A Blog Update If I Were a Character in Final Destination 2

Hello. Nothing in particular is going on.

I want to smoke some pot.

Hey, I didn't get electrocuted whenever I typed that last sentence. I have fucked up Death's Design.

Uh oh. I have a premonition. Any random object outside might run asunder, gain momentum, and decapitate/burn/mutilate me. Because Death's Design is deeply inspired by Rotten.com.

Nothing's happened yet.

Nothing yet.

Nothing.

Hey, what's that sound outside?—

[Shane's head gets chopped off by a loose lawn-mower blade that was flown from the lawn mower whose owner was drunkenly mowing in the middle of the night, and slipped on a puddle of gas that flowed onto his lawn, from the crashed car two blocks down, which crashed because there was a giant gas pipe explosion in the middle of highway 41, which was faulty because of the C-130 plane crash into JoJos a few years back, which all comes back to Ali Larter's failing film career escaping death via a whip-cream bikini. Oh, and the lawn mower propelled a lawn gnome into the room at the same time as the blade, which impaled Shane. Didn't see that coming, did you?

Scene.]

Iraqorea: The Evilest Place on Earth

Favorite State of the Union quote: "[Saddam Hussein] has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world."

From Slate.com:

If you went to the refrigerator during the first three minutes of President Bush's State of the Union address, you missed the part where he discussed the state of the union. After a few words about his record on the economy, education, corporate responsibility, and homeland security, Bush spent the rest of the hour outlining plans and promises. It was the kind of speech a president gives when he's been in office two weeks, not two years.

Why didn't Bush talk about the state of the union? Because the state of the union is nothing to talk about. The stock market is in the toilet. The economy is going nowhere. Unemployment is up. The deficit is out of control. Remember those State of the Union speeches Bill Clinton gave? The guy couldn't stop quoting happy numbers. That's one problem Bush doesn't have. […]

What Bush said of Saddam's disarmament record could equally be said of Bush's domestic record. He has given no evidence of progress. He must have much to hide.

I don't think I've ever had a more prolonged, inhuman, asthma-like, mouth-covering, crying, fist-banging, literally-falling-on-the-floor, hyperventilating, intaking-enough-air-to-supply-a-South-American-rain-forest-with-a-year-of-carbon-dioxide, car-alarm-alerting, Helen-Keller-imprersonating, seriously-lasting-for-two-minutes-straight, gleeful fit of laughter than I had after reading the headline from this.

I Have No One to Make Glib Comments to During the Super Bowl: A Melodrama in Fifteen Entries

Ignore the reverse order. Ignore it like I ignored my homework to do this.

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 15

Bon Jovi's only audience is cheerleaders. Can it be that I actually have sympathy?…

…OHMIGOD, he's prolonging the bridge in "It's My Life" so that ABC can play footage of various Bucanneers talking about their lifelong dreams of winning the Super Bowl. Get it? It's their life.

So no, I no longer have sympathy for Jon Bon. Oh, hey, look: the snare isn't syncing up at all on his second song. And they went to commercial break in the middle of his "performance." Fitting.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 14

Can we please have more semantic debates about whether you can challenge a challenge? "You're challenging with your heart." Football commentators are, like, philosophers.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 13

Am I supposed to write about game developments? Like the sudden punt block/Raiders touchdown (34-15) that temporarily (until the botched two-point conversion) gave hopes that this game won't suck? Of course. I'm in competition with ESPN.com.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 12

Fuck this. I'm flipping back and forth between this and High Fidelity.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 11

When Dwight Smith made that interception return, there were some coaches on the field. I believe that's a penalty for too many men on the field. Seriously—flag it, ref. Not only do those coaches need to know they do not have full rein of the field whenever they're winning…but…well…I dunno…BLOW-OUTS SUCK.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 10

Wow: Foo Fighters' "All My Life" is combined with P.O.D.'s "Alive." Network sports spots are so damn inspirational.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 9

I wonder how many of Shania Twain's guy band members feel like a woman? Probably a lot. One can only assume that the greatest feeling in the world is to stare into a Super Bowl camera and give a wild look ("It's infectious! I'm playing at a football game! The world is such a great place!"). And did Twain's wardrobe dept. tell her, "We're thinking of a biker slut/gypsy hybrid for game"? And why does she have that weird scaffold to sing above people? Is this Beyond Thunderdome of the Super Bowl?

