All my heroes are weirdos
Howard S. sits across from me at dinner, clean cut and well groomed. I first met Howard as a flunky in the grade school of some statewide test scoring concern, which was just one in a number of unending temp positions I have worked in my life. I remember talking to Howard then, and the unending vacillation over whether or not he should cut his hair, the symbolism of the event, and what it would all mean. Then he had intricate dreadlocks, which were creatively tied back into a large bunch. He was the type of individual you would imagine hanging around and listening to Kruder & Dorfmeister albums while high on pot. But today he is some dusted off version of his prior self, sparkling clean, with a mortage, fiancé, and a fenced in yard. It’s weird, hanging out with someone who has graduated from the trenches. Howard’s life stands in startling contrast to my own, which is haphazard and grim-seeming. My mom gave me the number for food stamps the other day and I copied it down enthusiastically. When did Howard rejoin? I wonder. And what turn did I miss, I find myself thinking, which put me on the collision course with impasse and total failure, like a train car rushing full force ahead into an implacable brick wall, destined to crash over and over again?

Howard invokes memories of the cast of characters we used to work with. “I hated all of those people,” I find myself telling him. “All of those pedantic fuckers,” I say, “destined for better things. –So completely obnoxious.” I find myself alarmed by the conviction in my voice, about seeming to care about something so vigorously. Howard laughs it off. “It’s pretty much true, though.” he confirms. We laugh at those same people, and wonder what they’re doing now. “I think you either become disillusioned by the process," I say of the temp world, “or you transcend it all together, figuring everything out in the end.” Howe has joined the ranks of the transcendent, apparently. And meanwhile I’m a train wreck, a wreck of all wrecks, destined for collisions, and references to arcane song lyrics which validate all of this behavior. When the check finally comes, I wonder if they take food stamps here.

I was formed in the shopper's eye
It is just some random day, which could be any day. Have I written that sentence before? I’ll write it again. The weather itself is perplexing, clouding over long enough to trick you into thinking it’s going to be a crappy day, shortly before the sun bursts through again and you think, how manic the weather is. I actually find myself thinking about Tim Drawbridge again, and am then creeped out by my same obsession with this human being: is Tim Drawbridge married with children? Or is he some hanger on— the creep at the end of the bar who women, no matter his bizarre manifestations, latch onto the intangible charm beyond? These are the things I’m thinking about, I actually find myself thinking. And then I change the subject, the television channels of the mind, when the thinking about thinking becomes the thinking itself, so far removed.

I am listening to a punk rock song right now and experiencing the placebo of context. I remember this song, and my experience with it is transporting me five years or more, which mine as well be a century ago (which, at least in the currency of song form, actually is a century ago. Although, I guess you might make the argument that if a song means something, it might actually transcend the value of commodity, but that’s an argument better saved for a different time and place and author, who may not be me). I’m thinking about what my life was like then, walking around the art school campus and taking it all in. It seems, sadly, like I have not changed at all. Did I just hit the wall? I wonder—like when your body has matured to a point where it’s not going to mature any further. Or do you just begin to disintegrate, falling apart completely? Or are the changes more subtle and I’ve just forgotten completely, with the inability to compare? The only way to know, I guess, is if you write everything down, and unfortunately I do write things down. The blog itself is some paltry reflection of this, and there it is, laid out before me, to observe with no lack of chagrin. It could be worse, I guess. But the song at least, is still the same; it couldn't sound better.

Wine in the moring and some breakfast at night
The window washers outside of my window meticulously wash in the morning light. They’re kind of a motley-looking duo, one of them sporting a decidedly Kid Rock-style moustache and the other wears a ratty ponytail that sticks absurdly out of the back of a baseball cap. The Kid Rock guy uses some sort of makeshift watering device, while the other guy goes behind him and cleans away the dirt. It’s kind of a nice, baggage-free profession, I find myself thinking—the kind which you’re amazed technology hasn’t made obsolete in some way already. Hey, what do you do for a living? someone wants to know. Oh, I wash windows. The clarity is refreshing (nix).

I’m experiencing my own moment of clarity right now, wrapped up in the whole seasonal miasma of figuring out exactly how things work. I had this same epiphany last year at this time, as I walked around downtown in a pouring rain. I’m not sure exactly what I figured out, although I’m not sure it was particularly earth shattering. But it’s kind of amazing how life works sometimes, when everything comes together and seems so well choreographed. You can’t help but be moved in some small way, and then be moved by that same movement, like ancient glaciers shifting within. It’s a long life, but you can’t help but be touched by the irrefutable glints of beauty produced around the edges.

