Now I'm taping To Kill A Mockingbird and whatever movie it is that comes after it.

Last night I picked up the tapes Tim did for me while I was away. For me he got Age of Innocence, Remains of the Day, and a bundle of Akira Kurosawa movies.

I'm strangely not hungry right now. Maybe it's because I don't feel like there's anything good to eat within reach. I'd eat the waffles if there was orange juice.

That was one great thing about Lake Arrowhead; always there were good beverages at the ready. Be it hot chocolate, coffee, orange juice, or water, it was all right there. All I've got here are three cans of coke. That's it. And don't get me wrong, I do like coke . . . It's just not the time.

I failed to mention that I worked on my novel yesterday. In Lake Arrowhead I began chapter 80, the first chapter of part 9. I finished that chapter yesterday. I think. Actually, I think I'll make it longer . . .

Er . . . Maybe this novel's too big. I'm gonna take a hard look at it when I finish the first draft.

I'm tired.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--I wish I could've gotten more sleep this morning.

But I couldn't--The maid unexpectedly turned up.

So I was unexpectedly turned out and found myself at the beginning of an adventure on the trolley through San Diego! to include a smoothie, a phone call to and a recommendation from Trisa, a new book by Caitlin R. Kiernan, a taking up Trisa on her recommendation, and an inept trolley operator who took me in the direction opposite from which her sign proclaimed.

Now here I go 'gain.

Oh, lazy, fat-cat Americans like me, spoiled yet again by paradise--er, and by paradise, I mean the free post-apocalyptic environment of blackish brown smooth hills dotted with the construction paper black skeletons of trees. From here to Lake Arrowhead (almost a hundred miles), this is the genuinely glorious sight on either side of the 15 freeway, not to mention the crusty black scalps of land hugging the winding road leading up to the mountain that Lake Arrowhead calls home.

Lake Arrowhead--cold. Quite cold. Especially in the hotel room where my mother laughed at our craziness with the heater and sagely turned the device down to a perfectly sane 60 degrees (my mother tends to be too warm).

It's easy to kill an hour or two in the cute little "village" (read "mall") within walking distance of the hotel. It was there that I ate at a restaurant that had--judging from autographed photos about the place--previously served David Prowse, William Shatner, and, most incredibally, Lani "Captain Crais" Tupu! Someone at the Casa Coyote had proudly presented Tupu with a Farscape production photo for him to put his John Hancock on! This thrilled me lots. And it's fun to say Lani Tupu.

The drives sucked because I largely had to put up with my mother's insistence on playing a live Eagles CD over and over (I do sort of like "Desperado" and "Hotel California," but if a band's live performance tends to be a collection of their greatest hits, to me that says something). During "The Girl From Yester-day", by mother and sister agreed that it was silly to cry over a lost love and that anyone who did it was a loser. After all, there was always someone else at the party.

With triumphant laughter, my mother informed us that breaking up was a time when one essentially announced, "Next!"

Echoing her laughter, I rejoined with my oft-undetected sarcasm, "Yeah, totally! The idea of someone being irreplacable is preposterous as it is of course predicated upon the idea that people are unique! Ha ha, what a tired fallacy!"

What reply any member of my family may've had to my comment shall never be known because at that time we rounded a corner and saw the aftermath of a rather severe car accident featuring an expensive black sports car with a hood crumpled like a soda can. We were forced to park in another shopping centre so let's shop more, hurrah!

The bulk of my time was spent in the hotel room reading, mostly Caitlin R. Kiernan stuff. I finished the brilliant Threshold which combined interesting, tormented characters who exchanged dialogue that got me in a way somehow similer to the way dialogue got me in Citizen Kane, with a great, slimy dark, dark something underneath it all that was mysterious and mythos-ish. Especially mythos-ish as I spent a lot of time in the hotel room also reading stories from Caitlin's Tales of Pain and Wonder relating to Threshold's characters and something.

Speaking of Caitlin, that lovely woman has put a bunch of my manga and stuff on her Nebari.net in my absence, and oy, was it ever a nice thing to come home to.

