NEEDLING

Been working on learning HTML and CSS all day, trying to “design” the website for the small press I’m starting with Claire. It’s going slowly. Mostly, I end up surfing on the net, like tonight, trying to look up the Vouvray, Domaine Le Peu de la Moriette, I opened for diner. Doing so, I found a couple of blogs I added to my reads: Vinography: a wine blog, and Botrytis@vinexpo. However I did get some work done, and if Claire approves of the direction I’m taking, the site should be up soon.

The bottle by the way was some damn fine drinking wine. It’s good I tried it, because I need to start pushing some of our French wines. They’re not moving unless they’re “hand sold.” And I still get loads of “I refuse to buy French” responses from small-minded mostly republican voting upper class shits – a rather large section of my clientele – to whom I have a very hard time keeping my cool and not telling them to go fuck themselves.

Blablabla...

(Also, blogger.com is doing some weird shit these days, and it's really time I learn how to get out of this blogger.com dependence... as in find some other blogging tool...)

I love reading and I love re-reading the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Opening a collection of short-stories at random and starting to read whatever story there is on the page, turning the pages back to the beginning of whatever story I opened the book to. It’s always good, better than good, and it never gets old. Just re-read Logarithms from the collection The Death of Methuselah and other stories. A young man listens to his aunt tell the story of Yossele, a mathematical genius, who betrayed womankind by marrying the daughter of the gentile apothecary.

“If one lives long enough, one hears many things for the first time,” Aunt Yentl said. “Men look strong, but they are actually very weak.”

1

I lived in a big house not far from my parents. How I accepted to live there is not known to me, but there I was, and more or less happy. Unbeknownst to me, in my front yard was a large opening which I noticed one day while coming out my front door. I walked over to check it out and lord oh mine it was a large hole somewhat like a garage door or rather more like the window of a military silo, like the ones you see on the Normandy beaches but much bigger, big enough for a car to come through if it wasn’t the roof. All around was my garden. There underneath was a large room. Next to the garage-like window was a staircase going downwards into this large room. A door at the top, also opened. The whole thing looking as casual as could be. In the heat of summer, late afternoon a cool breeze is unusually blowing through, and they’re simply trying to catch a bit of it. This being bizarre enough, what was really shocking is that down there was my old high school band-room, the very same room I’d spent more than one hour per day, sometimes several hours a day, practicing in the high school symphonic orchestra or the high school marching band. Squatting on the ground trying to get a better look inside, I felt as if I was doing something wrong, looking into a place I had no business looking into, getting a sneak look at my past, or at what my past once held, because there underneath me was not my past, it was the band room I once spent much time in, but I wasn’t in there so to say looking back up at myself, I wasn’t anywhere to be seen; underneath my feet was a world I no longer belonged to, to which I no longer had the key, a world I was no longer invited to have any say in, and this is why I felt awkward looking down. There were a few kids in there listening to the band director, which sounded as if it might still Mr. Franklin. I could only see the double door entrance right under me to my left, and part of the instrument storing area as well as a few chairs from the back rows of the orchestra sitting arrangements. I couldn’t make out any of the kids, though I could hear some activity. This must have been the end of the lesson for the day. Most of the kids had obviously all ready gone home. Mr. Franklin was giving some pointers to a few remaining kids. I squatted down as much as possible, held on to some metal bar, and peered down a little more when I noticed a young girl facing the band director, meaning facing away from me. As if on cue, she turned around and looked up at me, giving me that teenage look of “what the fuck” and I jumped up, caught red-handed, I walked back to my front door all shook up. The one main thought on my mind being: My god, they’re going to make a hell of a racket when the practicing starts up again, how the hell am I going to live with that?!

2

On the way back to my front door, I crossed a man who had obviously been watching me the whole time. I turned red, felt ashamed, and did not know quite what to say. He wore some blue working clothes, like a janitor.

“Are you the custodian?” I asked.
“No, I am not,” he responded calmly.
“Are you the groundskeeper, then?”
“No, I am not,” he answered again in a very calm voice which unnerved me even more.
“Then who are you? And what are you doing in my garden?”
“I watch over the door.”
“Oh...” I had nothing to say to that, “I’ve never noticed it until today.”
“I know,” he said and looked at me for a few very uncomfortable seconds. Then he lit a cigarette and walked away. At that point I decided he looked very much like Humphrey Bogart. I watched him till he disappeared into the darkness, because the day had ended and it was now nighttime.

I turned around and headed back to my house. I opened the door, turned the lights on, and entered. All was very silent, grizzly almost like a lonely winter evening somewhere in Maine. A chill ran down my spine as I shut the door behind me.

The roommate search
hasn’t gone so good.

Met some good folks

haven’t called them back

because in fact I’d rather be alone
here in this house
by myself
with nobody here other than me
and my dog.

Reading Blaise
and he talks how he can’t be bothered to clean the house
and this is the main reason why
he lives most of the time on the road
and the rest of the time
he hires a maid.

Now... that’s an idea.

Think I might be much happier
me who hates a dirty house
and yet who hates cleaning the house
and thus
always lives in a dirty house
unhappy and depressed.

