Situation Normal. Atmosphere Breathable. Brainstem Injected. Dialogue Engaged.
stg-roadrunner-gfx
Tuesday, December 31, 2002

Certified

No replies from the Score 670 or Blockbuster yet. I don't expect them, but I admit that I have checked the mail more often than normal, which is twice monthly.

My boss wants me to stick out this job until the end of January. There are several reasons. Hopefully at that point our contract will terminate and not renew, and I will be a layoff as opposed to a resignation. She's really been very helpful and supportive, and she gives great advice. I have a great deal of respect for her and must express this in some way before I depart.

Today I will lollygag gaily. I expect when the workday is through my desk will be covered in scattered paper: origami swans and tribal swirlyspikes in black on white.

I've been invited to Mark & Linda's New Years' Eve celebration, and I am considering carousing while sober tonight. That seems to be the direction I'm heading. Today is the first day I've tried to muster my creativity without being hungover from anything fancy. It's been a couple weeks now since I had a steady diet of anything besides food. I shall have to summon myself from rosy comfort as opposed to delerious nausea.

A note to all regarding tonight:Whiskey before beer, never fear, beer before whiskey, pretty risky.

Or the more common:Beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer, in the clear.

I hope I didn't write all that backwards or I'll owe some apologies tomorrow.
11:48 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Dear Vic Theatre Proprietors

Dear Vic Theatre Management,

I’m writing today to commend you on your Brew and View movie showings and to offer a suggestion. I last attended a triple feature over a year ago for the bargain price of four dollars. I’ve heard that the price has recently been raised, but whatever the minimal increase I’m sure the value is still excellent.

The notion of allowing the movie going public to drink alcoholic beverages and smoke tobacco during a movie screening is both novel and genius. As a person with little leisure time, who lives hard and fast, and is a cinema enthusiast, the luxury of combining these vices is a treasure among other expensive and restrictive options.

During the past year I’d forgotten how greatly I’d enjoyed patronizing your establishment. I was reminded of the Brew and View a few days ago when a friend made an offhand comment regarding the recently opened Lord Of The Rings film. Instead of three two-hour movies, why not screen two three-hour movies? I know that in addition to current movies that are late in their theatrical run, you also pursue older movies, usually cult favorites. I think that a dual screening of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers would be excellent and admirable double-billing. I and many of my peers would certainly attend it. Please let me know if such a thing is possible.

Once again, thank you very much for holding Brew and View at your establishment and please continue to do so in the future.

Sincerely,
Steve
11:37 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Monday, December 30, 2002

Auld Lang Syne

I told her that all the conference rooms are open, and to holler when she wants to have a meeting. To fire me.

She just got back from lunch and I'm due for food next. Still no meeting. I think she enjoys having me dangle like a little worm on a hook. I don't mind, as this place isn't affecting my headspace, apart from one strange malady. After an extended period of sloven couch dwelling, I've realized that I psychosomatically make myself tired upon enterting this building, yawning and stretching the whole day through. I look forward to the end of this employment.

A guy just passed the front desk where I now sit. He told me all about the differences between handguns now, and handguns then. Recoil/jamming problems on newer lighter models. Interesting.

Fuck this writing. No fire today. Need drugs.
2:49 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Thursday, December 26, 2002

Reprieve

The boss never came last Friday, but called and asked me to come in Thursday, today. I expect I'll be fired on Monday, New Years' Eve.

It's been a winter wonderland. I've slept a lot, stayed mostly sober, and just hibernated. I did all my Christmas shopping on the 24th and my gifts were received well.

I've gotten no replies to either of the above letters so far. I started one to the Vic Theatre in Chicago while having a steak last weekend but haven't finished it. I intend to respond to some editorials in the Sun-Times soon. I'd meant to answer one or two last week but neglected to do so in a timely manner.

This entry is for the record. I want to be able to look back and see the bridge from one part of my life to another. At this moment, my eloquence and verbal verve are too tired to muster anything of value. The major change in question is the departure from this employment. I began here at 18 when my peers were graduating highschool. I was already a longtime dropout wastrel at that point. Survived a few mergers, from digital to compaq to hp. Now I'm going back into the blank again. I was afraid of that, but I'm not anymore. Worry is waste.

So yeah, that's what happening. I'm mildly surprised that I haven't got a few pages worth of crap to say about it. It just is.

