for the past few months i've been completely unemployed, living off of a comfortable inheritance. though assuredly glamourous, its horribly boring and my mind wanders to ridiculous topics. i haven't done anything really worthwhile with my time except go back to school, and join a gym.

so, a couple weeks ago i interviewed for a hostessing position at a pricey mount vernon restaurant. it went well, i thought, we shared some laughs and he seemed impressed with my knowledge/willingness to work. today, i read their newer craigslist ad:

"We're a restaurant that's been very well reviewed by numerous publications, however we're not stuffy, and don't expect you to be either. We offer a very profitable enviornment, it's easy, and you'll have fun. August is coming up and we'll be opening for lunch. We're going to need approimately 2-4 daytime dedicated servers. In addition a hostess is the first line of defense for a restaurant. We're looking for a very well presented, confident, attractive hostess who is willing to work 2-4 evenings per week.. Cheers !!"

i am so depressed, so mournful, i may give up my dealings with the service industry all together. i can't believe that i'm too gross looking to be a hostess, a fucking hostess, the imbecile warblers of the industry.

i have no skills and not enough charm. will i ever work again?

open your mind to the truth. they're trivialized, weighty bags; twin comics, a reliable laugh. get a load of the flesh sacks that pull and push outwards so painfully from your heart-center, pulsing with a nearly obsolete purpose. i wish i could find a picture that was work safe, but i'm sure you all know what they look like.

i probably will close the window and forget this whole thing when i'm done, but it feels so good to type about it as i think.

tonight i consummated my relationship with the fuselage, posting foolishly for and with people that don't care and might be idiots. i wonder if my little brother will read my posts, that would be something. he'd be embarrassed, i bet. he doesn't even know about killoggs.

speaking of family and killoggs, i spoke with my mother today. in the hours i spent with her in may in the hospital, while we watched my brother recover from kidney surgery, i lent her my copy of gene wolfe's "the fifth head of cerberus", and i couldn't be happier that i did so. it was way fucking better than watching her knit.

i guess its important to say that any book i ever really loved i borrowed from my mother (excepting "the book of the new sun", gene wolfe, given to me by a good friend on my birthday. mom will get that next, if josh ever finishes it). she has such an impressive collection of fantasy and sci-fi and ficton and mystery, anything she likes, i guess, often two books deep in the shelf (which can be so frustrating!), such a resource for a young person.

so, as i said, today we talked about it (cerberus), and our conversation was full of her trademark pauses and silences. it was a book that made you think long and full after the reading, she said. and i replied that that is what i enjoyed about the author. she noticed things about the book that i hadn't - genuine horrors of the colony glazed by wolfe's casual narrator. you have to read it again, i told her, i need to read it again!, essays have been written about this book!, and she had read up on it. she knew everything. i love my mother so much sometimes. she is really my great librarian.

in twelve hours i'll be at school again. i can barely be tired. i hope all of this takes me where i imagine myself. i kindof want to be someone else's librarian.

last week i signed up for some nice summer courses at an out-there community college. ancient and medieval history, a comfortable world of my interests, english 101, a reflection of past failures, and women's studies, a last resort. should i have used semicolons in there?

in the past i've enrolled in three semesters at a different community college, and i have twelve credits to show for the twelve classes i took. some i failed out of carelessnes, others i dropped, and others yet i failed because i was too lazy to drop them and just stayed home.

so, this summer i'll be evaluated for math placement. a kind counselor gave me a packet of sample questions and an answer key, and i looked over a couple on the train home, feeling hopeful and sharp.

i guess i should confess that i've never taken a college-level math class, stopping at geometry in high school because my graduation requirements did also. that was about eight years ago.. jesus christ. my mind has lost all of that, replaced by dumb facts about silverware.

tonight i drank five cups of coffee in preparation to study, remember, and feel alright about my upcoming assessment. oh, disappointment. i've got these problems, and im trying to wrap my mind around "elementary algebra" and i haven't the slightest idea of where to begin. each equation mocks me like an alien heiroglyph. even with the solutions, which i implant, i still can't fathom, i mean.. who would think up such a complex system, to get at the number nineteen?

what the fuck is this shit? gross.

so i started crying like a frustrated sixteen year old all over again, and now i'm on the internet instead. i wonder if i can bypass the assessment altogether and just sign up for the lowest level math they've got.

