Prancin' Around Trying to Figure Out Who Should Be the Head Dork

Mon. sep. 16

I put 2 more ucla classes on my master charge. Five hundred and sixty dollars worth! One is Mondays on campus. The other is Thursdays at Universal City Walk. They are 3 units each. Upon their completion I should have enough units to move up a step on the Los Angeles Unified School District's pay scale. woo-woo. I'm not sure what that will do for me. Will I be able to afford a house? How about a washer and a dryer? Maybe pay off a credit card.
Hum. The Steelers are playing the Bills on Monday Night Football, and the Dodgers are trying to preserve their half game lead in the pennant race, against the Rockies in the madhouse that is Coors Field in Denver. I must see a game there one year.
What'll I do when I've completed these three pages? Type until eight o clock. It's weird. I mainly enjoy writing, but I only enjoy writing crap. If I think about the discipline needed to write well enough to be published, I freeze up. I don't enjoy it anymore. I wonder if I should take two different approaches to my two different classes: one in which I assert my potential, personality, ability, etc., and the other where I ask for help and seek guidance.
I bought this CDROM package (I'm a fuckin' junky for this worthless crap). It has these six games from LucasArts. One is this cool Star Wars where you wander around in first person and blast stormtroopers and stuff. Great point of view graphics, cool mazes and sets, challenging puzzles, good stuff, but when you complete three missions and locate the arms dealer you're looking for, it gives you the phone number to call to get the rest of the game. What a rip.
There was a program of dancing for Mexican Independence Day at school today. I ate some macaroni and pizza and orange chicken when I got home today. I watched a pornographic video with poor tracking that I took from the GIP's room, and I beat. Where is the magic in life? It's random and unpredictable and rare enough to be wonderful, it's got to be. I smoked one puff from this marble pipe the dirtweed Shirelle got from some gangsta a few blocks away. I have a sore spot on my gum near my left bicuspid. I want to drink some Gatorade. Chirs Spielman plays for Buffalo now. I took Adventures in the Skin Trade off the shelf. I finished and enjoyed Strange Pilgrims last night, G. G. Marquez. I've still got to finish Richard III. I think it sucks. These fucking nobles prancin' around trying to figure out who should be the Head Dork.
What else? I need to straighten out the right side of my desk. You're mom wears a goatee. I just met a woman in Pittsburgh before the Pirates game at a little sports bar. I told her I was trying to meet the most beautiful woman in Pennsylvania. She inferred that I was only after sex. I said, "Well now that would be a little too much to hope for, wouldn't it?" And I tried to make my eye twinkle.

God's Command

Friday Sept. 13

I got paid today $1397. Paid my bills and now there is $342. Depressing. Shirelle is jumping me for grocery money. Chronos is on his way here from Lancaster to borrow me and my truck to pick up a swingset in Alhambra and bring it to Lancaster and set it up in his backyard. Sometimes having a truck sucks. I need to go clean out the back of it.
Black clouds blotted the morning. The kids were uneasy and kept going to the door to see the ominous skies. After recess the sun began to break through, the rays shone down, and George said, "Look, Teacher! An angel!" He pointed excitedly. Lepidoptera tickled my belly.
Jeopardy is on now. The Dodger game just started. Vladimir fixed my car nice. It sounds great. They're singing the Star Spangled Banner. I didn't write my page yesterday.
Sun Sep 15
I feel like a loser. I have no motivation and little desire. Nothing to say. I saw Paul Westerberg at the El Rey Theater on Wilshire. Miguel and Stevo and I went. Big whup. What else? I've been conscious lately of how much slang I use and am exposed to. Slang is colorful and entertaining and imaginative, but doesn't it also contaminate language, shatter meaning? That Westerberg show was dull. People just stood around. There are about a dozen ways to use the word "just". I wonder how it got to be so utile a word as it is. I bought a CDROM for 44.99 + tax that doesn't work in Mac. I've got to get to Burbank to exchange it. Shirelle's mother wanted us to come out to her company picnic in Pasadena today. I didn't want to go, so Shirelle told her we weren't coming. I felt bad. I listened in bed as the girl told her mother she wouldn't be coming. All I did was lay around and read the paper and monitor the day's games and nap. We did go to the market this morning. I gave Shirelle eighty dollars to buy groceries. The Thing has gone to spend a week in Fresno to go to his high school reunion. I haven't got that Best Wishes in Your New Home type card yet that I was going to send to my father and step mother in Idaho. My mother is expecting me to spend the weekend at her place in Orange County. Maybe I'll bring my golf clubs. Or should I see about bass fishing at the quarry in Irwindale with my step father? Should I call that girl who sat on my lap or does that only invite further complication.
I'm stumped now. I mentioned marlin fighing off Catalina and he mentioned a camping trip there. I read a feature in the Travel section about canoeing the Colorado River from Bullhead City to past Moabi through Topock Gorge. The budget for two is only $250.oo. Canoes for a three day trip. I also experienced some more Baja lust. Definitely need to plan a vacation for next spring. Something for December, too. Shirelle made pepperoni pizza in the oven. I ate two pieces. At the market I gought a beef rib and some macaroni and some orange chicken. It was overcast. I read some more in Joshua about the Israelites slaughtering the other peoples of the area at God's command.

