Cindy Sheehan came up, favorably as this is, thank god, at least a room full of Bush haters; Seun (yes, S-E-U-N "shawn", a black guy from New York and the smartest of my coworkers) asked if Bush ever talked to her, and Billy nitpicked that he had already met with her, along with other mothers who had lost children. "Come on," Seun called out, "they were prepped! They were probably telling them what they could ask for weeks!" This was met with astonishment. "I'm telling you, they were prepped, just like everyone else he talks to." Billy took this opportunity to steer the discussion toward whether he himself would be allowed to express his thoughts to Bush, asserting that surely he would be able to. He could just walk up to him and tell him how mad he was, and nothing would happen to him since we have free speech.

If this is hard to follow, it's because I'm finding it hard to recreate the situation. It was so absurd. Maybe you get some idea of it.

Another example of Billy's eerie annoyingness: three weeks ago, I was walking back to the office after buying cigarettes when a car drove by me and honked its horn. After I got back to the parking lot, I was standing on the sidewalk smoking when Billy walked up to me and said, "You didn't even jump!"

Another example: today he held up a sheet of paper and asked us each in turn, "do you think you could solve this?" I squinted to see what was on the paper. It was a maze. Billy had just created it and he wanted one of us to try it. He gave it to Matt (who has a highschool mentality and acts as though he's in a perpetual Will Farrell movie), and then told him, "and don't try starting from the finish, either. Start from the start."

Another example: At any given time, Billy is liable to look up from whatever he's reading and ask me (me specifically, because the room has decided that I'm a genius; no, really, they have said so many times and without irony, it's really embarrassing) to explain a concept, define a word, give a history, provide a fact. The questions are usually phrased in a manner so unclear that I can't tell exactly what he's asking.

"Can we see other galaxies?"

"What's so bad about marijuanna that they've made it illegal?"

"Is it better to buy a house and fix it up and then sell it, or to build a house and sell it?"

Another example: Billy has mainly read entertainment magazines since he's come, although recently he's started reading novels. I think he has a gay friend, who has been recommending stuff he can read to figure out what it means to be homosexual, because two of them were written with a gay narrator and, when asked, he said a friend had recommended them. I asked him what one of them was about, and he said, looking defensive and weary, "well, it's not necessarily work safe."

"What do you mean?"

"You have to be a . . . you have to have liberal views not to think it's offensive. It's about a gay kid."

I wish I were making all this stuff up, I really do. I don't think I could invent Billy if I tried.

I have finally set up a chair in front of Elliott. For those who don’t know, Elliott is a six-year-old blue iMac, which Anne gave to me after she got a Power Book. The placement of the chair was harder than it sounds. I have a rather sizeable room, at least comparatively--it’s bigger than any dorm room I’ve seen, anyway--but I’ve somehow managed to nearly fill it with stuff. The bed is rather meager, just a twin bed, and the only two areas that have to remain furniture-free are the closet and the door. The remaining sections of wall are covered by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, both of which are overflowing with books. I haven’t read most of the books, and I’ve read even fewer of the books in the large box underneath my school-style desk. I’ve placed this desk behind what used to be the family’s kitchen table, until its ugliness and bulkiness caused my parents to put it in the basement. I took the table into my room when I got Elliott, so that he’d have somewhere to sit. Now tonight, as a result of a newfound desire to use Elliott for writing, I’ve placed one of the former kitchen chairs by the table. The head of my bed is right next to the smaller of the two bookshelves, and to the right of the bed is this window-schooldesk-table-chair setup. A few feet behind my chair, I have a dressing table which has been with my family since, well, since I was dressed on it as a baby. This leaves roughly three square feet of floorspace, and part of that is covered by notebooks, shoes, cords and such. I have all these things for two reasons. The first is that I am a compulsive buyer of books and CDs (which, like the books, have gone mostly unused since I got them), because they fill the hole. The second, and the reason that they’re all in my room, taking up living space, is that it is somehow more comfortable to have such restricted movement options. I suppose I have the opposite of claustrophobia, at least when it comes to my private rooms. The only time constricted spaces are a burden to me is when those spaces also contain other people. Then I begin to get antsy. That’s what it’s like at work, by the way: five people in an area only slightly larger than my room, along with eleven computers and desks along every part of the wall. What’s worse is that the people have gradually gotten more insistent about talking to me, even though I could never be real friends with any of them. When they aren’t talking to me, they’re talking to each other, which is slightly more comfortable and far more entertaining. They often discuss matters of some importance, only they’re all of average intelligence. It’s like watching people with severe cataracts compulsively running into each other in an art museum, talking about how beautiful they’ve heard the paintings are. As I write this, I'm slowly losing bloodflow to my feet, because the chair is rather high and the leaves of the kitchen table hang down rather low.

Scott White, I approve of you. I hereby affirm your existence and state my wish that it continues unchecked.

I am still in a state of disbelief that I woke up this morning and went to work. Not effectively--I know I am here, after all--but spiritually, I suppose. You know how I roll. I roll spiritual.

In four and a half hours, I've read only one and a half articles of WaPo. My coworkers appear more monsterous even than they usually do. Also, I really want to rise from this computer and go get some coffee, but my body is saying "no." I think it really means "yes."

The temp computers here sound like old lawnmower engines with sawdust in them. Also, I just heard a guy tell someone named Paul that he could just call his voicemail because "we're gonna jump into the Conference Room". I'm going to go check whether the Conference Room has been converted into a pool.

How many people has Bush called "a man of character and integrity"? Add one: Jerry Kilgore, who has been running for governor of Virginia almost exclusively on attack adds. Tangentially, to what kind of person does the word "character" mean "good repute"? To me, one would have to say "of good character" to have the meaning Bush intended to communicate.