Fireworks make the music more exciting.

No Doubt makes you long for Bono and his flag droppin'. "I'm just a girl—at the Super Bowl!"

Sting, I'd be sending out an SOS if this was what I was resorting to. Can't Shania duet with them? OH! Gwen's singing "Message in a Bottle" with Sting. And yet, there are no Gwen Dancers, nor fireworks. That's what happens when you get musicians with a modicum of talent playing during halftime; they forget the attention spans they're appealing to.

Oh. Scratch that. There's fireworks.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 8

Uh oh. Here comes halftime. And Shania Twain, No Doubt, and Sting. How the Super Bowl can combine up-to-the-moment hipness and career declines is amazing/sad/…exactly what you'd expect.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 7

David Spade isn't necessarily the Lemon Twist spokesperson; he's the voice at the end of the commercial. (1-800-COLLECT isn't paying what it used to?) And Jackie Chan has joined forces with Michael Jordan to sell Haynes.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 6

Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions…first glimpse of the freeway car chase and the 100 Agent Smiths…[eyes roll into back of head and some sound emanates from Shane's throat, indicating satisfaction].

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 5

I wish death upon the Osbournes.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 4

Those introductory clips, where each team member stares and says what college the came from?…Classy. It wouldn't have worked if I'd had to read them. I feel like I know them intimately.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 3

Finally, tonight, thirty years in the making: Bob Griese finally had the national forum to say, "Hi Mom."

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughtout the night

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 2

Dixie Chicks make football players solemn.

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue throughout the night.

Super Bowl Coverage: Entry 1

CELINE! DON'T SING AMERICAN SONGS YOU'RE CANADIAN! STICK TO BUTCHERING THEM WITH YOUR GYRATING BALLAD CATERWAULING!

Continuous Super Bowl commentary will continue on throughout the night.

We're Just Kids in Love, and I Have a Headache

The Ben Stiller Show (the Fox version) was on Comedy Central last night for the first time in a while. I think it's switched around networks forever; I remember it on MTV, I also remember F/X doing a marathon of every show, and Comedy Central has had the rights to it forever, but never showed it. Is it taking the before-we-go-off-the-air spot SportsNight and The Kids in the Hall are circulating around?

In every way was it a genius show. Not only was it ahead of its time, but it was the precursor to Mr. Show (its cast memebers were Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, and Bob Odenkirk; David Cross was a writer, as was Judd Apatow). I saw two of my favorite sketches: The ZOO TV Late Night show where Bono became obsessed with how Sherman Hemsley said "wheezie" (from which my Evansville Online email address, wheezie, came from), and the made-for-ESPN action movie Advantage: Agassi (starring Odenkirk as Armand Assanti as some action-movie villain with a widow's peak—"You need work on your back-hand!"—and Garofalo as Maria Navratilova as a cyborg tennis player). Missing: Die Hard 12: Die Hungry, the ten-minute film where a bomb specialist attempt to defuse a 60-second bomb, and any numerous Skank episodes.

…
And now for my own "Remember When?"

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! I guess the main reason I'm noting it is because I just realized I'm in the house that's been the beacon of racism in my life—Grandpa Hazen's house. I can just hear him saying, "Now I don't understand why they give the goddamn nigger the goddamn holiday…"

It's just the era he was raised in… it's just the era he was raised in…

Rambo 4 Update!

