Hookers hang out on my street

Pulling down my street Saturday evening after a 16 hour day volunteering at a local school event, my car began to shake from the vibrations emanating from a hot-tub included Party Bus parked outside of my suburban home. Mostly naked women walked from cars that lined out quiet streets toward a house down the street from me. I originally thought they were going into the house next to mine because of how loud they were, but then I checked my neighbor’s back yard and there was nothing there.

My wife, my neighbor and I stood outside in the middle of the night watching what could only described as a gaggle of over 50 hookers standing in the middle of our road drinking booze from red plastic cups. Eventually we went to bed after calling the cops and praying our baby would sleep through it all.

The next day we walked the road earlier than every one of those rented woman would even be awake and we found high heels in our neighbors front yard, broken beer bottles in our road, plastic red cups lining the streets amidst the weed-lined sidewalks, and crushed beer cans strewn here, there, and in another neighbor’s pickup truck’s bed.

We swept up the broken glass so we could go to breakfast. It was such a wonderfully fun evening. Good thing I was so exhausted from working all day that I feel right asleep. Of course some cars still line my road.

iPod

So I think tech people are idiots. Itunes told me I had to install the upgrade, I did, and then I got a disk error! So I tried everything... I reinstalled the new version and the old version and everything to no avail. I even went to the Apple Store and spent two hours there with the lady. She was cool, but she knew little about PC. She finally replace the iPod and nothing. She told me to call Apple. I did. It didn't help, then I called at home and after 25 minutes I was disconnected. The bastard didn't even call me right back, even though he had my account pulled up on his end.

Today I finally called back and the incompetent fool talked me through the motions of doing essentially nothing for over an hour and told me it needed to be replaced. I said, no it didn't. He said "yes, it did." So I hung up and went back to the store to the same lady. I told her my life sucked (only this part of it) and I wanted to come back and see her Sunday. She said fine bring it all in, and she'd fix me up.

I then went home and got the error again. This time I notice it was when I tried to import certain songs. So I am manually deleting the songs it hates. Hahahahaha I am within 700 songs of getting all my songs on there, and I've only had to delete like 8 songs. Woohoo.

tired

If I am tired, I wonder what my wife feels like. The baby has an ear infection and this is the second night in a row that my wife crept reluctantly from between our sheets to gp sleep in the spare bed in the nursery propped next to my daughter's crib. Look at the time stamp from this entry. I am tired. We went to bed at 10 and got up and got up and got up. We're splitting the shift today as I will work the morning shift then she will work the afternoon shift. She actually even has a meeting so she'll be gone for quite some time today. I cannot stand seeing my kid sick, but surely this is the first time in a long time of sicknesses, bangs, bruises, etc...

Lunar Park

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis turned out to be quite well developed. I had my reservations from time to time, especially towards the beginning. Of course the climax came a hundred pages before the end, and that was very different than I expected. The narcissistic tones of Ellis as writer and character become one, and I do find his honor of Stephen King refreshing and I want to more and more read more King. Perhaps I will or will not. I am reading l'Engle next. I know it's been 25 years or so, but it's time to revisit those and Narnia.

A horriblest wild experience that is now over, I hope

No emotion ever came faster and more furious through my entire being than today’s situation where my daughter abruptly screamed out. I turned quickly on my heel to see a toddler slapping and punching my daughter in the face! I began to holler across the day care room as the one lady swooped down and pulled my daughter from harm’s way. I gripped the sign out binder until my knuckles turned white and my chest hove under my orange shirt. As my daughter quieted down in the woman’s arms, I slowly filled up my bags, deliberately put my daughter into the stroller and moved quickly from the room without saying much more to anyone there.

The image of this little boy attacking my daughter with his pudgy little fists and beady blue eyes seared itself into my mind’s eye as I poured her into the car seat and dialed my wife. We commiserated for some time before I eventually called the day care director and told her in no uncertain terms that a report would be written regarding the situation. She assured me all would be well, as I fingered the long scrape down my daughter’s left jaw line.

I wondered if I should tell the little boy’s mother, and my own mother reminded me that once she attempted to drown me when I, when I was that little boy’s age, attacked a little girl and bit her face! I rue the supreme being that shot karma from their superior weapons back onto my life 30 years after my first infraction.

I promised my little daughter that next time anything like that happens, she has my permission to kick the living shit out of him before I rip his little pudgy arm from its socket. Now I feel better.

