Drug-Free Day

10-29 W 8:50 AM
Dijonia says I look like I just got off a farm.  I'm wearing jeans and dusty old work boots to school today.  I knew I looked like a geek, but I didn't care enough to change.  It's Drug-Free Day, Red Ribbon Week--whatever they call it.  They want us to wear red.  I was tempted to come to school with red eyes.  We're going to have an assembly and release a bunch of red balloons into the air.  I don't get the symbolism:  The balloons getting high, polluting the atmosphere.  I wish I was polluted.  Next year I have to quit one of my jobs.  Become the fucking writer.  This journal seems like one of the lamest I've done, but I'm sure if I were to look over the previous eighteen, I'd find them just as week.  Like my social skills.  Why am I not a part of a community of other thinkers and writers and intellectuals?  Where did this basic distrust come from?  It's because of the oppressive/frail nature of my ego, isn't it? 
What the hell else can we talk about here, you and I?  I could go for a home-cooked quesadilla.  I'll have to wait until after school.  Today at lunch, I'll only read.  We shoulda had a Halloween party.  Read some ghost stories.  Have Ol' Peculier play.  I read "The Red Room" by H.G. Wells to the class.  The language was too difficult for them.  I don't think they enjoyed it.  They liked "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", though, which is written in nearly the same style and about as long.  What else?  It's hard to think here.  Ready? : I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?  The kids keep taking my scotch tape to put it on their lips.  I'm so sick of this shit, waste of my time, feeling like a prick. 

10-28 Tu 11:45 AM
To lunch or not to lunch?  Whether 'tis nobler to fatten oneself on Jack in the Box burgers or wait out lunch and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when I get home...If I skip the burger, I can spend time writing this and finish a few more pages of the Naked and the Dead.  Maybe tonight I can carve pumkins at Shirelle's if I get my wannabe writing out of the way.   
Fuck.  Again I have no will power.  I'm at Jack in the Box, driven by the faintest little tummy rumble.  This restaurant is a non-smoking facility.  Across the street, a Nutri-System Weight Loss Center taunts we victims of the clown.  One of these days I'll try that Meijii Take-Out for lunch and that chicken place on La Brea. 
What else?  I have to be back at school in ten minutes.  I drove today.  I need to condense the first few pages of Jim.  Rawler e-mailed.  He and McCracken definitely want to go on the fishing trip.  Three for sure.  I need Peach, Drew, and Kayo.  I wonder if Walters would want to go.  I should call Jerry Ball.  Maybe Peter Lee.  John Bayless?

"Dow Record Plunge:554" screams the headline in the newsstand.  Ellen Washington was telling me how much fun she had at her high school reunion.      What else?     Now I'm all fucking bloated.  I have to type my one page when I get home.  Damnesia's got big ol holes in her maroon stockings.  [a pencil drawing of an ambulant Teddy bear with a ribbon around his neck]
[a pencil drawing of a grotesquely monstrous deep sea fish with bulging eyes and an upturned mouth full of fangs]I've got to get on my treadmill soon.  Sindy Pozo is a dumb little girl.  That's what I'm reduced to: writing the names of children I can't get to listen.  I suck.  I'm an asshole.  I'm a jerk.  I'm a dick.  What else?  In forty minutes I can go home.  I was a crappy instructor last night.  [another pencil drawing of another deep sea fish with a long protrusion off the front of its head,  nearly the length of its body, bending back up above its mouth]  This morning I did a good job.  I'm slacking right now, though.  God this is hard.  What else?  No softball Friday.  Shirelle said she was going to be a nun for Halloween.  What else?  This is getting me nowhere.  [a pencil drawing of a cute little bat]   Here we go again.  I'm a loser baby, why don't you kill me. 

10-27 3:45 PM Mon
There's not a thing to say.  I stayed home from school with a cold, but I'm going to teach my night school class.  I already typed these things in the fifteen minute file.  I typed a random third person page.  Randomness plagues my work.  My nose is raw.
Getoff just stopped in.  I complained about Carlin, his roommate, and we compared notes on what the problem is.  It's too tedious to go into.     I have to do my attendance.  I have to do the Comp Book transcription.  I have to read more  Mailer bio.  I have to work on Jim.  I'm anxious to get this Mailer shit down so I can do my Disney research.  When will I get those frames?  What else?  Ug.  There's still two pages to go and I'm already out of things to say.  I ate some mostaccioli my mom gave me for lunch.  What else?  My lips are chapped.

Our relationship is littered with landmines.  I'd like to rent some movies.  What else?  Eep op orp ah ah means I love you.  That's from The Jetsons, when Judy falls in love with a pop idol.  Baby!  Baby!  Baby!  Karen Berlin.  What else?  I read the first seven chapters of the Book of Job.  If you accept the good God gives you, you must also accept the evil.   What else?  I raised the blinds.  Thought it might give me an opening.  It's autumn and it feels like it.  As big a dork as Mailer seems in the bio, I see that I am second-rate in comparison.  He plowed the fields in college.  I made mine in a toxic waste dump.  Maybe some strange mutation will result.  What else?  I have to leave in less than an hour.  I guess I've got to shave maybe.  Can I get in and out of the office without the boss spotting me?  There are no drawings in this book.  Should I draw the cover of the Mouse Tales book?  Fuck.  You see, I don't have the patience.  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck every time I write fuck, the scratching of the pencil reveals its rhythm.  Fuck.
[Godlen light shining from a castle in the outline of Micky Mouse ears]

