10.26.01 everyone is pierced


jesus loves jake and satan is afraid of jesus: happy almost-samhain! when i grow up, my hit points will be higher than my IQ. just you wait.


thieves have attacked me. i had a lovely entry all scribbled into my notebook on wednesday: fifteen minutes later a guy came into the SPCA and took (it and) my purse. so long house keys, car keys, driver's license, cell phone, credit cards, sentimental personal crap, and about $3500 in overdraft charges, as my bank kept me on hold for an hour before i could cancel my accounts.


i'm really only angry about having to fight for my identity - he might have gotten my social security number, even - and about my personal crap. so i'm in line at the dmv for two hours, whatever. the idea of the guy ditching my ring at the bart station and eating my certs, though, makes my blood fucking boil.


sarajean informs me that i've been de-bridesmaided: her mother says that she will not attend if i'm in the wedding party. i have no anecdote for this, as it seems that no one knows what's going on. haven't decided if i'll go as a civilian. there are principles, obviously, but what wins?


jake is still my hero. when he went to the bridge school benefit on sunday, he had me on the phone for most of billy idol's set. when locksmith 2 finished breaking me into my house after the purse thing, jake materialized at the door with taqueria food an' coronas an' a loobylu mug. if the queen's still got the knighting bug, well - you know.

10.21.01 the vulture you can catch and eat


dad suggested last night that living alone is good for me. i think he'll ultimately be right, but i'm still learning to remind myself that i'm not a lightning rod. not entitled to the king lear routine.


charlie ultimately survived his fall, though his status was questionable for a while. he landed on his head (said the surgeon) and split his palate in two: imagine a straight line from your front teeth to your uvula. like that, thus blood. he also tore up his front paws, though i have yet to figure out where he fell or what he might have grabbed. he ran a fever and needed oxygen and sub-q fluids for three days, but he is home and himself, mostly.


jude picked up conjunctivitis while charlie was gone, so i brought cat 1 home on friday night and took cat 2 in on saturday. was still feeling sorry for myself when we both came home last night, so i went to the corner market for a beer - just one, as i had to be at work at eight this morning. grabbed the garage door opener instead of the keys (same shape); didn't have my uncle/landlord's phone number; assumed 1) he was probably in sonoma anyway but 2) a cab ride to the sunset and back couldn't possibly cost more than a

locksmith: the deadbolt your boyfriend installed is very good. i'll have to destroy it.


lauren: so how did you...learn to pick locks?


locksmith: [shiftily] locksmith school. they show you all of the tricks and then drop you into the water. some swim. some drown. [pause] that's the way things are.

i'd put a padlock on top of the deadbolt, so destroying the lock was no good, as we had no electric saw. back to the front door / apartment door, where (contrary to what he'd predicted) the guy jiggled a piece of plastic at each frame and the things practically giggled and opened. i got a $15 discount becasue the back door was destroyed rather than opened, but ultimately i paid $50 (kill deadbolt) + $65 (front door) + $65 (my door) + $35 ("nighttime fee") + tax. one beer = $240.

locksmith: i'm in my van with your bill and i'm thinking, you said you put the padlock on the back door because your cat fell out the window. doesn't he land on four legs? you must replace him.

i did get the guy to teach me how to pick locks with coke bottles. as for the $240 beer - i could hate myself, but it's over.


drove to work at 7:30, comatose from waking up with the cat all night. stopped at the supermarket, traded my last two bucks to kick up a nice coffee smell in the car. mix tape popped on to "papa was a rodeo". good morning.

10.19.01 the moon and the yew tree


most of what has happened in the past few days touches on others' privacy, so i can't say what i would like to say about my own life. the one thing that is just mine, and it is my everything, is that charlie fell four stories from my apartment on wednesday. i found him in a pool of blood on the pavement.

10.16.01 reading rainbow


a gaggle of japanese journalists turned up at my house maybe twelve years ago to interview emperor ed. they were with a lifestyle magazine that wanted a piece on an american who drove a hot japanese car (a nissan 300ZX, so this is debatable: the electronic woman who lived in the dashboard malfunctioned and announced that the door was open often enough to make me cry several times). they snapped pictures at the office (dad and a fleet of lawyers), at home (me on a scooter, mom on an exercycle), on the road (not him, not his car). they gave me a plastic car that turned into a disturbing pile of school supplies. i remember looking at the toilet in our downstairs bathroom: wow, guys from japan used this.


the article we received was dubious, as it went journalists > translator > dad > translator > journalists > editors > another translator > us. dad became The U.S. Salaryman with a majestic moustache, an hypnotic voice and a devastating effect on women. i looked chumpy in the pictures, princess di was on the cover of the magazine, this is what i remember.