Outside the Kid Rock guy has come back around again to inspect the windows and realizes he has missed a spot. There seems to be some flaw in one of the windows, and he goes to clean it again. It’s funny, watching him look directly in. The windows are tinted and I realize he can’t see anything but his own reflection as I look right into his eyes, not five feet from my own. I catch myself wondering what his life is like. Maybe he’s having his own epiphanies, I think, cashing in on the whole seasonal vortex of beauty and shine. Who could say what he’s thinking? The possibilities really are endless. When he’s satisfied with the window, he picks up his supplies and moves along to clean the next window for somebody to look out of with equal parts astonishment and wonder.

Kaiser get in here right now
Ostensibly having lunch with my grandmother. Actually, I have no food or money and so I show up to her house unexpected to make a peanut butter sandwich, deciding to sit for a few moments before leaving. It seems like the couth thing to do, not just showing up to get some food and then leave again. She calls my motive, though, and on going to leave she asks me what's up. "Are you feeling alright?" she wants to know (it's always the inquiries with me, which only leads me to believe that my public persona needs some polishing. --A friend has recently spotted me standing against a wall at a show, totally lifeless and grim, later telling me how pathetic I looked. Thank you, L. Trela: you're always one for words. Although I guess I'll just chalk that one up to the proverbial touche--yeah, i know you read this blog, and may be refering to any number of incendiary things I may have said about you). "I guess I feel OK," I tell my grandmother, simultaneously amazed that she's asking about my well being. "Well you sure are acting strange," she says. I have no defense for acting strange, however, having given that up a long time ago. In the end we must be who we are, the singer sings, and there it is creeping up out of me, like some kind of insane bonsai. There is no hiding it. On my way to the door she holds up some grapes to give to me. I snatch them from her hand and pop one into my mouth, feeling as the sugary sweet tartness from the grape rushes over my tongue, like a piece of candy.

We got old but we got good
Birthday extravaganza ’07 ensues with no casualties. That’s a good thing. Although I guess it depends who you ask: the compulsive drug abuser might actually prefer to die in the heightened state, where the meth-induced state reveals, with startling clarity, the essence of living. But for better or worse (pointing me out to be the first class weenie I am, on a myriad of levels), the only drug I’ve been abusing is my asthma inhaler. All other aspects of life fade away in the desperate morning, lips pursed as you gasp for air, dizziness ensuing as the oxygen in your blood dissipates and then seemingly disappears altogether. That’s the state I found myself in Saturday morning. And that’s the way it is these days. Oh, dear god, I think to myself silently, what did I do to deserve this, with the newly formed panic attack of the inoxygenated lung. But there are few answers in the life of the uninsured, and sometimes you just have to deal. “It’s OK,” I tell a concerned friend, keeling over and gasping for air. I’m actually getting used to living life on the verge of death. “Well, Happy Birthday,” she says tells me derisively. Happy 29th.

This job is killing me
In what is apparently my ongoing attempt to reference 2001: A Space Odyssey as often as humanly possible, I’ve recently begun conceptualizing my brain as the HAL computer as it’s shutting down, pleading with no one in particular to stop the process. Please, I hear myself saying (in some kind of interior monologue, which is a voice not unlike that of the actual H-A-L computer, although slightly more suave if I don’t say so myself), don’t do it. The Walkmen sing, this job is killing me, and here I find myself with the bloody shirt stain wound and the dying. It’s just another day in Info Systems. All systems go.

Trust your needs to feed you
Morning time at L. Trela’s. I cannot sleep and L. Trela is the only other person I know who may be awake at this hour. I dial her number to find out that she is in fact sleeping, but she invites me over anyway. I know there’s at least an 80 percent chance of receiving breakfast when I get there, and so I arrive moments later, jumping as she emerges from some bizarre entryway I’ve never noticed before and scares the shit out of me. What’s up, she says. What’s going on? Trela’s a funny one to pin down, because she’s one of two or three people I know over the age of 40 who righteously holds on to the ideal that she’s actually 17 years-old. That’s all well and good, but that worldview seems to come particularly unraveled when she’s hustling down Lark Street at 2:00 am, threatening to drive herself home after a night of heavy drinking. And that’s kind of the thing you tend to notice about L. Trela: it’s less that she’s in active pursuit of the imagined lifestyle of an adolescent and more that she seems to be holding onto some kind of death wish. All of her stories, you tend to notice, end in horrible disaster, and it’s not difficult to see through the active lifestyle veneer, which presents in crystal three dimensional clarity, a life out of control. Mostly though, she’s into it if you eat the pizzas she always making, and I can adequately fulfill that roll, looking up between bites, as I pretend to be listening to what she’s saying. But today I arrive to little fanfare. She looks at me blankly before asking what I’ve been up to. Oh, nothing, I tell her. I went on vacation to Cape Cod. The details are not very thrilling. We have no idea what to say to each other and the effect is unnerving. Gone today are Trela’s horrible anecdotes and misadventures. Even the things she’s telling me are benign and lightweight-seeming. What's going on here? I want to know. What the fuck? It’s no use, though, and so I leave after a short visit, feeling somehow defeated and grim, cast out into the day with a bad feeling. Thanks a lot, L. Trela; thanks for nothing.

