NEEDLING

39) Claire Denis makes beautiful films which are often very difficult to watch. 38) Not sure why I rented this one. 37) Jeanne Moreau: Wow. And isn’t it true, the bastards always get away with it. 36) Funny. I like Bill Murray. 35) Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacal, how can you go wrong? You can’t. 34) La Santé is not a healthy place to stay at, and this Becker film, his last, shows us how five men try to escape. You’d think all this digging would get boring after a while. It doesn’t. 33) Humphrey, can’t get enough Humphrey. 32) Well. Keep in mind this is made for TV miniseries. Moreau is still superb. 31) Noam. Need I say more? 30) Wasn’t impressed. Too pretty, too soap-opera-ish. 29) A little too close to home. 28) I enjoyed this a lot. 27) Couldn’t get into it. 26) Rented for Claire who was visiting me. I was too tired and went to sleep. 25) Sent it back before watching second half, didn’t think Claire would be into it. 24) I like this a lot, which is why I went ahead and rented the “first” one, which I thought was too much blablablablabla. 23) Fell asleep half way. 22) Was really depressed at the time, so couldn’t watch it. Will rent again. 21) Funny, and again, I really like Bill Murray. 20) I need to watch this again. We were this close. Scary. 19) I’ve watched this several times and I’m beginning to realize this isn’t as great as they say. It’s a good film. But that’s it. 18) Read the book. Seen the film. Like they say, kill one man you get the chair, kill a million you get the Nobel Peace Prize. 17) Good stuff. 16) This was really bad, but I watched it anyway. 15) I watched most of this, and that’s because I really like Ionesco. This was a very bad adaptation. Maybe Ionesco can simply not be adapted to the screen? Are there any others? 14) Roast some peanuts for this one. I’d hate to admit I enjoyed this... but I did. 13) This is some of my favorite kind of stuff. Specially with dialogue by Michel Audiard. Love it. 12) Michael Moore is over the top, but he often has a point, or several. Plus he’s funny. 11) Was suggested by a friend of a friend. I cried. (Am I suppose to admit that I cry at movies sometimes? Yikes!) 10) I lived in Belleville for 7 years, so it took me a bit to get over the fact that this film has nothing to do with Belleville, specially since part of me – big parts of me – whished I still lived in Belleville. 9) Hollywood crapula, all with the “moral” at the end. 8) I loved this film fifteen years ago, now it puts me to sleep. 7) Anything with Dominique Pinon. 6) Crap. 5) You gotta be in the mood, but if you are! Wow. Philip Glass. 4) Classic. Again, my kind of stuff. 3) I have a thing for Charlotte Gainsbourg, can’t help it. She’s awesome. I want to become a film-director so I can ask her to play in my movie. Or maybe I could just be her coffee boy? 2) I’d forgotten I’d seen this all ready. Still didn’t like it. 1) Some people are deranged.

05/25/05-now-Trouble Every Day (2001)
05/25/05-now-Le Divorce (2003)
05/18/05-now-Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
05/18/05-05/25/05-The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
05/18/05-05/25/05-Dark Passage (1947)
05/10/05-05/18/05-Le Trou (1960)
05/12/05-05/18/05-The Desperate Hours (1955)
05/09/05-05/18/05-Balzac: A Life of Passion (1999)
05/09/05-05/12/05-Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times (2002)
05/03/05-05/10/05-The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002)
05/03/05-05/09/05-Sideways (2004)
05/03/05-05/09/05-Jesus of Montreal (1989)
04/22/05-05/03/05-The Decline of the American Empire (1986)
04/22/05-05/03/05-A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
04/14/05-05/03/05-Balzac: A Life of Passion (1999)
04/14/05-04/22/05-The Barbarian Invasions (2003)
04/14/05-04/22/05-Before Sunset (2004)
03/17/05-04/14/05-Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
04/05/05-04/14/05-Stripes (1981)
04/04/05-04/14/05-The Fog of War (2003)
03/28/05-04/04/05-Amores Perros (2000)
03/28/05-04/04/05-The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002)
03/15/05-03/28/05-Quai des Orfevres (1947)
03/16/05-03/28/05-Crime Spree (2003)
03/10/05-03/17/05-Rhinoceros (1973)
03/07/05-03/16/05-Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
03/08/05-03/15/05-Any Number Can Win (1963)
03/01/05-03/10/05-Roger & Me (1989)
02/23/05-03/07/05-Elling (2001)
03/01/05-03/07/05-The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
02/23/05-03/01/05-Bruce Almighty (2003)
02/23/05-03/01/05-Last Tango in Paris (1973)
02/17/05-02/23/05-Diva (1981)
02/18/05-02/23/05-The Story of O (1975)
01/26/05-02/23/05-Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1983)
02/11/05-02/18/05-Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954)
02/03/05-02/11/05-La Buche (1999)
01/26/05-02/03/05-East/West (2000)
01/26/05-02/03/05-Crumb (1994)

