28nov00 .. . lost it in a drawer

The lack of images on this page isn't mostly due to the fact that there has been nothing to see. In fact, there's been a lot to look at: turkey, babies, the fight clubhouse, leaves still on the trees, the guy that got run over by a dump truck in front of where I work, the strikers, the WTO preparations, the weird party I went to a few weeks back, Portland, the ocean, the bus and the train, etc etc.

There are none of these things because I lost my camera. Actually, I thought I lost my camera, or worse, yet, someone had stolen my camera. One of the things about having a lot of dental work when you are young is that you can generally blame leaching mercury for many of your mental setbacks. So, when I say to someone "shit I lost my scarf/hat/glasses/Visor/camera/tickets" they can smile and nod and know that I will track it down within a few days. I found the camera in a drawer. Yes, that's right, I lost it by putting it away. In Vermont, the only drawers I have in the entire house are in my bedroom in the dresser. Here I forget I have drawers at all, but at least I don't lose them.

If I was the patron saint of anything, I'd be the patron saint of abandoned houses.

Oh yeah, if you have some red clothing and the inclination, come meet me and a bunch of other santas at the Nitelite at 7 pm this Friday. Please remember the Four Fucks. I'll be wearing the red silk Santa pants.

25nov00 .. . wide open spaces, city style

I am old. I can tell because the Thanksgivings I have which are intended to keep me from having Thanksgiving with my family are now populated with babies and dogs. Or at least this one was, and not in a bad way really. The great thing about Thanksgiving with a baby is that the chance someone you don't know very well will turn to you at a lull in the conversation and say "so, what do you do?" are about a hundred to one. Though it does raise the likelihood that someone will ask you when you plan to start doing your smart-person-American duty and start producing your own offspring. It's hard to not sound like you are passing judgement when you say "Never" or, what I actually say "I am having a hard enough time just parenting a cat".

I got out of Buy Nothing Day with only paying money for the movies, but I would have allowed myself the purchase of one santa suit.

My friend in Portland lives in a loft. I have another friend in Seattle who lives in a loft. Lofts sort of go against my [blooming] urban decay fetish though, unlike the fight clubhouse where I live, they tend to be warm and have big windows, and fridge lights that work, even if their stainless steel faces won't hold magnets.

Being back in Seattle has been a series of eye openers like this: people I know have babies now, people I know live in lofts now, people I know are running marathons now [you know who you are], people I know talk about The Market now instead of NPR [a 180 degree reversal from two years ago]. The joy for me in this is that 1) this seems to make many of my friends very happy 2) the fact that I am not doing almost any of these things does not make me unhappy. Sum total, good news.

19nov00 .. . easily amused

When I was downtown this week, I walked through Occidental Park which is the notorious down-and-outer downtown park. As I got close to it, I noticed a whole bunch of people standing in a circle watching something. I expected, in my jaded city fashion, to see someone getting busted by the cops, or lying facedown in the road. Instead, everyone was watching a falcon standing over a pigeon it seemed to have very recently killed. There was a c ircle of feathers and a pigeon head nearby, and a bloody carcass underneath the falcon. There appeared to be some sort of standoff, as if the falcon was waiting for everyone to go away before it would resume eating and the people were waiting for it to rip into the pigeon as they watched. Ooooh nature.

In other nature news, we caught a small hungry looking rat in our house. I'm pretty sure it will not come back.

This past week I also saw two author readings: James Gleick and Eric Bogosian. While Gleick is a moderately facile writer of fairly deep-seeming books and Bogosian is a rough and tumble performer of dark dark stuff, both of the events had one thing in common: the audience. I don't know what it is about literary audiences, but I've heard they're the same everywhere. Since I had a lot of time to spin my wheels -- the question/answer part is my least favorite -- my friend and I composed a So You're At A Reading drinking game. It goes like this:

Drink Once Every Time an Audience Member...

• asks a question over two minutes in length
• asks two questions in a row implying the author did not understand them the first time
• apologizes to the author for not having read their book
• asks a question about the author's "process"
• asks a very long question that wanders hither and yon and in the end, is not really a question
• references something the author wrote over ten years ago

• "where do you get your ideas?"
• "who are your favorite writers?"
• "what are you working on now?"
• "do you have any advice for a new writer?"
• "what's your opinion on [insert current event here]?"

Bogosian said he voted for Nader.

