3-24-98 Tu 10:04 AM
At school, at my desk.  Back to the drudgery.  Night school tonight.  Went to part of an Oscar party last night with Thing and Shirelle.  I didn't feel like I belonged.  Shirelle couldn't hear the broadcast, and it was too crowded to eat and drink, so we went to her place in the middle of the whole thing.  Ate some leftovers.  I walked to Auto Club yesterday, but they only take cash or check.  I had neither, so I will have to register my car today.  Still have taxes to get done.  Can't find the booklet Gramma sent me.  H&R Block or Mr. Matthew?  Got to try to buy that print still from Heather Hang.  Someone dropped it off to be framed six months ago.  The shop's liability runs out after one month, so they should just sell it to me.  The bell to end recess just rang.  We're going to an assembly.  11:20 PM  I have nothing to add.  I'm lying in bed, short of breath from lung cancer.  I'm going to read Herzog until I fall asleep.  I didn't get to my email like I wanted, and I didn't spend any time with Jim.  I made an abstract water color.  I think I'll call it "Abcess Tooth Extraction. No No Va Cain."  I need to get a mirror for my room and new clothes and furniture.  Tomorrow at lunch, the picture.  My taxes.  Talk to Ross Matthew.  Next week enlarge a photo.  Music at school tomorrow.  Maybe I should bring my guitar.  Roselle invited everyone to the Conga Room.  I'm supposed to go to the Dodger/Angel game with the Guatemalan Insanity Pepper that same night.  What else?  I'd like to golf soon.  My brother sent a registration form for his hundred-dollar golf benefit.  I have some credit hassles to think about.  The hair on my chest tickles my chins.  I skipped supper tonight.  On the way to Pio Pico, a toothless bum hassled me for eleven cents and called me Red.  A billboard said "Fatherhood is Forever."  It was drizzling.  I had the duckhead-handled umbrella Fred had handed me. 
I started to doze, because I didn't want to think how that umbrella probably belongs to someone else, and I always tell kids not to take things that belong to someone else.  Oh, nevermind.  Hey, look, it's the middle of the book.  See the staples?  I put up a post card of paintings of Adam and Eve on my wall.  What else?  I left my leather jacket at school, in my classroom, I hope.  My flab runneth over.  I want to paint.  I have one hundred and six hours of illness pay left this year.  I have a sore on the inside of my lip.  I didn't make phone calls I wanted to make. 

[A pencil drawing of the shield of Cosgrove, my maternal grandmother's maiden name, with three  vertical bars, rounded nearly to a point on the bottoms, like the inversed archways into dark tunnels, and of Eaton, my mother's maiden name, with a diagonal banner with three Xs from northwest to southeast upon it, and the extremity of each each X crossed with a short perpendicular line]
3-23-98 M 12:30 PM
Two hours to kill.  We'll go outside for some basketball today.  After school I'll walk up to Wilshire and register my car.  Maybe I'll check to see if Heather Hong will sell me that print that I want.  Maybe I'll check out The Tales Bookshop or Il Literature.  Maybe I'll have a glass of wine at Rita Flora.  I'm supposed to meet Shirelle at 5:15 tonight to go to this Oscar party.  When will I work on Jim?  When will I paint?  When will I practice my guitar?  What else?  I sat with Kelly at Tam's.  She left rather abruptly.  I wonder if I offended her.  I thought we wanted to do each other, but maybe I'm wrong.  I need to call Kim Booshay.  I saw Gabi Naranja in the teacher's lounge, but I didn't say anything.  I started reading Herzog.  Sounds like his wife is a bitch.  What else?  This is a number three pencil.  My wrist hurts.  I'm bored.  I'm tired.  I switched to a number two pencil.  I could go for a smoke.  I'm doomed anyway.  What else?  I'm a lousy teacher.  I forgot my tax info.  I'll not use any time for the the newspaper today.  Ugh.  I'm barely halfway through this.  Shrieks of medieval battle are heard from the playground outside.  I need a nap.  The kids are turning their eyelids inside out.  We did a Scoring High prep test for the Stanford 9 state test.  I have to update my ELD records.  What else?  Maybe [a pencil-drawn reproduction of a logo for MOUNTAIN GROWN COFFEE with a silhouette of a mountain and rays emanating from behind it and white bands flowing down its side representing snow, perhaps] I'll take home some tempura paints.  Still more than a page to go.  Would Hegel have this much trouble filling a page?  [a rough pencil sketch of a woman with short hair, wide nose, dangling flower earring, high collar, three buttons, maybe Shirelle] What else?  What else?  Next Friday we get paid.  Chase Walker is eight years old.  She keeps saying she hates her life. 
Fifty-five minutes more 'til I can get out of here.  [pencil drawing of the Lorax]
What else?  What else?  "What number you on?"  "I'm silly."  "Oh, Mr. Zurn, I just thought of something.  I want to take a part of the country where there's nothing and call it "Cheese."  A country called "Cheese."  All the houses would be made of cheese!" 
I said, God forgive me, "Chase, that's why you're not done, because you spend too much time thinking up goofy thoughts like that."  God forgive me. 

