slacking off

i didn't forget about the heroic asshole aspect of this blog. i'm pondering who to do next: john becker or archie bunker, who is pretty much the prototype. though gary is tellling me to do wayne arnold, but i really can't think of anything redemptive about him just yet. been really busy with Fanzine stuff since i got back from maine. our listings in NYC and SF really went to shit this summer, and now that casey is somewhat back from his three-month coke and poetry binge, he's slowly getting back into Fanzine. still kind of annoying. "did it ever occur to you that maybe i would like to go do coke and fuck girls and stay up til 5AM (not because i'm working) having fun? no, i bet that never crossed your mind..." ah well. it's a paraphrase from bottlerocket. more TK. i'm way behind.

picture: nothing special. digging around in old folders and found this one of emily and megan at golden gate park a couple summers ago. 2004 i think. my pic with emily's fancy camera.

maine

updated: 10.10.06

old stuff: was so pissed about delta i didn't even get to the part when i was actually in maine. here's some pics from branden's wedding last year because i don't have the energy to write more at the moment. i'm still mad.


my grandparents at the hall where my cousin had his wedding reception. wish i took this one. don't know who did, most likely a family member of some sort. someone take credit for it. i was off getting drunk.


me and branden on mary's mother's bike. wedding outfits were pretty wacky, but yo it wasn't my wedding so it's cool. i think the last time i wore those pants was in high school. branden got his the day before the wedding. good times.

[edit: photos were taken by my other cousin's wife, pamela, who also used to go out with this asshole matt wright, or wrong as i'd prefer. what does that have to do with her? well... nothing. i just wanted everyone to know he's an asshole, and not of the heroic variety.]

new stuff: ok. it's been a few weeks since the whole delta incident and i think i've finally calmed down enough to talk briefly about the maine trip. Peaks Island is probably the best place i've been to in the last year or so since my cousin's wedding. i can't really articulate what's so great about it, but after six years of living in major cities something about Peak's is so utterly refreshing even though during most of its summer months is very touristy and crowded. i've never been there when it was like this. peak's is two miles off the coast of Portland, in the Casco Bay. you take a ferry to get there, and all along the way you'll see orange floaters with ropes tied to them. at the end of these ropes are lobster traps. they're all over the place. the back of the lobster boats are open, like a pickup truck without the tailgate, and lobster people fish up the ropes and haul the lobster out of the cold, clean water. i'm working on trying to get a job on a lobster boat.

once you get off the ferry you walk up a driveway to a parking lot and a couple stores. we jump in a car. the doors are always unlocked. nobody locks their car doors here, it seems. at least the locals don't. there's a tiny post office and a little market, a gas station that looks like it's reserved for fire trucks, an actual fire station, a library, a bike rental place, a couple of pricey but tasty restaurants, and a elementary school tucked in there somehwere. there's a lot of houses: some of the usual cape cods; some multi-storied beachfront houses with yards and long, winding porches; tacky new houses that stand out like sore thumbs; expensive, obnoxious looking glass houses. there's no code here, no neighborhood standard to tell you what to build, which has its obvious ups and downs. my cousin's house is gray with a spire and a crow's nest platform which is good for smoking cigarettes on. inside there's FIFA06.

FIFA06: this was the source of much competition between my cousin branden and i. i don't know how mary dealt with it most of the time. ever since we've been kids, branden and me have been screaming at each other over video games—the last i remember being goldeneye for the N64, though we'd usually team up with my brother on perfect dark's version of the PvP and fight like 8 or 9 computer controlled characters. i don't really know much about soccer, but i got pretty into the world cup this summer. i picked Barcelona since i know ronaldinho plays for them and that dude eto'o and that lou ferrigno-looking guy puyjols. anyway, we spent hours screaming at each other, cheating, talking ridiculous shit, doing my best not to throw his controller at him, and ultimately the score inched near even after losing the first 8 matches. i know he's up there practicing for the next time i go up, so i have to buy this game.