Two Little Squares of Paper

Wednesday September 11
Thursday September 12
Colby the German shepard is napping in the shade of the garage. A weedwacker drones. While looking for matches in the desk drawer last night, I found two little squares of paper...!? I phoned Mary at work and said I wouldn't be able to make it because my car was sick. "I thought my girlfriend wcould give me a ride, but she has to go to work now." A little yellow card lying in the driveway advertised thirty-nine dollar tune-ups at a place two blocks west of La Brea. I had decided not to take it back to Quino's since I believe they had messed it up in the first place getting it to pass smog. The mechanic at the place west of La Brea was out to lunch when I arrived. When he got back he asked if my truck was an 86. It is. "I have same car," he said. He conferred in Russian with another guy who was up to his elbows in grease. "It have exhaust leak. Give me tree hours and I find out why problem of acceleration." He repeated that he bought the exact same truck. He seemed enthused about it. I believed him. It seemed like more than salesmanship. We'll see how the car comes back. $35 per hour X 3 hr. I expect it's going to turn out be around 300, when it's all said and done. I just hope they fix it up. GM sent me a new credit card with a higher limit. They're worried because I haven't used it in 6 months. ("Each girl gets her own card," said the slickster. ~~~Something else entirely.) I feel like drinkin this kind of off day and walkin around like a bum. I need the exercise.
I'm wandering around the house in an aimless acid stupor with a cigarette listening to recordings from a few weeks ago. Peachtree and I on the way to a BBQ talking AA meetings; GIP and Thing and I ate the Foothill in Long Beach to see Andrew's band. ONE FUCKING PAGE TODAY. I'm going to walk to the liquor store first, though, and get some beer. My pants got themselves on cuz that's what they wanted to do. Pencil-tip-smashing energy~~~Dreams of UCI where my fate was sealed~~~I wonder if this vitamin A is inhibited by true vitamins
Just like that the bubble is burst
Can't start that til I finish this, though.
I can't think when my hair needs cutting.
----SHAVED it! Just shaved it all off now. Gone! Bald!
Man I've been lagging on the 3 pages. You want to be careful about the kind of voice you create in a journal--you want it to have personality, but you don't want to become pigeon-holed.

Sit Down and Write It

Sun. Sept.68th, 1996
I looked up at the calendar to write the date and it is GRANDPARENTS' DAY. So I called them. AT first I dialed 909 625-0629, and it said, "We're sorry. The number you have reached has been disconnected." --Disconnected from my grandparents! I tried it again. Same recording. Had they packed up and moved to Idaho with my dad? I tried then 652-0629, and that worked. They gave me my dad's address. I said I'd send him a card and wish him well in his new home. Submitting your judgment~~~~~oh susanna oh don't you cry for me. Basquiat prodced childlike rage and died of homosodomy. Last night I watched the Tyson-Seldon fight at Marachi's in Pasadena. I drew round one in the pool, and Tyson scared Sheldon so bad he fainted, and I won with a knockout a minute nine into the fight, so I won twenty-five dollars.

Mon Sept 9
I'm wheezing. The Dodgers are winning 7-2 over the Reds on the radio. I'm stuffed. GIP and I drove up to West Hollywood to a place called Uno Pizzeria. There were a bunch of Monday Night Football Specials, and the waiter and the manager were falling all over themselves to sell us on the place. I pigged out on deep fried breaded mozzarella sticks, plus we ordered a dozen chicken wings, and I ate them all, and there were peanuts, I ate plenty, I ordered penne pasta and asked for both marinara and Alfredo sauces, and they were giving away complimentary mini pizzas, which I ate, dipping the crusts in the sauces before scarfing. I drank one- and one-half beers. Should have stayed home and treaded mill and written. Walters stopped in last night. He has gone to work at his dream of producing records, in a studio, with a band called Dead From Sex. They were playing at the Garage in Silver Lake on Santa Monica and Virgil in the Virgil Village District. Walters showed up around six in the evening. I had forgotten he was coming. I was lying in bed in my shorts. He had a couple of beers with him his brother had brought from Germany. He asked how my writing was going. I stuttered about writing three pages in my journal every day and having one short burst on "the thing I'm working on", but lately not getting much done. He asked if Peachtree told me about his script idea. He had. He asked what I thought. I said I thought he should sit down and write it.

so there.

