Unfortunately I've run out of money. Shut up. I'm going to need a burst of creativity if I'm to achieve the nirvana-like state of pants-shittingly drunk tomorrow night. I'm going to type out loud, so to speak, to see if I can summon fundraising brilliance. Watch and laugh in derision as desperation sets in.

1. Begging. Out of the question. Not only am I young, handsome, and far too obnoxious to engender sympathy, but I haven't got any clothes with month-old dried puke stains. Plus I have all my limbs.

2. Mugging. Out of the question. I have a relatively decent police record that would show I've been an upstanding citizen ever since those drug busts and public underage drinking offences when I was 18, seven years ago. Besides, the only violence I like committing is upon my digestive tract.

3. Ebay. Out of the question. I don't have enough time to sell my possessions by tomorrow. I was booted off ebay for fraud anyways. Even if I thought of this a week ago I still couldn't have done it. I was innocent, by the way.

4. Pawn shop. Out of the question. I have nothing universally valuable that I'd part with. Stuff like televisions and guns. I have some rare comic books but they'd only give me a penny a pound for comics, if at all. It's a good thing I stopped buying those years ago or I'd be really broke now.

5. Borrow it. Possible. My roomates are unemployed, so that leaves friends and family. All friends are unemployed. Most, anyways. I see a trend. Hmm. Family? I've called in that card too much recently. Transmissions are expensive.

6. Raid the honor system candy box upstairs at work. Out of the question. Even were I that depraved and pathetic, there's only 6.75 in there anyways. Yes, I guessed. Don't look at me that way.

7. Go to parking lots at train stations and use a hacksaw to cut off the box on a pole. You know, the one full of slots for people to slide their dollars into, $1.75 each. Out of the question. With the holiday season, fewer people are attending work and the pickings are likely sparse. Last time I did this I was chased by policemen for two hours and got a spiderbite. No, I didn't get caught. Refer to aforementioned clean-ish record.

8. Sell myself to science. Out of the question. Not enough time, nor do I suffer from balding/thinning hair, asthma, panic/anxiety, or high blood pressure. The only testing I would like to participate in is alcohol poisoning threshholds & tolerance levels. I can't get paid for that. I have to pay for that.

9. Sperm bank. Probably out of the question. Even if I found one tomorrow, people don't want sperm from Illinois. I think. Supposing I wanted to be artificially inseminated by Illinois sperms, I wouldn't pick the seed of a chain-smoking alcoholic high school dropout. If I qualify, they'll probably only give me a couple bucks. If I only had a degree..... then I wouldn't need to sell my jism for cash.

10. Drug dealer. Possible. I could get an ounce of pot fronted and turn it in about 3 hours. But I don't want to. I'd feel guilty about my markup. Which is stupid, considering the risk and effort involved. Definately no.

I had better get moving on my idiotic business notions or I might repeat this agonizing scenario next year. I think I'll go with #5. Borrow it. 2005 Resolution: assault cafepress and make immature slogan t-shirts and hope like hell some assholes want them. How's that for ambition?


12:42 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I came up with another horrible idea after 10 hours of drinking beer and smoking pot the other night. As with everything these days, the goal is merchandising. The brand name:

Kids Love Farts!

I would begin with a Saturday morning cartoon to hook the kiddies. The characters would have to be cute like the smurfs, and they could save the neighborhood/universe/school from evil Satanic nuns. Each character would have a certain food they eat for fart fuel. Billy Beans would be the leader, and there'd be Egghead Craig, and Coffee Cody, among others. The theme music would be made entirely from farts of varying pitch, tone, and length.

The merchandising is where the fun starts. I can picture t-shirts with the Kids Love Farts! logo in zany letters, decorated with kids handprints, in brown of course. Next would be trading cards and stickers with scratch and sniff. The official whoopee cushion. The Brown Cloud official fanclub w/ monthly magazine and membership card. Stained underwear hats as a Walmart exclusive.