What I need is a maid.
Why not hire a maid?
On a bi-monthly basis?

There’s gotta be a maid service
for me.

I’m a bachelor,
certainly I can afford
such a trifle luxury?

“Oh dear,
what’s happening here,
I think it’s perfectly clear...

[interlude, repetition]

Give
me
one
small
strain
of...”


Listen the Ken’s 15 June 2005 show . It starts out rocking.

And so I just put on his last Wednesday’s show, and it turns out it’s exactly what I needed. Then the second show is this bad ass interpretation of Mr. Sandman. Or whatever the name of that song is. IT ROCKS.

Got a call yesterday to show up tonight for what I thought was some sort of job interview. I'm currently looking for part-time work I could do from home, to supplement my current income. The person who called me and set up the meeting time, did not even show up. Following is an email I've just wrote and sent to her. Maybe one should not write such emails when one feels that he's been had or been abused in any sort of way, but I felt as if it was necessary to tell this person what I thought.

Dear T.,

I arrived at the meeting to which you invited me to 15 till seven and left 20 after. I never received the information about Global Travel Trends you had promised me, and decided to go since I had said that I would. Unfortunately, after staying a few minute, what I had been afraid might be the case turned out to be true: I had been tricked into showing up at an MLM-type meeting, one which would undoubtedly prove to me how much money and how much fun I could have if I parted with a small amount of cash – an amount which for me is far from being small. I am upset about this. It’s partly my fault, as I did not ask you any specific question pertaining to the nature of the “business” meeting you were inviting me to, but I also blame you, though you did not lie to me in any way,you did not mention to me any of the pertinent bits of information I would have needed to make an educated decision on whether or not to show up. And I feel that by the ad you posted, as well as by your phone call, that you insinuated this would be a job-interview type of situation and not a sales pitch for some MLM company to "help improve my life" and get into my wallet (though I admit to being ungodly gullible and childishly trustworthy... maybe even a little simple... so perhaps I'm at fault here?) I did show up. I actually arrived at the hotel at 6h15. I drove directly from work since I did not have the time to drive home, and arrived early, went to the bar, had an over-priced coffee which tasted like burnt socks, and read USA Today, which I hate. There is nothing wrong with a person parting with 215 dollars expecting El Dorado – whether it be at the movies or in Vegas or wherever, dreams have always been for sell – but to abstain from telling such a person about what it is he is going to take part in, and not to send said person the promised “business” details, is wrong, and in this case, is equal to Lying. Please, refrain from finding “clients” or “associates” in this manner. Please, put some sort of link or some sort of explication on you craigslist.com ad to explain the nature of your ad so that you will get only REAL responses, and not waist the time of people like me who are actually LOOKING for a second income. (Hey, I’m not saying Global Travel Trends is necessarily a bad deal, maybe spending 215 dollars might buy me some much needed information so as to travel cheaply... but I’m not in such a position, and the places I will be traveling to in the next few months, I have no need for hotel fares, taxi, and such... this kind of traveling is not the kind I can afford, even with 90 percent off. When I’ve traveled in the past I’ve either slept in my car, at friends, friends of friends, people I just met, in a tent, eat sandwiches, or eat at side-road fruit stands, and I don’t care much for comfort. Basically I have no money. Could you prove to me that those 215 dollars would be well spent? I doubt it, but if you’d like to try, go ahead, write me why.) And last but not least, when you plan a meeting with somebody, have the decency to show up, or at least tell the person you’re inviting that this is a seminar at which you will not be present, but that I should go and listen anyway. Blablabla... Okay... I’m sorry, this is getting out of hand. I’m probably being too harsh, here. But you see, my family lost all their money in the mid 1983 oil crisis. We were living in West Texas at the time. The town we lived in went from 15000 population to 9000 population is less than a year, in almost six months. That’s a lot of folks for a small town. My parents owned a motel, and we went from full occupancy at fifty bucks a room, to quarter occupancy – on good evenings – at less than twenty bucks a room. I’m not asking for sympathy here, I’m about to tell you why I am upset at being lied to, or at least, at not being told why I was being invited to a “business” seminar. My parents, trying to make ends meet, did everything they could. My dad tried selling insurance, frozen food, my mom went back to school so she could become a teacher... and, all this time, people such as yourself, would come see them with “magical” money making deals, for such and such amount, and very little work on our part, you could make thousands, millions, whatever. Amway and all their copycats. My parents never made a dime, but those other people sure made plenty of money off my parents, who were simply trying to make ends meet, and easily influenced by the likes of such companies. And some people do make money with these types of companies, but they do it by preying on all kinds of people who cannot afford to be preyed on. So... sorry for this long email, but I had to get it off my chest, tell me why your MLM is different than all the others.

Sincerely yours,

Francois

1 ounce of home-made liquor – you know
the one I mean from your garden
and those you had to buy
peanuts in a bag, peanuts for the masses
peanuts roasted backstage
peanuts farmed by those rednecks innocent of you
like windows, you are the view unknown
of the mountains or the plains never seen before
likewise... roasted... never even a nuance of wide eyed
reconnaissance.

1 ounce of vodka
a splash of orange liquor
and a splash of lime juice.