Fri September 6

The bind is

Mort Binder lived on the way to school in a +green house behind banana fronds
a devil-

I'm watching this Wink Martindale low budget Jeopardy-type game show and the question was: "I am the songwriter of "White Christmas" and the German capital that was divided after World War Two," and one of the contestants rang in and said, "You are Mel Torme!"

Shirelle's going to the The Pearl with Dina. Dave's on his way here. Mormon Dave from high school. Devout. Family man. He's on his way back from dropping his wife and kids off at Ontario airport to go to Iowa. The old gal from my class said she was going to send out an address list, but it hasn't come. You'd probably never guess that I'm trying to get this focking web browser to run right again. I was a few books ago, too. My brain is empty. If I crush my ear to my shoulder I can hear the hum of the computer vibrate the desk, then through my elbow, up my bones. If Dave hadn't have had to go to class tonight, we could have seen Brett Butler's miraculous return from cancer to the Dodger centerfield. I should have treadedmill today rather than eat five pieces of pizza. My nose is a little sniffly. Joe took Shirelle in his Jeep to pick up her newly tuned vehicle. I guess they must be doing it, but she says his teeth are too focked up. I guess that's just a smokescreen. I forgot today was picture day at school and my hair was poofed high and I wore an untucked ultra casual low top button collar shirt, and I have a red zit on my cheek in the line over my smile. I played 3 chess games against three kids. I told them before we played I'd beat them so hard it would hurt. Maybe Dave's stuck in traffic. Ko was going to come out today, but when I got home Shirelle said he had called and wasn't going to be able to make it. Ron laid out a tarp in the backyard and put out a round table for two with a white table cloth and some roses in a base with a bird-of-paradise and sprinkled petals all over and dressed in black and cooked dinner for Tonisha and served it to her out there. Shirelle saw this and fussed around the apartment in her mudpack. I had some dreams about not being invited to weddings. Rose was in the Seven Eleven.
so there.

Richard III and Marquez

Thursday Sept 5
Wayne Gretzky just scored a goal for Canada against Germany in the quarter finals of the World Cup of Hockey. Richard the Third is obviously staged. The dialogue, while magnificent, is overdone. The glee Dick takes in his evil deeds is comic. The idea that he can "bed" Ann in her grief and anger after he has killed her husband and father-in-law is absurd enough to believe of a female, but still unlikely. Sensational political scandal re-enacted for the public's entertainment. I've only read the first Act up to now.
One of Marquez's stories, "The Saint" tells of a man in Rome whose wife died in childbirth and of the child, who died seven years later. His grief goes unmentioned. Some years later, the graves are to be disinterred because of a dam, and the man discovers the child's body is perfectly preserved and dedicates his life toward an audience with the Vatican to have her canonized. Marquez tells the story as a character who has experienced some of the story and is relating the rest which he has learned second-hand. A lion on an island in a park roars to a tenor in the tenor in the story, and a woman believes a naked woman in her hall is a ghost. Vintage Marquez. Another story is "Sleeping Beauty on an Airplane". Some Nabakovian description of sitting next to a beautiful young woman on a plane. Another told in the same first person style as "The Saint" begins with a wave smacking off the ocean and crushing a woman in a car against the wall of the hotel where the narrator sits. The body is too mangled to identify, but the narrator reads of a description of a ring she wore which is like the ring worn by a woman he knew in Austria, a woman who had prophetic dreams. They run around with Pablo Neruda. Another tells of a woman whose car breaks down and she catches a ride on a bus, but falls asleep and winds up in a mental hospital where no one will believe she doesn't belong. I haven't finished that one yet.
I wish I had such clever circumstances of plot to move forward Aaron's dialogue explaining his decision to bail for Utah.
Notre Dame opens against Vanderbilt tonight, only 3-0 ND at halftime. I have some wine in the fridge.
I ate some pistachios and drank some grape juice and heated some chicken wings and slapped together a honey peanutbutter and boysenberry jam sandwich and a leftover chicken sandwich that someone brought home from say Marie Callendar's.