June 13, 2002

Well, for those following the wanderings of WonkoDSane and radlab0, they made it to Colorado with no difficulties.

I got to meet their nifty black-and-white kitty and they met our menagerie of pets, ranging from Boris (who broke into the house in the morning, jumped up on their futon and started smooching on WDS. What is it with that guy, everyone wants to smooch him...) to Beaky the laughing parrot. Unfortunately, they met our rather stinky rabbits, whose cages should have been cleaned the morning before they arrived. I hope the fan we put in the room helped them breathe easier.

radlab0 and wonkodsane make such a cute couple. They even brought me a gift - a Star Wars lego kit that featured Luke Skywalker. "Not the wimpy Luke," said WDS. "It's the kick-ass version of Luke from Return of the Jedi!"

I hope you get the chance to meet them on their trek towards the Nashville, TN. I understand they're on the way to Kansas City for some Bar-B-Cue. If I found a foothold on their truck, I'd have tagged along.

In conclusion, I found out that everyone (and everything) wants to smooch WonkoDSane and that everyone who meets radlab0 has a crush on her. My son told me that she was "really really cute, she would be a cute girlfriend if she was eight years old".

OOOOH, well, I’m feeling a little better now, following yesterday, well sort of the day before as well. Ive spent most of my time since the sleeping.

On Tuesday night, one of my friends celebrated his 22nd birthday so naturally I was compelled to go out on a bit of a bender. My plans were to go out (a bit late), leave by about 1.45am, sleep and get up the next day bright and early.

At about 3.15/ 3.30am I abandoned the idea of sleep as the England game warm up was starting at 7.00am with the game itself half an hour latter. So Simon and myself went back to a nearby friends house (generously offered as a place of refuge to Simon earlier) to wait out the next few hours.

We went for some food (I was not staying up without it) and Simon got the last donner kebab in the shop. This didn't bother me as I have decided never to eat them again, but this was the only food in the shop! So I left empty handed, I shot of down the road in a food hunt with "you wont find anything at this time of night" ringing in my ears. Eventually I found a takeaway/taxi office still open; they only had chicken burgers left, but that suited my fine and I ordered a double burger and chips. Whilst waiting I got talking to two people in their who seemed really nice and very friendly, I just have no idea what they were talking about.

I met up with Simon again who was half way through his kebab and had drawn a small crowd of people who wanted a talk at this ungodly hour. We talked with them for what seemed like an eternity from everything from football to ethics and morality, to the expansive use of cars and those strange bubbles on the ground next to road crossings for the blind and extra foot grip. All in all I suppose it was just one of those conversations that would never happen in daylight hours.

We finally made it to the house. To my surprise, the front door had been left open for our arrival, which could not be a good thing near the centre of town. The rest of the night/dawn was spent going through a 6 pack and watching videos. We watched Swordfish and The Fast and the Furious, don’t remember much from them except the basic story line; I do however plan to watch them again when I am a little more with it though.

Eventually 6.30 came. We left after getting a coffee from one of the occupants of the house we had been using as a shelter for the last few hours. I was amazed by the number of people I saw on the roads, there were queues stretching round corners of people waiting to get in to the pubs at 6.00 in the bloody morning where they mad??

Well that is all the interesting stuff over with really, the game itself was particularly average with close calls from both sides. The only goods things happening was Sweden scoring against Argentina (If Argentina qualified, England didn't), this was latter nullified by Argentina scoring. So both games finished in a draw with England not looking that good really, but we qualify along with Sweden.

I await the game on Saturday against Denmark!

(have u noticed that the Denmark and the English flag are quite similar, good luck to both teams !).

---

SO HE walks up to me all insouciantly in his studebaker ((QUICK! WHAT'S TWO PLUS FOUR?! an i say FUCK OFF KILL and he's all like NOW WAIT A so ((SIX! rampantly, compliantly, the assassination of the tool bell in post-antiq(s)kwitties; kitties COW BAREEEEL,,, so moe says so moses osmosis, I BET YOU CAN GUESS THE

on the stick it is writteN:Face 1,,,, CLUE nam sub axe legimus hecubam reginam on the stick it is wrttiN:fAce 2,,,

abrupt arrivals and departures to sell the world a new old time drag a fixed set a tropical saradice not so much a cooler but a versionless leather holster property sale solllld oh babe have i hav GOT