The British newspaper The Sun has frequently been discredited as a source of…well, any news, much less movie news, but, ahem:

According to The Sun (via Corona's Coming Attractions), the newest storyline for Rambo 4 would involve Rambo taking down the Taliban in Afghanistan. Rambo would be "the brains behind bin Laden's downfall," and "The original story had Rambo killing bin Laden single-handed, but even Sly thought that was beyond the imagination."

Why stop when you're ahead? Btw, Stallone's last movie, D-Tox/Eye See You played in a few theatres in Nebraska before going straight-to-video.

WHO CARES! BRING ON RAMBO 4! FANS ARE CLAMORING FOR SOME MORE REGANOMIC, HOMOEROTIC, VIETNAM-BASED CHRIST IMAGERY STARRING OUR FAVORITE MARBLE-MOUTHED ITALIAN PORN-STAR TURNED ACTOR!

I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her last letter to her husband Robert Browning before they ran off to Italy

The fates deny us if we are too bold.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

I guess fairly is the key, mysterious word.

Why can't we just send personal survey emails like everyone else? Oh wait, because I need to make more attempts at mimicry, as the following will attest against (as will Stacey, Liz, Melissa, JD, Ashleigh, and Toni's blog entries).

10 Bands I've Seen Live
1. Sleater-Kinney
2. Weezer
3. Mogwai
4. Built to Spill
5. Garbage
6. Radiohead
7. The Breeders
8. Shellac
9. Ani Difranco
10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

9 Favorite Songs of the Moment
1. "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong" - Mogwai
2. "How I Made My Millions" - Radiohead
3. "Slow Dancing" - U2
4. "Not a Pretty Girl" - Ani Difranco
5. "Box Full of Letters" - Wilco
6. "I Can't Make You Love Me" - Bonnie Rait
7. "Academy Fight Song" - Mission of Burma
8. "Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset" - Modest Mouse
9. "Goodnight My Love" - Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman

8 Things I Do Everyday
1. let the dog out at 6:00 a.m. at his beck and call (which sounds much like he's being raped with a pencil); go back to room and climb under covers until he goes back to the door and makes the same signal
2. get up and crawl over to the computer; wait another two hours before I finally manage to get out of the house
3. check AIM to see if anyone who normally isn't online is, or someone new will IM me
4. obsess, fret, and seethe inwardly
5. get depressed
6. get blissfully happy
7. get depressed with renewed vigor
8. tell myself that I am a fully autonomous adult unto myself

7 Movies I Could Watch Again and Again (not favorites, right?)
1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Blade Runner
3. Star Trek 2: The Wraith of Khan
4. Jaws
5. Touch of Evil
6. Citizen Kane (seriously Melissa)
7. The Godfather Part II

6 Things That Annoy Me
1. Dustin "Someone Should Pee on My Car and Videotape It" L.
2a. my lack of telepathy when it comes to certain people
2b. my impotent lack of proper or charming action when it comes to certain people
3a. Dubya
3b. Dubya's high approval rating
3c. the war on Iraq
3d. North Korea
3e. our national complacency
3f. the more increasingly totalitarian things Dubya does
4. years of miscommunications with people I genuinely like adding to me acting like a paranoid jackass around them—and the people who willingly and unwillingly contribute to it
5. (currently) Blogger.com
6a. not being the person I know I could be
6b. questioning whether I even have the capability to be the person I "know" I could be
(Note: Notice how Jackie's not in here? He and I have said "hi" twice since our last meeting.)

5 Things That Touch Me
1. Erin, dealing and acting stronger than I know she can be
2. Stacey's perfect description of herself on her latest entry sans the comment "I'm also immensely loveable and dateable"
3. Jeff and Rai
4. our better angels(?)
5. she grabbed my hand in the car and held it in hers over my crappy space-heater to warm me up

4 People I Spend the Most Time With
I'm sorry, but I refuse to answer this because I COULDN'T THINK OF ANYONE. SERIOUSLY. NO ONE. THIS ISN’T SELF-PITYING CRAP—NO ONE. The closest people to being on the list, if they read this, will probably think "He spends the most time with me?" So I refuse to answer this one.