Coffin nail, check, lighter, check, coffee, check.
11:28 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Friday, December 20, 2002

I Am A Lazy Jackass

My phone died one week ago, although the bill is paid and it still rings to voicemail. Yet in the apartment I hear no ringing, dial tone, or otherwise. Dead air. It died sometime last Friday, the 13th.

I didn't come to work yesterday. I couldn't call in. My boss is furious. Today is a half-day, and she should arrive sometime in the next hour. It's ten past eleven right now. I talked to her on the phone this morning when I arrived.

If I don't have a great reason for her to keep me, I'll be fired. Her words. I don't have a reason. She doesn't believe me about the phone. She lives east of here, like I do. I'm going to invite her to go there with me and see the phone for herself. She'll decline. It's a pathetic idea really. Not to mention that in my frantic haste I locked my keys in my apartment and can't get in. The roomie's still away, so no help there.

I hope to be back writing here soon. I do all my writing at work, you see. If this clusterfuck goes badly, it may be a while.
1:11 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Tuesday, December 17, 2002

Dear Pandering To Drunken Tailgaiters Monolithic Broadcasting Entity

Dear Score 670 Maneagement,

I recently began listening to sports radio. I’d grown tired of the limited music selections offered by FM radio, so I switched bands out of curiosity. To my surprise, there was more available on the AM band besides weather, traffic, current events, and Hispanic trumpet music. I now regularly listen to WGN’s Spike Odell in the mornings, and during my lunch break and on my commute home in the evening I listen to your station or your main competitor, ESPN 1000.

I’d like to share a few thoughts on your programming.

I don’t listen to Murph and Fred in the morning. While their insights and knowledge may be top-notch, I find their humor to be pedestrian and unimaginative. Nor do I like the sounds of their voices. Their nasal braying reminds me of the church lady at work.

I love listening to Terry Boers and Dan Bernstein during my lunch break. Their humor is sharp-edged, sarcastic, irreverent, and colorful. Yesterday Terry described somebody as a “simpering pile of jello.” I chuckled at this and I’m likely to use it in conversation whenever possible during this holiday season. They went off on tangents and eventually began insulting each other in a mostly playful fashion. I also recall that they advocated applying Mike North’s giardinara pepper mix to the scalp as a hair regrowth formula. High comedy indeed. Please give them more money, or at the very least, some plastic dog feces and some blackjack chewing gum from a novelty store. I am confident that they will use these items to entertain me.

Mike North is good to listen to if I’m in a foul mood, because he’s always harping and crowing about somebody or other, and he loves to showcase hypocrisy and idiocy among athletes and coaches. Sometimes the lampooning is a bit too po-faced and serious for me, but Mike usually knows when to lighten up and have a laugh. That’s why I’ve enjoyed his “jag bag” call-in segments the most. They are mean-spirited but venomously uplifting nonetheless. I think the word I’m looking for here is cathartic. We Chicago sports fans have plenty of frustration to vent, and Mike is perfect for expressing our loathing.

Last weekend I was working my secondary job delivering pizzas in Hoffman Estates. On Saturday night, I believe it was, a show I’d never heard before called the Me and Z show came on. Aside from Boers and Bernstein, this was the best radio I’ve heard on your station. These guys must drink a whole lot of coffee. Between discussing the following day’s matchups, these gentlemen somehow laced in an astronomy lesson and some ruthless impersonations of Chris Russo from In The Huddle, a syndicated Westwood One program following theirs. “Hewwo, dis is Kwis Wooso heah wih Boomah, howzit goan Boom?” I didn’t see this show on the programming schedule published on your website. I will be checking again to find out when this show airs again. I really enjoyed it and would like to hear more from these sugar-addled chuckleheads.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Sincerely,
Steve
1:54 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Monday, December 16, 2002

Dear Faceless Soulless Corporate Entity Representative

Dear ???,

I am a reluctant customer of your Blockbuster stores. I usually purchase movies from other places. Your selection is severely limited by a policy of yours that restricts movies that you find "morally objectionable" or "explicit" from being sold on your shelves. While I disagree with this policy, it is your right to run your businesses as you see fit. I merely wish to make you aware of why I choose to shop at other establishments before I continue, as that's not the reason I've written you today.

