The Return of Dreams

In one, my father skeptically bargained with the waitress in the Indian restaurant at some theme park outside Shea Stadium, trying to get her to let each member of the family eat an appetizer for dinner for $5 instead of $7. In another I drove and drove and drove with Abbey sitting shotgun. I don't remember what we talked about but I enjoyed it immensely. In another I explored miles and miles of nonexistent and abandoned railroad yards lined with dead trees in some part of Queens that also isn't real.

war

seven years ago, i was named employee of the month at wendy's in bayside, queens. i have the certificate here and will frame it soon, although perhaps i should be burning it. since then i have not stopped working, but i think i am ready to stage a very formal rebellion against the concept of work. allied thoughts: is cynicism the mother of hipsterdom? if we have nonexportable jobs, should we cling to them like [insert bad metaphor here]? what are any of us getting out of this?

you want to learn something today? read what camus wrote about the sisyphus myth.

free peanuts

the fairfield inn gave everyone red sox cups of celebratory peanuts. when i was cooking in my overheated bed last night i came up with an idea for a really good, really long story. a book, you might say, **please give me money so i can stop working. $20,000 per year will do.** i'm going to start playing the lotto. boss, if you read this page, i'm sorry to worry you. i'm good for another 2 years at least.

screaming textured wallpaper in the big shoebox

is what this fairfield inn feels like. it's making me think about the potential rewards of not being an idiot for a long while. and my brain says, if you don't like it, you can always go back to being an idiot.

au words are hot this week. autum, august, augusta, auburn. i stopped singing at the roadside flannelled farmers on this trip. i am a lot calmer now. i really am a very simple person.

Portland

Final sales trip of the year is tomorrow morning: 4 days in Portland and Augusta, ME. I'll miss eating 3 meals a day on the Company for the remainder of the year. This time I should actually bring my camera and point at those many auburn! leaves. I also need to start finishing work before dinner so I can read, write, and drink at night. Discipline is difficult. It's pretty funny that I'm a traveling culture salesman.

sturm & drang

when are we gonna find osama? yesterday i provided the bums of somerville with $2 cash and a pack of cigarettes. but i think i only paid off my used karma and didn't get anything new out of it. then i stabbed myself in the face repeatedly and metaphorically. i went bowling at sacco's and the jukebox played the soundtrack from my car: the clash, elvis costello, the ohio players, james brown. i thought i was on my way to work. seth and i did a nice, impromptu live set in our living room. glad to see the gallon of stoli-o i bought in new hampshire works as it should. disappointed at day's end, i wandered the streets for 2 or 3 hours, stopping to catch a live band in porter square and to chat with a security guard from the bronx at the 24-hour cvs. i stopped at the pickle factory fossil in powderhouse park to sing at the wind and then i went to bed.

little brother says

'why are you in a relationship? why do you even try?' i really like little brother.

wish list, 10.23.04, 12:37 am

• my Kerplunk and 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours tapes from the mid-90s.
• a non-criminal brain (temporarily)

requisite red sox post

I happily claim credit for the Yankees' loss. I knew that somehow converting my NY license to a MA one would help out the Sox. Fuck da Yankees!

'office friday'

today i'll sell books from my green bathrobe all day long. too bad i got a late start; i'll have a late finish. can't have hard days' nights without hard days.

from over the permanent autumn of the lowell skyline i listened to her grace exuding mechanism tick on on n on

too bad i've missed the whole sox/yankees thing. peril, peril everywhere and all paranoias amassing.

silence=

progress??

betterish

i bought a comforter

one more for the road

FUUUUUUUCK!!! FUCK!!!!!!

can't get no satisfaction

DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA
FUCK FUCK FUCK
CHRIST CHRIST CHRIST

I Should Be (Smokey Robinson and the Miracles)

I should be submitting "Action Plans" for my "job," ironing clothes for tomorrow, packing for New York, buying a present for the wedding I'm attending, and/or finding a place to stay tomorrow night. Instead I'm here to tell you about my impulse buy at Target this weekend: The Best of Smokey Robinson for 9.99 (on MCA/Universal, I think). I got introduced to him through D'Angelo's HOT cover of "Cruisin'" and had to buy the best-of when I saw it on the store shelf (omg they sell black-ish music in target?11!1?). I have to say it was worth it: from the delightfully heartbreaking 60's soul pop of "The Tracks of My Tears" to the 60's playalistic anthem "Shop Around," from the familiar and loveably Motown "I Second That Emotion" to the 70's discofunk of "Love Machine," this potentially cheesy album covers all the bases of looooove, funk, and soul. Can I hit it and quit?

