Today’s soundtrack: we'll be waiting in Kingston Town, right on
Today at 5:32pm: doing the crosswalk shuffle



At the photo studio, for eight-hour stretches I'm like Prince: Doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before. After I let the clients in and set up the gear there's not a whole hell of a lot to do, but I've still gotta stay there in case they burn the place down.

When I first took the gig, I figured it would be a good time to write.Wrong! The reason they don't hold photo shoots in libraries and morgues is because they're noisy. Makeup people are as voluble as radio DJs, and have the same tendency to overestimate the funniness of their jokes. During the average shoot I overhear everything from European gossip to detailed rundowns of what their boyfriends' problems are, and just about none of it is interesting.

So I diverted eBay funds into purchasing noise-canceling headphones. But while the 'phones are great at stripping out bass, they do nothing for treble, meaning I could still hear shrill models raving about Ibiza. You need to fill the headphones with something else, like music or movies.

Enter serial programming, which is the perfect way to make eight hours go by in a blink. Thanks to Netflix I have now seen Deadwood, Freaks & Geeks, the first three seasons of The Shield and every season of 24. The adventures of Jack Bauer are particularly enthralling.

The thing about 24 is--j'ever notice CTU has a mole every season? Don't they screen their employees? I think McDonald's has stricter hiring practices. At CTU you walk in off the street, fill out a job application, then they give you a desk and start telling you secrets.

The scuttlebutt has been that Jack Bauer will eventually be killed off the show, but if you ask me that would be too predictable. I think it would be better if Bauer simply quit after getting frustrated with his job, like the rest of us. Plus they could use the opportunity to get some big-name corporate sponsors for product placement.

Today’s soundtrack: stop your running around
Today at 12:02pm: paying the Con Ed bill


Ladies: Do you know what we men do, when we go to take a piss and find a sheet of toilet paper floating on the water?

We cut it in half with a focused, jet-like stream of pee. We saw that thing right in half, bzzzzz. We don't want to, we have to. If it's really long we'll cut it into thirds and sometimes we'll cut it on the bias.

Why we do this, I can't say; marksmanship, probably. If they sold penis-mounted laser scopes all of us would get them so we could cut the toilet paper in half with previously unattainable levels of precision. In lockerrooms worldwide there would be red dots everywhere while guys tried to hit targets on the ceiling or twenty yards outside the window. The descendants of William Tell would be chugging gallons of water and blowing apples off the tops of each other's heads.

No man was ever taught to cut floating toilet paper in half, nor do we discuss it with each other, yet all of us do it out of instinct. If we were peeing in a stream and a log floated past, we'd try to cut that in half too, or at least submerge it with a powerful blast. If we missed and it floated away before we got to submerge it, we'd finish taking our piss with a quiet, disappointed expression on our faces.

Today’s soundtrack: a message to you, Rudy
Today at 5:42pm: Grand Central Station, Grand Central Pain in the Ass



Motherfucker. I am right about to break into hives. I've had hives twice in my entire life, and both episodes were preceded with an unmistakable tickling sensation in the back of my throat. After that, the fireworks, and after that, writhing around on bathroom floors.

An hour ago I wen t to Sunrise Mart (Japanese market) to get dinner, because I'm broke but I have some Sunrise Mart gift certificates that I received as a Christmas present. The gift certificates were in twenty-dollar denominations but my dinner came out to $8.48.

"We...cannot give you change," said the Japanese cashier, struggling for the words.

"In other words I have to buy twenty dollars worth of stuff," I said, and she nodded. Apparently Japanese gift certificates are like mutual funds, you can't just break off a piece of them. So I grabbed a couple cans of beer (I don't even drink beer) and whatever they had around the counter, like ginger cookies and stuff, until I hit $20.62.

After dinner I slogged home (long fucking day, Jack) and broke open the ginger cookies. I was having one of those moments where your eyes are glazed over and you're just staring at the wall without seeing while slowly eating cookies and before you know it half the bag is gone. Then the tickling sensation snapped me out of it.

Now I'm sitting here with a box of antihistamines and a glass of water, just waiting.

Fucking gift certificates.