14nov00 .. . no fire blowing, week two

The dude with all the lamp oil was a no show this week so the Fabulous Half-Assed Street Poetry Happening [in front of the bank at Olive and Broadway, Mondays at 8] was without fireballs. I did get to read this story at high volume however, which was a real pleasure.

Made plans to get way the hell out of town over the holidays this year. The last time I went to Alaska was a long long time ago.

12nov00 .. . doing my part

Happy Birthday Barry! My new brother turns 18 today which means -- to make a long story short -- that he is no longer owned by the State of Massachusetts. He was really hoping to be issued his very own Emancipation Proclamation, but I think he's going to have to settle for something more along the lines of cake and ice cream.

Just in case you can't wait for the overseas ballots to come in, here are the results from the South Pole Station election:

Ralph Nader (Green): 32 votes
Al Gore (Dem): 30
GW Bush (Rep): 7
Harry Brown (Libertarian): 4
Mike Gomez (Welder): 7
various other station personalities, 1 each

Sorry if this information will not help you gain the advantage in your office pool.

10nov00 .. . road not taken, week one

I got a postcard from a friend in Vermont a ways back speculating on whether he would ever leave the house if he was able to give himself head. My burgeoning home network is making me ask a similar question, in a somewhat different way, though I am mostly certain the thrill will wear off.

This week I declined to learn to blow fire during an impromptu poetry reading in front of the bank up on Broadway. I also managed to miss the Clown Bloc crashing of the Greens and Democrats election parties. I couldn't quite make it to anarchist drinking night at the Elysian, and I just now got around to getting some heating oil. It's been chilly here.

What have I been doing? Good question. Working, mainly. Catching up with people I haven't seen I a while. Many of my friends range from the mildly hermitty to out and out misanthropes. I can't invite them all over at once unless I want to talk to one of them at a time while the others all read. And I tend not to enjoy the social dynamics that are created by an election boondoggle of this magnitude anyhow so one-on-one bullshit sessions are fine with me.

Anyone going to Portland for Thanksgiving weekend? I could use a ride.

08nov00 .. . total hours spent in house awake so far = 4

For once I don't feel like talking politics. I just feel all oogy about the whole thing.

The most difficult thing to get used to has been the incorrect assumption I made, based on being in Vermont, that I would be spending at least some of my time at home. Since I spent nearly all of my time at home in Vermont, I assumed I would spend less than all but more than none of my time here. So I had a project list, and told some people to call me here, and left my bags by the door to unpack later. Granted, it's only been three days but my dance card is kind of full and I keep looking at my bags as I walk out the door thinking "what was it I needed in there anyway?"

I stayed home long enough to get the home network running so while we may not have a ceiling in the living room, we do have DSL.

04nov00 .. . day in the park with 100 lbs of luggage

For reasons I haven't figured out, I am bringing too much stuff back to Seattle. This means when I need to shuffle it between places on the four-stop-trip eventually winding me up at the airport, it's a serious expedition, which would be made easier by llamas or something. I stopped in to have lunch with friends of mine who work at some dotcom behemouth in Boston. They have a telescope to watch planes take off from Logan, push-button espresso machines on every floor, and rasta dudes in the mailroom who hand out Zip disks to anyone who wants one [like me, for instance]. Big fun of the day was my friend pretending I was interested in a job there so everyone would give me their best post-orthodonture grins as I schlepped my two backpacks and a mailbag around with me ["hey this cubicle looks nice, think I'll move right in!"].

Suffice to say I'm staying at my .net for a bit. I only have to dress up one day a month [or call in sick] and all my goofy co-workers have websites so we can all track and stalk one another linking to eachother. Well, not everyone is a linker...

02nov00 .. . the killer jet lag approacheth

I already wake up at 6:45. In Seattle this becomes 3:45, begging the question of why I go to sleep at all. I'm heading down to MA today so I can head up to NH Sunday and head to Seattle. I'm chompin' at the bit to see the mountains and take a trip or two to the ocean. These locales are all the more tantalizing because I'm still not supposed to be driving. So, I'll enter my new Whoring for Rides phase and see who wants to take me to the beach. I know some great driving songs.

So, farewell Vermont, I'm leaving you in good hands with Anitra. So long to saying "hey, these are my good overalls..." Adios to taking a bath in my wool hat cuz it's cold inside. Vaya con dios to my new stove scars, eventually. Arrivederci Milky Way and reading by moonlight. Sayonara post office box 14. À bientôt scavenging in the backyard dump. I'll be back in April.