this, more than the wind-up bird chronicle or the elephant vanishes or what have you, is what i liken to murakami's underground. murakami admittedly had a weird thing to do when he collected the survivors' interviews, but the whole thing goes praise/typification of interviewee, random personal details, repeat. i'm only halfway in, but i kind of get a foreigners + toilet / terrorism is weird vibe that will be hard to shake. imagine douglas coupland interviewing new yorkers about september 11, then pretend that you're icelandic. that's close.


that said, it's interesting to see murakami the interviewer slide into murakami The Artist. he visits a girl from the marinouchi line whose exposure to the gas left her in a semi-vegetative state:

As I talked to Shizuko I tried to look into her eyes now and then. Just what did she see? What lit up those eyes? If she ever gets well enough to speak unhindered, that's something I'd want to ask: "That day I came to visit, what did you see?"

ah, the humanity as The Artist gropes for a role in The Event. is he on business, or is he hoping for a picture of himself next to something big?

10.15.01 is a burning thing


paunchy guy in a tee shirt on geary: FBI: female body inspector. i have one that says sorry, i only like emo boys with broken hearts, but i kind of want his. shirt.


a flurry of music in the wake of 12 october: must buckle down and absorb agaetis byrjun (sigur ros), white blood cells (the white stripes), vespertine (bjork), an' back in black (ac/dc). combining the last two in a mix tape to see if i can split my brain. my hung-over neighbors seemed to enjoy the pairing at seven this morning, a wee thank you for playing ping pong and screaming until four last night.

10.12.01 kissing your reflection


when val / grant / mari / jake were here to feast on saturday, mari and i scuttled up to the corner to see if searchlight market could save our beer supply. they were closed, so mari grabbed a flower from evil frascati (the mean italian restaurant on the corner; benevolent and oddly eighties baldoria anchors the corner below us) and we went home. half a red onion (and little else) survived dinner, and it was the same shade as the flower, so we plopped both of them in the vase that doesn't house Fish Tim (he hides in vases, my french press, or the measuring cup, as charles bronson learned to go after the fishbowl). nearly a week later, the onion and the flower are still bobbing happily in the fridge; they've neither rotted nor begun to smell. maybe the combination was magical.


on blogs that are not blogs: jorge colombo is cool, ditto his raison d'etre.


little cat left a birthday present under my bare toes this morning; not so transient as it might sound.

10.11.01 the eyes still small


i think turning 23 should carry extra privileges, like ferret ownership or a tank license. on perks: it occurs to me that maybe moving to the suburbs means a yard, and that clearly means livestock. i understand the problems with believing that > 5 miles from subway = farm, but petfinder says that new jersey is just teeming with piglets. vegetarians generate a lot of organic garbage, you know.


in west virginia petfinder listed, god help us, a fox cub. if you're familiar with ted hughes's "epiphany" (forget "the thought fox", it compares poorly) - it's just hard to have a hair trigger, you see.

10.10.01 her whereabouts are unknown


no more lies! i live at the oakland airport. the lauren you see at the apartment is actually a fantastic projection from a hidden lens on the cat. i'll patent the technology as soon as i get a break from greeting'n'sending folks who go places. no, that's a lie too. there is no break.


i'd like to talk to work and movers and cellular phone people about the move back east, but joe is a beautiful dandelion who floats and scatters and amuses children or something. i've tried to weigh him down with food; it doesn't stick. i will continue to nest if i can't plan on leaving, is the problem, and i can't swear that i won't acquire more furniture and animals in the absence of a schedule.


i want to apply for courses in DC and pack my dishes between newspapers and have a go at the whole rosy glow a place is supposed to take on when one leaves, but - how wearystaleflat&unprofitable, and all that crap.


so current events got me after all -

WASHINGTON - Bat Boy has volunteered!


In a bizarre turn of events, the half-bat, half-human mutant reportedly has joined the U.S. military - and is being trained to use his super-sensitive hearing, keen sense of smell and other unique talents to hunt down terrorists in the caves, holes and hovels they hide in!


[...]


"When the Marines found him, he was clutching a newspaper that had a photo of Osama bin Laden with a sniper's crosshairs over his face," reports the source. "He must have found it on a road or in a parking lot because it had tire tracks on it.


"I'm told that he held it up, pointed to the picture and said, 'Bad man...lemme get him...bite him up."


[...]


Here's how Bat Boy can help America!


"Bat Boy can go places and do things no normal soldier can," a highly placed Pentagon source says.


"His hearing is 10,000 times more acute than an ordinary human's and he can track smells like a bloodhound. He's able to navigate in total darkness like a bat, using a kind of built-in radar. He can scuttle up a sheer cliff effortlessly and is strong enough to pull a man's arm out of the socket.


