Blah Blah Blah

April 29, '98 W 10:30 AM
     Kids are doing Stanford 9.  I'm crabby.  I've got a banana to eat.  This is the eleventh day in a row with no sex.  I'm sure the cunt has someone she's fucking already.  Who cares?  Finished Herzog.  What can I say about it?  It was genuine, real.  That's how it is.  It's well written.  The trouble with thinking.  The trouble with intellect.  I just finished a short by Antonya Nelson.  "Naked Ladies", another work about the pain and confusion of sexual betrayal.  I've got to get my personality back, drink fearlessly, throw around my cruel sense of humor, don't let any bitch push you around.  I think to give up my will is to be God's instrument, but it only makes you the victim of evil; it's my out, that way I can think I don't CAUSE any evil.      A fallacy.
I thought I might copy some Herzog in here.  Maybe I won't.  I should have brought my camera so I could walk it up to Samy's at lunch.  I wonder if forty minutes is enough for that.  I have to remember to go to the LACAS office before class tonight.  What else?  Blah Blah Blah.  Like a big drink and a joint, like to push some people around.  Like to throw some blows, punch out a few lights.  Like to take some time off. 
"...he let the entire world press upon him...What it means to be a man...transformed by science...under organized by power...subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization in a society that was no community and devalued the person...Would you ask them to go hungry while you enjoyed delicious, old-fashioned values?  You yourself are an ingrate idiot...Oh for a change of heart--a true change of heart!"
"A woman who squanders her husband's money is determined to castrate him."
"Clothes are important to women because they are the setting of their only saving grace, their nakedness."

Yeah yeah yeah.  What else?  I can have a bakt potato for dinner.  Like to drink tonight.  Have to begin work on Coydogs.  Must give some words to Jim. 

No. 1 BESTSELLER   THE GREAT PRIZEWINNING NOVEL
National Book Award for Fiction
$10,000 International
Literary Prize

Symbolism in Random Life

Tu April 28 10:30 AM
Herzog seems to have found a peace in the Berkshires, but there are still almost twenty pages to go. Will Bellow save him or is the world lost to evil?  It's amazing the way the books I read mirror my life, without any foreknowledge on my part as to their contents.  Both Miller and Bellow are victims of evil from women?  Ahh, what else?  Yovonne just asked for help editing a paper.  I corrected some grammatical errors but lef the content alone.  She was writing about a feminist play called "Trifles".  Her thesis was that---Ah, it was unsalvageable anyway.  What else?  Things are warming up.  We've got the windows open here in room 33.  The kids are doing the Stanford 9 reading comprehension section.  It will take fifty minutes.  I hope I can get these three page done and finish Herzog in that time.  I think I'll read the Times today, too.  I had an apple before.  I have a banana I can eat, too.  Shall I have Tam's for lunch today and P B & J for dinner?  Will today be the day I buy the interior paint?  Will it be the day I take my camera in to be repaired?  Ugh.  What else?  I must be evil, too.  We're all equally evil.  We just gloss over our own improprieties.  Shirelle's better at it than I am, that's all. 
F--k her anyway.  Think of something else.  Like to go to Dionysian tonight.  Get drunk and f--k.  Next week.  I can take a day off next week or the week after.  Estaban Gracias invited me down to his beach house in Oceanside to party.  I forgot to put Compound W on my warts this morning.  I typed meaningless crap for fifteen minues, though.  What else?  The kids are getting fidgety.  The girls made a paper crown and put it on my head.  They lowered it over my eyes, giggling.  "Mr. Zurn can't see!" Carlos called.  "He's cursed by the evil girls!" (Whoa, right?)
We were playing "Dragon's Lair" on the computer.  We've been playing it for months during recess.  No one has been able to slay the dragon and save the b!+ch--I mean princess.  She's hot, too: pointed tiddies, almost no clothes, frolics in her crystal prison so that you can see her curves from all angles.  Of course, she's the creation of men...
I slew the dragon.  First time ever.  The kids exulted in the victory.  The princess was free and leapt into the arms of my knight.            Snares and nets the sinful man.

4-27-98 M 8:55 AM
Alana's telling us about her weekend.  11:15 AM  What shall I have for lunch?  Tam's?  I be eyeballin' lotsa wimmin today.  Fuck the bitchcunt Shirelle forever and all time.  It's almost time for lunch.  It won't be too hard to become a bachelor again.  Not this time.  I'm on solid ground.  I'm not Christ.  I can't save her soul.  I suppose I could die for her sins (if she gave me AIDS), I may yet--but I can't save her.  11:50 AM  I ate only a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple for lunch.  I'm in the little teacher's lounge.  No one else is here.  If someone comes in, I'll probably have to stop writing.  All I had for breakfast was a bowl of cornflakes and a graham cracker.  I wish that graham cracker had had more ham in it.  What else?  I tried to ground down my warts by scraping 'em back and forth across the rough asphalt.  I should have washed that apple Marlin gave me.  I can already feel the bacteria attacking my throat.  What else? 