Up since 4h30
scrapping and sanding
shelves
pulling on old sticky paper
several layers
some blue, yellow, or grey
and layers of old paints
too.

Now it’s all done
with one coat of primer
mostly dry and ready.

Pots, plates, glasses
mostly glasses
of all kinds
like cocktail glasses of various color
and size
though I never use them
a few English beer pints
my favorite
house-warming presents from Brian and Tracie
one wine glass
I’ve broken all the rest
and lots of other weirdly shaped odd ball glasses
along with my two special single malt glencairns
one brandy snifter
and what looks like a set of Italian regular
strong thick skinned unbreakable approximately 12oncers
I use mostly for water or large tumbles of white wine.

The silverware along with the rest
is spread out on my couch
my fold-up kitchen table
along with all my beer-making equipment
lots of tea, spices, vitamins, essences of herbs
wood bowls I eat out of
cheap ceramic bowls
and so much more crap
I don’t know how I managed to accumulate it all
in barely nine months.

And unless I decide real quick
what color(s) I want to use
then I’m gonna be without a couch
or table
for several days to come.

I was thinking about each cup-board shelf
a different color
like one orange, another light yellow
one purple and possibly another red shading towards the purple
though I’m thinking about three colors
really light seaweedy green and mauve for the shelves
with light pastel orange trimming?

Uhm...

Primer on! Mission partly accomplished. Turns out yesterday there was a telephone cable down somewhere in my neighborhood and that’s why neither my phone nor my ADLS connection were working. I spent forty minutes with a technician via my cell phone, and not once did this come up. Then several hours later, another ADSL technician called me, and after I told him my phone wasn’t working either he said I should call the “voice people” because he didn’t know anything about that kind of stuff, but that my problem sounded like “some regular voice problem,” so I called the “voice” technician line, got yet another horrible automated voice services which promptly told me that a cable was down in my area and there was nothing anybody could do before the 31th – tomorrow – so I guess I should feel lucky everything is back and running today. Sounds to me like the Voice people and the Virtual people should communicate a bit more so as to avoid frustrating technical conversations which go nowhere. Maybe I should call them up and thank them, if it hadn’t been for that technical failure, I might not have gone to Home Depot in a huff of bad mood, and bought fifty dollars worth of painting supplies.

In the morning. Fell to bed early last night, and if I don’t go back to bed soon, I’ll do the same again today. Emptied all my cabinets in my kitchen yesterday. I unscrewed the doors and took them off the hinges. I have a dislike for cabinet doors in kitchens. Their only purpose is to get in the way, is my belief, so I finally took them off after wanting to since I’ve moved in here nine or so months ago. I pulled off several layers of paint and cup-board paper, scrubbed the whole thing with soapy hot water, and this morning I’m going to slap some primer on after which I will paint them various colors. I bought a small pot of yellow, of blue and of red paint, this way I can mix my own. Am thinking of various shades of Green and of Purple. Next: the kitchen walls are going to go from canary yellow with loads of grease stain on them to egg white. Lots of work, specially since I might be moving out soon, but what the hell, the landlady’s a friend of mine so it won’t be totally lost if I leave, though I doubt I’m out of here any time soon the way things are going these days. Might as well make this place all pretty for my own sanity, plus it gives me something to do other than aimlessly surfing the web, reading blogs and newspapers online, and ruminating dark thoughts on how much life sucks and wouldn’t it all be so much better on the other side of the mountain. .

