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| I climb on the plane at 12:45 PST, cover my head with the blanket provided and manage to shut down cramped into a narrow JetBlue seat all the way back to JFK. It's a four hour and change flight, and I milk it for all the sleep I can, but when I hit the East I have to go right back to work, groggy and unshaven at my desk. I spent a grand total of 48 hours in Seattle, and amazingly it was worth it. |
| Since I didn't get home from the reception until about 2:30 in the morning, and I'm still brutally jetlagged and beaten down, I spent a lot of today in bed, alternating between lying on my stomach clutching my head and lying on my head clutching my stomach. Eventually, my mom takes me out for pho and I can feel the sweet, warm Vietnamese soup filling up the parts of my body that booze had hollowed out. |
| The wedding's on a decomissioned ferry boat floating in the lake; first it was a pirate theme, then a Chinese theme, and eventually everybody just showed up and got it done, vows exchanged and ceremony performed by our friend Asa, freshly ordained by mail through the Universal Life Church. The last line of the ceremony is "By the power of Grayskull, I now pronounce you man and wife" which was a drunken decision on the part of the bride and groom but one that worked out pretty Goddamned well. |
| Thumb still achey, sleep still fleeting, tons of work to get out the door before I make for the airport, but I look over at my to-do list and there's one thing on it: "3/28/03 Miss Erikka hella lot" - she wrote it there, behind my back, when she stopped in the office this morning to work on her resume. See you Monday. |
| A little headachey and groggy but still basically functional this morning, maybe coming down with a case of the creeping green crud as my nostrils are seeping a little infectosnot so I'd best take it easy tonight. Flying out to Seattle for Nate Dogg's wedding on Friday evening, gotta get my fancy lad clothes all packed and his present wrapped for plane travel. Cross-country and back in slightly under two days isn't my idea of a relaxing trip, but I made my own bed. Hope the movie's good. |
| That's the way to spend a day off - waking up with E. who also had the day off and breakfasting on hot eggy bagels from across the street while watching Maury Povich yell at teenage girls who wanna get knocked up. Then off to wander around Queens in search of a Target we never found, the sun shining as we wander 'cross bridges over railway yards, no hurry to get nowhere as the technical school down the block disgorges its students out into the street. |
| Strange feeling this morning - like somehow I'd Rip Van Winkled and woken up in a completely different time than the one I'm used to. Walking to work, things seemed new and strange to me - I was captivated by repaved streets, newly opened storefronts, unusual pantaloons. I had overslept this morning, woken at 9 by the ringing of church bells, but my face was free of beard and my moonshine jug was full, so I'm gonna chalk this one up to cognitive dissonance. Also I drew a guest episode of Achewood today - check it out. |
| One of the best things about spending a weekend outside the realm of human dignity is coming back to work on a Monday all damaged and insane and knowing that most of these chumps just stayed in and watched TV while I was out getting fucked up royally far from home. E. was asking why I did crazy shit like that and I replied "Because I can." She came back with "Not for long" and I realized that she's right - that's why I need to do as much crazy shit as I can right Goddamned now. |
| Ten hours and change in a car bcksiding the way we came - battered, bruised and barely breathing but Ryan keeps a steady seventy-five all the way back to New York. Given the circumstances, I'm feeling fairly good, but the feeling evaporates as I try to get out of the car and my knees turn to jello-wobble. I crabwalk down the stairs to the PATH train and before I know it I'm in a certain soft bed once more. |
| The Unholy Three in Ohio, day three: down to Southside, Cincy, but really across the border to Kentucky, Bobby Mackey's Haunted Honkytonk. Ghosts are not in attendance but the mechanical bull is right Goddamned there and we Unholy Three Minus One tackle it as Ryan stayed in and played video games due to his concussion. Riding a mechanical bull is hard and painful, as Jeff took a header into the seat and I cranked my thumb out 180 or so. We hobble back to Cincy and sleep fifteen to a living room. |
| The Unholy Three in Ohio, day two: we get tricked out and head to a goth club to burn the dance floor down. The ceilings are covered with garbage bags and there's so much whiskey and 40s in us that things quickly get dangerous. Ryan hits me with a Macho Man elbow and gets his face smashed in by a stray Goth forearm. At this, he begins tearing around the club covering people in his spurting nasal blood. We make our exit by Jeff smashing him down on the floor and trying to incite a panic. Later, holding ice to his head, his eyeballs dilate and he manages not to die. |
