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Tuesday, July 30, 2002

O.K. I promised myself that I wouldn’t write an entry about this after it happened to me this morning but I just can’t stop thinking about it and I have to get the last word in somehow. I don’t usually worry about things like this but. . . you know those bars that you have to hold onto when you are standing on the bus? Here in Chicago you can actually feel the human grease on them and it really grosses me out. I mean, if you are the kind of person who touches those bars it’s not like I’m going to shun you (you filthy dirty greasy-handed bastard). I just choose not to hold onto them myself. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, keeping my balance and all without touching the bars. It’s almost sort of a sport for me. But this morning I was trying to stand there in the aisle and the bus-driving dude hit the brakes really hard for some malicious reason and I didn’t have my sea-legs about me. I pitched forward and hit my head on the back of a seat and tumbled to the floor where I lay there in the aisle for a bit. I’ve never spent any time on the floor of a bus before but as I lay there with a wad of gum under my cheek it was almost. . . serene. From far away I could hear bus passengers on cell phones suddenly interrupting their talking partner to remark on the “guy that just totally wiped out on the bus.” But then suddenly I snapped back to reality and people were grabbing me and trying to pull me up and I was telling everybody that I was okay and picking gum off of me. It was cool that people were concerned about me, but this is the part that really burned me up. Some guy with no t-shirt on under his dress shirt told me “You’ve got to hold onto those bars, dude!” like I didn’t know that. Well, Mr. Safety nut, I KNOW that I’m SUPPOSED to hold onto those bars. I just choose not to. And I won’t compromise my position. I’m not going to touch the bars tomorrow either. We’ll just have to see what happens. Once my job actually starts I’ll be fine. Usually I put about half a roll of invisible tape all over the inside of my hands so that I can hold onto the bar without actually touching it (and nobody knows!) but my “invisi-glove” (patent pending) isn’t economically feasible unless I have access to an office supply closet. Although I do have a patent pending on my “invisi-glove,” consider this a limited license to use my idea yourself if you are also grossed out by the bars on busses.

Brian 10:36 PM

I just wanted to type a quick thank-you for the people who helped me with the spelling of that guy’s name with the nose prosthesis in yesterday’s entry. So, if you are doing some research or want to know more about the life of the guy who died because he wasn’t allowed to take a bathroom break, and who discovered some astronomical crap too, his name is spelled like this: Tycho Brahe. It’s NOT Tito Bra-hey, as I originally typed yesterday.

Brian 9:36 PM

Monday, July 29, 2002

I have the first day of the bar exam tomorrow morning. The whole thing at this point has me feeling. . . angry. And it’s not the fact that the Bar exam seems to have solely an anti-competitive purpose (keeping lawyer’s numbers low so fees stay high), or the fact that they’ve wasted my whole summer memorizing a lot of stuff that I used to know in a more nuanced fashion. It’s not those reasons so much anymore. Right now I’m mostly angry at the fact that there is a four hour period tomorrow morning when I am not permitted to use the bathroom except for during actual test taking time. Using test-taking time to go to the bathroom, of course, will put me at a disadvantage. And I’m one of those guys that have to go to the bathroom every half an hour, especially when there is some barbarian test proctor telling me I can’t. I mean, really, am I supposed to dehydrate myself prior to the test? It’s like one of those movie-fied Shao-lin kung-fu initiation rights when the guy’s got to grab the metal pot full of hot coals with his forearms so that he would have dragons branded onto his arms. At least that dragon-branding was cool. This not being able to use the bathroom thing – it’s just plain stupid. And didn’t that old tyme astronomer die of a ruptured bladder? He was that old European astronomer back in the day when the Europeans were still working out the idea of the solar system, his first name was Tito (sp?) and his last name was, phonetically, Bra–hey. Tito was a partying astronomer and had fake noses, one made out of silver, another gold, etc. He needed the nose prosthesis because he had lost the tip of his nose during a duel. Tito would throw totally rad parties and for the final climax of the party, after everybody was super drunk, Tito would stand up on a chair and pull off his nose and then everybody would cheer. Tito was a super cool astronomer but he went to this dinner with the King of Denmark or something and the rule was that you couldn’t get up to take a leak until the King did. Tito drank a bunch and totally had to take a whiz but he couldn’t because of the “king pees first rule” and he tried to hold it and Tito’s bladder burst and he died. The bar examiners are just like that King of Denmark - jerks about bathroom breaks. So today I puttered around my kitchen for a bit. I was thinking maybe “catheter” but everything I found in my cabinets and drawers struck me as a bad idea to put up my urethra. I lingered in front of the adult sanitary absorbent underpants today at the grocery store. But in the end it all comes down to this: This won’t be the first or last time that I’ve peed my pants during my adult life.