Over ice
covered and filled up
with some club-soda
and stirred
with a chop stick from Hon Kong.

Sipping ice home-made liquor with some club-soda over ice and a splash of lime. The day went by like a mass of grayish slumber overwhelmed with dark clouds ready to blow up any second. I watched two films. Neither much better than the other. Passable. The first worse than the second, only because of the subject. The cinematography was absent from both. Meaning the art was mostly gone. The second was based on a large larger than life famous figure, and it was able to get away with some pathos. Unforgivable emotional margins. I sip the liquid of my own invention. Pure 100 proof alcohol into which various herbs and fruits macerated for one month, then diluted with sugar water, and aged for several weeks.

Had an appointment with PH#3 yesterday late morning. Nobody came. So I called and was told she was running late. I had to head up to my sister’s so we changed appointment to this morning.

Having a hard time getting out of bed, this being my day off, I force myself out anyway so as to make myself presentable for interview and visit of the room. This time, PH#3 calls, and tells me that after all she thinks my house is a little bit too far south for what she’s looking for, regarding her job and all that. I say okay, whatever.

On to PH#4. A fellow visiting this afternoon. Seemed like the descent sort over the telephone, called me back yesterday to make sure we still had an appointment this afternoon.

Beer bath?!?! Is that gonna be the next fad? I think it would go big around here in Texas. Check it out: Guests take a dip in beer pool.

(Link found via A Good Beer Blog via this post.)

Grim stories for educational purposes. Dim lights shown on this world of shit and frozen underpants. Undergarments in the gutters. Smelling like the backthroats of lifelong drunks who haven’t had nothing to eat in ages, nothing but cheap regurgitated liquids. A dance mal propre of one hundred drunks puking on stage in harmony and in step on Broadway! What’s happened? A musical undignified relative to... vile stories written in verse so’s we might learn, so’s we might teach our children some chagrin, some ugly little truth... none of us much better than one hundred drunks puking on beat, syncopated delirium onstage from a children’s book illustrated with love... I see it says the writer to the director, it’ll be a grand success, we’ll make millions. And the orchestra plays on...



(This is my 300th post. I started on 31 January 2004. I've had few visitors, but that's all right. This is after all not such a good blog. Sometimes I hit on some good ideas, most of the time I don't. As the rest of my life, it lacks focus. That's fine, too. It fits me just fine. We'll see what happens next. Also, I should probably take a class in grammar, maybe that's one of the things I'll do when / if I go back to school like I'd like to this coming September or January. When I was learning sentence structure in seventh grade, I didn't speak English. Not that I should use that as an excuse, so I won't. I remember being in this classroom not understanding what the hell was happening, except that I understood the teacher was breaking down sentences on the chalkboard. By the time I got to eleventh grade, the teacher gave us a spelling test once a week on Mondays to start the weeks with. I failed every single spelling test that year except for two. I've improved a little bit since. That's something. Yes, something positive, and I should probably focus on that.)

Listening to Jacques Brel from a CD AMK made for me before leaving Paris. I’m having a little drink thinking about this whole housemate searching business. I’m not backing down, but this means compromise in the near future. That’s fine, I can deal with it, I guess. But it’s been so long since I’ve lived with anybody for any lengths of time. I’ve crashed on friends and strangers’ couches and beds for a night’s visit to several weeks at a time. It’s always been much appreciated, sometimes it’s been awkward, sometimes there was drama, it’s always been rewarding in the sense that I’ve met all kinds of folks that way, and I've gotten to see different places. I've had many people stay at my place in Paris. Sometimes friends, sometimes strangers who just needed a place to crash. It’s been good. Many nights having flaky conversations lost in the drinks. People staying at my place while I’m away, while I’m staying at somebody else’s place. But LIVING with somebody on a rent-lease basis, sharing bills, sharing living space with an agreement, a financial and roof-over-your-head commitment to another, I haven’t done that in more than ten years. It’s scary. A bit like stepping into a time blitz. This probably means I won’t be able to sing along with Brel or Gainsbourg or whoever, somebody like Vian... walk in my shorts, my balls hanging out, glass in hand singing as loud and as off key as I can, the music blasting, the wine bottles rattling, the peanuts roasting. L’insouciance égoïste. Nothing sweeter. Compromises. Uhm... I guess I can deal with it.

She calls at 8h30. It’s my fault, the directions I gave her yesterday weren’t very good. She’s a bit turned around, she says, and she’d rather call me before getting even more turned around. Twenty minutes later, I call her to see where she’s at.

“I’m on 45th and Bull Creek...”
“I’m not sure where that is,” I say, “but just keep going East until...” I give her more directions.

Ten minutes later she arrives.

She’s very clean, paused woman. She’s forty years old she told me in one of her emails. I like her right away. She seems like an easy person to get along with. The dogs like her right away as well. Brutus and Little Bear are all over here, tails wagging, snoofling about. Good sign. Always trust the dogs, they’ve got good instincts, better than us.

I show her the house, explain to her that I wasn’t expecting anybody to move in before the first of July, and that I’ve got a few things to do, like put a new door on where her room would be. Brian took the door off years ago, before Tracie moved in, and earlier I was asking Tracie whatever happened to that door, and she said it disintegrated, and no longer was. So I’d have to buy new one, or build one.

PH#2 really likes the place, likes the neighborhood.

“Why did you move from Virginia?” She arrived in Austin about three weeks ago.
“Well, I’d been stuck in this no-end job for the last few years, and I’d heard that Austin was a cool friendly place. Music and an art scene, I figured I’d give it a shot.”
“Yeah, I just moved back here myself, I’ve been in Paris, France, for the last seven years, and I kindda wanted to come back here and eventually go back to school.”
“To do what?”
“Well, ten years ago, I used to work in the film industry a little, and I’d like to go back to film school. My job’s a little bit of a no-end job as well, and I’m looking for a housemate to lower my bills, basically, so that I can save some money. Right now I more or less barely break even every month. Plus I also like to write poems and stories, so that’s another reason to go back to school, to get back into that whole aspect of things. I haven’t been writing much lately.”

She lights up when I say I try to write.

“That’s funny, I’m an English major,” she says.

I show her the kitchen, and we continue talking.

“It’s kindda like a little commune here,” I say, “They have two dogs and two cats, I have Brutus here, and we help each other out, you know. We often just hang out outside and have a few drinks... you’re...” and I’m not so sure how to say this, “you’re open minded to all kinds of folks? I mean... all kinds of people from different places come here, you know. I’m French, Glenn and Kari are English... and every once in a while, my little sister and her girlfriend come over and visit for a couple days or so... I don’t want any problems there...”
“No problems,” she says laughing, “I realize we don’t have such a good reputation for such things in Virginia, kindda like here in Texas, but there’s no problem with me.”

She sees the dried apricots on the kitchen table.

“Apricots,” she says excitedly, “I just love apricots. You know, when I was in Turkey – I did some intense linguistic studies, and I was studying turkic languages – I finally discovered apricots. Back in Virginia, I’d never had anything but dried apricots, and when I arrived in Turkey, I tasted some fresh apricots for the first time, all kinds... wow, they’re so good.”
“Yeah, I love apricots, too.”
“They’re so good for you, too.”

“Well... I’m really interested in the room,” she says.
“All right... well... I still want to meet a few people, I’ve got another girl coming in to visit a little later today, and a fellow tomorrow... I kindda want to see everybody...”
“Just keep me in mind.”
“I sure will.”

Wow... after last night, I was a little nervous. This woman is very calm, clean, and definitely a good potential. The only thing which bothers me is that she doesn’t drink.

“You don’t have a problem with alcohol?”
“No... I mean, I don’t drink, but it doesn’t bother me.”
“Because I work in a liquor store, I like to experiment making home-made liquors, home-made beers, and eventually I want to try home-made wines. So... I drink, is what I mean, and I enjoy it.”
“There’s no problem there.”

Which is probably just as well. I could see PH#1 coming with his buddies one weekend late at night when I’m not home, and polishing off a couple of my 75 to 100 dollar bottles of single malt scotches. Probably mixing them with coke or something horrible like that. I’m looking at my little menage a trois I’ve got standing in front of my poetry books: a 15 year old Lahroaig bottled by Murray McDavid, a Caol Ila 18 years, and a Lagavulin 16 years, and I cringe at the thought.

PH#2 is definitely on the running list. On the PH#3, who should be here any minute.

Started my housemate search. First guy came by last night. Received an email from him and called him up as I got back from work last night.

“How late do you stay up?” he says.
“I don’t know... I’m sure to be up past midnight.”
“All right, let me call you right back.”

He calls me back and tells me he’s coming by in forty five minutes. Then Tracie calls to see if she can stop over.

This is great, I won’t have to face my first potential roommate by myself. I’m not always such a great judge of character on first impression. I tend to like just about anybody, and start seeing their negative sides later, or at least traits of their personalities which won't match with mine, sometimes a little too late.

Then Glenn and Kari show up as well, so we’re all four having a drink outside waiting for potential housemate # 1 (PH#1).

A loud finigled engine in a personalized muscle-car mustang drives by slowly, pulling up in the neighbor’s driveway. I catch the tale lights, grab my phone and go inspect on the street. Sure enough some car is at the stop-sign not knowing what to do. The phone rings. It’s PH#1. I tell him to back up, I can see him, that he’d pulled into my neighbor’s driveway.

He pulls up in his very loud, both in engine and in design, vamped-up mustang. He’s young, cool-joe attitude, but I like the fellow. We make our introductions.

I show him the place, he seems to like it. We chat a little. He’s a rapper, a writer, a painter, he says, which would be great, he could cover the walls with his paintings. I don’t react right away, but this morning when I wake up I thought to myself, but what if I hate what he paints, then what?

So we step on back outside and up to then everything was going fine. Relaxed fellow, no negative vibes, seems like the honest type, probably parties a little too much, but I’m thinking, hey, maybe this would be a good way for me to meet all kinds of new people, go out to concerts for free and stuff. We walk outside and Brutus who is a gentle dog, loves everybody and every other dog, growls and barks at him. Only for a second, but it still startles me. He’s never ever growled at anybody before. I reassure Brutus and everything is forgotten, still, I don’t like it.

