Prefontaine

That's right, I'm like fucking Prefontaine or some shit.

But right now I've got a fucking cold and I feel like crap. I think it's mroe or less my own fault, since I went out to see The Gaping Abyss on Friday and stayed out 'til 4:00 AM. And there was a lot of hooting and hollering on my part while they played a sloppy, punky set. But I could tell by the end of the night that my throat was gonna be fucked up. And it is.

Did a shitty job of it, but finished painting the trim around the window. I may have to get some titanium white (or whatever the ceiling's color is) to do some touch-ups. I also played a bunch of Halo 2, which is really fun. I never got too far in Halo 1, maybe because of some extreme frustration in that initial level where you're trying to dodge the Convenant on that moutainside where you touch down. But it's gonna be different this time. Maybe.

I also cleaned the fuck out of the bathroom, which was getting fairly disgusting, dust-wise. You can't really tell so much, but the dark, dank nooks are significantly less dark and dank. Plus, I found this neat little hand-decorated Mexican-looking matchbox under the radiator. It's got sequins all over it and a picture of a skull ("La Calavera") but no matches. Horror!

Tom lent me Kung Fu Hustle, which is delightful; I picked up Mer's copy of Ulysses and am trying to get into it.

Scary Face-u

So this was on CNN's front page for a while on the day that BTK guy got put away. How fucking creepy is this? This weekend is going pretty good so far, after a pretty stressed-out lousy week. I had my first non-California roll sushi last night at my boss's house and then spent some time at a bar with the friends. Then I had brunch with the friends this morning at this place in Carroll Gardens called Banania, which was, you know, pretty good. On the way home I ran into Sam Frizzank, who told me he'd invited me to a party over at his place a block away from mine (his e-mail had gotten routed to my HotMail junk folder), so I think I'll do that after I get back from yet another work-related BBQ that I'm leaving for in just a second. The best part, though, is that the fucking kitten is finally gone. "Big Kitty" is obviously a lot more relaxed already. We had what Tom calls a nice long "love-up" this morning, with the result that my eyes and nose were streaming all day. That's right. Me and kitty.

I wanted to paint the living room this afternoon -- I even traded in the white semi-gloss I'd bought last week at Pintchik for a white eggshell plus primer at the urging of my co-workers -- but I was so beat after carrying it over from Flatbush and doing the laundry that I think maybe I'll just do it tomorrow.

Sometimes when I'm taking a leak at work and just sort of staring down into the urinal I kind of zone out a little, thinking about some problem I'm working on or whatever, and when I snap back to reality I have this millisecond fear that I've pissing into the wrong thing. Like, pissing into a wastebasket or something.

Update: Now it's Tuesday -- I meant to finish this sooner. Holy shit, though! I just finished my first full run around Prospect Park. 3.7 miles or some shit, and no stopping, not even on that widowmaker of a hill at the end. I just sort of kept on goin', and I was sort of thinking, "well, I'm just gonna keep on goin'." And I did. It didn't even feel like anything, just like a normal run. The thing is, though, the burrito I'd eaten for lunch was sort of, shall we say, propelling me along. So when, in the shower, I reached for my customary washcloth general, John Ass-cloth II (selected, like John Ass-cloth I, from an ignominious cardboard box in the back of the Yale merch place on that main street in New Haven), I knew there'd be some terror in the tumbleweeds. And there was. And I couldn't, shockingly enough, seem to get clean with the washcloth. So eventually I had to just sit down on the toilet and have what my co-workers refer to as an "assplosion," which took some time. But now I'm feeling good, and I'm making some pasta.

At The Enchilada today, I bought a bottle of that really good spicy habanero hot-sauce, El Yucateca, to keep at my desk for when I buy lunch there. That shit is hot, brah.

I ended up going to Sam's party, where this girl filled me in on what happens in season 2 of Carnivale. It's probably not coming out on DVD, right? I don't think so.

So I did paint on Sunday, and it took a real long time -- don't know how Mer managed to do the whole room (plus trim) in a single afternoon. I've still got the trim around the window left to do, which looks to be at least an hour and change if I use the primer. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Then Tombone called and he and I and some assorted others went to go see The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which was totally delightful -- sweet-natured, very funny, very accurate -- they certain captured the "virgin" mindset as I recall it having been a 21-year-old virgin. I was really really sore and stiff on Monday and this morning, but the room looks good. I accidentally broke the glass plate on this Picasso print that I kind of liked as I was rehanging it, but, you know, it happens. The problem is, it broke into two big sharp pieces, kind of too big to just throw away.

On Monday I went to go see Jaws at Bryant Park with my friend Karen from work. We picked up a couple of cheap bottles of wine and met her roommate and friends right smack in front of the screen where they'd secured like 10 square feet of precious blanket real estate and provided some crackers and cheeses. It was great; the weather was great, Bryant Park is just great, right in the middle of all those tall buildings. I'd forgotten how gory that movie is -- that kid on the raft basically explodes when "Jaws" gets him.

So it's been good.

The Nine Billion Names Of God

I had the scariest, most vivid dream last night! I dreamed that the world was ending, but it was happening in this gradual, awful way, such that I (and my dream-girlfriend) were stuck in a part of the world that hadn't yet been completely destroyed (I think it was Connecticut) and realized that something was terribly wrong but couldn't find out the details. In the dream I was frantically searching the Internet for information, and all the news sites were either unreachable or had posted "Technical Difficulties" messages. From the little news we'd been able to get, a good portion of the world / universe had dissolved into this white mist, and the dissolution was proceeding towards the Eastern seaboard of the USA. We'd already observed the effects of the "winding down" process where we were, in that "entropy had ceased to function" (this is how I phrased it in the dream, although now that I think of it, it doesn't make much sense). This meant that plants no longer grew, there was no wind, and human beings couldn't make any changes in their lives -- my dream-girlfriend had wanted to take this clerical job at the sheriff's office, but had to turn it down after the "entropy" phenomenon had taken effect. Additionally, my dream-self kept getting these mental flashes of what I identified in the dream as the Hindu god Shiva rising out of the ground and turning all the surrounding organic matter into this sort of particle slurry. Since I happened to be near the Yale campus, I ran over to visit my old Indian CS professor. to ask him what it meant, but he said he wasn't a Hindu and didn't know.

