June 12, 2001

I cannot explain why, but I am sad. I see write-ups on Timothy McVeigh’s death; I see articles about his death; I read the opinions that people have on his death. All I can feel is sad. Sad for the victims, sad for Mr. McVeigh, sad for McVeigh’s family, sad for America. Just sad, I suppose.

This incident has become such a public spectacle. I realize by this Day Log, I am contributing, but that in fact is why this is a Day Log, not a reactions to McVeigh’s death node.

I don’t know if the death penalty is right or wrong. I was against it for quite a while. Then my Uncle Nelson was killed. It was terrible. He had just left my grandfather’s place. He left earlier than planned so he could get ready for work the next day. As he was driving home, he had to cross the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Coming in the opposite direction was a man who just had gotten in a fight with his wife. This fight apparently caused something to snap in his mind. He had decided to take his life by driving his car, into a car going to opposite direction on the bridge. My uncle’s Car was the one he picked.

This man, who determined he wanted to die, lived. My uncle, who had left Grandpa’s place early so he could get ready for work, died. We found out about the “accident” immediately. My family went to my Grandpa’s while I stayed home. We had all guessed that he had went into insulin shock and crashed. We were very sad.

Then the telephone rang. Since I was the only one home, I answered it. It was a reporter from The Poughkeepsie Journal. He wanted to know our reaction to how Nelson died. When he found out that I did not know, he decided to enlighten me as to the events of the evening. My uncle was killed. A man wanted to commit suicide, but failed. In the process, my uncle had died.

For the weeks and months to follow, let me tell you, I believed in the death penalty. It was not allowed in New York State, but I wished with everything I had, it were. I hated this man. He killed my uncle. He never called us to say he was sorry. I wanted him to suffer. Instead, he was let off on “temporary insanity” and went into a mental hospital for a short period of time. Now, he has his family, his job and his life. My uncle has a stone in the veterans’ section of a local cemetery. Did this man ever visit Nelson’s grave? Does he feel remorse? I don’t know.

I wanted him to die. Now, that 6 years have passed, I am glad he didn’t. I am glad his children still have someone they can call “daddy” and his mother still has someone who can call him on Mother’s Day.

I don’t know if I believe in the death penalty. I don’t know if McVeigh should have died. I don’t know if his execution helped people deal with their loss. I don’t know how those people will feel 6 years from now. What I do know is that I am saddened by the whole situation. I feel so badly for the people who lost loved ones. I feel so badly for those who cared about Mr. McVeigh. I feel so badly for Mr. McVeigh himself. I feel so badly for the way America has turned this into a public spectacle.

It’s a sad, sad day.

my professor, who happens to be a she

i spent all day studying today..
i went to professor williams' office hours
in this tiny little room because she's only a visiting lecturer...
a room that she has to share w/prof. hennig.
there were at least ten of us, maybe fifteen
so we were spilling out of the room
and she was enthusiastic and concerned
intense and engaging
and it reminded me of the times in my life
when amazed at a teacher of mine,
i realize how much i appreciate her
and it makes me think of why i would want to teach.
to be able to inspire students like that
and ignite in them a passion for learning
whatever the subject may be. for a moment it makes me forget
that in our society,
in this home of the brave,
teachers are underappreciated, undervalued, underpaid.

and it made me sad since she's leaving

and she's not going to be here next year.
that i've only taken one of her classes
and it will come to a close this friday...

but i guess it's good
it's good because her next job will be better
because i bet she'll get a bigger office
instead of this closet

and they will let her teach.

I have a job interview!

The big interview is set for tomorrow at 2pm. I'm hoping that by tomorrow tonight I'll be a report writer for a private investigation company! That would be great. And full time, too! No more crappy waitressing jobs! I think that may be the best part...

I went to the library to start studying for my last exam on Friday. I got books and photocopies and am now working on my procrastination skills, which include, but are not limited to:

• shopping (for clothes and pets, neither of which I can afford)
• cleaning up our room (this is a rare, very desperate technique)
• cruising around the world wide web.

Of course, I know that none of these are particularly original forms of procrastination- unlike my friend, who, to waste time, took his cat for a drive to the beach. His cat was so distressed by the whole ordeal he just farted the whole time. Apparently it really stank the car out. My friend hasn't procrastinated that way again.

