Today’s soundtrack: I kept the right ones out, and let the wrong ones in
Today at 12:03am: the shakes came back.


Yesterday I made a $375 mistake. I was defrosting my piece of shit refrigerator with a hammer and screwdriver (don’t ask) and I accidentally punctured the part that holds the fucking freon.

I called Ben, the fix-it guy while my freezer hissed in the background, slowly filling my apartment with CFCs. “Is this something I can fix?” I ask. Not that I have the time or inclination to sit around fixing a freezer. “Is this something that’s fixable?”

“Uh...sorry, dude. You’re gonna have to get a new ‘fridge.”

Fuck.

So I had to send my pineapple and OJ and miscellaneous produce down to Yuka’s to stay for a while. She has a big-ass, nice, late-model, working refrigerator with the anti-frost feature.


MISC. PRODUCE: Why do we have to leave again?

ME: Because your daddy’s a fuck-up and he accidentally ruined the refrigerator with a philips-head screwdriver. Now listen, it will just be for a little while, I’m getting a new one on Tuesday and then you can all come back.

M.P.: I don’t want to leave. I want to go back to my ‘fridge.

ME: Listen to me, you piece of shit cabbage--It’s gone, Gone, GONE. There is no more ‘fridge, no more crisper drawer, no freon, no nothing. It’s gone, like the Taliban.

M.P.: Some people say the Taliban is still--

ME: You be good and listen to your Aunt Yuka, don’t give her any trouble.

M.P.: Fuck you.

ME: What did you say?

M.P.: I said fuck you. I’m produce, a foodstuff. You’re ultimately going to eat me so I have absolutely no incentive to behave myself.

ME: You think that’s bad, being eaten? You should have seen what I used to do to cigarettes. Set them on fire and suck the life right out of them. Keep fucking with me and I’ll give you a demonstration.

1. What's one thing you've always wanted to do, but never have?
Double-drop-kick someone through a subway turnstile.

2. When someone asks your opinion about a new haircut/outfit/etc, are you always honest?
Fuck no. What sense would that make?

3. Have you ever found out something about a friend and then wished you hadn't? What happened?
Yep. Worse than finding out they secretly liked me in “that way,” I found out they thought I secretly liked them in “that way.” It was like a bad episode of Three’s Company.

4. If you could live in any fictional world (from a book/movie/game/etc.) which would it be and why?
I’d like to live in The Matrix so I could run up walls and kick people in the head and so forth. Also I would smoke opium, carry high credit card balances and subscribe to magazines I have no intention of paying for.

5. What's one talent/skill you don't have but always wanted?
I wish I had a set of pipes like Mel Torme. Tease me about this if you’d like to get shanked with a rusty screwdriver.

Today’s soundtrack: oh please leave the vendanna open
Today at 8:02pm: left-right-X-O-triangle etc.


I thought it was okay to smoke in my dreams, but someone pointed out that’s no good--it speaks of a weakening of the mind. So I have to fight those urges too. Oh goddammit.

Mike got a Playstation 2. It’s not really his but to make a long story short there’s a fucking PS2 in his kitchen, and I have the keys to his place.

Today my roommate and I let ourselves in to play The Matrix game. It’s pretty fucking hot man. And I just saw The Animatrix so I’ve been thinking about the Wachowski brothers’ little world a lot lately.

If I was in The Matrix, I’d be steady smoking. I’d smoke like seven packs a day and eat assloads of saturated fat because shit, it’s just a simulation and real life in those dank fucking ships looks like a drag and a half.

At those jawbone sessions with Morpheus I’d never not be eating pizza. I’d go on missions with Neo and Trinity but while they’re running up walls and flying, the first thing I’d do is stick not one, but two Camels in my mouth and light those bitches up.

That would be my thing, I’d smoke two cigarettes at a time. With Neo around I wouldn’t have to do any fighting anyway. I’ve spent six fucking years and several thousand dollars studying Hapkido and Neo “downloaded” that shit in like twelve seconds.


ME: Where are my matches? Oh here they are. Phew!

NEO: Hey! Rain! Hey!

ME: Insert cigarette A. Insert cigarette B.

NEO: Can I get a little help here? I’m fighting 100 Agent Smiths!

ME: (lighting up) That’s ironic, because I was just listening to The Smiths. “Louder Than Bombs.” Good album man.

NEO: I’m serious man, I could use some help over here!

ME: Fuck off Anderson, I’m busy smoking. Download a gun, or Ninjitsu or something...

NEO: I’m getting buried here! Help me goddammit!

ME: ...while you’re at it order me an ashtray and a zippo, you Messianic little bitch.

Today’s soundtrack: I can’t say baby where I’ll be in a year
Today at 5:02pm: Waiting to cross


I smoke in my dreams now. Each time is different in terms of location but the circumstances are always the same: I can’t fucking take it anymore, and I put a cigarette between my lips and light that bitch up like the girl next door at the Salem witch trials.

I inhale deep and long, then make a face, then exhale a jet of smoke like a skywriter. Phoooooooooo.

