April 18th thru April 24th, 2004

Mostly I read and played Sky Odyssey, one of the older PS2 Games in my little collection. Really, all you do is fly airplanes. Sure, there's some twists to it, but no shooting and no aliens and no crazed neanderthals wielding clubs and either kowtowing to or attacking your silvery sky beast. Back and forth twixt TV and tome flitted me, until finally I was done with the book. Yessir, I read all of A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid (A Novel) in one day. It's an epistolary novel, and those always read more quickly. Its very VERY funny. But I am not sure who I can give it to-- anybody want it? Send me your address and if you PROMISE to read it I'll mail it to you.

IN the evening I had some tea and met with my fellow members of COCANG.

So, anyway, what did I do this fine Monday. I puttered around-- the French call it brickolage, pronounced BREE-ko-Lahzh, which sounds betters, so I brickolaged. I found a way to miz cottage cheese with tuna fish. I know I've said it before, but those two foods are so damn good for you. I made it over the University Bookstore, and picked up Journey to the End of the Room by Tibor Fischer and Pricksongs and Descents by Robert Coover. I've read Pricksongs before, but I'm hoping this collection of sort stories will fuel my own re-entry into a wee bit of writing.

After that there was some pizza and a visitor, and we played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and she pretty much spent the whole time driving a tank around while the police chased her. I kept saying, "watch out, it's the po-po," which amused me to no end. After that was much sweating, rhythmic sweating, and if you think I mean sex then you forgot that we had eaten pizza and I don't care what kinda casanova you are: getting some after eating greasy pizza is about as likely as getting fat off a bowl of broth and nothing but a fork to eat it with.

Brains. I have no explanation for why I just typed that.

So Bizmarc dropped by after his job fair, which was not too exciting for him. We went and picked up Creme, and us 3 went to the Greenlake Bar and Grill for Happy Hour food. Salmon burgers, corn-dog bites, fried calimari, chedder cheese poppers, fish tacos, cocount fried prawns, flourless chocolate cake, and a rum-and-coke. Then over to Seattle's Best Coffee for our weekly gather-n-chat. Then I walked home... and boy was I mad! Nothing that had happened at coffee did it, I was just angry at everyone. By the time I got home, I was mostly over it, and I ate Bugles and M&Ms and played Tetris till I was tired enough to go to bed. Weird, huh?

Here's a slightly amusing sight to browse for a while: I Used to Believe.

Today I worked, drank some mountain dew code red, cooked some chicken and potatoes. My approach to cooking is sort of like my approach to, well, pretty much everything. I filleted the breasts and started frying them in canola oil, and when they were mostly done I microwaved them for three minutes, sliced them, and fried them some more. I peeled the potatoes, boiled them whole, and then mashed them, using the masher as a strainer, too, so that the undercooked, unmashed parts were left behind. Added butter and milk, not sure how much, just tossed some in to see what would happen. That's how I do everything- just fiddle with it, draw on past experiences, see what happens. I'm the last guy you want robbing a bank but the first one you want there to stop the robbers.

Went for a walk around lovely Greenlake with lovely Jicklestick. She's looking to beef up her endurance now that the weather is here, so watch me bore you with more Greenlake tales until such tales disappear altogether, like other things I used to talk about all the time...

Over to Capitol Hill. Urban Outfitters. I decided the shorts I was wearing were dumb so I bought some pants, and misread the price tag, and paid twice as much for them as I thought I was going to. Also, I bought a new duck. I'll photograph it tomorrow. Then Dilletante's, then I met up with Gholly, and we had Japanese food, and an awesome gab fest. That girl is purely talented in the brains department, folks. Witty? Does the Pope wear Holy Pampers?

I'd like to hang out with someone very pretty, no, not just pretty, cute, and young, and just listen to her talk in an animated fashion for a long time. I would, of course, participate in the conversation in small ways by asking insightful questions, but for the most part it would be a monologue. Usually, as you all know, I am the one who does all the talking, but this time I just want to listen. We're talking Elisha Cuthbert style of cute, though to be sure I have never seen her behave in a way that I would call the kind of bubbly, animation that I am looking for. I don't think this is a sexual urge; indeed, it might be more of a paternal urge, like I want to listen to my cute little girl babbling about her hopes and dreams.

This next urge might be sexual, but for some reason doesn't feel like it really is. I have this urge ot give someone the gift of some very expensive underwear. Not someone that I am sleeping with, and no someone who would model said underwear for me, or even necessarilly call me up a few days later, slightly breathless, saying, "I have on those panties you bought me." I think this is just an urge for some kind of intimacy, without all of the emotional politics of actual sex. I've given the gift of platonic underwear before, so maybe this is a throwback to those memories.