yesterday i tried to make this post a journal entry, but it looks weird over there. also, it had such a downer tone, i couldn't stand it. front ideas, front consciousness, front page!

the big city weekend was fun and relaxing. i met a dizzying three killoggs heads! evan and michelle were loving hosts, albeit busy bees. there was something about their dishrack that was so awesome, and their cat, too, despite a lazy distaste for me (me, friend to cats!). kiche was knowledgeable about beautiful community gardens and a nicely dark bar with a big open front, populated by men who could have just crawled up out of the sea. i saw the statue of liberty from a distance, and i realized how lovely the idea of an off-shore monument is. are there any more?

i discovered in a visceral way josh's poor sense of direction. its so cute, how he goes off in some nutty way, so confident! i'm going to buy him a compass.

a couple hours into being home, i discovered i'd been fired. i suppose it isnt important why, and any talk about it is useless now, so i'm looking towards a future of solar winds and bright nebulae, world-studded creamy spirals and mysterious propulsions. forward, outward!

on the physical plane, i'll surely search through jobs no one on killoggs can relate to.

i am going back to school in less than a month. i'm not a complete waste of life, if i can still learn.

so my journey into beyond begins. i'll shower with the all-one, and rake my mind's unruly ocean city into an austere zen garden. also i'm going to buy some new shoes, or a nice new slip, because i deserve it, all that i deal with. a birthday present, for my dearest taurus, maybe! my life surely is open without the threat of employment, and i am pleased with that, at least.

i noticed that theres a post category for dreams, so i am obnoxiously moving my "dream journal" to the front page. quickly, though, because i have to get to work.

last night after falling off over park avenue with the help of boson, fresh from the gay bar, i passed out and such visions came. in my dream, i was observing an ultimately rare set of birds, two horse-sized white vultures in captivity, the only known birds of their kind. either they had been regenerated from extinction like jurassic park, or they were from another planet beyond the sun! nobody remembered, we were all just there to see those big birds.

a child somehow got into their cage, and when the mother noticed, she followed it, all silent trying to avoid the attention of the birds. she failed, somehow, and the birds toyed with her for long minutes, and she screamed and screamed for help, and then they tore her to shreds pretty slowly. everyone just stood and watched, either silent or praying or crying or covering their eyes and ears. as the birds were so rare, no one was permitted to harm them, or even tranquilize them.. i became very upset and went outside to cry, and it was nighttime, and i could still hear the woman screaming like an animal and the birds shrieking to eachother.

then i went to research the birds, and i found that they had been discovered in a hawaiian island called mauna loa (i dont know if this rerally exists). the trees where they were found are so huge they can be seen distinctly from space, enormous, great green conifers with huge red blossoms the size of houses. they formed a kindof ring and dominated that tip of the island like a crown. a neat inconsistancy with earlier. i was drunk.

flash foward a day to kara and i waiting for the bus. she had read in the paper that, amazingly enough, the woman who was eaten by the birds was the regular bus driver of our route! i tried to convince her that the bus wouldn't be coming, and she said no way, theyd get a substitute, and i just couldn't believe it. and then i woke up and posted this. now i have to take a shower.

i noticed that theres a post category for dreams, so i am obnoxiously moving my "dream journal" to the front page. quickly, though, because i have to get to work.

last night after falling off over park avenue with the help of boson, fresh from the gay bar, i passed out and such visions came. in my dream, i was observing an ultimately rare set of birds, two horse-sized white vultures in captivity, the only known birds of their kind. either they had been regenerated from extinction like jurassic park, or they were from another planet beyond the sun! nobody remembered, we were all just there to see those big birds.

a child somehow got into their cage, and when the mother noticed, she followed it, all silent trying to avoid the attention of the birds. she failed, somehow, and the birds toyed with her for long minutes, and she screamed and screamed for help, and then they tore her to shreds pretty slowly. everyone just stood and watched, either silent or praying or crying or covering their eyes and ears. as the birds were so rare, no one was permitted to harm them, or even tranquilize them.. i became very upset and went outside to cry, and it was nighttime, and i could still hear the woman screaming like an animal and the birds shrieking to eachother.