By the time it gets popular enough for a live-action feauture film, I should be able to afford Adam Sandler to play Billy Beans and Judi Dench for the head evil nun. Are you still with me?

I will be sole proprietor of this empire of puerility. I just want my parents to be proud of me.
1:47 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I found myself at the supermarket the other day.

Who eats headcheese? This is the fruitcake of organ meats. As far as I can tell, brains and guts are mushed together into blocks and sliced as a deli meat for elderly people. Go ahead, replace your cheese on crackers with brain putty spread on toasted ligament chips. Tell me how it tastes.

For all I know it could be a delicacy on par with caviar. I've heard that most caviar tastes like mold or mud, and rich people gobble that up.

I'm considering starting a business/community service. The service? I would round up all the homeless winos and scrape them off. All the layers of dead skin, alley grime, caked vodka vomit, and shavable scruff would all be removed, gently of course. The business? Mashing all that crap together into blocks, and selling it at the deli. The meat slicers might get caught on the occasional fingernail trimming, but the outrageous price I would charge for this carefully cultivated gourmet cut would offset the costs of an occasional slicer breakdown. I proudly present: Hobo Scrape.

If you are among the poor who cannot afford such a luxury as hobo scrape, you can make your own. Go to the supermarket and look for the Salvation Army santa ringing the bell outside. Brain him with a heavy object. Peel his santa outfit off. Gently scrape him off with a butter knife, paying special care and attention to the feet, particularly underneath the toenails.

Repeat as necessary. It may take several assaults before you have a cupful. Take this mixture to the produce section. Hold it under the moisture sprayers that keep the lettuce dewy. Three spritzes should be sufficient. Grab some potatoes and butter. Run like hell to the 10 items or less line. Fight your way ahead of the blue-haired old lady reading the National Enquirer article about Princess Di's last crap in a toilet. Go home, studiously avoiding the ambulance treating the naked santa out front. Shred potatoes into a hash browns like substance, and butter fry all of it together. The poignant taste of the scrape should inform the blank culinary canvas of the potatoes, providing you a cheap yet plentiful taste of the high life. Add foot cream for a smoother texture. Goes well with Cabernet Sauvignons or Pinot Grigios.

If I succeed and become a food product magnate, my second nutritious gift to mankind will be placenta pancakes. Abortion doesn't have to be wasteful, nor does miscarriage. Why let all the vitamins and minerals from that third trimester midnight pickles and ice cream binge go wasted? Just imagine umbilical jerky! Pickled in garlic! Stem cell salad! I promise not to hurt any dolphins.
10:53 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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There. My avatar is present, unfortunately not sneering. The picture is almost two years old, but I look the same, minus the barely visible dodgy facial hair, now replaced with shave-your-mug-you-bum stubble. It was a passport photo. I never got to travel anywhere. Big surprise.

Oh no. I look like I'm nice.
3:55 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Everybody has pet peeves. Mine are many and insignificant, but something about the plastic saccharine smarminess and frozen rictus smiles that saturate our American media Christmas drives me to make lists of this garbage. Without further adieu:

I hate diamond commercials. Don't you? They reflect and play upon the lack of communication and goodwill between married couples, in essence saying that it takes very expensive rocks to demonstrate your love to your materialistic, sex-withholding, status-conscious wife. I remember one that had the tagline "the one time she'll listen to you." Which suggests, inversely, "this'll shut her up." Some commercials even show children at the stairwell who know that a kiss comes after the earrings. Way to train the kids, guys.

Next comes Old Navy and their pastellization of culture. I hate their jingles, to start. I hate their rosy cheeks, I hate their fancy fucking scarves, and I hate their vapid blank-faced go-go dancer boys. I hate their sick idea of Christmas carolling in which this singing horde of demons berates a scarecrow-thin, far-too-young-to-be-a-mother-of-college-students "mother," warning her not be caught off-guard by giving shitty presents to her son-home from school with his girlfriend, etc. College kids want money, not pullover fleece. Am I right, or am I that out of touch? They want money and alcohol and condoms and pizza. End of story. Okay, I know, people must wear clothes and parents must buy gifts. Supposedly. Still, Old Navy makes a great arson candidate.

