March 09, 2002
40 to go!

40 to go!

60.  I read the dictionary.


61.  I subscribe to National Geographic, though I do not know why, really.


62.  In my apartment are four computers.  Only one presently works.


63.  My bicycle chain needs oil, my bike seat needs to be replaced, and there's a huge hole in the middle finger of one of my gloves that must be sewn shut.  The hole started in January.


64.  I fantasize about the questions the interviewer will ask after my first book is published.  Actually, it could be my third or even fifth book—fantasies are easy that way.  I've imagined writing a good dozen or so books.  Does this make me a fantasy writer?


65.  I described this site to my family once as non-fiction writing, without the research.  That's because you've always been lazy, my sister concluded.  My brother and sister visited my site once, and went no further than here, and here.  They don't want to know.


66.  I usually think everything is my fault.


67.  Playing with a Ouija board with my aunt once, I asked it when my father would die.  At that time he was in his mid-fifties.  The board said 63.  He did.


68.  My room is a diorama in the museum of clutter.


69.  ..is not one of my favorite positions.  Spooning is.


70.  There is a terrifying place I should go, emotionally, but I don't.  I don't know anybody who makes such excursions into the emotional abyss (maybe I'm avoiding anyone who might challenge me), and at the mouth of that pit are all sorts of diversions encouraging me to go elsewhere.  I comply.


71.  I have been convinced, at least three seperate times, that my death was imminent.  I was wrong.


72.  I think there should be bare breasts in the Department of Justice, instead of naked ambition.


73.  I want to live—and I mean live for real, not like I do watching life, but like I have never done before, living life—at least once before I die.  (Refer to the abyss in #70).


74.  I sleep in my underwear.  Sometimes I even wear a cap.


75.  I brush my teeth daily, I seldom floss, I use a tongue scraper.  And Listerine.


76.  Most of my clothes are black.  Everything I've bought in the last year is.


77.  My right ear is pierced.  I usually do not wear anything in it.


78.  Basically I am a taker.  When I give, it is only because, for that moment, I figure I can afford it (spiritually, emotionally, etc.).  But I believe that on balance I am always in the red.  I am waiting for all that was ever stolen to be given back.


79.  I admitted a guy I knew from high school to the detox where I work.  When he realized who I was, he expressed—through a light mist of booze—the sympathy he used to feel for me when other guys would steal my lunch money. 


80.  I'm surprised I did not grow up to be the Unabomber.

half a hundred

Starting the last half.


50.  I stay until the credits finish rolling.


51.  I cried after Men In Black.


52.  I recently saw "Life is beautiful" and it is haunting me.


53.  I can't pay my bills and my rent. 


54.  Once in a while, I wake up 'foggy,' unable to concentrate or even think straight for ten whole seconds together.  This indicates I am going to have a seizure; in fact it is the effect of 'partial seizures' which are the beginning of a generalized seizure before it has spread throughout my brain.  If my thoughts are coherent enough, I can at this point take 3 mg of Ativan, and sleep for eighteen hours.  Somehow this prevents me from having a seizure, but it still costs a whole day.  I woke up that way this morning. 


55.  I do not want a lingering death.  But I believe that within the transition from the temporal to the metaphysical, though it may count from our perspective as only a minute or two, it may contain days, months, or even lifetimes of suffering.  I think it is funny how we use the phrase, 'Better off dead,' when we really have no idea.


56.  I am not sure, but I suppose human culture has improved since the Crusades.  I know Humanity has not.


57.  I like the sky to be gray and overcast, and and the ground to be white and snowy.  Everyone's mood descends closer to the mood I live in always, and I don't feel so all alone.  Blizzards are good.


58.  When I first get out of bed, I pee sitting down.  It relieves the need to aim.


59.  There is no such thing as a lone gunman in a political assassination.

Israel descends into chaos. "He



"He got in one of the buildings and started shooting and throwing grenades, and carried on to the study hall where there were a lot of pupils," said Yona Emmanuel, a resident of Atzmona, which mixes pre-army training with religious study.

During the 15-minute rampage, the militant hurled a grenade into a trailer, incinerating a student in his bunk, and sprayed gunfire into the study hall, before being shot dead by a soldier.

The attacker was identified as Mohammed Farhat, from Gaza City. At 19, he was a year older than his victims.

the Guardian Unlimited


I feel sad, hopeless, depressed.  I need some food, some wine, and some serious recreation to cure my despair.  And as always, I still need to cry.