[ me and branden getting drunk in front of my parent's house at my brother and mari's baby shower a couple summers ago.]

back to the island: me and branden went fishing a couple times on the ocean side. first time we went at night and it was pitch black; the only things we could really see were our smokes and the white crush of waves crashing agains the little rock jetty we were standing on. the water was rough—if we fell in we'd be goners. plus we only had one fishing rod so we both had to take turns smoking and fishing. we caught one striper that night. a couple days later we went in the morning and the sky was bright and sea was blue and cold. this high tide was a lot calmer than the previous venture out, though i'd probably still be doomed if i fell in, but i'd probably die happier. feeling the sun and the cool, clean air, seeing the cliffs and the pine forests of the adjacent islands felt like you were really supposed to be there; not just here on the island, but here—like this is what people should see everyday of their lives: the enormous night sky, the patient air, the tall cliffs and thick trees and the hushed ocean stretching beyond. i couldn't even tag there, though somehow i wanted to know that i'd been there. it's probably the closest i can get to the vertiginous sections of US1 i'd rush off to past pacifica south and muir woods north when i'd have crazy mental breakdowns and stand 200 feet over the ocean and imagine the silence of falling down. anyway... we caught two more fish that day and tossed them back in. me and branden had some fake mexican food in portland, and i'm pretty sure i found a pube in mine (fucking hippies). saw some little punker kids, which for some reason was pretty amusing and fun. caught a plane back to nyc and have been plotting a way to get back ever since.

delta. don't do it.

edited: 9.22.06
just don't. don't do it to yourself. read why.

back in mid-august i bought a ticket to go to portland, maine, off the coast of which my cousin and his wife live on this unspoiled paradise of the north called peaks island. the ticket was $142RT—pretty cheap. i got it through expedia and i was supposed to take off last friday 9.15 at 8.45pm. the flight was through delta, but the actual plane was operated by something called freedom airlines. i was trying to get out of brooklyn and up to maine pretty much all summer long, but because of work stuff and people flaking out i couldn't make it until just this past week. i was dying to get out of here.

i showed up to JFK at around 6.30pm. i took the L to broadway and made a surprisingly easy trip from the A to the airtrain. took about an hour and 15min total from the graham stop, and there was actually some pretty interesting stuff to look at along the way—bunch of huge and ancient cemetaries, some of them completely overgrown by weeds and trees; a ton of graffiti spots and a yard or two with probably about three decades worth of paint on the walls. the delta terminal was a shithole as soon as i walked in—there were 60 people wrapped around in a broken line that in some circuitous fashion led to the ticket counter. i went to the e-ticket checkin and punched in my confirmation number and got some message on the screen: IT IS TOO LATE TO CHECK-IN FOR THIS FLIGHT with another, smaller message that stated my flight left at 12.51am the PREVIOUS morning. obviously there was something fucked up here... i called the delta number and talked to the first of many people from bombay, india (i asked them). the flight was actually delayed until at least 1AM—which didn't work for me since the last ferry to peaks island was at 11.30pm. so i rebooked for the next flight for 1PM on saturday and went home. all around me there were other people whose flights had been cancelled or otherwise inordinately delayed.

saturday. i called delta and talked to bombay, india dude #2. took him like 10min to find my flight info and finally told me my flight was delayed til 1.50pm. i showed up at noon; the delta terminal looked a lot more orderly. i went to the e-ticket check-in. after finding out the flight was delayed to 2.45 i got another retarded message while trying to check in. i waited in line for the counter. i tried to check-in with this delta lady, but she said she couldn't find my flight, my information, and my confirmation number didn't exist. then these people from israel cut in my place in line and the delta lady stopped helping me. then later when she was finished with them, she gave me a boarding pass without a gate number on it. it was just some generic boarding pass to get me out of line. i went through security with no problems.

