tonight i got really sucked into the internet and ended up making avatars on one of those doll-maker websites. so here are my new author pictures that will go on the dustjackets of all my upcoming hardcover books:
my truest reflection,
my truest reflection,

my truest reflection,
my truest reflection, and
my truest reflection (with a tiger). it’s great. waste a lot of time, that’s what’s time’s job. NB: while there are a wide variety of accoutrements available to pick from, there aren’t any skin tones other than caucasian, body types other than thin, and eyebrows that are actually just one eyebrow. i’ll do a full avatar website report in a week when i’m completely insane.

the man at the laundromat still has not come to a resolution (his words) about the open position down there but the walk was not in vain as i’m told it’s good to make a tiny bit of a nuisance of oneself in situations like these. moreover it was a nice excuse to go to saver’s foods or whatever the hell that market’s called and get “bubba cola”, which is my new favorite generic now that newport cola has ceased production. at 84 nice cents i can almost hear the almost intolerably handsome indian man at the cumberland farms say honestly “what a bargain”. the two peculiarities are the name, which i imagine comes from the clinton administration, and the splash lettering on the label that says “new flavor!” when in fact, “cola” is one of the oldest flavors i can think of (if we consider a flavor as distinct from a food, and spices like pepper and turmeric don’t count). nonetheless it has eclipsed chocolate mate as the good-time brain-work coasting-on-a-manufactured-sensation elixir of choice. incidentally the whole saver’s generic line is really great- their mountain dew is “mountain holler”, corn pops are “yukon gold”, and trix are “gator-berry crunch”.

it’s mel’s day off and her and mars madigan are in her room (the one next to mine) watching sex in the city dvds and cackling, hooting, gasping, snickering and carrying on. damn it’s cold out and windy but i’m going out again u-bet.

oh, looking up “bubba wiki” i found this pretty extensive muppet wiki. lists of all the characters, etc.. remember that recording of charles bukowski reading at some california bar and he says in that sniveling shitty whiney (not gruff) voice of his “i’m glad you’re all here tonight, not at home watching the muppets… what the fuck is a muppet anyway?” then he rags on the muppets even more? what was up with that? hey mt, here’s a thing on the vile bunch, alice cooper’s totally messed-up monster band from when he was on that great episode. unfortunately the metal band from emmet otter’s christmas (“the riverbottom nightmare band”) gets too small of a write-up but does have this great line: “When not performing on stage, the band members enjoy breaking traffic laws, riding their snowmobiles, and destroying merchandise.”. yes. oh hell, here’s a link to all muppet bands.

it’s a toughie but so are we.

crux of a joke to be fleshed out:
barkeep: today is a thursday.

drunk: well i’m a thursday too! (thirsty).

also:
barkeep: today is saturday.

today is the subject of a novel i’m writing, or anyway the introduction. today after i wrote a mess (less of a mess than usual) and after i talked to lilah and after i ate a cupcake (but before i wrote this, obviously), marge came over and helped me make burritos to freeze and reheat later (i’m a bad eater and a worse cook). that’s cute, right? macoe: “you’re really approaching this living in an apartment thing as if no one’s ever done it before!”. tomorrow the job search, the pen swap, the jack kirby poster-get, the phone-call, the stuff-draw, the food-eat, the water-drink. reading that book on crows, also cities of the red night, listening to elton john and blastbeat metal and that van morrison contractual obligation album. here’s a quote from that book on hermes i can’t stop talking about: “if he behaves, he does so in a world he has altered.”. croW town!

i would be remiss if i failed to note that everyone’s (yours and mine) favorite band the terribles are playing live on the radio (wcuw in worcester, 91.3). this is on wednesday at 9:30. that’s AM, suckas!!!!!

thursday night was VegAnimeCon06 with rinaldo, the countess, and CLF (aka christina the faerie). we made sushi and watched kiki’s delivery service (howl’s moving castle was region 3, unplayable by our meager tech). the best invention of the night (besides the night) was when we tempura-dipped and fried those budget oreos that are vegan by virtue of cheapness. tempureos! it was like a eating a little ice cream sandwich hot. squishy + good.

it’s snowing here again and since i’m not cozy i’m ready to be straight-up warm. i’m searchin’, reachin’, foolin’, wantin’, and a host of other great ohio players songs. or maybe it’s brass construction that all their songs are truncated gerunds. anyway that’s me. dreamin’.

i finally have furniture in my room, a desk (six milkcrates and a plank) and a folding chair. still no bed or even a foam mat. today i went on a real domino rally of errands, each errand neccessary for errand to follow and dependant on the errand preceding. as dominos expel extra energy in the form of clicking and clacking, so did my errands expel energy in the form of a national geographic magazine about neanderthals, a single piece of laffy taffy, two packs of wacky packages (second series, brah!) and at the comic book store i put two totally awesome and garish jack kirby posters on hold for when the return on my investments returns. regarding wacky packages: the new wacky packages are so good they totally dwarf the new garbage pail kids (which i maintain aren’t good).