Having a hell of a morning. My phone’s not working, my DSL internet service is not working, I burnt some potatoes while trying to cook them, my dog ate another one of my plants... et cetera. At least I’m able to capture somebody’s WIFI connection – though it keeps turning on and off – so here I am on the couch with my laptop watching “Trouble Every Day” by Claire Denis, and having a glass of red wine to calm my nerves.

Was out walking Brutus when upon walking home I see the new neighbor coming out of her house and walking towards me. We greet each other.

We met the other night when Kari seeing her hanging out on the front porch of her house invited her to join us for a drink. Glenn and I if I remember correctly had all ready been at it a while when she joined us. We continued to drink the beer till it ran out and I then ran to my house to find 3/4's of a bottle of Zubrowka vodka, the one with a slight green tinge of color to it, which has a piece of Buffalo grass in the bottle. This bottle had been kept in my freezer. Back at the pick nick table in front of Glenn and Kari’s place, I set four glasses, not shot glasses but proper 10oz size, and filled each on to the rim with the potent ice cold liquid. That evening ended with me waking up on my couch the tv blaring at four in the morning. I hadn’t talked to the new neighbor since. She was walking towards me.

“How are you?”
“Fine, and you?”
“How’s Brutus? Hello Brutus...” She played with Brutus for a minute.

We were both walking in the direction of my car, she heading down the street, and me thinking about a potential six pack of tall boys at the local corner shop.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” I asked knowing she doesn’t own a car.
“Uhm... actually... sure, why not. Can you give me a ride to the post office?”
“No problem.”

I put Brutus in the back seat and off we go.

After a couple of minutes of silence.

“Are you still up for it?” She says out of nowhere.
“...”
“Our deal we made the other night?”
“Uhm....”
“Do you remember, we made a deal.”
“Possibly... uhm, I was a little intoxicated the other night.”
“I know, I understand.”
“We decided on something?” I was a little worried.
“You said you’d trade me a bottle of Zubrowka vodka for me fixing the hem of your pants.”
“We agreed on that?”
“Yes, we did.”
“Hell yeah, then...” That sounded like a great deal to me. And, I was relieved I’d made such an innocent offer, remembering part of my thoughts from that night in particular, which had not been as innocent, and also having back-flashes of so many days-after throughout my short but intense university life where people were more often than not very upset with me the next day, and I was almost always totally in the dark at what they might possibly be upset with me about. Such a trade off as a bottle of vodka for some hems fixed up to fit my short legs was illuminating and refreshing at once. I must have matured somewhere in the last fifteen years, though I’m not sure in what manner and at what point this climb towards maturity happened. Probably in small unnoticeable increments, so small I didn’t even realize I was maturing.

I dropped her off at the post office, drove back home, said hello to my landlords on the way back - whom I noticed repairing one of their rental houses a nonpaying tenant had destroyed with the help of a chainsaw - took my leave after chatting for a good twenty minutes, dropped in at the local gas station to buy a six pack, and am naw back home totally happy with my little excursion into the world.

Found the link to a novel by Joey Comeau called Lipstick Pornography via the blog Nick Douglas, and I read the first chapter.

Raunchy, dirty and funny. Good stuff.

Go and READ it. Check out Nick's blog too, while you're at it.