Tim has come in.  He's having a school pizza.  I'd need to eat three of those things before I was happy. 
 "So wha'd you guys do in Santa Barbara?"
"Screw.  A lot.  Drank.  Screwed some more.  Mostly screwed.  Played a little golf."

So, what the fuck else?  Tim went to call the Science Center.  Now I'm on a lunch bench.  Christopher, who lives across the street from me, just came to sit by me.  12:30 Back in class.  What, other than 'Fuck that cunt Shirelle for all time'?  I just gave Marlin fifty standards because he won't read.  There's a staff meeting tomorrow.  I have to pay bills and go grocery shopping.  What else?  Typed for fifteen minutes this morning.  Third person, comp book, Jim work to go still.  Jim is such a stupid waste of time.  Like to do some kind of painting with sleep as a theme.  The kids are going to paint in a little while.  Maybe we'll go outside and play some ball after this.  The Milwaukee Brewers make their first ever visit to Dodger Stadium tonight.  What else?  Mrs. Holtz just stopped in to collect earthquake kit money.  It's a supply kit for kids who may have to spend the night at school in case parents can't get through to pick them up after a big earthquake.  I need some pussy.  What else?  Why is life so hateful?  All the larger circumstances suck.  Is God indifferent?  Herzog seems to think so.  Says death is God.  The preacher in Ecclesiastes says the same, death is a release from earthly pain and vanity.

[pencil sketch of MAD magazine logo and Alfred E. Neumann]

Whatever Gets the Pen Moving

4-23-98 Th 8:15 AM 
Damn.  I'm bummed I left my Herzog book in my night school classroom.  Now, not only do I have nothing to read during lengthy test sessions, I have to hope that prick Zanda doesn't do anything shitty with it.  1:45 PM  Kids are having some downtime after testing.  I read the Times, did the crossword, listened to the Dodgers lose to Milwaukee.  What else?  Fifteen minutes after work.  Same old boring shit. 
4-24-98 F 9:55 AM
In the Wilshire Hill auditorium, a few more hours of my life slip away with me in the trap.  It's almost lunch.  Unusual: I'm not hungry.  Had a ham and cheese croissant, a half bagel with cream cheese, and a piece of yellow cake with chocolate frosting, which were placed as refreshments for the seminar we're attending.  What else?
4-25-98 Sa 8:40 PM
From the Wild Goose.  A topless bitch hangs upside-down from a brass pole.  It would be cooler if her titties were big enough to hang upside-down.  Nothing like a little misogyny to get the pen moving.  We're watching the Angel/Devil Ray game here.  Just ate a "buffalo burger".  I don't believe it was really from a buffalo.  We went to the batting cages before coming here.  I took two hundred swings at 80 MPH.  I suck.  I busted down Shirelle's gate last night.  Fuck everything.  The curtains glitter.  A few of the girls have talent and beauty.  What are we going to do after this?  How can I get out of this funk?  I need a shower.  I need to cheer up.  Ugh.  Jane's Addiction.  She picks up her clothes and money and disappears.  Shirelle says, "You're right.  It's the movie business.  It's evil."
I find out the Insanity Pepper lied to me about fucking one of the chicks here.  Tink can only become a showgirl and not a stripper or else it will become too cliché.  The GIP wants to get a table dance.  Some skinny impy girl asked if I wanted one.  I didn't.  My conscience is a drawback;  Shirelle's lack thereof leads her on. 
4-26-98 Su 10:20 AM
Going to the Huntington to meet my mom and stepfather in a little while.  Right now I'm at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles.  Howrad flaked.  Shrill's a bitch.  I start from scratch.  We're going to Gordon-Birsch in Pasadena after the museum.  Steve may meet us there.  I should be home by seven, say.  I'll read my Bible and do my fifteen minutes.  I should finish Herzog soon.  A baby squalls.  Who can blame him?  I looked over the sports page.  Dodgers won.  Kings lost.

Heh Heh

4-22-98 W 12:50 PM
I'm tired.  I'm full.  I ate pizza and fet alf from Papa Rico's.  I sat with Natalie Gilbert and Juana Naranja.  Juanita commented on the beauty of a rose in the teacher's lounge.  I wanted to get her one.  I want to ...  There's so much.  Anyway.  We have an earthquake drill coming up.  I was wiping my ass and reading my horoscope.  It said, "People will say you can't do two things at once.  You reply, 'Watch me.'"  Heh heh.  What else?  I think I'll invite Howrad to the Huntington.  What else?  I'll nap before night school.  I'm horny.  Got Compound W for the warts on my thumb.  6:03 PM  At Pio Pico Elementary.  I could go for some McDonald's now.  Why do I crave fat?  Why does my body scream for heart disease and cancer?  Slept on the couch listening to Dodgers in Milwaukee.  They were losing 6-0.  Piazza homered to make it six to one.  I took a shower to try to wake up.  I washed my hair.  When I heard the game again, it was tied.  I'm still not feeling like I'm at the height of my alertness.  Thing and I went out last night.  I had two bourbons at The Bounty while we listened to some poor slob has-been actor try to sell us his thinly-disguised autobiography.  A black lady said I had a perfect nose.  There's an ego-disorder epidemic.  I was feeling like a failure after watching how disjointed Paul's movie is and how lame it is and how my work is the same.  I told this to Thing after the bartender got pissed because everyone was smoking and threw us out.  We went to Molly Malone's.  I had a Jameson's or two and a Harp beer.  The actor who was Sue in "Swingers" was there hitting on some fine young filly.  I see him in bars everywhere.  Haven't read any Herzog yet today.  Did read the paper.  What else?  I'm thirteen minutes late to class now.  What else?  I have to make some phone calls when I get home.  What else?  What else?  I wish I could just read and not have to teach anymore.  My belly strains against my pants.  What else?  The weather is warming up.  What else? 