Two Crocodiles on a Boat

Having finished the 36-month "3 Boxes" tapes, we are now recording "36-month Self Control". They are awesome. The setup is as follows: parent and child walk into a bland random standard-issue government room, decorated in early nineties style with ugly, rough carpet and light-toned wall with dark-toned paneling. The interviewer follows them in and tells the parent to sit down, take a load off and fill out these beurocratic forms. This is a government study, after all. What are the forms? I don't know. Maybe they're for declaring bankruptcy, or requesting to change their legal name to "Chuck(le)". Whatever. It seems to be a ploy to keep the parent occupied so as not to interrupt the awesome.

The interviewer then tells the child, "woo, chile, has I got a special toy for you! Why don't you jes' sit yoself down over yonder whiles I gets it out 'a this here shoe-bag." The child fidgets, or runs back to the parent, or sits down obediently, or whatever. This part is up to the child. Once the child is sitting, though, the same awesome thing happens each time: the interview pulls out the toy and says, "Look at my special toy! It's two crocodiles on a boat! Hot damn!"

Except for the "hot damn" part. That part is merely implied.

It's a small plastic boat on wheels with a blue crocodile steering and a green crocodile behind him. The interviewer pulls the green crocodile, which is attached to a string, and then the string pulls the crocodile back up onto the boat so it looks like it's climbing and then wheeeeeeeeeeeee! the boat jives its merry way across the room over to the child. "Now your turn!"

The children usually take a good minute to figure out the mechanics of the green crocodile, and how it has to be pulled back in the center like an arrow from a bow, and how the boat has to be on the ground to go anywhere, but then the boat jives on over to the interviewer. They trade the boat one more time, and then comes the self-control part. The interviewer says, "gee, I sure am glad you liked my toy, but hey guys, right now I have some work to finish up. Don't touch my toy until I'm done, okay?" The interviewer then places the two crocodiles on a boat inches from the child, and then sits down to fill out some more random beurocratic forms, perhaps filing taxes or sueing Philip Seymour Hoffman for indecent exposure. Anyway, it takes about three minutes to fill out these particular forms, and meanwhile the camera focuses on the child. Some immediately lean over and put the tips of their fingers to the two crocodiles on a boat. Some just pull the green crocodile and start 'er up. Some run over to their mother and stand under her dress. Some sit and wait patiently for a few minutes, then begin soundlessly crying at the immensity of the universe. That part is up to the child.

Once the interviewer is done applying for permisison to build a really big tree house, or teach English to turnips, or wear chaps without pants underneath them in polite company, the interviewer and the child end the clip happily by playing with the two crocodiles on a boat and eating ice cream and pizza and singing Belle and Sebastian.

Last night was covered in fog. It had seeped in from the breath of wolves on the outskirts of town while I wasn't looking, and now I had to go 45 on the highway. All the trees by the side of Arrundel Mills, their grisly forms lit up by the mall lights the only thing showing through the gray, made it look like the set of Macbeth. I could only see ten feet of white lines to know when the road curved. My energy was entirely focused on what was in front of me, a situation so rare that Yugoslavia declared last night a holiday and Nature sent a bulletin to the AP. Fog-driving music was Scary Monsters.

After I got home, I went for a cigarette walk in the fog. The cigarette walk, by the way, is a distinct entity. It is different from, say, the two-cigarette walk, which is halfway up Patapsco River Road, or the is-the-world-still-there walk, which has no defined limit but is generally at least to the train tracks at the end of Main Street. You there in Santa Fe, you can look it up on mapquest if it interests you for some reason. I live on Chapel View Dr in Ellicott City. Anyway, one of the neighbors has a light trained on a tall tree in their front yard, a decoration strangely out of place and bourgeois in this middle class suburb. It is a little like the "beams of light" memorial to the World Trade Center, only with a tree. I thought of light pollution. I thought of how, if there were no light, I wouldn't have been able to tell that there was fog, unless it fogged my glasses. Then I realized that didn't cut it, for obvious reasons. Perhaps I would know if I stood in it long enough that it began to condense on my hair and clothing. Perhaps I would never know.

I went back inside, still not to sleep. There was still so much Bob Dylan to get onto iTunes. So very much Bob Dylan. By the time of the next cigarette, it was 7 a.m. and the fog had returned to the steam vents of The Block in Baltimore, or it was recaptured by the UFO from which it had escaped, or perhaps the light of the sun had evaporated the excess water in the lower atmosphere. Take your pick.

The disorientation of watching babies for eight hours a day has dissipated over the last four weeks as the actions involved in the job become increasingly habitual. Roughly every fifteen minutes I briefly have to pay attention to the VCR and the DVD recorder as a clip ends. Without looking up from my book, I push the stop button on the recorder and then the VCR, rewind the tape, remove it put it into its case, take the next tape out of its case, insert it into the VCR, briefly look up to preview the tape to make sure it's at the beginning, push record, push play . . . and then look down again and lose all touch with my surroundings. The disconnect between abstract analysis of human thought and the monkey work of this (admittedly fairly exotic) job could not be more complete. Right now I am reading After Virtue, given to me by Tha Unstoppable J-Nutz. I lose my physical form and stroll through mental space, pausing to take a closer look at a portrait of Kierkegaard and the deep neon of his literary genius, turning toward a portrait of Kant, who is colorless and magnificent, then briefly standing in awe at the feet of the statue of Cultural Structure, which is grimy and rusted but whose head soars in the clouds. Now, even when I do come back to my surroundings when the other workers talk to me (and one in particular is fully convinced that talking makes the time go by faster, whereas it most certainly does not), I am still caught up in abstract analysis. Every statement and gesture and inclination coming from others gets filtered into categories, associations, lines of thought. There are no particulars here. All is general.

It is rainy out there, and also cold and wet, and so cloudy that if the sky were always this way, only educated people would know of the existence of the sun. Gorgeous.

Kirillov, from Demons:

There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: 'Yes, this is true, this is good.' This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything, because there's no longer anything to forgive. You don't really love--oh, what is here is higher than love! What's most frightening is that it's so terribly clear, and there's such joy. If it were longer than five seconds--the soul couldn't endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it's worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically.

From the ice age to the dole age, there is but one concern. I have just discovered: I have to remove the tinting from my car windows before I can get it registered. Damn.