We saw a huge green parrot today in the pet shop, an eclectus. They look like the original pirate's parrot: big hook beak, huge chest and wingspan, and an annoying kind of "arrr arrrr" sound. He was gorgeous and very vocal. Also $830. And they need huge cages because they're so big - in the pet shop he was in a cage they usually keep 6 cats in. And eclectuses (eclecti?) need a lamp shining on them all the time just to keep them warm enough. He seemed to be a very high maintenance pet. Hmmm, maybe another day... after I get my first pay cheque.

Update: I didn't get the job. I went to the interview and it went okay, but I got THE PHONECALL OF DOOM earlier tonight, and was told I didn't get it. Meh.

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Update 2: Well, it's a month later and I got the job (eventually). They originally asked me if I wanted them to "keep my resume on file"- at the time I thought yeah, right, keep it on file so that you can shred it as soon as I walk out the door. In reality it apparently really meant they would keep it on file, so that when someone quit three weeks later they offered it to me! Wow, they actually kept their word... employers aren't all bad! After a few days of employment, anyway.

I had an exam today. Or rather, I SHOULD have had an exam today. Instead, I retreated into my depressed, ignorant state and stayed at home, sleeping for most of the day. I'm happy when I sleep.

mellamaphone had things to do at Uni today, so she got me some copies of lecture notes I HOPE I will use to prepare for Friday's exam. When she got home she got angry at me for still being in bed (had she not been so pleased about her upcoming job interview things could have been a lot scarier). My lack of activity is really frustrating for her and jt...nothing they do can get me out of bed, to Uni, and in a happy state. I'm not trying to disappoint them by failing, but it's probably going to happen. Eh.

We went to the walk-in Doctors office in the afternoon specifically to get a Doctors Certificate. You need one to give as a reason for non-attendance at an exam. I think he must be used to desperate Uni students shuffling in with fake colds and infections around this time, because after a few perfunctory questions he had his pad of paper in hand, writing that I had a 'severe viral infection'. He explained it was so I didn't have to tell my lecturers and faculty what was really wrong. That was nice, though given the amount of times I've used 'I have clinical depression - here, look at this letter' this year as a reason for a missed assignment...it probably wouldn't matter.

What happened:

Him: So, what can I help you with?
Me: Well...um...(I hate going to a Doctor..I need to have a plan for what to say) my sister brought me here because she was worried. I had an exam today and missed it because I kind of freaked out.
Him: Ah...what subject?
Me: Subject?
Him:Yes...what subject did you miss the exam for?
I get confused, and wonder if the University has provided all the Doctors with a list of subjects they aren't allowed to interfere with. I answer meekly 'English?'More bizarre, seemingly irrelevant questions follow. I manage to tell him my history of depression ( and what a long, fun history it is ), and use the words ' panic attack ' somewhere in the conversation. That's all he needed to hear.
Him: Panic attacks? That would be part of the problem you had today. He starts to write something else. What course does your sister do?...Ah, journalism. Is she honest?....Ha ha ha - she won't do well at that then.
I giggle, say 'I think she'll do well', and he pushed another bit of paper at me. It was a prescription for Oxazepam, a tranquilizer.

This has unnerved me. I don't know why. Maybe because the doctor gave me it out of nowhere, knowing very little about me or what my problem actually was.His incompetence is a little scary. Possibly I feel weird about it because I don't know if I can be trusted with them. In any case, I should get over it and not be so shook up about it (and not feel the need to day log it). I've been on medication for ages; why does this bother me so much?

mellamaphone won't let me fill the prescription anyway. She doesn't like it either.