i got to gate 23 (the gate listed on the tv screens at the airport), and saw somewhere around 200 people crowded around the gate entrance with like three people working. this was the literal end of the airport—the corner where delta shoved all the angry, pissed-on and otherwise disgruntled customers and jerked them around for several hours while their desperate workers scrambled around to find the outgoing airplanes for all these people, whose annoyance was increasing exponentially and sweeping across newcomers to the gate. i had more than 2hrs to wait for my flight out, so i went to burger king, which was probably the worst place i could have gone to. i had these chicken things that i remembered were ok from the last time i ate there, which was around 10 years ago. now they are shaped like cut-out king's crowns and taste like dry newspaper. i went back to gate 23 and saw my flight was delayed again until 3.20pm. the crowd was getting restless.

gate 23 was the area where delta sent all its customers whose flights were delayed or cancelled the previous day (when i called they claimed there were weather problems, which was total bullshit because it had stopped raining in ny at around 4pm on friday). the three delta workers wouldn't even talk to us on the portland flight because our plane was not physically on the ground at JFK. in fact, they had no idea where the plane that was supposed to take us to maine was—as would become clear in the next few hours. they were trying to find the plane to boston. they announced the plane to boston was in the air somewhere and would be here soon. at 3.10pm the screen shifted to 4pm. at 3.50 they announced our plane was in manchester and was getting ready to take off and that we should be ready to leave at 4.30 (again, bullshit: it takes at least an hour to fly from manchester to JFK) and promised an update on the flight status by 4.15. at 4.50 we hadn't heard shit and the flight was now set for 5.20. at 5.30 they changed it to 6pm. at 6pm they announced our long-lost plane in manchester was still in manchester. bullshit. i had enough. the flight was being delayed indefinitely. i got the fuck out of there.

over the course of the day i was on the phone with a bunch of delta people from bombay, india. i talked to them about possible refunds and cancelling the ticket. apparently it was delta policy not to refund tickets until the flight has departed. another told me the only way to get a refund was to talk to someone at the counter. another told me i would not get a refund on anything. another told me i would get a small refund or a voucher for another flight on their shitty airline, and to use this voucer i'd have to give delta 50 bucks (this would later prove to be true). i went to the ticket lady back downstairs and explained what was up and that delta was fucking around and i wanted to cancel my flight and get a refund. "we don't have your money," she said. "expedia does."

i called expedia when i got outside. "we don't have your money," the lady said. "delta does." after about two hours of arguing with expedia and delta, this dude manuel at expedia tracked down some guy at delta named Ian Scott, who turned out to be another indian dude from bombay, india who offered me the voucher that i'd have to pay delta another 50 bucks to use. no thanks, i said. just give me my money back.

delta fucking blows. if there were an asshole company of the year award, they'd be in the top two. they don't have any infrastructure or organization and i'm pretty sure they will be filing for some sort of bankruptcy protection after losing about 1000 customers this past weekend in JFK alone. the upside to all of this is that branden (my cousin) and his wife (mary) bought me a ticket on Jet Blue for later that evening. Jet Blue is the polar opposite of the bullshit that was Delta. diametric opposite. as soon as i got into the jet blue terminal there was no stress. it was well-lit and clean. people were smiling. i had a beer and watched baseball while waiting for my flight, which left exactly on time and arrived in portland early. almost as an intentional "fuck-you" to delta. i got into portland at 10.20pm saturday, 24 hours late.

Red Foreman, heroic assholes take 2

"When I die, I want to be buried face down, so that everyone who doesn't like me can kiss my ass."

update: 9.15
that's my most memorable quote from the dad on that '70s show. admittedly, i didn't watch this show very much when it was on. i knew it was funny, but for whatever reason i never really watched it (reasons vary from: (1) i didn't have a tv; (2) i had a tv but only got like 2 channels; (3) i had a tv but i didn't get any channels; (4) i didn't know when it was on.). well anyway i started watching the reruns in the past few months. foreman is the archetypal, red-blooded american tv dad. he's mostly an asshole to his friends (donna's dad, bob), his wife (when he can), and the kids (the dumbasses). [personally, i want to do with "douchebag" what red foreman did for "dumbass"; that is, make it a household epithet.] aside from being a nixon-lover, red has his redemptive side too—see the episode when hyde's dad comes back and hyde moves out of the foreman house. or the episode when they have to clean out jackie's parent's cabin and red finds a stash of pot on hyde and kicks him out of the house, even though you can tell he doesn't really want to. he's a man of principles—but he's also somewhat beaten down by life. he has a Walter Mitty thing going on with kitty, even though he strives to pretend he's the man of the house, as most men will try to do before finally surrendering any say in the relationhip. anyway... this whole post is kind of silly, but red foreman... he's not number 2 by choice, but rather by merit of the above quote, which bumps him up to somewhere in the top five. i think i'll have that engraved on my tombstone... well... since i plan on being cremated maybe i'll have it engraved on an urn and tossed into the sea.