3 Things I'm Looking Forward To
1. that whole spiritual and emotional fulfillment thing
2. actually achieving or expressing something enlightening in this world
3. hopefully not fucking things up with certain people

2. Things I Wear Everyday
1. watch
2. glasses

1 Person I Could Spend the Rest of My Life With
1. (tie) Stacey or Erin (and I say this knowing it probably pisses them both off (-:)

Three random things.

A) Arba Rupert is in my Philosophy of Religion class. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to that class (past tense). I can't tell you how much I am not looking forward to that class (present tense). Stacey has described its teacher, Dr. Stephen Sullivan, as single-handedly the smartest man she's ever met. Arba Rupert almost single-handedly ruined every class conversation of every English class I had in high school. Arba Rupert is almost single-handedly responsible to my adverse fear or militant Christians and their monomanical arguments. I am almost single-handedly lying, since, FUCK, I live in the midwest after all. For the non-Central readers, here's a story about Arba:

While viewing Apocalypse Now Redux at Kerasotes, I found that Arba was sitting in the front row. Knowing I was a movie buff, he asked if I had seen the film. I confirmed that I'd seen both versions. He then asked, very tenatively, if there was any nudity. I told him there was some in this version, but there was much more graphic violence. Right, he said, but there's nudity? he asked. I tried reiterating that there was much more graphic violence, but still, he asked if I could somehow warn him whenever there was nudity. I sat farther back than him, so there was no way. When the Playboy scene, from the original, came on (containing no nudity but threatening with potential), Arba left for a few minutes and came back a few minutes into the next scene. When the Reduxed scene of the Playmates came on, Arba left (it contained nudity), and came back a few minutes into the next scene. When Martin Sheen's character has sex in the plantation, in another Redux scene (also with nudity), Arba left. Otherwise, he stayed for the entire duration of the film, including the ending act that is proliferated with severed heads on sticks.

B) News briefs: Pete Townshend's a pedophile and Chrisopher Reeve will appear on an episode of Smallville.

C) Time for my pompously quoted excerpt from whatever I'm currently reading (in this case, have been reading for way too long). From Naomi Klein's No Logo; aren't I all liberal an' righteous an' shit?:

The New Trusts: The Assault on Choice

In less enthusiastic eras than our own, other words besides "synergy" were commonly used to describe attempts to radically distort consumer offerings to benefit colluding owners; in the U.S., illegal trusts were combinations of companies that secretly agreed to fix prices while pretending to be competitive. And what else is a monopoly, after all, but synergy taken to the extreme? Markets that respond to the tyranny of size have always had a tendency towards monopoly. Which is why much of what has taken place in the entertainment industry during the last decade of merger mania would have been outlawed as recently as 1982, before President Ronald Reagan's all-out assault on U.S. anti-trust laws.

Although many media empires have long had the capacity to coordinate their holdings to promote their various offerings, most were held in check from aggressively doing so by laws designed to put up barriers between media production and media distrubution. For example, U.S. regulations passed between 1948 and 1952 limited the ability of film studios to own first-run movie theatres because lawmakers feared a vertical monopoly in the industry. Though the regulations loosend in 1974, the U.S. government was at that point in the midst of implementing a similar series of anti-trust actions designed to keep the three major television networks (CBS, ABC and NBC) from producing entertainment shows and movies for their own stations. The Justice Department charged that the three networks had an illegal monopoly that was blocking the work of outside producers. According to the Justice Department, the networks should act as programming "conduits," not programmers themselves. During this government anti-tust campaign, CBS was forced to sell off its prgramming arm—which, ironically, is now the synergy-obsessed Viacom. Another irony is that the interest that pushed most aggressively for the Federal Trade Commision investigation was Westinghouse Broadcasting, the same company that merged with CBS in 1995 and now enjoys all the attendant synergies between producation and distribution. Full circle arrived in September 1999 when Viacom and CBS announced their merger, worth an estimated $80 billion. The companies, reunited after all these years apart, converged into an entity far more powerful than before the divorce took place.