freedom like a jello a new manifest distancy for nationals alike a new bread a new shit a new pork-celine a right set yesterday follows tomorrow minus a coiled wire like grease in the gears unlike a a writing implement a stone face a blank die plastic he said crittling like a sharp stone on the surface water ripplers try to but it all decreases as i go along a manifold manifest destiny for this planet mars earth venus old sun rises sets on the same horizon a pulse a jangle a shat into metaconscious no more microwaved dinners or glutton menschen a lullaby cradle of safety thought and troughs of healthy disease sometimes i think i think the recursive dream scenario playing out on the tuba-vision a drip-up-down helical caskets twined around my cold fingers in the dark in the monsters in the never land came come away to neverland with me she says and she means it like a lawyer an old old lawyer that spoke only of the law like a scripted program designed to tell its truth and the hacker has good intentions too the common mis-had suture structure of confusing terms hacker and cracker you fucking lame lime heads a big dopey smile fit for a candy wrapper children of earth we are shipping you off into relative vacuum so that your fluids may freely boil in the near pressureless space no stress babe no stress as we all know the preda(tors/trices) make us strong strong the symbol strong embedded in her shoulder a bold reminder a bold old boring crusty world a world of books and solemn times unfold all the things i could give away to have what i want a drink to sublime the quashed crushed crangled mares of night of day of i am staring into the sun this is what we call bright call hot call fusion we sense this as something we call beauty the symmetry of string interaction the abstraction spoken as physical sciences to observe what is in preference to what isn't sometimes i thinnnk our capability for abstract thought impairs us by allowing stupidity to exist we need predators to predators of understanding to more and better predators of understanding to force us to think correctly the comforts of irrationality no i would like to drown in your crazy please

on the stick it has been carved like so: ugly, stereo-cliche((commercial, clue, crrzy stories ((so that i might better advertise my inability to splay words on the wash-away ground. monday monday cain't trust that day. predicted this to be less than cool, an' it waaaas. oh baby, it was. withdrawal can do that to a person.

she just dies. locked away in the tantalus to torture my dreams. angie. angie still haunts my dreams. i am sick of exis- EXISTENTIAL ANGST oh how fucking cute. people that adhere to stereotypes are much like playing with simple AI scripts; you already know the various inputs and probable outputs, hence you can fuck with them to no end. example: today((yesterday was the day dryad made my head green. we are walking, arm in arm, on the riverwalk. we had spotted our quarry from high up ((postulated thoughts such as "I AMSO KEWLZORRS I AM NICOTINE-ADDICT PUNK AND I EXPECTORATE VARIOUS BODILY FLUIDS ON THE SIDEWALK in the big big ((shit-poor book store, and they conveniently walked below us, these targeted AIs. so i am green in the face and chin, have a brightly colored braided yarn wrapt around my left leg, hand cuffs on left wrist, the wooden sword with writings on it held in left hand. looking down on them ((double entendre from a few feet arm in arm and i make a non-threatening face at them. response predicted; i offer an offensive comment as they pass in conversation with dryad; one inquisites about my sexuality and i give a resounding affirmative to pleasurable male on male phallic-anal sex drives. to which they respond with a host of hebephrenic ((i must admit i only learned this word from a master, although i do have real experience with schizoids, and the schizoids i have known were no fun at all, no sirrrrr... but that might have possibly been because i was on the wrong side of the bars in that zoo)) to which they respond with a host of homophobic slurs cusses faggot queer and other such boring shitnesses. ah. this was a crowning achievement of the day: to fuck with the simple AIs, and laugh my way home with a dryad. god forbid i'm given a more powerful weapon on this field of battle ((that is, of the mind, since thought-crime has yet to be made an official offense by our ministries of truth and justice ((however, the ministry of the AMAMRICAN WAY clearly states a xenophobic hostility in areas such as these. i hope those kids pay for some lottery tickets. tax the reason-impaired!((must maintain proper public relations of course, that is, shove phallic symbols in their minds and hear them squeal to the beat of an electro-vibratron. perhaps we ought to put an EINGANG VERBOTEN sign on the door to stuuuuupeeeeeed-land, along with pictographs to ensure a higher ((that is, more than 1% success rate of turning the simple-scripted shit-bots away. oh. what the fuck. let's just mine the god damned street while we're at it. perhappenstancery this would remove some legs and thus remove their mobi- no. wait. they'd just get more annoying means, such as motorized personal personnel transports. hmm. no. no. let's merely keep to fucking with their little heads. requires a significant amount less effort... so many come down to this: lazy ((subject also known as the laws of thermodyn- ah. you know the rest. an' so on.