I'm early, I have a purple flower in my hair, I'm travelling fast, and there's singing on the tube. Lone voice wavering operatically.Port a beul, wordless mouth music, no particular key but it's loud and deliberate, not the usual loony tunes or muttered psalms you get, sometimes, on here. The tube is packed but as usual most of the travellers are oblivious, blanked out: only me and a little girl opposite (a pointy-eared pixiechild, bouncing in her seat) seem to be able to hear the voice. We swap grins and strain our necks to see where it's coming from, this trippy singing, but then the train stops at a station, people get on and the singing's joined by a squeezebox, folded in and out by the grubby hands of a teenage gypsy. Weird, weird and weirder, the singing battling this crazy fairground tune, all diminished fifths and spooky minors and just for a second it weirds me out a little too much  - but then the singing stops, and the squeezebox gets off, and so do I. For once at the mainline station my train's in. Six minutes till it leaves, plenty of time so I relax, go grab a smoothie for the journey. Saunter off to platform 1 where the notice board says the train is, sit there waiting for it to leave. It takes a while, and nobody else gets on. That gives me a faint flicker of wrongness, but then it comes to life and chugs off, so I sink happily into the book I am reading. Twenty minutes later I look up and realise: shit, I'm on the wrong train.

Check where it's going, realise that some way down the line there's a place I can bounce off from, back to the line I need, relax again - but the book's abandoned, the windows are far too interesting now. Places I haven't seen since I was a kid. Gran used to live here, years and years ago. Tower blocks flashing past (was that it, there, that one?) remembering the stairs we climbed when the lift was broken, sliding down the banisters every week on the way out, till she got too old to be so high and they shifted her out to the country. Later memories coming in now as we travel. Ten-year-old me, running away, getting on the ferry, not liking the other side (grey dead warehouses with blind eyes, stinking sugar factory, industrial wasteland) and coming back again. Fifteen-year-old me, spiky-headed spraycanned me, hanging out here, getting up to no good. More flashes of memory come thick and fast as the train rattles down the line and it strikes me that since I've been here, I've spent a hell of a lot of hours visiting other people's history, but this is the first time I've encountered my own. Also probably the first time I've been old enough to be amused by it. Thousands upon thousands of miles now between me and the essence of here, and it's a fairground ghost train ride through a host of faces and places. Concrete walkways, smashed bus shelters, deserted stations covered in graffiti in the arse-end of nowhere, and one of those stations is where we got arrested, once, but I can't remember which one. Sudden vivid flash of a face in memory, sharp and clear though I haven't thought of it in years. Fierce violently sweet sixteen-year-old kisses in a smashed bus shelter. Moonlight on concrete walkways, burning cars below us. Twin tags slashed in silver paint, 4 EVER scrawled underneath and it seemed like forever, always does when you're sixteen, but it was maybe two months. I kept his picture, still have it somewhere. Tall thin dark. Shaven head. Diffident smile, raised eyebrow,come on, I dare you. Bad fun and danger boy, but something nice and homely about him: he always took me to see his mum and brothers on a Sunday, though he never met my family, who would not have approved at all. We split because he was arrested, on his own this time. TDA: Taking and Driving Away. He got sent to Borstal, and by the time he came out I was long gone. End of story.

But it's all so clear in my head suddenly as we flash through this industrial wasteland, like those records that get shoved to the back of the collection and forgotten completely until you stumble across them, years later, and think:wow, did I buy this? was that me?And you play each one to the end, searching, listening hard to find whatever it was that made you buy it. I get off the wrong train and change for the right train, full of this happy excited feeling like I've just unearthed a stash of buried treasure. Dig yourself up sometime, see what you find..

First daylog for me. New but learning quickly.

Last Friday was my 25th birthday. My girlfriend and I got into another stupid fight. Not that we have that many, actually, because we don't, but it was not the first. To make a long story short, I broke up with her.

This was my third multi-year relationship. We were living together. Long-term plans, cats, plants, a nice apartment in New York City and everything(2.com). "What happened?" you're probably not asking yourself. "What went wrong?" you also failed to say. "What will you do now?" you probably neglected to add.

Well, I'll tell you. : D

I'm moving out at the end of July, into a friend's new place. He just moved in a month ago. I'm gonna stay there for 6 months for free while saving up money from my job doing macintosh support at a small publishing company. Why do I get to stay for free and not have to pay rent?

Because at the end of my tenure I'm leaving all of my junk (32" Sony Wega TV, queensize bed, giant bookcase, new dresser, 6 speaker stereo system, Dreamcast, books, etc.) with him. All my debt will be paid off, I will own nothing except the clothes I need, and I will have enough ducat$ to move to the U.S. Virgin Islands where I will get a job as a professional local asshole a la Cary Grant in Father Goose (also starring the beautiful Leslie Caron who you may remember from Chocolat).

