The Outline

Th 2/8/96
See, now, I got all this other stuff that needs to be done, and I ain't gonna touch it 'til I'm done with these three pages. That could take 'til bedtime. This Chinese pencil doesn't erase very well. There's a woman singing, "Let's get naked just for a laugh/It's a trip and a half/". I wish she was really here. We're learning to play the recorder in my intern class. The music teacher adores a captive audience. Tom, who's my supervisor, said to me, "How you doing, champ? You're all caught up." Someone in our group left some profanity laced writing in the classroom that some children found. Sounds like something I would do. I don't think I did it, though. Still, I felt guilty. I'm sure I was the number one suspect.
I spent $200 on computer software at Staples on Wilshire. Dumb. I'm going broke if I don't get that bilingual money back.
Shirelle moves shit around that's yours so that you can't find it. She went out to the Granville with some other teeny-bopper types.
Joan Osborne is singing on the radio.
The screen just darkened.
The screen that was sky.

I-eye-limited perception ?
1. The car on fire 2. walking to work 3. the ants 4. Disney 2. A gift for numbers 3 detour to Pete's 6. Break in 7 pot 8. porn 9 Phone call 10. Bob Flemish 11. Tinkerbell
Goofy

social IQ-zero / flop on the field / the lowdown/
12. the Beast and Bob Fleming 13. The fight/ The walkback Thoughts on the wayback ? : Prayer? arm-twisting
Tink's talk Southern California

(switched to Gershwin. Mrican in Paris
The court jester Excalibur
The magician

Vegas - the bald man - the card fix and discovery-
a rich man briefly - Sent to Reno-thin ice- The ride back through Death Valley

Geneology The end.

Great my novel's done. Now all I gotto do is flesh it out. Jim "Car Trouble" Crack and the Three~~~~Four Breakdowns
-

Got to install that modem update still] Shirelle didn't work today. She's been "borrowing" a bit of dough lately.

Ate Taco Bell today. $5.37 I should be ashamed. I am. ~~~~~~

Lame

2/7/96
Much to do. Got a Mark Whitfield strum floating around the room while I also listen to a tape of myself reading Dylan Thomas. The tape's playing anyway; I don't know if I'm actually listening. My insides feel rotted, like I can feel the bottomless pit in the nuclei of my cells. How to be healthier? Perhaps a move to Stanislaus County?
I just thought something about having kids, about how much the conception might have to do with the character of the kid.
It seems
Its
-
Computer languages--Where do they get off calling them language?
What if I wrote something for somebody each week?

There was just now some creepy hiss
an electronic rattlesnake.
A drain in the light bulb over my head
maybe
A pressure pop! in the powered appliance

A child howls in savage mournin-

"Wow man I just got into some heavy duty data crunching on my Apple MacIntosh Performa 6205CD POWERPC, man...Had to take a break, man."

Really now I need to just move through the 3 pages. I would like to spend all evening searching with lazy luxury the choicest tidbits of human expression, but I'm in a hurry. I got shit I gotta do. Is that one?
I would like to be able to throw them out at random without any concern for the order.
Oh, that's what I already do.

A field in Utah comes to mind.

I'm going to miss this little notepad.

Saw the movie "Dead Man Walking". I don't want to preach right now.

Agh- I got heartburn.

This pencil says MADE IN CHINA. McArthur would be appalled. My grandfather wouldn't prefer a pencil marked so. Aren't I supporting the communist regime by using this pencil?

I've got to write in my teacher journal before going to bed ideally in 50 minutes. I was supposed to type up a document for my portfolio tonight.
How come Charlie Sheen gets to have a video camera at the Laker game?

Almost there/Stay on target/Almost there/Stay on target

2/6/96 Tu
Boiling some spaghetti. I just pour the sauce out of the jar onto the hot pasta, mix it up, and eat it right out of the pot. The newly Magic-led Lakers lead Denver with six minutes to go while over on channel 15 the Kings will probably lose to Chicago even at the Forum. Yeah yeah yea I'm pinche tired. Still haven't gotten my web browser fixed. Still haven't finished Thomas. Haven't gotten any exercise today. Muthafucka. Listened to the Beastie Boys on the way home from the school in Pacoima where I work. The air was weird today. It was foggy in the morning, but then it was windy this afternoon, and all the fog got blown away, and it was clear briefly until all the dust got kicked up over the valley. The fog rolled back in as the sun went down and the sky was backlit a post-apocalyptic brown-gray.