I received a gift card for Blockbuster as an early Christmas gift this week, so I found myself browsing the DVD racks in your Schaumburg, IL store. Several titles I was interesting in purchasing were only stocked in full screen format. This format chops off the edges of the picture and does not present the movie as it appeared in theatres, which, for me, was the motivating factor in upgrading from VHS to DVD. I know many people who feel as I do. Additionally, widescreen televisions are becoming more popular as their prices continue to drop. This also should lead you to consider stocking both formats of all the movies that Blockbuster sells.

I must commend you on your buy 2, get 1 free "previously viewed" promotion. I took advantage of it and brought home three movies. It was an excellent value.

Upon arriving home, I attempted to remove the bar code and pricing stickers from the movies. I was unable to get them off without risking damage to the packaging. I would like to suggest that you wrap previously viewed movies in shrink plastic before applying stickers to them. This would allow myself and other customers to read the special features listings and movie summaries on the back of the boxes. It is also aesthetically displeasing to see giant red circles covering the artwork when I take a movie off my shelf.

Please reconsider your position on these policies and consider changing them. Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,
Steve
..........

Now to find a name and address to send this sucker out.
2:44 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Splish Splash vs. Eight Legged Freaks

I look a bit wrecked today. I haven't shaved in over a week, I have a hole in my shirt on the right side, and I've got a large, deep pimple on my jawline. I think a spider laid eggs in my face as I slept and later on, perhaps while chewing lunch, the swollen lump will explode outwards in a weak splash of blood and pus. Cute little eight leggers will pour out, cascading down my neck into my shirt like a nomadic rash.

The weekend's indulgences have me twitchy. My eyes are red from shampoo and little sleep. I'm drowsy. This happens frequently in the morning, and I always promise myself that I'll hit the hay at an early hour. That never happens. Hello Red Bull, hello candy bar.
11:29 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Thursday, December 12, 2002

Making Waves In The Bathroom

I take that back. I will hold forth with nothing of importance to impart. Below is a letter I sent last Friday to a friend attending UNLV. I was attempting to begin a correspondence, but I was bitterly disappointed by the one-line reply I received.

Are you even still reading, Dave? Write me back properly and show some moxie this time, old boy. Let it not be said that email has butchered the concept of formal written communication. I intend to buy some stationary to write letters from now on, as the electronic method seems to inspire apathy and laziness in many cases.

I must also include a cowardly disclaimer that this letter is rife with hyperbole and exaggeration. My ego does not swell like a broken ankle. I was merely vying for his attention via colorful entertainment.
...........................................................

Hello there you degenerate bloodsucking heathen,

I have decided to become a Writer when I grow up, and I have been sharpening my mental knives of late in preparation for the carving of the great glazed goose that is Amerika. What an awful sentence. I have far yet to go, as you can plainly see. I will not be deterred. In the vandal's act of plucking the feathers, I may during some crisis have need of reliable legal counsel. If you have intestinal fortitude and obnoxious gall enough to make Proclamations of Righteousness, I hereby elect you to be my lawyer. I am, after all, the majority stockholder in the corporation of me. Fuck, I sound like a self-help book written by Donald Trump. Fuck. I have also decided to begin and maintain correspondence with anyone brave and foolish enough to reply to my letters.

I have begun by chronicling my adventures, which has then lead to wallowing in morbid despair and self-pity, which has then led to ranting about our backwards provincial culture. I hope you'll find it entertaining, and I hope it provides you with plenty of material with which to torture me during your next visit. I am in dire need of roasting, for my ego runs rampant and my head is beginning to swell like a boil on Rush Limbaugh's pasty flaccid asspile.

You may pass the link to your criminal college cronies, (alliteration is cheap and lacks subtlety, I like it) but please refrain from sharing it with the unfortunate podunked souls back home here in our sad hopeless little burgs. Certain friends and acquintances have thin skin and I wouldn't like to be billed for the varicose results. There are now almost five pages full of this stinking garbage:

(link to old journal page removed 12/04)

Be sure, if you dare, to write me back some ginsu commentary, be it commendation or condemnation. I greatly desire to read of your adventures desecrating nuns and tattooing satanic slogans on ripe virgins. Orgies of gluttony and excess are restrained and uninspired here by scarfs, parkas, and churches, so I must live vicariously through your exotic and filth-slathered Las Vegas debauchery.