I think I'll go out and buy Low Read Moon now . . . Or at least, as soon as I catch up with correspondences and things.

Oh! And happy Thanksgiving (it's occured to me that poultry is the worst smelling thing in the world. Why do people wanna eat something that smells like raw sewage? Maybe my vegetarian olfactory is biased . . .).

Woke up feeling something terrible. Was it the tap water? Was it the Taco Bell burritos I wolfed down on the way home last night? Was it the walk? Was it something else?

It only figures as I now have gotta scramble to get my shit together for departure. Yes, I am gonna be dissapearing for a few days . . . I think I'm getting back on Friday. I'm going with parents and sister to Lake Arrowhead, where I suspect I shall end up eating too much.

What really kills me is that I'm gonna miss taping Only Angels Have Wings on TCM at midnight to-night. You know, if someone out there has a desire to be really, really sweet to me, they might wanna consider nabbing that motion picture for me to-night *puppy dog eyes*.

I shall now try to gather stuff and strength to the soundtrack of Velvet Underground songs. Until days from now, bye!

Oy . . . Not feeling so great this mornin'. Little kids screaming and bumping elsewhere in the house . . . Ug. Can't they just get swallowed by the ground?

I gots some walking for doing to-day. To and from school. It'll be fine. But all I want to do to-day is lay around watching movies.

Blah.

At least I've got money. Maybe I'll stop at Einstein bagels on the way . . .

Right. Off I go.

Taped Touch of Evil, or I think I did, anyway. My cousin was fucking with the TV so, although I think it still worked, I'm not altogether sure.

During lunch, I watched the opening shot and it really was extraordinary. We go from a close-up of a ticking bomb, to the car it was planted in, to lovers strolling casually a few blocks away . . . All it one, single crane shot. Remarkable.

Last night I did four more pages of The Adventures of Nar'eth. Caitlin's requested more, so I think I shall give her more.

This morning I did a new page of Doll Merchant--I think my clear influences for that series are beginning to be less Raymond Chandler and more Arthur Conan Doyle.

So I have been a busy bee. At this rate, I may have to stop insisting to people that I'm not a comic book artist.

No matter what happens to-day . . . I don't think I'm ever gonna get the theme from Pokemon out of my head.

sigh.

I did see a good episode of that series yesterday . . .

"Gotta catch 'em all . . ."

I feel like I'm in a submarine.

But fortune strike in the midst of malaise as I unexpectedly bagged a video of Billie Holiday after taping Johnny Belinda. Nice.

A sort of victory: In a recent answering of reader's questions by Roger Ebert, Ebert said;

"Apparently moviegoers now prefer wide-screen to 'full screen' (i.e., cropped pan-and-scan) by such a wide margin that stores are routinely left with piles of unsold full screens."

I do like the sound of that. And to think, a couple years ago people thought I was crazy for my preference. Huh! Who's crazy now, huh? Huh!? I'm--I'm not craz . . . The door made me do it, I tell you! The door!

...

Six guesses for what I did this morning.

No.

No.

Heh, no.

No.

Well, yes, but everyone does that routinely. Right?

No.

Okay. I did something kind of wrong, I guess . . . I watched the Paris Hilton sex video. Morbid curiosity, I suppose. I'm not really sure why I wanted to watch it but if it was for sexual arousal, my libido was quite disappointed. It's kind of depressing that someone can seem so artificial and superficial in such a situation. Here she is, having sex with her supposed boyfriend, and she can't even sound genuine. Isn't 19 awfully young to be so emotionally jaded? Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Do I feel sorry for her that this video is circulating? Vaguely.

The door! The door made me do it, I tell you!

Turns out a guy can indeed get around without a car.

Yesterday I went to La Mesa, came back, then went to Parkway Plaza. I figured it'd be silly to waste the Trolley Day Tripper I'd gotten for going to La Mesa.

It was at Parkway Plaza that I finally bought The Apartment, and it was shortly thereafter that I finally saw the end of that movie. It's all good, it turns out.