Friendships are weird thing, situated as they are on so much precarious footing. Move one rock and the whole arrangement comes crumbling down. It’s easy to get swept up in the romanticism of a world built around good intentions, structured perfectly with people who care. But mostly it’s not like that. Mostly, it’s cruel and unusual. Although, mostly unusual. Back in the car, I realize why I’m feeling so strange: I’m starving.

Goodbye stranger/ it’s been nice
I get phrases from movies and song lyrics stuck in my head. Short blips which correspond to nothing particular. My father was plagued by the same disorder: you hear something on the radio and the next thing you know it’s rattling around the cranium, bouncing around for days on end. My father’s problem was a lot more abstract, primarily intrigued by television commercials and Saturday Night Live skits. Often I would wonder if he was experiencing the onset of some sort of dementia, watching as he would spontaneously bust into song in front of my friends. Said friends would look at each other bemused, as I reeled in horror, often having no idea what he was talking about. Car rides to the mall were marked by the bad humor of my dad and the accompanying jokes which followed. It was a particularly sordid time, perplexed as I was by my dad’s precarious mental state. But here I find myself, impossibly enough, on a chance listen to the classic rock radio station, with Supertramp lyrics trapped in my head. Goodbye Stranger/ it’s been nice/ hope you find your paradise. The words and music cascade around my head, over and over. I whistle this in the office, the falsetto part sticking in your tar trap brain and eradicating all other contents. It seems weird whistling a song about a one night stand in the office, but soon others are plagued by its infectiousness, and everybody begins singing along. Which is unimaginable, even to me.

It is casual Friday, and the common people have brought out their duds, complete with white sneakers and general accessory. I have forgotten about this and am left looking not-so-casual, but that’s OK. My general affectation has already gone the distance of freaking out my coworkers, and I’m sure they have no desire to see my sneakers. But things are OK today: it’s enough to be stoked about the weekend, with its unlimited potential for nightlife and god knows what. The workaday mats you down; days and months accumulate, and your paycheck tells you 900 hours worked, which you look at questionably. Could I really have worked all of those hours, you think, seated at this desk? But all of that fades away. In three more hours the limitations will have been thrust off, and you will be impossibly seated at the blue collar bar. The next-day responsibility will have evaporated, and you will find yourself liberated totally and completely, ushering in the unlimited potential for who knows what. I see a coworker on her way out the door and she stops to talk. “Doing anything good this weekend?” she wants to know. “--Oh, I don’t know,” I say, perplexed by those same limitations being thrust off—the possibility of anything. “I’ll probably just,” I say trailing off, not knowing what to say. She looks back at me derisively, the disappointment of my complete lack of an answer. “Well, see you around,” she says. And then, a few paces away, at the threshold, she turns and tells me, “Goodbye stranger.” To which I can only shake my head. Hope you find your paradise.

Color me in

Summer '07: it’s in effect. Outside of my window the clouds burst in the nebulous blue. An eagle coasts lazily in the sky, and the world seems perfectly colored in and alive today. So far advanced does it seem in its trajectory towards aliveness that it could not go any further. I see a bumper sticker that reads Life is Good, and I actually believe its message. It seems precarious and short-lived to me, but it actually seems true, today.

I am in my cubicle, hunkered down in the cube. It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than you have lived wrong, to have ended up in a circumstance such as this one, watching as the perfect day goes by. At least with a window like this one. Although, that’s kind of funny, too—to always come to the same conclusion. Going over the pathways in your mind, and the decisions made: were they all the wrong ones? Is that a possibility: that the sum total of all of those decisions has lead me here, within four walls? I distract myself by doing work and come accross a license with the dog name Freedom. I can’t help but laugh at the inexplicable horribleness of that name, and the hilarious hi-jinx provided by the gods above. Didn’t they have anything better to do today, I wonder, than to send me over the edge. It doesn’t really seem that way. I put it out of my head, but I always come back to its terribleness, with all of its angles and points of light.

