Category Archives: Journal

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Two Blog Posts in a Row

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I’m going back to work today. Shit I just wrote a post and deleted it. Got to get back to the old days of just writing some shit down. Stop deleting shit. Traffic out on the street is a bitch. I guess everybody is leaving for Labor Day, but the sky is gray out there and it’s hot. I got my Birkenstocks yesterday and wore them around town and my feet hurt like a motherfucker. That new leather just dug into the tops of my feets. God damn that shit was rough.

I went to this bar that newly opened up like two blocks from my house. I’ve never lived this close to a really cool bar. I didn’t realize it was cash only though, so I couldn’t get a cocktail or deviled eggs because I only had sixteen dollars.

I’m listening to Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. I usually listen to just the Stuck Inside of Memphis or whatever because Hunter Thompson refers to that song in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but this is the first time that I’m listening to the album from start to finish.

My morning routine is getting really set. I mean I wake up and do the same shit for the first hour of every day. I don’t mind it, it’s really preferable because it sets up the rest of my day really well. Basically I keep adding shit that makes my wife’s life easier right from the jump, so then the rest of the day I don’t have to go out of my way to get anything done, not only because the perception is that I’ve done more than I have but also because I actually have gotten a lot of shit done. I water the plants, make the bed, do yoga with her, fill the water filter in the fridge, clear the dishrack, do the dishes, make the coffee, make the toast, put out the condiments, clean out the cat shit since her sister isn’t here to do it, take the trash downstairs, fill up her water bottle and put it in the fridge, eat breakfast with her, then clean up and wash the dishes and then it’s only 10:30 and I can just chill until work.

But can I though? I don’t know, there’s always some lingering shit that has to get done around here, I feel like, and should I be studying up on wine and the restaurant menu and shit? I don’t know! Fuck it.

Plus what the fuck, I was taking a multi vitamin every day for like two weeks and now it’s been five days and I also did not go to the gym at all this week. Everybody’s got their own life I guess fuck it.

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Scratching My Balls Part 10 ^ 6

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Sometimes you just need a good cry, right? That’s something people say. Have you ever done that? Sit around and wait for your Zappos order to show up all day?

Today I am off. I worked my way through a couple of chapters of Learning to Program by Steven Foote. Suddenly I couldn’t proceed. Mental capacity reached, I guess.

I don’t really mind going to work any more. I have been at my current restaurant for a year or so and it’s pretty comfortable. I can say funny things to people with uncanny regularity. I enjoy doing that.

I have been bad at blogging so far this year with only forty posts. I guess I just ran out of shit to say. I guess I’ve said that before, fuck it though, because if I can’t repeat myself I guess I won’t write any more posts this year.

I put on some pants a minute ago and showered my genitals with baby powder. When you just been sitting around scratching your balls all day shit gets real. Got to calm that shit down. I was like, “Hell yeah I’m about to go outside before I scratch through to the other side of my balls here. Jesus Christ I am fucking disgusting. Why didn’t anyone tell me to stop scratching my balls all the time when I was a kid? How do I stop this shit! Fuck! I’m totally going outside now, fuck it! I’m going to have an espresso somewhere and be mad European and I’m going to wash my fingernails.”

I put on some pants for the first time today and I put on the baby powder and now there’s a fine white over everything. I tried to create a good “while” loop in JavaScript and then I decided to just stay home and have a good cry on the old blog. God damn Zappos. I was supposed to get some Birkenstocks today. There’s a quarter sized hole in my Gap flip flops circa 2005 so I thought I would treat myself. Then the first time I ordered them everyone on the reviews was like “Watch out! Get the narrow size because these shits is wide as fuck!” So I did and of course my feets was wide as fuck so I had to send em back.

I ain’t really do any writing at all, except for my weekly posts on Conceited Crusade. My writing friend left town so I said fuck it.

What the hell am I going to do? I could go out there, I guess. Fuck it. Pretty rich for the next three days since I’m not going to pay my student loan on time. Can probably afford three dollars and now the itch is coming back with a vengeance. Hoo. Shit.

