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| 09302003 | |
| You know that feeling you get in your stomach when you've got the flu or some other sort of sickness, when it feels all unsettled and seasick and roily, and the idea that just a nudge in the wrong direction (a sniff of mayonnaise, seeing an open wound, bad news from the IRS) could set it off into a gurning geyser of stomach acid and lunchables. I'm trying to remain calm and cool but if I don't get back to bed in under three hours I can't be held responsible for the state of affairs or your clothing. TOTAL-FUCKING-PUKE!!!!!!!! |
| I think I'm getting a little sickly - my forehead is griddle-cake hot and I'm about as logy as Orson Welles in August. Hopefully I'll be able to maintain consciousness throughout the workday and get myself home to bed and fluids safely, but this is most certainly going to donk a dent into the army of monster projects that are clamoring for my attention. Ah well - such is the price you pay for being a biological beast, and until I can cyborg my up-pep into a clanky Conky half-man I'm stuck with the influenza shuffle. I have no idea what any of that just meant. |
| As I was on my way to the scavenger hunt, I notice this weird, fey little skater kid who lives on my block wearing a black plastic top hat and prancing about with streamers on the sidewalk. As I walk towards him, he steps out to block the sidewalk and says (lispy voice) "I am Abraham Lincoln, and you canot pass." Then he takes off the black plastic top hat to reveal a green plastic top hat and says "And now I'm Irish, so you can pass," and steps out of my way. I was flabbergasted speechless and just walked on by. |
| Went out to Justin's birthday last night but had to bail fast as people kept buying me drinks and I kept drinking them, severely compromising my vertical orientation. Knocking back shots and getting awesome is all well and good but by the time I got homeward I was barely able to think straight, and wound myself tight in a warren of blankets until mid-afternoon today. |
| Slept hard and had mysterious dreams about being lost in a five-story Home Depot with E, taking the bus home but leaving her there and eventually getting a job making apple fritters. Woke up to find the cat nestled in between our ankles, purring contentedly as we waited for the alarm to lead us by the nose back to cold autumn reality. I finished the new portfolio this week - comments and offers of work equally encouraged. |
| Went to the Kaiju party at the Tribeca Grand last night - I love those kids but man they need a better PR person - 90% of the crowd was rail-thin Jersey broads and hipsters there for the free vodka. They had a few monsters passin' out magnets but otherwise as a PR move it was a dud, especially for a fancy bar like the Tri-Gra. We bailed after shit-talkin' with the few people we knew and, full of hooch, collapsed back in Queens to nearly instant hard-line sleep. Today it's nothing but REBE and work until yet another freebie nerdcore party tonight - am I that predictable? |
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DEATH TO FALSE METAL DEATH TO YOU |
| Ears still ringing - completely fucking amazing rock & roll show that re-affirmed my faith in God, satan, et cetera. Europa (the venue) is this hilarously retarded Polack dance club 99% of the time but every so often somebody manages to talk them into throwing an honest to Christ rock show and it's always a good thing. Lightning Bolt made the kids sweat and mosh and bounce around but the night's real find was opener Necronomitron who took "technical metal" to ridiculous and perfect extremes, just mathy enough to be confusing but just straight-ahead enough to crush with rck power. And then we all filed out into the street to see Friends Forever and the smell of gunpowder filled our nostrils. |
| Who's got tickets to go see Lightning Bolt tonight? if you guessed me and mine, you're a champion of the art of guessing and should be commended. Since the last show got brutally oversold and resulted in hipsters rioting on the sidealk, I'm justifiably chuffed that advance-thinking seems to have saved the day here. Now I need to go get food and earplugs, if you'll excuse me. |
| Another long sleepy morning, E. not rousing until nearly noon. Some weekends are just made for lounging and lazing and this was one of them - despite the fact that I got a tonne done, my fondest memories are of the layin' around. We got up and went to the dg parade in Williamsburg where I re-united with some of the shelter dogs it's been too long since I walked, including Sheba, my favorite - and, hopefully, I matched her up with my friend Lauren and there'll be an adoption in the near future. Then we all split off and I headed home to get the drawing done. |
