Strange Day

I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t think of anything to write.
I think I mentioned before, I had a english comp professor in college who had us keep daily journals. And if you honestly couldn’t think of anything to write… you repeatedly wrote I can’t think of anything to write.
Right now… I feel the need to expel some mental miasma. Like a sneeze you can feel coming. You prepare yourself… stop… deep breath… tense your shoulders so as not to blow yourself over… wait… your nose is tingling… here it comes… almost there…
I feel like I need to write to get rid of something. Trouble is… I am kinda tired. This puts me in a very mellow mood. And I can’t write worth a shit when I’m mellow.
This whole day has been fucked up. All I’ve had are snacks all day, and no real meals. It’s now almost 11 PM, and I have no desire to eat dinner, which would be my first real meal of the day. Didn’t get much work done either. Lots of little prep shit for the coming deluge. But nothing measurable.
Well… I did get stuff back up on my walls, this evening. My apartment was recently gutted for renovations, and I’ve slowly been getting it back into a livable state. I have two small problems left. Well, two small piles that are problems. Stuff I don’t want. There’s a stack of comic books and a stack of picture frames. Both still in good condition. Not that they interest me in the least. The comics I’ve had some recommendations on… donate them to a library or hospital or such. i looked up the donations page at the Children’s Hospital, but as expected, they’re mostly concerned about money. And I can’t bring myself to call someone whose life is dedicated to helping to ease the suffering of children, and asking them if they want the comic books that are too boring even for me. *breath* The picture frames leave me in more of a quandary. Short of a garage sale, how do you get rid of picture frames that you don’t want? I won’t throw them away. I’d be satisfied giving them away… but how does one advertise picture frames of varying sizes, materials, shapes, and colors? I’m thinking maybe I should come up with an art project utilizing them, and give them to people as presents.
Wait.. I smell girls outside…
I think that’s what girls smell like. I don’t know. It seems like so long since I’ve left my apartment.
Is the sky still green out there?

I have too much crap. I could easily have told you that a week or so ago when I moved it all down the hall and back again, so my floors could be replaced. That little exercise in exercise didn’t even involve everything.
Procrastinator that I am, at about 11 PM last night, I started moving everything into the center of my apartment. Everything. This is in prelude to haveing the walls repainted. Somehow, when everything was in its previously ordained place, it could almost look sparse in here, at times. But try to pile it up in the center of one room, with at least a 4 foot walkway surrounding it, and you would be surprised how fast it fills up. I have maybe enough room left for a large bulldog. (Pixel has chosen to sleep on top of a perilously piled stack of laundry, which rests on a stack of comic books I’m trying to give away, which rests on some empty boxes, which rests on my couch. Did I mention the beautiful new floor the couch rests on?)
But yes… too much shit.Too many empty boxes for when I move or sell something. Too many clothes, because I feel guilty giving away a gift I never wore. Too many books and paper stacks, whose contents I could no longer describe. An absolutly obscene number of picture frames, some of which are big enough to hold Christo’s artwork.
It’s a life long habit of collecting crap so I have something of my own. And while it can be meaningful, sometimes crap is just crap.
I had a strong, if not entirely new feeling, when I came home from my most recent trip north. It involved what felt like the blindingly obvious need to eschew mental clutter and useless actions. Instead of obsessing about the appropriateness of inviting Autumn to dinner with Kier and myself, I just call and inform her of the opportunity. Instead of worrying about the fact I am going to call someone I don’t know and ask them for work, I make the call. I never cared about the outcome. It was just the fact I had to make the call that hung me up. Every second I worry over inviting Autumn to something is another second I could have been creating a real memory.
It’s not so much trying to order my life as trying to cut loose the necrotic memories and processes.

I really do love it on the roof.
Late in the day, when the sun has lost it’s ability to burn you, but not to blind you. Or maybe I just spend too much time inside, because it take me forever to adjust my eyes and stop squinting, even in the shade.
Maybe the sunlight doesn’t really make it to the street. I seldom need sunglasses, and have never squinted down there.
The sound certainly tries to make it up to the roof. My family who’ve never been here would recognize the sirens from the firehouse around the corner. But up there, they’re just sirens; without the physical force to knock you off your feet, that they have at street-level. Other than them, and an occasional Harley, nothing else makes itself heard on the roof. There is only a steady, low-level hum that is the city. A half million inmates. Another quarter million tourists on an average weekend. Three-hundred-thousand cars. Air-conditioning in every northwest home. Giant city buses dissecting the neighborhoods, disgorging people someplace they obviously didn’t come from.
Down here in my apartment, I can hear someone’s brakes scraping. I can discern the rhythm of an ancient muffler. Pixel’s collar is jingling about 5 feet behind me.
Up on the roof, I just realized, is they only place where there is a big sky. Every time I go to Texas, or I sit on the Seneca Lake shoreline in New York, I marvel at the big sky. I miss it, and haven’t seen it regularly since the summer of ’96. But up on the roof, all the building do their best imitation of a photograph of some European city. There’s an actual horizon, and not just a rise in the street.
I think if I sat up there too long, they would have to drag me back to my apartment, kicking and biting.