I am into this whole programming thing and think I can make good money doing it once I figure it out, I just don’t have any time frame for when I’m going to figure it out or when I’ll know that I have figured it out. I guess I’ve got to buy some tech magazines or something.

I’m pretty sure whatever social obligations I have are falling through the mother fucking cracks so to speak because I have no idea what any of them are. I don’t have time to think about it since the house is clean and I have a steady job with reasonable time off and I’m getting solid amounts of sleep at night. At the end of the day what is there to do? Should I buy a book about math and try to relearn that shit? I’ve got to come up with some kind of curriculum for myself or some shit. Even my days at work are pretty much days off since I just got to go in there make enough jokes to forget that we’re all dying and then go up and down a bunch of stairs like three hundred times.

New York City. Don’t care if I stay or if I go. Indifferent. Just got to manage this shit really, manage your expectations and plan your coming and your going. Don’t get caught in the wrong place at the right time.

Reading the New York Times and thinking I should read something more representative of something but I don’t know what. I should know things. I read an article about Joy Williams and another one by the same guy about the band Spoon. Now I’m listening to Spoon. I guess you got to waste your life in one way or another.

I got to think more positively. I got to feel like things matter and shit like that. It’s almost decorative gourd season.

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Homoerotic Muscle Lengthening

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Have you ever seen a big man do yoga sans irony or skill? Jorge says it’s important to stretch before we get in the steel box with wheels. This afternoon were headed to the bario.

I haven’t done yoga for a couple of months, and haven’t done it regularly for maybe a year or more. My body has really been aching, especially my back. And I think I have a glass heel. And my elbow hurts because of basketball. Some people can shoot all day and their elbows never get sore. Maybe I am shooting wrong.

I think I will try yoga again. Good for the soul, too, right? I wish I knew kung fu. 

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Waking Up in Bogota

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This morning, a car outside was playing fiesta music. I mean the kind of music that makes you feel like you’re waking up in a commercial. It’s bright as hell in the apartment, and somewhere nearby there’s an important convention of emergency vehicles.

I don’t really feel like writing a god damn thing. I really just want to go back to sleep. Too bad I can’t. Too bad. 

I remember thinking last night that I am getting too wound up and I better just relax again and forget the feeling that I’ve done nothing of import in thirty years. I usually forget stuff like that in the morning. 

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The Well-Tempered Clavicle

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I’m back on my coffee grind hardcore and starting to think about drinking again. The other day I had a taste of rum for professional purposes and I was like hoo damn I could probably drink some of that. But I don’t have any here anyway so it will be a while before I am singing the hurdy gurdy and toasting the cat.

I am still working through Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland which my book guy gave me to inspire me to write crazy shit but it’s pretty hard. I’ve been meaning to read Donna Tart’s The Goldfinch since it came out a few years ago, but today I finally got it at the library. I also read David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife while I was there. It was an amazing book about drama and art in general. He says “the purpose of ‘information’ is not to share truths but immobilize and enervate the soul.” By ‘information’ he’s talking about 700 TV channels (he wrote it in 1998).

It was a long walk to the Brooklyn Central Library on Grand Army Plaza. I walked through Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights. I helped a guy get into a building. He was wearing an expensive clothes. I hope he wasn’t an assassin, or if he was, I hope he was a good one.

I ate cereal for breakfast but I didn’t have coffee like usual. Lately everything I eat fucks up my stomach. I think it’s because I’m doing it wrong. I usually eat to fast, or too many different kinds of things, or too much of one thing. I feel like the humbug in The Phantom Tollbooth after King Azaz’s feast. So today when I got home from the library at three, I willed myself to eat slowly and only a little bit of some similar vegetables. Now I am waiting it out to see if that was a good idea. And I just made some coffee and god damn it is good.

I’m listening to Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier but I almost called it The Well-Tempered Clavicle because I of course don’t know anything about this shit. I’m really trying to appreciate classical music, especially Bach, because everyone, even David Mamet, says he is the Shakespeare of music. And I usually read classic books but I’m more into new-ish music.