| Slept in laaaate, until a little after noon, but the sun coming through the window and the warm back of E. schnoozled up against me really didn't give me any reason to get out of bed anyways. We took a quiet morning and headed into the city to meet up with D-Newb for his birthday. On the way we bought a bowling ball for a dollar (it's monogrammed SYK!) and got shut out of the Richard Serra opening by art snobfags. The bowling ball found multiple uses before we headed back to Queens and collapsed in beds and couches. |
| I got some kind of skin disease from swimming in that stank-ass lake in Missouri - right on my lower stomach/upper crotch area. I've been doing some research to find out what the fuck it is 'cause I don't have health insurance yet (working on it) and if it's life-threatening or contagious I wanna know so I can get doctor money. Thankfully, it looks like it isn't either - just some water-bound viral nastiness that goes away by itself - in 6-8 MONTHS. Cripes. Thankfully there's no physical effects beyond ugly little bumps but fuck, medical science, get on the stick here! |
| Buckled in to weather the storm but came away pretty disappointed - aside from the wind screeching the neighbor's TV antenna and some gusts of water through the windows, Queens was pretty much tornado-proof. So I inked and drinked some of my fancy-pants beer and tried to catch up with the deadline Joneses as the year draws inexorably to a close and my New Year's resolution remains uncompleted. Will I make it? Or will I get swept up in the wind-funnel, transported to Oz and have a marvelous adventure? They're both equally likely at this point, I think... |
| Sun shines down without anything to stop it as I spend the day jet-setting (or more like tube-chuting) around the city running a passel of errands. Ran up to the real fancy beer store in Park Slop to pick up libations for my Midwestern beer-trading partner, up to the PO box for bills and ills, and generally out and about and soaking up what may well be the last true week of summer if the naysayers and cloudlovers have any pull in it. Let's hope they don't. |
| It was sunny and shiny and beautiful all day today while I ended up trapped behind a desk, waiting for the tornadocaine to roll through and brutally fuck everything up again weatherwise. I was really starting to get used to the little indian summer thing we had going there, but it looks like that, alas, won't last. Just another excuse to stay inside and draw, I guess, but I don't think I needed another one. |
| Monday comes again and I managed to get the SECRET LONGSHOT PROJECT out the door (the first time I typoed that it came out SECRET LONGSHIT PROJECT which is probably a little closer to the truth) and after getting it signed, notarized, sealed and mailed I'm breathing a little easier. Now to go home and catch up on all the other shit that remained undone in the weeks before this. I think I've got some beers in the fridge that will make this endeavour a little bit easier. |
| Rainy influenza Sunday - the two of us slept 'til early afternoon, our plans to go hijack the High Line derailed by inclement weather and hangover. We scraped out and went to the diner for breakfast/lunch and then bailed back home for extended nap remixes and a little bit of drawing work. Pretty catastrophically unproductive late summer weekend, but there's really not much can be done about that. Eventually managed to go back to bed from bed and slept the solid sleep of the just. |
| E. to friends last night, asking about where her boyfriend was: "Oh, he's staying home tonight, he doesn't really want to go out until he feels better." Friends: "I'm sorry, things are really rough lately, a lot of people are breaking up..." E: "No, no - we're no breaking up! He just has gas!" |
| Man, I'm gassy. THE TERRORISTS WON! But I guess since it's Friday they didn't win by that much. A lot to do this weekend - catching up on some projects that need to get out the door by Monday will leave me busy and gassy until at least Sunday when E. and me are going to finally make our sneak up onto the Highline for a pic-a-nic amongst the scrub-brush and syringes. Until then, I'll be holding my gut and emitting gentle moaning. |
| Back to work, frenzied trying to finish up this long-shot project in a world full of 'em. I gotta believe, though - if this works, I'll have nothing to lose but my proverbial slave-chains and it is about time some good luck came my way. Fingers? Cross 'em. Rabbits feet? Rub 'em. Four-leaf clovers? Pick 'em and send 'em. Let's see how all this secrecy works. Oh, it's also two years since they blew up all that freedom because they hate freedom. |
| Rode from Queens down to E's yesterday - unfortunately, I think I may have blown out my back tire as it started going flat awful fast and had to leave the bike at her house. Did it without a map this time - trying to internalize the routes through Brooklyn that are the most bike-friendly and least scary projects and broken glass and no-fun hilly. I've found a pretty slick trip so far but there's always room for improvement - once I replace that tube I'll hit the trail again. |