The Blues Are Still Blue
If life replicates art, and art is some tedious movie (as has been explained by our dethroned hero), then this is the segue, with the flipping calendar pages (or Rolodex, depending on your bad movie montage of choice). The days roll by, and more significantly, the weeks and months. Constants during this period may include any one of the following, and often several at once: walking around in an un-induced trancelike state, being in continuous possession of a Belle & Sebastian album, and adult onset ADD. Some things never change, and here I find myself in the same office chair, with fellow coworkers floating lazily by my window, like pollen. Spring is also experiencing the delayed onset, and so maybe the whole movie segue/ pollen analogy is a bad one. It’s a passage, but one that often lends itself to nothing in particular. Tim Drawbridge, the tragically named weather person on the local station, animates this on the morning news, the flickering ghost images flashing on my walls in the early AM. I love this person because he’s a boring human in charge of making a boring subject matter entertaining, therein revealing its entertainingness to me. The other anchorperson has no idea how to deal with him, awkwardly passing the minute segment of time they have to fill together until the next spot. “It seems like we’re just going to have to put up with this frosty weather for a while longer,” he says dogmatically, as I laugh out loud.

At work they have reduced my computers’ functions to the space of a barely adequate hard drive, comprised of two fully functioning programs. I drink black coffee and clack ferverishly at the keyboard. It seems to create the perfectly lined vacuum which blocks out all outside stimulus. What exactly is accomplished in this state, I don’t know, but I can’t quite endorse it as therapeutic. “I just seem to be getting dumber,” I’ve recently explained to a friend. “I used to read the newspaper and things, but now I just sit listlessly in the corner.” “Well it seems to be working out pretty well for you,” he tells me, and I have to admit that seems at least somewhat true. No longer will you catch me standing on street corners speaking about the fascist tendencies of reality programming, choosing instead to take in the latest episode of Cheaters. Some tectonic plate seems shifted, within.
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Interoffice fashion critique with a coworker. “Boy, here comes your girlfriend,” she says. Coming up the way is the elusive girl, walking by my window everyday. Today she is wearing a peculiar aqua-colored dress which does not go unnoticed by my coworker. “Man, she’s wearing her Easter-edition getup,” she says. And it’s true: her outfit does seem unglaringly funny. Augmenting the aqua dress is a similar colored blouse, which only adds to the overall effect. All we can do is shake our heads at one another, the razor-sharp fashion critics, having missed our calling, and ended up here instead.

I try and examine exactly what it is that makes this so hilarious to me. The girl likely purchased this dress from the store, and possibly even stood before the dressing room mirror, before making the executive decision that this garment is perfectly acceptable for presentation to the outside world. At some point in time, she may have even checked the price tag, and determined that it was a worthwhile purchase. Meanwhile, it’s the most hilarious outfit Kalish and I could even imagine. It’s not so much the outfit itself but the dichotomy of perception which makes it so funny to me— the almost unfathomable outfit choice which seems to the espouser perfectly acceptable, while to me it denotes that the wearer may inhabit a reality completely unlike my own (which may also make some amount of sense, because I’m not a 23-year-old woman. But still, it’s invariably gut busting and funny.

I’m trying to become a ‘better person,’ I keep telling people, although that’s a concept which may just be shrouded in ambiguity and meaninglessness, even to me. A better description might describe changing without having finite terms in mind. I like that better; although that, too, is misleading. I try to imagine the movements which actual change might imply, and all I can come up with is an automobile routed firmly in tracks. For years I’ve been confused by the destination that change ultimately implies, conceptually or geographically. It all just seems like landscape and broken promises to me. But thinking in these terms hasn’t gotten me very far. And so I’ve decided that it’s probably better to place the emphasis on the act of change, and transit, without having such finite terms in mind. Whatever that may mean, which in my case is fairly complex and difficult to articulate to you.

Dina, the chef at Mezzo and apparent PR person, sits down next to me at a bar recently. “I’m just going to eat here,” she explains to me. “There’s no other tables available.” “—Oh. OK,” I say to her. A friend of hers arrives momentarily, and it’s not long before I find myself not knowing what to talk to them about, and so end up mercilessly making fun of their suntans instead (suntans which, here in the frozen tundra of Spring, seem inordinately vain and funny to me. Although, it occurs to me that maybe I’m just jealous that my own pasty and office-imbued complexion falls short of the invigorated skin of my sanguine-faced table dwellers). Shortly they are taking offense to this. “Are you making fun of us?” Dina wants to know. It does seem like particularly bad form, openly making fun of strangers like this, but I’ve had too much to drink and what can you do? “You shouldn’t do that,” she admonishes. “You shouldn’t prejudge. –She’s Italian, and it’s hot in here.” The way she says this to me, calmly, it’s clear that she’s not actually mad or upset, but sincerely instructing me on the dangers of making fun of humans with red faces. I try to imply the good-natured-ness inherent in my fun-making but before long the band has launched into some incredible assault of their Hootie and the Blowfish cover, and there is just no way to explain. And so there we sit, people of all varieties, red and white-faced, wildly coifed and inarticulate.