Feverishly,
Steve
6:36 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Assumption Generator Awry

A miraculous thing: the oven can be pulled away from the wall! I was shocked. Nothing ruptured, exploded, or otherwise. This discovery led to further exploring of the kitchen components. When I removed the shelves and bins from the refrigerator, I was not surprised to find dehydrated bay leaves and spilled cherry grenadine coating the formerly white interior. The 409 and the chore boy brass wool took care of that. I renamed the brass as scrub buddy, and I talked to my cleaning implements with a poor imitation of a drill-sergeant's voice. It's all a testament to the power of positive thinking.

The nice young man who previously inhabited my body has gone on vacation. In place of the quiet and mostly harmless fool who lived there for 23 years, there is now a ravenous and bloodthirsty cancer. It howls at the moon, cackles and leers, and twitches while staring bug-eyed at the hoarsely breathing paint on the wall. Just kidding.

Today I am severely lacking in inspiration, and I have no reason to be making an entry. I suppose I just want to think aloud, so to speak. That's what I've been using this journal for lately. I still have plenty of stories I could tell, but I'd rather look forward than back. Enough introspection.

I got clerked yesterday. On the way home I stopped and picked up a few movies. The clerk was the stereotypical cynical and superior arbiter of taste, peering down her nose at the lowly peons and their hopelessly inferior taste in cinematic entertainment. It seems I threw a wrench into the gears of her assumption generator. She looked at the top of my pile and read aloud the title with wry bemusement. "Black Knight." Very disapproving. "We Were Soldiers." She sighed. I imagine some disparaging thought about guys and guns was crossing her pure waters. "Amelie?" She looks up at me. "Black Knight, We Were Soldiers, and Amelie. Oh-kayyyy." I smirked and kept my silence. I save my snobbery for music, with one exception. I cannot tolerate teen horror or teen comedy movies.

Enough blathering. I'm shutting up until I have something to say.
2:55 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Corpse Head

The geese are back, and I am the Pigpen of gunsmoke aroma. My right hand looks like I grilled it. I need something bigger than whistling rockets.

My boss called in sick, yet several people have asked after her. They want to wish her a happy birthday. Any hooky guilt I've fostered is now orphaned.

I have emptied the humongous bag of marijuana I was drunkenly cajoled into purchasing last week. Thank fuck. My skull has become a fondue pot. Time to congeal.

Waitresses and gas station attendants are smiling at me and chatting me up - a welcome turn of events. I do not understand it, as I am no different now than I was for the past several years, and if anything, I've added flab and my haircut looks like an otter's rump. No, I still haven't had that haircut. The thick wad of money has remained stealthily concealed, and my demeanor has not changed since I gave up my virginity. Despite my puzzlement this makes me merry.

Speaking of women, I successfully broke it off with the birthday girl. It was quick and easy and painless, something I couldn't possibly have hoped for. I'll spare you the details, as they're tremendously mundane and universal.

There's a guy who always orders food that lives in a nearby apartment building. He's the only customer who meets me at the elevator on his floor, and he tips very well. He's a short bodybuilder guy, and he keeps inviting me to death metal concerts and AC/DC coverband gigs at various local blue-collar roadhouses. I always thank him without answering the invitations. He's barking up the wrong tree. He has nice teeth, and he likes to show them off. I always think of the Joker. I'll bet they're not his original teeth. Maybe he's selling those to the elderly on ebay.

I am feeling somewhat feverish. I am in desperate need of some black licorice and some black pepper jerky. I will leave work early today to procure these confections as well as some steel wool for the kitchen floor, which is encrusted with ancient garlic-heavy spaghetti sauce.
5:01 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Splish Splash

I murdered two plus hours of my precious free time last night by doing the wretched dishes. I put some angry music on the stereo at an unacceptable volume, took off my clothes, and started the hot water running.

I needed a shower when I finished, because the month old dishes had turned the dual sinks into moldering pits ripe with stench and foul unidentifiable decay. There were some kidney beans and pecan fragments, but the rest was just a light brown gumbo-gravy stinking like a raccoon carcass in the summer humidity. The experience was testing and unarousing. Next time I may open the blinds to play voyeuristic mindgames to distract myself from the horrible oozing slop. If there is a next time. I usually let the roomie do all the chores. I have little free time and better things to do with it, while he has nothing but time. While he's away, I'm cleaning the entire apartment to Show Him How It's Done.