One thing that I appreciate is decoration psychosis. Suburban superdads have an obsessive compulsive streak and will go to insanely laborious lengths to inflate two-story snowmen in the yard and to mount Santa sleds on their roofs. They'll bind their homes in enough flashing, glittering, twinkling, and garish multicolored lights to scare the shit out of Jerry Garcia. Let's not forget the tinsel on the mailbox. I think it's crazy, but it's quite a tasteless spectacle and I love tasteless spectacles. These fathers could be spending their energy shopping for diamonds at Old Navy, so I won't complain if they want to risk violating multiple electrical codes and burning their adorned houses to the ground.

One last shot: Kevin fucking Kringle and the Best Buy giftcards: Go away. I can see that you couldn't afford Chris Elliot for the ads and had to hire a cheap knockoff. That's bad enough. But just because everybody can't impersonate Santa from a Norman Rockwell painting is not reason enough to hand out giftcards like parking tickets for Christmas. That's almost as bad as the Illinois Lottery commercial about getting scratchoff tickets from a gay secret santa.

Moby once played drums in a sendup punk band called the Pork Guys, and they did a rotten piece of juvenile garbage called "Fuck Xmas! Fuck You!" I liked it. I have the 7" somewhere.

I actually like Christmas. It's television I hate.

P.S. Didn't you hear? Raging bitter hatred is the new black.
8:37 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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One of my duties at work is outsourcing repairs. Certain items must be fixed by their manufacturers, so I send the items off to them and charge an administrative fee for handling the item. I am a middleman.

One customer, a fast-food manager, became irate because of long delays, shipping mixups, and various other difficulties. I spoke with the vendor, who promised free stuff and chocolates to help sooth this savage burger joint managing woman.

So I put them in contact with each other. Diana (manager) called Maria (repair) and engaged in verbal combat. Diana will receive some free register components. Diana called my office to gloat, and my boss put her on speaker so we could all share the glory.

I said "I knew Maria would bend over...... I mean bend over backwards for you. she seemed very sorry, so I knew she would stretch..... I mean go out of her way to please you."

Diana speaks again, meanwhile my boss has muted us and everybody is cracking up, bending over, and wiggling their asses at me. "Streeeetch, Steve, stretch, please us!"

Finally the call mercifully ended.

I'm not going to live this one down anytime soon.
5:02 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Taken individually, I like most people. Taken as a group, I hate most everybody. I believe that the more people you put in a room, the lower their collective intelligence becomes. The very best two places to observe this phenomenon have a lot in common: bars and churches.

Warning: Extremely hypocritical arrogant misanthropic snobbery and contempt for organized religion and popular culture to follow.

When I was forced to attend a Methodist church as a child I was struck stupid by the atonal braying they called hymns. It sounded like the groaning of a thousand constipated cows. These idiotic mumblings provided a common shared experience that helped everyone feel like a member of the group, together, in a mindless procession of hypnotic noise.

I have voluntarily and enthusiasticly visited many bars, and I am constantly struck by the utter lack of taste betrayed by the most popular choices selected on the jukebox. Horrible miscarriages like Kid Rock's Bawitdaba and Pink's Let's Get This Party Started are constantly trying to bleed my ears and stuff my head with shredding tinfoil. Yes, I consider myself a highbrow arbiter of taste. Sue me. Anyhow, this idiotic thumping and screeching provides the drunks a way to feel like a member of the group via a vapid mindless shared experience. God forbid they enjoy that shit independently of other people.

While engaging in their respective noises, the volume of each group rises exponentially in relation to a certain characteristic. The bar patrons get louder and louder the more booze they imbibe. The saintly ones get louder and louder the deeper their fear of the unknown, desperately reaching for a higher power to answer their longings and salve their injuries. Sorry folks, God is just Santa Claus for adults and there is nobody listening. Increasing your volume isn't helping anything. My favorites are the ones who get louder to be more holy, to ward off that which they fear, the different. I want to create a gasoline lake of fire to scorch and drown them.