The only question left is do I sell my G4 and get an Airport-enabled iBook so I can node in my hammock?

Actually, there is one other question. Why, when my now ex-girlfriend was sitting in front of me crying, was I thinking about noding Jaco Pastorius and Word of Mouth? Is noding responsible for the end of my 2 year relationship? unF!@#

I wish I could turn my keyboard volume down today. Each word I put together by typing a string of characters reminds me of the drinks I had last night. I know exactly where I went wrong, it wasn't the first shot of Jack Daniels. Not even the second shot, nor did any of the three Pacificos I drank put me in this state. Newcastle came into my life fucked me over and left like a one night stand. What seemed like a great idea then, drums into my head like a Crash Worship show only in a painful way. I work in a lab, but today I can't deal with music. Both of my co-workers in here don't realize that when they sing along with the music I don't hear razor blade like pain pulses cut small chunks out of my brain. Instead of being extremely mad about the whole thing, I've been engaging them in conversation all day. It's working. But here is the real kicker, it's a creeper hangover. The worst of all, I feel worse at 2:45 than I did at 9:00. It's only 93 degrees outside, I haven't been smoking much today. I'm in a good mood though...

Back up......

I can tell the summer found its way to Austin finally. Not because it's June, because at 7:30 last night I read a thermometer at 91. Some people complain about that, but I embrace the sweat that holds my shirt to my seat as I drive a piece of shit Chrystler with crappy AC. Snow almost fell last night, I missed it by 15 minutes or so. That's why I am in a good mood. While summertime snow feels really good and would have probably stopped my creepover in a heartbeat, my esteem would have been wrecked. Relapse, say it along with me....1-2-3, Relapse.

So in honor of not abusing a substance, I'll abuse a Rolling Stones lyric:

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find....you get what you need."

Last night I found myself battling that monster that makes me drink copious amounts of Vodka and keeps me out so late that getting up early to go to work is enough to make me want to just give up on life.

The night began with some late evening bike part shopping at Valencia Cyclery and its sister shop Freewheel Bikes. I am currently shopping for a new light weight crank-set for my mountain bike.

My girlfriend and I made our way down to 16th street which is the place to be for restaurants and bars in the Mission District. We dropped by a small middle eastern dive for a shawarma and some tea.

I got a call from a friend that was running the table at Kilowatz across the street. Pool sounded good so we went to meet him after the grub. Kilowatz is a rock and roll/goth/biker kind of bar with a great jukebox, cheap beer and two pool tables. It seems as though every person in the bar loves to play pool and thus the chalkboard to sign up usually has 10 to 15 names scribbled about it. Some thing else to point out, is the fact that Kilowatz has what is known as ‘regulars’ and I have witnessed on numerous occasion that these ‘regulars’ tend to cheat the sign-up boards or just flat out lie about their name and actually argue about who is who with the actual person they are claiming to be until said person gives up and has a seat with his/her group of ‘non-regulars’. It’s a pathetic site but somewhat understandable and accepted by me and tends to remind me of the E2 leveling structure and the punch thyself(don’t go there!) node. (this makes me wonder, at what level is one considered a ‘regular’ on E2?)

Well, we got a bit drunk and my friend and I played some of the regulars for money. We actually walked out with an extra $40 in our pockets carefully looking over our shoulder for any disgruntled followers.

The three of us, which is My Friend Rene (guy), My girlfriend umm lets call her Bjork :-) and I moved ourselves to the Beauty Bar. We proceeded to drink. I had a glass of vodka (as usual) while we grooved and watched the fabulous babes of San Francisco get manicures and revel in the illusion that they/we were currently mingling in some post-porn movie completion party (at least that is the feeling that I get).

The night concluded with a Super Burrito and a Cab ride home.

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Happy Birthday dmd!

Housemate Soap Opera

Even though I'm not exactly young anymore, my girlfriend and I still live like we're in college, basically, sharing a flat with 2 other unrelated people. One of them is an asshole, who we were sort of friends with back in Ann Arbor and then L.A., and so when we moved to San Francisco he was one of the few people we knew (he having moved up from L.A. 6 months before we moved up from L.A.), and so he was a natural choice when desperately looking for a person to share a flat with (San Franicsco housing tends to encourage frantic behavior. If you find one place that's actually available and affordable, you do almost anything to get it). Anyway, after 5 years living in this flat with this guy, who we'll call "MK", i have gradually (actually after the 2nd year or so) concluded that he's an asshole.