A few moments later I feel guilt (while still in the dreamworld--stay with me, people) and curse myself for having smoked. But then I wake up and IT’S ALL GOOD! It was just a dream! I got the pleasure of smoking but I didn’t really break the no-smoking streak.

It’s been forty-something fucking days now, which means I’ve smoked around 800 less cigarettes than I would have if I’d continued on The Path. Fucking miraculous but I worry I am just postponing the inevitable.

Speaking of The Path there’s a team of guerillas, Marxist I think, called The Shining Path. That name is no joke! “The Shining Path.” I’ve never seen ‘em but they sound like some bad-ass motherfuckers. If you lived in the same town as them I bet you could do some ill-ass shit to your neighbor’s pet and just blame it on “those Shining Path cats. You know those motherfuckers crazy.”

I download everything. I would download your mom if I could. But I am going to go into a store and actually buy that Radiohead CD because I am anticipating hearing tracks that will profoundly improve the quality of my life, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in five and ten years, and I want to give them my money in appreciation. OK Computer is still, penny for penny, some of the best money I ever spent.

I hope that’s not stupid; I hope I’m not just putting super unleaded into some record exec’s Escalade. I want to give Thom Yorke the money personally, like I’m his grandmother, and urge him not to spend it all in one place. “Hey Thom, here’s a ten and a five. Do something positive with this, aight? Thom--look at me, Thom. You spend this money on heroin and I am going to beat your filthy, stinking ass with my shoe.”

The cats from Radiohead don’t do drugs, right?

Going to sleep soon. Tonight in my dreams I’m going to count sheep, smoke a FAT camel and download your mom. If you’re lucky it will say “More Sources Needed,” if you’re unlucky it will say “8 Users.”

Today’s soundtrack: at last
Today at 8:02pm: downloading old Seinfeld episodes


Mike lets himself into my apartment carrying a meat cleaver and a coconut.

“The hell is that,” says Shady.

“Coconut,” says Mike. “I been buying ‘em ‘cross the street. So cheap! Just a buck-fifty. You want some? I’m gonna drink the juice.”

Mike puts the coconut down on our floor and starts hacking at it with the meat cleaver, making an awful din. WHACK WHACK WHACK. The shell remains unscathed.

“That’s not working,” says Shady. “Gimme that thing.”

“No no no,” says Mike. “I been cutting these things up all week, it just takes a little while.”

“Gimme that thing,” says Shady, pointing to the cleaver.

Sara comes out and looks at the coconut. “That’s not how you do it,” she says, having had experience with such things. “You need a machete.”

“I got a machete,” says Shady. Mike continues pounding at it with the cleaver while Shady begins rummaging through a box in his room labeled WEAPONS.

Soon enough Shady produces a machete. Mike hacks the top off the coconut, revealing a small hole leading into the center of it. I stick a straw into it and take a sip.

“How’s it taste,” says Mike. “Tell me that isn’t refreshing.”

“I dunno,” I say. “I think it’s gone bad, man. Something doesn’t taste right.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to taste,” Mike insists.

“That coconut’s no good,” says Sara, inspecting it. “It’s gone bad.” Mike ignores her and begins drinking the juice.

After he drains it we hack it completely in half. Coconuts are hollow, but clinging to the inside of the shell is a thin, hemispherical layer of white “meat.” Mike and I each take a half and pry the stuff out with spoons.

The texture is rather radish-like, moist but crisp. The flavor is unsweet and surprisingly buttery. Eating it is a chore. “Hey Sara, what’s inside these things?” I ask. (Sara is ridiculously smart, way smarter than the three of us, and she knows a lot of things. At the moment she’s on the computer.)

“Coconuts? They’re mostly saturated fat,” she yells down the hall. I spit my half into the garbage but Mike keeps eating his.

Eating coconut in turn leads the three of us guys into a conversation about Gilligan’s Island.


MIKE: Ginger or MaryAnn?

SHADY: Come on, man, MaryAnn!

ME: MaryAnn, without a doubt.

SHADY: She could cook and everything, she was a farm girl! Ginger couldn’t do *shit.*

ME: Yeah man the only people on that island who pulled their fucking weight were MaryAnn and the Professor.

SHADY: True.

ME: Ginger didn’t do shit, the Howells didn’t do shit--all they had was money, what good is it?--and all Gilligan did was fuck things up.

MIKE: What about the Skipper? He helped out.

ME: Bull, shit. All the Skipper did was keep Gilligan in check and he couldn’t even do that right. If it wasn’t for the Professor and MaryAnn all those motherfuckers would be dead.

SHADY: True.

ME: If I was on that island I would’ve beat Gilligan’s ass Week One.

Today’s soundtrack: stop this madness before it starts
Today at 8:02pm: eating dinner in a restaurant with decent chow but shitty service


I think I would’ve made a pretty good hitman. Some people like to work in teams but I enjoy working alone and in silence. If I just took the time to master the killing arts and made the right connections to get the right contracts, I bet I’d be doing great.

Yesterday I get to The Corporation at 8:30am with my coffee and there’s a girl sitting in my office. What the fuck.

