When the Lighthouse Goes Sailing

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:11:26 GMT

"It's already finished," murmured Hordubal. "I've only fixed up a latch for you, so that you can lock yourself in."

A slice of bread and bacon, all is ready, and now for the hills.

Smart Kid

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:57:40 GMT

Today I played Sorry! (the boardgame) with an 8-year-old girl from Israel.

She insisted on filling out a comment card for the hostel. Under the rating for "Atmosphere," she paused. She looked up at me and asked "Does this mean how hot it was today?" "Sure does" I said. So she gave Sacramento a low grade for being so hot today. But while penciling it in, she paused again, and said, "But I guess you aren't to blame." She erased it and gave me a perfect score for atmosphere.

"Good thing you used a pencil," I said.
"Do you have the game Sorry!?" she asked.

The Ashtray Made of Goldfish Scales

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:42:39 GMT

Yesterday's start:

I woke up early and drank hot coffee, and went to work at the hostel while thinking about my stomach.

A couple of Swiss girls kept asking me questions. Questions like, "Were you ever afraid of E.T.?"

On the drive home, still thinking of the question, I got hit in an intersection by another car.

An hour later, a friend from Oakland came to my door. I am a bad host. She likes milk in her coffee, but I never have it around the house, because I take my coffee black. With the cities' difference in weather, the drive from Oakland to Sacramento will spoil brought milk, but the drive back will not.

Several hours later, a friend came to my door who had been playing freelance violin concerts in the foothills of the Sierras. He griped about how the cigarettes cost 7 dollars up there. He also talked about how hard it is to smoke at high elevation. The locals like to thicken the air with fog machines, while he plays the theme from "Star Wars."

I ate tapas for dinner and pretended to like all kinds of olives.

Then, I drank three cups of coffee after dinner, and read "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," written in 1821.

Yesterday's end:

I finally fell asleep and dreamed that I was applying for a loan, and the bank tattooed the contract onto my chest, so I wouldn't forget.

While I was getting into a car accident, I could see my heavy green glass ashtray flying in mid-air.

And I buy my cigarettes "dirt cheap," which is just above sea level.

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:43:57 GMT

It's about 1 in the morning and I was just outside my house having a cigarette. I was pacing in front of my porch, debating whether or not I should have a cup of coffee, because I don't have much to do tomorrow, and I always used to drink coffee at this time of night.

I also buy certain brands of deodorant to remind me of the year that I wore them. I'm wearing '06, which is also the year when the pits went into re-runs.

Then someone in a car threw a box of Honey Nut Cheerios at my head.

I'm writing this over a cup of coffee.

Breakfast Time Apparently,
andy

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:34:41 GMT

A Field Trip to the Grand Canyon

If you have even a hairline crack in your self confidence, it's traumatic to work with a group of little kids. And we all know I have a bit more than a hairline crack.

Wrong number

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:28:36 GMT

"Hello"
(panicked) "Did you just hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Who is this?"
"Andy"
"Ugggh" (hangs up)

A vacuum diet

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:25:14 GMT

I had watermelon and coffee for breakfast. My stomach feels like a geode in a sock.

And I was vacuuming my room for some reason, and the vacuum got stuck on a string from an eaten candy bracelet.

I really need to be more careful.

Instructions for Visitation

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:39:10 GMT

During the morning we listen to The Zombies: Shake off your parasol and fill it with tea.

During the night we listen to Brahms, very seriously: Don't hit your funny bone on the candelabra.

Les Anges dans nos Campagnes

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 07:48:06 GMT

I spent Christmas Eve shoving handfuls of chex-mix into my mouth before my relatives could ask, "So what are you going to do now?"

That night I went to midnight mass at St. Francis of Assisi Church, standing in back next to the ancient radiator that someone turned on in 1862 only to have the valve rust shut at once. The same radiator has been melting my shoe rubber since I was a kid, and we sang the same carols too.

Tonight, I lied on my hard wood floor playing with micro-machines with kids from the neighborhood. One of them is named Jameson, like the whiskey. At one point, as we were scooting the cars around, I lost mine, and told him I had an invisible car. He chased my car with the new invisible car that showed up minted in his fingers, until the only cars we cared for were invisible, and wreckage was wreckage because you could see it.

I've basically been trying to live a few shit things down, to the level of hard-wood.

Now I have the same carol stuck in my head that I sung in the back of the church, and the angel I heard on high was the awful in-flight movie that brought me back to this part of the countryside.

Corpse in a blue book the size of a swimming pool

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:03:00 GMT

"Norma Desmond has a kind of perverse integrity to her"

This was the last sentence written for my academic career.

The Roll of the Die

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:09:39 GMT

I was talking with some friends at their house tonight when I got a telephone call from her. I told my friends, "I need to take this" and walked outside.

I said, "hello." She had some very bad news for her hello. It took me several seconds to translate that blunt hello, like a single dot of morse code sent from no address, the unexpected One rolled on a dice before you know what it means in the dice game you are playing. It is that dot over the phone that tells you someone has died.

We talked a little and I tried to comfort her the best I could. After we hung up, I stood alone outside the house and sighed. I said to myself softly the only thing that came to mind...

"scheize"

the new year's ball-drop that bounces

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:38:22 GMT

Tonight is my last night at the beehive. We had a little farewell barbeque. I grilled some corn on the cob and put a little margarine and cayene pepper on the corn. You have to kiss the corn to eat it and the cayene pepper burns your lips.

