taking some time out from my remodeling to drink a beer, due mainly to the american mythology surrounding beer consumption and semi-elective manual labor.

still working on drywall repairs and sundry prep. but the gallons are there. I may be able to open one tonight. not sure.

I don’t have a girlfriend.

today was a good work day.

I’m a good progr/ammer and drywall repairer.

w/ork is very busy, of a sudden.

for the journey of a thousand steps begins with a single mile. and that mile is getting all the stuff out of the living area so I can start prepping the walls. and going to get two gallons of canyon echo.

believe

and so it is that as soon as I finished unpacking I have begun re-packing.

I got a couple color samples and put some splotches on the wall. One of the colors is good. The other is magical. Simply looking upon it causes me to levitate from my chair and slowly drift toward and into it. And then onward into an endless magical realm where all is soft and shimmering. It is the greatest color ever. I can’t take my eyes off of it. I want to be it, and soon I will.

I awoke with this thought -> paint <-

paint

it can happen.

many people have painted.

I have painted; seen others paint. I know it is possible.

I see the way. I believe it can happen and will happen soon. I’m downstairs looking at the walls, believing they can be painted. it’s a little overwhelming, just thinking how possible it is. not overwhelming like daunting. it’s not daunting. I mean the extreme possibleness is overwhelming. I feel almost as though the walls already have paint on them. I can smell it. if I touched the wall right now, I might get some paint on my hands. it’s not yet dry.

if I keep up with this craisins type stuff it’s just going to be me and you.

that said, I am in an imaginary land today. it seems very safe. I don’t see what could go wrong.

I missed that whole tennis match. I didn’t even know about it until after the fact, then thought it must be a typo or spoof, then had to research it for a little while before I realized that 70-68 really meant 70-68. as surely as 6-4 means 6-4. maybe I can get it on netflix sometime.

hey, I just threw away some old craisins so I could use the bag to ice down my middle finger, and I looked at the “best if used by date” and it,s today, june 24 2010. typing w one hand. had a frisbee game earlier. then I realized Ive only had the craisins since nov. I cld have eaten them.

realized earlier Im a slacker workaholic. tho I never realized I was a slacker until people started telling me I was.

I slept not well. I slept midnight to 3, and then 8:30 to 10. Between 3 and 8:30 was scatterbrained. The illusion of sanity receded somewhat.

Now the illusion is back in force. I’ve decided to work on location, in my living room. For a time. Tho the laptop makes my quads too warm, even with a sheet of cardboard in between. yeah back upstairs.

************
IT”S HOT OUT
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my relationship with arnold is very good lately.

I’ve made 3 dollars so far this year. I think by this time last year I had made close to 10. What comes around must go down. as the crow flies. it’s ok.

I got a google voice number and was looking at the interface and telling it to call me and things, but it was too mind blowing so I soon had to stop.