We go to the table and sit with Tracie, Glenn and Kari. Everybody questions him about everything. Again, he’s real relaxed about his answers.

“Why are you moving?”
“Well, I broke up with my fiance two months ago, and I can’t afford to live where I’m living anymore. I told the landlords I was thinking about moving and when they heard that, they gave me three days to get out, so I need to be out of there by Monday.”

He has two dogs. Two pit bull mix breeds. That’s another bad thing. There’s all ready three dogs on the property, do we really want two more? And he says he’s gone a lot, goes out of town to do concerts and recording.

“What do you do with the dogs then?”
“Well... that’s the thing...”

After a couple of white russians, he leaves and we start breaking down the whole interview.

Tracie says, “And could you really live with somebody who voted for Bush?”
“Well,” I say, “this is after all a democracy we live in, I mean, I don’t like it, but I’d like to think that’s not what I’m judging him on.”
“Yeah, but you have to live with the guy,” Kari says.
“And two more dogs, I don’t know,” Glenn says, “seems like to me, he’s gone a lot, and we’re gonna be stuck with the two extra dogs.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Kari says, “and I don’t know, there’s something about him that didn’t strike me right.”
“I think he’s a good guy,” I say, “deep down at heart, he’s a good fellow.”
“Yeah,” she continues, “but when he made a point of telling us that he doesn’t steal, that just didn’t strike me right, and he had to bring the point home a few times, when all we were saying is that we’d had a couple of thefts in the last ten years, but that overall the neighborhood was a safe one, we weren’t putting his honesty on the spot, we weren’t even suggesting anything like that, but he took it to heart anyway...”
“Yeah...” I said, “I guess you’re right, and when we were talking about politics, and I said I had trouble with the current administration because, among so many other things, their openly born-again Christian views on governing, and he said ‘well, what’s the problem with that?’ ‘The trouble is I firmly believe state and religion need to be completely separated, and should have nothing to do one with the other.’ ‘Why, a person has to govern with his personal ethics, and anyways, the two presidential candidates, Bush and Kerry, they were both openly Christians, I don’t see where the problem is there.’ And I didn’t push it further.”

On and on, we decided one reason after another why he wasn’t the right person for our little commune. Also, Kari or Tracie made this point, he’s a DJ, and hangs out in the hype bars and clubs all night every night, that means he’s a late night person, and would probably never be home before late hours into the night. That would not be okay. His loud car, his dogs, all that rilled up every other night at three o’clock in the morning. That would get old real quick.

Nice fellow but not right for our little community.

On to PH#2.

(Taking another test... what else is there to do on a Saturday morning when you're trying to get over your hangover and get ready to go to work? Found the test via Texas Biscuit on this page and you can take it as well by going here.)


Free report for: Francois
Your Temperament is Idealist

Idealists, as a temperament, are passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self -- always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.

Idealists are sure that friendly cooperation is the best way for people to achieve their goals. Conflict and confrontation upset them because they seem to put up angry barriers between people. Idealists dream of creating harmonious, even caring personal relations, and they have a unique talent for helping people get along with each other and work together for the good of all. Such interpersonal harmony might be a romantic ideal, but then Idealists are incurable romantics who prefer to focus on what might be, rather than what is. The real, practical world is only a starting place for Idealists; they believe that life is filled with possibilities waiting to be realized, rich with meanings calling out to be understood. This idea of a mystical or spiritual dimension to life, the "not visible" or the "not yet" that can only be known through intuition or by a leap of faith, is far more important to Idealists than the world of material things.

Highly ethical in their actions, Idealists hold themselves to a strict standard of personal integrity. They must be true to themselves and to others, and they can be quite hard on themselves when they are dishonest, or when they are false or insincere. More often, however, Idealists are the very soul of kindness. Particularly in their personal relationships, Idealists are without question filled with love and good will. They believe in giving of themselves to help others; they cherish a few warm, sensitive friendships; they strive for a special rapport with their children; and in marriage they wish to find a "soulmate," someone with whom they can bond emotionally and spiritually, sharing their deepest feelings and their complex inner worlds.

Idealists are rare, making up between 20 and 25 percent of the population. But their ability to inspire people with their enthusiasm and their idealism has given them influence far beyond their numbers.

The Four types of Idealists are:

Healers (INFP) | Counselors (INFJ) | Champions (ENFP) | Teachers (ENFJ)


(That's the free part, to find out more, you have to shell out 15 bucks.)