A note to other potential nude dishboys out there: blue DishWish will irritate your penis if it splashes on there and you let it sit for longer than say, 60 seconds. Get the soap off your hands first and then wipe yourself off. Trust me on this.

The loud angry music was trail of dead, which I turned off when Monday Night Football came on television. I watched it until the bitter end. It's a bad year to be a Bears fan. I ate the rest of my gouda wheel , a half a loaf of mom's pumpkin bread, and a large serving of dirty rice with chili beans. I was stuffed like a horseshoe crab. I've been pigging out lately and I've got a pouch on my tummy now. Time for a gym membership.
11:06 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Monday, December 09, 2002

Prescription Introspection

Subtract: four packs of cigarettes, two eighteens of beer, four half-price sandwiches, twenty-five dollars worth of gasoline, twenty dollars worth of: frozen pizzas, grapefruit juice, one small wheel of gouda cheese, and spiced apple cider, and the remaining $255 is my weekend profit. Few drugs and poor sleep later, I'm back at the 9-5 with baby kangaroos under my eyes and a miniscule gloss of sweat highlighting my hairline, induced by coffee. (8-5 actually, but Dolly's phrase has more ring)

I'm in a good mood today, and I'm glad that I don't know why. While such things are best left unexamined, I'm going to thinktype about moods nonetheless.

I'm a reckless pharmacist. Objectively I can see that I have mood swings, but I dislike the idea of psychotherapy and medication for something that I believe is part of the human condition. If I'm going to seek false relief from reality, I don't want a perpetual subversion of my emotional peaks and valleys. I think that prozac etc. would dull me and change me into somebody else. While I might be more comfortable and happy, I would also be duller and less introspective. All sharp edges sanded down. Whitewashed. It simply would not do for everything to be easy. Was it Plato who said that "the unexamined life is not worth living?" I choose instead to have moments of relief, and this is where alcohol and other assorted illegal sundries have their place. They are a temporary escape, and they remind you of this every morning after. I can see and feel the price of my wombing, whereas a prescription would just be flicking my switch to Off.

Rereading that, it's not as lucid and concise as I would like, but it'll serve. In one sentence:

It all boils down to awareness.

The roomie has been away for one week, with one week to go. The apartment is corrupt with filth and scum. He left a sink full of his rotting dishes, and I've amassed a formidable array of empty bottles on the countertop. Tonight, if I'm not lured by football and cocaine, I will wash the dishes, mop the floor, vacuum the carpet, and pine-sol the bathroom. I dread performing these tasks suddenly, but when I plan them ahead and succeed with completing them on schedule, I feel very self-satisfied and content.

A sudden simple realization: when I'm happy I think about food, and when I'm not I think about money or companionship. I'm hungry.
11:54 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Friday, December 06, 2002

Consumption and Degradation

I consumed another spread of intoxicants last night. This time I don't feel so rotten, mainly because I stayed in bed for a few extra hours this morning.

While giddy in the throes of my lunacy yesterday, I embarrassed myself in front of my guests by singing "Blue Moon" by the Marcels and "People Got To Be Free" by the Rascals at the top of my lungs. Forunately both are good friends are were entertained by my silly merriment. In other settings I would certainly have earned a labelling as an obnoxious clown of a drunk.

The stew of pollutants had temporarily atrophied my appetite, and I woke this morning in desperate need of nourishment. I reined in the galloping herd in my stomach until I reached the office, where I annihilated several glazed twists.

This weekend I face a punishing marathon of degradation: pizza delivery every waking minute. This begins when I finish here, Friday at 5 pm, and ends on Sunday night at 9pm. I will be dissheveled and grumpy once finished, but considerably wealthier. I would wither away to emaciation were it not for the greasy, fatty, delicious sandwiches assembled in this cholesterol castle.

It really sucks to see people I haven't talked to in years by handing them pizza. Downright embarrassing. I would only look more a fool if I clumsily pointed out that I hold a decent and respectable job on the weekdays. I should apply for some warehouse muscle work. Good excersize and anonymous.
2:42 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Thursday, December 05, 2002

Bastardized (Word.)

Today I was given a CD wallet apparently made of license plate metal, same size and screwholes included. Inside this rust-begging abortion are about 30 sleeves. The pinnacle of it's folly is that, while being a promotional product for the largest PC maker in the world, it says Taking It To The Streets on it. This is written tag style, with sloppy graffiti letters and ill-advised star-twinkles assaulting my tender eyes. I wish I had a way to show it to you. It's gone beyond sad and insulting into a new realm of perverted delusion.

