my internet has been down for the last three days.  it’s up for an hour.  then it’s down for twelve hours.  then up long enough to think that i can check my email, and then it gets disconnected.  how annoyed am i? very.

i bought a game for my playstation two.  i don’t have very many games…not a very big game person…but i play it on occasion.  the game was XIII.  i’d heard a lot about it, and it does look pretty cool, but i have no idea why anyone in their right mind would choose to have a first person shooter on PS2 than on the PC.  you can get much more accurate aiming on PC…with a PS2 controller i feel like i’m just running around waving my guns all over the place, spraying bullets everywhere hoping one of them hits someone. they usually don’t and i usually die.  i guess this is why i’m not a game reviewer.  that and since i was twelve i haven’t found it possible to play games for extended periods of time. 

my girlfriend laura is the salutatorian for her graduating class this year.  she’s lying on the floor behind me writing her speech.  her graduation is in a week on friday and she has to get her speech proofread tomorrow.  she’s on her first line.  procrastination.  this is why she is my girlfriend.  she just got mad at me because i was reading it. i sometimes wish i had actually tried to be valedictorian or salutatorian in high school.  then i could have written a killer speech…only it wouldn’t be written.  i’d just bring a copy of something like naked lunch or on the road and go on a rant interjecting quotes from one of these books into the whole thing.  spit would be flying everywhere and all you’d be able to hear would be gasps from the parents and school board (the students by now would no doubt be bored comatose). 

when i was in high school i was artist of the month some time in my senior year.  (it wasn’t really a high honor…my art teacher knew the seniors got pissed off if they weren’t artist of the month at some point.  i didn’t really mind either way).  artist of the month means you get to display a bunch of your work in a case outside of the art room with your bio.  i wrote my bio and then cut it in half right down the middle, vertically, and put one half on one side of the case and the other half on the other side of the case.  a whole lot of people didn’t get that it was all supposed to be read together, so they’d read one line on the left one and then go down to the next line, and you could actually see their brains imploding when the sentence didn’t fit.  i’ll post it sometime soon if i can find it.  i believe it’s tacked to my wall.

i’m reading fear and loathing in las vegas again. watching the movie really made me want to read it.  so i am. i bought this copy in London, England, at a Waterstone’s a few years ago.  i think it’s kind of like a Borders is here, except much smaller, all the workers i spoke to actually like to read, and the books all had different covers than they do at Borders.  though this had more to do with the fact that it was great britain and not america.  it was on a 3 for 2 sale.  not buy two get one free.  why?  because the british are smart; there’s nothing free in this fricking world. except maybe fear and really bad drugs…the brittle kind. with urine soaking it.

Saturday midnight…Memories of this night are extremely hazy. All I have, for guide-pegs, is a pocketful of keno cards and cocktail napkins, all covered with scribbled notes. Here is one: “Get the Ford man, demand a Bronco for race-observation purposes…photos?…Lacerda/call…why not a helicopter?…Get on the phone, lean on the fuckers…heavy yelling.”  Another says: “Sign on Paradise Boulevard–‘Stopless and Topless’…bush-league sex compared to L.A; pasties here–total naked humping public in L.A….Las Vegas is a society of armed masturbators/gambling is the kicker here/sex is extra/weird trip for high rollers…house-whores for winners, hand jobs for the bad luck crowd.”

-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas