Today’s soundtrack: nous met en cause
Today at 6:32pm: some days you don’t feel like teaching, but you’re on the schedule so you have to go in



I’m walking down the sidewalk thinking about how things could be better for me and then I catch that whiff of piss that reminds me how okay I am.

Walk around the city and you smell urine, or worse, at least once a day. The smell doesn’t offend me, but I notice it every time. How could you not. I can block out background noise and visual noise pretty good, but the smell of anything that came out of the lower half of another human being always registers.

What I mean by how okay I am is, I’m sitting here bitching about my life and a block away is a guy who has to piss where he can.

The only benefit I can imagine to being homeless is that you don’t have to carry keys. Other than that it seems completely miserable and I am in awe of how they are capable of surviving. They must be some of the toughest bastards on the planet. If natural disaster did strike Manhattan like in The Day After Tomorrow I bet they’d still be walking around, humming and stuff.

Two of my friends now have a baby, which blows my mind. And of course it makes me think about my own prospects for fatherhood, which are currently remote. Finding the right girl and marriage and such. Anyways I decided when the time comes, I’m going to have my own kids the Chinese-Brazilian way: Kidnapping.

Hapkido was slow today, I knew it would be. Raining and all. I teach every Thursday and today I really didn’t feel like going in. It would be cool if I could call in a substitute, like the students show up and there’s some strange ninja standing at the head of the class.

I’m not really in the holiday spirit, so I think come Christmas I’m just going to stay in my apartment and break crayons or whatever. I got an invite or two from friends but I don’t feel like dealing with holiday parties where I may be required to put on my Proper Social Comportment face or have strangers turn to me and say “So, what do you do?”

“I smell urine and sometimes I write about it. What do you do?”

At this point in my life I’d rather be alone on days like that, which, I know, will get you funny looks if you confess this out loud. But it is what it is, and what it is ain’t terrible. For now I prefer it.