then i went to research the birds, and i found that they had been discovered in a hawaiian island called mauna loa (i dont know if this rerally exists). the trees where they were found are so huge they can be seen distinctly from space, enormous, great green conifers with huge red blossoms the size of houses. they formed a kindof ring and dominated that tip of the island like a crown. a neat inconsistancy with earlier. i was drunk.

flash foward a day to kara and i waiting for the bus. she had read in the paper that, amazingly enough, the woman who was eaten by the birds was the regular bus driver of our route! i tried to convince her that the bus wouldn't be coming, and she said no way, theyd get a substitute, and i just couldn't believe it. and then i woke up and posted this. now i have to take a shower.

i've been sick since saturday, like a horrible, clouding headcold, and a high-feeling fever. i don't own a thermometer, and i'm not sure if i know what a low fever feels like, but i am sure it would not be as impressive as my great, steaming flesh was for those days. i missed about twenty-four hours of work.

yesterday i plodded around and i sneezed and i cleaned my room, extensively. many were the buttons of killoggian lore in my dresser (which i emptied, flattened, and left out back), brad deason and zack soto originals. how fun!

many also were the coins of pant and purse. i collected them in a tiny cauldron and a sherbet container for the night and counted them today into neat rows on the freshly bared floor. thirty-nine dollars, or thereabouts! i put each denomination in a titled plastic bag and enjoyed a stroll to the bank.

misfortune, then, when my loose change was refused. they offered me rolls so that i might "d.i.y.", but i declined and bought with my chaotic fortunes a box of instead softcups and a very rustic soy mocha from caribou coffee. josh, are you ready to be initiated?

sated and progressively minded, i visited friend jason in his shop and purchased an orange dress that reins in my busom and is trimmed in rope detail. a fine garmet to wear in the worship of the lords natural!

and, at last, apon entering my home, i find the building doors are again falling from their hinges, and i note that requests left against the doors previously had been adhered there by band-aids. so resourceful!

now i will listen to music on headphones, later i may even eat somewhere new.

hello my valentines, great and small. today i wish you all romances most delicate and deliciously tender understandings. i made this e-valentine with each of you held perfectly in my mind.



let us lament the decline in quality of 32-pack valentines. what do bratz know of romance? or digimon, what time have they for the subtleties of eros? the digimon might have the capacity for a kind of primitive agape love for their master. i'm not too sure. the my little pony has been oddly sexualized, which weakens the purity of their message which is i understood to be one of platonic capering. oh, for the shit that existed in my youth!



face the facts, valentines. the holiday is intensified if it is a gay one. let your earnest love story ring from every mountaintop! what greater romance is there than the sabotaged and misunderstood love connection.



let the season's blessings be apon you and your loves. why not hold hands as you take a romantic stroll by some fountain. dine on the finest red foods you can get at. we all stand on the precipice of intimacies vast and immeasurable! let us explore its lacey secrets, together. happy valentine's day everyone!

due to an extended hangover coupled with a weird fever, i will not be attending church today. i am bummed at this setback so soon into the project. a current trend in the mount vernon and downtown area has been wednesday afternoon services, an offer extended mainly to directionless or salvation-hungry office workers. that could show me two worlds i've never really known, office energies and adult piety. expect to hear more about this.

i think its really awesome how the writers of battlestar galactica don't shy away from a little violence towards women. in spite of my devastatingly progressive ideals, it is still deliciously shocking to my ingrained societal notions to watch an asian girl-child get stole on. i love this show.

after months and kindof years of shit-talking, i have gone to church. i am not really going to worship, it just seemed like a fun thing to do. churches are so pretty, i love looking at them. its neat to think about congregations and what they used to mean and how they've weakened so severly in our modern era. i love to observe traditions. also, i think that people that fall in love at church are usually dorks.

kara and i agreed on the most beautiful church in our neighborhood, the mount vernon place united methodist church. i didn't know that was its title until just now really, and i sure as shit didn't know it was methodist. a weird place to start on my journey back into christian faith. as an observer.

all the prayers seemed strangely current to me in their wording. "a word with the children" contained this prayer: "oh lord, thank you for babies, thank you for gifts, thank you for this beautiful day." it left me with a weird feeling. i guess i should note that the church was celebrating a belated christmas. from another prayer: "we are always amazed at bethlehem, o god." i didn't like that, either.