I was standing at my sink making preparations for coffee, such as cleaning the pot to boil water in, getting the beans out of the freezer, plugging the grinder into the wall, et cetera, when I noticed something bizarre, something which didn’t seem quite right. To the right of the sink, I’ve got a few dirty glasses – working in a liquor store, I get more free glasses than I know what to do with... I can go several days without cleaning any glasses and be fine – so to the right of the sink, there was around half a dozen glasses of various sizes. One large sixteen ounce pints was moving! This is not normal. I grabbed the glass and looked inside. Ten, plus or minus a couple, very large cockroaches were struggling against one another trying to climb up the glass walls of their prison. But how did they get in, and why? Kind of like a lobster trap. You get them to crawl into a contraption of sorts out of which they cannot get back out. This could be a revolutionary concept for such places as Austin, Texas, where Cadillac size cockroaches are the norm. This glass must have been used by yours truly for one of my concoctions such as half orange or pineapple juice, half Perrier. Or maybe it was those pina-coladas I was trying to make the other night, which I gave up on finally because they were so candy sweet, and I don’t like that at all, the reason I often put sparkling water in my juices, otherwise I find them too sweet. Anyway, some sticky sweet residue must have been left at the bottom of the glass, enough to attract a whole slew of cockroaches. I walked to the back fence of my backyard and threw them there out the back alley. And Stay OUT! The sight, though, of ten or so large cockroaches stuck inside a pint glass looking up at me all bundled up together with their multitude of legs, antennas, carapace brown and grey bodies, insect eyes looking up at me, at once begging for mercy and telling me, if we were but half your size, we’d eat you alive.

My brain is dead. There is nothing there to share. Definitely nothing to argue about. It’s a sad state of affaires. I wish things were different. I’m starting to not want to be here in this city, in this state, in this country. I no longer enjoy my job, as I do not think that my person is being appreciated fully by the powers that be. The pay is meager, the hours long, the moral recompense inexistent. The poetry is simply not anywhere to be seen. Words... words simply stacked randomly without meaning upon my shelves... words scribbled upon stacks and stacks of papers. I do not understand any of them, nor am I moved to try and do anything about it. There simply are not any words inside my head which speak to me in such a way for me to place them down one after the other in the hopes of making music. I am brain dead.

Re-read Thierry Jonquet’s novel, Le Secret du Rabbin. Enjoyed it. I’d forgotten it, and recently loaned it to my folks. My mom was looking for some books in French. They told me how much they enjoyed it, so I picked it back up and gave it a new read. Fun polar, French style. Historical setting in post World War I Europe, mostly Poland, and the war they were fighting against the Reds. The story starts with an old Rabbi dying in a forgotten shtetl somewhere in Galicia circa 1920. He’s dying. He dies. A few years prior, he had gotten a promise out of the new Rabbi that his will would be taken seriously. He leaves a “treasure” to the youngest surviving members of his family, who happen to be spread out to the four corners of the world, the bulk of the family having been murdered during a horrible pogrom. We meet Four individuals in their early thirties. One gangster from NYC who hangs out with Bugsy and company, an officer from the French army wounded during WWI, a Zionist fighting the Brits in Palestine, and a Communist thoroughly engaged in the Bolshevik revolution. We follow their respective stories as they all make it back to the shtetl, all with their ulterior motives, the war raging everywhere, history all over the place. We meet the legendary gangsters of NYC, Lenin, Einstein, to name the big ones... all in all a really good “polar.” Well written, engaging, fun, suspenseful. A good read when you simply want a good escape with some fine writing. Plus you get a good history lesson at the same time.

This coming Sunday, I’ve been invited to a Star Wars costume birthday party.
Now, let me make this clear, I am not a Star Wars fan, nor do I particularly hate the trilogies, I simply don’t care either way. I haven’t seen the new films, and don’t expect to. I saw the original trilogy ages ago.
Nonetheless here I am in this predicament of needing to dress up for a costume party.
I’ve asked some of my favorite customers at the store, and I’ve also asked my co-workers, what they think I should dress myself as.
They all said, without hesitation, without any sort of brainstorming, or taking advice from others around them: You should go as an Ewok.
Then, as if to justify themselves: You all ready have the facial hair, it’d be easy.
I’m not sure how to take this.
I guess Ewoks are cute cuddly little friendly creatures.
This should make me feel special, somehow.

Last night, I was trying to read Chaucer in the original.
Haven’t read him since I was forced to read him in high school, though back then we read him in the modern English translation.
Never figured it’d be this hard.
Had to read out loud, looking at annotations, references, and word descriptions as I did so.
Got through the introduction and four pages of “The Miller’s Prologue and Tale.”
Read those pages three times.
Some pretty sexy hot stuff, if you ask me, and where was I in high school, I should have been ecstatic we were not only asked, but forced to read such racy material.
Maybe it was not only the modern English translation, but also the abridged version... or shall we say edited, censored, revised, and reformulated for young innocent hearts and minds.
Or maybe I was just dumb and couldn’t understand a word I read.
Not that I’m understanding a whole lot more now fifteen years later.
These make Robert Browning’s stuff look easy.