Last night, Lucky the cat made a break for the outdoors well after sundown, a time he's not typically allowed outside. While looking for him in the backyard, I saw in the darkness the small, pale, round face of a opossum, looking about with tiny black eyes from atop the fench.

I was reminded of dream I'd had the night before about Victoria the cat escaping because she'd lain thousands of black and white kittens all over the house. These strange little kittens were of varying sizes, some smaller than a fingernail, lost between carpet fibres. One had to walk very carefully around the house.

...

It occurs to me that some of the decisions we make in life are extremely difficult to deal with, even if it was probably the right decision. You wonder when on earth you'll stop thinking about it, as it keeps popping into the brain.

Good advice.

To bed, for bread.

I must go to sleep early so that I may travel to La Mesa to-morrow and retrieve bread from my Aunt.

I don't wanna. Why did I agree to this? I have plenty of food . . . Oh well . . .

Anyway, I must get up early--Hullo! It's already 3am. So much for that! Then again, 3am is early for me . . . but not early enough to make waking up at 9am very comfortable. Maybe I can do it from 10am?

Halloa, my neglected blog!

Eh, I didn't type anything into you on Tuesday because I gave the whole day over to watching The Two Towers extended edition. And I'm not sorry. Nope.

It's like all better with the characters and what not. Blah. No word things in my brainmouth to-now. I'm tired. Shall I watch more? I haven't even begun on the special features of which there are . . . heh . . . a lot.

Suffice to say, like Fellowship of the Ring before it, The Two Towers is now a far better, less frenetic feeling film.

So it's single-handedly responsible for me being in quite a good mood. Otherwise, I'd be miserable and crazy, maybe, from isolation and lack of a proper desk to draw on which is really starting to get to me. I'm tired of drawing on the floor. It's just not comfortable.

Oh, yes, I used to have desk space for drawing on. But what happened? The big, beautful, frelling desk got cut in half is what happened!

Ah . . . but that's an old wound. No sense pestering it now.

Sean Bean is an excellent Boromir.

Dreamt ants were taking over the world. Not a good feeling, especially as they started with my glass of apple juice.

I'm busy to-day again.

Feeling out of sorts for an altercation with Trisa.

And to-day's the last day of car insurance. I have a feeling that the next couple of weeks are gonna be composed of long, slow days. But that's fine, as I'm in a slow mood these days.

But whatever happens, I do know that the Two Towers extended edition comes out to-morrow. That's the kind of thing that keeps me alive.

Found this on Mel's journal. It's cute . . . if the graphic ever loads, huh?


Sometimes your creative solutions land you in
sticky situations but you remain adventurous
and undaunted by failure. You posess an
infectious confidence and deep thinking comes
naturally to you.
Always on the go with many paws in many pies,
Rabbits can appear slightly manic to others.
But not to worry, you have everything under
control... most of the time.


Which Pooh character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

To-morrow's my last day of car insurance. The Company sent me a form in the mail for me to fill out in order to get my own insurance, but said form has not yet arrived. Fortunately, I won't actually need my car for a while after Monday. And on either Wednesday or Thursday, I'm going to Lake Arrowhead with my parents and sister.

Lake Arrowhead was caught in the fire and I'm looking forward to seeing majesticly burnt trees and shrubs.

To-day . . . There're a couple projects I wanna work on, I wanna do laundry, and . . . Oh yes! Eat breakfast. I think I'll start out by going for coffee.

To-night I plan to tape Cleopatra from 1913. I also want to tape Adult Swim for Marty who, not having cable, has never seen Adult Swim.

So, tapie, tapie.

...