Still have to do the 15 minutes and begin the Crack file, but I'll probably just go to bed after this unless I get the ganas to take that half hour walk my fat belly needs. I look older than I am. I'm still young. Ten years ago I wasn't even eighteen yet. So much has happened in ten years. Ten years from now where will I be? So much could happen. Or maybe not. The ten past were formative years. What next? Family? (There was another one of those little hallucinatory stars went across my field of vision.)
I'm a big lame-0 loser nerd geek. Threw my high school reunion invitation in the trash.
People are a big let down.
Have parent conferences. Met the diablo's dad.
Evan's moved to NoHo. Howrad's going to Stanislaus County to work in the DA's office. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope.  

BompBompBompahBomBomPa BomBomBomBompa Bom Bom Bomb pah Aaugh.
The Thing wants to know if he can "borrow" the remote. I've drawn the ghost of a wookie here.
Chimelle and I argued finances. I paid all my bills today. Balnced the ol' checkbook. Went to the credit union. Ordered new checks. Made a deposit.
Still need to walk up to Office Depot. Tomorrow. Computer City sucks. Computers suck! Suck suck suck suck. Talked about skiing with Arenal Bacchus. PILOT BETTER RETRACTABLE FINE That's what kind of pen this is. Kings are getting shellaqued.

I Shanked the Shot After That

2/6/96

Oh shit, here we go again. The retard downstairs is playing his music after bedtime again. I didn't write at all yesterday. Boo hoo. Went to Brea Pulbic Golf Course and shot nine with John and Jim Viggers and Mike and Ramone. Chimelle came, too, but they wouldn't let us play a sixsome, so she and I played apart from the others, but after the first hole she quit and went to my mom's and the rest of us played a fivesome. As I was teeing off on the third, Ramone said he birdied the second, and Mike said,"Yeah, then you woke up with sperm all over your stomach." I shanked the shot after that.

Then Mike was talking about a woman who had a hand injury and was having seizures, and Ramone said, "Seizures, huh?"
And Mike said, "Yeah, but not the kid where the police come and take all your weed." I sliced that shot.

John and I went to see Vera at the hospital. The doctor told us she was too old to risk an operation to repair the tear in her aorta.

(A change in the body can cause a change in the soul.)

Chimelle's watching "Chicago Hope" and talking to the TV.

It's conference week at school. I went out Saturday night with Getoff--

Chimelle points out my "smile wrinkle that never entirely uncreases".

--and his friend whose name I lost, (Ch'elle said he looked like a pimp) who drove us around to Hollywood sidestreet bars, the Spotlight, where we shot darts, and I drank turkeys. We bought Macanudos at the Roosevelt, took a toke in the bathroom. HAC for pool; the guy was a good chauffeur. Home. 69. Ch'elle says it gave her a sore throat.

We watched "The Indian and the Cupboard" at school.

I can't think with this TV on.

Yea yeah yea. Jim Crack's flashbacks.

I look pregnant. Today Dylan Thomas was an amazing use of words. Howrad called. Whup tu scrum diddly bum dum. Zonkaroolooed. I thought of Eliza Christondo, a girl in my dorm who was my age but seemed younger. She never drank, but one night she did, I think to be drunk enough to sit on my lap, which she was doing when she leaned over and puked into a nearby trashcan. She passed out on the floor of my room, her skirt hitched up, panties showing. She was cute. She had a beautiful, wonderful innocent soul. I carried her up to her room and laid her on her bed and went back downstairs to party. I used to get letters from her after college for a while. I think she became a doctor or something. She's married now.

Really Pretty Lame

1-31-96 W

Outside it's raining, but there ain't nothing to in this house to drink but non-fat milk, tapwater, and that generic coffee liquer.

3-5-96
I've really been a pussy here, haven't I? A month without writing. It's a rainy Saturday. Chimelle just went to Santa Monica with a boy. I've got a hockey game on- Colorady Avalanche hosting the New York Rangers. Two good teams.

I've been embarrassed lately. I've never much cared about embarrassment, even though I'm so frequently embarrassing. Wha---

Gramma Vera is in the hospital. Her aorta is torn. Sounds like her time is coming. I think she wants it. She speaks of being reunited with passed loved ones.

So that's about the size of it. I'm going to visit the Fowler Museum at UCLA anc check out the exhibit of voodoo for that baseball/voodoo story I want to do. I ought to do some reasearch on Satchel Paige. I think also Branch Rickey will be in it.

The Avalance is burying the Rangers 7-1.

I've been imagining a barrel,
gagging, cold steel, against uvula
not, a minor comic compulsion
compared to nothing
which includes couches and television

It takes too long to write these three pages. I need to do it in fifteen minutes. I should whip through it, then balance the checkbook, then do fifteen minutes on the word processor, then go to the museum and the bookstore, then go to Placentia or maybe just only go to Placentia.

