Category: Uncategorized

today, as of about 40 minutes ago, i am 21 years old.  a legal adult in all states.  i am drinking bailey’s irish cream, an excellent drink that all should drink and enjoy, which is reminding me of sitting in front of the christmas tree at my girlfriend’s house talking to her and her mother while sipping on this very drink and talking until very early in the morning. if i didn’t have to get up at 7:50 i’d be more happy, but i’m happy enough as it is.  not giddy…happy. and the rain is coming down in angry fluries outside and is blowing some of my more top-heavy plants onto the porch.  i got freaks and geeks for my birthday from laura’s dad, and i am mourning the fact that it was only on air for two seasons.  it is infinitely better than all the drivel OC and CSI could ever hope to create.

i got the new crooked rain crooked rain set for one dollar, and it is fantastic.

sadly, i have to leave my accounting class today so i can register for classes.  but this isn’t interesting. 

what is interesting is johnny the homicidal maniac.  it’s a comic that pulls at my heart strings through its depth of insight into the human soul.  it’s one of the several books i’ve bought in the last few days.  i miss reading my own books, so the textbooks are going on the shelf for now.

if we never get back to california, i want you to know i love you.

when i stopped at waterloo on the way to the clinic show, i got a few cds, of course.

i found a few good ones that i had sort of been looking for.  but the most annoying is the one i am listening to, veda hille (this is her only album).  it has been in the used bin for literally about a year.  i’ve seen it in the a section, the p section, the t section, and i ALWAYS notice it.  it always catches my eye.  so it caught my eye again, and it was marked down to 2 dollars.  FINE, I’LL BUY IT.  so i bought the dirty little thing.  it’s not bad, or great.  there are some fairly good songs.  she’s also a lesbian feminist i believe, from what i’ve read.  but the important thing is that it is out of the stinking used bin.

and for the weekend: listening to remaining cds bought, finish at least one of the art pieces i’ve been threatening to finish for the website and scan it on, and if i have time in there maybe do homework. although i did just get the new mcsweeney’s, which i need to be reading…

i took a test on scantron last thursday.  if you don’t know what this is, it’s just a page you bubble your answers in on.  this is how the professor grades it:

put scantron page into scantron machine.

that’s it.  nothing more.  so why haven’t i gotten my grade for this test?  could it be because every professor on every campus is out to make the students’ lives an exact reflection of hell?  i have the sneaking suspicion that the answer is a resounding yes, with little sparks flying outward all around it.  like this:

if i was a professor, that would be my biggest goal.  but i think my reasons are more justifyable than theirs. 

regarding a test i had this morning, a professor (of the evil variety, of course) sent an email last night telling us we could bring a dictionary to use during the test.  i read this email at 1:50 in the morning, as i was about to go to bed.  i felt he was telling me something, hinting that what will really get me an A on the test is a dictionary, that a dictionary is all i need be armed with for the trials of life.  sadly, however, i didn’t have a dictionary, but i felt that the message was so strong that i got into my car and drove to a 24 hour store.  they didn’t have dictionaries, so i went to another one, six minutes away.  they had them–TRIUMPH!–and i purchased it for $4.00.  i carefully put it in my bag when i got home, carefully, carefully, carefully as it was my key to life, and went to sleep at 2:30, confident that it would help me achieve my highly desired and much needed grade.

i took the test and didn’t open the dictionary once.

is it bad when your knee hurts whichever way you bend it?

i went to see clinic last night in austin.  i don’t know what i was expecting, so i don’t know if it was a letdown or not…i can tell you it wasn’t worth 15 dollars.  They didn’t even play for a full hour, it was about 50 minutes.  they played a lot of the songs that i was hoping they wouldn’t, off their newer albums (most of which, oddly, sound like they are the same song.  example: “hey, didn’t they already play this song? oh wait…that one just added a clarinet. okay…” or “hey, didn’t they already play this song? oh wait…that one just added a harmonica. okay…” 

don’t get me wrong.  they are a good band, even if their superiority over other bands dwindled after their first album, from which they did play quite a few songs, thankfully.  they had one encore (they had stayed off stage for about 2 minutes, probably less) which consisted of three songs.  then they left.  again, don’t get me wrong. i hate encores.  i think they are stupidly contrived piles of garbage designed to boost the morale of the band.  you know what?  boost your own morale and just play a whole set, okay?  i went to an american analog set show where they did this, had no encores.  though that did kind of piss people off, because we had no warning that there would be no encore.  no warning!!

laura and i hadn’t been to austin in several months until last night.  i wanted to stay forever, but then i’d just end up spending money i shouldn’t be.  the record store here, in san marcos, rarely has anything good that is used.  waterloo ALWAYS has something i’ve been wanting. bless you waterloo.