Flagg is kvetching like he was born to whine. He goes from pressing his nose against the glass door and staring as if God Himself were descending from heaven into my back yard, to looking back at me imploringly with all the passion of a mother pleading for the life of her child, to calling out with a voice like that of a man who is dying of thirst, to rushing over to my chair and jumping on the back and pawing at my face and pointing at the door and saying, "let me out, let me out, let me out. Bee-yitch." He kvetches like he got a doctorate in the subject. Little user. Why couldn't he be more like his brother Mulder, Best Cat in World?

I'm almost certainly asking the wrong people, but has anyone who reads this seen the show Six Feet Under? And if so, do you happen to agree that it's an excellent drama, but that dramas make for bad television? By the way, if you read this, please comment "yes" or "no", just so I can tell for sure. It's important, goddamit.

For anyone who cares, the All Music Guide review of Bright Eyes' two 2005 albums is the first honest assesment of his carreer that I've seen. He's been getting a free ride so far: immediately placed on NPR's "All Songs Considered" list of best songs of 2005, glorified by critics both indie and mainstream, and eaten up by unthinking indie rock fans (Febbie Steve, Josh Kazmin, that chick Elise from Barnes and Noble who Scott met). And he isn't even . . . talented. It's a long review, and I give you permission to scan it or, hell, not read it; but one that made me feel deeply pleased at finally seeing an independent and intelligent reviewer say that it's reasonable to disdain the dude. Ah, nothing like a good hatchet job of someone I sense I don't like.

Rather than simply say he's no Dylan or Springsteen, the review says why: ". . . Oberst is as precious as Paul Simon, but without any sense of rhyme or meter or gift for imagery, puking out lines filled with cheap metaphors and clumsy words that don't scan." Ah, yes, lyrical vomit. In this instance, I think, it was the right choice to go with the puking image rather than fall back on the tired diarrhea metaphor. My favorite line, for its disdainful implication and astute cultural criticism: "He's leapfrogged over Chris Carrabba in Dashboard Confessional to be the figurehead for how certain strands of modern rock is judged solely on whether it's a personal emotional expression or not, never taking into account such niceties as craft, in either music or lyrics, or in the sheer impact of the music." Truth! Just look at all that truth. Craft is exactly what Bright Eyes lacks, and it would be ok if he were at least intelligent, but he isn't. The two star ratings might be excessively low, but then again, they might not. Would anyone be hearing these albums if Oberst weren't a master of marketing?

Last year I received an email from Paypal informing me that a class action lawsuit against Paypal had resulted in a damages payment and that I was eligible for a small portion of it by virtue of the fact that I had signed up for Paypal before the class action lawsuit was initiated. I have no idea what the case was about--I have a vague recollection that it had something to do with improper withholding of information from certain Paypal members, although I didn't understand it at the time, either--but I downloaded an affadavit that I had become a Paypal member before some date in 2003, sent it to the address they had given me, and forgot about it.

About a month ago, I got another email from Paypal telling me that the money had been distributed, and that my Paypal account now had an $8 positive balance. It had been in my account since then, essentially the only non-family money I'd gotten since the library job ended.

Tonight, after being alerted by a text message from Anne, I found an entry on Daily Kos reporting that, as a result of the Homeland Security Department, the Red Cross has had no presence in New Orleans. One of the reasons HSD gave for keeping the Red Cross away is that the presence of food, water and medical aid would discourage people from evacuating the city. (Fun game: can you spot the absurdity?)

Among the hundreds of comments to this post, some people questioned the appropriateness of an organization called Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief, whose goal is to raise $1,000,000 from the readers of liberal blogs and donate it to the Red Cross. Of course, the Red Cross may not be in New Orleans, but they are nevertheless providing relief to those who have made it out. It's frustrating in the extreme, but there don't seem to be organizations for whom it would be more appropriate to solicit donations than for the Red Cross. I don't think liberal bloggers would feel more comfortable donating to FEMA, for example.

You've probably figured out by now where my Paypal $8 went. I looked at the page I linked to above and saw that they were asking for donations through Paypal. I had wanted to donate to the Red Cross, but since I'm broke, anything I gave would essentially be my parents' money, and they're already planning to make a donation. I had forgotten about the Paypal money until I saw the page.

It's hard for me to express how my donation made me feel. Being broke, miles away from the crisis and unconnected with any people bringing help to the victims, I am limited to the following responses: I can either get as much information as I can about what is going on now and hope that the situation improves, or I can attempt to put my mind on other things. The one other action I was able to take was to give a paltry contribution with the only means at my disposal to an organization whose legitimacy I had just seen questioned.

It was an easy decision to make, but if anything, it reinforces my feelings of powerlessness.

I just got an email from Polewach in which he told me that he "think(s) everyone who likes learning and needs money should go to grad school and be a t.a. and study, as long as they're prepared for what it's going to be like and can combat the dangers of the system without getting kicked out of it." That's John, all right.

If I were Franz Kafka, it's true that I would hate myself, would not know Anne, would be consumptive, would fear that I was inadequte in my mid-level government position, would have awful creaking headaches all the time, and would never be able to sleep when I wanted to. But damn, would I be able to write! One short paragraph of his writing has the ability to control my mood for hours.

Then again, if I were Franz Kafka, I couldn't be Tim Kile.

I am about to check job listings in New York City. I can say this already: the NY posts on Craig's list are a hell of a lot more interesting than those for Baltimore.

Lately my night walks have been punctuated by people calling out to me from passing cars. They always do this psychically, I suppose, as I myself idly wonder where pedestrians are going and what they are like. These calls are rather different, though, more akin to Jess's surreal "nice book, bitch." I just came back from one of the circular walks, hugging the increasingly limited forest that surrounds a new community in the area, and a passenger in a speeding car called out, "slut!" Last week, it was "hey, faggot!" I wonder what I would think if I were, in fact, a slutty faggot. I guess I'd have to conclude that these were some very perceptive and chatty people driving by me, who perhaps felt obligated to label the things they saw, much like Adam in the first days of Eden.