Last night, I managed to watch all of They Drive by Night, a movie I'd taped because it's got Humphrey Bogart in it. As it turned out, this movie was made before Bogart was a big star, and he's forced to play second fiddle to a far inferior actor. And the story was ludicrous mid-century Hollywood shlock, beginning at point A, going to point L, coming back for point G, spinning out to N, taper spiraling round to C, and, at last, ending up at K. Bogart and some other guy are brothers who drive a truck delivering produce, dreaming of one day actually owning their truck or even their own trucking business. But things go awry when Bogart falls asleep at the wheel and looses his right arm. The Other Guy goes to work in the garage of a big trucking company where the boss's wife (Ida Lupino) has a deep crush on him. Lupino kills her dopey husband, makes The Other Guy a partner in owning the company, but goes wacky when she learns that Other Guy is marrying a sweet, plain little redhead played by Ann Sheridan.

It ended up that Ida Lupino was the person who made this film worth watching. She'd killed her husband by allowing an automatic garage door to close on him while the gas was on in his car and, later, which she was on the stand, her mad laughter and cries of, "Yes! That's it! The door made me do it! The door, I tell you!" were just delicious. What a plucky dame. I understand there's another movie she costars with Bogart in. I just might hunt it down . . .

The last two movies I saw at the cinema were Kill Bill and Lost in Translation. Two movies having a lot to do with two different perspective on Tokyo. Kill Bill being the more stylised, Lost in Translation being the more raw. They're both incredibally good movies.

This morning, for some reason, I also remembered that both films have a Charlie Brown gag, wherein a group of people decide that an individual resembles Charlie Brown and so they take to refering to him by that name. Strange, no?

I woke up to-day at around 10:10am, watched a bit of a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode I'd never seen, and then went back to bed. I really must stop doing that.

I think I'm catching a cold . . .

Hoy.

Got up at 2pm to-day. Well, technically I woke up at 11am, read the last chapters of The Valley of Fear, and then went back to bed.

Again, I stayed up looking for Sarah Bernhardt, only this time the hunt yielded my quarry. Here.

If I can find a large enough photo of Benhardt, I might make a Sarah Bernhardt desktop scheme. I don't know where this sudden interest in Sarah Bernhardt comes from. Maybe I just feel nlike I wanna possess her in some voyueristic fashion before I see Nicole Kidman's rendition of the legendary actress in Steven Spielburg's new film.

I got Elvis Costello's new album yesterday and, thanks to a breathtaking traffic jam on 15 north, I managed to listen to it twice in a row. It comes with a smashing good DVD and a PIN code for a bonus track on the website which doesn't work.

. . . Gods it's weird having Sarah Bernhardt yelling at me so passionately . . . This is exactly why I wanted these mp3s . . .

Er, so anyway, the new Costello album is great light, somewhat gloomy jazz. I think I'd enjoy it more if I was more in touch with my emotions.

Hmm. I'm going real creepy . . . The girls in my life are Sarah Bernhardt, Rita Hayworth, and Sophitia.

Help.

Even I think it's obscene that I'm this tired at 1pm.

I was driven last night, though, for no apparent reason, to find mp3s of Sarah Bernhardt. Apparently recordings do exist, some even from before 1900. But alas, my search was in vain.

If any of you know where I can get my hands on some Sarah Bernhardt recordings, let me know. And mind you that's Sarah Bernhardt, not Sandra Bernhardt.

...

Don't know what I'm gonna do to-day. Maybe just read.

Victoria the cat returns!!

After weeks of avoiding me, she suddenly seems very happy to hang out in my room.

Not really any other developments besides that around here . . . Looks like it may be easier to get car insurance than I thought . . .

Victoria seemed overtaken by horrid fascination when I did thirty crunches in front of her. The look on her face told me she'd never seen anything so inexplicable and bizzare.

I wonder if 1602 number 4 is out yet?

(jumping to another topic) I taped Clash By Night with Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, and Marilyn Monroe. It's good--not spectacular, but good. Seeing Stanwyck reminded me of how much I wanna get a copy of Double Indemnity.

I finished part 8 of my novel yesterday--the first draft, anyway. As it looks like the novel shall end up being in nine parts, I guess this means I'm in the home stretch. A home stretch that's likely to take five months, at least.

Dashing all about yesterday, influenced maybe by the dashing about of my main character in my novel (or perhaps the other way around? Naw).