i just posted a new story: the crippled scholar. the scholar is not only crippled; he is also paralyzed. this helps lay an exciting foundation for a story that involves the scholar sitting there, and then sitting there some more.

for the weekend, i went home, leaving friday and not getting back until sunday.  upon arriving at my apartment on sunday, laura brought it to my attention that, not only were the mats inside my bathroom all completely soaked, and not only was there an inch deep puddle of water sitting in my bathroom, but also that the carpet leading into my living room was completely soaked.  this was ten o’clock at night.  when i finally got ahold of the maintenance guy, i thought he’d come over immediately to get the carpet dried, so as to avoid replacing it all once it got moldy.  quite the contrary.  “i’ll be there tomorrow morning,” he said…with complete disinterest and apathy.  the water was dripping from the hose that runs from the toilet to the wall (not toilet water…fresh water, before entering the toilet).  i have to turn the water back on any time i want to flush it, so i put a hand towel underneath the dripping when i do this.  it’s fascinating to see how fast slowly dripping water can completely soak a hand towel.

i was going to tell you about how my alarm didn’t go off this morning, but that’s not interesting.  i will tell you that because of this i didn’t eat anything this morning, so now i am too hungry to concentrate on doing the homework that i couldn’t do last night because i was mopping my bathroom floor.  also, there’s no way i could possibly concentrate on homework, not just because i’m hungry, but because in my rush to get ready this morning i put my boxers on backwards.  i can’t turn them right now because that’s gross.

that is interesting.

i have recently resigned myself to the fact that i’m not going to have a career. resigned is the wrong word.  but it’s because i can’t imagine myself doing the same thing for the rest of my life (except, of course, writing, making music, and creating models of a vomitting oklahoma giving birth to a mule, but creating models of a vomitting oklahoma giving birth to a mule does not pay the bills).  i get bored, if not after a few days, then at least after 6 months of doing the same thing.  in the future maybe i can stretch that out to 7 months…i really can’t make it more than that.

i’ve spent hours in the library looking at saturday evening post magazines from the early 50s.  have you ever seen a magazine from the 50s?  being absorbed in it for a few hours is quite possibly the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me.  i made copies of a few ads and things, and i’m going to color them with colored pencils and then put them on the site, at which point i will notify you, so that you can see what i’m talking about.  but on about every tenth page there was an ad for a company commenting on “the terrible condition the world is in” and asking “won’t you want a reliable air filter in your fallout shelter?” and creepy, identical looking mothers telling you which girder best tucks in that tummy fat to which your husband shouldn’t be subjected.  cigarette ads everywhere, including a series from 1951 to about 1954 by marlboro where there was a picture of a cute baby’s face who was saying “That’s right, my dad smokes MARLBORO!  What else is there?” and other equally disturbing blurbs.  there was also an odd abundance of spark plug advertisements, many of which said something like “isn’t it nice to know that when the appocalypse arrives in the form of a nuclear holocaust, your spark plugs will still be in tip top shape?”

the reason for this search was originally to find characters to go in my art piece called “the fecal house,” but i started finding horrific images that i couldn’t help but copy to color later.  they are coming soon.  i promise (this isn’t like the shallow promise of producing the tales of karen deathrage, an evil woman who stole my heart and soul).

i just put a link to 2% magazine on my site. i have a story published in it this month.  total with shipping is $3.50 (basically printing costs and shipping), and i assure you it is greatly worth it.  well…i haven’t gotten it yet, so i haven’t read it yet…but my story alone is at least worth…a third of that…or 10 cents of that…and it’s 30 pages, and the editor is an intelligent guy with good taste, so i’m sure the rest of it must be just as good, or better, filling up the remaining $3.40.   (this is u.s. shipping.  not sure about international…) but you can pay with paypal, in any case.

i would have posted a story today, except for a few things: i have written a few very short things lately, and while they aren’t terrible, they also aren’t fantastic.  so i’ll hold of posting them until i’m really desperate.  i blame this lack of style in my recent stories solely on, of course, my accounting course, whose texts and information should all be placed upon a ship and set alight.

also cause for celebration: i found my journal that i had been doing without for three weeks (this, i believe, was another reason for my jaded attempts at writing of late.  it was like my intestines or other bodily organ went missing for a few weeks, and my body didn’t know how it could possibly handle it).  incidentally, the journal was right beside my bed.

also, i just found a deal for cd-rs: 100 fine quality recordable cds for $25. http://store.yahoo.com/cdrsavings/taiyonotfuji.html (if you have money to cash in on this deal i know you have enough money to buy a $3.50 magazine.)