Did you know that in 1960 Norton Juster met a kid in Brooklyn who asked him what the biggest number was and that would later inspire a scene in The Phantom Tollbooth? Maybe it was Carl Sagan. He would have been 26 at the time. Makes sense to me. Also, in the first draft, Milo’s name was Tony Flanders.

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Got A Whole Lot to Show For It

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Good evening ya’ll. Just hanging out. Just finished a bunch of work. Just sitting under a blanket on the couch and being like ho no bitches ain’t look at my blog yesterday. Tomorrow I am off and I’m going to breakfast with my in-laws. Then some more work for this old guy. I did a bunch today, yesterday, and the day before, trying to catch up and pay off the time debt. On all those days, plus the days that my good friend was here, I haven’t written any fiction. I wrote four or five thousand words on the day before all that shit went down, but I am past due. I don’t know I might be able to get it in today. I went to the gym again today, first time since last Saturday, but the third or fourth time in two weeks, so I’ll be in it soon enough. I went hard. I am starting to get tired of listening to Marc Maron. Nothing he did, just cycles you know. I listened to the Allie Brosh episode. I was so excited to see that she was on there because I love Hyperbole and a Half. I am glad she is doing well, even though she has had a lot of fucked up things happen to her and she is clinically depressed. By doing well I guess I mean still living. That is really the only thing to do at the end of the day, anyway, like The Preacher in Ecclesiastes said. You can figure it all out but in the end you’re going to die like a common fool. So eat, drink, and be merry all the days of your life. Still ain’t drinking. I ordered a beer at a place and got through half of it. I hated to do it but I didn’t want to finish it so I left it. Now my wife only finished half of her beer at home and I fought the urge to just chug it because I actually don’t even want it. I been drinking like three times as much coffee though. I was listening to Marc and Allie talk about letting one thing slip and then not being able to stomach their to-do list any more. Reminds me of whenever the phone rings I ignore it and then dread returning the call for two weeks and then finally do it and it’s fine but I just wasted two weeks. So I said well, I used to know this girl who was like that, and I said fuck it I’m not going to do that shit any more, I’m going to pay off the time debt to work. I’m going to catch up on that old man’s work and I’m going to call my parents and do all the things like a mother fucking adult. But not too hard, because that’s the key to me I think, just try a little bit over a long period of time. Fuck it. I’m living the fucking dream out here for real now. I was running today at the gym and I thought, this is it man, this is what I’m going to remember, some fucked up day. I keep trying to pay down these bills but when they’re all paid down if I haven’t enjoyed my life I won’t feel any different after that. Or maybe I will, because I make a good amount of money that I just throw down the debt drain every month so…who knows. But anyway. My good friend and I watched some fucked up movies while he was here – The Hustler, Dr. Strangelove, and Chinatown. Don’t watch those three back to back! Hoo wee. I ain’t been reading as much. I been listening to WTF non stop. Time to chill the fuck out. Cut the throttle back. Suck my own dick for a change. It’s hard to write here now, but then I try to write something helpful and it’s even harder. This is year three of the blog and the last two years I went hard on it for two months out of each year. Well I’ll try to at least get three out of it. Damn I am sore. Who wee but no for real though I actually am just about the happiest I ever been in my adult life…because when I was a kid though, that was happiness. Like a real little kid though. Too little to remember. Butter and bread I’m hardly dead time to move on and listen to a Jimmy McMillan track. I been listening to The Bends now. It’s good, too. And this Drake song 0 to 100. I cannot wake up early to save a mother fucker’s life. I went to the Spring Street Starbucks today. That shit was nuts. I say “that shit was nuts” a lot now. I never used to say nuts so…I wish I still didn’t. Wearing slippers and gray sweats every single night. Glasses all fucked up. Soon as I get some cash I’m getting some new ones. Waste of $230. Money’s still a thing but only for a little while. Well anyway I am going to try to write some fiction before my wife finishes her school work…oh damn…she literally just finished as I finished that sentence. Tomorrow I’ll get it in. And next week is light. Maybe I will come through with some kind of hot post for ya’ll. Yeah it will be so hot your computer will start sweating like a Long Island Ice Tea in a 24-hour Tijuana dive bar.