While I sat here looking for bloggers and journalists out of Geneva, Pixel tried out approximately 20 different sleeping positions in the sun. I recieved 7 pieces of Spam. I found out You’ve Got Mail has nothing to do with email.
I don’t believe it. In a one-horse town like Geneva, there must be more people journaling online. Not much else to do.
9 Spams.
The money in this town is amazing. I passed houses today that had no right being anything but museums. And parks that you arne’t allowed to walk your dog in.
I wondered… who cleans off the tennis courts? Tennis courts are always surrounded by trees; probably to keep the balls from hitting nearby buildings. Even today, there were piles of leaves surrounding the courts. Does someone actually go out there with a leaf blower or a broom and clear away the organic refuse?
I don’t know where Pixel went. I think she’s investigating the groceries I haven’t put away yet.
I need a new job. We … well… the design jobs are dead again. Of course we have a few jobs. But they’re just the kind that sit around for months with no changes. So I’m idle. I cannot stand being idle. I can’t stand the crap work I’ll do for a couple weeks. I can’t stand the sudden splurge of jobs we’ll get. I can’t stand the unqualified designer we’ll hire. I can’t stand…
I need a new job.
Pixel’s been quiet for too long.

Two more songs for the soundtrack…
Divebomber by Pigface
American Hero by Scotland Yard
You know there are some pissed off Christian fanatics in Disneyland this week.
I got my hard drive the day before my trip. With the help of some beautiful shareware (1,2), I had cloned my entire 30 gig internal drive within an hour and a half. And the incremental backups since then have taken only about 5 minutes each.
There’s $110 I truly hope I’m wasting.
More and more, I think this city may not be the place for me any longer. I know by now I cannot travel anywhere without some sense of frustration or displacement upon my return.
I sat in the hotel one night in San Angelo flipping channels, and came across a speech from the Senate floor. Considering the hive mentality in DC, you can’t help but see that almost every night on the news here. But sitting there, with a little perspective and a lot of relaxation, it struck me hard just how … anachronistic… it all is. Some truly ancient man in a suit that surely hung in Grover Cleveland’s closet, giving a speech that no one with the least interest in reality could possibly care about, in a room that hasn’t been remodeled since god knows. The wooden creak of this mans movements and the soma induced expression on his face… you just know he had not had contact with reality in many decades.
And much of this town revolves around these men. No matter how hard I try, I just don’t care about them. And they quite obviously don’t care about me. I have no vote there anyway. I received a mailer from my only representative there, yesterday. It well communicated the message: “Unless you’re black, poor, on drugs, and interested in buying a house in the slums, get the fuck out”
I’m not going into the status of work, since that has been well covered before.
bah… I’ll finish this later…

Do you know how fucking unnerving those helicopters are?
They’ve been circling the District for two or three days now. These are the same ones that come out whenever there are protests, gatherings, events, or threats. So they’re only out there when they suspect something bad afoot.
Today they’re focusing on downtown very specifically. I am lucky enough to be right on one end of their flight path.
I really wish this was LA, but they don’t chase people down with helicopters here. And there’s no news choppers, because they’re simply not allowed to fly. The Secret Service is paranoid like that.
Pixel keeps looking up at the sky as if to ask what the fuck that is.
Lets keep in mind that it’s after dark. And this is Washington Fucking DC. So there are half a million people living in 64 square . And the cars… never… fucking… stop. I just rant this because I don’t believe that they’re using night vision or infrared. The only useful thing I can imagine them doing up there after dark is looking for highly concentrated radiation sources.
There’s something to lull your kids to sleep at night with.
It’s like trying to sleep with a 30 year old air conditioner running in your room.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…
I had plans today.
Eastern Market. Hopefully pick up the photo from Joe. Check out the pet store.
And groceries of course. Haven’t had fresh food in nearly a month now. Getting a little sick of peanut butter.
But this snow is coming down. I don’t see it stopping any time soon. And I cannot imagine anyone left with an outside spot at Eastern Market. And if the market is closed, do I feel like going over there just for the pet store.
Hell. I barely feel like going out for groceries.
Leave this nice warm apartment were I can watch the snow through the massive bay windows, to trudge through it all, cold, wet, windy.
And the church bells somewhere nearby are playing a song I know, but can’t remember.

