Excess Verbiage

April 5 Sat 6:05 PM
Now what? There's a reading of The Great Gatsby on CSPAN 2 right now. Joseph Heller and Garrison Keillor read the first chapter. I haven't heard of any of the other four readers. I'm trippin'. Thing's sleeping. I've walked into his room to talk to him while he sleeps. "Mrs. Ravel walked up to me and stopped to ask if I was growing a beard. 'Constantly,' I said. 'Even when I'm shaving.'"
Feeling like Farmer Ted, all nervous and shaky to be going out with a couple of girls tonight. I've been envisioning certain witty scenarios starring me, followed by abject geekiness and fear. How do you like them apples? How's Koi boy? What the fuck else? I may have used up all my small talk at lunch.
Sun 10:26 PM 4-6
I still have some reading to do; I'm just going to ram through this, so I can be done with it quicker and get to bed so that the alarm won't be a shock in the morning. I'm writing in bed. I've got to read the Bible. My brain is already alseep. I can't think of anything to write. Here's the last page of this journal. I think I'll be moving onto volume 14 after this. How long will it take me to fill a hundred books? My life is no longer a wreck. It's now a disaster. A train derailment in the Cajon Pass, leaking a deadly poisonous cloud with Santa Ana's blowing it straight to LA. Tuesday is the damn computer class. Someday, I'll move. I wonder when and how. It seems like I should stay at Sharp for two more years until I'm ready to move. Tomorrow might be a good day to go by Hoover Elementary. What else can I possibly say? I want to put up a basketball net on the garage.
Mmyeahhhhitsapossibility.
Help! I've just got to finish this so I can go to bed. See? Witness my dedication: I refuse to just give up and sleep. Someday my princess will come. I'm not much of a letter writer, per se. Could it be the actual physical act of putting it in the mail that daunts me? I don't mind writing e-mail. Hmmm...What else? Help. Bless me. God help me to feel well-rested. What else? I feel like I finally know what I want. Now if I can only find it.

 

QUALITY TIME by Gail Machlis
Using a wordprocessor instead of writing longhand allows a writer to replace whole paragraphs without having to go through the arduous process of rewriting them and having to weigh the value of each word versus the physical labor. So, instead carefully honed prose you have literature that is overburdened with excess verbiage...

4-4 F! 12:51 PM
From an Arco station in Rosemead with Mariachi and Gracias, on the way to the Dodger game. Surly, dishevelled. Urg. Uk. Just want to finish this. Maybe what I feel is incompletion from not doing this. Pablo said, "That dude could not speak English to save his life," after walking back from the cashier.
A girl around twelve ran down the street to greet a tottering old woman. They walked back arm in arm. Pablo had sex with Sanyo twice this week, he says. He's all giggly and "feeling chipper." Ross Porter on Dodger talk. "Who gives a crap?" Gracias says. He had a crappy week. He said he might have had a part in a guy getting fired.
Upper Deck, Aisle 1 Row B Seat 107. Pedro Astacio just gave up two runs to the lowly Pirates. An unheralded kid by the name of Mark Johnson just hit a run-scoring double. Kevin Elster got a cheap RBI off a broken-bat groundout to short. Royal Alfonso and a guy named Jesus and another guy came. We saw unused seats down closer to the rail and moved there so we all could spread out and see into the Dodger dugout. Today I loved Veronica Huerta. Butler just grounded out. A rookie named Wilton Guerrero is up. Ball one. The guy Gracias fired was a newswriter. They hand him a tape and he writes what the voiceover will say during the broadcast. A $60,000 a year job. Guerrero lined to short. Mondesi hit a long fly foul out of play, then flew out to right. What else? Kid looking through binoculars. Vendor yells, "Peanuts." The organ between innings. Did I mention I was in love today with Veronica Huerta? Last night Zuly asked me, "Como se dice 'Estoy enamorada de ti?" I said, "Nos dice, 'I love you' pero podrias decir, "I'm enamored of you,' pero aquel es raro." I've got the New York Times rolled up in the back pocket of my jeans. I was in the middle of my fifteen minutes when Gracias knocked. I managed t0 pull myself together and we had an extraordinarily traffic-free, five o'clock, rush-hour drive out of the city. I could kick myself for going to McDonald's. Too bad about the Sanyo Bible situation. Astacio is wild tonight, but he made it through the inning unscathed. Should I get a dog? I'll go join the guys up there along first; they've moved again.