"born to be a god among salesmen"

another soul coughing reference. if i'm going to do this loman thing, i'm going to do it fuckin' rockingly.

I'm 50 years old, and I have a Bowflex body

said the TV. I'm leaving and getting a calzone. I don't know if I want to drive to NY tomorrow.

Invitation to Live Musick

Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Mon Nov 22 @ the Paradise.

w.club revival!

It's official: w.club, the online writing workshop hosted on this site, is alive once again. This is particularly exciting and promising for me, and I owe Dan and Scott many thanks for setting up the new FTP directories and message board. I hope that we can add a handful of new members by year's end. And for those of you already in The Circle, comment on my fuken story!!!111

only truth of today (seasonal)

window keeps knockin around in the frame, says to buy cocoa powder

pretty sure i'm making music in new york this weekend

and that puts me in a pretty mood.

adeptly constructed metaphor:

lone bumper car sparking about its cage

Tom Waits sez

A good man is hard to find

Only strangers sleep in my bed

My favorite words are good-bye

And my favorite color is red

This from "A Good Man is Hard to Find"--get a copy!

Note to would-be critics, do-gooders, and naysayers: I post this because I love the song. The context of this post remains firmly planted within the realm of Art and appreciation; it is not intended to transcend the boundary/boundaries of Reality and its associated problems. If you were to hear the way T. Waits performs this song--the combination of voice and brilliantly retro, ancient-sounding production values--you'd understand. I implore you to understand. Please.

I-AM-ASIAN

I read about this in Tak Toyoshima's cartoon in the Weekly Dig, and I can't believe it's real. I-Am-Asian.com. I don't know what's more saddeningly entertaining, the caricatures of modern-day 'chinks' or said caricatures' choices from the McDonald's menu. Check it out--you'll get that sinking, time travel feeling that you just regressed to a point in American social history well before your birth.

The Ethics of This Blog

There are no ethics of this blog.

The Sound and the Fury

Faulkner strikes again. Actually, Shakespeare. This morning I became keenly aware of the differences in pressurization inside and outside my skull. If I had hit my head any harder on the refrigerator I think my brain would have exploded out into the real world like the passengers on TWA Flight 800 who were unceremoniously, whiplashingly, fatally vomited into the wild blue yonder over the wild blue Atlantic. This is what it means to be a drama queen. Better keep the projections on the paper.

Wish List, 10.10.04, 1:44am

• License to kill everyone I see wearing an Ithaca is Gorges t-shirt.
  
• A monthly subscription to all the publishing grrrls in Boston.
  
• Endless supply of white cheddar.
  
• A car wash I don't have to pay for or drive to.
  

casalblanca412 (1:32:33 AM): you are killing yourself! all those cigarettes and alcohol and lonely nights at hotel rooms! no more!

What a crazy Saturday it's been at the blog!

oh! fuck

desktop post it note:

exhausting breathing less crying in your fucking tarnish to the armor is garnish for the karma ash burnt brackish blue scatterawait captainuniversification toward the next occasional glow

this from chainsmoking--wait till i start drinking...

self-anesthizing policy incubator

chasing the streetsweepers with a mug of maker's never looking back down or forward

Going to the Barber Today

Today I went to the Barber. My barber is Eric and he is 22 and a townie and has a lot of tattoos. Eric gives me a Parliament Light and as we smoke we greet the other townies in front of the barber shop, including fat Felix who runs the Italian bakery across the street and the 14-year-old, 27-looking girl behind the counter. Eric says to look at the way she looks at him; it's illegal. Then we go inside and Eric gets to work. My hair falls to the floor in dry curls and wet little bundles. Eric says, "This haircut is going to get you laid, one way or another." He gets a $3 tip for being cool, and I leave smelling like aftershave.

William Dresden

The good news is that I was so pissed off when I woke up that I went out on the porch in my bathrobe, slapped on my big dork headphones, and finished a rather longish short st0ry I've been working on for the past year. It's a class war/social climber tale, formerly called "Towers," now called "The Attempted Socialization of William Dresden, Young Native of the City of New York." It's going into workshop (w.club) this weekend. Thank the Jesus I got something done--and it's not even noon.