Along Main Street in Ellicott City, the trend is for drivers to throw trash at me. I haven't gotten anything of value yet, just some soda bottles and a bannana peel, but I still have hope. I may not get an iPod, but maybe someone will hurl, say, a usable air conditioning unit or a crate of avacados.

The dogs are barking and what's done is done.

If Ingmar Bergman were here right now, I would buy him a soda
I'd buy him a soda
I'd buy him a soda and then I'd molest him in the parking lot yep yep yep

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

HA!

Hal-le-lu-jah,
(unh!)
Halle-luuu-jah
(oh, oh, oh)
Hal-le-lujah
(a-hooooooooooooooooo!)
Halle-luuuuuuuuuuuuu-jah

I'm really starting to doubt my analytical abilities. Today I finished Barry Miles's biography of Burroughs, in which he briefly lays out the essentials of narrative being driven by changes in consciousness. I had never quite pieced it together so fully. When the speaker's mood changes, the perspective changes to the extent that, in a more traditional book, it would be considered a different speaker altogether. Dedicated adherence to the narrator's consciousness produces nonlinear narrative; events are interpreted in such a way that there is no explanation of causes, if the narrator is not focused on these causes. This isn't the same as "stream of consciousness", which Burroughs defines as a transcript of subvocalization, the words and images that constantly pass through a person's mind without being spoken.

Burroughs's writing is rather different from earlier experiments in represententing consciousness. In the writing of Joyce, for example, the narrative is driven by the consciousness of a particular character, and is written as if the book is inside the character's head. In Woolf, it is less tied to a character, more of a disembodied third-person consciousness with occasional forays into one character or another. Burroughs is closer to Woolf, although the consciousness in question is more that of the author, and he allows himself considerably more room in the way of uncensored, total access to the mind in its full range of thoughts. He is much more open about sexual fantasies, in particular; in addition, he includes the tendency of the mind to combine reality with subconscious dream imagery. His books often include elements of science fiction and fantasy, more or less formally, and when informal, this is a result of combining his mind with the text to such an extent that it effectively manifests his subconscious.

Now, I could certainly analyze this further now that I have a basic model (already have), but the fact that I didn't already have this level of awareness distresses me somewhat. For a while, I've been idly considering a written project in which the consciousnesses of the characters come to the fore, and yet I was never clear what this would mean. Moreover, even after reading Hegel, Freud, etc., I never had a complete concept of the significance of their projects. Of course, I wouldn't say that I have this complete concept now, either. I can't tell how much of this is a failing on my part, and how much is simply a matter of not yet having taken the time to do much serious analysis.

Then, I had a further realization while reading Miles's bio of Kerouac: one could consider Kerouac's books to be early postmodern fiction, given that they make use of fiction, memoir, the occasional section of meaningless sounds, real conversations, etc. It is, of course, a hallmark of postmodern art to combine, and sometimes deconstruct, genres and mediums. The other half of postmodern art usually involves being aware of these actions, and allowing this awareness to influence the work. In this respect, Kerouac is completely removed from the postmoderns, as he's so caught up in himself and, ultimately, so adolescent that this doesn't seem to occur to him in the least. Nevertheless, even if I didn't think Kerouac's books had any other literary merit (and I think they do), they would be significant for this alone. They are one of the earliest examples of these important postmodern tendencies.

Yet, partially as a result of a biased introduction to Kerouac in my late teens, and partially because I never did much serious thinking about it, I had no awareness of this aspect of his work until seeing it suggested in Miles's bio. His book was the first serious analysis of Kerouac's work that I've read, the first that actually criticizes and analyzes. It's given me a rather intriguing avenue of inquiry, as well as a decent framework to use.

I spent the day sitting in an office in the lobby of a building on Charles St., reading Barthelme and the New York Times and writing prose sketches, catering to the needs of an obsessive, looming property owner. A one-off, extremely temporary job, just a few hours yesterday and 9-5 today, due to the anything-but-absentee property owner's odd-ball policy of ending all of his leases on July 31st. The leering, preening, grasping owner wanted people in the office and in the back watching the doors and preventing damage. As it happened, only two people moved out while I was there, and the most worthwhile thing I did all day (from the perspective of the paranoid, shiftless, nosy owner) was buying the peering, insectile owner a lemonade from a coffee shop a few blocks from the building. At the end of the day, the batty, prickly spook of an owner offered to recommend me to a friend of his, a vice president at Agora publishing, one of the places where I happen to have applied for a job. It's good to have base friends in high places.

And then, there it was. It had been right in front of me this whole time, and I just hadn't seen it. And it was so simple! That's what it meant when I washed my hands for hours on end, that's why I had to tie my shoelaces in a clockwise manner. Of course! I was acting out the suicide of my cat!

Thank you, Freudian analyst!

Here I don't want to move, and there Lance Armstrong goes showing me up yet again.

I have a new haircut, gotten with the intention of looking more professional so that job interviewers think that I am reliable. It will deliver the message that I take life and formal relationships seriously. Its composed follicles and layered structure will make such a strong impression that the most seasoned judger of qualifications will be powerless against it. My hair is my best spokesman. It will remain unflappable and relentlessly promote my cause, even if my face betrays me by grimacing, my hands turn traitor and attempt to strangle the armrests, or my aura chooses to switch from gentle to cagey. My hair will politely communicate to the interviewer and the world that the person it's decided to bedeck is worthy of trust. It will inspire people with confidence in me, will direct them to consider that I clearly have good taste, and also have the necessary agility and consideration to apply mousse and a rigorous combing. It will soothe the soul of everyone I encounter, even as it impresses them with the obvious signs of my excellence. Do not understimate my hair, for it is persuasive and it will overcome. It is both sexy and composed, strong and gentle, confident and inquisitive, bold and nuanced, firm and supple. My hair is better than you, and it knows it, but it isn't patronizing. The legacy of my hair will be as expansive and bright as the night sky. For generations to come, children will be told the story of my hair and its great deeds; historians will debate which of its accomplishments were the greatest; legions of imitators will desperately struggle to capture even a small fragment of my hair's magic; the fashion world will study every tuck and splendorous wave of my glorious locks; poets will sing my hair's beauty and bravery to all corners of the earth.