I know i drive you all nuts when I say my building is on fire. I can’t help it when the fire engines show up every time I’m on the phone.
Okay… so it has never been a real fire, but Samuel Clemens never got anywhere with journalism.
Yesterday though, the exaggeration became almost too real. Honestly, I missed it all. But when I came home, the Arson Investigation unit was pulling out of the driveway. And in a few hours, when the Emergency Services repair truck pulled up next door, it finally hit me what happened while I was in Bethesda.
The five hours of deconstruction, sawing, shattering, and hammering in the middle of last night left the neighboring building with a grim visage. It looks as though the entire right half of the building — four stories — was damaged by a fire.
No injuries, from what I can tell.
But it strikes very close to home. Literally. One entire side of my apartment is literally connected to that building. If the fire had spread to the other half of the building…

I may be a little sick in the head.
I must be.
Have you ever heard a giant boom and not gone to look? Do you calmly ponder it’s origins, wondering what may have crashed this time, or was it a bomb, or even, the Bomb?
Maybe it’s just this city that’s sick.

“This theme can be played in a very sad, minor key, by training the lens on realities that seem to sink the Washington myths. The once-grand town houses now boarded up. The vaguely seedy cornices on rundown local buildings, which do for Washington architecture what bad teeth once did for the idea of English aristocracy. A picture of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., that apostle of hope, caged behind a security grate.

“But on balance, it’s a happy thing, this wealth of common human dailiness, this life force, bursting through the abstractions and idealizations, the symbolism and the rhetoric. Here’s Washington for you: fresh-faced teenagers trying to look tough, hard hats with ropy muscles and plenty of work, flower gardens and bow ties and quiet acts of generosity.

“Every time we Washingtonians drive over the Potomac bridges, or up I-295, or along New York Avenue or East Capitol Street — each time we catch sight again of the dome, the temples, the obelisk — we are reminded that we live inside a very famous photograph. Billions of people around the planet have seen our spot in the world.

“But only we really know it, because for us, Washington is not an idea, nor even simply a place. It’s home.”

– washingtonpost.com

7 murders in eight days, by gun.
another week in the District.

I woke up to cheering this morning. Of course, it isnt the first time I’ve had cheering in my bedroom. But ussually it doesn’t happen when I’m alone.
Okay… so maybe it does, but it’s a personal thing.
The DC marathon was passing my apartment. Those people are sick. Getting up at 7 in the morning and running 26 . Just punch me in the gut and let me go back to sleep.
My landlady is a nut. She’s on this trip about me looking like Nicolas Cage. It isn’t the first time anyone’s told me this. But she is slightly more vocal about it. She has the entire building staff calling me Nick, and I caught her yesterday telling other resident’s I don’t even know about it when I wasn’t there.

No wonder I am having personality seizures.
My apartment is clean, damnit.

Insert babbleing here.
cause, ya see, I made a psuedo-promise a few months ago that wI would post things here even if I had nothing to say, but I have noticed a degeration in my writing lately (not to mention my love life).
I do have one thing I want to write about. But not now. I am still pondering. Have my little list of thoughts taped to my forhead, cause I never remember shit I was thinking about unless I right it down.
This in contrast of course to the fact that I remember everything anyone else was thinking, or saying, or doing, or…
Man, I should remember to breath more deeply.
Here come the sirens. If you know me at all, then you know what I’m talking about.
Building holiday party was tonight. Beautiful women, prodigious amounts of alcohol, and apartments only a few feet away. MMMMmmmm….
I ought to buy one of those ‘word-a-day’ calendars.
I am expecting something good soon. But only if I survive the weekend. Bio terror attack on Sunday or Monday. Tha’s his story anyway. But if people crashing planes into skyscrapes didn’t know the truth until the boarded, I’m not really in the mood to humor a putz from California who had his coming of age crisis while in Pakistan and decided to shoot at the US Marines.
Fooooooooooooooooood. My gut is rumbling. The taco’s in the freeezer are calling my name. (Come to butthead! … sorry… flashback)
For someone who didn’t have anything to say, my own oral flatulance amazes me.

