It’s 1:30 a.m. PST. I’ve been up since 6:30 a.m. EST. I’m bordering on giddy with lack of proper brain functioning.

Today I flew JetBlue (pretty good, I watched cartoons, the World Tournament of Poker to learn more about Texas Hold’em, some TLC makeover show where there mean to a chick with bad clothes and make her shop, some news, and some cartoons with the sound off, while listening to music.)

I got to Cali, de-planed, grabbed my bag (one of the first off the carousel), got chauffered into the city by M. and minutes after de-carring in SF, saw a naked guy on a bike riding through a park. All of that happened before I even had coffee.

Why am I writing? How long can I go, sleepless and incoherent?

A long weekend for a well-deserved couple days off from the grind. I shouldnt be awake now, since I have a long day tomorrow. But, as always, you have to respect the late, great Warren Zevon and sleep when you’re dead.

No laptop for me this weekend, but I might be check in here, because I can. Just one more week of the first month unllimited cyberspace by phone, so I have to keep using and abusing.

And, for anyone out there in search engine land, getting a BOLO freak on by seeking this guy, I got nothing for you, except for this guy. He’s funny and a fierce web designer. I originally met him in a comedy class years ago, which I took and then decided never to go on stage again. (Gotta remember to write down the Pat story about when I did take that class.) Oh, and the comic, web designer guy, if he’s a terrorist, he’s awesomely brilliant, since I don’t know anyone who would give him credit for that much cunning. Also in that class, there was a very suspicious Lebanese, or some kind of one of those countries, dude. Since he’s often naked, however, I don’t think he’s packing any weapons on him. What I really mean is, I’m not the operative willing to go in depth enough to search for anything concealed.

Benadryl and tomorrow a.m. with JetBlue are calling me…

Don’t know whether it is a cold or allergies, but I am a phlegm-producing zombie. Haven’t really fallen asleep, so I’m suspecting allergies. But, I feel unusually shitty, so that’s a vote for cold.

I need to OD on Benadryl on the plane on Saturday. I’ll have to look on the Physician’s Desk Reference on-line at work to check what dosage could be dangerous. Actually, it would have to be pretty fucking high, since they use IV drips for extreme reactions.

This post may be the most boring yet. Worse, I will add a little syrup: Even though we had already spoken, my honey called to check on how I was feeling, because I’m alone and sick and being alone and sick sucks. I threatened to write about it. Now I did.

OK. I have officially entered the sixth grade and this shit is my diary with the little metal lock. Sad.

Stupid bitch or cautionary tale?

I have tread this line myself (and in fact this sentence has a word that could be misinterpreted). Sometimes I worry when more than the couple (literally) work friends I have told about this site appear to have found me. Sometimes, I think “wow, that would be a cool story.” Overall, my fairly professional credibility, I think, would instead make a couple of people have earnest heart to heart talks with me. I would hate that more than the ass-canning I think.

Wanting to perform and write publicly is probably more important to me than my daily grind. However, I wouldn’t really want to test that theory.

Thinks I have seen at work, which I would consider questioning, or have:

I guess if you stick around long enough you get to weigh your skeletons against others’.

I don’t know what the word would be for it, but I’m feeling all small towny since coming home from work. Picture this scene, if you will: I have a teeny condo within the urban grit of the low-rent side of town. The mean streets. The hood. Alright, it’s not really East L.A., it’s East Cambridge, but it’s still a city. I live alone, so I lock my doors and windows and have a telephone in my bedroom (‘cuz, you know, home invasions).

I also have a small backyard and small deck with a small French door with small windows opening out to said deck. Because it’s my backyard and the street I live on is one-way and quiet, and my apartment is tomb-like in it’s lack of direct light, which is blocked out by the neighboring buildings and a huge tree, I usually keep the French doors undarkened and curtain-free.

So, I’m sitting here watching “Law and Order” and checking some news and whatever on this here ‘puter, and I hear tapping at the glass of my backdoor. I tense, urban ready, threatened, hair on the back of your neck alert. What the fuck? Immediately, I assume it’s Jimmy, my former neighbor and casual crack sampler, discovering that you can walk around my property and peak in my place. I’m freaked and frightened, because I can’t see out. The darkness outside is a reflection back on my well-lit room, therefore I know whoever is out there can see me, while I am squinting and can see nothing. I tentatively approach the class, checking that my cell phone is in my pocket as I approach the mystery danger. I have to cup my hand over my eyes and press my face to the glass. While I’m doing so, I prepare my Jimmy speech in my head — “Get the fuck off my porch and leave me the fuck alone. I’m calling the cops right now Really, Jimmy, leave me the fuck alone and never, fucking never come back into this yard again. Seriously, the police, Jimmy.”

