Treacherous Bitches

Nov. 3 1996

I'm tired. I lost twenty-five dollars worth of golf balls at Coyote Hills in Fullerton today. Mike rolled a j round about the thirteenth hole. Tell you the truth, I don't think I lost any more golf balls after that.

I came to the story of Samson and the slaying of the Philistines with the ass's jawbone, and of Delilah's treachery in which she goads Samson into revealing the source of his strength (his hair, course), and how she shaves him so that the Philistines can exact their revenge. It was funny that once or twice more Delilah advised the Philistines to attack Samson when he misled her on the source of his strength, and he never caught on that she was trying to have him killed. Then was the climactic scene in which he brings down the house on everybody. It is sort of thrilling to read such a well-known and ancient story.

I should go over my ballot tomorrow while I wait for class. Tuesday I should go for that flu shot and call the court. Somewhere at UCLA I should be able to get test applications for the BCLAD and such. I'm supposed to go to Palm Springs on the 8th and 9th for this math conference. I don't want to go. The Tyson/Holyfield fight is that night. I've got to xerox sixteen copies of the latest Jim Crack edit.

What else? Tonight I do the plot outline. It's harder to write with Shirelle staring at me. My ears are burned, my lips are chapped, my nose is sore. She doesn't care if I write or not. She just drove off to Burger King. I declined. I should tread if I get hungry. I got through this book pretty fast. I have a meeting with Sora Furymota at lunch tomorrow or Tuesday to share what I know about the internet. I should review it before I present it to her. I drank three beers and two iced cappuccinos on the links today and two more beers while I read the paper at Brian's Pub in Placentia. I wonder if I bought some Compound W would it get rid of these warts?
Shirelle's back from Burger King now. She's watching "The Lion King" on network television. She said, "John, come in here. I want you to watch 'The Lion King' with me. I told her, "I can't. I have work today."
What else? I'll do fifteen minutes typing next. There's a golf ball on my desk here. I could've used it today. By the time I finish the next journal, Thanksgiving will have passed.

November 2
The sample ballot has arrived. I feel stupid again. Get over it. A little pumpkin sits on my desk. We can't decide whether or not to go up to the "Baywatch" wrap party at Billboard Live. We're on the guest list. A barrell full of beer calls from the kitchen. I don't know what to do about drinking it. Shirelle made bacon and eggs this morning. She drank a beer while she cooked. I napped through the sports page.
I have to bring a plot outline to to class Monday. I'm embarrassed that I spent hundreds on that fuckin party last night. Why not go out and have fun for free tonight, except that the cab ride might cost fifteen dollars each way? Extra ambiguity. That little pumpkin's sister is over here on the other desk. Actually, it's the same desk, an L-shaped desk. I set facing the vertex of the L, with the little pumpkins along either side.
Tomorrow I'm golfing at Coyote Hills in north Orange County, fully comped. Shirelle is watching TV in the room behind me now. I should do my fifteen minutes of typing. I should do Jim Crack. I should play a little guitar. I should get a good night's sleep. I should pray I don't have a runny nose all morning golfing. Dream about my form. I'm hungry. All I can think to do is order a pizza.
I began reading Saul Bellow's Seize the Day. The introduction was lame. It was like little Cliff's Notes. Now that I've read the Old Testament, I have a little resentment about anyone's considering themselves the chosen people. I thought God was supposed to love us all equally. For this reason, I'm a little leery of Bellow's Jewishness. I will be labeled anti-semitic for expressing this, but if one group claims to be chosen by God ahead of all others, aren't they anti-everbodyelseic? Is it okay to be anti-Philistine? Anti-Palestinian? Know too much. I've got This Side of Paradise on my bookshelf, too. We can't find a ride to the party, and we don't have thirty bucks for cab fare. If I took some time to work on it, we could probably go, but I'm still workin on these pages, so I must not want to go that bad.
The police came to the party last night. I went out to talk to them on the front lawn. I said we'd be done by ten. I looked at my watch. It was ten twenty. I said I'd go back and unplug the show. I was a drunk zombie soon after that. We had a campfire in the backyard.
I scrape all the birdshit off the hood of my car with a squeegee at gas stations. I'm going to have to do some power editing on Crack before I xerox sixteen copies for my class Thursday. I can use feedback and editing ideas from that before I turn in my chapter draft to the Monday class in two weeks. I've got to be there at 8:30 AM tomorrow. I've got to leave here at at least 7:30. I'll have to be up by seven at the latest.