we scored some great brochures and christmasy photoshopped shit. a walking guide of mount vernon churches will prove helpful in the coming weeks. the choir was directed by a woman named homeretta.

the pews were cool and had lots of hymnals and a bible and even some pencils. we didn't stand or sing, which may have been rude, but come on. any reservations or concerns i may have had about church manners were out the window when this woman sat next to us about fifteen minutes into service, in the great airy space of this mostly empty church.

she was alright-looking, light skinned and decently dressed and her coat had some fur on it. she made lots of ushering gestures at us before finally asking us if we would move down. we were sitting on the far left of an empty pew. what is her problem. i can't stress enough how much seating was available to her.

the choir began the bulk of the service, which was lots of christmas hits like "the first noel" and some more obscure things like "thou didst leave thy throne", and the woman began muttering really weird-sounding criticism. she said that they didn't sing with the right inflections, and no you can't do it that way. she said "oh god oh god" a lot. she twitched and bobbed her head around and made noises in the back of her throat like old dirty did on that one song. ("remember back in the day when we'd go like this?")

at first it was kindof funny but became annoying. she began to fake-cry and then actually cried during "go tell it on the mountain", complaining that she can't, she can't, oh god. she had such an angry tone and sometimes she would hiss during the hymns. i couldn't look at her and it was so distracting, but at least i was no longer the rudest person there. people may have even felt sorry for me.

i guess it made the whole experience worthwhile. as far as the services, i felt they were lacking in the power and majesty that organized religion should offer. there was very little ceremony and the only time i felt as i if i were present for some event was when the pastor introduced new babies in the congregation.

afterwards kara and i walked to the grocery store and on the way saw a tabby cat in a parking lot. so we looked at this cat, and then a black cat appeared and stalked the naive tabby around the cars. the tabby seemed as if it were trying to appear nonchalant, the black cat had a strong agressive thing going on in its movement that was so intense. so blacky followed the tab across the lot, and they ultimately disappeared into an alley. i wonder what that was all about. the tabby had a collar on, but the black one didn't.

what a rad day so far. next sunday i believe we will attend the emmanuel episcopal church, which is across the street from josh's apartment so i hope he'll accept my invitation to observe one of humanity's great rituals. i was baptised episcopalian so there might be some spiritual kinship going on. perhaps there will be less singing and more preaching and a better sounding organ.

i have the day off. this is the fifth day off i've had in six days. i haven't gotten anything done, but i don't know if i had anything to get done anyway. my paycheck wasn't ready at work.i'd feel dishonest if i didn't admit that i was mistakenly scheduled to work tonight. wednesdays have my only permanently unavailable evening, so the cafe owner told me to just not come in, and he'd handle it. he won't handle anything and everyone is going to hate me tonight. oh well. by friday they'll all think i'm great again.

wednesday evenings are mine so that i can watch lost.

i don't know what to do until then. i might clean the living room, it never really recovered from zack soto's visit. this is not a personal insult to zack. sometime i should treat you all with a detailed post recounting zack's visit to my home. it was amazing. zack is probably one of the coolest dudes i have ever met in my life.

which gets me thinking about the south. weird! its almost tropical, its almost mexico in my mind when you start touching the gulf. there are fucking sharks in the gulf. you touch water that touches the yucatan, that touches that great crater from that meteorite that went and snuffed out the seemingly eternal flame of the dinosaurs. that probably doesn't strike you all as strange, but i've got news for you, it is. its also weird to be so far away from the great lakes. your bodies of water are all flipped around weird and crazy.

this is a picture that always makes me laugh, even when i think about it, which seems to be happening a lot lately.



i tried to write a couple paragraphs here about smoking weed and how i want to be better at it, and these boots i bought, but none of it worked out. lucky for you guys. it was all pretty stupid.

its official: today i will eat what they call golden falafel from the al pacino cafe, despite strong warnings from both josh and kara. part of being an adult, i think, is making other people's mistakes and learning from them for real.

i took the weekend off for my mother's birthday. she thought she was a year older than she really was. this bummed her out because she was excited to cash in some 401k thing. at dinner over steaks she said she wanted to stop by the bookstore on the way home to pick up a copy of gamepro because it had an eight-page feature on the new world of warcraft expansion pack. so we go, but couldn't find the right issue, it might've been last month.