Lines 173 – 178, for example:

And prively he caughte hire by the queynte,
And seyde, “Y-wis, but if ich have my wille,
For derne love of thee, lemman, I spille,”
And heeld hire harde by the haunche-bones,
And seyde, “Lemman, love me al atones,
Or I wol dyen, also God me save!”

(Wow, writing it down helps a lot... I might should copy the whole poem down after I get through reading it a couple of times?)

Eighty miles from nowhere
is the road going through the land
cutting it
spiking it along it’s way with barbwire fencing
and electric posts
on and on going towards Mexico.

Flat lands
and mildly hilly rolls of hot sun-baked mesquite trees.

Seventy miles an hour
in my little automobile
overheating
me watching the red needle
as much as the road
and the vultures eating carcasses
all along
so full from dead meat
they can’t lift off no more
and I have to slow down
not to save their ass
but mine and my passenger.

I’d hate to get one of those birds
those big ol’ birds of death
slammed into my windshield
at 70 miles an hour
as it tried to fly off from some dead deer
or armadillo
knocking us out and putting us down
eighty miles from nowhere
on the way to the Mexican border.

The elephants agonized over their fate
though they knew no other
some said they’re must be something else to life
than this
most said
this was their fate and their fate was their fate
and that was that.

Two principal factions formed
in this mass of flesh
within these flapping ears trying so hard to fly
unknowingly
from trunk to trunk
from tusks to tusks
from roars to roars
the arguments went on through the day and through the night
unstoppable and forever on
and so unnervingly around the clock
that another faction formed
the third and fatal one:

The worshipers of silence
who knew not what silence was
but could only imagine
the beauty of an hour of uninterrupted silence.

The elephants grew one of top of the other
not knowing any better
or any different, they grew thinking
nothing of it
other than a little discomfort which they felt guilty
about expressing to one another
on hot summer nights.

Twenty one elephants
in one large room
growing from infancy
as they are undoubtedly bound to do
quickly limiting the extra space in the room
shrinking it at an alarming rate.

The elephants
not knowing of any outside, any other world
lived only day to day
whishing they’d stop taking on weight and pounds of flesh
growing like mountains inside a cave
taking shape of legs surrounding flesh
limbs various and unrecognizable stretching out
making way between belly and sex
trunks and ears
restrained only by other limbs doing the same
in the opposite direction
creating a great big room-size Elephant fill
as in a shrimp crepe étouffe
filled with cream and melting cheese.

There was a man at his grey desk who cried
and who had a drink
his third or his tenth he knew not
anymore
nor cared.

He listened to his stories bumbling about in his head
and cried at climaxes
randomly bumping one against the other
like dumb elephants
un-accommodated to this tight space they were born into
and grew into
taking so much room about the place they themselves
disappeared behind their own grotesqueness
never having been released
and freed to live their epics and lives outside
in the open air.

I found a house this morning which I really like. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been searching for a house pretty much since I arrived back here in the United States in late July. It’s far from perfect in many aspects, but I’d be paying twenty to thirty bucks more than I am now, and I’d be owning my own house, or at least paying towards ownership, which changes everything. But I shouldn’t jinks it by talking about it. My mom’s drawing out the paper work first thing tomorrow, she’s acting as my real-estate agent, and I’m going back to visit the inside on Thursday morning. This morning I couldn’t get inside. I tried to call my mom but couldn’t get a hold of her. By the time we got in touch I was all ready back in Austin, so she went over there to check it out on her own, and called me back to give me the low-down on the insides. It needs work, but it’s livable as it is. That’s all I need to know. There’s a back room which with a little work could be turned into an efficiency studio. It all ready has it’s own door. I could rent it out and make some of my mortgage and property tax back, which would greatly help me out. But I shouldn’t get excited about this too much. We should put in an offer on Thursday morning. If it happens and there’s nothing wrong with the house – gotta get it all inspected from top to bottom – then I will be well on my way to accomplish my goals set out in my personal little Five Year Plan. Within the first year, thou shall purchase a house which will reduce your monthly financial responsibilities enough to qualify for a second loan so that you can purchase your second home in the beginning of the second year, at which point you will be put in a position to find a different less time-consuming employment and think seriously about going back to school as well as starting a self-employment scheme of yet unknown sorts – a large portion of what I’m thinking about these days before I can actually make it happen. I’ve got two months and two weeks left for the first year in Austin. I arrived on the 23rd of July 2004. That’s incredible how fast time has gone. In my mind I haven’t been gone six months yet.