Go here

My favorite line from a song right now that gives great emotion toward the genesis of my novel is:

You know I love to watch them angels fighting over you.

I have not much else to say because I won't share that inner working of my soul with you right now. Although I will say that I adore listening to my iPod at work so I can block out everyone around me. I am way to loquacious to be thrust into a situation of people talking over copiers.

Stephenie Meyer - Twilight

So this lady in Scottsdale, AZ wrote a book about vampires. Now, she makes it seem so easy –not writing her book, but getting it published. As a first time writer, Stephenie Meyer, was given a $750,000.00 advance from Little, Brown for three books, including her premiere novel Twilight. This was from a vampire dream she had at some point, and she sent out queries letters to a paucity of agents. Now, I sure hope this works out for me, too. I do believe I need to work on dialogue. This has always been my downfall.

Memories

My first semester of college I was friends with two lesbians and two gay men. One was interested in me, and the other was kinda hot if I was into that. Anyway, so I remember going to this Christmas party with them at Edinboro Unversity one snowy night while we listened to Cutting Crew's "I Just Died in your Arms Tonight" on casette. I always remember that night when I hear this song and I am listening to it now. I sometimes sit and try to put myself back into situations that I remember... just close my eyes and alter my senses to how it felt, sounded, smelled, and one day I hope to open my eyes back there just to look at it from my new perspectives and see what decisions I made and why.

Nokia 888

Nokia 888

What're they going to think of next? This is the next generation of cell phone. It's completely malleable. And if you want to send your partner a lovey dovey message her or his phone will mold itself into the shape of a heart. Isn't this odd? Next comes phones imbedded in your head. Why don't we all just learn to communicate with our minds?

Katie Holmes baby news

Ok I am completely baffled. Perhaps I really didn't care about the whole Ashton Kutcher / Demi Moore fiasco because I don't care about Ashton and Demi hasn't been hot since One Crazy Summer and I wanted to vomit when I saw Striptease, but come on. Tom Cruise??! Katie, what're you thinking? I remember the first time watching Dawson's Creek in 1999 after grad school one evening and being hooked from then on. I wanted that girl next door and always had. When I was little I made imaginary friends... one was a boy, one was a girl. Did I wonder if I was bisexual? Nah, I didn't even know what that meant then. But I did not know I wanted some girl to climb into my room who lived next door, and then we had Elisha Cuthbert who every raging hormone teen went to see play a porn star who moved in next to a dork like all of us. But back to Katie Holmes. I remember my wife wanting to whoop my butt when I bought The Gift, which had her in nothing but her panties, and I remember all those stupid email spam pop-ups promising naked celebs, but why Tom Cruise? He's much older than you and was popular in the last generation. Why does he get to ruin it for us all? Perhaps Katie was eating her frosted flakes one morning before third grade and saw a rerun of Risky Business and learned what a woman was at that moment, and knew she had to have Him, and no one else. Or perhaps Tom signed a pact with Lucifer, or was given the gold egg by the giant at the end of some rainbow. Who knows, but Katie, come on. Give us all back our fantasies and come to your senses. Don't let this wild and crazy and old and so last decade movie star steal you from our shared emotional memories. Of course, he got you pregnant out of wedlock. Great idea on your part, that shows your true brilliance. Did you think your career was sucking that badly that you needed this crappy press?

Ellen Goodman: The Miers mystery

Ellen Goodman: The Miers mystery

A writing workshop?

I’m in a writing class now, which my wife paid a lot of money to sign me up to. The author is from Sedona, Arizona, which is the New Age capital of the world. His log grayish brown Jesus hair hung over t-shirted shoulders above gangly legs supported by his Birkenstocked feet. Now I appreciate being able to take this course, but I hope tomorrow night’s part 2 is more exciting. Tonight we’re discussing right brain versus left brain behaviour, and I think I want more hands on training of some sort. Tomorrow we’re suppose to discuss how to get published, while tonight he thinks he is talking about how to write. He’s quite a bit flighty much like Bob Budd was when I was in high school. Bob Budd was my creative writing teacher in the early 90s. He was a fiction writer and I was primarily a poet at that time. A young blonde girl I met at the high school who use to drive me to school in her father’s Red trans-Am told Mr Budd I wrote poetry and he encouraged me to do it often and daily. I had his class first thing in the day, and I would eat ephedrine beforehand. My hands would shake while I spit out plot novel after plot novel from that class. I came out of it all with a knowledge of how to write plot outlines and how to write ambiguous teen angst poetry. I knew I needed to be there and slowly developed as a poet over the next five years. I worked with two great contemporary American poets, and to this day, I know I can write poetry. I will write it again in this Spring in April. Perhaps it will be a book for my child. Something about children and turtles and turtle shells. An idea that has festered for a year. So last year I wrote my first full length novel, and a few people have read it. I want to publish it so my wife shelled out the cash for this class, and I think I regurgitated everything inside me about what I felt about a certain topic- a man’s relationship with his brother. Now I thought I would step away from all of this and write something away from me, but I always come back to writing what I know. After having my mother visit this last week, I know what I am writing, and I know I cannot escape from my experiences. I don’t think my mother will ever read this book because it will be too painful. I sent my last novel on the airplane with her, and I begged her to read it. I don’t think she will. I really don’t. I will let you know. Remind me.

