4-2-98 Th 11:25 AM
We only have about five minutes until we leave for lunch.  I read some Herzog this morning.  He's firing letters off to everyone from Adlai Stevenson on down.  He seems compelled to clarify his positions in the wake of his divorce.  I read through some of the paper.  I've got the Dodgers and Cards on the radio.  The kids are doing some multiplication problems.  I need to write today.  I have to exchange those pants at Miller's for some that fit.  What am I going to do about my busted camera?  I have to do Damnesia's cum.  I have to get my register ready for tomorrow.  I have to clear off this desk.  The Dodgers are already losing.  What else?
I still have to take care of state taxes.  Call Ross Mathews.  Pay insurance.  It's eight PM now.  I'm almost out of here.  I ate a shitload of Chinese food before class.  I can hardly believe the enormity of my gut.  I feel like Lenin in this goatee.  What else?  McGwire blasted another bomb to beat the Dodgers in twelve innings.  I'll have to call Shrill when I get home.  What else?  No night school for twelve more days.  I'll party and write all night.  I might go to the Long Beach Grand Prix with Thing and his girlfriend this weekend.  I might see Cathy Howrad.  What about Shrill?  Next weekend, Thing invited me to Vegas with him.  They gave him the flight for his birthday at work.  He's never before been.  The golf tournament is the same day as the flight leaves, though.  Plus my mom is expecting me for Easter. 

W 4-1-98 2:50 PM
Waiting in the same booth at El Coyote where I waited last Saturday, waiting for Julia again.  We're going to talk writing.  I need to come up with something to say.  The news on the TV over the door says the Paula Jones suit has been dismissed.  Thank God.  I was afraid they were going to try to outlaw horniness.  They're filming something across the street.  The kids were trying the old there's-something-on-your-tie routine in honor of April Fool's Day, but I wasn't biting.  Jennifer called me with more of her screen play.  The dialog seems to flow right out of her.
8:07 PM
I'm in class now.  Julia and I had a mutually beneficial visit, I think.  I"m going to get the guys in and out of Tink's house for next week, but we're going to concentrate on getting Julia to finish her novel by the summer.  I typed fifteen minutes when I got home, but Gip called and wanted to talk baseball and Shirelle called to hass me and Mac called about calling up the Hall of Justice website to find out about his fingerprints, and that was all that got done.  No paper, no Herzog.  At recess I talked to Matthew Keith about my taxes.   He said to call him tonight.  At recess I went to Blockbuster and dropped off video, then to the photo shop and dropped off that roll of film I shot before my camera froze and I bought batteries for the camera (they didn't do the trick), and I stopped by H &R Block and had it explained to me that there must be some mistake with my payroll, because the state didn't take out enought tax, but it's too late to do anything about it now but pay the piper five hundred bucks.  I got four bland, nasty pieces of Papa Rico cheese pizza and ate it during silent reading.

March 31, 1998 1:00 PM Tu
On the couch under a blanket of rainclouds drifting past the window.  I told the sub-desk I needed a sub for today, April first.  Oops.  The first Dodger game of the season is coming from St. Louis right now.  After a while, I'll head out.  What should I do on the way to Shrill's?  Taxes?  Battery?  Film?  Clothes?  I feel retarded, as if I got cerebral palsey, some inability to control my muscles.  I need to go grocery shopping.  I need a dresser and a bedstand and a rug and a mirror and some shirts and ties and sports coat and some books and CDs.  I have to do my laundry.  I read a chapter of Herzog.  His wife is a bitch.  He's on a train flashing back the way Jim will on his way to Vegas.  Dodgers go down 1-2-3 to start the '98 season.  I ran out to Miller's Outpost this morning.   They had a bunch of high school clothes.  I just got some jeans and underwear.  Cathy Howrad just called.  She wants to do something outdoorsy this weekend.  Yikes.  She told me she read a book called Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.  What else?  Can I work on Jim tonight?  I have to get the dictionaries.  What else?  I read the newspaper this morning.  Brillo-looking sky.  Stottlemeyer is blowing through the Dodger order.  What else?  Fuk fuk fuk.  I ate some pasta and a bagel and made a couple of little quesadillas.  I have to take those videos back to Blockbuster.  I typed fifteen minutes.  What else?  We need safety pins.  When will I paint?  Top of the order coming up for the Dodgers.  No score in the third.  Ug.  What else?  What else?  What else?  I can't believe there's still one more page to fill before I can quit.  I have to piss.  Here's E.Y.  He went down swinging his first time up.  I'll just write whatever Ross Porter says.  The pen doesn't feel comfortable in my fingers.  Stottlemeyer had a dead arm.  There's only been one opening-day no-hitter in the histoty of the Major Leagues.   Bob Feller threw one for Cleveland.  I missed the year.  Here's Piazza.  Piazza doesn't exactly own Stottlemeyer.  There's a little basehit.  That'll bring on Todd Zeile.  He's had almost 1,400 at-bats at Busch.  He flew out.  McGwire will be coming up this inning.  He was called out on strikes in the first.  This game is breezing along.  It's not even an hour old and it's already almost half over.  I should have gone to work.  Now I can stop.

3-31-98 12:25 PM Mon
Kids are doing silent reading.  I have an inflamed taste bud.  I slept at Shirelle's last night.  She made some BBQ chicken wings.  We watched some of "The Choir Boys." It was embarrassingly bad.  Yesterday we watched the marathoners go by from the Denny's at Wilshire and Western.  Then we took the Red Line downtown and rode the Angel's Flight funicular up to the Museum of Contemporary Art.  A lot of it is just crap.  We had some cocktails at Otto's and rode home again on the subway.  I took a nap, read the paper, listened to the Dodgers beat the Angels, read Proverbs about wisdom and foolishness, wrote some, water colored a little, and went up to Shrill's.  Mostly blue sky today.  We're doing testing practice.  I skipped lunch.  I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast.  What else?  I guess I'll go to the Beverly Hills library after school today.  See if I can get those California tax forms.  Sindy and Sandra are having a fight.  Sandra wrote a poem in Spanish.  I translate:

poems of 1998 for my house
less my amigas locas and don't
know nothing of my life because
they are mean, bad witches
they use pistols and smoke
and take beer and they sell
drugs.  and they are bad
with children and they don't
believe in God.
     For little Sindy     from nobody.

--Sandra Alonso, 3rd Grade, 8 years old

What else?  I'm hungry.  What can I eat that won't fatten me any further?  I have to drop off film and get new batteries for my camera at lunch tomorrow.  What else?  Haven't gotten to read any Herzog since I was stuck in that horrible "Kill Kill Kill the White Man" seminar where the gringo-hater was flipping me off.  What else?  The kids broke my Kachina doll.  They've broken pretty much everything I have brought to class.  I have to work tonight, natch.  I'll do my writing when I get home from the library.  I'm not a great man.  I'm a fool.  I'm not wise.  I'm a fool.  I met Julia for an editing session at El Coyote on Wednesday.  Maybe I'll take Tuesday off.  Maybe I won't.  Will I walk to work tonight?  No, because I have to go to the office.  What else?  Will I sleep at home tonight?  We'll see. I need new cloths.