| Sun rises over Ohio as we finally roar across the Pennsylvania border - Unholy Three been up all night, bouncing from truckstop to truckstop as we careen into destruction. We've been listening to grindcore all night and we're amped up on coffee (my first cup in three years) and adventure. Ryan drove pretty much the whole way with a short break in Penna. for Jeff to take over. I can't drive so I man the back seat. We roll up to Streets' house and it smells like overdone beans but that doesn't stop us from collapsing on the living room floor. |
| Little pixelated explosions over a quiet Baghdad sunrise; night vision creeping slowly into daylight. A tall glass of whiskey and coke sitting untouched by my bed. Outkast "BOB" on the stereo - this is becoming like a ritual. Little pixelated explosions on the front of the newspaper; slowly into daylight. |
| Getting ready to roll down to Ohio this weekend, caught in a usual scramble of last-minute finishing on piles of scruff, but generally full of grins and cheer as the day slings by. It's just the Unholy Three in the car - me, Jeff, and Ryan behind the wheel. Ryan and I drove to DC last year and it was pretty smooth, and Jeff and I have adventured in the past, so hopefully we won't be caught in a three-way strangle over control of the tape player as the car careens madly into oncoming traffic. Hopefully. |
| Beware the hell out of the Ides of March - E. lost her job yesterday. T'aint fair that a bunch of investment banking jagoffs can ruin the lives of so many innocent underlings in their quest to wallpaper their bidets with Benjamins. So she's on the hunt, just like I was in 2001 at pretty much exactly the same time. It's a pretty horrible feeling, but at least she's not pounding the pavement in the dead of winter. Plus she's tough as nails and six times as smart - I know she'll make it after all. |
| Yeah, okay, being in my office when the sun's shining outside is a little rough, I'll give you that. But I know that I'll be out of here like Vladimir soon enough, walking up Broadway under an early sunset until it's cold enough to make me hop in the subway. This weekend it's off to Ohio with some of my friends, but until then it's going to be gazing longingly towards the window here at work, thinking of excuses to get outside. |
| Like a clock ticking over to three PM and the final bell ringing, it's spring. Spent as much of today outside as possible, wandering around parts of the city that I don't normally see. It's funny, I've lived here for almost half a decade and there's still plenty of streets I've never walked. Now that summer's coming and I've got a new bicycle in the hopper, I'll hopefully block off a little more turf every weekend, until the whole city's mine. |
| After the Kid Koala show we hit one shitty party, chock-a-block with honkies trying to score some Asian trim and fat goths. We grab a handful of Red Stripes and settle in for a bit as there's no room to dance. The room is packed with wanksters, brought out of their hidey-holes for bad times. Terry spills her beer and I reach out, grab a fat girl's coat and wipe it up. Nobody feels bad, especially because she will later sit in the beer-puddle anyways. Eventually, we jet out into a warm spring night. |
| Nice Friday payday, gearing up for a weekend of wugga wugga whatever, including Kid Koala spinning some records and a Giant Robot party, among other things. Spring is hopefully starting the brunch circuit again, and by running from house to house I'll burn off that extra breakfast - or at least that's the plan. I'm sitting at my desk, doing four thousand stomach crunches, one every time I press the space bar. Gotta start using longer words. |
| Chris comes home yesterday - he got jumped by two teenagers on the way home from work. One knocked the book he was reading out of his hand and got up in his face, saying "C'mon, motherfucker, I've been waiting for this all day." Chris grabbed him by the jacket, his friend tried to suckerpunch Chris so he let him go, grabbed the guy who threw the punch, wrapped his keyring around his fist and beat the shit out of him. The other kid ran down the block and started screaming "Come on, motherfucker, I'll kill you" but Chris just kept beating on his friend, came home, washed his hands and we watched "The Power Of Myth" until the sun went down. |
| E. calls me from the police station and I skip work and run down there. She was on the train this morning when a group of 20 young teenagers get on with a bag of eggs. She ignores them until an egg smacks into her wrist, looks up and says "Don't throw eggs at me." Then an egg smacks her right in the face. She stands up and the kids swarm all over her, pelting her with eggs, stealing her cell phone and her wallet, emptying her handbag on the floor of the train. Nobody watching does anything. I take her home from the police station and she falls asleep with her head on my lap. Sometimes I wonder if people are even people at all. |