other stuff... my flight to maine got cancelled by the dicks at delta, who failed to inform me until i was already at the airport. when i tried to do electronic check-in, i got some fucked up message that told me my flight had already left at 12.51 am the previous night. then i called delta to find out what the fuck was going on and i got some some outsourced customer service dude from india who took forever to confirm my flight was cancelled and to tell me the next flight out of JKF wouldn't be for another 5 hours. so i have to fly out tomorrow, which sucks because it's pretty much like losing a day and a half of hanging out in maine. tonight i told alexis i didn't want to talk to her anymore and she sent me some link of steven seagal singing the blues with some backup band. why, i don't know—in both senses. for some reason i'm a dick for wanting fried chicken and get annoyed when people say "oh, that's gross." well, ya know what? i think a fuckin' $30 hamburger is gross. sorry if my taste buds aren't as sophisticated and well off as yours. anyway, another night. i'm still the asshole.

ps. to people who don't have bedbugs: you don't really help the situation by making light of it to the people who do. you don't understand that you're being an asshole. unless you've actually dealt with bedbugs, woken up 15 times at night slapping at things you think are bedbugs, woken up screaming and covered with hyper-paranoid sweat because you know you have bedbugs and you know that, at some point in the night, they're going to get you, checked yourself every morning for the 5 or 6 new bug bites that appear in random spots from your back to your legs to your arm to your neck to your face, don't talk to me about bedbugs, and please don't fucking try to make fun of me about having bedbugs or make me sympathize with you for being creeped out about bedbugs. that's not very nice, and to paraphrase number one asshole vincent gallo, being nice feels real good.

crocodile hunter r.i.p.

i didn't really plan for this to be my next post and it's somewhat tangential to the heroic-asshole theme, but i don't really mind (well, contains elements of both heroism and asshole-ish behavior, but they're separate in this case). i was getting a lot of shit earlier today for being bummed out that steve irwin died yesterday. some people went so far as to say, "oh, he got what he deserved; if you want to live by jumping on alligators, then that's what you get." what an asshole thing to say. irwin loved animals—but he was by no means naive about it, as opposed to someone like timothy treadwell. irwin knew the line and knew when he was pushing it; he also did a lot of crazy shit and handled himself far better in very dangerous situations than you or i, as commoners in this world, would. the guy loved animals—and i'm by no means a fellow animal lover (i think of animals more like people; some i like and some i don't. i especially dislike little, yappy dogs.)—and he was passionate about them, but there never seemed to any other hidden agenda with him. i have to respect him—for his craziness and daring, but also for his passion and the fact that he always seemed honest about it. i don't know... part of me is trying to be less cynical and less uptight, despite the overall nature of this blog. i have to give it up to him. i had fun watching his shows. r.i.p.

heroic assholes, take one

i think i'm finding a direction for this blog, and that is to profile curmudgeonly, self-hating, obsessive, ostensibly unlovable assholes in an attempt to make sense out of my reality. for lack of a better term, i will call them heroic assholes, until i come up with a more appropriate, catchier term. [it is also a way to distract myself from the bug bites i keep getting and the frustration of being unable to find any of the culprits for the past two weeks (the only empirical evidence we have are the bites on our ((mostly mine)) bodies.)] the reason i call them heroic assholes is because they are an archetype—they're bitter, caustic dicks to everyone around them and everyone who cares about them, or might have the potential to have some sort of emotional tie toward them, and yet has some sort of hidden redemptive personality flaw that ultimately wins people over. i'm not talking about assholes the way football jocks in high school were cocky assholes to make up for the fact that they were closet fags, but more so the way quiet, aged men have become assholes because life has let them down. i don't include myself among this category of assholes; i'm more of the incorrigible type right now. and if you think otherwise, you're probably wrong.