Put an ad on craigslist looking for a housemate the other day. In a few minutes I had several responses, and I’ve all ready made two appointments for tomorrow and Monday for people to come visit the room I’m renting. It’s a bit nerve-wracking. To meet total strangers via an electronic medium with absolutely no references from friends, acquaintances, work relations, friends of friends, or family. I’m going to have to base my decision solely on instinct. So far, I’ve only heard good things from craigslist experiences. Both neighbors on each side of the duplex where I live found their current addresses via craigslist. The one to the left is a girl renting a room in the musician’s house. She moved here from San Francisco, and she’s the one that told me about the internet service in question. Then last night, I was at the neighbor’s house to the right who were having a party. She’s a graduate student and he’s a computer engineer. I told her about my looking for a housemate and how I’ve thus far gone about it, and she told me they found their house via craigslist. The odds are in my favor to fall on a good person. Yikes. What if I meet some person who’s a very nice person, a little artsy, open minded, and we seem to get along... and in a few weeks this person turns out to be a total wacko? What if I fall on a kleptomaniac? Or a pyromaniac? Who knows. Like I said, the neighbors on both side are all good people, there’s no reason I shouldn’t get a good person as well. In any case, I need a housemate, as I’ve been living over my financial possibilities for months, and I need to reduce my monthly payments.

We sell cigars and cigarettes at the liquor store. My knowledge on smokes and tobacco in general is not much better than my knowledge of survival techniques inside the artic circle. A self-respecting smoke shop would probably not hire me ever, not even to mop the floors. At the liquor store, I’m in charge of ordering all cigars and cigarettes, foreign and domestic. I make sure the humidor is full with a varied array of smokes. I do my best. I’ve learnt quite a lot by default on the mater since I started working at my job eight months ago.

To add insult to injury, I’m the worse kind of smoker. I don’t really smoke, I bum. I’m the kind who never buys for himself, though I live in denial by purchasing packs of cigarettes every once in while for the people from whom I bum. The denial part has nothing to do with my smoking habits, in the sense that I do not crave cigarettes – or at least rarely do I – outside the socializing element, I am not in denial about being a semi-smoker, I’m totally at ease with the fact that I’m a social smoker, and I feel no need to move up or down from this station, what I’m in denial about is about being a bum.

It’s funny really, whenever I purchase a pack of cigs for myself, I don’t smoke them, I let them go stale don’t find the urge nor the envy to smoke. To be perfectly honest, I don’t like smoking, and I don’t enjoy smelling like smoke the next day, but if it’s somebody else’s cigarette and we’re out drinking some place, then it’s a whole different story. At this point I start needing a smoke.

Cigars? When I was a kid, not long after we immigrated to America, my dad quit smoking and threw away a whole box of cigars, his last. I fished them out of the trash can and hid them. I did not have a humidor. Most ten year olds hiding cigars from their parents don’t. We lived in San Francisco then, but shortly after, we moved to West Texas for reasons too long to talk about at this point. My two older sisters stayed behind with an Italian-American family so they could finish their year at the French Lyce, while me and my little sister hopped into the Pontiac station wagon with my parents to cross half of America in the hopes of ending up somewhere close to its asshole. Or armpit. Still not sure. I remember driving into Mansfeld. It was nighttime. It smelt like something I’d never smelt before: Raw Petroleum. Mansfeld was right outside the county seat of one of the highest oil-producing county in Texas during the late seventies. The smell was horrible. Somewhere between free-flowing burning melted rubber and gasoline. Big ugly in-humane machines all over the place going up and down sucking petroleum out of the ground. Later, after having lived there a while, and having discovered the mosquito, that’s what I compared these great big pumps to. Great big metal mosquitoes sucking the blood right out of the earth.

I kept those cigars hidden from my folks. I was very proud that they never found them, but I was afraid to smoke them, afraid of being caught, of taking my father’s wrath, of loosing my cigars, those crusty dried out tobacco rolls which broke away like dust if you weren’t real careful whenever I braved taking them out of their hiding place to look at them, to hold them, to smell them. My treasure. My secret possession. The box which held the forbidden fruit. The apple of knowledge to my preteen eyes.

My parents bought a motel in West Texas and I shared a room with my little sister. Then my two other sisters joined us and I changed roommates. My parents wanted to keep only two rooms occupied. But after a year or so of this arrangement which was definitely not working, I got my own room. Three joining motel rooms. My eldest sister in the first, my second oldest sister and my little sister in the second, and myself alone in the third room. I kept the joining door to our rooms closed at all time. They kept theirs between the first and second room open.

This was my first taste of freedom. All these months, over a year, since we’d been in America, and I finally had my own room. Never had I slept in my own room ever. In Paris we all four slept in the same room. The same thing in St. Briac, and I can’t remember Chateaugiron, how the rooms were laid out. All this waiting, this hiding, this clandestine adventure, could I finally open my treasure openly – though the shades of my room were closed and it was more often than not late at night – could I open the box of cigars and light one up.

I would place a wet towel underneath the door which joined my room to my sisters’ rooms, and I would light up these old dried out disgusting cigars with so much pleasure that nothing could match it today I don’t think. Not even a great bottle of wine. Those stale sticks were for me the total representation of freedom. I smoked them while hanging out on my bed and I felt like I was man for the first time, whatever that means.

A few months ago, one of our cigars was too messed up to sell to a customer. The ex-manager told me I could take it home. I smoked it. I was sick for the three following days. My house smelt like an ashtray for at least a week. I had to wash my clothes several times.

½ ounce of grenadine
1 ½ ounce of light dry rum
½ ounce of orange liqueur
and a squirt of lime

Into a cocktail shaker
add ice and shake.