Brian 8:42 PM

Sunday, July 28, 2002

There’s a guy who lives in my building. I’ve seen him a few times now and he never wears a shirt but he ALWAYS is wearing a red, terry-cloth headband. I don’t get why he wears the headband, it’s not like he’s sweating a lot or something. So it was he who first popped into my mind when I saw that somebody had spilled old chicken fried rice all over the lip of the refuse chute. But I talked to the guy today and he seems really cool, he’s probably not the type to spill chicken fried rice in a public place and not clean it up. So I apologize, headband guy. But still, why does he wear that headband? I don’t get it. And then there’s the issue of the house down the street that I walk by whenever I go anywhere. My neighborhood is mostly apartment buildings and so whenever I walked past the house, all big and fenced in and landscaped, I figured that some really rich and important people must live there. But the other night as I walked past I saw two women wearing too-tight pants cursing at each other and fighting over something wrapped in newspaper on the porch. Another woman in too-tight pants stood halfway inside the door, sucking on a cigarette and loudly casting dispersions upon the hygiene of what she called the other two women’s “cooters.” I was just beginning the soorya namaskar this morning when it suddenly hit me. I got a head rush and had to crouch down until it passed. I looked out the window, saw a murder of crows circling between buildings, and as my head rush faded I felt a tremendous sense of panic. What am I doing here? Mr. Kitty and I don’t belong here. What have I gotten us into? I’m sorry Mr. Kitty.

Brian 11:14 PM

Saturday, July 27, 2002

Ever since I wrote that last journal entry about those old people talking in the gyro store I’ve been thinking of a very special romantic and inspirational love story I witnessed years ago and I would like to share it with you. I’ll give you the moral first off, it’s this: if you are an old person and want to fall in love, then you should become a regular at a fast food restaurant. Because when it comes to having things in common, common fast food patronage seems to be enough. Years ago I had a summer job at Burger king. I had originally applied to McDonald’s but the McDonald’s manager refused to hire me because I had long hair. During the interview I pointed to women with long hair working behind the counter, alleged gender discrimination, and shouted in an angry voice, “Listen you McAsshole!” (that “McAsshole” was very clever of me, don’t you think? – I was only eighteen at the time so cut me some slack) “Either you’re going to give me a job here flipping your fucking burgers or I’m gonna call the ACLU and put your ass in a sling!!” And thus I began a long and fruitless eight years (to date) of getting pissed off and threatening to call the UCLA in a loud voice while in public places. But it never works. People aren’t as scared of the ACLU when it’s just some longhaired kid standing up in a fiberglass fast-food booth screaming the acronym. It’s funny because I still think that it will work, I always do. But so anyway, I got a job at the Burger King down the street. And I’m kind of glad that I got the job at the Burger King because if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have witnessed the wonderful and inspiring love story that I am about to relate. At the Burger King I worked at there were two regulars, a man and a woman. Both were these old, grey-looking, sad people and everyday at some point between the morning rush and the lunch rush they would come in and order a senior coffee and sit with it in the filthy little smoking section smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. The woman was old enough to qualify for senior coffee. I wasn’t sure about the guy but didn’t really care and sold him his coffee at the reduced senior rate anyway. They usually came at different times, but after a while their visits overlapped enough so that they began to recognize each other as fellow regulars. At first they just started showing up at the same times, then they started talking, just pleasantries at first. Then they began sitting at tables closer and closer to each other. The old guy started doing corny things to impress the old woman, like drink his coffee really fast and get a refill, and she’d reward him with her raspy laugh. It was obvious to we Burger King employees that they were falling in love. I got impatient. “Come on you horny old people, go get it on!!” I’d shout at them from behind the counter. “I know you want to!! It’s inevitable!! Chop chop! Let’s cut to the chase here!” I shouted stuff like that until I was disciplined by the franchise manager. I was much younger then. Now I realize that love takes time. They had to be patient with each other’s tender feelings and emotions. I think they had both been hurt before, by other coffee drinking seniors. Eventually, of course, they were sitting in the same booth, and a few days after that they both didn’t show up at Burger King at all. They didn’t show up for about three weeks straight after that. They didn’t need Burger King, they had each other. I’m not sure if anything they did together could be technically referred to as lovemaking, they were both so desiccated from their exclusive bodily intake of coffee and cigarettes that I don’t think either of them could have produced any coital fluids. Let’s just call what they did very special acts of conjugal kindness. . . Regardless, they had something beautiful together. They spent their days at one of their homes, we Burger King employees imagined, locked in each other’s arms and suckling each other’s cigarettes and sipping Folgers Instant Coffee in bed. In fact, I imagined that the two were so madly in love that they refused to leave each other’s embrace, even to micturate, and so in the rare instance when either one felt the urge they’d just pee into a plastic milk jug that they’d then cap and push under the covers to keep their feet warm. But none of the other Burger King workers agreed with me on this last speculation. I think it ended badly, although the old dude wouldn’t talk about it, even when I pressed him for details after he started frequenting Burger King again by himself. But still, something’s better than nothing, right? All I’m saying is that if you are a lonely old person you should start frequenting a fast food establishment. That might be all it takes for you to find love. You have to have faith, of course, and you’ve got to put yourself out there in the market, but most importantly, you need to have 35 cents and a half box of menthols. I don’t know. I’m beginning to think that I shouldn’t publish this entry, see, I’ve sort of tipped my hand here. You realize, of course, that if you ever see me sitting in a run-down Burger King, tapping the ash off my Old Gold cigarette into one of those pressed tinfoil Burger King ashtrays and burning my tongue on a cup of senior sized coffee, you’ll know exactly what I’m up to. I’ll be looking for love.