Sitting there, in the dim-lit bar, it’s hard not to realize that a band like this could only really exist in Albany, New York. Albany is, as anyone whose paid a visit, a vacuum unto itself, channeling in strickly vapid influence and hackneyed pop culture reference. Next to Cleveland, Ohio, it’s probably one of the most notoriously losingist cities on the map. And you can’t help but feel, listening to music in a place like this, the crushing weight of it all. It seems the perfect music for the hideous bar, within the confines of a hideous city, the layers of horribleness accumulating like the spackle on a wall that is crumbling beneath, and which can only be appreciated for the eyesore that it is. I can only shake my head at myself. It seems almost inconceivable to be so disconnected from an environment you’ve spent an eternity in, shambling amongst its inhabitants like an actual alien. There were people out there like me somewhere, I find myself thinking, even if I never found them.

Before leaving, Dina turns and thanks me for letting them sit with me, and that it was, actually, a good time. “I’ll see you around,” she says to me, as she cheerfully clinks my glass. It seems weird, but I can’t help but think something good has come from the encounter, and that some innate connection was made, even if she does have a real bad suntan. Maybe the whole personal evolution thing is not lost on me, after all, I find myself thinking; Maybe there’s hope for me, yet.
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Easter Sunday: what a day. Tim Drawbridge is probably pointing out the unseasonably terrible weather somewhere. I am meeting my parents for brunch on short sleep. I saunter over to the the mirror to find sleep-depraved eyes staring back at me, the maniacal visage of someone whose life is out of control. It’s embarrassing, really—not quite a look conducive to entering the public arena, with its dramatic angles and bad lighting. I realize I cannot present myself to my parents looking like this, and so a trip to the store is in order, to buy eye drops.

The Colvin Avenue Hannaford stands stark in the midmorning sunlight, the architecture itself issuing forth the magnetic hum which has vagrants of all sorts producing forth to hang out lazily in the morning sun. This has been my favorite place in Albany for some time now, if only because you cannot leave the premises without some variety of dull anecdote to relate to someone. And as if on cue, en route to the eye care aisle, I see Dina, the girl from the bar, walking straight towards me. She looks right into my eyes, and then through me. I almost cannot believe and so I say, “Hey, what’s up?” She fixes on me, and then all at once my face must prompt the imagery of the person she was sitting next to at the bar the other night. We exchange a lackluster greeting, and then depart, her through shadowy monolith of the grocery mart and me to my battered car, shaking my head once more at my own sense of transparence.

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At my parents’, I am early for once. The TV plays the meaningless banter of the national news people. It’s funny how much more urban these people seem by comparison to the square-seeming newscasters on the local station, whose lives, you imagine, are so much less exciting. They’re featuring a segment where they corner pedestrians and ask them about the significance of the Easter holiday. The masses seem perpetually confused, and totally unable to define why Easter is celebrated with any degree of correctness. And it seems unreal for people to be so dumb, from even a totally secular perspective. Neitche famously declared God is Dead, but here in the blinding light of the new dark age, he seems deader than dead, without even the mere suggestion of anything but more deadness. Although, that adds up, too, and I find myself hard pressed to defend things from any high moral grounds. It just seems kind of strange to be so disconnected--so dumb. But then, I've never experienced this variety of solidarity. I'll probably just get worse. It feels OK.

You've got a right/ but I've got a right tonight
Excessive interneting has lead to an apparent zero tolerance policy on behalf of the ye old workplace. The leering “Know Your Employers’ Internet Policy” poster hanging by my desk for months went unnoticed, and so did the literature placed strategically around the break room. Now they have blocked my computer in what can only be viewed as some harsh Draconian consideration, clicking on a favorite website and receiving the message, in harshly defined block print. Meanwhile I have taken to pencil and paper, feverishly scrawling on a notepad; let them lock away my supplies and then what?? (You cannot take away my pencil and paper! I want to shout obnoxiously in earshot of the internet patrol team—a division that I have yet to pinpoint, but when I do will be met with swift action and icy looks). It’s weird, though, writing by hand, which is limited primarily to correspondence with a pen pal who never writes back. It’s like some kind of technological artifact from the dark ages. Your hand isn’t accustomed to this variety of strenuous activity, developing a dull ache between your thumb and forefinger. It’s kind of nice, though, too, at the same time, like unearthing your bicycle from a garbage strewn crawl space and realizing you can still pedal like a motherfucker. Sitting before a computer for hours on end has a dull, pacifying effect which has you mouth-breathing and on the verge of entirely differnet platitudes. Just today KJ was choking on a piece of food, and I watched on as though I were dreaming an unreal dreamw while various coworkers tried their hand at some variety of the Heimlich. At least four different people came up from behind her as pandemonium broke out in the office, people scattering everywhere. And all I could do was sit there, watching on as the translucent line which separates living and dying became boldened, and then perfectly defined, like the scrawling of somebody with a CAD variety number 2 pencil.