Counter-cultures always get co-opted by the mainstream, usually for advertising purposes. It's a way for a product or company to ingratiate themselves with a newly discovered demographic, or just to keep up with whatever is hot and cool at the moment. Pepsi's got to be the worst right now, with the Pepsi Blue commercials portraying an embarassing hip-hop MC flowing about the virtues of the berry revolution, regular Pepsi hiring Outkast, and Mountain Dew, a PepsiCo product, hijacking snowboarders and skateboarders. Did I mention that I hate ads?

I wonder what stiff old suit approved this particular kink. I'm going to take it home and love it, and store my CDs in it, meanwhile betraying not one iota of irony. I can't wait to see which people look at me funny (as they should) and which compliment my rare new toy. (to which I will nod and thank them, hoping desperately to detect a trace of insincerity.)

If I keep this cultural misanthropy up, one day I'll end up eating granola and tofu while listening religiously to NPR, waxing nostalgic about the smell of tear gas in the morning and the thud of billyclubs at night.
7:06 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Gothic and Hubris

I'm feeling better today, but I still haven't had a haircut. The hungover aftermath of combining ephedrine, alcohol, and marijuana leaves me in a bizarre and bitter introspective funk. It's really very ugly, as you can read in the above entry. While the feelings were and are genuine, I am not prone to such gothic wailing most of the time.

I'm reading The Proud Highway, a collection of Hunter S. Thompson letters from when he was a young man about my age. There are several thoughts about the differences between those who limp through life looking for comfortable resting places, and those who take risks and truly live. I've always wanted to be one of the adventurous spirits, but that 'll take some prodding and stretching, as by nature my habits are those of the great swarm of mediocres. I don't mean to slight the simple life of making ends meet, raising a family, and holding down the fort, because I respect and value that greatly. It's just that I'm conceited enough to consider that I may deserve something more interesting. Am I capable or daring enough, though? Confidence can either be learned or conjured, and I am one that must conjure it out of the chilly air.

I have to keep looking around the corners for those glimmers that'll lead me down yellow brick roads. The notions of writing fiction and sculpting monstrosities have brought me closest to the path I need to walk. I will either be creative, productive, and happy, or stifled, bored, and disgruntled by an office & boss.
2:01 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Dust

I am hungover and I still need a haircut. Today's pains will net me another morning of feeling drug through gravel and fish hooks. This abuse has value, much as slamming a finger in a door repeatedly feels better once you stop.

Is my childhood overwith? I no longer delude myself into thinking that everything will be better once I reach my inevitable rich and famous turn. I no longer entertain myself thinking that my thoughts and feelings are valuable and important. Mom saying how special I am was just a storybook line to keep me comfortable and safe. No, I try to to stare down a future of drudgery, scraping for dollars to keep the belly full and the skin warm. I don't like it and it feels suspiciously like waiting to die. I must find something that I like doing that will support me. I am envious of those who know themselves and their place in the world. Some people learn easily what they want to do. Not me. I must find it and I don't know how to even look. Emptiness humbles.

The freedom one earns upon leaving the parents' nest is actually a cold place to hold back an avalanche. I hate money. It killed my dreams, and even worse, my faith in fairness and goodness. I have meager rest and no peace.

Spinning wheels.
6:12 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Monday, December 02, 2002

Pine, Sex, Curry

It's snowing and I need a haircut. I got my wreath today. It smells wonderful and it's too large for my apartment door. I have no fireplace, so I think I'll hang it on the wall next to our tiny television. This way I'll have something to draw while the roomie watches inane sitcoms.

My weekend was very nice. I slept for twelve hours each night, and I ate enough to feed two midwesterners each day. I delivered some pizzas in the snow, and for some reason I expected to get better tips due to the weather. Not so. Just a few "Cold out there, isn't it?" comments. I lost my viginity in an unspectacular and drunken fashion to a birthday girl on Saturday night. I don't regret it, but she's my little sister's best friend and she wants it kept secret. I'm not sure what I think of that yet.

Tonight will be cozy and safe. My only dilemmas are chicken curry or chicken vindaloo, and one blanket or two.
2:15 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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stg-shark