Oh thats much better. The Washington Monument and the Mall is covered in a red glow.
Mother nature is a sick puppy.

Okay, okay.
To be more specific, the sky isn’t dark enough. Not where it normally becomes. By now it is should be black. But what I see out my window is more of a tan/gray.
The streets are as dark as ever, but the sky has a light cast to it.
This is not a comforting thing.
The only reassuring aspect is that it’s been like this for hours, with no other noticable differences.

It is 10:52 p.m. on November 27th in the Northern Hemisphere.
Confirm something for me.
Shouldn’t the sky be dark now?

Tonight I watched the contrails pile up over the District.

(Con-trail – ‘kon-”trAl – n. – 1943 – streaks of condensed water vapor created in the air by an airplane or rocket at high altitudes)

I’d seen a couple earlier in the day out in Georgetown. But sitting in my windows at home, I watched six of them appear. And four more float over the horizon, as the sky shifted (fuck Galileo).
The problem, in case ya didn’t know, is that the District is a no-fly zone.
No commercial aircraft. That, and the contrails themselves mean there were at least 12 military jet flights over DC today. Only once before do I remember any jets flying over, and that was in relation to the September 11th attacks.
They were headed straight towards the Pentagon, though they flew well past there.
Maybe the Pakistani President should visit more often. Makes for interesting sunsets.

I was walking through Georgetown today after leaving the flea market, looking for a Chinese place to eat. I passed this… guy. I had to look twice because my mind just didn’t process him the first time. He had to be in his late 40s/early 50s. He had close cropped white hair going in every direction but down. There was a patch over one eye, and a maniacal look over the other. He was wearing cut-off camouflage pants and a sleeveless white t-shirt, and just leaning on newspaper box.
Should have expected him. I had just passed the mental health center.

Just rain already, damnit

The city was unnaturally dead this past weekend. Well, sort of.

Eastern Market was as crowded as ever. But I heard some vendors complaining about a lack of sales.

And the MickeyDs behind the FBI was all but empty, with just a bag lady and some guy sleeping on a stool. Wonder if the suspension of FBI tours has killed their business.
Walking around, it just seemed like an incredible lack of people.

I read elsewhere that even the Pentagon City Fashion Centre was quiet.

Nothing that could be accounted for by a lack of tourism. On it’s worst day, DC was normally busier.

Wondering just how many people heard about the suspected second attacks for this weekend.

Can someone explain to me why there are jets flyin over DC, which is a no-fly zone at the moment?

awww Christ.
Thirteen Metro Police square cars just went by, with all lights and horns flashing, at high speed, headed east.
The presidential motorcade doesn’t get 13 squad cars.
This is the kind of shit that makes me nervous.

It is 7:30 in the morning. looking outside you couldn’t tell a damn thing happened. not now anyway. But just 22 hours ago, I was standing in front of this very computer, when a loud bang outside was followed by a vibration that shook the building.
It was assumed that the president’s home was so much rubble now. Or at least the OEOB.
When I made it to the street, an area that had been crowded with normally jaded downtown workers watching the fire crews race around town just 2 minutes before, the street was empty.
You live in this city knowing you are ground zero for any war that might happen. But I never expected the sky to fall. That was everyone’s reaction yesterday morning. You just didn’t know what was going to happen next. That was the scarey part. No one worries about a nuclear war, since you’ll never see it coming. But this was gruesome.
Americans are strange people. I left the shell shocked downtown for safer destinations. And I passed people having lunches at sidewalk delis. I came back to work to find client called about work, since they weren’t sure if we were going to stay here. In the suburbs people where discussing it in the street like yesterdays Redskins game.
Fifty thousand people worked in the World Trade Center towers every day. Twenty three thousand people work in the Pentagon every day.
This was no symbolic strike at american culture. These weren’t milatary targets, cultural landmarks, or transportation centers. These were probably the two biggest concentrations of people on the east coast. This was simply about wholesale slaughter.
And nothing we do is going to make it all better. There is no justice in a situation like this.

There is a dark storm flowing across the city tonight. I could barely take a step in it and was a mess by the time I got out.
This doesn’t bode well for my plans. I may have to come up with something else.
Am I ominous enough?