Went to Parkway Plaza first, after pressing record on the VCR to nab A Streetcar Named Desire and Notorious. Spent hours at the mall just writing, and looking for my aunt's birthday present, which I never found. But even if I had found something, I suppose I really dinna have the money . . .

I had eighteen dollars yesterday. Pretty pathetic, really, as I was trying to save money to pay Trisa. But as Trisa was unavailable yesterday I figured, hell, I can just go and spend it, whoo-hoo.

Spend it I did, on coffee, and lots of it. So it was that in the cool of the evening I was sweating through me sweater as I realised that I needed to be at Grossmont Centre to buy groceries from Trader Joe's (this was at 6pm I realised this). I promptly left the Rubio's I was waiting in line at and took off for Grossmont Centre mall.

Now, I know what you're thinking; Sets! Don't you have school at 7pm on Mondays!

Well, at about noon yesterday it came to me that Juliana Cardenas (teacher) had informed ze class that Monday was to be a Veteran's Day and there was thusly no school. I thought it was too bad I had not remembered this Sunday night, when I had stayed up 'til 3am typing up a story for subission to the Acorn Review.

But fuck it! I thought. No one liked my last story, "Gregg's Mermaid"--a fact which has led me to believe there is a prejudice against sci-fi/fantasy around these parts as the complaints for the story were vague and a couple people even said it was well written. Stories have been accepted for less--and yet this story of mine got only two votes; mine, and this cool girl named Sarah (or possibly Sara, or even Sera--I once knew a Sairah) who told me it wasn't the sort of story she liked but that she was voting for it on principle. Hurrah! Someone in the class has ethics.

Right--Monday.

So I get back to my grandmother's house at 7:19 and my grandmother mentions she'd been to the bank to-day.

"I'm surprised the bank was open on Veteran's Day!" says I.

"To-morrow's Veteran's Day, not to-day!" says she.

"Oh fuck," thinks I, outwardly keeping my cool because I got some moves on me, or so I was told by a flying saucer salesman at Parkway Plaza (I was carrying my copy of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Threshold and when he jovially launched his inflatable saucer at me as I rounded a corner, I reflexively batted at the saucer with Threshold, causing the thing to fly off at an angle to where it hit a partition, rebounded, and landed in the salesman's hand. Smooth, yes, I know).

So.

I grabs me story and a card thingie, drive as fast as I dare to Grossmont College, park off campus (because I am too cheap for parking permit) and march up the dark night hill towards school whilst trying to fill out the submission card.

There were no cars in the school parking lot.

There was no one at the school.

I walked across the campus and, apart from a rabbit dashing across the quad, mine was the only soul present.

Sigh!

The day ended as I left Tim's with his extra packets of hot sauce from Del Taco. I took something home last night.

. . . just realised I have no school to-day. Huh.

Well, let's see . . . I've got eighteen dollars. What shall I do with it? I wanna tape A Streetcar Named Desire at 2:45 . . .

Maybe I'll buy food. I spent five dollars on a sandwich yesterday and it seemed like a bad idea at the time. Now it doesn't sound so bad.

Getting dressed would be a good start, true . . .

About the Bush Administration, Al Gore recently said, "They have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, 'big brother'-style government toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book '1984' than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America."

I was thinking the same thing. Lots of people are, I guess.

Yesterday's post was gonna be longer but a carpet cleaner blundered into my room and I had to leave. But now that I think about it, I didn't really have anything else to say . . .

Last night I was quite enjoying The Apartment (Billy Wilder's film with Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine and Fred MacMurray) until I found that the last thirty seconds or so of the movie had been cut off by what I'd taped after it. Grr! The frustration. I'd forgotten that some VCRs have a helpful tendency to rewind the tape slightly when you press record.

It seems the other movies I'd taped are okay since for all of those I'd left them recording for much longer than necessary . . . oh, the pain. Looks like The Apartment isn't available on DVD--Damnit, it won Best Picture, why the frell isn't it on DVD? Gah!

There are two projects I wanna work on to-day, but I think I shall only have time for one. I'll flip a coin . . .

Watched (and taped) Les Diaboliques last night and it was good and even had me a little frightened. Many good qualities about this movie including a glimpse of the starlet's nipples at the end. It's just more exciting to see in a movie made in 1955, for some reason.

Just watched the very short first chapter of Star Wars: Clone Wars. It seemed good but damn was it fucking short. Anakin Skywalker hasn't spoken yet, but already he's a strangely more believable character than he was in the movie.

It's too bad Palpatine isn't played by Ian McDiarmid. I can't tell if Obi-Wan is Ewan MacGreagor.

My cousin's a model and she once told me about a job of hers where pictures of her were taken for a dating service's advertisements. I asked her if she herself actually used this service and she told me that of course she did not.

Common sense had told me this already--I doubt there's anyone who truly thinks the made-up creatures grinning from the meticulous advertisements are actual examples of people using the service. But having this cynical fact definitely proven gave me some kind of cruel glee.

There lies the gaudy, accessorised marketing machine naked and blushing before me. Ha!

So to-day, when I was looking over my hotmail e-mails, I found myself idly gazing at a row of three photographs of different women's faces--a dating service advertisement. I got to thinking about how each face is supposed to look different, implying that there's "a match for simply everyone!" out there. I'm not sure why the photos caused such a meloncholy to fall over me. Something about the way I could sense the photographer saying, "Oh, you've got a snazzy look to ya. Give me a bit if fun . . . Yeah, let's see mischief, like you're up for fun and what not," and to another, "Aw, you're a sweetie aren't you? Let's see a little coy, but let's make sure you still look like you give great blow jobs. Perfect!" and, "Hey, yeah, just give me a reasonable smile . . . yeah . . . your life's together but you're not judgemental and all that . . . Yeah . . . brainy but docile . . . yeah . . ."

And then I imagine the guys being pulled in by these ads, whether they know it or not, into using the dating service. These poor lonely bastards with their simple, little mental crayon drawings of woman "types". I've known plenty of guys like that, some of them even smart guys. It's amazing how dumb a smart person can be when they've all but given up hope.

Another example of real life being too complex for itself.

...

Gods, I have a lot to do to-day . . . And I'm having big trouble concentrating. Things just flit helplessly in and out of my brain. I'm forgetting important things way too easily lately.

I think I'll begin by typing things up. Sounds simple enough, yes?

It's Garfield, the movie.

I would prefer that Lorenzo Music, who was Garfield's voice for the old cartoon series, be the voice for the movie, but it seems he died in 1999. Still, the fact that Bill Murray's onboard for Garfield's voice makes me hopeful. The fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt is also onboard is something I'm trying not to think about.

I got me copies of Citizen Kane, The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn), and Holiday (with Kathryn Hepburn and Cary Grant). Oh yeah.

I also took a test yesterday. The school kind. And yet, also, at the same time, it was the moral and spiritual kind. That sort of crossroads where you ask yourself, "Oh, what is the fucking point, anyway?!"

I'd skipped this class on Monday in order to hang out with Trisa (which I do not regret as hanging out with Trisa is more important than school), so I didn't actually know about to-day's test until Mr. Ding (that's his name!) started writing questions on the board.

They were all about Twelfth Night which we would have studied last week if there hadn't been fire all over the place. Instead, I guess he expected us all to have independently done our work, merely because he'd had it all written down in the syllabus . . . Okay, not an unreasonable thing to expect of students. But I was busy smouldering under my own cloud of inner drama so I could hardly concentrate (wish I could say that inner drama was worry for our firefighters but it wasn't. It was Shirley McClaine saying, "Why do people fall in love with people?"). This was pretty much the reason I'd dropped the class the first time and I'd re-taken it now. When I signed up for classes, I didn't think I was gonna have much else to think about (ya'll get what I'm saying, right?).

So, yes, I'd read Twelfth Night once, a very long time ago, which was a fact I wasn't even aware of until I started frantically (while trying to look casual) skimming over the text (thankfully, this test was open book).