| The livejournal survey of a Canadian girl that I do not know as venue for short story. Yes, my day job is pretty boring, thank you for asking. |
| Here comes another workweek, but this one is at least slightly mitigated by the fact that I'm goin' out on Monday night to see some Tiny Ninja Theater with a hella cute girl, so that's keeping the teakettle whistling this morning. Of course, I'm whirring away on a dozen projects both work-related and non but on the whole I'm feeling pretty gyroscopically stabilized amd whirring at frequencies I can barely hear. |
| Well, damn, that's the sun - how're you doing, old friend? Out and shining on this Sunday morning so I make a resolution to spend as much time outside as I can pull off today. I start off with a run around the neighborhood, the first real outdoor exercise I've had in months. It feels good, but I'm achingly reminded of how crippled and collapsed I've become over this winter. I stop after a few miles, grab my satchel and sit in the park and draw until the sun dips too low and it starts to get cold again. |
| The last band practice for a few weeks, as the various members are all going our seperate ways for a spell - Douglas off to Russia and Finland, me off to Ohio and Seattle, Leela and Mindy off to who knows where. We coagulated a new one today, featuring the goofiest opening couplet I've ever spat, and it came together beautifully, like an omelette. We reconvene in early April once again, hopefully with a bindle of new songs and a show or two on the horizon. I'll put you on the guest list. |
| Now this made me laugh until my sides split. It's a fantastic review of Dogsjournal written by a woman who writes gay Harry Potter sex fiction. It inspired me to try to get more of my work reviewed by people who are totally the wrong audience for it, just to see what they come up with. It's funny because this woman can't even parse what I'm doing - it's like I'm writing about dogs from the moon. Which, come to think of it, isn't such a bad idea. |
| Another Wednesday night at McCarthy's, drawing dick jokes with drunken dorks at the BBM Comics Jam. I wasn't really feeling my Cheerios, though - usually I'm a braying jackass of terror but I was a little restrained after a day off from work. I don't know what's wrong with me but the last few days I've just felt really drained, exhausted. Had terrifying dreams about murdering people (nobody I knew) and the fear that the bodies would be found. Woke up with a cat trying to bury itself in my armpit. |
| That's better. As you can see by my continued typing, I survived intact, everybody got loaded out and swaddled tight and now I've got three days at the office without the bossman breathing down my neckerchief. Gonna use it to final wrap on two anthology projects and start on another two, as well as a full-color project for this summer's MoCCA convention. I'm totally overcome by my love for comics lately, elated every time I touch a brush to paper. I actually feel like I'm getting close to doing the work I was born to do. Am I there yet? Maybe not, but I'm walkin'. |
| Today was a ceaseless grind, my molars chipping sparks as I try as hard as a teapot can try to keep from blowing the roof off. The morning went by with one kick in the dick after another - printers malfunctioning, boss vacillating, arguments and misunderstandings all rolling themselves up into a shitball of a Tuesday. I looked anxiously towards the window, overcome with a singular urge to throw myself through the glass and shatter into component atoms on the street below. |
| Too much to do today to even write in this thing; I'll probably check in again on Wednesday after I've put the bossmaster on the plane with all of his stuff. Until then, I'm going to be living the life of the bumblebee, making sure everything's honeyed up and sweet to the tooth while simultaneously stinging the fuck out of everything in my way. |
| After a day spend trudging around in the cold-piss rain bouncing from one closed stationery store to another, getting the chance to relax with cat and girl on a warm sectional couch down King's Highway was exactly what I needed. Watched "Orange County" and some oddly unsettling ground-beef foot-fetish pornography and hit the sack for a sleepy Sunday bookend to a quality March weekend. |
| Amazing practice today - we relocated from the warehouse full of frustrated teenage metalheads in Manhattan to a strange little shed in Long Island City, cold air seeping through the cracks in the door and mysteious spatters of blood on the snare drum. I was a little rusty but it was WD-40d away by three straight hours of chords into nothingness. Plans for "gigs" are congealing like butter in the cold - I'll let you know when you can come and nod your audience head. |
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