| They let Chris out yesterday afternoon - I talked to him a bit and he sounded shaken but surviving. He spent the night at his best friend's so tonight will be his first back int he apartment - let's hope the piles of his ex's furniture don't bring him any further down. I've never had to do the break up and move out deal, and I think I'm thankful - maybe I'm just immature enough to not want to live with my schnoozler, the fact that we both need our own private spaces is obvious enough that I don't want to push it. Ah well - we can't learn if we don't fail. |
| It's 9:22 Monday morning and I'm waiting for my boss to get in so I can trepidatiously ask him for an advance on my paycheck paid straight to my landlord. I hate this - I hate borrowing money, I hate being in debt, hate hate hate. I've never asked for an advance anywhere before, depsite having worked full-time for nearly a decade now, and I'm really not looking too forward to doing it, but at this point I have no other choice. Other projects are being percolated on and hopefully will lend some bolstering to my bank account but for now it's ramen and rice and cheap thrills for me. |
| Strange days in an empty house - E. was off riding a 100-mile bike ride and while I was supposed to help Naomi sell off a bunch of her eBay stuff today she was too stomachachey to deal, so I was on my lonesome for the duration. Drew, wrote, ground away on Evil Video 3 (slowly and steadily nearing completion), worried about this and that and the other thing. Eventually retired to the mattress but turned and roiled all night, nerves frazzled for another long week of unexpected surprises ahead. |
| So I found out that the IRS, instead of waiting for me to send them a check on the 15th like they promised, filed a lien on my account instead and hoovered $1044 out of it, plus a $100 bank processing fee, meaning that the rent check I wrote on Tuesday (covering the whole apartment) is going to bounce as high as the Chrysler building. So it was down tot alk to the landlady this morning and try to explain the deal while withholding as many facts as possible, and thankfully it went OK - I've got to borrow money from work on Monday and run her down a new check but at least I'm not evicted. |
| Went to visit the roommate in the hospital last night after work - they're keeping him at least another day, but hopefully no longer (they legally can only hold him against his will for 72 hours from what I'm hearing). Utterly, totally depressing in there - seeing your sharp, funny, sane roommate treated like adrooling, urinating, broken-down lunatic (which is what he's surrounded with) is incredibly demoralizing. Some choice tidbits - they yold him he has "delusions of grandeur" because he wants to be an artist, his tattoos indicate he has a "drug and alcohol problem" and one of the orderlies warned him against doing sit-ups in his room because if the doctors see him doing it they'll write him up for having a "manic episode." Good lord a'mighty, what a world. |
| Roommate's still in the hatch, last I heard - hopefully he's out and on his way home to sleep in a familiar futon or something. Can't help worrying obsessively even though I know there ain't anything I can do to help bail him out. So I'm sitting here at my desk, all sorts of work in front of me that I don't have the heart to do, this weekend's trip to SPX up in flames in front of me, just feeling crushed and bruised and lonely and lost in a world where this kind of shit can just happen to people, and my arms feel heavy inside my sleeves so I'm just going to lay them down. |
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So my roommate was admitted to St. Vincent's against his will this afternoon for depression. He had gone up there to try to arrange some sort of psyciatric consultation but the braintrust decided that he was a danger to himself and/or others so they locked him up for at least overnight. Apparently tomorrow morning the doctors make their rounds and decide who can go home, and hopefully he'll be in that batch and won't have lost his job and - Jesus, why is my life always so complicated? |
| Back to work to find a mostly empty nest, people taking a little well-deserved time off before we launch into our next big-league chew. So I'm handling everybody's incoming and out-going like the six-armed Shiva of the reception desk that I am, while meantime doing the drawing and writing and 14-year-old-girl-pretending-to-being that I do so well, and it feels good. It feels together and productive and about as "right" as I can get. |
| Labor Day is supposedly officially the last day of summer (or at least the last day when you can wear white shoes) but I'll be damned if it didn't stay gray and rainy throughout. After taking off from E's this morning, taking the bike embarrassingly on the subway 'cause I'm too much the puss to pedal 20 miles in the rain, I headed home to cocoon and finish up the long-awaited Unholy III comic as rain cascaded against the windows, my fresh new sunburn keeping the empty house warm. |
AUGUST
all content (c) 2003 k. thor jensen