In the middle of all this hoopla, though, I couldn't help thinking, "Is this how I wanna read Twelfth Night? 'cause this kinna sucks." But no, it must be this way to placate the gods of acedemia. That glorious realm of their's where one should not learn unless it does not get in the way of memorising. Unfortunately, it often does.

I finally caved in and wrote one of my patently bullshitted essays. Like Trisa says, being things for all people . . .

"We had such wishful beginnings . . ." -David Bowie

Hello, friend. How does this sacred evening find you? You look good. If you come over here, if you sit on my lap, I'll tell you a little secret. If you put your breath on my ear, I'll make known to you things that are hidden beneath the shifting, black silks of the mind and eternity. Draw close to me and I will tell you . . .

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, madmadmadmad, mad world.

No, I've never seen It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but it's gonna be on TCM on Friday and, as seems to be the wonderful norm on TCM, it'll be without commercials and it'll be completely unedited.

I'm not so sure it interests me enough to watch it. I only mention it because it's title speaks the truth. It is a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

I'm troubled. I'm dreading a couple of things right now. I guess top of the list is the fact that I still need to get car insurance. And that just sucks. I never really wanted a car to begin with. All I ever use it for is goofing off. I could do with a lot less of that. Aw, but what am I saying. That's mad talking . . .

What do I want most right now?

As Agent Cooper once said, I wish I was making love to a beautiful woman for whom I had genuine affection.

I'm currently recording a movie starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley McLaine that I've never seen before. I think I'm just recording it because I've suddenly become wildly excited about TCM's generosity with their movies.

Wednesday looks like it'll bring in quite a haul; Citizen Kane, Mark of Zorro, Stagecoach, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. I think I'll probably try to get all of them on tape. And I probably won't have time to watch any of them.

I am becoming an impulsive collector of movies, huh . . .

Hmm. Wait a minute . . . what happened to my apple juice . . . ?

Trisa and I partook of the unknown yesterday in a forray into Mitsuwa. From this place we took popsicles that were green tea ice cream on the outside and some kind of tangy fruit paste on the inside. They were also very good.

Apparently, Trisa and I both really liked Kill Bill. Has does everybody. This is a loved movie.

I will have money soon. I'll probably buy Low Red Moon. But I also want Elvis Costello's new album, and I'm even thinking about the Indiana Jones box set, which I really shouldn't be doing. I'm also thinking about breakfast . . .

...

Oh, and Happy Birthday Trisa!

The mail yesterday was not so bad as I thought, at least it does not seem so thus far. I received a notice from West Hollywood, as I had expected--well, not so much expected--I mean feared. I had feared that there would be some additional charge to what was paid on the night that Trisa and I took back my car from the clutches of Hollywood authorites, even though the receipt seemed to include all conceivably relevant fees. I was nevertheless worried that I'd forgotten about something.

What I received yesterday, I could not exactly make heads or tails of. I'm not certain if it's simply a notice that my vehicle had been stored by them at one point, which is the nearest thing to making sense of it. What it seems to be is a notice that they are still storing my vehicle and why haven't I picked it up? Which would be awfully extraordinary as I seem to recall parking my car and driving it about scores of times since the incident.

I suppose I ought to eat breakfast . . . Gods, I want a latte.

Not sure what I want to do with this day.

Some people are too uptight.

Okay, Existence. Now what?

Oh . . . you don't know? Well, don't expect me to give you a clue because I haven't got one.

No, I ain't mad at ya. Things would be so much easier if I was, huh, because then at least we'd have something to chew on. But for the moment, we're doomed to freedom and the cognisance of the insignifigance of pleasure.

Blasphemy, I know . . .

I mean to say, I have no money. Well, I've got some. But I'm saving it to pay Trisa back for the fiasco in L.A.

It's getting cold around here. Maybe that'll be good for the fire. Maybe Mother Nature shall stop bingeing and sink into a cold, numb aftertaste.

. . . I have places to go to-day. I'm told I have mail at one of my other addresses. And I have a bad feeling about this. I have a bad feeling about a lot of things to-day.