Today’s soundtrack: police and thieves in the street
Today at 8:02am: Deciding not to go to work



It gets worse and worse. I wish problems could be cleanly solved, like if it was just a simple matter of punching the right face or burning down the right bungalow. But no, this is never the way of things, not these days.

Back in the day you were killed by things like the bubonic plague, and if you had it there was no doubt about it; your arm turning black and falling off was kinda hard to miss, even by a medieval doctor. But nowadays we’re killed by devices more subtle, like high school kids who play Doom or bacteria that evolves. Answers range from elusive to non-existent and problems feed on more problems.

Right now I’d really like to go to sleep and forget everything, but I can’t even do that because my roommate is throwing a party tonight, so as I write this my apartment is filled with cannabis smoke and the raised voices of people who’ve had one Stella too many.

Escapism has always been a big problem for me, but I’ll continue to cling to it. I have carefully avoided getting myself into any situations I cannot extricate myself from, but this gets harder and harder as I get older. Most of the problems I’ve had are the kind you can get away from in a taxi, or in several cases an airplane, but with each passing birthday this becomes more untenable. I feel like at some point I’m going to have to put my John Hancock on something and then it’s all over.


I’m listening to Junior Murvin sing “Police & Thieves,” my new favorite song but even through the headphones I can hear the inebriated tones of the dozen or so in my kitchen and living room. And the smell of pot-smoke is like the idiocy of George Bush, it’s so pervasive that you can’t really get away from it.


I won’t be going to Pennsylvania after all, my foot is still not healed and I think I’m coming down with something so I had to pass. I’m kind of relieved, actually. I’m fucking tired.


Not too thrilled with the direction this city is moving in, but maybe that’s just me externalizing. I don’t know.

I wish I drank.


On Monday I start freelancing for The Germans again. I like them because they pay right away, like I’m a hooker. There’ll be a check handed to me with a precise dollar amount written in crisp Teutonic script and there’s something awfully nice about that.


I don’t want to think anymore. I want to sit on a couch and eat pizza and fried pork rinds and watch bad cable movies.

Hampering this fantasy is the fact that I don’t own a couch, don’t have cable and can’t digest pork rinds. I’m a smack addict without the needle, a writer without a novel, a cowboy without a gun. I need a six-shooter, a horse and a sunset to steer towards.


Things will seem better tomorrow, I’m sure of it.

I just wish these people would get the hell out of my apartment so I could go to sleep.