Brian 9:19 PM

Friday, July 26, 2002

I ate a late breakfast at the local Gyro place today and while I was there I overheard a very SUSPICIOUS conversation. I wish I was a member of Ashcroft’s new evil TIPS organization so I could report the SUSPICIOUS conversation that I heard this morning. And when you see how SUSPICIOUS this conversation is you’ll agree that if I reported this “tip” then Ashcroft would be really impressed with me and maybe give me a medal for being a totally eager and efficient Nazi. So, this morning I was sitting there eating my Gyro (by the way, if you don’t pronounce it correctly when you order it the guy behind the corner won’t give you your change back. It took me around five years before I even stopped pronouncing it JI-ro, and the counter guy is pretty technical about how to pronounce the damn things, so I just pay with dollar bills and that way the most I ever lose is ninety-nine cents). So I’m sitting there eating my Gyro and across the room I spy a little short guy with dark tinted glasses with big gold frames. He’s got at least one big gold ring on each finger and is wearing a mesh-back baseball cap and penny loafers and has kind of a protruding belly under a sky blue golf shirt. Then this huge woman sits down in his booth across from him. She told him about her day yesterday in a really high falsetto voice. She told him about how she doesn’t like this one nephew of hers, and how she’s a substitute teacher for a private school, and how her aunt brought her a big can from Mexico, but the can is too big, and she wants to have it reshaped. Then the short guy went up to get some more food, and the woman asked for some tea, but the short guy ignored her. I couldn’t really understand the short guy, he kind of grumbled instead of talked, but one thing I understood that he said was the very wise and prophetic, “you gotta stick with the can you got.” But anyway, this was all small talk. There was something brewing between them, I could tell. Eventually, after an embarrassed silence, the woman asked the man what he was doing “after this”, she asked. He grumbled something and then she suggested that maybe he could cook her some eggs and bacon. He didn’t know what to grumble. I could tell they were on shaky ground. She told him that she had a real craving for bacon and scrambled eggs, and that if he wasn’t busy then maybe he could have her over to his place and scramble her some eggs like he did that one time. She really liked those eggs that he cooked her that one time. She said that she could just wait outside his house until he got there. He told her that he “had some eggs, but he didn’t have no bacon”. She said that she’d pick up some bacon, and pay for the eggs. She emphasized the fact that she would pay for the eggs. She said that she didn’t order any food at the gyro place because she wanted eggs and bacon so bad. She said that she had been thinking a lot about that time he had cooked her some eggs and bacon at his place. She could go to the pancake place if he was busy, but she said that they always gave her toast with eggs and she was watching her weight. She’d rather just stop by his place and have him scramble her up some eggs and cook her some bacon, like he did that one time. The conversation didn’t make any sense, at first. Then I cracked their SUSPICIOUS code. This is the key: “Eggs” means “Doing it.”

Brian 10:33 PM

Thursday, July 25, 2002

I’ve been unpacking today and I just found my old num-chucks. I refer to them, affectionately, as my “property damagers.” If you don’t have a pair of num-chucks, I would really like to encourage you to get some. I made my own and if you want a pair of num-chucks but don’t want to endure the expense and embarrassment of actually going down to a martial arts supply store and picking out a pair of Bruce Lee endorsed ‘chucks yourself, here’s how to make a pair. But you’ve got to be careful with them and all that crap, and check to make sure they are legal or the heat’s gonna be all over your shit and everything.
Materials required:
Dowel, about 1” to 1.5” thick. You can use an old broomstick, or a birch dowel bought from a hardware store, or for a really heavy-duty pair of num-chucks you can use part of that wooden rod in your closet. And if you are making your own num-chucks and are old enough to not be in the situation where you will get in trouble with your parents for sawing up your closet rod, then you totally get bonus points, in my book.
Saw
Drill or dremel tool and various bits
Rope – about .25” or thicker – it’s got to be sturdy enough to provide the fulcrum for your martial arts fury.
Method:
What you do is cut two pieces of dowel, cut them about twelve to eighteen inches long. Then take a drill bit about as thick as your rope is and drill straight into one end on both pieces (right down the axis), for about two inches. Then, take a drill bit that’s about 1 and 1/3 larger than the first drill bit and drill into the side of the dowel. Drill perpendicular to the dowel, straight into the side, and at a point where this hole will connect with the end of the first hole that you’ve drilled. Then do the other dowel That’s it for the drilling. To attach the two dowels together you push your rope down through the hole in the end of the dowel and out through the bigger hole in the side of the dowel. Then tie a simple overhand knot in the end of the rope. Now, try to pull the rope back out – the knot that you tied will seat in the bigger hole in the side of the dowel. The knot has to be big enough in relation to the smaller hole so that the rope won’t slip back out or your num-chucks will slip apart at a critical martial arts maneuver moment and strike your grandma who you begged and pleaded to watch you do some awesome shit with num-chucks and now is finally standing in the room and watching, trust me, it’s a bad scene. Now push the other end of the rope down through the top of the other dowel and tie it off. Leave about 4 to 5 inches of rope between the dowels, depending on your num-chucking preference.
The cool thing about using num-chucks is that you will totally fuck up the room you are in and yourself. That’s what makes you a bad-ass, it’s this willingness to fuck up the room and yourself. So anyway, don’t say I didn’t warn you when you have a goose-egg on your head and your great aunt’s Franklin Mint collectible plate collection featuring pivotal moments in Jesus’ crucifixion has been reduced to shards. I’ve also heard that if you plane off the sides of your num-chucks to a hexagonal shape in cross section then this will give you more foot-pounds of energy when you strike something. Since the only person I ever hit with my num-chucks is myself, I haven’t taken this step, but if you are especially bad-ass inclined then go right ahead. Enjoy!