CAN YUORS GUESS THE state endorsed religion subsection j paragrahaph haigch article three line twotwotwo that which die MINISTRY ZOV TRUUUTH that which the state endorsed religion sayeth so-like:to eat shit fed through the wide-band comm channelses, such as:corporate/money/interests((also drugs, poppy seeds, opiates, heroin, we fight wars for oil and heroin, these d-rugs of die masshes, the state endorsed it says we are paying to blow ourselves up HAHAHAHA and then we orally satisfy ourselves for JOB WELL DONE...

ok ok have now established withdrawal is NOT GOOD THING ohhhhhhh am being crowned king obvious brain pock marked with kitten claw scratches this is what it feels like feels lahk ooh mah jaw just popped see i had scheduled this here appointment with the psychiatrist and i had slept through/forgotten it they called me up and rescheduled for much later and asked did i have enough medication and i said yes yes lying because i don't give a fuck and it's annoying so am now going through withdrawal from the remeron(mirtazipine

IT SAID please~ no more stupid, i am full

cigarette ugly charm only faces no farther no farther the withdrawal aches subside progressively a pouncing kitten kitten kawaii is an island of kittens to feed the sero-addicts

a person wakes up says oh shit i'm conscious again. honestly. i am fucking sick of this. this is existential angst, that which can not be escaped or successfully denied without the proper mental filter of retardation. this chemical reaction is sick of pain. of horror. of pain. pair-haps i should still be doing the proper drugs so as to increase my sero amount until i am plugged happy. per-haps i am merely on an upset stomach, an upset mind, slurping down water straight out of a can of tuna. the horrible, horrible visage of bloated corpses. discoloration is the wrong word; it does not communicate the rising vomit in they who are still capable of emotional responses. shoot me up until i am gone. i want to leave with you by my side, in a nitrogen narcosis smile. hold me; i am not well. i miss your touch. touch. another SIMPLECOMMON((extraordinary taken for granted by the beautiful. it is difficult, difficult, to maintain enough denial to carry me up into the fifth level of maslow's hierarchy of needs. adolescents alternate coffee grounds and dog shit into my nostrils so that i may enjoy neither, so that only a psy-

THE PROPER PSYCHOSIS FOR THE POST-MODERN WORLD

Ahhh man, it's done. Over and done, who knows when I'll be teaching Math again. My kids this year, for my one Math class, were the best bunch of students I've ever had for Math, ever. They are mid-level seventh graders, still working on mastering fractions, decimals, percents, ratio and so on. Most of them are not moving on to Algebra next year, they don't win the school awards for academic excellence, but man, what a nice bunch of kids. I have tears in my eyes as I write this, because I know that someday I may have more academically prepared kids, but I know I'll never have a more kind, generous, fun-loving, respectful and open bunch. Something about that class just clicked, from begining to end. They've gained a lot of knowledge in Math this year, and had a lot of fun. We went to the Exploratorium and they did my scavenger hunt enthusiastically and with good humor. They've learned how to ask a question instead of saying "I don't get it." They've helped each other out in personal areas as well as in class. They were silly as could be, and serious when it was time for serious. They were honest and game to try anything. Today they brought me candy, and a card they'd all signed, and wrote on the board that I was an A+ teacher, with a repeating decimal bar over the plus sign. What more can a teacher ask for? Bye 5th period Math kids. I'll always remember you. All of you. And I miss you already.

GRADUATION!!

Finally, after twelve long years (well, actually thirteen, if you're counting Kindergarten), school is over. This morning was my graduation ceremony, and let me tell you, it didn't live up to all the hype which I had been building up for the past few years. It still hasn't hit me. It doesn't seem like I will never attend high school. It seems like any normal day. I think it'll hit me later on at an unexpected time. In the words of my friend, Nayda, "The sentiment might sneak up on me later this summer, during a commercial break."

My AP Human Geography teacher told me to pass by the school the day after we graduate, and we'll see it in a whole new light. Well, after the ceremony, I passed by, and took a long look at the building. Nothing changed. I think it takes a little longer for the feeling to set in.

I've been stuck here for six days.

I am getting pretty hungry too.

I am in the basic computers course at my high school summer school. It is for freshmen. I am a junior who is pretty good at computers.

Laugh. While you still have your trachea. A tracheotomy isn't too difficult to perform with a ballpoint pen, unless you count the zero-tolerance policy at my school.

Anyway, the first day we spent three hours formatting a floppy disk. Three hours.

Laugh. It's not like my self esteem can go any lower.