"Best of all, he's totally at home in mountain caves - where many terrorists like Osama bin Laden hide."


Surprisingly, Pentagon testers found, Bat Boy has a gift for learning languages quickly.


"While he speaks English poorly, he understands it perfectly and should easily master Arabic," the source says. "This will help him on spy missions behind enemy lines.


"Bat Boy used to be America's most wanted - but now he's America's secret weapon."


(weekly world news 10.16.01)

10.09.01 cheesecake doesn't fuck around

tour of north beach and city lights last night. still haven't figured out why i hate that store; a shame, as the key to my issues with the town as a whole are probably nested in that smaller peeve. ah well. home and wine.

today, the park and the japanese tea garden. big old koi, botan ame, a snow globe, a stretched penny with a stamped buddha. we rounded out sara's trip at tommy's mexican restaurant, thank you jen, where the staff chatted with the animatronic skull at the door: "hey you, what are you doing?" "hello, senor!"

ditched libra at the ten-page final stretch for murakami's underground, a series of sixty-two interviews associated with the '95 tokyo subway attacks. topical, yes! intentional, no! a segue, hell no! we all deserve spankings for the shenanigans of the last few weeks.

Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise...Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency...Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope...Our four...no...Amongst our weapons...Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise...I'll come in again.

10.04.01 pms decision tree


the california megasuperultramarket has street signs: ADULT CEREAL, CONVENIENT BREAKFAST, INCONTINENCE. traffic snarls when extended families shop produce together. twelve-pack soda ghettoes. weather: safeway pipes in thunderclap effects when the vegetable misters get going. two quarters get you a wee plastic HOMEY (tm) near the checkout gumballs. the machine is always empty, but shana promises that i can have some of hers. she's got duplicate bouncers and skinny handkerchief guys.


for the tube children: having decided that i'm to be marjorie trash heap for halloween, i rummaged for inspirational images and stepped in jump the shark. one really needn't google neurotic people talking about tv - they occur organically enough - but when one does and one finds them, they sure do pass the time.

10.02.01 latvia and lithuania


had one of those satisfying little epiphanies where pop lyrics are spontaneously intelligible. if you wrestle with this sort of thing, know that "take a chance on me" begins with "if you're all alone / and the pretty birds have flown..." baby steps, you see. baby steps.


the heat wave up here is finally over. this is great, though i feel like a chump for buying two fans the day before it broke.

10.01.01 plant on premises


was planning on daisy-chaining last week's trip home with my entries when i got back. i slept instead, mostly, and am duly ashamed. maybe rapid eye movement is a finite quantity; that would explain paul's insomnia coupled with my inability to stay conscious for more than six hours at a stretch. i'd swap if i could, sweetie.

casa de puppy; ellis island; taco loco (09.23.01)
LOS ANGELES: after negotiating rat terrier farms, forty seven carl's jr / green burritos, and the grapevine, lauren joins a crowd of hundreds and several barnyard animals at LAX's parking lot B, where she greets a very bushy joe. they continue through the orange curtain to mendocino court, where mama oster ferries them to the best surf shack food in the continental US. later, the gypsy den is visited [1].


monday - see 09.27.01


vincent vega; this mortal coif; the red scare (09.25.01)
ORANGE COUNTY: sara and lauren rendezvous at their former workplace, the amsterdam coffeehouse. lauren orders her usual (coke / espresso / vanilla syrup); kevin recognizes her and gives her a discount. it is revealed that joe is getting his hair cut at one; sara responds with an appointment of her own and leaks the plan to amy, who speeds to the styling site. michael and amy arrive; their hair is admired. sara chats and lunches and develops highlights all at the same time; she too is admired. joe emerges with smashing hair to great admiration as well. clay (the gypsy den [3]) describes his weeks on tour with belle and sebastian and his conversation with jonathan richman; he is loathed. lauren and joe meet emperor ed for dessert and coffee; current affairs are discussed as lauren's eyelashes attempt to eat her head.


play it again; bargain wednesday; apocalypso (09.26.01)
GILROY: afer revealing his plan to shelter in san francisco and make for DC on monday, joe purchases sunglasses with lauren [the gypsy den, 4] and they depart for the bay area. when lauren announces that she prefers death to a drive through oakland, the duo retreats from the evening rush hour and attempts to score bargains at a roadside outlet mall. soap and a wool skirt are purchased; joe is disgusted with the lack of scorching values at brooks brothers. the denizens of taqueria cancun terrorize lauren. the cats smash a fishbowl in the kitchen; the fish is safe in a flower vase.