Brian 6:10 PM

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

My Great Grandma used to have this electric chair. It wasn’t a mobility device, like the super-rad HoverRound (see May 16 entry). This was back in the day, back before the revolutionary HoverRound mobility scooter had even been invented. The only thing that my Great Grandma’s chair could do is lift the seat cushion so that it would boost her into a standing position. She normally spent most of her day sitting in that chair watching televangelists. She needed the chair because she had trouble getting up from a sitting position to go to the bathroom. My brother and I were just little kids at the time. Whenever we’d go to visit and my Great Grandma would have to get up out of her chair to go to the bathroom, my little brother and I would jump in that electric chair. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world. We’d sit side by side on the cushion, and I’d lower the seat and then I’d hit the toggle to make it boost us. Then we’d both scream “Blast Off!!!” at the apex of the chair’s mechanical boost and we’d leap off the seat cushion. Whenever my Great Grandma came out of the bathroom and saw us playing with the chair she’d be horrified. She was afraid that we would break her chair. “How am I going to be able to go to the bathroom if you break my chair?” She’d ask us. Now I feel kind of bad about it, but that didn’t stop us from playing in her chair. “She can pee in a bucket!” my brother would whisper to me, and then we’d both giggle. So you can imagine my surprise when I found a chair like my Great Grandma’s old lift chair in this car I rented yesterday. All I wanted was one that didn’t leak too much antifreeze. “You know, the kind of car that it’s no big deal if a cat pees in.” I told the car rental clerk. But all they had was this almost new big old-dude luxury sedan. On the road old dudes were doffing their caps to me. While I was driving I found all the levers and switches on the side of the seat - that seat can do anything! It was like a freaking Craftmatic Adjustable Bed behind the steering wheel. Regardless of the adjustability of the seat, driving the car in Chicago was less than pleasant. See, I am unable to drive in a forward direction unless people are honking and cursing at me. Chicago drivers seem know this about me intuitively and were nice enough to supply me with honking and cursing all across Chicago. Finally I just pulled over to look at my map when this guy came over and asked me where I was going. “Where are you going, man?” he asked. Me: “The [omitted pending endorsement contract] car rental place.” Chicagoan: “Why do you need to go there?” Me: “I need to return this car.” Chicagoan: “Oh, you can return it to me.” Me: “You work for [omitted] rental car agency?” Chicagoan: “Yes.” Me: “But where’s your [omitted] shirt and nametag?” Chicagoan: “We don’t wear those anymore, company policy.” Me (getting out of the car and handing him the keys): “Oh. Okay, here are the keys, how much do I owe you?” Chicagoan: “Two hundred dollars.” Me: “Okay, here you go.” Chicagoan: “We don’t take credit cards, only cash.” Me: “Really?” Chicagoan: “Yes, company policy.” Me (handing him cash as he gets into the car): “Okay.” Some dude was watching the whole transaction from the sidewalk. He approached me after the rental guy drove off in the car and tried to sell me a ziplock bag full of tube socks. “I’ve got all the tube socks I currently require! Good day sir!” I told him. I may be new to town but there’s no way am I going to get ripped off with the old tube sock bit. After I returned the car I took the wrong bus home. I walked back through my new neighborhood and saw all the shirtless dudes hanging out of their windows smoking cigarettes and watching TV, and I saw all the brick buildings and laundry hung out to dry, kids playing jump rope in the streets, people talking on the street corners, trees with little fences around them, and the little repair shops and restaurants. I got some gum on my shoe but I still can’t shake the feeling – this place totally fucking reminds me of Sesame Street.