I don’t smoke so I poke around
Coworker watch ’07: while nobody knows exactly who the four foot miscreant eating Mr. Subb in the break room is, or precisely what he does here, numerous people have seen him washing his face in the same break room sink, tiny hand towel particles stuck all over the countertop. Often times on getting coffee you will perchance to spy his particularly grime stricken countenance as he proceeds to scrub away with nonchalance, as though he’s not actually using the break room as his own personal grub shoppe. One might be moved to wonder if the pygmy hut he resides in does not contain the accompanying outhouse, with washroom amenities. Or if whatever back breaking nine to five schedule he works here does not allow the more traditional home-based personal hygiene measures. But whatever the case, it is freaking me and KJ out. An additional item on his agenda, apparently, is eating all of the Pop Tarts in the thrifty vend, as he seems always to have a half-eaten pop tart in his hands, which may just explain the incessant hand washing. Often times on looking in there, I ask myself just who eats this stuff, and the answer lies front and center, in the groveling hands of the four foot beholder. Although, sometimes the table he’s sitting at may include any number of items from the machine, and often times several at once. One more pastime and affront to the general sensibilities includes almost continuously hanging out with the jerry curled woman, and incessantly hanging around in the bathroom, as nearly 75% of the time I go in there, I will see him lazily hanging around in the corner (in some admirable late day appropriation of the Fonz--office portal as unofficial business/ rec-room). While many facts remain uncertain, one thing’s for sure and that is that there’s a lot of information to be ascertained, a lot of work to be done. And the weird thing is, I’m pretty much sure that we’re representing the same temp agency. Which could just be conversational fodder, and introductions to entire worlds unknown.

I look through transparent things and I feel OK
I have reached the end of the walkway this morning when I hear my oft-appearing neighbor David calling from the doorway of his home. “Hey!!” I hear someone saying, as I look around to see. “Over here!!!” I turn back and am astonished to see him on the porch in full sleepwear regalia, telling me to have a good day. His voice resonates for everyone within a five mile radius to hear. It’s some curious mélange of Kermit the Frog and someone with a severe case of dementia, and there really just is no way to sufficiently respond. I raise my hand firmly aloft, signaling to him from the street, a gesture which is intended to imply that I have received his transmission, and am returning that same well wishing, with earnest and sincerity. And then in one swift motion he disappears behind closed doors again, vanishing within the entryway of the home, to do who knows what.

I am at work, having arrived this morning with the over exuberance of someone whose eaten a large breakfast. The sugar of Cap’n Crunch cereal coagulates somewhere in the intestine and disperses to more or less obnoxious behavior patterns. Already today I have discussed the program Wifeswap with a coworker, talked over the perils of drinking exorbitant amounts the night before a coworker’s liver exam, and have been told that I’m stupid for the one hundredth time by one KJ, who resides in a neighboring cubicle. More and more now, she does this, and I never can tell if she’s being serious. It seems at once to denote endearment and derision, and confusing things further is that she’s never consistent. Just a while ago, for instance, I was telling her how to maximize free time away from work, which has something to do with doing the exact opposite of what you normally be doing at work, which is sitting under neon lighting and sitting before a computer. It’s particularly liberating, I explained, because we process dog licenses, and what could be more demoralizing than that? She processed this information, thinking it over a moment before having no apparent idea what I was talking about, and then issued forth, predictably, “Boy: you’re so STUPID.” And either way, really.

I don't make no jokes about bombs or guns because they take them seriously
ONE day off from work, and no idea what to do with myself. I am not a creative person and left to my own devices turn inward and grim-seeming. Last night L. Trela told me that I seem to be declining steadily and firmly, and this point is reiterated by a two-day old friend who makes fun of my hair. “Being unkempt is one thing,” she said, “but this is something else entirely.” And it’s all true: if the outward appearance is some signal of what is happening on a more cognitive level, everything’s a mess. I walk around with a mountain man shirt on all day and the accompanying sense of ennui. There’s no solid deduction that I could offer you, no firm answers which wouldn’t crumble under tenuous footing. I need some sort of vacation, I think, but I don’t really like to travel.