On tuesday, I played minesweeper for nearly three and a half hours. Straight. It skewed my perception of reality quite a bit, as you can imagine. It also made my eyes really red, and people thought I had been smoking. My contacts decided draw forth nastiness from my tear ducts. I hate eye infections.

I want to castrate the maker of Solitaire right now. That game is like heroin. That and minesweeper.

In short, here I am, in Computer Tech. 1, wearing my glasses, listening to two girls speak really loud trying to drown out the noise coming from their earphones.

People stare at me funny when I listen to Squarepusher. And what? Country's better?

At least I get to write daylogs on E2...

What a day. Ack. I feel like I can never be satisfied. I feel like nothing is good enough. I do not feel like I am valued. I should have never given him a key to my apartment.

You are no longer paralyzed with fear. You finally notice the pair of scissors that have been in your pocket all day long and remove them. Fading from your worn sheets is the smell of apples ripened to the point of turning, then fondled excessively before being peeled and eaten, there, naked, stinking of guilt yourself. The nap was good, you may take another.
There is always more wine. And cigarettes. And food. The fruit was only a single milestone in this eating through the day's time. You are preparing for something. Gearing up, a marathon ahead.

There is a plateau you know you have reached many times in some empty room, one quiet and satisfied (alone unwatched and fearless with no concern of time). Where every air current moving through this space is governed by your will. Opening windows ceases to be an obsession (as you only itch to in the company of others anyway). You suspect hell was like this, or will be, and eternity is no longer a problem if you look at it correctly. Every strata of your possible existence is an eternity, like endlessly layered continents, but you are merely a tourist. You kill time. You bite your nails viciously. You ash in the keyboard and blow it at the screen automatically. Happy birthday. Make a wish.

You enjoy rubbing chalk into your fingertips and looking at the whorls. You want to be a bankrobber on postoffice Wanted posters. Because they had guns. Because they had style. You see the same damn faces in every city, have the same damn conversations year after year, and yet somehow you seem to be evolving. Or improving. Mastering the technique. You do small things with your hands during conversation, folding bits of paper into birds or tracing out woodgrain faces on the table with your spoon. Your eye contact is blistering when you stir up some soul inside to shine out, but most of the time you allow it to sit like sediment in your leaden flesh.

Reading Rainbow taught you that early SFX for the Star Trek transporter was just a glass of water with glitter swirled in it. And that Geordi wasn"t really blind.

You only pretend to hate people. You always consider jumping when crossing bridges on foot, always. Just for the hell of it. You have almost perfected the art of the old mug-for-coffeepot switcheroo under the automatic drip to capture that precious first crackhead-strength cup. You wish they sold heavy narcotics over the counter. You secretly despise signing petitions. You allow scraps of paper to pile up around you; drifts of words and numbers you will never call but still keep. When coming across any password or bank account number you record it for the little book. Just in case. For Armageddon. This is what you pray for everyday. Absolute destruction. A clean cut. Trespasses forgiven. Complete absolution. You are finally beginning to understand slaughter for the purposes of recreation.

So here you are. Alone. Finally. Eternity awaits your prepared mind. You decide to pack up for the road ahead.

*** ( . ***

The rain washes cold and static outside; you are in the bath. Smoking cigarettes languidly and drinking cheap wine out of a coffeecup. Reading aloud to the empty room Philip Whalen, Ed somebody, Allen somebody, Diprima, their words echoing tribal mythology and traveler wisdom (berkeley, new york, portland, all these drunken miles) bouncing from tile to white leadpaint tile, the water is growing tepid and you barely notice. Pollyjean sings from the next room. Then a wedding march plays and the rain washes into dead television sound, and these raw nerves were never ready for war. You can’t care, you don’t, it’s beat reader bathtime and you are slowly drinking your way into noon and your birthday is tomorrow and you want for nothing.
You're a made man, you remember this, right?

Right.

The other night Kim and I were searching my car for my Fiona Apple CD (which we never did find) and came across one of those little locked diaries in a pocket on the back of the passenger seat. I don't remember putting it there, but my sister and I must have found it in Grandma's basement, not been able to open it there, so brought it out to open later. Then we must have promptly forgotten about it.

So Kim and I get it open and it was my mom's! We read it, she wasn't too incredibly wordy. It was the diary she kept when she would have been 20. She wrote about concerts she went to and how she wrote a letter to one of the Monkees. (Hilarious, Kim remarked that my mother must have stolen her life from Marsha Brady.) She was very boy crazy too, it's so weird to think of my mom at age 20.