Brian 12:11 AM

Saturday, July 20, 2002

THE MAN's out to get me. Lately his fiendish ploy has been to have his evil minions, my former apartment’s management company, hold part of my security deposit for the black tattoo ink stain that I left on the carpet of my bedroom. The actual details surrounding the creation of the tattoo ink stain are fuzzy. To my best recollection I was drinking that night. However, it bears mentioning that I’d be a PROFESSIONAL tattoo artist if my roommate hadn’t been such a wet blanket about me installing that old barber chair in our living room and hanging my TATTOO business sign out in the parking lot, but as it stands now I’m an amateur, home tattoo artist. And one of the hazards of being an amateur, home, self-tattoo artist is that when inspiration strikes after drinking heavily (and isn’t that ALWAYS when inspiration strikes?) the tattoo equipment is close at hand. I believe that I was drinking on the evening in question to the tune of post lawschool exam depression. I also believe that my idea for a tattoo was “a tattoo design so grand and obvious and blotchy that I’d forever be separated from this white-shoe, button down, evil world that had visited upon me such psychic harm!” It seemed like a good idea at the time. But the next thing that I remember was a huge waterfall of tattoo ink running off my desk and onto the floor. I’m sure that THE MAN had his hand in that too. But take heart, because there are ways to fight THE MAN if you are so inclined. When I was working as a bartender a few years back I got to know some of the cooks at the place where I worked. Every once in a while one of the ex-cooks, a man by the name of Timmy Cho (name changed) stopped by to visit. Timmy Cho had been fired for perpetrating some heavy-duty anti-THE MAN shit. He had had this whole anti-THE MAN racket set up that provided for all his needs, he told me one evening. It could probably be described as “stealing from his employer,” but he had some way better names for it. As a cook, Timmy Cho could eat all the free food he wanted at his own place of employment, but the genius of Timmy Cho was that he didn’t stop there. He exchanged the free food he got from his workplace for other consumer goods from other people who stole from their employers. Timmy Cho spent lots of time calling up stores and restaurants to convince people who were similarly oppressed by the man to participate in his barter economy. For instance, if Timmy Cho felt like pizza, he’d cook up a bunch of steaks at his workplace and then he’d order a pizza and when the pizza came, he’d pay for it with steaks per his under-the-table agreement with some of the pizza store employees. Pizza kids, burger workers, electronics salespeople, pretty much anybody who worked on the front line in a retail establishment was a potential participant in his barter economy. They didn’t have any meaningful stock in their company, couldn’t give two shits over whether franchise headquarters could show a profit every quarter, and had access to the goods. The barter economy worked great for a while, but then Timmy Cho got too greedy. Trying to get a free big-screen TV, he traded two freezers of frozen shrimp. That amount of missing food was enough to alert THE MAN’s dog-loyal manager to employee embezzlement and, of course, THE MAN fired Timmy Cho. The other cooks told me that Timmy Cho had a hard time finding another job, and that he ran out of money and at one point, desperate for some cocaine, performed fellatio on his drug dealer in exchange for a small amount, but really, that’s only a mere detail of his life and shouldn’t be focused on. For the most part, Timmy Cho was a bright and shining anti-THE MAN pioneer and should be recognized as such.

Brian 12:58 AM

Friday, July 19, 2002

Brian 12:48 AM

Thursday, July 18, 2002

I got a lot of shit done today. And I can’t help but think my amazing level of productivity was, in part, due to this [omitted] brand herbal energy drink that I’ve been drinking. I’ve decided that I’m not going to mention the actual brand of herbal energy drink that I’ve been drinking until they sign me up for an endorsement contract. So far, I haven’t heard anything in response to my multiple e-mails to their corporate office regarding my sponsorship. I think they are giving me the “silent treatment” as a sort of a pre-negotiation posturing. But they better make me an offer soon because I’m beginning to think that they are just plain rude. I’ll start drinking another brand of herbal energy drink! There’s plenty of them out there on the market!! And I’m not just saying that. I’ll do it. I’m serious. But I have confidence that [omitted] brand herbal energy drinks will sign an endorsement contract with me. I think I’m really on to something here. Don’t you think it would be great if [omitted] brand herbal energy drinks sponsored just a normal guy like me? Because I’m just one of those guys who is normal, but who also GETS A LOT OF SHIT DONE! And that’s who buys herbal energy drinks, normal people who want to get a lot of shit done. I mean, usually energy drink companies just sponsor athletes, but how many athletes are out there buying herbal energy drinks? None!! Athletes get all their herbal energy drinks for free from their sponsoring company! I’m be such a perfect endorser because I’m really visible in the community. You know that guy who’s always riding his bike along a busy street and slowing down traffic during rush hour? Yeah, that’s me. I almost get hit by like, at least, six hundred cars a day. And don’t think for a second that those cars don’t get a good look at me! This is what I’m offering the [omitted] herbal energy drink company: I’ll wear [omitted] t-shirts when I’m riding my bike, and I’ll have a little cooler bungee corded to the back of my bike and I’ll pause to refresh myself in very visible locations with a delicious frosty can of [omitted] herbal energy drink. I imagine the effect on passing motorists would be like this: Passenger: “Watch out for that guy weaving all over the street on that rusty bicycle! He’s either drunk or high!” Driver: “I wish that guy would get out of the street! He’s going to get hit by a delivery van one of these days!” Passenger: “Could that guy possibly be showing ANY MORE ASSCRACK?” Driver: “Yeah, that’s at least, like, six inches of crack.” Passenger: “Do you think he knows that he’s showing so much asscrack?” Driver: “He’s got to.” Passenger: “You know, I think he even has a TAN on the upper part of his butt!” Driver: “No way!” Passenger: “Seriously!” Driver: “Wait a minute, I think I saw him biking yesterday all the way on the other side of town.” Passenger: “He must have a DUI.” Driver: “I bet you’re right.” (note: I don’t really have a DUI, I just one of those guys that ride a bicycle that LOOK like they’d have one.) Passenger: “I wonder where he gets all that energy to ride that rusty bicycle all over town and get so much shit done all the time?” Driver: “Hey, it must be that little cooler of [omitted] brand herbal energy drinks!” Passenger: “Hey, he’s drinking an [omitted] right now!” Driver: “That sure looks good!” Passenger: “We should buy some!” Driver: “Yeah! I’d like to get more shit done! Let's go buy some [omitted] brand herbal energy drink!”