4-17-98 F 10:55 AM
"Art froms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus or sordidness, defeat, despair..."
--Unibomber Manifesto

4-21-98 Tu 10:45 AM
I thought I had lost this journal.  It was mixed in with a bunch of other books behind my desk here in my classroom.  I only found it because we're straightening up for Open House today.  I was all out of sorts not having it these last few days.  I even walked up here Saturday and hopped the fence to get into my classroom to see if it was on my desk.  Who knows what startlingly profound revelations have been lost to posterity in the its absence?  The kids are doing their Stanford 9 tests.  Guess I'll just have a banana and a Nutri-bar for lunch.  We've got to get some current work up on the bulletin boards.  What else?  I have to wait around here until four o'clock.  I'll read some more Herzog in that time.  I doubt many parents will come.  The principal will be in, though.  Glorious called last night fishing for a date.  She said she had an anxiety attack at school.  She was hyperventilating, and her face went numb, and she couldn't move her arms, so they called the paramedics.  She's got a month stress leave and may sue her district, she says.  I offered calm reasurrances, but my selfish mind was screaming to get off the phone with the crazy b---h and watch the Rat Pack concert on TVLand.  What else?  I've got to read more to my kids.  What else?  Scab in left nostril.  Have to work at 6ix tonight.  I have milk and Graham crackers in the faculty lounge fridge.  You can see how intersting my life is.  Octavio Paz has died.  The paper said he plummed the dpeth of the Mexican psyche.  I plum depths, don't I?  I just don't come up with anything.  Paz found beautiful corals, wondrous creatures, golden treasures, sunken ships, bottomless abysses.  Me? : Dark, shallow water, nothing but sand.       What else?  Have to take these videos back to the library.  I already wrote about my weekend in my fifteen minutes of typing each day.  No need to re-hash it here.  I wonder if I can finish this journal by my 30th birthday.  Wonder if I can take Jim to p. 50 by then.  I should focus more on Tink.  It's all confused and wacked now.  How about Herzog commenting on Spinoza's depression with random thoughts?  That applies to me. 

4-16-98 Th 4:00 PM
Ug.  On the sidewalk in front of Louise's Trattoria on Larchmont.  Ate some pasta.  Now I'm having a latte.  Something gay about that word makes you want to go all limp-wristed and hold your pinky erect.  Going to get my prescription next.  Then I guess I'll head home and do that third-person page and listen to the end of the Dodger game.  I feel like I can't afford this meal, so I'm not enjoying it.   "...kind of small-towny..." I heard a guy say as he walked by.  Trying to be like a Paris expatriate out here on the sidewalk at the cafe, pigeons flying around.  Where are the pretty girls today?  Shall I do the crossword here?  The price is going up on the parking.  I got a new student today, a Yugoslavian refugee, first white kid I've ever had in one of my full-time classes.  Ugh.  What else?  A lady draped her LA Weekly over her bicycle frame while she went in for ice cream next door.  The pages started to blow away, so I weighted it down under one of the chairs at the table.  When she came out she thanked me and said I was sweet.  "Yeah, sure," I said.  What the f__k else?  Wish I could pay for a few glasses of wine without feeling any guilt.  F--k.  Herzog is going to visit Ramona.  She sounds pretty hot.  You see--he has it good, but tortures himself.  Like me.  I could go for a f--k soon.  I went to Shirelle's last night, but she was playing games with me.  Just to f--k with me or rather not to.  Then when I was leaving this morning she says, "Leaving so early?"  I was gonna give you some sex."  I had already told myself f--k it, though, and I left.       The village has no potential today.  The poetic souls are at the non-corporate cafe down the street anyway.  I write sh-t.  I think sh-t.  Therefore I am sh-t.  Could go for a smoke.  Supposed to meet Modchill maybe for a drink.  That looked like Linda Ashour driving away.  I should walk to work tonight, but I proably won't.  Wish I could paint.  What the f--k else?  Catherine?  Like to go to the batting cages soon.  Like to golf.  Like to have a nice fistfight.  Had to take some pseudoepinephrine to quell the gush of snot from my nose.  Awnings.  I like awnings.  6:10 PM  I was telling the children that historians would some day trace the fall of American civilization to the abolition of corporal punishment in public schools.  I saw my TA regard me with an impassive eye.  I said, "Or maybe I'm being too cycnical."  "No!" she said.  Oh, f--k it.  I'm whupped.  Beat. Out of it.