Socially there are many comparisons to be made. Many profess to attend the bar to get drunk, meet people and watch sports. Many also profess to attend Sunday service to seek forgiveness, praise Jesus, and meet people. There are subtleties beneath these stated goals. It seems that people in both places are actively showing off their wardrobes, accessories, and income, via both the cost of the vehicle driven and the wife's earrings. Everybody just wants to be popular.

When I go to the bar I usually end up taking to the grizzly old bastard smoking a tobacco pipe, snapping his suspenders and muttering at a bowl of peanuts. He knows he has nothing worthwhile to say, so there's only one pretentious shithead in the conversation, me. I realize that I am just as guilty of being a fuckhead as those I lampoon. I shall continue.

Finally we have the basic physical attributes.

Wood: In a church you sit on a pew or pray before the altar. The bar is named for the polished wood your drinks are served upon, on which you lean. Both require convoluted posture.

Iconography: Bars have neon beer signs. A church is easily recognized by the numerous crosses, although perhaps the stained glass windows are a better comparison to neon. Churches have roadside signs with bible passages, bars have chalkboards with drink specials.

Other: A church offers wafer & wine, a bar offers pretzels & beer. In a Catholic church, you kneel, bow your head, and confess to the priest to purge your sins. Upon leaving the bar, you kneel and vomit to purge your sins.

Survey Time!

1. Who do you look up to more, Jesus, or the guy who buys everyone in the bar a round? My answer: The buying guy, Jesus never did anything for me.

2. Who is more entertaining, the priest/preacher/rector, or the band/DJ? My answer: the band. Sometimes you get original music, whereas at the church it's always cover songs.

3. Do you feel you get a better reward by tipping Jesus (alms dish) or by tipping your bartender? My answer: Should be obvious by now. You can't get loaded off a sip of cheap red wine.

4. Are your favorite musicians, writers, and artists religious people? Mine are, and that baffles me. John Irving, U2, Orson Scott Card, Curt Schilling, Moby, etc. All Christians. Openly. Pisses me off. Yet they're great. I consider myself agnostic and consider religious doctrine to be arrogant posturing, a failure to recognize our human ignorance of the invisible.

5. What Would Jesus Drink? My answer: Nothing. He would smoke pot. Look at him, he's obviously a stinky fucking hippy.

6. What are the differences between Anglicans, Congregationalists, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Protestants, Puritans, Episcopalians, and Universalists? Did I forget any denominations? My answer: I don't know. I am masochisticly curious.

Okay, your turn. Crucify me.
5:14 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I've just moved this blog here and registered it (or tried to) with the various chicago blog listings. Vainly I think somebody might just stop by to kill their cat. In that spirit, here are pointers to a couple of my favorite entries that I like to gloat about when I'm drunk and alone.

This is the story behind my name:
http://coffeerocket.blogspot.com/2003/03/things-we-lost-in-fire.html

I like gruesome:
http://coffeerocket.blogspot.com/2003/01/cheap-lipstick.html

I had a letter-writing phase. This was sent to WSCR 670 AM Chicago The Score:
http://coffeerocket.blogspot.com/2002/12/dear-pandering-to-drunken-tailgaiters.html

I like angry:
http://coffeerocket.blogspot.com/2003/01/just-say-whoa.html

I like distrust, sarcasm, snarkieness, and disillusionment:
http://coffeerocket.blogspot.com/2002/11/limited-time-offer-at-sally-gangbangs.html

That should be enough. The first three months of the diary, late 2002, are all about drug use, violence, and committing crimes. After that I got into truly horrible things like introspection, wordplay, and what I ate for lunch.
8:24 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Many of my friends consider me a homebody. I won't go out drinking with them on weekdays, I won't visit them and eat their awful cooking, or I won't leave my job suddenly to tour Alabama.