Pawn Off Shirelle

10-25 Sa 3:50 PM
Tony Brown's Journal - David Chittum, Author of Civil War Two. 212 575 0876
We bipped over to the house for a puff.
10-26 Su 3:50 PM
I can't believe the weekend is over already.  I'm on a boat chugging back from Catalina.  Shirelle and I went fishing.  I caught the same undersized bass three times and one sculpin too small to keep.  Only cost me a hundred and ten bucks.  Last night, Shirelle and Bernie and her boyfriend, Matt, and I went to a place called Rockin' Taco in Fullerton.  Some guy Bernie knew sat down and told us how his wife had left him...for his brother...who had just gotten out of prison...for a murder charge...and said he would kill him... and he has to share custody of his daughter with them.  Then we went to some lame bar where some lame singles Halloween party was going on.  A great big fat guy asked me if I was trying to pawn off Shirelle.  I didn't answer right away, but eventually I said no.  The Indians won last night to force Game Seven in the World Series tonight.  I'm in a booth right now surrounded by sleeping people.  I don't know where the fuck Shirelle went.  Maybe she's with the fat guy.  She probably wanted to show her displeasure with me for reading the newspaper all night.  Who cares that I took her out to dinner last night and then out fishing with me?  All instantly forgetten in her toddler's mind.  Or maybe she bailed because it smells like greasy shit in here from the head.  Hardly anyone caught anything today.  A couple good yellowtail and a bonito.  The pencil I'm wrriting with broke in half in my back pocket.  I did two crossword puzzles.  What the fuck else?  Back to work tomorrow.  I've got kind of a cold.  What else?
The water is blue.  The sky is white at the horizon.  Two ladies talk Spanish.  It'll be almost two more hours before we get back to Newport.  Then an hour drive home.  I'll have to call my mom and tell her since we got no fish, we're just going to go straight home.  I can't wait to take a shower.  The sea is pretty calm today.  I have a dry hack.  What the fuck else?  Ass and Pussy, Ass and Pussy.  We ate McMuffins from McDonald's this morning.  What'll I have for dinner?  The Spanish ladies stopped talking and put their heads in their arms on the table.  This boat is rockin' all us babies to sleep.  I'm going to have to ask the guy next to me to move so I can get out of this booth and go look for the ingrate.

She Had a Sizeable Dorito in the Crumbs on Her Breasts

10-24 F 10:30 AM
I lost one of my inhalers.  I've got to call the pharmacy.  This always happens on the weekend when I can't get a hold of the doctor.  I'm in the Wilshire Hill auditorium.  They're showing a video about guided reading.  In the video there's nothing exceptional about a woman reading to a small group of children except that the children appear to have been hand-picked and then sedated.  Urg.  What else?  Softball game tonight.  Shirelle called about it.  She wants to go.  Ugh.  I'd like to just stay home and and get on the treadmill.  I better get working on Jim tonight, too.  After the game, I'll go home and type.  No World Series tonight.  Maybe I can catch up on some reading, too.  Watch the video with Shirelle.  Girls!  Girls!  Girls!  For an icebreaker at this training, we had to get into concentric circles and face each other and tell about a favorite book.  Every thirty seconds the circles turned in opposite directions until we came all the way around and everybody knew everybody else's favorite book.  Florelle wore a low-cut top.  We didn't talk about books.  We talked about margaritas.  When the circle rotated again, I got another low-cut dress on Miss Johnson.  She had a sizeable Dorito in the crumbs on her breasts. 
What the hell else?  I better call Payless at lunch.  E-mail Jewelia.  My dog/  My D-o-g/ My dog.  Inventive spelling.  I need a new bulletin board idea.  the and to said you he it in was they she - Tim's drawing a hand.  Yovonne Ellington had a good presentation. I asked if she was related to Duke.  She wasn't.  The sweat of Septemeber finally ate throught my leather watch band.  I never felt it slip off.  Only noticed it was missing from my wrist and couldn't remember taking it off.  I found it on the floor and Scotch taped it back.  I was telling Mr. Modchill about it.  He called it a Scotch tape weld.

10-23 9:27 AM Th
I saw my beloved this morning.  She smiled when I waved.  Tall and lovely, she pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.  She was helping one of our blind students to use a white cane.  My student that she works with is not here today.  I hope my beloved comes all the same.  I want to ask her to lunch.  I doubt she'll be able to go.  I have her business card.  What if I call her?  Leave a message on her voice mail?  "Hello, Karen.  This is John Zurn...Gabriela Hernandez's teacher over at Wilshire Hill...ahm, I've been trying to think of some official pretense for calling you and then somehow working out a dinner date with you some time if your free, but I couldn't think of anything, so I'll just ask:  Would you like to have dinner with me some time?  Give me a call and let me know, por favor.  Or if it's too awkward to tell me no, just don't call for a fews days, and I'll understand.  Hope to hear from you.  My number is (213) 857-6681.  OK?  Bye."  Or what if she does come before lunch?  I can say, "Hey, when do you take your lunch?  You want to have lunch together today?"        But of course today, Gabi didn't come and Karen will have gone to the Visually Handicapped classroom first and know that she's not here and that there is no need to come to my room to get her and so won't come.  Thwarted again!  All week I hoped, and the Devil must have known.
Dijonia told Ashley, "I'm going to pull out all your extensions, little girl!"  They were fighting about something.  Ashely said, "I don't know what you're talking about--you the one with more extensions that AT&T!"  And Dijonia shot back, "You can't even spell AT&T!"  These are third graders!  When they saw how hard I was laughing, they seemed to enjoy that they had an audience to entertain, and then they started giggling and trying to out-insult each other, but I was laughing too hard to remember and soon their animosity had completely blown over. 

It's gloomy out today.  Julia e-mailed that she was in a funk.  I wrote back that I could out-funk her.