It's also weird that someday I might have kids and they might read the things that I'm writing now. That is a scary, scary thought. Ah well, imaginary kids, if you're out there, I guess the cat's out of the bag, your mother is crazy.

My first (and hopefully only) daylog...

I'm copying this to a few lists. Apologies if you're not interested , or if you get this several times...

Wow...

Brian Wilson at the Manchester Apollo - what can I say?

Tonight may well have been the best night of my life...

The show started with 'Well, You're Welcome', sung totally a capella, in pitch blackness. The lights came up and straight into Wonderful... after two verses this segued into an abbreviated version of CabinEssence (no second verse)... this may be the greatest opener anyone's ever done...and the rest of the set didn't disappoint...Sail On Sailor, Our Prayer, Heroes & Villains (not the cantina version as such - even better - this had the choruses from the single version (but with Brian singing Bicycle Rider at points), the 'In The Cantina' section, and the ending used on the other live shows.), Surf's Up was a thing of beauty as always, Please Let Me Wonder, Cal Girls, Marcella, Do It Again, Don't Worry Baby, Your Imagination, Forever, Good Timing (dedicated to Carl in place of Lay Down Burden, which wasn't played), Meant For You, Friends, The Night Was So Young, Busy Doin' Nothing, You're So Good To Me... it was as close to a perfect setlist as I can imagine. And obviously the Pet Sounds section was wonderful.

Brian was on *FAR* better form than the Jubilee gig - and better even than the gigs in January. He actually went to the front of the stage and shook hands with the front row, which I'd not heard of him doing before, two or three times (when going off and coming on stage).

Darian's keyboard broke down just before YSGTM, and they had to take a break while it was fixed (during which Brian and Jeff told knock knock jokes, the crowd sang Happy Birthday to Brian, and they did the cigarette lighter routine), and Brian seemed a little thrown for a while (even forgetting the line 'you're so good to me' in the song) but coped surprisingly well with a fairly major upset. Mikey rather than Andy being present made little real difference to the sound - the only real difference I could see was that Desert Drive was dropped...

The audience, BTW, were nowhere near as responsive as in January - but that's not to say the audience was bad. In January, pretty much every single hardcore fan in the country went to the gigs (hence presumably the comments about how good the audiences over here were - there were *only* huge fans there) - this time people are only going to one or two nights, and the rest of the audience is made up of more casual fans (there were very few cheers when Your Imagination and Melt Away were introduced, for example). However there were plenty of people I knew there - good to see Iain Harris and Paul McNulty again especially, as I hadn't seen either of them in a long time.

But it was after the gig that was really magical - I went looking for Ian Alexander-Barnes (we owed each other some tapes & CDs) and saw him among the 'important people' with backstage passes. Alex McCambly came up and looked quite sad - he told me he'd had a pass for me, but had been unable to find me and so he'd given it away. Obviously I was devastated - but then John Porteous came up and told me I could have his, as he'd met Brian several times anyway!

So I got to go backstage (with Ian, Alex, Annie Wallace, Robbo and some others) and meet the man himself. He seemed very tired and didn't talk much to anyone - just 'thanks for coming' and so on - but I got to shake his hand, and got my Love You and PS Live CD booklets signed.

I also got PS live signed by Foskett, Bob Lizik, Darian, Probyn and Nick. I spoke with Foskett briefly about his solo stuff, and he said he's sorting out a distribution deal in the UK soon.

I also got Darian, Probyn and Nick to sign my Wondermints CD liners. Darian seemed quite shocked - "Wow! You *BOUGHT* that? Thanks!" - when I passed him the liner to Wondermints, and we chatted briefly about the Mints (the new album will be out in September all being well, and there's a slim possibility they may do a couple of UK shows but don't hold your breath). Nick also seemed surprised to see I had mints CDs, and pointed out his be-hatted cartoon image on the Wonderful World CD cover while signing it.

Probyn was *VERY* talkative - chatting with a few of us for a good ten or fifteen minutes. He agreed with me that a Love You tour would be fun (if impractical), and said the band often sing Johnny Carson on the bus (and backstage at the Tonight Show), as well as chatting about Smile songs, playing the trumpet, his favourite song (undecided but probably Don't Talk) and a hundred other things...

I'm still absolutely in shock, and I'll be grateful to John for the rest of my life, and I've stuck my backstage pass on my guitar for posterity, and I'm probably boring everyone now so I'll shut up ;)