This final urge is for sure sexual, but not as sexual as one might think. I have this urge to do the whole make-out thing. Clothes on, no groping, hands on the back of the head, in the hair, on the neck and shoulders. It's all about the lip gloss, in my head, and even more, pulling back at certain moments, her eyes half-open, and she's sort of biting her lip with the headiness of it all. Its tough for people our age to keep up the whole kissing thing. We're liberated and free, we don't mess about with guilt too much, and so if kissing happens, why not go for the big kahuna and have the sex. Ah, but I think we miss out a bit when we skip the kissing.

Those are the urges. I am fairly sure they won't be met, but that's really okay-- those who know me and know me well know that I find urges as delicious as fulfilling them sometimes, and I can wallow in my desires like some men wallow in their satisfaction. I'll let you know tomorrow if I have any odd dreams based on any of these. But remind me if I don't-- I sometimes forget.

Otherwise, that nap was like heroin. No, I mean that, in as much as I know what heroin is like, seeing as how I've never tried it. But I was in that almost-awake state the whole time, and I could feel the dopamines or seratonins or whatever washing through my brain, like waves lapping at the edge of the beach. In my hypnopompic state, I felt like I could almost control them. It was this awareness that made it so beautiful, this knowledge of what was going on, this being able to internal ooh and coo with every fresh pulse of pleasure.

Maybe it was the mashed potatoes I'd eaten for lunch.

Later in the day I played some good old Tiger Woods 2004 on ye olde X-Box. Hadn't done that in a while. It's a testimony to their programming or my leet skilz that I went at it with the same uber-Tiger results that I'd displayed when I was playing it 5 months ago. Then Scrim dropped by, and we hit the Northgate Mall for a wander and a convo, some light munching at Kidd Valley and Baskin Robbins, and a bit of the shopping. Wizards of the Coast will be open only for 7 more days, and EVERYTHING is 70% off or more. We got lots of junk. It was great!

I pity the fool who finds, falls in love with, and wears constantly the t-shirt that reads, "Born to Read Wilde."

Friend e-mailed me: "The Exorcist in 30 Seconds," an amusing Flash Animation. What do you think, kids, is my foray in Flashdom iminent? I do okay with the picture thing, but sound and movement? Bandwidth? Yikes...

Work, Tiger Woods Pro Tour 2004, brickolage. Over to the bookstore and, hooray! Adventures of the Artificial Woman is there on the shelf! Thomas Berger is in the house. I gets it and I'm off to SBC to sip hot cocoa, be wistful, and read... and then to nearby Subway to chow down on a sandwhich-- I guess the lady who made misheard me, for when I said "lettuce tomatoe onion, please," she obviously thought I said "more lettuce that is humanly possible to eat on one sandwich, please." The back to SBC, grape soda, reading, and BOOM! The phone calls start.

I grab a buddy out of one house, we get the muffin thing going via The Rusty Pelican, alight on another friend's abode who's already cached still another personage: we four thence to A Vegetarian Restaurant who's name escapes me but who's location is in the U District and who's predominant color is eggshell blue, easter-style, pastelly, where I get laughed at for ordering mashed potatoes and gravy, but the which are good, my friends, and then we drop off the previously muffined one, head over to Tost, a smoke free (thank god) bar in Fremon to pay a minimal cover and watch The Children of the Revolution. I know this for a fact, a stone hard cold fact, a cash-in-your-pocket-and-smile-on-your-face fact, that you have never seen fiddle and guitar in a world-music setting virtuosity like this. Good God Damn.

(For what it's worth, right now I have Henry V playing on the DVD in the background, my favorite Shakespeare movie of all time, and so if my language gets a bit silly, blame Kenneth Brannagh.)

Eventually Pooh Bear came over, and we played DDR and Karaoke Revolution for a while. Then DV5 arrived, and she started cooking some kind of Persian rice dish. Then Chanticlara drove up, and Stella, and Jusjus, and Crowmium, and Hoop, and finally Squid Devil. And the slumber party was under way! Karaoke Revolution was the big hit, cause we got some talent in the ranks. Chanticlara and Crowmium are pure talents, and Hoop has obvious skills, and Stella has a beautiful voice cause she's got a beautiful soul.

The food was fabulous and so was the desserts brought by Chanticlara and Hoop. I am telling you, people, between her singing and her baking, that girl has no business soiling her soul in her current, chosen career-- though, to be sure, she does it with the kind of wit and alacrity that makes certain she truly is the best at what she does. Anyway. Crowmium gave everyone manicures and hand massages, and some of us took on mud masks-- Stella provided a paraffin dip for our hands and feet. And then we sang some more, and fell asleep about the place.