Grandparents

I wonder what kind of relationship my brother and my sister remember about my grandmother. She's been gone now for 13 years this December, and I want to know their perception of her compared to my perception of her. I remember her hair being pulled up tightly and those hours spent primping before going out to Hills or Murphy's Mart. I remember her buying clothese for my cousins and then being embarrassed because they had less money than her. I remember the time some young kid tried to steal shoes from Payless and she offered to pay for them since he obviously really needed them. I remember her bathroom and her African violets. I remember her basement, and I remember the toys she kept for me under the bed. I remember this and other things and things I will never remember that I remember.

Olga Koutina & Caitlin Cleary

This is the crazy Russian stripper lady who abused her son before his father ran off with him. A recent newspaper article written by Caitlin Cleary was obscenely slanted and seemed like she did not actually research much of the background on Olga Koutina. No one mentioned that she is leaving in a house in Brookline owned by some Mt Lebanon dentist who she's currently screwing. Or the fact that she has tried to steal the boy from his father and kidnap him away to Russia on several occasions. Journalism sucks.

A billion

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion," casually:

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency
did a good job of putting that figure into perspective in one of its
releases.

a.. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

b.. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

c.. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

d.. A billion days ago no-one walked on two feet on earth.

e.. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government spends it.

My next novel

I have had some ideas about what I will write next, and I seriously have very little ideas for a plot but I do have a ton of characterization. I am looking for my plot now, and my mother has been with me for over a week and I keep asking her things that will help me carry it along a bit, although I really don't know what will come next or after that. I am sure I will figure it all out before the big day of November 1st.

16 year olds wanna buy a Nissan pick up ? Plate # 039 BCG

I was going to title this "16 year old sluts" but I figured that would pick up some web searches that I may not like... ooops I did it anyway, which reminds me of that slutty Brittany Spears who should go to hell on a Palahniuk human fat greased stripper pole. Yuck. My world would be better without her stealing air from the rest of us. I am sorry that no-name kid is a product of those two.

So here's to the real reason I'm here. I went to IHOP for breakfast and a Nissan pickup careened around the front of the parkinglot before slamming into the empty parking space near the front where my wife was about to park. It doesn't matter that my wife is carrying my 15 pound 6month old daughter and all her stuff, or that my mother has some congenital hip slash back slash ankle problem and cannot even walk... So these two little hookers get out of their non-descript grey pickup and saunter past us waiting on the curb and mumbled something about "we're 16 and faster".... where upon my friend decided to thank them for stealing his friend's parking space where I took it upon myself to call them a$$holes and they retorted with the equally mature "we're 16 and you're 40". Ha. So this 40 year old who was actually born a decade or so later had a nice breakfast with his friends and family after writing down the girl's liscense plate number, which I will share with you all now: Grey Nissan XE Pickup Truck with Arizona Plate 039 BCG.

Today

My daughter’s half birthday was yesterday and while we sat in Chiptole eating Steak Fajita Burritos I fed her her first real food-green beans! Of course part of it went up her nose and on her hands and on her clothes and on her parents. We then went to Target and found a soft puppy bed that we laid the baby in so she could sleep while we shopped. She’s my little person, and she talks now. We go back and forth and talk to her and she talks to us. We took her into the shower earlier that day and pointed at her foot and said “foot” before the kid proceeded to say “foot”. Now it sure sounded like “foot” but surely at this age she just was beginning to mimic our words and sounds.

