A Superhuman Stomach

1-16-96 PM
Sandi Bauhaus spoke complimentarily of the Miracle Mile story, but said it ended too abruptly and she felt cheated.
I thought I would walk around the house playing guitar for thirty minutes and call it exercise, but the guitar was out of toon, or my hearing was flat; my eardrums are not taught enough or er I mean taut enough. Or maybe I do mean taught enough. Both. Anyway, I just stumbled around at a zombie's pace hitting discordant notes that got the dogs to barking.
Then I ate to, um, I mean two turkey sandwiches with year-old Miracle Whip and gravy. Yeaaah, gravy.
God screwed me on the lung situation, but he gave me a superhuman stomach.

The Swamp Thing could be the next Michael Jordan. Just tape some of those checks he writes to the bottom of his sneakers and he'll be dunking like a donut.
Air Iowa
Wocka wocka wocka

I forgot my pushups this mornings.

1-17-96 AM
It rained yesterday. I got my butt kicked on NTN. My lungs are full of crap. I don't know what to eat for breakfast. Last night, for the second day in a row, I helped Shrill finish a big ol' greasy basket of home fried potatoes. My stomach doesn't look nor feel good today.
Got all the way to the crossword today.
Talked with Zamona Bouvier lengthily about her four months of dryness and my similar considerations. We talked about conch for quite a while. She gave the kind of professional advice you might expect from a woman who has spent years in therapy.
My mucous membranes continue stepped-up production of a thick, sticky snot, as opposed to the loose, watery kind.
I'm going to wear that cool Bogart overcoat my grandpa gave me last week.
There was a big brouhaha to have the office manager at school removed. I said nothing, though she is clearly a cold woman who reduces her workload with her unapproachable manner. ~~~Sandi O. is a funny lady.
Peachtree called with a free ticket to Las Vegas President's Day weekend. It has not even been a year since my last fiasco there.
Well, it's time to wipe and get off the pot now.

Blame It On the Santa Anas

1-11-96

This Santa Ana condition is prompting a strange meteoro/physio -logical effect. The low pressure and dry air has made everyone light-headed with scratchy throats. We feel dizzy and tired. In school today, the lessened pressure caused our stomachs and arteries to dilate. Everyone is especially hungry. Maybe the wind kicked up some weird spore from out of the San Fernandos. I don't know, but it's not a good trip.
Shrill's here with her friend Christina, Shrill, eating soup, Christina draped over the love seat with a hangover.

1-15-96
Wha happen? I've missed a few days, due, I guess, to poor health and alcoholism. I finally got that upper repsiratory infection that's been going around. I called in sick to work on Friday, but still got talked out of the house to go drinking.
I already had a half a bottle of cough syrup in me, and then I drank double screwdrivers at the Derby telling myself the vitamin C would be good for my immune system. Before we left, I switched to Bushmills on the rocks. Don't know what I told myself about that. We walked down Hillhurst to the Good Luck Bar. The twerp at the door wouldn't let me in, he said, because I had no ID. I berated him, said I was obviously over twenty-one, and that he was just on a power trip. He stuck to his guns, and I said, "I was checking IDs in front of bars when you were still in a freshman in high school, you little prick," and I poked him in the chest. The next thing I knew we were rolling around the gutter with the cars turning onto Hillhurst from Sunset honking at us. He put my drunk ass in a chokehold and then someone pulled him off me, and I was taken away by my friends with my tail between my legs.
Surprise: I felt all wrong Sunday, stuck my fingers in my throat in a vain attempt to purge my nausea. I have scabs on the the left thumb knuckle, and the right pinky knuckle, and on my right elbow, and a slight abrasion on my forehead near the hairline.

All in a day's play.

Not to mention that persistent sore in my nose. I better start exercising more often; that guy was a middle lightweight, tops.