Brian 1:22 AM

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

My poison ivy is finally starting to go away. It thought that I would be happy, but my disappearing rash leaves me with bittersweet feelings. There are two things that I’ve grown fond of about my poison ivy rash. One is itching my belly in public. People find it incredibly rude and always shout at me to stop but I’m like, “What? I have POISON IVY and it itches!” The second reason that I felt a little down today is that I had been thinking that if my poison ivy scarred and left me terribly disfigured then Mr. Kitty and I could probably move in with my Grandma and mooch off of her and I wouldn’t have to get a job. My Grandma lives in this low income senior’s apartment building. There’s a recreation hall on the main floor and the apartments are above. The apartments are on each side of a long hallway. On one side of my Grandma’s place lives an old diabetic woman with a cat named Kevin, and on the other side of my Grandma’s apartment lives this skinny old guy. His bathroom is right next to my Grandma’s and she tells me that sometimes at night she hears the skinny old guy sloshing around in his bathtub and calling out to his long-dead mother. In every room of every apartment in the building there is a pull cord that a senior can pull to summon an ambulance. When a cord gets pulled an alarm sounds throughout the whole building and a strobe light flashes above the door of the stricken senior. Whenever the alarm sounds all the old people walk out of their apartment and into the hallway to see which person's door is flashing. I guess it’s kind of like bingo. The apartment building holds real bingo games in the recreation hall on the main floor and most of the old people attend. The prizes are pretty modest, but that’s okay because in the recreation hall they’re just playing for fun, upstairs they are playing for keeps against the grim reaper. For a bingo in the recreation hall you can win a roll of toilet paper or a three pound bag of potatoes, for a bingo upstairs you can win three months in a Stryker bed or a new pacemaker or a stroke and the loss of control of your face muscles. One day my Grandma showed up at my parent’s house with a bag of carrots. She had won them at bingo but can’t eat them because carrot pieces get stuck in her intestines and keep her awake at night. My grandma has a bunch of awesome stories and she’s a great cook, too. People call up and demand that she brings potato salad to their church picnics. Church person: “ringgggg” Grandma (picks up telephone): “Hello” Church person: “Hey, could you bring some of your delicious potato salad to our church function picnic?” Grandma: “I don’t know, I’m old and tired. . .” Church person: “We really like your potato salad!” Grandma: “But I’m almost ninety years old and my potato salad is a lot of work!” Church person: “I don’t think you heard me. We want you to bring some of your delicious potato salad to our church function!” Grandma: “But the doctor says that I shouldn’t cook so much.” Church person: “Are we going to have the bring THE LORD into this?” Grandma: “No, it’s just that. . .” Church person: “Potato Salad!!” Grandma: “All right.” Grandma’s heart is so big that she bounces her car off of other cars all the way to the local nursing home twice a week just to visit the people that live there. She listens to their stories and gives them life savers. She calls the people that she visits “her old people” but most of them are about ten years younger than her. See, my Grandma is so nice that if she saw my totally disfigured poison ivy face she wouldn’t be able to resist letting me and Mr. Kitty move in with her in her apartment and mooch off her. I imagined it all going something like this: One day after I’d been living there for like a month growing a big beard and watching “Growing Pains” on TV all day Grandma would come out of the bathroom after cleaning up Mr. Kitty’s mess (Mr. Kitty has this recurring problem. He likes to take his Penguin Pocket Classics paperback books into the bathroom with him and he gets so engrossed, like when he is reading one of the Russians, that sometimes Mr. Kitty forgets what he is doing and accidentally drapes a disproportionately large cat poop over the side of the litter pan, but don’t tell anybody because he is self-conscious about this). So Grandma would come out of the bathroom and see the big mess I made where I got grease all over the stove and kitchen from making sizzle steak sandwiches for myself and my Grandma would make some sort of very subtle hint about me maybe finding a job or my own place and then I’d totally freak out. I’d be like, “God Damn it Grandma! Look at me! LOOK AT MEEE!! My face was TERRIBLY DISFIGURED by that poison ivy!! THEY don’t want me out there! I’ve got no place to go!” Then I’d turn up “Growing Pains” even louder on the television set and ignore her. But I guess since my poison ivy went away without any scarring that it was all just a wonderful dream. I was kind of depressed earlier today about it. But then I realized. I don’t need an excuse to itch my belly in public. I’ll just LIE and say that I have poison ivy when I itch my belly. Who is going to check my belly for a real poison ivy rash anyway!?