It's two years later and I'm finally ready to say it: Elephant is a godawful awesome album. Just a real knockout. At the time, I was terrifically underwhelmed. I basically thought it had no good qualities at all. I thought each song was poorly developed and leaning toward weak, and that the album had bad pacing as a whole. I thought that the copious overdubs killed the feeling that Jack's songs had had up to that point. I thought there were no original ideas, no real expansion as a band.

My God.

Every record critic seems to have a "What the hell was I thinking?" moment. As a critical listener of music, this was mine.

I take it all back. Sorry, Jack White.

A conversation held between two go players after I had left a game I won by over a hundred points (not that I'm boasting):

Nimphy [24k]: sukkel
Wiskid [12k]: heheh
Wiskid [12k]: heeft blijkbaar een ego-boost nodig of ze
Nimphy [24k]: ja lach maar
Wiskid [12k]: *zo
Nimphy [24k]: dag 23k
Wiskid [12k]: die ranking komt echt wel
Nimphy [24k]: denk dat ik maar naar bed ga
Wiskid [12k]: mag ik ff control?

I think this is Dutch. Babel fish doesn't know the word "sukkel", but I can guess. The rest is
Wiskid: "Apparantly he had to have an ego-boost."
Nimphy: "Well of course, ha ha."
Wiskid: "Indeed."
Nimphy: "23k day."
Wiskid: "The ranking really comes, however."
Nimphy: "I think I'm going to bed."
Wiskid: Something like "You think I can control it?"

I am requesting a transcript so that I can apply to work for the federal government. I am not at all sure that this is a good idea, but it causes anxiety, which can not be overstated in terms of awesomeness. If I were a religious man, I'd ask Jesus whether he likes hotdogs.

Time whistles by, its hands in its pockets, as leasurely as could be. We are nominally discussing The Descent of Man, although really we're just trying to make the next hour and twenty five minutes go by. With any luck, we think, the tutor will lose hope as he has many times before and let us leave early. No one was in the room at 10:35. One stutent actually came in a full twelve minutes late, and sat down unapologetically. Mr. Bayer allowed a ten minute discussion of Reality to begin the class, and then diligently asked an opening question. So began the play-acting. The conversation is punctuated by Tim Kile's facetious "seminar" comments, which spur half the class to laughter ("I'd like to bracket that question for a minute." "So what's on the table right now?" "Hmm. Yes. Interesting. Let's unpack that a bit." "Where are you when you ask that question?"). There are four students who are willing to be serious, but only contingently. As soon as there's a joke, they're on it. At one point, Dan Marshall pulls out a camera and snaps a flash picture in the middle of someone's sentence. The conversation doesn't even pause, as the tutor chooses to ignore the evidence. At noon, Tim holds up his hand, smacks his wrist twice, and says, "time." And we walk out into the nauseating sun of brief freedom.

Santa Fe is big, and ugly, and dusty, and smells bad, and, and, and I don't like it. Jess, you're out of your gourd.

It's a tough assignment, explaining the circumstances behind the last post. I know of only two people unconditionally willing to talk with J--blon, one because she is unfailingly polite, the other because he has an obsession with the weird. Neither of them have coherent theories of J--blon's mind. In general, people say he is intelligent in the sense that he could win a chess game or follow a Newton proposition, but not in the sense that he has an understanding of reality or is capable of meaningful interractions with people. His presence makes people uncomfortable, and it's hard to tell just why. He assumes friendship with anyone he speaks to, friendship of a very idiosyncratic nature. He essentially seems to want to play the role of a beloved child of the person he's talking to. He is one half demander, one half critic. Demander in that he just oozes with the desire to be accepted. Critic in that he nevertheless makes fun of people, although in odd and illogical ways. Most people diagnose a strong desire for attention, to be present in people's minds. He is very rarely silent, whether he's in the library, the computer lab, the dining hall, outside, anywhere; and he doesn't seem to care who it is he's talking to. I should mention at this point that he's well into his thirties.

J--blon has a different routine with each library worker. With one person, he every day asks for a call number he could easily get on the public computers. With another person, he asks for help with homework. With a third, he incessantly talks to the worker until he has to find something to do. With a fourth, he will stay until past midnight so that the worker has to request that he leave. With a fifth (and this is the origin of the incident), he checks out a senior essay, takes it to the couches, and ten minutes later gets into a discussion and forgets that he has the essay.

This fifth iteration occurs, or I should say used to occur, on Max and Cory's shift. It particularly angered Cory, the supervisor, because J--blon would check out essays the day before the student's oral, keeping others from reading it. On the night in question, Cory said to J--blon that he better actually read the essay, or else he wouldn't give him any more. Ten minutes later, he was sitting with the essay in his lap and talking loudly with whoever was next to him. Someone came to the desk asking for the same essay, and Cory directed him to J--blon. A few minutes later, he then returned and asked for another essay, saying he wasn't sure if he should read it now or in the morning. He was planning his time for the week, it might be better to do homework, etc. Cory said, Steve, what do you mean planning your time? You only read for ten minutes and then you just talk to people.

It was at this point that J--blon went into hysterics, waiting about a minute to fall to the floor. Now, if you consider this an explanation, perhaps you can explain it to me.

Obviously, the joke wasn't that funny. The common theory is that he honestly found it funny at first, for an unknown reason, and decided not to stop because people were looking at him. I did hear him boasting later that he had gotten the whole library laughing, so this makes sense . . . in a way. I mispoke when I said that I found out what caused it, because I could only say that the phenomenon "J--blon" caused it. If my account doesn't make sense, you could blame my writing for failing to coherently explain, or you could blame the J--blon for being irreconcilable with normal reality. You'd be correct either way.