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What the Fuck Am I Talking About?

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I am seventy-five hundred words into this new story and it’s going really well. I started looking over my old stories and counting how many actual new stories I ever wrote versus how many diary entries I wrote. It turns out I haven’t written all that many different stories. I mean there are a lot, but not in comparison to the diaries. So then I thought how much time do I actually spend even writing fiction and it’s not much, cumulatively over the year. 2015 year of new stories. I’m still working on that badger story, thinking of new shit for it etc. Now I spend only a little time writing fiction, between ten minutes to an hour at most per day, but I don’t talk about it as much. I’m only talking about it today because I’ve got some extra time before work and I’ve already exceeded my thousand word limit.

I’m listening to songs from Ok Computer over and over again while I’m writing today, even though I’ve never taken the time to get into Radiohead. I know I should, but I should do everything else, too. I’ve been watching Mad Men episodes again at night. Tonight there’s a party after work paid for by the managers for the staff of the restaurant and I told my book guy I am not going to drink a lot and then I told him the story of getting fired from that restaurant where I was a bartender. The whole story, that might have been a mistake. Another chink in the armor.

I ended up sweeping all over the apartment today, lifting rugs and such looking for this earring that we lost the night of the last big drink. Can’t find it. I guess the cat hid it. It felt a little like spring cleaning. The cat is sitting on the bookshelf with it’s eyes closed like it’s really digging the music. I would like it to be spring, because it is cold, but today it is warmer and there was snow yesterday and now it is melting so fast in the heat that when you walk a tree-lined street like I did with my wife this morning it feels like it is raining as the snow melts from the trees.

Yesterday my wife and I made meatloaf for dinner. While it was cooking I was like, well I got to write a thousand words before bed and she said fuck it just do it now while this is cooking and I did and she folded the laundry. It wasn’t the easiest thousand words I ever wrote, with her there talking to the cat, but I was surprised to find that I could get it done even on a day that we were together. It has been six days since I committed to the idea.

Today I tried to do more pushups but I am really pathetic at them. I have been to the gym three times this month, and my goal is five so, well I think I should make it. I didn’t think it would be this hard, but with the vacation I guess is what made it hard. What the fuck am I even talking about any more? I don’t know, fuck it.

Today I went down to the train to come back home but there were these signs talking about G train to church avenue on this side of the tracks and I thought I was on the wrong side so I went out and came back in on what I thought was the other side and I tried to use my card which is a monthly pass but you can’t use the monthly pass consecutively because you could be letting other people in with your same card so it wouldn’t let me in so I had to use a different card so there went $2.50 and then I went inside and realized I was still on the same sign but this time I was sure it was right and I looked down the track and there was my train but it was too far to run for it and so I had to sit down and wait another ten minutes for a train and I was thinking fuck man! Fuck this shit! New fucking York! God damn it! So then I read some Bleak House on my phone and it passed but I was like god damn it! for a minute there.

I was listening to Marc Maron yesterday and said that Maynard from Tool told him that if you don’t believe in Magic a little bit it’s hard to be creative and I’ve heard that before in a different way but I thought that was a cool way to say it or rather it was a cool person to say it.

Half an hour until I go to work now…feels like it’s been a while since I’ve been in this position of waiting to go to work and not really wanting to go, but here I am all the same. And just last night I thought for the first time that I was excited to have coffee in the morning and already I was doing something fun, watching TV, and I thought that I had achieved whatever it was that I wanted to achieve in life and so it was all downhill from here and downhill is where I’m happiest anyway and anyway it was a slow grade but just enough so I didn’t have to work any more…but now I feel differently and as Chuck Klosterman said, “This is why I will always hate mornings.”

But no, I’m good, I’m cool, I’ve just got too much time today, enough time to be thinking too much about myself. The subconscious mind is the smart one, the conscious mind can’t be engaged too much or your start wondering about shit that you shouldn’t be wondering about…again, what the fuck am I talking about?

This is what you get. Oh, Jesus Fuck I forgot to eat! Well, at least for that.