I’m concerned I’m working my fingers to the bone. I’m going to look down at my fingers and see bones. they already feel like bones sometimes, like I type and my bones are touching the keys. I do worry about becoming arthritic before I can live to be 70,000. something like that. that’s really just one worry. I also worry about ALL of the oil coming out of that hole. what if all the oil wells are connected down there, or the collapse of one caused another one nearby to collapse into it, and the oil just keeps coming until there is no oil left at all in the earth and it’s all in the ocean. I suppose that’s one way to avoid burning it and putting the CO2 in the air, tho they are burning what’s floating in the gulf. Of course the word hubris. For humans to think we could safely mine oil miles beneath the sea. And I wonder why it hasn’t crossed my mind at some random moment in the past… like, what if something popped off down there, would they be able to fit something on top down on the ocean floor, with all that pressure coming up. And it never crossed my mind. Many other calamities may have crossed my mind but not that scenario. When I’m pulling up knotweed I think this is impossible kind of like trying to keep oil from coming out of a hole in the bottom of the ocean. I always think of the gulf oil spout when I’m pulling up knotweed. Spill is not the right word. It’s more of a spout. I’m liking Derek Fenner’s love letters to katie couric. I’m impressed by the book. I have that thought: “I’m impressed by the book”. And in one of the letters he’s writing about biological terrorism and it’s really frightening, and I think of the disclaimer at the front of the book and how when I first read the disclaimer (“The accounts herein are fiction and resemblances coincidental” that sort of disclaimer) I thought it was a bit silly but then you get into the letters and it’s almost like yeah I can see why some people could start reading these and think this is a little too emphatic not to be sincere and I wonder if katie couric read it would she find it just a tiny bit disquieting probably not but I don’t know and perhaps she has read it, I mean how could she not know it exists. Is it possible to get so famous that someone could publish a book called “Love Letters to ” and you wouldn’t even know it existed. Maybe she’d just think it was a silly boring political book with an ironic title and not a book of actual love letters (and drawings). It’s an interesting book and I have to say it pretty much describes my own feelings about katie couric, which are more complex (and perhaps more positive) than my feelings about soledad o’brien, albeit maybe less acute in some ways. Here are some words I misstype I often type “actual” as “actually” and “and” when I mean “an”. Really revved up in recent weeks re: wo/rk and pro/gramming I prog/ram so much that’s why my fingers feel like bones I worry about my eyes but moreso my hands. I love this califone cd “all my friends are funeral singers.” I also like stereolab and yo la tengo. last night we talked about neil young and ice t. bobby brown and tony toni tone. they thanked me a lot they didn’t have to thank me so much. I like having people over because it’s a party and it animates the place. even after they’re gone the place is still more animated than it would be if they handn’t been here. mark’s milk is still here. when mel was moving things around in the fridge I said that’s mark wallace milk. I’ve become a much better progra/mmer and have written some cont/ent managemen/t modules that I’m unhealthily obsessed with. there’s a lot of beer in my fridge. I’ve had one. there are 14 left. I looked outside and for a second it was snowing. it’s hot and I don’t feel like cranking the A/C so it gets hot upstairs and I work in a backwards thong with the fan pointed at me. I wear the thong as a kind of gag, tho really it doesn’t prevent me from speaking but keeps my teeth from chattering as it gets quite chilly wearing only a thong in my mouth with the fan pointed at me. it’s suede. don’t put your armpit on your food in a restaurant. I can’t think of what else to do except pro/gram I suppose if not for physical limitations I would become immaterial I’ve had the song we are spirits in the material world in my head a lot lately. sometimes my fingers hitting the keyboard feel like little splashes like there are these splashes of cool energy or pain around my fingers after they hit the keys. maybe a gulp of air.

I’m going to sit and eat this sandwich.

Five-sevenths of Cleveland was here. Tom, Steve, Jose, Carmen, David. Weirdos all. This morning we watched CHI beat SUI. Last night we debauched. I’m starting to remember some things. We talked to my neighbors. The cab never came. We talked about Mysteries of Small Houses. Tom read from it. Lots of things happened. We bought beer. We dragged Mel here from Adams Morgan and she left a little while after she got here, tho the cab didn’t come. We ordered Chinese food. Lots of things like that happened. David rolled cigarettes out back and then some people went to smoke them. That’s when I went upstairs and went to bed. This morning David was asleep in the kitchen. Carmen slept in the Cyndi Lauper/Ian Keenan room. Steve and Jose slept in the living area. Most of them had air mattresses. Jose, the Clevorican, might not have had an air mattress. Steve slept parallel to the facade of the house, up near the front. David slept parallel to the rear of the house and was towards the rear of the kitchen. Tom slept in the office. I don’t sleep. I slept from the age of 9 to 21 and am still living off of that banked sleep. I’ll have to start sleeping again next year and will sleep until 2017.

They left around noon and planned to go to the Arboretum, though Tom didn’t want to. They also hoped to go to a Wendy’s on the way out of town. I advised them to take Bladensburg to New York to 295 to the beltway. They’ll probably get home around 7. David was able to arrange to get off of work. They had two cars and Steve wanted to take the one with satellite radio. Tom let him. Steve thought they were putting too much stuff in his trunk. Tom said there’s always something happening in Cleveland. Tom looked somewhat like he did when I met him 10 years ago. His hair is somewhat longer than it was toward the end of his residence in DC. Tho not as long as it was 10 years ago. It was very normal having them all here. I gave them books and was a little surprised when they immediately began reading them. That was fine of course but I got up and went to the porch, where Mel was still waiting for a cab and talking to Tom.

Overall, the whole event was very responsible. It was all above board, pragmatic, ethical. It was sensible. I don’t think anyone was offended and in the end, that’s all you can ask for.