A couple of months ago Adam Lynch and I inexplicably attempted to lie our way into Canada, en route to Montreal. The whole idea being that we appear to be sketchy terrorists and it would circumvent the whole interrogation process if we said we were going to visit a friend, totally unprepared for the interrogation which would follow when we did in fact deliver this excuse. Two oversized Canadian officials produced and searched the car, holding up a bottle of half-empty whiskey before wanting to know the address and phone number of our imaginary friend. Adam stammered a bit before producing a phony contact number and then proceeded to turn an almost sallow color that skin is wont to produce. We talked over the myriad possibilities in the hard chairs of the border waiting room, the actual telephone number of the person he had just given, the confusion it would elicit, and the grim shadowy descending these answers produced. The border patrol person returned moments later, with the grim determination of finding out our real business in Canada, which is blowing up buildings and destroying landmarks. We noted the handcuffs and gun as we stammered to find something to say. He fixed on us boldly, before asking something more typical of third grade classrooms. “Do you know what happens to liars?” he asked rhetorically. Oh dear god, we thought, are we going to be taken away and locked up under some obscure Canadian law? We paused a bit, thinking of the possibilities before he issued forth an answer. “THEY GET SENT BACK TO THE USA,” he said, pointing at the prominently displayed USA sign, with the little U-turn symbol that is the international symbol, apparently, for you just fucked up the whole trip. I snickered uncontrollably in full earshot of the patrolman, and then we turned the car around and headed back across the imaginary line, with the clear and articulate direction of the sign. And so some things you just can’t escape, it seems.

At the gate I said goodnight to the fortuneteller
Sporadic and cagey energy from being snowed indoors, watching as the street adorning autos are snowed over, inch by inch, before disappearing completely from sight. I have a new pair of headphones that I listen to continuously, carrying my listening device around the apartment in a tightly sealed vacuum of caterwauling guitars and violent noise. It’s kind of a pleasant effect. My roommate is at work and aside from an occasional phone call, I haven’t had sufficient contact with anyone for what seems like several days, sauntering from kitchen to bedroom and back again. When you can’t hear yourself, and even your own thought process seems inordinately blocked, you begin to question whether or not you actually even exist. In the absence of mirrors you forget your face, and the same seems true of audible sound, as you find yourself disappearing altogether. Strange thoughts begin skittering across your head. And when you’ve reached the bounds of acceptable thought process, you go outside and shovel the walkway, because there’s nothing better to do, and it seems like a swift strategic maneuver, if only for the sake of sanity.

Out of doors is a nightmare of the panoramic landscape. Everywhere are people frantically shoveling snow in the attempt to unearth their cars before the plow comes back around again. Street teams have assembled to dislodge motorists who have gotten stuck, and a police office stops to help an older couple. It lends an almost pleasant air to the disaster of the storm, watching the community come together like this. Momentarily I find even myself joining in the effort, shoveling some gaggle of frat kids out of the street corner. I work diligently, taking away the snow, before pushing at the car from behind. The wheels spin, with the smooth whirring sound of the rutted tire, before the car becomes free, and as it does spraying me in the brown cumulus that is the street snow. God damn, I say under my breath, as the car disappears without as much as a wave of thanks. Those bastards, I curse indignantly. Fuck all this, I realize, before returning indoors, where the soundtrack to forgetting and being forgotten is angular, and somewhat Slinty.

The church is filled with losers psycho or confused
The breakfast cereal that I eat, with the rather nondescript packaging, now features indie-rockers on the box. I make this discovery at 8:00 am, as I crunch whole grains. The indie-rockers are taking over the world. And there’s nothing they won’t try to sell you anymore without some vaguely familiar song etching its way into your subconscious. I rustle around in the box a little looking for the new Shins’ cd, but all I find is an insipid fistful of protein twigs (sic).

A couple of weeks ago I told A. that I’m going to start listening exclusively to Norwegian dark metal, a proclamation that has sadly fallen by the wayside. Norwegian metal is where it’s at, I told him enthusiastically. It’s like a cleansing of the pallet. And do I ever need some cleansing. The only question now is which breakfast cereal to eat. Although, that seems easy, too: Capn’ Crunch, which could easily be the name of some Nordic Metal band, and in all probability is.

Everybody say whoop-di-doo
New York City in a flash, dressed down in every article of clothing imaginable, as you run from train to the venue and back again. And as always, the completely arbitrary left hand turn into the best restaurant you’ve eaten at in weeks, since the last time you were here. I keep thinking I should move to New York, and then all I can think of is getting squashed like a bug. There’s something inherent about the getting squashed that just nixes the idea altogether.

At the show two NYU students from Middletown, New York cornered me and began asking me questions of all manner of intensity and inquisitiveness. Where are you from? What do you do? What are your goals in life? I found the whole interrogation rather disconcerting, I have to say, and they turned away with at least some slight hint of chagrin.