In the seventies and early eighties, however, the majors were under so much scrutiny that according to Jack Myers, then a sales executive at CBS-TV, his network was reluctant to coordinate the sales departments of its television, radio, music and publishing divisions for cross-promotional purposes. "The idea," writes Myers, "is one that several major media companies are today attempting to follow, but in 1981 concerns about anti-trust regulations prevented direct divisional interaction."

Those concerns were alleviated when, in 1983, Regan began the no-so-gradual dismantling of U.S. anti-trust laws, first opening the door to joint research between competitors, then removing the roadblocks to giant mergers. He yanked the teeth out of the Federal Trade Commission, dramatically limited its ability to impose fines for anticompetitive actions, cutting the staff from 345 to 134 and appointing an FTC chairman who prided himself on reducing the agency's "excessively adversarial role." A former FTC regional director, Carlton Eastlake, commented in 1983 that "if the policies of the current chariman are permitted to govern for a sufficient period of time, some of our most basic liberties will be jeopardized." Not only were the policies continued, but in 1986 even more dismantling legistlation was passed with the explanation that American companies needed greater flexibility to compete with the Japanese. Reagan's term saw the ten biggest mergers in American history up until that point—and not one was challenged by the FTC. The number of FTC anti-trust cases against corporations dropped by half during the eighties, and the cases that were prosecuted tended to target such ultra-powerful forces as the Oklahoma Optometric Association, at the same time as Reagan stepped in personally to protect the world's ten largest airlines from a pending anti-trust investigation by his own government. For the culture industries, the piece of the new-world jigsaw fell into place in 1993 when Federal Judge Manuel Real lifted the anti-trust restrictions that had been imposed on the the three major television networks in the seventies. The decision opened the door for the majors to once again produce their own prime-time entertainment shows and movies and neatly paved the way for the Disney-ABC merger.

However, even in today's climate of weak anti-trust laws, some of the more audacious synergy dreams have begun to wake up the long-dormant FTC. In addition to the high-profile case against Microsoft, Barnes & Noble's bid to buy the book distributor Ingram created such rage in the book industry that the FTC was forced to set up a dedicated phone line to deal with the complaints and Barnes & Noble abandoned the bid. That these controversies are fiercest in the book and software industries is no coincidence: what is at stake is not the availability of cheap staplers, toy or non-branded towels but the free publication of, and access to, a healthy diversity of ideas. It doesn't help that the concentration of ownership among Internet, publishing and book retail companies has come hot on the heels of what must now seem an incautious level of hype about the openness and personal empowerment of the so-called Information Revolution.

In an open E-mail to Bill Gates, Andrew Shapiro, a Fellow at Harvard Law school's Center for Internet and Society, voices an opinion that has surely occurred to most thoughful observers of modern mergers and synergy schemes. "If the whole idea of this revolution is to the empower people, Bill, why are you locking up the market and resticting choices? Synergizing your way from one biz to another every month?"

This contradiction represent a much larger betrayal than the usual doublespeak of advertising that wer are accustomed to. What is being betrayed is no less than the central promises of the information age: the promises of choice, interactivity and increased freedom.

Anyone still awake? No one held a gun to your head and forced you to read. Well, except for DVD Man, possibly.

Much akin to Stacey's happy annoucement that Ani Difranco is coming to Louisville…

SIGUR RÓS' IS PLAYING AT LOUISVILLE'S BROWN THEATRE ON MARCH 26!

Right now, there are three tenative concerts I was planning on attending:

1. Sleater-Kinney, Feburary 21 in Newport, KY at the Southgate House
2. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, March 23 in Newport, KY at the Southgate House (or alternately, 20-21 in Chicago at the Abbey Pub or the 13 in Austin, TX at the Texas Union Ballroom…c'mon!, it's spring break…)
3. and the aforementioned

My last concert ventures took no takers, but all of these are in the Louisville area, meaning I can go by myself if need be. Yee-ah.

