March 2007
Parts of Daddy clench – I would've said the wrong things to children, had I fathered. Smarten up that face, young man. Or: I have important colleagues coming over, can you not look so young just this once? They might find yo
March 2006
Agreement spree – My friend or co-worker went on one of his agreement sprees and it stopped me cold. I said I can butter myself up, thank you, I've been self-buttering for years. If someone agrees with me I'm embarrass
Annihilation of dreams – I rented Annihilation of Dreams but someone hadn't rewound it and then there was a tracking problem where the top was all wavy and not only that the subtitles were those annoying kind where the words
I never saw a pink one till I came out west – To the best of my knowledge I suffer from no significant diseases of the mind, yet from time to time I do like to drop into a carpet showroom to pet the deep pile remnants. They remain docile if you s
Pretty much asking for it – When that new masturbation tax goes into effect I'm going to be fucked, which in the end will save me some money. Pop quiz: what part of me could be described as "an unpleasant and narrow darkness"? C
Raised for slaughter – Taurean, you are stubborn and earthy, with cloven hooves, an ungulate. You are raised for slaughter. Your obstinacy is well-known, as is the pleasure you take in chewing. Your devotion to the status q
Sad brunch with my contemporaries – I attended a sad brunch with my contemporaries. It was only recently that I even acknowledged having contemporaries. I'd recused myself from temporal trappings. But time caught up with me, it sped by
The magnificent apparatus – The magnificent apparatus was a bone of contention. Some considered it an eyesore, even revolting. Others acknowledged this but said its functional purpose, while unknown, forgotten, or misconstrued,
Try – What does it mean, anyway, to try? I've tried, I try. There are times, occasions, in which, or just after which, I say that I tried. I really tried this time, or, I'm trying. Trying only becomes an is
Upon rising – First thing in the morning I like to let the dog lick my brain. If I've had dour dreams especially, or if my pants don't feel "right," or simply if I rise and think oh hell. Recent scientific studies
March 2005
Attention – After an excruciating week, there's still nothing much to report about Sam except that he's probably got an exotic mycobacterial infection of some unknown kind. Further tests are required. Since stres
Berner with the answer – Who could've predicted that the meaning of human existence would be discovered written in plain English backwards on the upper palate of a Bernese Mountain Dog who'd been taken to see a vet for an unr
Chump with a lump – My cat Sam, a lumpy thing under the best of circumstances, has a new lump where no lump should be, and will undergo surgery on Monday to remove it. Poor kins. Look at him, he has no clue. Just another
Cool it why don't you – Once again I have foisted my oleaginous attentions on an admired writer. If you write fiction and I have a special fondness for your work you better hope I don't snare your email address. Superlatives
Feline affectless stare syndrome – It won't be long before Sam undergoes his little procedure, the glinting knife poised over his pudgy midsection, ready to slice out his mystery blob. I can't help but feel anxious, a feeling intensifi
Fellating the blower – A line from an amusing email message made me think of the little libidinal jolt I get from seeing a husky fellow operating a leaf blower or similar obnoxiously loud and pointless mechanical device. I
Guilty – My grand jury testimony is probably going to be leaked to the press anyway, so I might as well come clean right here and admit that in the past I've used performance enhancing drugs to improve my writ
How's the patient – There are just enough holes in the organism, although some are called upon to pull double or triple duty, not to mention the Cronenbergian nightmare of the primitive cloaca. What's going on inside the
I saw the terrible smacking – Yesterday was the day of the Worst Hangover Since I Don't Know When. A really impressive degree of physical discomfort. I felt strangely undamaged when I first arose, buoyant even, and suggested to my
Meteor eye – I live in a leafy medium-sized city. I could live anywhere but I live here, not from any particular attachment to this city but just because that's what happened. Circumstances, which are unavoidable
Natural's not in it – I am walking down the street and the thought suddenly occurs to me that if I should happen to trip and fall or merely hurtle forward and almost fall with wildly pinwheeling arms and a childish gasp I
No me – It hardly needs stating that I fully expect to be done in by the avian flu. In the back of my mind I've always felt odd intimations that my demise would somehow involve diseased poultry. When the pand
Stone in love with you – J had a consultation with a surgeon today and will have his gallbladder removed next Monday at an ungodly hour. In case you didn't know, the gallbladder is a small organ that stores bile and squirts c
The wide but discriminating net of the homosexual lifestyle – It is with some slight discomfiture that I realize that if you are a male human between the ages of thirteen and seventy and you live in my neighborhood and you venture out of your home with any frequ
To cozy – I leaf through most every junk catalog that comes through the mail slot. Everything gets at least a perfunctory viewing no matter how wretched or boring. The mail slot is a mechanism by which dull rea
Unconnected things – I can't muster anything resembling a coherent progression of thoughts. Instead, here are some snippets from my mental trash heap, covered in wet coffee grounds: I had a daydream about an old nonexist
Vitas Gerulaitis – My springtime allergies—which since moving to Portland have turned into year-round allergies—have been raising hell the last few days, staging surprise attacks in the predawn hours. I used
March 2004
A spoonful of sweet 'n low – There are many ways to be self-defeating, and I prefer to try them alphabetically so that I'm certain not to miss any. Luckily my friend C called from New York today and, as usual, provided just the k