Ugly naked guy is wearing tighty-whiteys tonight

i warn you, I’m hardley eloquent, or for that matter legible, at this hour in the morning. Or any hour in the morning.
I’m beginning to think they run a demolition derby outside my apartment every night. If possible, I prefer to sleep with the window open. But at those times, I hear the loudest crashes, screaches, and roars. Of course if I actually drag my lazy butt out of bed to see the wreck of the Titanic, there is nothing out there. How can anything make that much noise and not be in pieces.
For that matter, how can any city never stop. They say New York is the city that never sleeps. Well bullshit. I visited New York just a year ago now, and at night time, things got noticably quiet. (granted I was on the 27th floor). But downtown DC, which on the weekends becomes a ghostown complete with rambling sagebrush, during the weeknights could make a auto factory seem like a quiet little campground.

this has gotta suck.
Fifteen minutes before the big memorial day show down on the Capitol lawn, and it starts raining.

You have to wonder what goes on in this city after dark. I can hear someone going at i with a jackhammer out there. How does anyone use a jackhammer after dark — and why?

I went to the National Mall after work. The Airforce and Border Patrol had displays set up, with tanks, helicopters, jets, and mobile rocket launchers. Being the violent, opressive american I am, I had to see them, and take some pictures.
There is something eerie about framing a picture of a high calibre tank with the American Capitol Building as the back drop.
I’ll put up links to the pictures when theyre ready.

I think I love this apartment. No matter what time of year, when I walk in after work, the sun is bathing the entire place in a bright warm light. Very comforting thing to come home to.

So I got my new chair. I think I mentioned the old one breaking down. This thing is suhhhhweet. (for a chair of course) The alternate color isnt so bad. the construction is very high quality. With springs at every joint for flexibility, and a pneumatic lift. First time I sat down, the seat molded to my gludius. (first time anything’s grabbed my butt in months)

dayuuuum its cold today.

yesterday, I walked home with my coat open… just emjoying the brisk air. But I woke up this morning to reports of a pending storm. With a possible 2-3 inches of snow. my first thought of course being; "Thats not a storm…. THIS is a storm!" (sorry, crocidile dundee flashback).

anyways… 12 hours later… we have 10 inches of snow on the ground. Needless to say this has effectively shut down DC.
(So why did I say it?) And while it isnt exactly he 3 feet my hometown just got, it’s still enough to make for some difficulties.

So Ive whiped out the russians, indians, and Zulus. What should I do now? Besides playing Civilization. Cant even check my email. Seems like my ISP got shut down by the storm.

Did I mention I broke my chair? Damn desk chair Second chair thats snapped off at the base, on me. You lean back one day and wake up finding yourself counting the holes in the ceiling tile. So Im waiting for Office Max to deliver a new chair. Id ordered a gray one, but got a message saying all they have in stock is a burgendy one. So I call back to okay the shipment

"Do you want to cancel the order, Sir?"

"No."

*fivesecondpause*

"So what do you want to do, Sir?"

"Now I may be wrong here, but as far as I can tell, theres only one other option."

"Oh, yeah…"

Am I the only one who thinks customer service reps are rejects from corrospondance schools?

I miss her. Three more months.

I look forward to the day I can wake up with her in my arms, and know she isnt going anywhere. (hey… any woman that sticks around after seeing me first thing in the morning is a keeper!)

4:44 pm est (cool huh?)

work, washington, dc

So I woke up at 4:30 this morning realizing that I had passed out last
night while ‘just resting for a minute’. So I stumbled over and turned
down the eveangelist screaming from the television; shut off the lights,
stripped down, and went to bed.

Did you know when
you get in bed at 4:30 in the morning, it is damn hard to get comfortable? Oh well… I overslept for work anyways to make up for the time I lost sleeping.

Woohoo… it’s
comics day. You see, all over the coutry, comics are delivered on Wednesdays.
And comic shop owners and collecters (and readers) being the impatient
people they are, the stuff goes on the shelf right away. And yes, I
am one of those freaks. I call it my one addiction. I dont smoke, I
dont drink, I dont do drugs… I gotta have some vice.

Ever go furniture
shopping? it aint easy when you have limited transportation and restricted
funds. there are no discount stores near me. those that are, charge
ya up the wahoo. or else the selection just sux. *sigh*

And lets make this
a step harder… there are no Kmarts, no Walmarts, no Targets, and no
Ames within traveling distance of me.

How the hell do
people do it?

Is anyone interested
in taking over a mother who likes to try and make her son feel guilty
about not talking to her. I’m tempted to remind her that she hasnt written
or called me in just as long a period.

*shiteatinggrain*