Trippin'

November 1
Here comes Steve. I just thought of something funny when Carlos rang: the una de gato, which is the bark of a tree in Baja that cures cancer.
Carlos is talking about the internet. Grant idea for documentary. I'm high. There's boxing. I have to hurry and finish this because a party may go on tonight. The band is in the backyard getting ready to play. Buster Mathis is flabby. I paid for two kegs on my credit card and rented some tables. Tucker Tubbs got knocked out. I went to the gardening area in the parking lot at the warehouse of home improvement. A gal directed me to a cart to transport my concrete bricks to the car. I'm going to use the bricks to to build a firepit for a big bonfire we're going to have later tonight. I realized what a fool I am on the way back here. The Gip and his dad went to the Wild Goose.
I think we need to turn down a few of those amps.
I got two jokes. One of them's about the Gip. Which one do you want to hear?
I'll go in the bathroom and dash off the rest of this. I've got to finish this so that I can entertain the guests. This entertainment idea is a paradox. What if I moved to the bookstore, might I find something else? I'm tripping out. I'm not making sense. I need hurry out there and take the reins. Talk it up. Getoff's go it up too high. I can't relax. I've done another foolish thing. Catched up. It's too loud. Guy tryin' to groove. I
Shirelle and the girl whose name I can't remember are chopping broccoli in the kitchen. The volume! Robbie is playing Rocky Raccoon. They turned it down a little. That's better. I near the groove. The girls both love "I Love Lucy". That's kind of warming. The girl is loved. That's what matters. I'm almost done. The girls say Lucille Ball
My sister just rang and they started calling for me downstairs. That makes me feel goofy.

Thursday Halloween
Principal Cicada chose me to go to a seminar at the county office of education in Downey about the latest research on how the brain learns. It was clear and cool driving there this morning. The mountains seemed magnified like you were looking at them through binoculars. I was glad to be driving though the outlying communities of LA. Southgate and Downey are an amalgam of the industrial and suburban. It seems to be eternally the seventies. The strip mall cocktail lounges with no windows, the two story motels and apartments arranged around parking lots. Everything is plain and straight. I was about forty-five minutes ahead of schedule, so I stopped at a Denny's on Firestone and got coffee and the American Slam breakfast: Three eggs over-medium, two bacon slices, two sausages, hashbrowns, and I got a side of biscuits and gravy, plus an order of sourdough toast. My eggs were a lot runnier than over-medium, but I enjoyed them anyway.
The institute offered strategies for teaching more in accordance with the latest research about different ways the brain thinks. At lunch I called Jeff and Nina, since they live in nearby Bellflower. They gave me directions to their apartment on Clark between Alondra and the Ninety-One. They gave me a Pacifico and some pot in a pipe shaped like the Tao.
"How come when I went trick-or-treating I never found any of those houses where they put acid in the candy?" I said.
In the car on the way back to the seminar, I heard a sound byte on the radio for Channel 2 Action News: "Could someone you know be hiding a drug problem? Many professionals are addicted to drugs. We'll tell you what to look for."
My principal sat right next to me. I tried to breathe the other way.

The computer glimmers when the microwave is on.

Will there be many freaks on the streets in Hollywood tonight?

Fairfax

October 29 Tuesday
I'm in the Kibbutz Room alongside Canter's on Fairfax because I'm an idiot. Getoff caledl. He had an invitation to "Fresh Talent Night" at Cafe Largo. He said he'd buy me a couple of drinks. We can't go in until 7:30, so we came across the street here. A Sandy Koufax plate hangs on the wall. Getoff and Steve are talking music business. A lawyer around the corner of the bar chimes in with his New York Jewish accent: "You need Vaudeville. All those old guys had Vaudeville. Do a little joke. Sing a little song. Some soft shoe."
"I'm not so sure the TV doesn't watch us," says the bartender. "How hard would it be to put a camera in there?"
"Let me tell you something," says the lawyer. "As a lawyer, I can find out anything I want about you in about ten minutes."
"Soon," sez the bartender, "when you're born, they'll put a chip under your skin."
The deli is awfully quiet tonight. I should have stayed home. Two hours I'll not be working on my book--"What are you writing in there?" asks the lawyer.
"Every word you say," I tell him.
He makes a noise like he's got a hair stuck in the back of his throat.
"I'm just writing whatever I can think of," I say, "which ain't much."
He makes the noise again. I keep writing. I feel like I've been wrong about everything for so long. How do you like that, Mr. Lawyer?
We're back across the street at Largo now. A band is playing. The drummer looks like a hobo who just fell off a train. Denny Brown's making a sincere effort. It's too bad this Ben Folds dude in the piano isn't a woman because he sings beautifully, but in a woman's soprano.