vincent gallo is at the top of my list of heroic assholes; more specifically, billy brown played by vincent gallo in buffalo 66. this was a difficult choice that i weighed over many years, but his character finally won me over, although i believe gallo actually loses heroic asshole points for trying to be such a blatant asshole in real life. (a girl i knew once, who lives with my friend trish, i can't even remember her name... said she met vincent gallo at some party and their conversation consisted of him telling her to shut up 90 percent of the time... i don't know her very well [see name, or lack thereof] so i don't know how credible her story is.) see his personal website here. i actually joined his message board at one point, in an attempt to spy on him and make note of all the shitty things he said to people, so we could happily persecute him at the Fanzine as our archenemy, but his message board is, unfortunately, no longer updated. he did, however, leave me with this:

Old messages will be occassionally pruned. However, if I notice any polluted messages, which usually come from bitter, jealous, ugly, poorly-hung men, who are unhappy at work and wished their whole life to be like me, I will remove these unproductive nasty little posts and I would like to say to these twisted queers and half-men, I feel sorry for you. All I ever wanted to do was be me. I hope one day you feel the same about yourself and release yourself from the petty, small-minded urges of polluting this message board and distracting its wonderful members. So go ahead and say whatever you want nasty about me, but know that we will all know by your insults just how small your pecker really is and how miserable your life has always been and how long it's been since any girl under 500 pounds responded to your cheap lines at the local pub.

As for girls who badmouth me, I don't know what I did to offend you, but I'm sorry. Please forgive me and be nice. My mom was mean. She never liked me. So have a heart.

With this all said, say whatever you want, but try to be productive and positive and friendly. It's nice to be friendly. I was friendly once. It felt real good.

if he'd have just stopped there i might have considered a gallo/billy brown double billling, but no—he had to go and do this. yes, that stands for vincent gallo merchandise dot com. it's the site where he sells everything from his tassled blue-leather jacket he got when he was 14 to his own personal copy of Yogi Berra's The Wit and Wisdom of Yogi Berra (signed by vincent gallo, not by yogi berra). other items of interest on vgmerchandise.com—a puffy white coat with screened images of reagan (legend) and george w. bush (hero), an 8-track copy of "Fish Out of Water" by Chris Squire (of YES) that he supposedly played while having an affair with an older teenage girl who (also supposedly) wouldn't shut up. this item is also mysteriously signed not by chris squire or any member of yes, but by vincent gallo. in fact, there's a lot of items here that gallo owned that he thought would assist the market value of, by signing them in his own name. kind of like, for example, if i presented a friend with a copy of william vollmann's Whores for Gloria (of which i actually do have a copy signed by vollmann) with my own signature across the inside front page, in an attempt to increase the future nostalgic, and eventual resale value of the volume. well, i'm not vincent gallo. but all of this still might be forgivable in this realm if it weren't for the two bookend items on this page. the first one: a date with vincent gallo.

On my 14th birthday I went to see the film Rolling Thunder and had my biggest crush of all on the actress Linda Haynes. I wished and wished and wished everyday that I could meet all these girls. I thought of a lot of sexy things with Susan Blakely after seeing her in Lords of Flatbush. In my mind I could do with her anything I wanted to do. So believe me, I know and understand what it's like to wish and dream about spending time with a movie star. Doing things that couples do. Couples in love. At least couples where the guy is hot and knows how to handle a chick.