But that's another story. Maybe I will at some later date make a node about him. Anyway The 4th housemate, who has been living here for 2 years now, is a woman who we'll call "Maiden". Maiden is 5 or 6 years younger than the rest of us, and when she moved in, she was actually still a virgin. It was kind of hard to believe when my girlfriend first told me that Maiden had told her of this. But they had started to develop a womanly rapport and so Maiden entrusted this fact. As I got to know her better I started to understand that this lack of experience was not really that suprising. Maiden lives in sort of post-ironic fantasy world of Fred Astaire films and Harlequin Romance novels, a sort of state of knowing delusion, where she convinces herself that she is aware of how cheesy, innocent and naive she is, but on another level she is actually cheesy, innocent and naive. Oh, and also dumb.

Well, eventually the thing that should only happen in sitcoms and and soap operas happened, a totally fucked-up thing that made me almost ill when I realized it was happening - you guessed it, Maiden and MK were fucking. To know this naive little pretender girl was deflowered by this dickhead was really annoying enough. But then it was even more annoying knowing that this could not last. Sure enough, she was deliriously happy, like some 13 year old in some horrible trite afterschool special. Then after 2 months he of course grew tired of her, told her he "didn't have time for a relationship", and that was that.

But, no one moved out. Remember, this is San Francisco, where even 1996 rents are insane, but 1999 rents are even worse. No one moves out unless they're carried out, in handcuffs or a coffin. Good ol' rent control! Anyway, it gets worse. Then Maiden eventually got a new boyfriend, a real boyfriend with a sort of real, sweet idea of real, sweet courtship, etc etc blah blah. But, but, omigod this is the worst part - a few weeks ago, she apparently was bored with sweet boyfriend, and she went and slept with the jerk again! But she wasn't dumping sweet boyfriend, no, she just needed a little sympathy and commiseration from original number one man, and maybe a quick seeing-to also, eh, nudge nudge, wink wink... oh god i'm really stooping to a low level here.

Well, the latest episode in this sordid drama is that Maiden announced today that she is going on a trip to Colorado with sweet boyfriend, to visit his relatives!!! She pretty much knows she isn't really happy with him, but she just strings him along, meanwhile fucking the housemate on the side. eewww. it just makes me shiver with revulsion.

I wouldn't give a rat's ass about this normally, but this is all going on across the hall from my bedroom. And of course whenever i express to my girlfriend how repugnant I think the situation is, she goes on the defensive, sticking up for Maiden. I just don't want to live on the set of The Young and the Restless, okay? please?

My cat threw up all over my bedroom floor this morning. Light beige carpet, now spotted with Friskies-colored stains.

I don't think she's sick. I think she was just protesting for me leaving her locked up in my room all morning. The landlord was supposed to come over to fix the clogged shower drain (of course, he didn't show) and we're not supposed to have a cat, so we had to hide her.

That'll show me not to lock her up anymore.


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My boyfriend called me in to his computer today to thank me for the CD of porn I had unknowingly given him. My ex-boyfriend had left me with a box of CDs with warezed stuff on them, so I passed them along. One of the CDs was apparently a nicely organized html catalog of porn.

After glancing at the porn I realized that one of the girls was my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. The one I was insanely jealous of, of course.

He never mentioned that she did porn ... I wonder why ...

I had two things to do after getting home from work today. I had to take a nap, and cut a length of countertop to place in the basement.

The nap was cut short as soon as I fell into a dream. I was staring into a cannon, and it went off. I recall my head bouncing up from my pillow, and then back down again.

I got up got dressed and went outside to work on the countertop. My father just had his kitchen remodeled and we inherited most of the appliances and cabinetry, which are now stored in my garage. I took the only piece of counter top long enough to cut my length from out of the garage, and measured very carefully 42" and cut. I got a decently straight line with no chipping of the Formica top, so I was proud. I took it to the basement to put it on cabinets, and find that I have a 3" gap.

I hate it when I fall victim to the old adage measure twice cut once. This project too was cut short.