Though I am beholden to my financial obligations and certainly don't waste enough money by paying $4 per beer, I do plenty of happy go lucky things.... in my mind. I am constantly trying to envision new absurdities and pranks to be inflicted on the general public. I wrote an entry over a year ago about becoming a health vigilante padlocking drive-thrue windows somehow. Here's some more. Try them and send me pictures.

1. Place a wig at an inappriopriate location. (Glued to a stop sign, a passed out wino's crotch, on the bananas at the supermarket, under a bald adversary's windshield wipers)

2. Place dentures at an inappropriate location. (In public toilets/urinals, in somebody's coffee - preferably capuccino, anywhere visible with a hot dog sticking out, in the mailbox, next to a corpse that already has natural teeth - do not provide the corpse) Aside: I think dentures in a snow globe would be an awesome Christmas decoration.

3. Go to the laundromat and tye-dye peoples clothing without permission. Preferrably somebody you know, so they can get you back. If you do this to strangers, leave immediately after finishing. Or, wear a fake mustache and stay to wait for their reaction. Do not get arrested/killed.

4. Beat up a hippy.

5. Go to the carnival and put Polish house music, Celine Dion, and happy hardcore CDs in place of the AC/DC, Scorpions, and Motley Crue. The greasy tattooed staff will go into to shock upon hearing them, fall on the throttle, the ride will speed up to well past the breaking point and teenagers will be flung in multiple directions to their gruesome deaths. The media and general public will begin blaming adult contemporary music for violent acts instead of Judas Priest and Marilyn Manson.

These are not funny. They're confusing and distressing. They make people want to go far away just to be safe from the unbalanced sicko responsible for the travesty at hand.

There. I feel better.

3:56 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I hate most pets. A friend has a ferret and a cat that was, until recently, a kitten.

First, ferrets. They smell awful. I think of it as shit musk. If you boiled some cologne in a dead monkey's ass, added flour for coagulation, distilled the flour back out after three years of storage on a restaurant foodwarming tray, mixed that with jalapeno corn dog diarrhea, and finally sprayed it from an old Aquanet hairspray can, you would have the equivalent of what a ferret smells like.

Now for cats. Even I am susceptible to cute kitten adoration syndrome, but I am not fooled by this display. I know that they grow up to knock over beverages, scratch up couches, and claw your sleeping eyeballs open when they are hungry. My friend's cat likes me, so it keeps trying to cuddle or use my head for a napkin. I keep knocking the damn thing away. Not violently, but forcefully. The little bastard thinks it's a game now. I cannot win with this cat. If I had a bottle of ferret spray I bet I could chase it away quickly.

Now for the worst abomination, which thankfully this friend does not own. Dogs. I cringe when I see people play licky smoochy with their dogs. That tongue was licking its own asshole right before it licked your nose. I know you can smell it. You're probably used to it because dogs have horrid breath anyways. That comes from gnawing dehydrated bones, chewing on squirrel corpses, and licking their own assholes. In that order. Don't get me started on the drooling, the shedding hair, the genealogical pathology for attention, or the barking at insects.

I once had a tarantula. It ate and shit crickets only in the dark. I had long hair at the time and my neighbor got tired of untangling it from my ponytail when I let it crawl on my head and face, and my mother was terrified of it, but it's an ideal pet. That and fish. The spider sheds infrequently, and unlike hairshedding mammals, it sheds in one piece. It only makes messes in your terrarium. (Because only a madman would allow it to roam freely. It could get lost!)

Did I say fish are okay, too? Yep, I did. Other acceptable forms of vanity lifeform ownership include: small lizards (not igunanas they are shit geysers), small rodents (caged!), and electronic Japanese pet simulators.

I don't like children either.
8:57 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I've got about 30% of the old journal diabolicly converted to a sensible modern format: the blog. Once I've survived a prolonged immersion in basic HTML I should be able to display my divine visage atop the header to stare down my pompous imperial nose at you filthy peons.

Right.

I'm just cranky. Let me try that again.