Also, to make matters worse, there was a mosquito in my room in real life, and it would whine in my ear every so often. I ended up sleeping with the sheet over my head, which was okay because it was such a nice night.

On the plus side, I did probably my best run ever around the Park last night, even though I've got this little cough thing.

Year Of Living... Grudely?!

When I was running Friday night around 8:00, I noticed an unusually strong police presence in the park. There was even a helicopter, criss-crossing the northern part of the park near that last killer hill, flying low enough to the ground that its searchlight could actually like... be on you. When I got to the Grand Army Plaza entrance, there were even more cars, including some unmarked black sedans with sirens on the dash that I'm pretty sure were detectives' cars. Anyway, a whole bunch of cops and cop-like people who poking around in some bushes near the head of the big meadow with flashlights and batons. I didn't see a body, but... you know.

On Sunday I went to go see Lee Papa's Year of Living Rudely, as part of the NYC Fringe Theater Festival. It was so gross and hot on the way there, but when I got out of the subway station, it was fucking pouring. I was totally soaked by the time I got to Dixon Place -- which turned out not to be air conditioned, which was actually pretty fortunate, considering. So, the show. It was okay. It wasn't great. Prof. Papa is not much of a monologuist, which is ironic considering he's a Drama Professor. He basically oversold every line, and he's got this weird fruity voice that sounds like he's trying to cover up a southern accent or something. On the plus side, some of the new material (the show was 50% stuff from the 'blog), especially the audience participation stuff, was pretty funny, and apparently there were supposed to be blow-up dolls and sex toys on stage with him, but the director said something about them being damaged / stolen, so. You know.

I'm gonna get flak for saying this, I know, but I do feel like I'm getting sick. At least I'm doing better than kitty.

Reading some David Eddings that I borrowed from Razor; I remember all my friends getting real into these books when we were in 8th grade. I'm finally leveling the playing field, by Aldur!

The Meat Circus

It is a fucking house of horrors up in this piece. I swear. Three things:

• My feet are bloody from at least two glass splinters I got this morning walking around the kitchen.
• About 15 minutes after feeding the cats, I noticed the kitten nosing around outside Mimi's designated litter box. I thought maybe he'd trapped a mouse or a bug or something, or that he'd gotten real excited about the smell of her piss, which he is wont to do. No. She'd fucking puked right outside her litter box, like an invalid or old person, and he was fucking eating it. And not just tasting it, he was eating all of it, licking it into the cracks in the hardwood. And there were little crystals of litter in it, and, you know, just... ugh. By the time I got a wad of paper towels to clean it up, he'd basically eaten all of it.

...and this one takes the cake:

• I thought the coffee I'd brewed yesterday tasted a bit funny, but I'm not really a pro with the coffee-maker, and I buy the cheap shit anyway, so I'd just kind of chalked it up to, you know, the hand of an angry God. Well, when I was dumping the filter and grounds out last night I chanced to look into the little filter-holder part of the machine, and what did I see? Glommed into the bottom were a few choice pieces of kibble that'd likely fallen in the day before during the affair of the champagne glass. I'd just put the filter and coffee in on top of them without looking and then brewed a 10-cup pot of Purina. Jesus.

The Strandman

Ugh, so it's Saturday evening and I have absofuckinglutely nothing lined up to do, though not for lack of trying. Chris is sleeping something off, Billy's characteristically unreachable, and I can't get ahold of any of my camp friends, neither. The Abyss and I had made informal plans to have a BBQ today (though it could still happen tomorrow) and I wanted to peep on The Aristocrats with T-Bone. It's not too late... something could still happen! I feel fussy and dehydrated. You guys know what I mean, right? Grrr. Maybe I'll go for a run.

Tom came over, I think it was Tuesday, and we watched Meet The Feebles, which he'd sold to me as "like The Muppet Show, man, but if all the Muppets were taking drugs and having sex and stuff." Well, it is sort of like that, but also really really awful.

Update: Yeah, so Tom came through and I went to go see The Aristocraps with a whole bunch of people at 11:00 on Saturday night. The movie was delightful -- I'd been worried that, having been produced by Penn Jillette, it'd be full of pedantic B.S., and it had a little of that, but for the most part it was a joy. Sarah Silverman is a naughty little minx. I would've stayed out later, but I've got this cough, you see, and...

I bought some new cotton sheets for my bed, since the flannel ones that Mer'd bought in college were just a tad bit too warm for year-round (not to mention pretty filthed, no matter how many times we washed 'em). I'm thinking I might also buy a new blanket to match.

Last night I went over to Bill's place and we all (Chris was there, too) sat around drinking and watching TV. It was nice. When I got home, though, I discovered that the kitties had knocked over a very nice champagn flute that was on one of the higher shelves in the cupboard as part of their never-ending quest for food. There was broken glass everywhere (think I got most of it, though I was still picking the odd shard out of my feet this morning), but they both seemed very contrite, which was kind of weird, so I didn't, you know, punish 'em or anything.

My stuff from Amazon came. The Op Ivy album is a bit tamer than I remember but a bit better, too. The Sandman book I bought was less interesting than I'd hoped but also significantly darker. It was also one of those books that didn't really benefit much from being colored; I wonder if there are some editions that are just black and white.