Today’s soundtrack: Mama put my guns in the ground,
I can’t shoot them anymore.
Today at 7:02am: Ironing.


As I’m heading down the subway steps I hear the train pulling into the platform. Whip out my metrocard and slide it through the gash in the turnstile, but INSUFFICIENT AMOUNT comes up in the LCD. Fuck me.

It’s no problem though, ‘cause I’m fast Fast FAST!

I whip around and hit the touchscreen on the Metrocard vending machine. I’ve memorized the prompts and button locations so I fly through the menus like a hacker, dip my credit card lightning quick, Transaction Complete. Behind me, on the other side of the turnstiles the train has just come to a stop. I can make this.

Then the machine starts making some grinding noise. “Transaction Complete” is frozen in the window. It doesn’t spit out a Metrocard, just sits there and grinds.

I hear the train doors open, hear people going in and out, then I hear the “bing bong” and the train doors shut. It slowly starts pulling out of the station. Then the machine spits my card out. I swear to god the fucking thing is timed.

Cops all over the place. I work near the Waldorf and I guess some U.N. shit is going down today, ‘cause as I come out of the subway there’s a wall of blue like they’re filming Police Academy Seven. I look for Steve Gutenberg and that guy who makes the sound effects but I don’t see ‘em anywhere.

I arrive at the office early, 8am. I woke up today around 3:30am and wasn’t able to go back to sleep so I’ve been up for a while.

Everyone on my floor seems to be upgrading their computers, so every day there’s a new piece of “garbage”--a completely serviceable but outdated computer component--in the hallway next to the recycling pile. Last week I scored a keyboard.

My laptop screen is dead (picture above) and I need an external monitor. Today there was a 17-inch Sony in the hallway. I immediately squatted down to pick it up, simultaneously feeling I should exclaim “Score!” or “Bonus!” but I have to face facts, I have no such exclamations. I have lots of “Shit”s, “Shyte”s and “Dammit All To Hell”s but I don’t have many phrases for when things go right.

The monitor was pretty goddamn heavy but I lugged it to my office so the garbage monsters wouldn’t take it. Tucked it away on the edge of my desk and debated leaving a threatening post-it to protect it. I wanted to write something in broken English to make it more scary, like MONITOR IS MINE, YOU NO TOUCH OR I BREAK YOU FUCKING FACE.

I don’t want to get fired (not that way, anyway) so I didn’t write the note.

After lunch I passed Drew in the hallway, he’s one of the tech guys. “Say Drew, that Sony monitor you guys threw out, it works, right?”

Drew scratched his head and looked at the ceiling. “...No. No, that one is garbage.”

“Ah,” I said. Dammit all to hell, hell, hell.

Carried it back into the hallway and I swear it got five pounds heavier. Fucking thing gained weight on my desk.

I got out of work early (“Score!”) and walked through thirty thousand cops to get to the subway station.

A limo with police escort pulled up in front of the Waldorf, trailed by a black Suburban filled with what looked like Secret Service. Some important-looking dignitary starts to step out of the limo (he opened the door by himself) and this female agent runs up from the Suburban to put herself between the dignitary and the sidewalk crowds.

One of the black agents started pulling some stuff out of the back of the Suburban. I couldn’t see what it was because of the angle I was at, I wonder if it was like, shotguns or something.

I put “female” in italics ‘cause I’ve never seen a female bodyguard before. She was backed up by a crew of three guys. They all looked like Agents from The Matrix, sunglasses, earpieces and “Don’t Fuck With Me” demeanors. They hustled the guy into the Waldorf and it seemed to me they looked at everyone’s face on the way in.

There’s this really good street musician who sings and plays guitar on the subway platform. The downtown-bound 6 at 51st and Lex. Anyway today he was singing some song I don’t really care for, but the other day he sang “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and it was just killer. The guy’s got a great voice and he knows what he’s doing with the guitar too.

So today when I got home I was craving that song and I downloaded all the various versions of it. I’ve had the Guns ‘N Roses version since college but I just now I pulled down the Clapton, the U2, the Bon Jovi and of course the original Dylan.

Unsurprisingly the U2 version sucked.

Surprisingly the Bon Jovi version sucked. I know most people think Bon Jovi sucks altogether but I can appreciate him from a New-Jersey-Turnpike-Rocking-Out-In-My-Camaro kind of way. Like you break up with your girlfriend Tina who works as a cashier at the Mobil station and you rip down the Garden State Parkway cranking “You Give Love A Bad Name.” Then you get to the Jersey Shore and get in a fight with some guy in a parking lot but you won’t punch his friend because he looks like Richie Sambora. Like that.

Anyways none of the versions I listened to really satiated my craving; somehow that guy in the subway sings it the best.