I’ve done the unthinkable, the perplex, the damned me once if I start it’s down the drain from here. I’ve opened my bottle of Lagavulin 16 years old Scotch and poured myself a healthy glass. One sip and I understand finally why this is the most coveted bottle of Scotch anywhere, at least in this part of the world. Desperate times demand desperate measures. This puts Caol Ila 18 years to shame almost (though I'm still a big fan, it's simply different and not of the same intensity). And all this time I’ve been selling Caol Ila 18 years as a substitute for the Lagavulin 16 years. The later has a much deeper orange color, and the smoke blasts you in the mouth upon first sip, yet the medicinal properties, though entirely alive, do not beat you upon the head, they are sneaky and come through almost without your awareness. It is thick, chewy, nutty, and long lasting. JESUS, your monks invented the ancestor of this potent liquid, and I thank you for that. They paved the way for this magnificent grain spirit to a place among the great distillates. May we rest in peace and be pickled silly.

Cannot seem to write tonight. All is bizarre, from another country with a language I do not understand and cannot put down. The dreams of tiredness which cannot rest have started once again. They’re no longer these mystical awakenings or pseudo-awakenings I once felt them to be (even if they weren’t) – late teen to early twenty-something’s – I don’t know what to call them – they’ve simply been categorized as the sleepless night of anxiety dreams, or at least somewhere in there. Half awake, half asleep, conscientious yet unable to control your mind, electrical surges and massive bodily energy, yet the inability to lift a finger, all this with the complete awareness of being in my bed in my room asleep. There lies the trick, the dreams always start as if I’m awake in my room and all is the same as reality except maybe little smidgets of runaway imaginative juices here and there. Then from a supposed normality which eases me into the dream without suspicion, everything becomes slowly distorted. The door is in the wrong place, or I’m facing the opposite direction, or I’m in a slightly different kind of bed, or I’m watching my room even though my face is buried inside my pillow, or whatever, any little detail which clues me right in, but by the time I see it, it’s too late, I’m in and cannot get out, I’m in and often do not want to get out. The knowledge of awareness, the knowledge of exactly what is askew in one’s reality, even if the very knowledge within this particular reality is that it is not real, is an intoxicant, a curious person’s nightmare or a potentialy deep rooted pleasure of conscience unconscious. To walk into a completely new reality knowing full well that it is completely un-real and does not exist, knowing full well that you’re inside your imagination’s universe, a realm you weren’t supposed to travel through, is exciting.

I ate some meat and a little piece of it has remained stuck in between my two front bottom teeth. It’s annoying as hell. I’ve brushed my teeth so hard my gums were bleeding. I’ve tried to stick various pieces of paper, such as business cards, post-it's, cd cover, a photograph, and whatever else I can get my hands on. Either the paper is too thick or too weak. Yet another reason to miss Paris, metro tickets made the best pseudo-tooth-picks, thin enough to fit perfect, yet hard enough to give you prolonged time to get the little annoying chunks out. They don't crumble and become little spit balls like regular paper. Who knows what kind of insane environmentally incorrect process used to give them that consistence, keep them thinner than business cards, stronger than cardboard, and always with that hardiness to live through wallets, pockets, sweat, extreme heat, and extreme cold. Probably don’t want to know (PDF). What's important here, is that they have four corners all ready for your dental needs if need be.