Pour into an English pint glass
ice and all
fill up with club soda
stir with a wooden Chinese chop stick
from Hong Kong
and relax with this refreshing drink.

I call it the Puxim Texnut.

Though there wasn’t much left of the antelope
just a leg rotting in the bush.

The dog and the antelope’s leg
rather
though there wasn’t much left of the dog
energy wise he was pooped
and passed out on the cement floor
next the ranch house
drying in the sun
after an afternoon of swimming
and chewing on the antelope’s leg.

"For only 45 days, starting June 1st until July 15, 2005, Prophet Yahweh, Seer of Yahweh, will be calling down UFOs and spaceships for the news media to film and photograph. During this time, a spaceship will descend, on Prophet's signal, and sit in the skies over Las Vegas, Nevada for almost two days."

Check out his press release here.

Sounds like fun!

(Found the link on the WFMU.org staff blog. Check them out and listen to their super cool radio programs.)

I would like to re-vamp my web “look” and possibly change blog server. I don’t know how. Blogger.com was being really uncooperative a few weeks ago, but it is now working fine. I’d like to have my own URL name / web-site and such, where I could do more than just a blog. I don’t know anything about it all. Soon, I’m going to be publishing single poems on poster-like paper with simple minimalist design, and I will try to sell them for a small fee here on this site, as well as at other physical places. For this, I need a pay-pal account and all that which goes along with it. I also know nothing about such things. The money raised within this enterprise will help towards a publication of my short book of poems called “Beer Songs For The Lonely” which Claire in Paris is going to send to the press sometimes after September 7th of this very year. She’s poor, I’m poor. We need money. Any help is welcomed.

Here's one of the poems I will do in single page format:


FAST-ORDER CHEF

Louis the Fish was his name
why he was called that
nobody ever knew
but that's the name he answered to
and that's the name he wanted to hear
whenever anybody
uttered his name and he heard it.

Louis the Fish worked his grill
down in a burger joint
across the street
from my dad's mechanic.

He didn't talk much
being too busy most the time
either flipping burgers
or smoking a cigarette
or remembering
the orders he kept in his head.

He worked his grill
like a love song
to the only woman
he could ever think of loving
who had gone
and left him one night long ago
and his masterpiece
was the Philly cheese steak
though he'd hardly ever been out
of his trailer park
and definitely nowhere out of Texas
it was the best damn Philly
outside of Philly.

Nobody touched his grill
he'd light her up in the morning
and scrub her down at night
and nobody would ever have dared
to take that away from him
because he had talent
slithering like his namesake
and he had scales
from head to toe.

He'd fry you some onions and cheese
like a man desperate for something
like a man trying to prove something
like a man figuring on a joker
he swam in heat
which mattered none to him
like a fish and water
he swam in grease and tattered his grill
like a lost child he'd found
one night
and loved her since
brought her to three hundred degrees
lovingly
every day just to repeat himself
again and again.

One night
after he'd washed and scrubbed his grill
he stepped into the grease bin
underneath
and slide inside till he was gone.

Louis the Fish is gone.
Louis the Fish is gone.

The girl at the diner was working her first evening shift on her first day after training. Or was it the first day of training? She was our waitress. No more than twenty, a big girl with rosy cheeks.

I was edgy, in a bad mood, having relived many unpleasant episodes of my childhood all plumped down within an unpleasant experience of being treated like cattle... the Texas / Mexican border, though I’m now a legal alien, was not pleasant, and the forty minutes spent sitting in the waiting room being at once ignored and grilled by the local border patrol, brought too much back in too little time. I hadn’t planned on stopping for breakfast at five in the afternoon, but now that we had found the correct road after a couple of wrong turns, that I was driving and needing some sort of force as well as calming element before continuing for another hour of driving on those long flat South West Texas roads before arriving to our next stop, upon seeing the truck-stop diner, I decided to drive in needing to fill up the gas tank but also hopping the restaurant would be inviting enough to sit my fat ass down on a comfortable vinyl booth and order some late afternoon breakfast, a meal which any time of day or night seems to relax me and put me in a better mood if served with gallons of burning hot American drip coffee. I filled the gas tank. Clair paid for the gas. I checked out the restaurant from outside, walked into the gas station to ask Claire if she wouldn’t mind stopping for a minute and get some food. She was in the bathroom. The store attendant was busy chewing gum and playing on her computer. Still, I managed to ask her, “have you seen my friend?”
“Who?”
“A young woman with dark hair, she was just in here paying for the gas?”
“She’s in the bathroom,” said the clerk totally un-interested in my person, then she went back to her gum and computer.