I, Vincent Gallo, star of such classics as Buffalo 66 and The Brown Bunny have decided to make myself available to all women. All women who can afford me, that is. For the modest fee of $50,000 plus expenses, I can fulfill the wish, dream, or fantasy of any naturally born female.

ok, well i myself would like to offer these services to women of all types. although i wouldn't be trying so hard to make myself look like a jerk. but not more so than his now famous offer for insemination:

Sperm is 100% guaranteed to be donated by Mr. Gallo who is drug, alcohol and disease free. If the purchaser of the sperm chooses the option of natural insemination, there is an additional charge of $500,000. However, if after being presented detailed photographs of the purchaser, Mr. Gallo may be willing to waive the natural insemination fee and charge only for the sperm itself. Those of you who have found this merchandise page are very well aware of Mr. Gallo's multiple talents, but to add further insight into the value of Mr. Gallo's sperm, aside from being multi talented in all creative fields, he was also multi talented as an athlete, winning several awards for performing in the games of baseball, football and hockey and making it to the professional level of grand prix motorcycle racing.

but even more so, this:

Mr. Gallo maintains the right to refuse sale of his sperm to those of extremely dark complexions. Though a fan of Franco Harris, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz and Lena Horne, Mr. Gallo does not want to be part of that type of integration. In fact, for the next 30 days, he is offering a $50,000 discount to any potential female purchaser who can prove she has naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone who can prove a direct family link to any of the German soldiers of the mid-century will also receive this discount. Under the laws of the Jewish faith, a Jewish mother would qualify a baby to be deemed a member of the Jewish religion.

so he's decided acting like a royal asshole is the way to further his artistic/film career. but he's obviously over-reaching, being an asshole for its own sake, and nobody really believes he would say these things himself had he not had any sort of prior success and be semi-famous. so he loses heroic asshole points.

billy brown


billy brown is a lot closer to how gallo described himself, also on vgmerchandise.com site: "In his lifetime, Vincent has received only a few presents." i've actually dropped friends over the movie buffalo '66 in the past. billy brown is a heroic asshole in every sense of the term. he kidnaps layla (christina ricci) from the tap dance studio; steals her car; makes her get out of the car to clean the windows because they're dirty; figures out that he can't drive her car so he makes her get out again to drive (in effect, carjack) her own car; makes her stop the car so he can pee by a tree (Don't let me see you move one finger. Not one twitch or l'll come back. l'll choke you to death. l'll take a bite outta your cheek and l'll shit you out.); asks her to hold him then shoves her aside; makes her come to his parent's house to pretend like she's his wife; "hiya pop"; his dad, played by ben gazzara, turns away. "jan, your son is here."

other choice examples of H.A.: at the bowling alley, billy's former kingdom, talking with jan michael vincent (formerly of airwolf): "Who's the girl?" "I'm his wife." "She's not my wife. [laughing] I picked her up hitchhiking" "Five years in the joint, you don't waste any time, huh?" "You know me, right?"

also in the bowling alley, with christina ricci. CR: "Who's that girl?" BB: "Just some girl. Girlfriend l had."
- What happened to her?
l don't know. l'm a free guy, you know. That's not my style. l need to be free a little, so l let her go, you know?
- Oh.
Can l get a little room here? Why don't you go sit over there?

and another paramount H.A. example, in the denny's with christina ricci:
Let me tell you something. l don't care about you or your fuckin' hot chocolate. l don't need anybody. Did you hear what l said? Did you hear what l said this time? Want to know the truth ? l could have had any girl l wanted in school. Any girl l wanted. You know why l didn't have a girlfriend? Huh? Because there was nobody that l liked. Nobody that l liked. That's the truth. l could have had anybody. There was nobody that l liked, because girls stink. They stink. They're evil. And they're all bad, all of them. They're backstabbers like you. So, let's go, all right ?

so here we have one of the possible roots of H.A.-ism—yeah, it's juvenile and immature, but i can relate... to a certain point. you're a loser. nobody loved me. as we get older, the ground gets colder. billy brown at least, after saying all those shitty things, went out and bought heart cookies from the dunkin doughnuts at 4AM. so he has a secret, redemptive side to him—a sweet, honest, albeit still self-loathing, side. jimmy brown (ben gazzara) was a true asshole, with no sort of lighter side to him. just an unhappy bastard in a v-neck T-shirt. billy, however, was heroic—he just wanted someone to love him. maybe next column i won't spend so much time expounding on the real-life (i.e. jimmy brown) vincent gallo's assholish qualities. next column: john becker or red foreman, i haven't decided yet. i'm still incorrigible, however.