She Said No, She'd Eaten Some Bad Mussels

4-3-97
I'm not exactly burning to express anything today. I'm feeling like a dumb-ass for drinking at the Sheraton yesterday when I was supposed to be at a lecture on literacty standards. I let the devil call the shots and horror of horrors, I drove home with about forty ounces of beer and a shot of bourbon in me.
I should have just slept, but Shirelle made a surprised drop-by to retrieve her mirror from the garage. I had to move the car out of the way and carry it out to her truck. Then I carried a big potted plant downstairs for her. I said, "What was the point of moving the mirror to the garage? Just making sure I don't use it?
"I was just going to come and get it out of there without bothering you," she said.
What could I do but smirk?
I shut the door and locked it. I went back to the couch and suddenly couldn't nap anymore because lost-love anxiety kicked in with a vengeance. In about two minutes, I had broken down and paged her. She called from Seven Eleven. I said I wanted to talk to her. She said, "Uh-oh, I hope it's nothing bad."
"No," I said optimistically.
She said she was going to drop the stuff off and then she'd come back. (To be continued)

I tried to sleep while I waited. It was useless. An hour or so later she knocked on the door. It was close to time to go to work. I called downstairs, "The door's unlocked."
"No, it's not," I heard, muffled through the door.
I descended the stairs and opened the door. It wasn't locked. We walked up. I collapsed on the couch. She sat on the La-Z-Boy. I asked could we kiss. She said she guessed so. Neither of us moved. After a while I got up and went over and kissed her awhile. She's got a superlative kisser, though she doesn't quite use it to its full potential. We stopped. I went into my room and lay on the bed. We lay together a while. I asked if she wanted a blow job. She said no, she'd eaten some bad mussels. So we batted some blame around until we were both disgusted. I couldn't stand to hear how wrong she is about everything. "Just go," I said. "Go on." I waved the back of my finger as if to shoo her away. She screamed and threw her purse down the stairs and then her keys and started a curse-filled tirade to herself.
"Good-bye, Shirelle," I said. "I love you."
"I love you, too," she said. "Too bad I'll never see you again," and she slammed the door.

This Is a Good One

4-2 Tu 9:41 AM The Universal Sheraton - Literacy Standards. Ooogh my head. Thing and I went out after I got out of class and trodmill. I had qualms from smoking pot. I was afraid to deal with the crowd at Luna Park, so I asked if we could go somewhere smaller first. We went to the Coronet Pub on La Cienega across from the vagina bar. I sat at the bar and it felt like I had never been in a bar before. To get my beer to my mouth was a clumsy, unnatural motion. I couldn't even do left-handed. I was afraid I would knock out a tooth. The girls next to us "danced" across the street. They were talking to some sleazoid porno producer with a fay voice and a line about his wine cellar.
We left after one beer. We had to park a few blocks away from Luna Park. There were a few hundred Africans waiting to get in, and I scoffed at Thing's notion that we would ever get in. "We're on the list," he said. "I've heard that before." Sure enough, though, we asked enough questions to get in the back entrance. It was a cool dark bar with a sunglassed and fedoraed singer fronting a jazz/blues combo. I paid for a coupla bourbons and stood nailed to the same spot as the crowd whirled around me. A number of girls stood by me and seemed to want to talk, but I had nothing. I switched to wine and rubbed a few elbows and managed a few comments. Thing called me over to a table where he sat with some people. I said a few funny things, but I don't remember what they were. Something about, "You can tell a lot about a man by what he says about the the movie "The Rock"." After a few minutes I went back to my corner by the bar. I thought of something I wanted to write, and I pulled out my little notebook, but alas, I had no pen. I remembered how I could produce a pen from thin air, so I looked and wished and there was a straw on the table in the dim.  I made one end pointy where a girl had chewed it, and as I stared at it, I created the possibility that it could be a pen, and I went over to it, and by the time I got over there, the transformation was complete, and now I am writing with that same pen.
The place was crawling with women looking for someone to call the shots. Rare, indeed, and of course it was one of those nights when I had nary a shot to call.
At home I gave Bayless a long, well-thought-out lecture on Jesus and God and depression and doing and job-hunting and not living off others, taking the reins, etc., etc.. It was like Ward lecturing the Beaver. Bayelss has got a religious doomsday philosophy, and I tried to present him one of hope and I suggested he take the trash out.
Oogh my aching head.