We then went to a friend’s house so he could figure out why I was not online at home. I took my routers and laptops and everything with me. Part of the problem could have been that someone hacked my router and seemingly removed my MAC addresses from the router’s hardware. We flashed the firmware after the Indian guy from Linksys told us in noncertain very-accented terms that we could screw it all up. They wouldn’t understand that my friend is a network administrator. Eventually I think we fixed it all, and then I bought him dinner. ONE pound burgers! How fun. And speaking of fun…

While sitting in the sports bar eating these burgers Penn State was playing on the big screen. It’s been a decade since they were undefeated, and they walked into the biggest game of the year against Ohio State yesterday. The score was 10-17 in the fourth quarter and I was buggin’. So finally it’s the last two minutes of the game and Penn State got the ball and I was almost yelling at the screen to hurry up, score, and tie the game. But we didn’t… they spiked the ball, ran down the clock, and began to cheer, while jumping around. It was then that I realized I am an idiot and didn’t realize that Penn State had the 17 and Ohio had the 10 points! This is where I cheered and jumped in my seat and got dirty looks from the wife who was trying to enjoy a dinner with her friends. So we won. And I remember walking College Avenue on Saturdays and going to The Brewery, Café 210, Zeno’s with all of the alumnus and current students milling back and forth with some blue painted faces getting drunk and hugging and spanking asses in a very masculine way. My best friend is there now drinking Forbidden Fruit, Sweet Tarts, and all 100+ Zeno’s beers down in the basement where he took me for my 21^st birthday late on Wednesday night in November years ago.

Jayne Dennis

Jayne Dennis

This is wild. So I finished Anansi's Boys by Gaiman and I began reading Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. I discovered a link to his "wife's" website... Of course, Ellis never married. It's fake. His main character is himself and this wife is fake. I was stoked though because it listed her being in the film version of Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which is one of my most favorite character studies of all time. Cleveland and Phlox are awesome, as are the other characters.

I finished Anansi's Boys and loved it. I really got into it, and it was everything I loved about American Gods without the stuff I didn't like. Then I immediately picked up Lunar Park.

My mother is here. She's visiting my daughter now this week, and I've asked several different leading questions about relationships that have occurred in the past. I find more and more of my next novel revolving around a relationship between two people from my past and how they relate to one another. Of the two, one will remain relatively true to herself, while the other one will become an enigmatic amalgam of what he/she really is and was.

My brother and I have not spoke in weeks. It bothers me, but I know I have not called him. He's sick. We don't know what's wrong with him, but it's some kind of syndrome but he's not the kind of person to ask for clarification or write anything down. I've never seen my brother physically weak and now he is. That scares me. I've seen my father physically weak and caused him to be so, and I've seen my mother physically weak for sometime, but that's something I run and hide from, but now when it's my brother and he's always been the strongest person in my family and now he's not, it's quite scary.

On a lighter note, my daughter's first high school football game was tonight. Out in cow country our high school football team fell too another local team and with a ridiculously stupid name that'll remain anonymous here. She had a nice new little outfit on, played on our laps for the first half and then crashed. We left shortly before the end of the game to beat traffic and drove home.

Diaper bag

So I suck. I hate losing things and I hate my wife getting pissed off when I do. She always asks “do you have your wallet?” “do you have your mobile?” “do you have your daughter?” etc…. and I almost always roll my eyes and say yes yes yes yes…. And then there are always those days when she proves me wrong. Today.

We were leaving for a work meeting at Starbuck’s this morning and all of a sudden, no diaper bag. I changed a diaper yesterday at Goodwill and now nothing. It’s as if I just keep screwing the pooch when I’ve already you screwed it. One thing after another. I had the bag in the men’s room at the Goodwill, then I remember putting it in the buggy. Then I remember nothing about it, at all. Nothing. Usually I keep it in the car. We got home from Goodwill after grocery shopping, and I unloaded the car. Then this morning we went to the car to load up the diapers and no bag. There wasn’t anything too expensive in the bag, but it’s the principle of the thing.

I called Goodwill, but hey today’s dollar day. Do you think someone just found it and bought it? Man, they got a burp rag, a few diapers, a little toy, a bear, and an old purple onesie that was bleached on the butt.

The house is cleaner than usual because Mum is visiting, and there are only so many places we can look or where we can have it. We searched each and every place where it could be. I searched the car several times even. Then we left. We went to my meeting and later drove back to the Goodwill. I walked all around that place, and ironically, I discovered an old Eddie Bauer diaper bag that looked similar to mine in a bin. It was obviously not mine, and it was too dingy to even replace mine. The bag was stripped down but it was our bag. Damn it.