I'm sorry, but even though I've been trying to play an elaborate game of Skirting the Issue, this week seemingly has been up there in the top twenty worst weeks of my life.

Mostly, it's been solitary. This involves the numerous amounts of people who've ditched me, thus leaving my shhh-edule open. There's been mad misunderstandings surrounding this—not to mention the two particularly noble-minded enterprises I took upon myself to help friends that massively bit me in the ass. It's turned into a mild conspiracy. At least in my head. But what doesn't turn into a conspiracy in my head?

And then…. I'll just say that all this alone time never does well for my brand of introspection, especially since the other events revolving around this week call out for such thing. I've talked this and overanalyzed it, as usual, to the point of stifled self-consciousness. My thought process has a definite cyclic nature. The only outside contributors to my thought process—everyone I know—essentially view me as a stereotype of myself. Their advice is accordingly uninspiried because, frankly, I've come to them before with nearly identical problems and I usually follow my own whims regardless, with their flawless or flawed justifications. And it's not like I feel like a shell of myself, more that the neurosis and infinite personality flaws are all there are, are all there is to see. I've had this question for God knows how long, and there have been some content moments where it feels like it's been answered, but for the most part, silence has been the only answer: What do I have that makes me a redeemable, likeable person?

I've tried—I feel like I've been really trying these last few months to not fall in the trap of asking that question. Everyone asks it. No one gets an answer that makes them feel totally, continually secure. My solution has been to empower myself; to truly try to be my own self-reliant entity. Still, I am continually, (seemingly) painfully unhappy all the time because I am too codependent on the opinions of others—randomly picked, fickle to whenever those opinions matter or don't, and completely vulnerable in everyway.

There seems to be conscious paths we develop for ourselves; over time, we can mold our own personality, outside of defenses environmental factors. It seems like a long time ago I made the decision that I wanted to be someone continually with his heart on his sleeve to anyone who gave a whiff of conviction that they might listen, and might stand through it. This faux-existentialist Connections Are All We Have approach has made me into this horrendously needy, horrendously anxious, horrendously disposable person. I added feverish desperation to this approach, and that's what makes it all seem needy and disposable. I told Stacey a few weeks ago that I think I do finally like myself, I just wish other people were there to back me up on it. If that's true, when do I not need these people? I've convinced myself that the happy-times-vs.-sad-times ratio is deluded by skewed perception over the last few years, but is this consistent bad feeling—able to overcome me without notice—is what I have to expect from now on? It seems like the revelatory Great Things in Life are really just pipedreams.

But above all, I know that I am not alone in this. I'm finishing the Buffy Season Three DVD, and here's a quote from "Earshot," apparently written by Joss Whedon after all:

JONATHAN: Stop saying my name like we're friends! We're not friends! You all think I'm an idiot! A short idiot!
BUFFY: I don't. (beat) I don't think about you much at all. Nobody here really does. Bugs you, doesn't it. You have all this pain, and all these feelings and nobody's really paying attention.
JONATHAN You think I just want attention?
BUFFY: No. I think you're up in the clock tower with a high-powered rifle because you wanna blend in. Believe it or not, Jonathan, I understand about the pain.
JONATHAN: Oh right. 'Cause the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that's a crippler.
BUFFY: You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own.

And I also feel like I should have come up with a more urbane source for quotation. But that's the way these things go, I guess.

HEY ERIK!

Open registration, and who walks in?

Not only does he look weirdly thin, but today's memorable HEY ERIK! observation was this:

HE FUCKING SCOWLED AT ME!