What am I thinking? If grandma is to die, she may want to be surrounded by loved ones when she goes.

How does death move the living?

That story really is pretty lame. Everything I show people, I don't hear back from them. I feel weak. My back aches. I might just read for a bit. Try to finish Dylan Thomas.

How long?

Quakes, Gilded Diamonds, and No-Look Passes

1-30-96 Tu

Kind of a bullshit day. We had a little 3.5 aftershock at school today. The kids all dove under their tables. They did an excellent job; I mean they were smooth and instantaneous; before I even knew for sure it was a temblor, fwoom! they were under their desks.
For math we were going to work with unifix cubes, which are supposed to be connected in groups of ten, but when I was at that teacher's convention, the kids talked the sub into letting them use the cubes, and so the cubes were all fuc- I mean messed- up, and I had to do another lesson which I hadn't planned for. Cesar and Christian and Carlos wouldn't stop fuc--I mean messing around, so I went ballistic on them, and banished them to separate corners and yelled so severely that there was not another peep except Cesar's sobs.
Jeez.
After school I drove to UCLA to see an exhibit of Haitian voodoo at the Fowler Museum, but it's closed on Monday and Tuesday. I drove over to Jackie Robinson Stadium to see the Bruins take on the Matadors of Cal State Northridge. This freckly-faced catcher from CSUN, Rob Fick, had a fine game: 2 for 3, with an rbi-double that was the difference in the outcome. Rob Crabtree gave up one run over seven innings pitching the Bruins a steady diet of junk. Former major league third baseman Doug Decinces' son caught for UCLA , but was nothing special. No arm. My brother, Mac, came to the game. It sprinkled a little, a golden light fell across the field, gilding the diamond.

The goddam web browser refuses to be accessed. I don't think even God knows why. I've tried reinstallling the prram from scratch, it says there's a problem with the memory, even though the numbers indicate there should be enough. It makes me so angry I have to fight the urge to destroy the fuc-- freaking computer.

I have not cared one fuc- about writing for the last several days. I realize I'm a hack, and still have a long, long way to go. It doesn't seem worth the time and persistence required. The initial satisfaction of finishing the first short has worn off.

Magic Johnson returned to the NBA tonight and is playing a fine game. HIV does not seem to affect the no-look pass.

1-29-96
I haven't written here for 3 days and haven't cared. The thread of this journal, if there was one, has frayed. I come to it uninspired. My life is trivial. Anyway...
I went up to Northridge to watch the Superbowl with my brother and his friends. Evil defeated good as Dallas beat Pittsburgh. We ourselves played a pretty good game of touch football in the park beforehand.
Mike talked about the night that Ivan, the former Belgian Congo Guerilla fighter who lives in the same building, came to Mike's apartment at two AM, drunk, and waving his Glock around screaming at Mike and Angel to turn down the music. Mike and Angel were both high as the Himalayas. All Angel could do was giggle...
Also Mike talked about showing up to football practice in the Corvettes and Saabs he and Chase and Goodman repo-ed...Three giant Baby-Huey-looking motherfuckers with mullets, barrelling down the freeway at a buck twenty, "chillin', high..."
Shirelle has been complaining to me that she's not happy and it's my fault. She just makes me angry anymore. I want to end it, especially if she's unhappy. Why bother? But she cries and moans so pathetically it sounds fake. I don't get why she doesn't just dump me and move on to someone more footloose and fancy-free. I know my personality won't fit her in the long run. I can be the life of the party-guy once in a while, but usually I just want to be alone and read and write. She's determined though to fit me into the mold of her romantic ideal, picnics on the beach, etc. where my poor conversational skills make the situation so awkward I feel almost panicky in my need to escape.
I'm out of dope. Ain't that a shame?
These Dylan Thomas poems are frustrating. They don't make sense in any literal way. The words seem spilled on the page, their order drawn from a hat. Yet the words are so rich in connotation, , their juxtapositon conjures imagery that might otherwise take pages and pages to describe. It takes effort to keep in mind his poems' themes and try to plug in the odd intricacies of each word as you read them, a lot like reading Joyce. Thomas's poems, though, contain this melding of old and new, Wordsworth in the twentieth century, where the pre-womb and post-grave mysteries struggle against the dominance of electric wires and modern medicine. Scientists seem only to change the terms of life's great mysteries without coming any closer to explaining them than the wizards and prophets and poets and crackpots of less enlightened ages ever did.
I forgot to read the Bible yesterday, so I'm gonna do it now.