Be that as it may – I would be thrilled and delighted to be part of your organization. I don't know what else to say really, I'm pretty much lost when it comes to this kind of thing. If you take me on I will do my best,
Boxed in – Why on earth is desire only permitted to find expression in these restrictive and unimaginative forms? I can't get my head around it, it's baffling. There's some fundamental principle I'm just not get
Enormous check – How impoverished my life seems, how hollow, when I consider that I've never attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring a pair of novelty oversized scissors, nor have I ever won a contest or sweepsta
Fragrance of B – My friend B smells great. Of course he doesn't recognize his own scent, people never do. It's distinctive and alluring but not oppressive, it's there beneath any other transient scents, like shampoo o
Hard facts – This coffee is delicious. Look at that sunny day, let's go. Last night I told someone a story, a personal tale of ancient heartbreak. It's not a story at all but that is the human impulse, to take a n
Hula hoop – As the somewhat reluctant owner of a small and modest life, I constantly waver between a desire for notoriety and a wish to be invisible, even to disappear completely. I like to think of invisibility
Hypnopompic circumstances – I wish I'd learned to sleep on my back, if learn is the right word. Maybe "gotten used to" is better. I never did, at any rate, and now it seems every other morning I awaken with one or more stiff, nu
Kick back – Gay men solicit each other for sex with such bracing candor, but the language employed in their ads is usually hackneyed and silly all the same. On any given day, thousands and thousands of eager cock
Lap hazard – I loved it when you rested your head in my lap when we watched those amusing and baffling British sitcoms. It filled me with tenderness. Please pardon the cacophony of noises my belly produced. The li
My alternate history – Thank goodness people exude body heat and are capable of making so many different kinds of faces, otherwise the nullity residing where their souls should be would be alarmingly apparent at all times.
My friend the phenethylamine – Saturday night I enjoyed the effects of a hallucinogenic, a research chemical called 2C-I. It's sort of like psychedelic MDMA in some ways, but without the goofball feelings of indiscriminate camarade
My interstellar message – I am going to bury some personal artifacts and documents in a time capsule. Or better yet encase them in a sturdy tube and blast it into outer space, let some chump alien civilization intercept my ste
Not a lemony mind – What a disgusting place my mind is. A sewer, a fetid swamp. But I dunno, I have a soft spot for my mind, I mean it's sorta disgraceful but it tries, it really does. Poor thing. It does its best, it ca
Rag of remembrance – Occasionally I like to think about my personal effects and daydream about their grim disposal after my death. Nearly everything I possess is completely ordinary and uninteresting, but of course the ha
Running – If the many worlds theory is true, I'm at least thankful these other parallel universes are never visible to the residents of this one, even in brief eerie glimpses. I'd really hate to see myself runn
Slacker – J had his wisdom teeth extracted yesterday. When he came back his face was swollen and he had a slack, vacant expression from the general anesthesia. It occurred to me how much hidden effort really go
Sleeping partners – Whether or not I can deal with sleeping with another person depends on the person, the way they occupy space. It has nothing to do with my feelings for them or how attached I am to them. I say "person
Something to happen – Today, I declare, is the day of occurrences of interest. For instance a mysterious cave, unexplored attic, or locked door. Or take a smallish highway and see where it goes. Who could resist? Another i
Top that woe – I have a cold, which always makes me feel slightly ridiculous. It's so mild a woe, barely worth mentioning. That's the best I can do, a cold? I'm not even running a fever. J is still smarting from his
Upriver to find the source of disappointment – These are extraordinary times we're living in, and this chair is really uncomfortable. My upper back and shoulders never bothered me till we got this chair. Plus I think its skanky seen-better-days up
What knockers – I am occasionally so offended by the way someone knocks on my door that I won't bother to answer it. I ask myself, Do I really want to speak to someone with a knock like that? A knockstyle can say sig
You're the bone machine – Thank goodness that loathsome holiday is over and I can nurse my hangover in peace. B and I went to a couple of Belmont St shitholes and got properly stupid, that kind of aggressively idiotic drunkenn
March 2003
A few ways I don't want to die – Unlike many other people, I have no desire to live forever, either in the corporeal realm or as some ethereal presence of Pure Spirit. I rather look forward to my eventual disappearance from Being (I
Absence makes the heart – In a spasm of tender brotherly emotion out of nowhere, I resolved to telephone my sister. In the time it took to look for and not find her number the episode passed, to my relief. It wasn't a frothing
Another country – It was one of those afternoons, those hollow Sundays. The kind of day when it feels right to let your head hang upside down off the couch as you keep on talking about nothing to someone who might not
Em Eye Ess Ess You Much – When my mother and my sisters and I left California after my parents' divorce, we found ourselves in the middle of a snowstorm in Nebraska. We stopped to buy chains for our blue Datsun 510 and then my
Hotel of memory and desire – It was truly strange to see Last Year At Marienbad right after we saw Carnival of Souls, because I swear Carnival steals some of the visual ideas and the organ music from the Resnais movie. I guess th
I'll Take You There – Well, I'm taking a break from research on my latest book project, Clams On the Half-shell and Rollerskates, Rollerskates: Cultural Anxiety and the Lyrics of Disco. Frankly, the deeper I dig the more d
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