He Probably Wouldn't Have Had Any Steer in the First Place

3-22-98 Su 2:16 PM
The Guatemalan Insanity Pepper and I are driving around Santa Monica listening to the Angels.  We're lost.  I'm mute.  "He can hit, but he can't field," said The G.I.P.  "Is this Main Street yet?"

We're in O'Brien's now.  It's quiet in here.  No TV, no music, no talking.  Gip is reading some second-hand Old West books he just paid too much for.  My preposition is dangling.  This pencil is pretty dull.  The bartendress is the same.  So am I.  There's an old Placentia orange crate label at The Trading Store where Gip got his books.  The guy wants $25 for it.  I'll got back and offer $19.  It will look good in the kitchen.  I may already have a frame that fits it.  It will be good for my soul.  I think it will remind me to work with Jim.  I think I should check the bartendresses's ID.  I haven't read the newspaper today except a quick skim through the sports.  I was tripping out last night.  I hid out in Shirelle's room all during her party and left without saying good-bye.  She called all drunk and schizo-upset.  So I took a cab back to her house to placate her.  Howrad didn't call.  Should I ask the bartendress to put on the basketball game?  She finally put on some music to break the crazy silence, but it's some horrible Smith's album.  I guess when I'm done here I'll track down a newspaper and do the crossword.  My writing is rude and crude.  [pencil drawing of the Guinness toucan with a couple of pints on his beak]  I hardly acknowledge the service. "Wow. It says here there was a woman named Cattle Kate who traded sex for steer.  See?  Those days were crazy," Gip says admiringly.  "Says they were both hanged.  Her and her husband.  He protested his innocence but was hanged all the same."
"You'd have lost all your steer," I said.
"Shut up," he said, but smiled like I was correct.

I got a BJ this morning right after Shirelle's ex called. 
I ordered fish and chips.  I'm drinking a Harp.  What else?  I wonder what kind of an odessey, actually, let's go with oddesy, it will be to get a newspaper.  Kentucky just beat Duke to advance to the Final Four.  Should I get those clocks?  Gip wants to go back to the Santa Monica Trading Company and get the money back on the books that he paid too much for.  I think Shirelle tossed all the coasters I collected form all the pubs we were in when I was in Europe when I was fifteen. 

3-17-88 Giggle the Stomach

3-17-98 1:37 PM Tu
I'm taking the night off from work.  I bought a sack last night.  My underwear is uncomfortable with semen.  I ate pizza and pasta for lunch with half a beer.  The kids are watching Babar. There's a faculty meeting after school today.  I renewed my insurance.  Wrote a check for $413 and will pay $100 a month for the next ten months.  Had to drive up Olympic to do it.  Picked up the now-framed rollercoaster at Aaron Brothers.  What next?  Went to work last night.  Slept at Shirelle's.  Failed at sex again this morning.  Had a bagel.  Drove to school.  What else?  I finished that Care for the Soul book finally.  I don't feel compelled to comment on it.  Go to Molly's tonight?  Call Howhard?  It's mostly overcast today.  I could crap right now.  This faculty meeting is going to be a long one.  Should I see if Kendall or Yovonne want to hook up?  Gabi?   Did the crossword.
3-18-98 W 5:40 PM
Battered, beleaguered, bummed, beaten.  My drug talks about love     .     . (  (~   ...
She wants me to throw her a 26th birthday party.  I may even be invited.
3-19-98 Th 8:02 AM
Just ate a rice crispy treat and an orange.  I'm at school.  I forgot to take my vitamin this morning.  Fred and Alana are taking down the chairs.  There's a lot to do as usual.  I'm still hungry.  I could totally go for a turkey and cheese croissant from Lee's 24-Hour Donut across the street, but I'll save that culinary pleasure for tomorrow.  What about a hike Sunday?  At lunch today I have to pick up my Getty photos.  They're not particularly creative, I don't think.  I want to check on a price on the sweltering sun watching the guy drink his bier poster up by the developer at lunch today.  Carlos and Fred and Alana are playing a math game on the computer.  What else?  Night school tonight.  I could go for a wee puff o' the green.  The lens keeps popping out of my sunglasses.  What else?  The bell just rang.  I have to go get the kids.  We're supposed to do some testing today.  What else?  What else?  Ugh.  I'm an idiot.  There's nothing else to say.  Jennifer talked about rides at Disneyland that "giggle [her] stomach."