I am a mere 30% of the way through this pathetic and hopeless attempt to impart some pride and worthiness to this..... this decomposed corpse I dignify with the description "my writing." Such a vain effort should be sneered at, debased, humiliated. It should be whipped back into the faceless void whence it came, never to besmirch the internet and shame the English language with its very presence. I am unfit to declare my very existence. Woe unto me, punish me for this idiotic presumption that my thoughts have merit. Do not deign to read furthur, I beg.

Wrong.

Too supplicant.

I blame Wednesday.
6:13 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Hello.

My name is Steve. Pleased to meet you. I started writing this about two years ago. I've decided to import my life in pixels from an obscure site deep in catacombs of the web and to continue it here.

There's thousands of words and many pages to copy, paste, break paragraphs, edit post times, and possibly even spellcheck. Perhaps I'll do a little retroactive editing as well. I expect it'll take a week's worth of spare moments at work to complete the conversion.

If you're interested and actually reading: Thank you.
3:40 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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Did I mention fiscal discipline? Oops. I bought the new Tom Wolfe book, a couple DVDs, and replaced a copy of A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving that I gave to a friend moving to Florida a couple years ago. It's my favorite book, I think. I'm a happy kid with new toys.

More final posterity notes from 2004... I've never been to a strip club, but I did attend my first bachelor party. It was... weird. The three dancers were friendly, sexy, and entertaining, but I'm not sure whether I'm impressed or disgusted by a vibrator being muscleshot from a pussy over an improvised goalpost. I know I liked the ice cube and lifesaver tricks. Although my eyes were glued to the spectacle I didn't leave horny or frustrated. I thought I would feel lonely and angry when I left. At the time I just wanted to smoke pot, not get laid. I didn't even masturbate that night. I had been drinking, though, and unlike everybody else, apparently, alcohol actually dampens my libido. Which screws up the whole drunken inhibition lowering combo. If I tried to pick up drunk women while I was sober, I would feel like a creep. Oh well, I've gotten by as a relatively happy person without much lust or romance so far, so I don't worry about it. Much.

My former roomie and current roomie went to a party last Saturday night, and suprisingly got in a fight. With other people, not each other. Patrick, the former roomie, bashed some goomba over the head with glass Bacardi bottle 4 times and ran like hell. The current roomie, Tom, took the punishment for it and came home with several cuts and bruises on his head. He'd driven Partick to the party in the suburbs, well west of O'Hare, and Patrick lives in the Logan Square area, well into Chicago. I got a call from the freezing and wandering Patrick at 8:30 in the morning, well after Tom had returned home. I brought him home. Idiots.

This weekend I shall luxuirate amidst my newly pristine bedroom, blasting the new U2 and reading. Wintertime=reading.

It feels nice to be writing something, anything. Really nice, even if it's a few mundane observances serving as snapshots in time.
2:00 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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I cleaned my room yesterday and put up a bunch of posters. I've been living, if you would diginify it like that, in this room for over a year. I just finally got around to making it home last night, 4 months before I'm due to split. Before I was living inside an eggshell littered with Almond Joy wrappers and peanut shells. Now it is wonderful. To wit:

I have two friendy fascism posters up. They show an american flag standing pround amidst a dump of oil drums and SCUDs. It has a little logo in the corner that shows Uncle Sam with a cheeseburger for a head and reads Patriarchal Death Machine. The kicker is that these posters are 6 or 7 years old. Precognizant. They were promo posters from IRS records (REM's old label I think) for a band/artist called Consolidated. I bought them in 1999. I also have a Junko Mizuno silkscreen, a Murray Eisner, a couple U2 posters, a Budweiser swimsuit girl on the back of the door, a Rancid poster with skull n bones that has a big picture of a mobile missile launcher in a third world village, and finally, a giant Outlaw Josey Wales poster. All are heavily smokestained. I like this. Obama for Illinois 2004, too, of course. That one is clean.