Jagged brain slow refrain
My coworkers are talking about reality programming and I’m telling them how I should be the next bachelor on TV. “You totally should,” my coworker Melissa tells me, “You’re way better than that prince guy.” But I just don’t know: the last person to demonstrate some romantic interest in me, I ran away from, literally. I forget the exact dynamics of that conversation, but I remember specifically jogging away. I’m like some kind of inverse bachelor, with a built-in repellant mechanism, intentionally keeping people away, like mosquitoes. Although, there are always people who just end up misinterpreting the signal, the transmission showing up with some entirely different code. Some girl I see at the gym jumps on the treadmill next to me last night. It’s weird to talk to someone after seeing them around for so long. You end up developing all of these theories about them, tangling them up in all types of unfair preconceptions which they invariably break down, for better or worse. “Hey, what’s up?” I ask her. “Oh, nothing,” she tells me. Right…I trail off. And then, despite my wholehearted attempts at articulating what a horrible human being I am, and how I should be swept off the earth in some great cleansing flood, there is the invitation to, among all things, a hockey game. I stammer, looking for an answer which will absolve me, before coming up with something along the lines of, “I’m not really into sports, is the thing.” An answer which, at best, presents with a whole lot of transparency. But the whole thing is, since I’m already on the treadmill, I can’t run away.

Everybody meet Mr. Me Too
I have had a run in with the retarded neighbor. For months I could hear an incomprehensible yelling while washing my face, and I had imagined that the neighbors were harboring some Goonies, Sloth-style monster in there, all barred and caged in their living room. One day, I had imagined, I would come home from work and a mad person would dash by me, followed by a throng of torch-wielding men (an illusion which may just be facilitated by the elephantine man I see stumbling up Washington by the university on my way home from work everyday, an experience which no passerby fully covets. His face appears caved and deformed as he shambles up the road like a drunk person. I have conferred with several other people, and it seems to be the general consensus that it is the most cage-rattling, horror inducing experience one can have, driving down the road in the midday, second only to roadside explosions and ten car pile-ups). My neighbor shows by far more innocuously, making his way up the pathway as I’m coming home one evening. I give him a general nod, never having seen him before. But palpable alarm bells of warning emerge when he sees me going down the alleyway which separates our houses, to retrieve the garbage. It is this solitary act which separates me from a random visitor he has never seen before to the more sketchy-seeming burglar that I appear to be—imagery provided by the emboldened notions of Good and Evil engrained somewhere along the way. “HEY!!” he says in audible arena rock concert volume, “WHO ARE YOU?? WHERE ARE YOU GOING??” I wonder momentarily what will happen if I’m unable to sufficiently explain, but the situation is quickly diffused when I tell him that I live here now, and then receive the spontaneous weather report at top volume. “AT THIS TIME LAST YEAR IT WAS SNOWING!!!” he says. “AND ON EASTER ONE TIME, TOO!!” Hmm, yes, I tell him: maybe it did snow on Easter one year. He’s into the weather. And so we have one thing in common, at least.

It’s all slate grey and snowing today, the way a bad day should be.

He walks like his legs are broken and he talks like he’s never spoken
State employees are all a-gripe today after governor elect Eliot Spitzer failed to reward them with a day off for the death of President Ford. “Aw, man,” my coworker Joy intoned loudly, having heard the radio report on Friday. “I knew I shouldn’t have voted for Spitzer. That JERK.” Meanwhile, federal employees have procured an additional day off, extending the New Year’s holiday for one more day. News reports of Gerald Ford’s death were followed by the hilarity-producing descriptions of his mediocrity and the accompanying footage of how clumsy he was, the BBC providing you with a montage of Ford falling down the stairs of Air Force One, and random other acts of clumsiness. As an additional coup to his tenuous legacy, the BBC then showed the Saturday Night Live clip of Chevy Chase falling over his desk and onto the ground, in some slapstick portrayal of the late president. “That just goes to show you,” I told A., “no matter what you do you will always be remembered for the ways you mess up.” The video clips articulate this perfectly, and the nightly new ingrains this in the national consciousness indelibly. And the state employees are just way less forgiving, I can assure you. As I write this, my coworker Joy is intoning small curse words under her breath as she date stamps the wrong document.

It is a new year. I woke up in bed New Year’s morning with the vague feeling of chagrin as I remembered the events of the night before, and then tried to forget. When the clock struck 12:00, I got up, passing some girl in the kitchen, and retired to my room to vomit in a garbage bag. It seems like a particularly sordid way of bringing in the new year. And it seemed to imbue a sickly sense of things to come. Future outlook: le bad. It’s nothing presidential, though, I guess. But I could have used another day off.