Fishsticks for lunch now, then I'm getting my head shaved.

An Exercise in Statics

1. "one more special message to go/ then i'm done and i can go home"
2. 0

G-ZUS CHRIST!!! or, rb autoheartbreakup line compendium

ordered from least recent to most:

• you'll be the perfect boyfriend in five years
• we're just not compatible anymore...i love you...i don't want to leave you...we're not compatible....bla bla bla
• like, i respect you, but i'm shady, and you're just as shady as i am, and i don't trust myself to not walk all over you like i walked all over N---, but you're shady so you might walk all over me before i walk all over you
• i just can't handle sleeping with people i like

semiassociated quotes for you to google:

• do not go gentle into that good night (take fully out of context)
• absence makes the heart grow still
• THE LAST TWO LINES OF THE SUN ALSO RISES

i don't *think* this is a joke.

tenth consecutive hotel morning

chorus of overpowered showers turning on at 6:36 am
=the opposite of cuddly

They Call Me Deacon Blues (or, what i did tonight in maine)

After the Brunswick Chicken Moghalai I climbed into my 4-cylinder ashtray with the copy of A Decade of Steely Dan that a woman more than twice my age had given me. Somehow I ended up tearing down dark I-295 with the windows down, blaring smoky, steely Dan. Giver her some funked up music, she'll treat you right/ Feed her some hungry reggae, she'll love you twice. After 10 miles or so I brought blue fingertips, a torn-up voicebox, and tar-battered lungs back to my handicapped suite at the Comfort Inn.

How many deaths did I just die?

swoosh swirl

swizzle swizzle

how to be a boy

no woman like a ruined woman faulkner said that but in a lot more words

Hemingway Validation Day Pass

[THE LAST TWO LINES OF THE SUN ALSO RISES]

Fredericton, NB

Not dead yet. Entire city is wireless zone. Est. betw. 3,000-5,000 college girls. Too much work to type full words.

Dispatch from St John

If you transplanted Butte, Montana to Atlantic Canada, you'd have St. John. Bunch of gorgeous brick buildings from the late 1800s with not enough people to live in them. By day I biked around the oil refinery, taking scary pictures of smokestacks and drydocks. By night I lurked around the docks in flannel and jeans smoking Player's brand sailor's-cut cigarettes. In between doing things like that, I sell books over the internet.

The port is about the only thing lively here. Yesterday a containership called from the Caribbean, unloaded, and left. Big tankers load up at the refinery and head south to Boston. How do I know? Because I see the same damn ones when I bike around Boston. Nothing escapes me. Going to go biking if it's not raining too hard.

Dispatch from the Border

Posting from St. John, NB.

...

10.01.04 7:15pm

calais, me.

they pronounce it callous. it is the last town in america. it has a chinese restaurant, two pizza places (i'm at one of them), two bar/grills, and a three-screen movie theater in a single-story commercial building right on main street. at the theater they have a computer printout taped in the window of the box office that informs us that there must be at least six patrons in order for any single film to be shown.

directly across the river, which parallels main street--or whatever it might be called; in this rare instance the true name is insignificant--is the infinitely sexier canadian border: the tollbooth-style customs stalls and the sleek, gray, wooden office building that controls them. it has the well-designed Canada (tm) brand-name-visually-appealing-commercialized logo emblazoned on its well-lit side. whatever canadia paid for its image, it was worth it. there's a HUGE sign that says 70 miles to saint john. all the calais preteens just fought their way into the 3-screen theater (i saw them; many were turned away and climbed back into minivans)...are all the teens and post-teens lushing it up in st john? i am going to find out.

this is where i am on my trials by fire: carmen's hometown pizzeria family restaurant. it really has all those words in the name. according to the menu they offer the following calzones: cheese, "carmen's," ham, meatlovers, "spinach w/ or w/o Fetta Chz," mexican, broccoli & cheese, "CarMac," vegetarian, and "Taco." when i asked for a chicken calzone they looked at me like i was fucking nosferatu. then i went out to the car and got my ibook. now you should see how the residents of callous are looking at me.

***

well, the dark meat chicken calzone was not bad, actually. i was just about to gush extrospective but i realized that i'm not yet at tonight's destination. time to clear customs and hit the road. i forgot what i wanted to say anyway.