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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is all, 100th post.

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

Grandparents here. So very, very hungry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

How the Mustache Club won last night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sure."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And math.
And math.
And math.

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

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

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