war

i've lived in a lot of shitholes in my day; most of them a lot worse than this, and i've battled many species of vermin. in LA i fought rats, mice, ants, and bees i once thought were of the killer-type that lodged in a rotting section of our roof (bill poon helped out with those while wearing his bear suit). Mission Records was probably the shittiest place i've lived—before i even moved in the place was a dump. i had to wear a face mask to keep from breathing in the rat shit and dust when i was cleaning the hallway out of trash, old mattresses, piss bottles, and pretty much every other form of debris you can think of. there were NASTY city rats that ran between my room and buzz's room and roaches that lived in our electronics (yeah, they can learn to eat the dust that forms inside your clock radios and monitors and tape players). i took care of those rats, though, and it only took me two days to get their number. and these were not friendly rats—these motherfuckers would chase each other right past us while we were playing GTA3, or run down the long hallway toward my room. i actually chased them once and one of them jumped at me like a tiger shark out of water.

i think i've met my match now, though. i'd almost prefer to be back in mission records. these bedbugs have got me by the balls. i haven't even found any bedbugs, or even any evidence of them. last week i spent hours spackling and caulking holes and cracks in my floor; i thought i beat them but no. i went several days without any bites, but over the last few days they'be been biting the shit out of me. i've barely slept in a week, plus i've been sick in a way that anything deeper than a several shallow breaths leaves me coughing and gasping for air. i wake up every night with the sheets soaking wet, screaming or completely out of breath, slapping and grabbing at anything that feels like it's crawling on me and i never find anything. new bites appear throughout the day and the welts grow in size over time. i'm a beaten man—they've run me ragged. my impotent defenses consist of a bottle of caulking, a small tin of spackle and an expired tube of cortaid. i need professional help, in exterminator form, before i set myself on fire. oh yeah, whoever brought these into my house is gonna pay something horrible.

the life of suck

well, since i'm waiting for all this spackling and caulking to dry i might as well update this thing. all day i was setting up to write this long-winded argument about the whole jonbenet murder thing and the guy who is allegedly the killer. i still think the whole affair is stupid and glorifies the lives of crazy, rich white parents and their freakish child, as well as John Karr, the pervert (this is not alleged—the guy was picked up for having a collection of child pornography back in 2001) who says he killed her. apparently he was planning on holding her for ransom in the basement of her own home, then "accidentally" killed her and sexually assaulted her to boot. sounds like bullshit, and i really had this all prepared but something more important came up.

my roommate came home after being gone for a few days. i saw her after work today and she was totally covered in bug bites, all over her arms and legs. poor kid. she showed me them. lots of weird pairs and trios of bumps which gave me the chills. i did some reading up—fuck... bed bugs... a sure sign. above is what those motherfuckers look like. i'm presently flipping the fuck out. i tore my room apart looking for bed bugs, digging around in cracks in the floor and the wall by my bed, tiny bloodstains on my sheets... still haven't found anything, but i spent 2 hours patching up the holes in my floor under my bed. yeah it's hardwood floors but i don't give a fuck. more so in the last week than my whole 5 months here have i realized how much this apartment sucks. so yeah, i don't give a fuck if the hardwood floors have caulk and spackle on it. i'm still searching for more tell-tale signs, but i haven't found any. again, i don't give a fuck. i'm cleaning this shithole up. i'm so pissed. poor kate. fucking scabies.

in other news... i started working at random house for a few weeks. job is boring as hell and i'm getting sick also. you won't believe some of the morons who work there. this girl across the cube from me doesn't know the basics of excel nor does she know what a pdf is. anyway, i get paid an astronomical sum for what i'm doing. here's to hoping it lasts for the whole 4 weeks. hopefully tomorrow i'll put my thoughts together to do this JonBenet thing.