When I finished reading an e-mail last night, I got up to leave the library, turned toward the door, and then stopped, having suddenly become aware that someone was uncontrolledly laughing. Naturally, I turned around to see what was so funny. A junior I know was sitting on a couch by the glass doors, staring in my direction and shaking with laughter. I gradually realized that he was not alone. People on both sides of the reference section were laughing outrageously and shaking their heads, looking in amazement at nothing obvious. Their stares all focused on the floor in front of the circulation desk. A freshman library worker was leaning over the desk and trying to hold back hysterical laughter while his supervisor stood back, his arms crossed, his face contorted and annoyed.

Then I heard, slurping and choking, off-key and grating, a separate laugh, sliding under and over and through and around the laughter that was coming from all other directions. I walked over to peek around the desk, turned at the column, and saw him: one arm pillowed his shaking head, the other pounded the floor in a hilarity so strong it pinched his face, making it even uglier than usual; his legs kicked, and his torso shook convulsively with gasps for air, as though from great sobs of pain. His characteristic ratty, baggy flannel clothing ballooned onto the floor, and his dirty hair writhed across his back like an animal sick unto death. Steve J--blon, whom I've described in a previous blog.

His laugh was like that of a crazy character in a movie who has just stabbed his mother. It destroyed the normal mood like a black helicopter hovering over a graveyard, like a puddle of blood on an office carpet, like a screech in the middle of a calm night, like a broken mirror. It was infectious and insidious. No one could ignore it, though no one particularly wanted to see it. At first it was just a spectacle; as it drew on, it became freaky. Eventually, the inconceivability of his hilarity dawned on everyone present. No way this was natural laughter, even considering what that might mean for J--blon.

After about thirty seconds Blake happened out of an office, alarmed by the noise. When he saw what was going on he said, "Steve, man, breathe. Really, you're concerning me." He walked around the desk and looked down at the absurd figure. "Come on, get up. Stop it. Just stop it." Steve did not respond. The sick laughter continued. "I'm getting angry." Pause. "If you don't stop, I'm going to call security. I'm serious." The laughter continued. The supervisor leant slightly over the desk and said, "Steve. Cut it out right now. You're affecting everyone in the library, and not in a good way." He didn't stop.

I went behind the desk. The freshman was still peering over the desk, chuckling a bit from the absurdity but looking decidedly less amused. I asked the supervisor if he knew what started it. "This is one of those situations where it's best to know nothing," he said. I left in awe. Today I heard that J--blon kept on for an unlikely, awkward and annoying five minutes, until the last dreds of appreciative attention had left long ago and the studiers were restless and angry. I later found out what caused it, and maybe I'll explain it some time.

Today I played a game of Go with a 16-year-old French kid. I told him that "je parle un peu de Francais," which made things rather awkward. He said, "Je jeu depuis un mois." When I didn't respond quickly, as I was trying to think of the plural of "mois," he said, "trente jours." I said, "Moi depuis trois mois." At the end of the game we both said "Merci," and then he asked, "Quel age avez-vous?" I told him, he told me, and then there was nothing else to say. I left.

I just checked out Ghandi's autobiography to a junior named Eitan Fire. I am so nonplussed.

Does anyone in the world have a strong opinion of Robert Frost, bad or good? No one I've asked so far seems to. I wonder about that man. His poems are quite good for what they are, seemingly flawless according to their design and their context, and yet something prevents me from unqualifiedly liking them. They are so completely modern, the thought behind them so direct and pure, the images perfectly chosen and the words perfectly suited for communicating them, that perhaps I question them as a matter of principle; on moral grounds, as it were. I appear to be incapable of accepting the modern, because of its contrast wtih the more complex, uncertain postmodern. Not that there's any good postmodern poetry, as far as I know, with the possible exception of found poems. Is this even a problem? Why should I care?

I do care, though. I've been reading far more Frost than the assignments for language class require. I've been asking all the intelligent people I know what they think of him, and even some of the unintelligent people. I've gone so far as to consider a sustained study of poetry (which consideration isn't new in itself, but I haven't ever carried it out). How could I ever pick one interest to pursue in grad school/not-grad school if I continue to have three or four at a time? (Other current interests: Old French/history of language, psychology, postmodern fiction/fiction in general, progression of philosophy, and of course modern music and Go. All potentially life-long pursuits.)

Also, Pearl Jam don't suck. This is news to me. Thought you might like to know.

The "good chance" has turned into maybe three-to-one odds. I am not pleased. It hinges on whether anyone here is driving to croquet, because airline prices are forget it. At least when I run into the wall really hard I sometimes forget I'm inexplicably still in school.

There's a good chance I'll be at croquet. If I miss more than one of any class between now and then, who knows, perhaps I'll be home a good deal before croquet, and not return to Santa Fe. A senior's only job is to show up. I know it. Christ, everyone knows it. Now how much would you pay?

From the depths of Santa Fe I cry out to thee, o lord: please make me a sammich.

Eric is back in Olympia. The house has so much less possibility now; fewer ways to get cigarettes before my father goes to sleep, decidedly less weirdness, no unexpected calls from the hippie-punk photographer in Columbia, no phones answered with the musical quotation "You hear me talkin' to ya, I don't bite my tongue", no more mall walks which raise the hopes of every ring vendor.

Damn that's pretty:

Guillaume Apollinaire
"Le Pont Mirabeau"

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

*****************
Literal translation:

Under Mirabeau bridge slips the Seine
And our loves
Must this remind me of them
Joy always came after pain.

Let the night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

With hand in hand let's remain face to face
Until beneath
The bridge of our arms pass
The so tired wave of eternal glances

Let the night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

Love goes by like this running water
Love goes by
Like life is slow
And like Hope is violent

Let the night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

The days pass the weeks pass
Neither the past
Nor the loves return
Under Mirabeau bridge slips the Seine

It's always this way. I walk outside and there's the holly bush, the little red honda, the stone house across the street, the badly paved driveway, all so expected and natural and without transition, like the last two months never happened. There are cats, at least. I had forgotten that somehow. Consolation, I guess. There's also an older, fifty-point-lower-IQ version of me in the basement at all times. In that room across the hall sleeps a wrathful God counting down the minutes to the moment he can smell my coat and confirm his true assumption. Not even the airport pickup and long island iced tea can put it off for long. I woke up this morning in Santa Fe and tonight I go to sleep in Ellicott City. A small portrait of hell.