Quintessential Lowlife LA Literature

3-16-98 Mon 8:08 AM
I'm hardly writing at all.  My reading has slowed way down.  I spent most of the weekend with Shirelle.  Hum.  Friday, Modchill and Montes and I went to El Coyote for some drinks.  Then we went to Crazy Girls, but it was closed because its liquor license had been suspended.  So we went to Dublin's Irish Whiskey Pub.  Some crazy-ass crack whore kept grabbing our crotches and rubbing her ass on our zippers while we were playing pool.  We went to my house.  I told Thing and Tim and Montes and GIP that the four of them together couldn't take me down.  Montes started talking some bullshit about how he had once been a marine.  We all went out to the front lawn.  It was raining.  I took off my shirt.  Montes and Modchill rushed me, and I threw Montes to the ground and put Tim in a headlock.  I called on Thing and GIP to come at me, but they were sober and wouldn't bite.  Montes started complaining about his shoulder.  He said he was in a lot of pain and wanted to go to the hospital.  I scoffed and made fun of him.  GIP said he would take him.  We all rode along.  The hospital was weird.  No one was there.  Friday night, you'd think it would be rocking, but the place was deserted.  The automatic doors opened, but no one was at any of the counters.  We wandered upstairs, checking examining rooms, looking for help.  It seemed like the rapture had happened or the hospital had been suddenly abandoned because of some kind of viral outbreak of the Andromeda Strain.  We started monkeying with the medical equipment, taking each other's blood pressure and checking each other's reflexes and looking for pills.  Eventually we found a receptionist.  I asked her where the cigarette machine was.  I couldn't stop ragging on Montes.  I told her we had a wounded marine in need of morphine, stat.  Finally, some doctor wearing scrubs and an Indiana Jones fedora took Montes back somewhere deeper in the hospital.  We waited in the waiting room.  It was boring.  I started telling the guys that Montes wasn't really hurt.  He was just acting like a pussy and we should leave him there.  They were reluctant at first, but I could tell they wanted to leave too, they merely had moral qualms, and I kept haranguing them until they had all relented one-by-one, and we bailed on him--left our fallen comrade behind and went to nearby Jumbo's Clown Room for embarrassingly small draft beers and B-squad stripteases.  One of the girls started bitching at us about not tipping her, calling us idiots and telling us how stupid we were and I said, Yeah, and you need the money cuz you're paying your way through college.  We left.  Some of us wanted Burger King and some of us wanted McDonald's and we drove through both, and I ordered food at both places.  We went back to my pad, and I passed out, covered in fast food. 
I woke up with a nasty hangover.  Shirelle called and I drove over there because she usually has clean, cool sheets.  She made me watch a tape of Oprah, but I didn't mind because it had Robin Williams, Matt Damon, and Ben Afleck talking about Good Will Hunting.  I was jealous I didn't have anyone I could work with to write a good screenplay.  Afterward, we had a quickie in the shower.  Then she made me watch Titanic.  It's still lame.  We ate at Houstons in Westwood with her gift certificate.  A rainbow arched over Wilshire on the way back to Hollywood.  Back at her place, she tried to make me watch Dangerous Minds.  It was alike a bad made-for-tv movie, but I fell mercifully asleep.  She woke me up when it was over and said she wanted me to take a bath with her and sent me to the liquor store for champagne.  I walked there in my moccasin slippers.  It was closed.  I walked to Trader Joe's from there.  I picked out a bottle of Gloria Farrar.  It came out to $10.27 with tax.  I had ten bucks.  I thought of asking the panhandler out front for a quarter, but instead I went back to the refrigerated glass doors and got a six-dollar bottle of Asti.  I walked back to Shirelle's. She said she couldn't drink Asti; it's too sweet.  We just sat in the tub and got out and went to sleep.  Sunday morning, she and Kristina and I hiked up Runyon Canyon.  When we got back we made soft-boiled eggs and bacon and toast and French toast.  Then we went to my house and hung out.  I started falling asleep in front of the UCLA game, and Shirelle started bitching if I was just going to fall asleep, she wanted to go home.  I took her home.  I went back to my house and read the first five pages of Proverbs.  Wise men follow the word of God.  Evil men shall be forsaken.  I went back to Shirelle's house that night.  We watched Dante's Peak and got a bottle of wine and ate some leftover trout.  This morning we tried to bone, but I went soft in the middle of it.  She put on an x-rated move and tried to rub me hard, but my soft dick just came. I tried to tell her I needed to take a few days off drinking.  She was miffed and nearly threw me out of the house.  At school this morning, Montes called me.  He said he has a ruptured biceps.