It’s not Jimmy. It’s a middle-aged woman. She’s very tentative, as tentative at me. She had just tapped the glass, but she’s already on the steps back down the porch in that half-turned, unsure, I shouldn’t have knocked pose. Like when you’re a kid who really doesn’t want to try to sell magazine subscriptions and pray no one actually answers the door. I fumble to grab the key on the bookshelf next to the door, so that I can open it. For about a second I thought maybe still I was in danger. Really, she had weight on me, but I have relative youth and speed, and middle-aged women aren’t usually implicated in home invasions that I’ve read or heard about on the news.

Turns out her poor, little one-eyed kitty was stuck on the deck above mine, and she had been knocking on my upstairs neighbor’s door, and he’s not home. In an accent I don’t recognize she explained how at 11 a.m. this morning her cat had climbed the big tree in our back yard and jumped on the deck and then couldn’t get down. Now 12 hours later, I think after trying all day to think of ways of getting the cat down, she was very worried and in desperation was knocking on my door. But, the deck is a good 10 feet up from mine, and I am short and have no appropriate ladder or scaffolding. All I could really do was listen, which is how I know the cat has one eye, It got in a fight with another cat, she thinks, maybe, she doesn’t know, but it came home and the eye got infected and she had to lose it (the cat not the woman). It cost her (the woman, not the cat) a lot of money. I shrugged my shoulders and expressed concern and reassured her that Dave would be home. When she left, I put a Post-it note on Dave’s door, letting him know about the stranded kitty.

I relaxed again. Laughed at my own city fears. Then, another series of taps. Her son, he works and he has a big ladder, but he left at the job he has at another house, but maybe tomorrow he could bring it home. But, it’s been all day, and with the one eye her cat gets nervous. Do I think the man upstairs is home, yet? Her son, he also said maybe rain tonight and now that makes her more nervous, because the cat is afraid of water. She saw my note. Could she maybe ask me to leave anther note with her phone number, she’s not going to sleep, not with the cat and the rain and the one eye. Tell him, he can call even if it’s late. I get my pad and pen. She writes down a wonderfully fluid, foreign girl’s name. Henriqueta, and her number.

I hear my upstairs neighbors feet walking around. I bet the kitty is safe and sound now. Back with his “mom,” happy and calm and eating.

I’ll have to remember to tell my brother’s kitties the story the next time he puts them on the phone to say “Hi” to their aunt.

I got a handwritten note from my aunt in the mail today. I think one think I am happy I have known in my lifetime, but I suspect will eventually go the way of the buffalo (and I am doing nothing to help keep alive) is simple, personal, hand-written mail. The un-standard size, an actual stamp, not-franking codes and cursive stands out more than all the direct market bullshit filler, brightly colored going to be recycled confetti. Probably in a couple of decades some marketing genius dink will have a light bulb snap on and we’ll all be getting mail with pen-applied ink and it will feel novel and new and weird.

I blame my handwriting as to why I am fully incapable of a handwritten card or note or thank you. OK, that, and the fact that I am completely self-absorbed and thoughtless, and a self-sabotaging procrastinator who couldn’t possibly bring herself to think that much about someone else and act accordingly. But, no, really, I hate physically writing anything but notes to myself. My writing is child-like scrawling, manic, unformed, uneven, clearly worse than a “C” in penmanship. I blame that on the humiliation of having to go back to my old class with the second graders for penmanship after I had already insinuated myself in the third grade. Oh the shame of that half hour in my day, when I had to get up and leave, while the third graders did what? I do not know. Probably fluid dynamics or advanced string theory or something equally profound to which I will always be ignorant.

I also blame the dissolution of the
the Palmer Method in public schools for my crappy handwriting. I always thought my mother’s script was kind of magical. It always looped and connected and looped and connected in exactly the same place and in the same way every time. Better yet, this elegant simplicity really helped with forgeries. “To Whom It May Concern, Please excuse my daughter from school today. She has a dentist appointment.” Presto, no gym class for me. My aunt has the same writing. It’s writing from another time sadly.

My version of that Sound of Music bullshit dollop of sentimentality, “These are a few of my favorite things,” is a thunderstorm on a late Spring night. The colors were varied, and there was one huge boom that shook my house. On top, I had a nice hot cuppa decaf tea in bed (OK, the fact that it was decaf just makes me feel old).

Otherwise, I’m late weighing in on the Iraqi prison abuse. My only thought is “Way to fucking go,” you really showed them that we are about a civil society with rational discourse. Fucking hell, you morons. And, Bush keeps rolling the fuck along with a huge warchest to help him try not to be a one-term president. Hey, anyone reading this shit, are you with me? Let’s vote the motherfucker out. You hear me?