I just put the story in the mail. Feels pretty good. I have to do a few more.
Dylan Thomas soul God body death
I just need to fill these three pages so I can move onto my other chores: Harpers, guitar, NTN, review Ring's Haircut, Write in school journal, think about tomorrow, do the fifteen minutes writing exercise, do sentences, begin Jim Crack.
Get disks & disc holder, call internet classes, !Field Trip! Field Trip Field Trip Field Trip

She Took the Money I Gave Her For Headshots and Bought a Gucci Bag

1-10-96

Man, am I beat. I'd like to get over with these three pages ASAP. Just finished reading about the major leagues in the first decade of this quickly waning century. Jack Chesbro won forty-one games one year. The first World Series was between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Pilgrims in 1903. I read about the advent of the the era of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Nap LaJoie and the Brooklyn Superbas...
Today in school we did water color illustrations for a book we're doing about the life of Diego Rivera. I was mostly pleased aftera dismal beginning in which the kids whined for a few minutes that they didn't have any ideas before they got into it.
Zamona Bouvier called. She says she's gonna subpeona the Swamp Thing and send him to bad check school. He probably deserves. Guy lives in retardo land. Bad checks, bleach on the rug, broken heater knob, two--TWO broken shower curtain roads, the VCR, etc. That ain't quite a complete circuit what he's got.

Yeah, if only he had it all together, like me.

It was windy today. You could see the dust kicked up for miles down in the south end of the valley going to Pacoima.
When I got to school, a few dozen National Geographics graced the floor of the teacher's lounge. "Please take" read a sign. The earlybird gets the worm. I loaded my little serendipity into the back of the truck.
Finished my homework for tomorrow, and anecdotal study of a student "behavioral challenge". You have to write it without calling the kid a jackass. You say, "behavioral challange."
Had a diet-busting dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli, zuchini, and for dessert, chocolate chip cookies! The chicken was the first flesh I've had in weeks. God, it was good.
Shrill took the money I gave her for headshots and bought a fuckin Gucci bag. Shitass stupid female. What can you do? She's in the next room talking to the television. Maybe that's my fault.
I didn't do the crossword today. Oh, the sacrifice.
A lithograph of a Holbein drawing of Henry VIII hangs on the wall. Shrill hung that when she moved in. Ironic, no?
Also up there is a print of Thomas hart Benton's painting "Poker Night" (from A Streetcar Named Desire) is up there. Blanche reminds me of Shirelle.
I have this fantasy I'll have to confess her soon, but I think I'll wait until at least after Friday.
I'm almost out of stamps. Need to update the financial picture after cash withdrawal the other night.
Yeah yeah yeah
Booger wooger wooger
I'm so zonkaroolooed. Gotta hit the hay.

Hasta.

1-9-96

Talking with Gramma Vera on the phone about her platelets...
...and about how my uncle permanently lost his hair at Potsdam from a scalp infection when he was just twenty years old...
...She has too many platelets! (Wouldn't that make you invincible?)...
...She saw "Carmen" in Manhattan sixty years ago! She was about fifteen. She didn't want to go, but her older sister made her..."Trying to culture her kid sister." ...A year later she saw the Russian Ballet...and a dreary play called "Tobacco Road"...Of "Carmen", she loved the costumes but hated all the "screeching"...Now she loves listening to Sinatra do "My Way" with Pavorotti...

I got that letter out to my uncle, finally. Sent him a copy of my story.

Gramma thought Aaron was a Scandinavian name, but I told her it was Moses' brother's name, who was, of course, not Scandinavian.

Finised Chez Chance. It sure pissed me off. It sucks. My writing is so much better. If my idea has to be usurped, why can't it be well done? And it's so short they've got only 200 words per page stretched out to make it look like a novel. I remember this Gummerman from UCI, a lugubrious type who I made nervous at the pub. The story is pointless, and the theme and plot both turn on acid, a topic near and dear to my heart, that he obvioulsy knows nothing about. You can tell he's the kind of guy that did it once, undertook such a great danger for the sake of his artistry, risking his quiet normal little life in the safety of San Clemente. Urgh.