Brian 11:54 PM

Saturday, July 13, 2002

There’s this guy that lives down the street from me. He’s got this small business where he drives old people around in run-down old minivans on errands and things. His vans are easy to recognize because he’s plastered his mission statement - “I’m you’re vehecle baby, I’ll take you anyplace you want to go!!” – all over the front, back, and sides of his minivans in the kind of adhesive house letters that you can buy at hardware stores. I’ve followed the guy’s career in the three years that I’ve been living in this town. He started out with one minivan, but then he got a few more and he hires these old women that he picks up on Saturday nights at the bar inside Applebee’s to drive them. He finds his minivans in junkyards and then fixes them with parts that he finds in junkyards. He’s the one guy in this town that I get. Where I come from, having lots of cars was something to be proud of. Like a Bedouin with lots of camels. But around here, I’m beginning to realize, the rule is that you are only supposed to have one car of any one type, and that car is always supposed to be in running condition. I’ll never understand these city dwellers, my landlord is totally breathing down my neck to have my car towed away just because it’s not running. Where I come from, we allowed our cars to die with dignity, eventually weeds would grow up around them and swallow them but if we needed a part off of the car it would totally be convenient because the car was only like ten steps outside the front door. And if I needed like five bucks I could go out and take out the battery and drive it down to the recycler with another car. Sometimes the house would get crowded but even after the parts had all been stripped off the car, it would be a place to sit and relax, maybe during a summer rainstorm and I could watch the raindrops fall onto the windshield. Also you can keep chickens and cats in an old car, even after you’ve taken off the doors and sold them or put them on another car. It’s round up time here at my apartment, and I’m like a lone cowboy in the sage deserts of the asphalt range. I’ve got a whole herd of cars that I need to get rid of because I’m moving deeper into the city where there aren’t places to pull over and walk when a car breaks down. I rode my bike down to the K-marts today to pick up some tools and wire and crap, and on the way I saw the Mini-van man out in front of his house swapping an alternator into a new Mini-van acquisition of his. “Sweet ride, Man!” I told him. “Yeah!” He said and pointed at two other junk minivans in his driveway. “I going to fix this one with parts off of that one and that one!” “How much did you pay for this minivan?” I asked him. “150$ for all three!” He told me with a big smile. I salute you, Minivan man!!

Brian 1:19 AM

Thursday, July 11, 2002

The unsung hero of my own personal kitchen in the toaster oven. And, I tell you, I can make that little toaster oven sing. I’m like those hip hop guys that do the turntable scratching in New York, except that I use a toaster oven instead of turntables, and I’ve only got one toaster oven while those Hip Hop guys generally seem to have two turntables. I’ve got some moves too, like standing on one leg and flipping the “on” toggle back and forth really rapidly. Sometimes like while cooking a ham and cheese sandwich for Mr. Kitty I get so into the whole GROOVE of using the toaster oven that spinning the toaster heat selector dial from “dark” to “light” feels like Genesis. I cook freaking everything in my toaster oven. Hotdogs, tuna melt sandwiches, little Cornish game hens (those delicious little immigrant chickens from Cornland that make America great), organic garden vegetable quiches, bananadine, toast, etc. The microwave sits across the kitchen like a very dark and evil force. Call me old fashioned, but using the microwave, I’ve found, is a little like being abducted and probed by U.F.O. riding aliens. It makes a weird noise and I don’t know what is going on, but something is happening and whatever it is I get this vague and unsettling feeling that it is unhealthy. No ma’am or sir, for my money I prefer the clean and pure red hot heating element wires of my toaster oven to the microwave, what with it’s evil Faustian bargain with radiation. I’d totally cast down my microwave if it wasn’t so convenient and sometimes I’m in a hurry and everything. But my heart will always cook with a toaster oven. If you ever see a red glow coming from my apartment windows late at night, it will be me sitting in the dark on the linoleum floor of my kitchen, cooking over my little neo-primitive campfire toaster oven, camping next to my tiny little mobile hearth in the middle of this desolate urban wilderness. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning too that if you ever do see that red glow coming from my apartment and I’m sitting there in the dark over my neo-primitive campfire then make sure to not startle me because I’ll probably be sitting there dressed in fringed faux buckskins and armed with a crossbow and be in a rather paranoid state.