I decided to re-read this polar by Eliette Abécassis. I needed something to read. I wanted it to be a novel with some sort of detective-like drive behind its narrative. I wanted it to be in French. (I’m a big fan of French thriller-detective genre called Polar or Noir.) I like Eliette Abécassis. I enjoy religious-theme thrillers, and she happens to be an excellent writer. I don’t find the whole book entirely credible, however I find it entertaining and engrossing, in the sense that – it’s been several years since I’d first read it and I’d forgotten the “twist” – once it grabs you, you have to keep going, keep reading, from one sentence to the next, whether in the morning with breakfast, during some off time at work when there aren’t any customers, or when your fellow work colleagues finally show up for their shift, and you have to go to the toilet and sit on the throne for as long as you think it possible before they start wondering what the hell you’re doing in there... reading... following the characters from one discovery to the next. At night, even though you’re tired from a long day’s work and you’ve got to open the store in the morning, you pour yourself a whisky and read as much as you can, though your eyes hurt and you’re a little bit drunk, and you might forget what you’ve read in the morning... you need to make some time, get to the next page, to the next chapter, to the next section, you need to know: Who killed Carl Rudolf Schiller!? Cut him in half, and left only the bottom half of his cadaver behind for the police to find. The story in this book takes place in the late nineties, mostly in Paris, but also in New York City, Israel, Germany, and Poland, via Rome. It revolves around the atrocities of WWII, what happened then, why it happened, Judaism, Christianity... collabos, résistants, faut résistants, Vichy... prisoners of death camps who survived, what they and their torturers became. Their families... It raises many questions, and gets you thinking about the Shoah. I didn’t realize this year is the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps when I started reading this book. I learnt about it while reading Le Monde last week.

Took one of these online personality test... here's my results:

EMO KID
You are 28% Rational, 14% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 42% Arrogant.
You are the Emo Kid, best described as a quiet pussy! You tend to be an intuitive rather than a logical thinker, meaning you rely more on your feelings than your thoughts. Not only that, but you are introverted, gentle, and rather humble. You embody all the traits of the perfect emo kid. You are a push-over, an emotional thinker, gentle to the extent of absurdity, and so humble that it even makes Jesus puke. If you write poetry, you no doubt write angsty, syrupy lines about depression, sadness, and other such redundant states of emo-being. Your personality is defective because you are too gentle, rather underconfident in yourself, decidely lacking in any rational thought, and also a bit too inhibited.

I probably made you cry, didn't I? Fucking Emo Kid.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Smartass.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hippie, the Televangelist, and the Starving Artist.

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

(Found this test via this blog entry on Ray in Austin blog. Here's the test if you're interested.)

Last night, the Shrimp Man came by the store and sold me one pound of fresh jumbo size shrimps straight from the coast that very morning. The Shrimp Man does his rounds every day, and usually on Wednesdays or Thursdays he comes by the store to see if I wouldn’t want a pound or two. So last night I bought one pound of the medium size ones. As I parked my car under that carport, Kari came out of her place.

“Hey, I brought some shrimps, d’you want some?” I say.
“Sure... why not?”
“Yeah, fresh... what are you guys doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want? I give you some now or we cook’em up and eat’em a little later?”
“What were you going to do? Eat them tonight?”
“Yeah... I mean, they’re fresh, when do you get fresh shrimps around here? I’m not gonna freeze them... no, I want to eat them right now.”
“Sure, you’re right, fresh shrimps, might as well.”
“Do you mind cooking them? My oven doesn’t work.”
“How do you want to prepare them.”
“I don’t know, just put them in the oven I guess, with a little butter.”
“Wrap them in foil?”
“Sure, just add a little butter, some parsley if you have it.”
“Should we peal them first?”
“Oh No! No, no... we peal them when we get them on the plate.”
“All right, that sounds fine.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem... so, just come on over in half an hour or so?”
“Sounds great.”

Glenn show’s up from a few days’ work at about this time.

Half an hour to forty five minutes later, I show up with a bottle of cheap pinot grigio. Kari also has some roasted butternut squash and some home-made banana bread. It’s a very simple and delicious meal.

I think I need to talk about the Shrimp Man some day. He’s an ex-used-car salesman turned Shrimp Man a couple years back when, upon visiting a friend down the coast, said friend pushed one hundred pound of shrimps on him and said to him: "Take these, take these back to Austin with you."
“What am I going to do with one hundred pound of shrimps?”
“Don’t you know anybody who likes shrimps?”
“Yeah... sure...”
“Then go see those people and sell them the shrimp at a reasonable price.”
“What if I’ve got some left over?”
“Eat them yourself, then.”

And the Shrimp Man became the Shrimp Man.

I think the Europeans have forgotten what it means to not be united. It’s been too long since one country has declared war against another country or just simply invaded it. Europeans have gotten too comfortable. In such a short time, they’re becoming like Americans who have never had to share their houses with the invader’s officers, who have never had whole sections of their populations murdered, and who have never had their own neighbors join the enemy in the killing. (Vichy France.) The Europeans have forgotten about all this. The Polish Plumber is much scarier than WWII, I guess. It’s only been sixty years, there’s no reason something like it couldn’t happen again in Europe. That’s what all this Europe building’s been about. To avoid such a possibility EVER. That we NEVER EVER decide to go and kill ourselves for years at a time. But it’s been too long, and Europeans have forgotten. The Polish Plumber and the Turks are much scarier than a non-united Europe. Albeit, the constitution should be a short laic document, and not a two hundred page lawyer-jargon riddle. Maybe this is just a set back to a United Europe, a Europe where no more wars will start. Maybe there will be another document written by smarter folks, and ratified by all Europeans. Maybe.