A white cat came to visit me last night. Then there was this man sitting on my pillow and I was asking him what the white cat represented, since I knew I was asleep, and I wanted to understand my dream simultaneously as I was dreaming it. The man was an Asian man with a perfect American accent. He said it only meant that I was given the chance to meet a future friend before actually meeting this person in real life. So I petted the white cat. It was very thin, shy, but not afraid. Then it was back to the man, and somehow I receded into my bed, more like slipping away or disappearing into the depths of my bed-sheets, my arms stretched forward but my hands unable to grab on to anything, my whole body buzzing like an enormous electrical surge, while the man sitting on my pillow looked on.

This morning, I’ve gotten up early to go to my favorite liquor store where, before opening the doors to the impatient alcoholic public, I have the responsibility of ordering all the booze for the upcoming week and weekend.

While ingurgitating my morning brew of coffee, I googled Pusan, Korea, because my friends are currently spending a couple of weeks there, and I didn’t even know where it was on the map.

I came up with the web-site of a world traveler / scientist with loads of cool pictures of all the places he’s visited, including Korea.

Today, through no fault of my own, I will be attending official church business for the first time in many years. I haven’t been a big fan of any kind of church service for a long time, and I don’t really want to go, but since it’s my nephew’s First Communion and it’s important to him and to the rest of my family, I have taken the day off from work to join them in this religious ceremony, if not in spirit at least in person and in moral support.

So this morning, I take my bible, “The New American Bible, Saint Joseph Edition” published by Catholic Book Publishing Co. New York, and open it at random.

Revelation 13:11-17

The Second Beast. Then I saw another wild beast come up out of the earth; it had two horns like a ram and it spoke like a dragon. It used the authority of the first beast to promote its interests by making the world and all its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. It performed great prodigies; it could even make fire come down from heaven to earth as men looked on. Because of the prodigies it was allowed to perform by authority of the first beast, it led astray the earth’s inhabitants, telling them to make idol in honor of the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second wild beast was then permitted to give life to the beast’s image, so that the image had the power of speech and of putting to death anyone who refused to worship it. It forced all men, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to accept a stamped image on their right hand or their forehead. Moreover, it did not allow a man to buy or sell anything unless he was first marked with the name of the beast or with the number that stood for its name.

(Only picking a paragraph, plucking it from the rest of the story, doesn’t make much sense, but for a random pick, I thought it was pretty good... if you want to know the rest of the story, or the beginning, it’s easy to find.)

Heck, lets go to the very beginning of the New Testament.

The Gospel According to Matthew,

Matthew 1:1-17

Genealogy of Jesus. A family record of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.
Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar [I once knew a girl named Tamar, she was one drunken little harlot whom I lusted frustratingly after without success.]
Perez was the father of Hezron,
Hezron was the father of Ram.
Ram was the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon.
Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth.
Obed was the father of Jesse,
Jesse the father of Kind David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah.
Solomon was the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah,
Abijah the father of Asa.
Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat,
Jehoshaphat the father of Joram,
Joram the father of Ahaz,
Ahaz the father of Hezekiah.
Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh,
Manasseh the father of Amos,
Amos the father of Josiah.
Joshia became the father of Jechoniah and his brothers at the time of the Babylonian exile.
After the Babylonian exile
Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel,
Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel.
Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud,
Abiud the father of Eliakim,
Eliakim the father of Azor.
Azor was the father of Zadok,
Zadok the father of Achim,
Achim the father of Eliud.
Eliud was the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Jacob.
Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary.
It was of her that Jesus who is called the Messiah was born.
Thus the total number of generations is:
from Abraham to David, fourteen generations;
from David to the Babylonian captivity, fourteen generations;
from the Babylonian captivity to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

[I love those Biblical Lists, the grandest of all Lists, when Ginsberg was putting down list after list in his poem Howl, was he emulating the bible in any way? Attempting to give his poem biblical proportions? Another thing I totally dig here, are the names. Didn’t they have some bad-ass names back then? And what if I took my genealogy back fourteen generations three times, where the hell would I end up? That’s a lot of generations. My paternal grandmother used to have a story that our family came from some woman aristocrat who was waiting in line to get her head chopped off during the French revolution. Apparently, she was sweet on the eyes, or at least to some poor republican guard who’s duty it was to stand by making sure none of the aristocrats got away before their heads were separated from the rest of their bodies. They made a deal, he would help her sneak out if she would marry him and be his wife. She agreed, leaving her aristocratic husband to suffer the fate of the guillotine, and left the furry of the revolution with the republican sentinel. They went far into the country side to hide, had loads of children, and lived happily ever after. Okay, okay... not nearly as impressive and intimidating as King David, Solomon, and Amminadab – I don’t know who the last fellow was but he had a cool name – but we do what we can.]