I may suck at it, but playing Go is still fun. This is true of many things. In fact, I have no strong talents, but many things are still fun.

There are a few ghost cats on my block, ownerless, nocturnal, seen only by streetlamp and moon. They disappear whenever I bend and make the internationally recognized Call to the Unknown Cat. Rabbits also run away, but far less aesthetically. (An odd tie between the two campuses: the immense population of frightened little bunnies. Enough rabbits to store one in every dorm room and still have overstock.) Rabbits lock their muscles and stare into the darkness, sniffing, and then bounce stiffly in the other direction. Cats look up quickly, as though an action hero hearing an approaching train, incline their front, approach a bit, contemplate, quiver slighltly for a few seconds, then turn and flee in a fluidly choreographed move, not ceding territory but simply looking for something more awesome to do. They look back every few seconds as if expecting you to come see, and then the light runs out and they are gone.

I miss you, cats of the world. I would like to hang out with you, but you will not let me. Why do you tease me with your insensible image?

An older man comes into the library every night for three and a half hours and looks at bargain websites. This may be a more effective use of time than my own.

Intertextuality in Action: a play.

Marx: There is a double error in Hegel.
Faulkner: A bear or a deer has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.
Marx: It would therefore be unfeasible and wrong to let the economic categories follow one another in the same sequence as that in which they were historically decisive.
Faulkner: But he aint gonter never holler, no more than he ever done when he was jumping at that two-inch door.
Marx: For this very reason, however, every medieval craftsman was completely absorbed in his work, to which he had a contented, slavish relationship, and to which he was subjected to a far greater extent than the modern worker, whose work is a matter of indifference to him.
Faulkner: So he comes to work, the first man on the job, when McAndrews and everybody else expected him to take the day off since even a nigger couldn't want no better excuse for a holiday than he had just buried his wife, when a white man would have took the day off out of pure respect no matter how he felt about his wife, when even a little child would have had sense enough to take a day off when he would still get paid for it too.
Marx: Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is the raw material, and at the same time an instrument for the production of manure.
Faulkner: Major has to get on back home.
Marx: On what grounds, then, do you Jews demand emancipation?
Faulkner: There aint any law against a man rushing his wife into the ground, provided he never had nothing to do with rushing her to the cemetary too.
Marx: It is still a matter, therefore, of the Jews professing some kind of faith; no longer Christianity as such, but Christianity in dissolution.
Faulkner: Come one, let's get back to town. I haven't seen my desk in two weeks.

I'm so green, I'm losing my Vitiman C. Wanna ask but I just stare.

Readers who know listen to Electrelane. They're like an all-woman Velvet Underground fronted by The Pastels' Bernice Simpson. Don't believe the implication of the band name, by they way--they're not electro, neither are they lame. Real live drummer who plays drum machine loops, jangly little rythem guitar, vocal melodies that sound sampled if only because she never really hits notes, but miraculously repeats the exact same mistake-sounding pitches multiple times. No Korg, but then, nobody's perfect.

Also good: Can is really good.

True, and if you ever need structure for your thoughts, bring them to Kay Duffy. She'll tell you what to do, with a hastily scribbled outline and a request for falafel balls and tzaziki. More revisions would still be appreciated. Any takers? How about you, Jellybaby? I hear you're reading a lot of crap for that Review thing, maybe you'd like to read something good for a change. J$, you're an author, right? I think I saw some of your work in The Education Gadfly. Anne, you have the essay already, or will by the time you read this.

Hey, is that a shiny object? I'm gonna go look at it.

"I know a girl named Elsa,
She's into Alkaseltzer."
-Noel Gallagher

I just read an essay by Octavio Paz in which he states that a poetic image at its most powerful unites two mutually exclusive objects, while retaining their individuality nonetheless. His example image used throughout the essay was based on an example of what he called the opposite type of thinking, logical scientific thinking. Such a statement as "a pound of feathers has the same weight as a pound of rocks," he says, deprives both feathers and rocks of their individuality and nature. The poetic image "feathers are rocks," however, combine the two without losing either. Though it breaks the law of contradiction, it is still true, part of the reality of realities.

Octavio Paz, it seems, is a douchebag.

We Shall All Be Healed has no sing-alongs. This is its biggest flaw, as far as I'm concerned. Often, the songs are very close, but there's obviously too much personal meaning in them for Mr. Darnielle; the choruses (when there are choruses) don't work on the same level as in earlier Mountain Goats. Where they used to invite you to exult with him, or to join his pain, these choruses don't. (Imagine singing along with "I am a mole." Can't do it, can you?) Mr. Darnielle probably didn't even write them with the intention of sublimating emotions; these songs are emotions. So the album's biggest flaw reveals itself to be that it's too powerful.

And yet also too subtle. All the Mountain Goats albums that I've heard are subtle, sometimes even maddeningly vague. I still can't put a story to any of them, and I would guess that's intentional. This album, although its story takes about as much form as any of them, remains outside my experience. I can guess what he means by most of the songs, they even make me feel a certain way, and yet they don't go under the skin. I still feel like I'm studying them, and they remain somewhat abstract. This is the album's second biggest flaw.

The music is great. I dont' mean the instruments, although they're more than adequate (and that organ on "Quito"--mmm, batampt). It's the vocal lines. They've got great fluid structure to fit the lyrics and the beat at the same time, great phrasing. I quite like the lyrics, too, but here, I think, is the reason for the prenominate greatest flaws. They're almost straight poems, with very little bowing to traditional song structure. They have stanzas rather than verses, and the choruses are often just two lines.

