AN IMPORTANT BULLETIN
(DON'T MAKE ME PULL OUT THE BLINKY TEXT!)
It's September, and those of you who've been with me for a while know what that means: new journal time! Yayyy!

This journal is officially done, and being replaced with a shinier, newer model by the name of catachreses. ADD IT OR BE DOOMED! (Although, as ever, if you're bored with me or whatever, this is your convenient jumping-off point).

Consider yourself forewarned, there'll be nothing new in this journal except this same post repeated five or six times for the stragglers (and there'll still be at least one person who adds me in November saying, "why didn't you tell me you were getting a new journal??).

AN IMPORTANT BULLETIN
(DON'T MAKE ME PULL OUT THE BLINKY TEXT!)
It's September, and those of you who've been with me for a while know what that means: new journal time! Yayyy!

This journal is officially done, and being replaced with a shinier, newer model by the name of catachreses. ADD IT OR BE DOOMED! (Although, as ever, if you're bored with me or whatever, this is your convenient jumping-off point).

Consider yourself forewarned, there'll be nothing new in this journal except this same post repeated five or six times for the stragglers (and there'll still be at least one person who adds me in November saying, "why didn't you tell me you were getting a new journal??).

This bit kind of wandered into my head while we were moving a swing set yesterday (who decides at the last minute that it's worth the extra couple hundred to have the movers carry a full-sized cedar swing set, anyway?). I post it here just in case any of you wonder just how tired I was last night, or just how lazy a cartoonist I am. R. Crumb I ain't.

( movers, monsters and spiders abound! )

1: It's been too long since I bitched about my job, so let me say this: it's passable to still have last year's Halloween decorations still up. If you weren't moving, it'd even be timely. And old copies of the Casco Bay Weekly, old Shop 'N' Save bags? Sure, you don't always notice those things when your house is completely trashed. But half-finished cans of Billy Beer? Nobody -- but nobody --should be allowed to have trash older than I am.

2: It is entirely Amanda's fault that I watched Gunslinger's Revenge tonight. Who goes to cast the leads in a spaghetti Western and picks David Bowie and Harvey Keitel? Were Sean Connery and Al Pacino unavailable? You must watch this film not just for Bowie's shameful attempt to imitate a "western" accent, and not even just for the fascinatingly awful hip-hop song that plays over the closing credits. No, you must watch this movie to prove to yourself that even David Bowie can be so embarrassing he's unsexy.

The upside is, Tonight and Tin Machine II look good by comparison.

Right. Because I haven't actually posted anything personal in here in about 3 weeks now, a quick rundown:

• My glasses broke, leaving me the terrible choice of getting all-new glasses and trying something stylish and new out, or just replacing the frames and saving myself $60. But for this very moment, money's secure enough that I actually have that choice -- don't blink, or you'll miss it.


• The new apartment is awesome. The roommates are lovely folk, and aside from a few predictable spots of friction, no one's knifed anyone yet.


• I have an office!! (see above photo) Well OK, it's an unheated, uninsulated storeroom with no electrical outlets and gaps in the wall I can fit a ruler through, so we'll see if I still have an office come Winter. But for the moment, I have a space to cloister myself and write, which is what I've always wanted.


• That issue of the Cafe Review I'm in came out.


• I took an R-rated trip into the 7th dimension, physically experienced infinity, and found infinity to be slightly tedious, but not in a bad way.


• Speaking of infinity, I'm damn sick of unpacking.


• Ryan and I went up to his office and retrieved a humongous, awesome flatscreen TV. And Amanda Jean helped me pull a couch out of the first floor neighbors' place (with their permission, naturally), so along with Ryan's HR Geiger print on the wall, we have a living room to show off to guests at last. Or we will, as soon as we've tie-dyed the couch.


• Myself, Mister Dan-O and Micah have started a weekly writers' critique group. If you want to get in, e-mail me.


• Um... I think that's it.

Oh, and for those of you who'll be as lost as me:


Miss Amanda = My roommate, bugamok

Amanda Jean or The Missus = My wife, froglady83


There were going to be pictures to accompany this, but I realized I don't have a single picture of Miss Amanda that I wouldn't get knifed for posting on the internet. Conveniently, however, they look nothing alike, so pictures aren't actually relevant anyway. I just like journals with lots of pictures.

photo: walking shark / quote: Wanda Coleman

• Walking shark discovered in Indonesia - Land shark! Except not really. But look at him! Isn't he cute? As Miss Amanda (roommate, not wife) inadvertently pointed out, all the biology news I can be bothered to care about seems to come from Indonesia.


• Gosh, who'd 'a seen that one coming? - Questions asked of applicants for plum jobs in Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority sometimes skipped over "are you in any way qualified for this position?" and cut right to the important stuff: "Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade."


• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - Mush-room! Mush-room! Buffalo (etcetera) and other grammatically-OK sentences that will make your brain ache.


• The brewing David Lehman scandal - Ah, poetry bitchfighting. This should keep Foetry.com busy for a bit.

(Text post soon, I promise.)

That's right, bitches -- a scant two weeks later we have triumphantly returned to the land of the not-quite-living. I'm going to valiantly attempt to tread through a gazillion pages of friends listiness (let's see, 60 friends x 15 days offline =... oh dear Lord.) but in the likely event I skim something important (EDIT: and LJ will only let me read the last 220 friends list entries), you'll all have to just tell me the good dirt here. How've you crazy kids been?? What's the good gossip? Etcetera??

Oh, and new contact info:
Rev. Jack Zall
20 Crosby St. #2
Portland, ME 04103

(207) 210-6039

When I am God, Sir Mix-A-Lot will be known as SAINT Mix-A-Lot, and dialing one-nine-hundred-Mix-A-Lot will be a mitzvah.

It's probably just as well that no one will ever elect me God.

It is 5:27 AM. I have now been awake and moving either myself or someone else for a full 24 hours. The Red Bull is keeping my body moving quite nicely, but my poor brain is falling further and further behind. When my father-in-law shows up to help in three hours, I will likely be moving at the speed of sound, but mentally incapable of controlling or understanding my actions; a hyperactive zombie that knows not whose brains he chews. God save humanity.

Because if I have to put up with me all night long, why shouldn't everyone else too?


"Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly." - Carl Sandburg

I thought to myself walking up Neal Street in the deep blue twilight that this was probably the last time I would walk up Neal Street in the deep blue twilight. All the apartments on the street have gone to condos in the last two years, but at night there's still the trees I've always liked silhouetted against the sky and the same people walk, ride, or stumble up the sidewalk after sunset, and for the first time in a long while I really loved it with all my heart. Two teenage lovers nuzzling and passing a single cigarette back and forth in the shadows of the Big Apple. The wilting, poorly-tended yellow roses in front of what used to be the Hay & Peabody Funeral Home, the ones I've stolen more of than I can count for first Sarah, and then Amanda. The woman with the ruined face (crack? meth? alcohol? old age?) sitting propped against the brick wall of Rite Aid rolling a cigarette who sees me staring and smiles with a sad warmth (I smile back). And inside, the drunks laughing with the clerks and trying to scam some beer and maybe the clerks will let them and pretend they were fooled. And sirens, always sirens and red lights threading themselves in and out of everything. Faced for the first time in five years with the possibility of silence now that I'm moving off The Neck, I am in love with the city in a way I haven't been since the first night I got lost and walked up Congress Street thrilled and terrified by the people and the lights and all the so much everything skittering around in the half-dark. I think this distance will be just what I needed.

City of Portland I love you like the first time all over again! Marry me!