What else? Still have to arrange the field trip, write John Bayles, A. Automann, and mail off this story to the LA Times magazine, and to the American Journal of Short Fiction, and Harper's. I have an essay, two short stories and a book of poems to read before I select the nest novel I'll read. The Jim Crack story needs to be at leat 120 pages. He should do some odd jobs before the Vegas trip. The characters to know are Jim, Tink, Jim's dad (security guard), mother (deceased), Adam--peripherally. Other jobs as flashback? Yes. The Newport house flashback. Whittaker (weeds!). His ability with time and numbers at gambling leads to a mob underboss and some kind of chore with a climax in Death Valley. Ozit gonna be good.

I'm going to read the Ring Lardner story from 1926 called Haircut. But before that I have to read 1901-1910 in The Ultimate Baseball Book. Tomorrow's freaking homework day. I must'nt forget the utmost priority of this year is that friggin' credential. So
that's
three
pages.

Impulses Scurrying Through Synapses

1-8

Well, what's there to report or describe or make up or rhyme or butcher or philosophize or rationalize or fictionalize or non-fictionalize or otherwise kcuf up here today? Nothing really. Got up at 5:30 A, showered, had a bowl of Nutty Nuggets with the front page, then shimmied off to school. The truck's working well enough, though the battery still needs to be remounted--
The phone rings. Getoff tells of Steve's estranged wife's horniness in San Francisco on New Year's Eve. She wasn't wearing any underwear, he said, and in the cab, she told him to put it in her meow.
OK, so what the hell else? I think Shirelle's driving me nuts. But I'm not going to get into it. I still have to type for fifteen minutes, and I've got three letters to write and a phone call to make, some geee-tar to strum, some net to surf, some novel to read, and two more pages to write here before I can stop, and miles to go before I sleep. Got in my 30 minutes of physical exercise today! Man, am I out of shape. It's blizzarding in the East, the skyscrapers of Manhattan are lost behind a veil of some Creator's artistry, the machinations of D.C.'s politicking have ground to a frozen halt, and the peaches of Georgia will break teeth like biting a shotput; while here in California, the mercury shot through 90 in Anaheim, and we joked with Tom McCann who was visiting from Boston who cold it was. Brrr.
Dip rip bibidip baram dam ding dong I don't know how the hell I'm going to get to the bottom of the next page.
Seinfeld just came on. Maybe I can just copy their B.O. jokes here: "When somebody has B.O., the "O" usually stays with the "B". Why don't I turn down the volume.
Oh, crap. Evan should be calling soon. Then I can go get a bag that might send impulses scurrying through synapses.
Are more than one doofus doofusses or doofi? Ski diddly de we wah woo.
Tomorrow we're going to do some Diego Rivera watercolors.
Gip has an entire stack, a stack of she-male and transvestite movies. Every time I think that guy can't trip me out anymore, he does.
Cesar lies and lies and lies.
AHHHGHHH
GrBzzzt
KKKKsniKt
Vrbt
Dohhhh