Plenty of exceptions. "Palmcorder Yanja" has a great chorus, song-like and quite fun to sing along with. "Whe-ere they-ee maaa-nu-fac-shured what I nee-ded!" Then there's "Garden Grove," and that "aa-ahh-oo," no complaints there, song as much as a poem. The aforementioned "Quito" is ear candy (that organ, woo). And the last song, again fun to sing along to.

I'm not saying that the rest is filler, I hope you'll understand. The rest also has great music, very memorable, hyper emotional. But what do you do with lines like "And once there was a deskAnd now it's in a storage locker somewhereAnd this song is for the stick pins and the cottonsI left in the top drawer"? Typical Mountain Goats, yes. Inventively fit into the song's rhythem, detailed and empathetic at the same time, sounds good when Mr. Darnielle says it, but . . . You know what, I'm wrong. That's a great line. I take back everything that sounded disatisfied.

Why I love Bob Dylan, vol. 1

I have a joyful feeling when I think about Dylan albums. He created so damn many (ten perfect albums in the 60s, a muddled but still Dylan period in the early 70s followed by two more perfect albums, late 70s Christian period, absurd yet endearing commercial albums in the 80s, a second act as big as Jesus's in '94 and '01), and with this constant output he revealed himself entirely. They all have a single mood: the expansively romantic feeling of an epic poem (Highway 61). the painful examination of a failed love affair (Blood on the Tracks), the paranoid, shiftless, claustrophobic sense of you against the world (Blonde on Blonde), playful absurdity and group mythmaking (Basement Tapes), dreamlike visionary spiritualism (John Wesley Harding). They're like old friends. I've seen every side of them, been through everything with them, know all their secrets, love hanging around with them.

Then there's the style of the songs. Overflowing words and a huge range, so you can quote them at any time, in any context. The voice, disentegrating over the years, always just beyond my ability to imitate, probably the best possible for these songs. The abounding energy of the music itself, alternately rollicking and whispering, echoing and air-tight. God, that guitar, strumming percussively away in the background, that high moaning train-whistle harmonica. The world never knew a 4-5-1 progression could have so many masks.

Also, just look at them. They're so pretty. Each one with a mug shot of Zimmy himself, drugged out or pissed off or grinning or staring or reclining or self-consciously posing. The minibus on Freewheelin'. The silly hat on Desire. The 'stache on Love and Theft. Dude, Bringing it All Back Home? Best album cover ever.

Tomorrow: my current thoughts on We Shall All Be Healed. I'll put off writing this essay if it kills me.

Sleeping way too often. Feeling weak in limbs and mind. Seeing many unlikely things in peripheral vision (today a lamp post was an eagle). Getting less sun than even I need. Constantly beset with compusion to go to indian casino. If had brick, would throw it through neighbor's window just to hear it smash. WhErE ArE yoU? ARe yOu tHEre?

Yes! I have received my awesome Beikoku Ongaku Japanese music magazine! Fewer pictures than I expected, but hey, a few of them is a Japanese hipster shopping for CDs. Also, there's a hella obscure mix CD of their favorite pop songs. And an article featuring a Japanese take on Lost in Translation.

Oh man, why did I buy this?

Infinity has changed HFS into a Spanish language/Latin music network. At least they let them go out with dignity. Or in great shame and as a travesty of their former selves, then kept around for cash.

Sometimes, yes is you. In any case, yes.

Fact: I really feel like writing aimlessly. I could write the essay, but that has an aim.
Fact: Flagg has become more vocal since the last time I was here. He will make little whiney mewing noises with no provocation, and also louder whines with provocation.
Fact: I like to tell myself I inherited only good traits from my parents. I have my mother's liberal openness, and her usually easygoing manner (and I at least don't think I'm lying). I have my father's interest and reasonable taste in art (not specifially paintings, mind you), staunch Democratic leanings, and intelligence. I did not inherit male pattern baldness (mother's father). I did not inherit lack of ambition (father's father). I did not inherit rage and strictness (father). I did not inherit terribly off-pitch singing (mother). I did not inherit shitty short-term memory (mother).
Fact: the reason the last fact was only "I tell myself" was because I did inherit bad sense of direction (mother), occasional ignoring of problems (father), a curt manner that makes sales clerks and non-friends on the phone think I'm angry at them (father), tendency toward overeating (mother), obliviousness (both, sometimes, to different things, both genres of which I got in varying degrees).
Clarification of parenthesis in last Fact: my mother can walk down fifth avenue and not notice the neon. (I can live in Annapolis for two years and never quite process the fact that it's on a shore, even though I often went to the harbor and saw a beach.) My father can be unaware that he is subtly implying things he does not intend to imply. (For example, I've gradually learned that some of the times that he sounds pissed off, he isn't. Also, I often think he is making jabs at relatives and friends, and he never is. I am aware that minor noises, glances, and pauses I make imply irritation when I feel none, and don't intend to express any.)
Fact: Jeff was awake when I got home, yes, at four a.m. He had woken up without reason and was watching the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring.
Fact: I often find myself choosing not to become interested in things that have the potential to fascinate me, or freak me out. I am self-aware about this. It is a strange thing which perhaps you will not identify with or understand.
Fact: Hydroplaning is all fun and cookies until you run into a guardrail. (I didn't run into a guardrail, or anything else, although I found myself widely varying in speed on Rt. 100, sometimes going down to forty-five, sometimes up to seventy. Luckily, I had the road basially to myself.)
Fact: I enjoy the taste of saliva-activated envelope glue. It is a taste unlike anything else.
Fact: An operational CD player will produce music when the play button is depressed.
Fact: Secret doors will sometimes open in secret locations when the secret trigger is depressed.
Fact: Skin will transmit a sensation to your brain via your nerves when it is depressed.
Fact: I am not depressed.
Fact: this list has gone on long enough.

4 Jess

Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday
...And we pray, and we pray and we pray and we pray.
Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday...
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely
See you at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)
so you won't be lonely,
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody
And I'm gonna miss everybody and I'm gonna miss everybody

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!