I never recognize him at first (especially sans hoodie), and so I always have to stare him down, at which point during this encounter, his lips did a blank upper sneer. Maybe it was an adverse twitch to the coke binge he partook in to wake up in time for G-I open registration. Or maybe, this here game of HEY ERIK! has been spotted by its creator and subject. Not a word was spoken, but as my paranoiac mind does in such situations, I make up dialogues, which he starts with,

"Hey 'Blogger.' HUH HUH HUH."

"Hey adled-minded asshole," I come back.

"You still writing for that bar toilet paper rag News 4U and discrediting people's name?"

"You still reading it, looking for your name in it? Or are you stuck bar-tending, hoping to get some pussy by informing bored-looking girls about how former members of Slint are in Billy Corgan's new band?"

"HUH HUH HUH, like I'd listen to that." (Looks away.)

"So JD was in town for a few days; kick his ass, did ya?"

And so forth. You notice how this really isn't game, and more an incitement for me to bitch continuously against a well-hated target? Does anyone want me to stop?

Yes, Clarissa thinks, it's time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep—it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accidents; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope more than anything, for more.

Heaven only knows why we love it so.

—Michael Cunningham, The Hours

Spitting-Acid-Pissed-Off

Me, to Jackie, less than two minutes ago:

"DON'T YOU FUCKING TALK TO ME YOU PERVERTED FUCKING MONKEY!"

Me, ten seconds later, getting a second wind:

"IF YOU EVER PULL THAT DISGUSTING SHIT AGAIN, NOT ONLY WILL I IMMEDIATELY MOVE OUT, BUT I WILL MAKE IT MY PERSONAL MISSION TO MAKE SURE YOU NEVER SEE DELIA EVER AGAIN. DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME?"

Me, what I wish I had added (and had prethought to say):

"AND YOU BETTER MAKE SURE THAT A DAY DOESN'T GO BY THAT YOU LEAVE YOUR DOOR UNLOCKED, BECAUSE THE MINUTE YOU DO, I'LL HAVE A CAMERA IN THERE CAPTURING YOUR CHRONIC MASTURBATION AND I'LL BE SELLING IT ON EVERY STREET CORNER I CAN FIND, YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?"

My dad, about one hour ago: "So Jackie confessed. He made the peephole a few weeks ago. After you moved in. I guess he was 'curious.'"

In the bathroom, for as long as I can remember, there has been a small hole about one-and-a-half feet above the ground. I never really thought of it as much more than a failed towel rack position until Keith was over last Friday with Stacey and Melissa and said, "Hey, what's up with the peephole?"

I replied with, "Oh, you don't want to know about the potential child molestation history of this house." At a family gathering a few years ago, my two aunts very nonchalantly proclaimed that my grandpa had made them model their underwear to him against the complaints of my grandma. Since this coincided with the psychological boom of the nineties involving post-Freudian victimization, I always ambiguously shrugged my shoulders on the whole thing.

The next day, I was taking a crap, and a light was on in the other room. And I saw it come through the hole.

Meaning there was no insulation or drywall in between this. It really was a direct hole from the bathroom—oddly placed at crotch level—to the outside hallway. And as long as I've lived here, I've never noticed it.

The coincidental value was still there. After all, there has always been a desk in front of that hole, of which was recently taken by my brother Chris. Without fretting too much, I simply rearranged things in the bathroom, moving the trash can in the "peep hole's" path.

A few days later, I noticed that the bathroom arrangement had moved back to its previous setting. Still odd; still freaky; but still potentially coincidental. After all, Jackie needs routine, and if he noticed the change, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for him to move it back.

Almost a week to the day Keith originally spotted it, both he and Stacey, along with Ryan Mullen, were back in the house. I stopped to inform Keith of all that I'd found in the last week, and which immediately called for further investigation.

Upon entering the bathroom, I made the final discovery that has seemingly killed all possibility of the coincidental "potential": the trash can, that has been in the room forever, has been replaced with a different, smaller trash can. It no longer covers the hole.

Of course, we all explored the hole's possibilities, and we all laughed. But then they left. And I still have to go to the bathroom.