the night previous i had gone to dc with friends, and dc still makes me feel funny and uncomfortable. i tried to explain to josh how dc makes me feel all weird, and how it began a couple years ago. it was fun when i was a teenager, and i'd smoke weed on the mall and think it and i were the coolest. for the past couple years its more like, much of everything about dc feels tailored to my exact dislikes and non-needs. isn't that weird?

saturday night peter, josh, abi and i went to goth night at the edge. its smaller than the dc goth flagship alchemy, but it was still pretty funny and the first dj played fucking madness. and new order. it was like being at the grocery store. i saw a guy from high school, and he was pretty much the same but noted that i had "grown up." my old friend charlie was there too, he is real successful and travels around a lot. he's always so cised and funny. we talked about some shit, i don't remember what, but i am sure it ruled.

sunday night i gave my mother's dogs a bath. it was so fun. keiko was greasy and deserved it. keiko is a tiny piece of crap, a chihuahua-shitzu that is more like a patchy, long-haired example of the former. its so small and delicate and mewed pitifully as i laughed and lathered her up with high-end dog shampoo. keiko is basically like a trembling, hairy, eight-inch tall antelope. charlie got it next, he is the same breed from a different litter, and he's more of a sturdy shitzu and is also amazingly fat. his rolls of backfat were gloriously apparent when wet. he took the bath better but wouldn't put all four paws in the water.

i hung out with my cats a lot. winslow slept on my arm and we watched tv together: boa vs. python, i love the 80s 3d, laguna beach, the secret life of wedding cakes, comedy central presents demetri soandso, a little bit of the sci-fi original d&d movie. cosmo pawed at his gallon jug of cat treats until i hooked him up. he looked cised so i kept hooking him up. i saw kender once and she looked beautiful, her orange dreads turned into scoops of ice cream. my cats are my most blessed angels.

my brother's best friend got out of prison on the last day of my visit. he'd been out for a month actually but was living in a halfway house. i hadn't seen him in two years! he looked all muscley like prisoners do i guess, but his clothes were hanging off him. i've known him since i was eight or nine. his older sister was my best friend in third grade until she stole me in the face one time i think. he and my stoned looking brother were going to hooters, they have awesome taste. later that day i got to see alex winter's idiot box, which i bet alex winter thinks has fallen out of all knowledge.

somewhere in there we went to the shooting range, too. sonny got mooned so he mooned them back. i was real rude to everyone i think, and i didn't shoot at all. the guns scared me, but something's going on at a cellular level in me and its making me less fearful of not seeming nice to people. but i think being nice is cool. maybe i don't. maybe i think nice people are chumps. but i don't want girls to be all "are you twelve" either. i guess wisdom on this type of shit comes with age. my friends are all amazing marksmen as well. i'm not really shocked because they are all pretty good at everything they do anyway. next time i am totally shooting some stuff.

last night i met some celebrity quake guy, some little guy who looked like he was seventeen but he was my age. i'd gone to jagermeister night at a dungeon bar with my manager, and the guy was his best friend and i felt obligated to talk to him, he looked real bored or something.

he told me about the finite math he does for arrow movement, and i don't know what that means. he only said it was finite because i asked him if it was like a fractal. i told him about my mice and he told me that he used to experiment on mice and rats at NIH and his stories were pretty incredible. i don't know if i feel offended or not, but i didn't when he was relating them.

there were genetically altered mice that had their dopamine inhibitors fucked with in some way, so that they were flooded with dopamine from birth. their growth was stunted and they were wildly active, they could jump at least ten inches in the air right out of their mazes and were always biting their handlers.

they injected a lot of mice with cocaine, but those stories weren't interesting to me. i wish i could remember them now, though.

there was the rat with a catheter in its carotid artery and one in its trachea, and this guy was all set to administer a dose of adreneline to it. he fucked up the amount and overdosed the rat a hundred fold. he said fluid started fountaining out of the trachea and blood was shooting out of the vein like nothing he had ever seen before, so he injected it with poison because thats what they do when someone fucks up.

he told me about killing mice too, and how theyd separate the vertabrae in one smooth motion with a closed pair of scissors and a little pull on the tail. i said that sounded easy and i think i could do it. he said i'd have to catch the mice first and i said no problem.

it was a very informative evening, i hope i see that dude around again.