I might go crazy being sober with no chores. Anybody out there with a sink full of dishes and ten bucks to spare?
8:14 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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This damn journal just won't fade into oblivion. I'm still lurking here on and off, enjoying the giggling perversion that informs the comments littered about the off-topic board. There's really no other place like the IRC.

Too bad I'm not funny.

So what's worth writing about? What do I want to read in a year to help me remember? I guess I should start with the mundane list of notable events. I have the same job. My car's transmission died while simultaneously everybody I live with lost their jobs. So I paid all the bills and drove their cars. That was 3 months ago. I'm still saving to get my trans rebuilt. They are still unemployed.

I went to the Barack Obama rally the night before the most disappointing election of my electoral life. Obama won, and I felt like I was was really close to a rock star when Obama spoke. First time I've felt like that since I met Moby before he became a VH1 category semistar. The other Illinois senator, Dick Durbin, was there too. My Congressman, Rahm Emanuel, and Jesse Jackson Jr., also. I'm a politics geek. Damn the optimism informing my passions and the crushing hollowness of November 4th.

That Christmas party I mentioned a few posts back, nearly a year ago? Same thing, same family, this Saturday. Rosalita died two weeks ago. I wonder what mentally absent elderly person will be non-threatening enough for me to spend my time listening to this time. Some of this family knows about my politics now, and they're been talking. I expect to take a lot of shit. Hopefully the food doesn't taste like corpse in a blender this time. Next year I had better be far, far away from this godforsaken lot.

I eat beans. I am a now a grand master of deploying dehydrated Zatarain's packets into both cold or boiling water. I am also addicted to the fiery death of Buffalo Wild Wings blazin hot wings. I had to stop at three gas stations on the way to work this morning because of them.

I am considering quitting drinking and drugs. My consumption has tailed off considerably in recent months, particularly alcohol. Somehow it stopped being fun, so I started doing cocaine on Saturday nights, which lasted a month. Then I started getting headaches. I never get headaches. Dehydration and nausea from alcohol consumption, but never headaches. So no more coke. Since then I also haven't had any alcohol. 2 weeks ago. That's millenia for me. Yes, plural intended. I ran out of pot three days ago, and apart from some trouble sleeping, I have no desire for that either.

I think I'll try some excersize. I hear that's some pretty good shit.

Hmm, what else. So much has happened, yet little of consequence. Not good. Saving for my car repairs has instilled a sliver or fiscal discipline in me. Just a sliver. Should be enough, if I can continue the pattern, to get me saved up and moved away from Tom and Sandy. They really drive me batshit.

Oh yeah, there is one other thing. If you're one of the two or three inhabitants who've read this thing from the start, you may remember my buddy Steve that was running an FOP charity scam. I don't know if I mentioned this, but he had stolen employees from a "legit" operation that actually gave the FOP about 10% of their take and was licensed and all that. He did this by offering a higher commission. His thing lasted over a year and all together they raked just over six figures. Some of his guys were doing prank calls on the side, and they began calling Frank, their former employer, owner of the "legit" FOP charity and also part-time corrections officer at Cook County Jail at 26th and California. He's fat, I guess. I never met him. But they'd leave message after message when he stopped picking up the phone. All they would say were different foods and dishes. "Turkey tetrazini. Broccoli cheese soup. Fuckin pork n beans, you fuck. Banana chocolate sherbet, godamnit." He figured out who it was, used his police connections to trace their unlisted numbers, and sicced plainclothes detectives on them. Combine that with Steve's DUI charge two months ago from fishing in the middle of the night on the Fox River in Lake County, and he's got a whole swarm of badge wearing angry people looking for him. I helped him get his stuff out of his apartment and office before they came for him. I guess they were dumb enough to call and threaten him two days before they showed up with handcuffs. Which was the same day he was supposed to report to serve 14 days on the DUI. He's tiptoeing from shadow to shadow around Chicago now. I hope he's okay. His folks are pissed. They're still not going to apologize for kicking him out 9 years ago when he was 16. When we were teenagers we all knew Steve was trouble. I'm the only one who didn't mind.
8:12 PM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm
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