Meanwhile, the international embarassment has actually gotten worse. Yeah, I know, I’m quoting the friggin’ post (from a week ago no less), but after various scandals at the “Old Gray Lady” it’s kind of hard to figure which NYC paper is really the one of record. But, proving that you can never really peg just how stupid folks can be, soldier extraordinaire Lynndie England keeps going past her 15 minutes of fame.

So, the Islamic fundamentals believe themselves so much our moral superior, we all should collectively die and spare the world from our immorality plague. And, what do the clever soldiers figure will break them down? Screwing in front of them. Jesus Christ, what could possibly have made that seem like a good idea? There’s probably an geometric progression of wingnuts from the Arab world signing up for the grenades and duct tape body suit after that PR blitz. It’s just so freaking embarassing.

Meanwhile, because freedom of speech is just another word for nothing even stupider to go unsaid, you have folks like these citizens. What’s behind the prison scandals? The homos. Yes, of course, that makes perfect sense.

I wonder why the people who are most against the freaky-deakiest shit, like the religious right and whatnot, are always picturing the absolutely most pornographic stuff. I have met too many boring people, who also happen to be gay, to believe it’s party all the time in the gay marriage tent. And, I’ve met some nice “normal” married heterosexuals who are into far weirder shit than the gay boogie man these folks are always imagining in the bushes. I would imagine that the same statistical sick fuck quotient exists as a percent distribution among homosexuals as it does among the rest of us. (And there are gay people looking at that 1 percent or whatever, and thinking “Jesus, Bob, you fucking freak, you’re making my skin crawl.” I also imagine that the people who are looking to get married and settled down are not for the most part the frightening fringe.

You know what the punchline to all of this bullshit is. I bet any amount of money the anti-gay faction actually rubs elbows with perfectly decent (but deeply closeted) gay folk each and every day. But, they don’t even know it. (Shhhh. Hee hee hee. No one here but us chickens.)

I fucking hope beyond hope that the collective hatred of the middle of the country to Massachusetts doesn’t queer the deal for Kerry (yeah, I’m ashamed of that pun) and hand Bush the election. That would just plain suck.

I saw Lewis Black tonight, which was pretty cool It was part of a benefit for Dana-Farber, which is also cool. (OK, not cool, but worthwhile. Even if I find it difficult to give to that particular charity myself, it’s still worthwhile.)

The only downside was it was the show was part of a large extravaganza for this place. Not that there is anything wrong with that place at all (I envy what they have been able to accomplish actually.) But, as their party, it was very “community” spirited, which I guess you could read as clubby. And, I’m not a member of the club, so I lacked a certain appreciation for some of the night’s bill that was like very good local talent show, as opposed to great. Turns out not all people in all situations can truly rock out, no matter how much they try or receive love and community support.

It would have been good to hear more from Lewis Black and less music overall, I think. But, for quite a few people in the audience, I suspect their opinion would be just the opposite. So, what are you going to do?

I should have been cleaning my house today (I should always be cleaning my house). But, instead I cleaned up computer files.

I cleaned up the sidebar here, so the stuff at the top is less chaotic. I figured with the new snazzy Photo gallery for my phone cam, it wouldn’t hurt to tidy up a bit to show it off.

I also uploaded another comedy comedy performance, just for the hell of it. And, I added it to this page, where I’m trying to keep videos and whatnot in order. (About this performance, it’s not like Carnegie Hall quality, but I was happy with it for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s the Studio, where for a variety of reasons I tend to get excessively nervous and suck (not absolutely, but by my own standards). I was pretty relaxed and alright here. The second thing is I wanted to throw in a couple of new, unplanned, untried things with no notes and just letting it happen. Not always the best approach, since untried bits are, well, untried, but I think it came off OK. So, overall my goals were met. The only other note I have, with the angle of the camera and the jacket I’m wearing, I’m fucking huge. You got the camera adding a few and the angle and I’m looking to be packed a solid amount of poundage, but in real life I’m not sweating with Richard Simmons.)

I remembered something I wanted to do before going to bed, but right now I’ll be damned if I could remember what it was.

Sometimes I like when it rains on the weekend. Great excuse for doing fuckall.

Shout out to my aunt, who’s hitting a milestone B’Day today. I won’t say which it is, since she’s a modest woman. But, it’s double my age. Whoo doggies, she’s seen more than a couple of decades. (And, she does more than I do, swimming, working out and all. I guess I’m saving myself for when I’m her age.)

The only other thing going on today, is I spent a while getting the update to the sidebar on the right going. Now, I can email messages directly to my gallery from my camera phone. Insta-photo-weblogging!