Then Corey brought out three party-poppers and said, "This is because Andy doesn't have to scoop gelato anymore..." and we pulled the strings of the poppers toward that select target known as "away from my face." It was a three popper salute.

Now, It's as if the whole thing still happens before confetti hits the ground.

The Alphabet Spells "No"

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:26:52 GMT

A car ride to San Francisco, me Dan and Cassie:

I say, "I'm going to smoke a J, does anyone mind (as I pull out a cigarette)"
I roll down the window and the freeway wind howls through the car against the noise on the radio.
Dan says, "Eh, it's a C."
I thought he meant the wind was in the key of C, ruining the music, but he meant my J was a C, a cigarette.
"Ahh" I said, getting past A, "I think I'm going to call B" getting past B.
"Cassie, I think you're gas meter's on E," "but keep it on the DL"
We drove through the mission district of San Francisco.
"I will not tolerate the N-word in this car"
"Oh"

Invasion of the Neptune Men

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:33:41 GMT

I am homeless, I quit my job, and I don't have to go to school. I'm sitting on a couch at the honeycomb hideout, because it's the only place I have left to stay. Someone melted plastic on the stove yesterday, and the toxic vapors have filled the house. It's like my last meager bowl of cat food is a frail plastic earth thing that burns in the hands of the neptune men. They have taken over the givings of my life.

The Past, in 2007 or 2001

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 10:57:05 GMT

No matter how well we can show the spaceships of the future, we still can't make a believable monkey suit. They're awful.

1 in 4 people have a bad joke

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:34:50 GMT

I went to a friends house who heats her house with pies. Her house has never known disease.

A few of us were talking and handing around a teeny-bopper magazine. Someone looked at the cover title and asked, "M Magazine?"

"The M stands for magazine."

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:56:35 GMT

"First of all, what is your phone number?" the Police Officer asked.
"She stole that too" I said.

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:24:12 GMT

I walked to the lovely Rachel Scott's house tonight to borrow a book about Richard Brautigan that I had never read before. Someone called me a shitcock on the way over.

signing off,
shitcock

Tesla

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:19:13 GMT

"In one of the most common forms of synesthesia, grapheme → color synesthesia, individual letters of the alphabet and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes), are "shaded" or "tinged" with a color. While no two synesthetes will report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies of large numbers of synesthetes find that there are some commonalities across letters (e.g., A is likely to be red) ( Day 2005; Simner et al. 2005)."

1 is black
2 is blue
3 is orange
4 is yellow
5 is blue, darker
6 is reddish orange
7 is purple
8 is dark purple
9 is pink
10 is white

A is yellow
B is blue
C is blue, lighter
D is brown
E is green
F is orange
G is bluish green

I've never found anyone who agrees with me or has ever even thought about it. Except Alex Lyon, my high school buddy, but his colors were very different.

They say Nikola Tesla had this nuerological condition. All I know, is the band Tesla was from Sacramento. So...

Alex or I should have done done their stage lighting, but not together.

Folding the Emperor's New Clothes

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:59:18 GMT

I try to remember: Walking around at night, in a t-shirt.

Somehow, I think all problems are solved by it, holding-warm the night air like a deck of cards.

Now I feel like a royal flush, held at the end of a wrench.

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:57:12 GMT

Today was good. I talked to a cable guy in my underwear, Kim and Steve and I drove to the garden of eden, and a bunch of us drove to Salinas for In-n-Out. Last night, Dmitry invited me to go to a bar and watch the Lakers game. We couldn't find the game on any bar television, so we ended up just having a beer together and I told him of my recent troubles, and he told me of his. Mostly its us building bridges so far they fall apart.

At one point, we went into a sports bar, hoping to see the basketball game on at least one of the televisions, but on all of them was poker. Last night, I had a dream about poker players using weighted card like basketball players use weights on their ankles to jump higher.

That's why its a sport.

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 10:31:58 GMT

Peetrie is dead.

However you spell it.

Happy trails little guy, pellets behind you.

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 00:45:16 GMT

When I was a kid, out of any superpower, I would choose invisibility for immoral reasons.

Downtown today, meth couples talk inane bullshit to eachother in all seriousness. Down the street, the ex-junkie married couple are always gardening or setting up for a yardsale or vacuuming with the door wide open, working on and overhauling their house everyday, manual distraction to rythmically keep "Don't do it" in they're heads. Homeless people playing "Like a Rolling Stone," not realizing the song is mocking them. My professor, a burn-out hippie with eternal jealousy from the sidelines of the past, doomed to write about writers, who plays the song on his computer with the same sentiment. New year's day, cold and clear. I see college students set their empty wine bottles on their window sills.

And instead of invisibility, all I can hope for is a hangover that keeps my eyes swollen shut.

2007

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 10:20:46 GMT

They counted down the new year from 10 as I sat in the corner of the kitchen.

When they hit the number one 1, I sneezed from cat allergy and my tie
was in my drink.

2006 was the worst year of my life. And at midnight, I don't mind kissing all my dead pets at once and tying my ties the perfect length to reach them.

Happy new year kids.

Love,
a

Maglite Flavors

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 09:07:11 GMT

I don't really have much to write. I got laid-off today. It makes me feel like an adult. I wasn't fired, and I didn't quit, I was laid-off.

I don't like the phone. It is invasive. People on the other end of a telephone receiver do not know how to sleep in or how to stay up late.

Today was the last day of Gelatomania. No one really cares. I turned off all the lights while I was working tonight. Customers would walk in, cautiously, and ask, "Are you guy's still open?"

I said,
"Yes, I just turned all the lights off."