“Hi, you must be Rain,” she says, perkily. (I hate perk. I need perk in my life like I need a prison shank in my kidney.) “I’m Robin! I’m the new intern.”

Ah, goddammmit. They never tell me things around here. “Nice ta meet you Robin,” I mutter in my pre-caffeinated tone. Subtext: Let’s can the chatter ‘til my coffee’s down the hatch.

“I hope you don’t mind if I just kind of, you know, look over your shoulder while you work. You know, see how you do things!” she says, pulling a chair over as I try not to recoil in horror. I fire my computer up and launch into derivative small talk, to feel her accent out and figure out where she’s from. Hobby of mine.

“Where’d you go to school?” I ask, trying to confirm if it’s a slight undercurrent of southern drawl I hear. I wish it was the 1950s and you could smoke at your desk. If I still smoked I’d light one up and blow copious clouds all around me in a defensive carcinogenic ring. I would create my own personal ecosystem of bioterror.

Turns out she’s from Texas, and a bit of a Chatty Cathy. She likes to ask questions and, when I begin to answer them, cut me off to provide an (invariably lengthy) answer herself.

I try reminding myself that in a parallel universe I am paid to put people like this into car trunks. I wear black Boston-Strangler-type gloves and a natty jacket. I drink my coffee with the gloves on and sit in diners at 3 in the morning, staring off into space. When the jukebox runs out it takes me a moment to register, then I put another quarter in.

Today’s soundtrack: we’re a winner
Today at 8:02pm: after hapkido, trying to do a split (and failing)


Well, I went back to the subway station this morning (and yesterday) and the bubble guys were gone.

In their place was a different immigrant selling belts. All kinds of belts on a card table. I waited around in the hopes he could delight a bus full of children by keeping someone’s pants snugly cinched but it didn’t happen.


My Curbwatch Alert System‰ is all fucked-up. I’d only been in Tokyo for seven days but it somehow got reset.

See in Japan they drive on the other side of the road, so you’ve gotta look to your right before stepping off the curb--I habit I remembered and slipped back into instantly while I was there. But now that I’m back in New York, I keep looking to the right, and at least two taxi drivers have called me things they would never say in front of their children.

I didn’t get hit, of course, or I wouldn’t be writing this to you. Unless they’ve got net access in Purgatory.

I’m glad I didn’t get hit by a cab. Not because I’m still alive, but because being run down by a taxi ranks high on my list of Shitty, Useless Ways to Die.



Shitty, Useless Ways to Die


- run down by a taxi
(Getting killed by something another person is paying to ride in is just no good, no good.)

- subway mishap
(Shitty because it’s supposed to take you to work, not the afterlife.)

- any gravity-based death
(falling off of something, getting crushed by something, etc. It’s a shitty way to go because Newton figured gravity out in the 1600s and you still couldn’t get it under control.)

- accidental electrocution
(Three words: “Ben Franklin, 1700s.” What’s your problem.)

- unlucky bystander during shootout
(This sucks because unless you were the intended target, you died simply because someone had bad fucking aim. If they had just put in a little more time at the firing range, you’d be collecting Social Security.)

- amusement park mishap
(Because you paid money, took a day off work and drove all the way out here to ride on this thing and “have fun”)

- botched operation when surgery is performed to rectify damage done in failed suicide attempt
(If committing suicide is saying “You can’t fire me, I quit” to God, then this is God’s way of saying “...Oh yeah?”)

Well. Surely there’s something better than death for me to end this entry on.

...

So...

Did I ever tell you about the time I...

Wait, yes, I did.

Okay, I’m going to bed.

Today’s soundtrack: fool that I am
Today at 8:02pm: chewing gum, lots of goddamn gum


What is up with this fucking weather. Every day it’s like London or Seattle up in this bitch.

Sorry I haven’t written and thank god for Etta James. Most of you know I’ve been staying away from the keyboard because I’m quitting smoking, and I associate writing with smoking. Am afraid if I sit down to type the jonesing will commence.

Well I’m going out of my goddamn skull now because write or smoke, I need to do one or the other. These things are integral parts of my personality. I worry something’s gonna break soon. It’s been 30-something goddamn days I’ve been trapped in this desert with no Camels and I am cranky like a motherfucker.

Wait a minute! It’s good that I quit. Good for me. I feel good.

Oh no I goddamn don’t. I want a cigarette so bad I could slap you, and I would if the interface allowed. I know it’s not your fault, you just clicked onto this journal page for the hell of it and ended up getting slapped for no reason. Maybe tomorrow will be better for you.

I wish tomorrow would be better for me, and by “better” I mean filled with big fucking clouds of firsthand smoke.

No I don’t, no I don’t. No, no, no. Camels bad. Very, very bad.

If I can’t escape with smokes, here’s to hoping I can write my way out of this bitch. If it works I’ll bring Kim Jong Il back to life.

You have vices too, don’t you, you silly little freak? I know you understand. Perhaps you eat too much ice cream or can’t put the Playstation down or you’re in your late forties but drive around elementary schools with no pants on. All of us have our demons we have to grapple with. Mine come twenty to a box and taste so, so sweet.