oops! i left the house and came back in the time between these two paragraphs and now it’s the next day!

one of the tapes i brought on tour was a dance party mix i had made that had run dmc’s “peter piper” and missy’s “work it”, two songs that features an awesome sample from bob james’ “take me to the mardi gras“. it was a halloween tape, so later i used the same loop under ten or fiteen seconds of the dracula vs wolfman & frankenstein record, and it was upon this third hearing that jamie buckmaster turned to me and exclaimed “this must be the best loop ever!”. i agreed, but in retrospect that honor is actually the famed amen break, which is, if not the best, certainly the most important sample in moderm music. here’s a 20 minute documentary on the amen break and copyright (found via boing boing). oh, here’s a great download page for famous breaks.

i’m reading up on numerology on wikipedia, which i’m obviously addicted to (wikipedia, not numerology). the entry on four is especially good, and casts the number in a kind of tricky light, sort of self-referential and back-biting. i’ve always been interested in the idea of numbers having personalities. and there’s the pythagorean idea that everything can be reduced to a number or series of numbers, or conversely, that a finite number of small simple building blocks can make very complicated structures (which is also expressed in the chinese idea of the universe being “the 10,000 things”, and the iching does this more or less for situations rather than objects, breaking it down to 64 discrete events). i like to think of a pythagorean sitting down with a notebook and hashing out the numerological makeup of, say, a rhinocerous. [rhinocerous] = ][fat][rock][horse]] = [[[abundance][body]] [[earth][part]] [[work][animal][quadruped]]] = [[[[joy][greed]] [[self][earth]]] [[earth][part]] [[[heat][food][god][earth]]… etc.. =819187123987198717498173948798 or something. of course pythagoreanism went the way of the dodo once hippasus proved that the square root of two was irrational (not expressable as a ratio of two integers), and was subsequently executed. and on a related note there’s godel’s incompleteness theorem, which addresses the idea that every axiomatic truth-telling schema harbors unexpressable truths. ok, ok, this has been math-as-worldview minute.

went to a show in providence last night with the countess and rinaldo and they interrogated me about the worcester wikitravel page, which lists all the things i told them when they moved to town. well, i didn’t do it, and based on their description and a cursory look, i can say with complete certainty that it was in fact written by our friend Holmes. he shouts out the mid-town mall twice! and he mentions that the word “postmodern” was coined in worcester, which is a classic wilson-family factoid. i’ve gone in and added sections on the Da Lat, the Ba Le, and i changed where it said that the preferred hard alcohol was “mr boston” to reflect the truth, that it is in fact “cluny”.

last night i went to a party and had an ok time even though i had to take my shoes off. i forced myself away from the easy talk that you talk to your friends at a party with towards talking to complete strangers and it was fun. they didn’t know what DIY meant! one lady told me something really nice about jacob from the bible, it was a good scene. her boyfriend took my number down, saying that i seemed like a guy with a lot of answers. lord help him if he acts on any of them, that’s what i didn’t say.

me and pars hung out the other night and had dinner and watched 20,000 leagues under the sea. kurt russell and peter lorre make a real good buddy pair, and there’s also a really beautiful scene where kurt russell and a seal get drunk together, the seal eating scientific specimens, kurt russell drinking the alcohol they are preserved in, kurt russell singing and playing a ukulele he made out of a turtle shell, the seal clapping along and barking and kissing kurt russell in the face. it got cold, it got windy, but it’s stil sunny.

a graphic based on a game that was the result of me farming out a title for a piece of artwork i was too lazy to make has finally been printed on a pair of underwear. also the game itself has been ported to PSP. of course i’m talking about robot finds kitten, which is also playable as a java applet and on any other system known to man. who let all these goddamn dogs out?

it’s hard not to feel like a prince on days like this, snow melting, sun shining, windows open. anne already took me out to lunch and yesterday, valentine’s day, the easiest bummer in the world, i not only kept my head above water but floated serenely, spraying water out of my mouth in imitation of a fountain. mike and i moved all my records from the go go (too many records), went to the mid town mall and the quan yin, ate a heart shaped box of chocolates (rather we ate the chocolates) and just had a fine time. today i’m going to find nicky revs and waste some of his very precious time and utilize some of his ample brain power. sometimes, it’s true, i feel like the bill buckner of hearts, but wasn’t it also bill buckner whose crucial error in game 6 of the 1986 world series kept alive the most important part of the red sox- the dream?

tomorrow i have a meeting with my new intern, tim houston. i’ve got a list of projects he’s going to help me whittle down and bust out for ten hours a week for three weeks. me and ML are going to be in the next pulse magazine, the shitty collegiate bar paparazzi lifestyle rag, and i’m negotiating with the worcester magazine for a sandwich. boots randolph “the yakkin’ sax man” on the turntable. windows open and snow melting and shit. doodling and roaming around seeing friends on the street, making the world into a birthday cake. playerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.