There was a girl I liked. I flirted with her even though I knew she had a boyfriend. She worked in a bookstore, I think, and I would go there and talk to her. Her boss was in at one point, and I waited for the boss to step out before I stepped in. Actually, I was all ready in, and stepped out with the boss, telling the boss, a woman in her fifties, goodbuy, nice bookstore, nice to see you, and all that. Then I waited outside for her to leave and stepped back in. The girl inside the store didn’t seem to mind, she laughed at all my jokes. I even found a French copy of Gaston and asked her if she liked it. Don’t remember what she said. Saying hello, because we knew each other somewhat, we hugged and I had my left arm wrapped around her and she was smiling and not moving away from my embrace so I brought her closer to me and kissed her lightly on the lips, pulled away and smiled at her to see what her reaction might be. She pouted mockingly and then asked what was that all about? I didn’t answer, but I knew I was in, that she was mine. That’s most of what I remember more or less from my dream. I also moved a lot and the last apartment I was in had rats. Even though I had just moved in and barely owned anything, it was all ready a major mess with all my belongings, and I didn’t understand where all this stuff came from. The girl in question came to visit me with other people, and there were rats in the apartment, little ones. Mice rather, or at least they were friendly rats if we can call rats friendly. They didn’t try to come after me or anything. I could see them scuttle away as I walked through the darkness and turned the various lights on. At one point the girl and her friends were in my apartment, I was looking up various servers and email addresses on my laptop, or at least that’s what I was suppose to be doing, when in fact I had gone directly to the girl’s web-page or something. When they came around to see how I was doing, the computer froze on the girl’s web-page, and I explained some bullshit saying that for some reason that was the only page I could open. It wasn’t really her personal web-page, but rather the home-page to the email server she used. It makes no sense, but in my dream everybody had their own email service like yahoo, hotmail, et cetera. Each person had a totally different service from the next, so each was readily recognizable. She saw it and said, hey you’re on my mail-server. I felt embarrassed, she seemed pleased to have caught me red-handed, then I was off again going towards the front door either for a new arrival, or to look for something which was in my closet... a little history here, my studio in Paris had a walk-in closet which also gave to the front door of the stuio, a sort of vestibule, but since it was so small, it was more like a walk-in closet, and I used it as such, hung my clothes there, stacked my shoes, so that when I walked into my place, or other people did, they actually had to go trhough my closet before entering my studio... So I walked to the front door of the apartment in my dream, a large place where such a walk-in closet / front door vestibule wouldn't make any sense at all, when I saw a rat/mouse and got scared. I screamed and climbed up the wall, one leg on each side of the door frame holding me up in mid-air – really a limb fellow in my dreams – like a spider monkey. The others showed up to see what all the commotion was about. They kind of laughed at me, an understanding laugh rather than a mocking one. The rat/mouse waited for them then left, making sure it had been seen by everybody. That’s when Brutus nudged me with his wet snout as he does in the morning when he’s in a hurry to be petted or taken outside to relieve himself. I jumped three feet from my bed. In my dream I had associated the wet nudge with a rat scuttling across my shoulder. I was awake and glad to see my dog wagging his tail sitting on the floor beside my futon wondering why I was looking at him like that. I cannot remember what the girl looked like, She was petite, a little shorter than me, brown hair, somebody I knew. Not a close friend, but not a stranger to me at all. It was none of my friend that I know now, maybe she was simply a made-up effigy of what I feel would be the perfect partner for me. Whatever or whoever she was, it's about as close as I’ve gotten to a wet-dream in a long time.

Took a few days off. Will be back soon. Cheers. Will probably post upon coming back from work tonight... Yikes... first day back at work after just about ten days away! Gotta get back into the whisky / wine pushing mode.

Needles