Gonna Swallow My Tears

1/7

Agh my hangover was too severe to even lift a pencil yesterday; I could not even see the paper for all the bourbon I drank the night before. It didn't seem like much at the time. I danced with a girl, but I don't remember anything about her, unless she was one of the group from Minnesota we spoke with, but I think they preferred not to dance.
Shirelle cooked fried bacon and eggs and diced potatoes and baked some biscuits and we had orange juice to drink, and then my hangover kicked in, and I was worthless. Beyond the haze, the Steelers beat the Bills and the packers beat the 49ers to advance to their respective championships. At about 3:30 or so, and some five aspirin later, and still unsteady, I showered and Shrill and I went up to Emilio's on Highland and Melrose. I like that place; the tab was $67, though. Then we went to the Chinese and saw "Heat" with DeNiro & Pacino, and Val Kilmer, a well-made heist flick, top-notch cinematography.
Jen and I went out to visit Grandma and Grandpa Zurn in Hemet. We watched the Eagles lost to the evil that is Dalla$, and the Colts earned and upset over the Chiefs that I saw coming weeks ago. Gramps talked about walrus ivory he'd got from eskimoes when he was on the ice cutter around Greenland in WWII, and about how after that they shipped him to the Phillipines and he shot at Zeros, and he'd lean against the hot barrel of the gun and smoke cigarettes. He gave me a cool old Bogart-looking trenchcoat. Gramma stitched up a loose pocket.
I read Exodus 8-12. God was plaguing Egypt through Moses again. I'm fascinated by the wording of the phrase which was repeated a few times that "God hardened pharoah's heart." Huh!? Pharoah didn't have a choice. God made him refuse Moses' request to let his people go. Why would he do that? Maybe Pharoah would have just let them go if God had not been hardening his heart. Like God wanted them to be enemies, so he could show off all his plague power. How vainglorious.
Well, I finally, FINALLY, finished the Miracle Mile story. I actually wrote "The End" on the last page. I think I'm going to work on Jim Crack next. I think it needs to be at least 120 pages (but that number may work better for Mex, which I have a somewhat clearer idea of how it begins and ends). I think Jim's father is going to have to play a big part early in the story, provide the impetus for Jim's snap and bail to Vegas.
I'll finish this Chez Chance book and another short or two and 1901-1910 of the baseball history before I begin in earnest on Jim Crack.

That brzzt Feeling

1/5

Oh uh uh oh Idiots Rule!

Nothing new to report. I just got off the phone with a nice lady who works in a corrupt office which administers a test called the BCLAD, which if you pass, decrees that you are capable of teaching in a bilingual situation (which I've been doing to positive evaluations for three years), and then they pay you $5000 more dollars a year. But no one wants you te get this money. It is a complete fuckaround. The next test was supposed (Test--I say test, but it is actually a labyrinthine series of tests) to be in March, but that test date has been mysteriously stricken from time, and the new date is scheduled for June. But they don't want to let you take the test unless you spend several weeks and hundreds of dollars in course fees in different prep classes for the test. (Do I detect the sulfrous oder of the governor?) It is so ridiculous. This is money I was already making and then it was withdrawn until I jump through all the hoops of this test which says I know how to do what I do every damn day. If I didn't do it correctly, it would show up in my evaluations, and I wouldn't have been able to pass the initiall bilingual test I took, nor would I have done well in the Spanish interview. Fuckers.

What else? Wish I had some dope or some shrooms or cid to lift this nothingness. If I could only find a handhold I could probably lift it myself.

Peachtree called. He expressed an interest in getting drunk at some public locale. I consented to accompany him with a reminder that it was his turn to come to LA from Pasadena. He's on his way. Wonder where we'll go to get that brzzt feeling that life is happening that you can sometimes get when you go out to drink at night in a big city. You need to be bold in a way I no longer am, though, to really get that.

Balls! Should I write to the bottom of this page or the next one? Maybe I should draw something over there.

I'm'na strum muh 'tar fer a bit. whthDDRrrum ping! baow ow ow bweeee ee ee

Tembloso Middle Finger

1@/4
They say I'm tembloso

This officially sucks.

School has started. I missed yesterday's entry cuz time is so tight now. Not that I didn't write. I filled a page in my intern portfolio notebook and wrote out a few ideas in the idea book and tacked on another couple sentences on the end of the short that was supposed to be done three weeks ago and now looks almost impossible to finish satisfactorily.

I just removed a scab from inside my nose.

I'm all out of weed. It's depressing. I should just read instead.

All I've eaten is a bowl of Nutty Nuggets and a nuked box of Green Giant corn.

Cathy Howrad left a message. She wants to "hook up". Why didn't she call three weeks ago? She could have saved me. Maybe she just wants to score some dope.

Urgh

Bah mp tiddly ^debombump Skee bop da diddly wop wop badada ski widdly be pob duh ridda
Zapow! wha da piddly wam wam

A whole new set of problems, just swapping old problems for new ones.

There's a scab in the line of the middle knuckle of my middle finger.

Nowhere near three pages.