Brian 1:57 PM

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Dear Prudence, I had to ride my bike down to my organic garden plot today to get my daily ziplock bag of organic lettuce because some filthy carnies put a curse on my car. I haven’t mentioned my organic garden in a while and I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking that I got tired of it and stopped watering it or weeding it after that groundhog broke my heart by eating my whole crop of unripe tomatoes and you’re thinking that now my garden is just a big briar patch of weeds that the old organic gardener dudes make shameful clucking noises about and shake their heads at. Well, you’re right, my organic garden is pretty much like that but I’m still getting lots of organic lettuce and greens out of it so those old gardener dudes can fucking kiss my ass. My car wouldn’t have been cursed and I could have driven to my organic garden if I had just listened to Mr. Kitty. We were traveling along the highway when Mr. Kitty signaled that he had to use the bathroom. So I pulled over in this rest stop. It was late at night and rest stops always get a little spooky late at night. I noticed a car with the hood open surrounded by some filthy footpad-looking characters. They said their battery was dead and asked for a jump. Mr. Kitty whispered “no way!” but I wanted to be a good example for Mr. Kitty and teach him to be a good Samaritan. Also, here these carnies were with all their carnie animals growling and trumpeting in the back of their carnie wagon, and just the other day I had silently fumed about these truck drivers that I had seen at a truck stop playing video strip poker while they had live livestock in their trailers parked out in the sun. So after making a big fuss about the video strip poker players I pretty much had to give these filthy carnies a jump and get them on their way. If you think that carnies don’t wield black magic, you are dead wrong. So never cross a carnie, or give them a jump either. I think the part that got the carnies mad was when I refused to start my car up until everybody was wearing safety glasses. I tried to explain that whenever you jump start a car, there is an off chance that the battery will explode. They said that they didn’t have any safety glasses. “Sulfuric acid in the eyeball is no joke,” I explained to the carnies. “Start your car or we’ll fucking kill you,” the carnies explained to me. I suggested that they could just hide behind trees while the battery was charging. They didn’t like that idea either. I was willing to compromise if they would just shade their eyes with their hands, but that suggestion was met with obscenities. Come to think of it, I don’t think they even appreciated my funny mnemonic that I tried to teach them so that they would be able to remember the proper order to attach and de-attach the clips on the jumper cables. I think that’s when they decided to curse my car.

Brian 4:12 AM

Monday, July 01, 2002

Normally I don’t have any idea about who used the washing machine before me in the apartment complex where I live. And I kind of like it that way. You know, underwear passing in the night, that kind of thing. But tonight I showed up with an armload of soiled clothes and all the machines were in use except for this one that a guy was pulling his clothes out of. I didn’t see what clothes he pulled out of the machine. In fact, I remember him being a bit secretive about what kind of clothes he was pulling out of the washer. I didn’t think anything of it because I’ve seen the guy walking around and the only thing he ever wears are t-shirts tucked into sweatpants and sneakers. So I naturally assumed that he was just washing his sweatpants and t-shirts. But, and here comes the shocking part, when I turned on the washer I realized that it had been set to “Delicate” and “Cold”!!! Was that guy washing sweatpants in “Delicate” and “Cold?” I think not!! Oh, he’s good, but he was bound to make a mistake eventually. After a few minutes of reflection I was able to determine exactly what this guy was washing in that machine. I am now totally convinced that sweatpants man, while he does wear sweatpants exclusively in public, spends most of his private life in his apartment dressed in a huge man-sized baby bonnet and bed-sheet sized diaper. Furthermore, I was able to deduce that twice a week this guy pays hookers fifty dollars an hour to put a dog collar on him and then pull him into the bathroom and into the tub and urinate on him. Are you wondering why they would pull sweatpants man by his dog collar into the tub before peeing on him? I mean, why not piss on the guy in the foyer or perhaps the utility room? I used to work in an old diner in a run-down section of town washing dishes and waiting tables. During Sunday breakfast buffets so much uneaten food would come back to the dishwashing area that I though it would be funny to pretend to be eating some of it and so whenever anybody walked by I would hold up a big handful of sausages and be like “Yum!! All this great food is really a job perk! I couldn’t eat another bite!” I guess that people got really freaked out and they sent a manager back to have a talk with me. The manager walked by and I pretended not to see her but started pretending to eat the food and giggling to myself and then she jumped into the dishroom and started yelling at me, “Not another dishwasher that eats garbage! Bad Dishwasher! You are going to get sick! Dirty! Dirty!” and I responded that I was just kidding and asked if people really ate the garbage back there and she said they did and I found out that it wasn’t funny to pretend to eat garbage. But anyway, after that we started talking more and she told me that once this guy that she had been dating had begged and pleaded her to put a dog collar on him and then pee on him. She said that he begged so pitifully and insistently that she eventually agreed and put a dog collar on him, pulled him into the tub, and pissed on him. “Why the tub?” I asked, it was the obvious question. “It makes clean-up a snap!” she told me.

Brian 3:28 AM

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