one hundred and five dollars

green green bottles.

oh, sports. what is it about sports?

last weekend, i treated myself to an absolutely fantastically average breakfast at my local pub, which is called The Dickens. it is named after Charles Fucking Dickens, because he used to hang out in burlington after he became washed up. from what i've been told. i totally liked a tale of two cities, except that it left me with the impression that girls who don't dig you are worth dying for. which is arguable, perhaps.

but it is romantic!

the owner of The Dickens (the pub) apparently is responsible for organizing a gambling pool for the national football league, on a weekly basis. i am a weakly customer, who does not presume to know a thing about football. he suckered me into chipping in five dollars and making guesses about who would win all of the games.

i picked buffalo, because i am near buffalo and buffalo almost beat dallas. then i picked detroit, and tennessee, and new england (duh), and the giants, and new orleans, and washington and cincinnati, and kansas city and dallas, and chicago and seattle and indianapolis. and then i struggled with pittsburgh/denver, but eventually settled on denver because denver is closer to mountains, which are pretty.

it turns out that i got all of the teams correct, and i won one hundred and five dollars. the owner called me yesterday and said he'd never seen anyone get it perfect before. but then he tried to make me feel dumb my saying i'd played on a stupid pub betting pool rather than making the same picks on pro-line or in las vegas, where i could have won exactly three thousand and five hundred dollars. or whatever it was.

i have decided that i will be a gambler and an alcoholic from now on, because they both really pay off, despite all of the whining and complaining to the contrary.

it's hard to be a human being

ah, fuck it.

unabashed shamefulness is the new goddamn punk rock.

last night, tom and jess invited me to a bar with karaoke. i was not nearly drunk enough for karaoke, but i sang a song anyway. it was "the night they drove old dixie down". i forgot how it went in a couple parts. it was a disaster, up until i noticed that no one was paying attention anyways. except for the choruses, which i remembered.

inebriation is so difficult, anymore.

i am bankrupt on all sorts of things.

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i moved to a new desk this week. i am making a little more money and i have lots less to do. strange how that works out. maybe i will stick around a few months, rather than resigning and escaping to the edge of the planet ten minutes from now. the exchange rate is intolerable, though, so there are more reasons than midlife crises to up and leave and go away for a long time.

i went to the dickens for breakfast again. my favorite part was the toast. maybe that means i should start cooking my own breakfasts.

tomorrow i am putting new york state license plates onto my car. there are no good reasons for that, though. except that i've been driving illegally for two years, and it is the closest state out of all of the united ones.

last month, when i did not care about anything anymore, i never got the feeling that i should get a haircut, which meant that my hair was always unkempt and messy and long and slackerish, and it was the coolest i have ever looked in my life. but then my psychology improved a little, and for no good reason i wanted to get a slight trim, and then some dropout at supercuts lopped everything off and now i look like a secondgrader, and my psychology is bad again. that is how the cyclicalness happens, i guess. at any rate, until further notice i will cut my own hair. it is only a bad idea to cut your own hair if you really give a shit about how you look.

there is no bottom to my nonconformism.

last night i decided that i want to read books by richard brautigan. and then i found out that he shot himself in the brain.

as you do.

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Originally uploaded by amnesoid

i will listen to the tarentel.

you know i'm sorry about all of this, don't you?

me me me, and a lack of distractions. anyways.

all through september i was in the northern parts, around fort saint john. i was directing the dissection and fresh re-emergence of a smallish turbine. as you do. it was thirteen hours per day, but i still got into the habit of hanging out with the generator fellows, who liked to drink beer at the pub until two in the morning, even if we did have to get up at five-thirty. fuck it, i'm game. i said. and another. as you do.

jason was the lurer of vixens, even though he is married, with a daughter. it was alright, all pretend. jill became our favorite waitress, and her jason crush was obvious. it was entertainment. she took us for a ride in her sports car on the last night. as you do. that is what mick says, because he is from nottingham. as you do. "obviously", in a snarky way. mick had meaty englishman hands and stubbed them into the table and swirled them around and stared at them, while telling stories. it was so very eccentrically english. as for me, i dont know what my draw was, aside from the occasional smartassed remark. maybe it is just better to hang out in threes. canada, england, and the u s of a.

so it was very nice to be away from home. it made me realize how much i do not like home. homes make me miserable.

it made me able to smell the singed bits of brain and the trail of smoke. do you know that i have to take dramamine in order to even attempt to read a book, nowadays? i haven't read a book cover to cover in over a year. it is an impossible task. i am never paying attention to anything for more than ten seconds, anymore.

so calmly, the analysis begins. how deceiving.

you know i am sorry about all of this. i would love to have a grip. it was very nice to have some camaraderie while i was away. i like people and i like hanging out with them. it is true. why i do not pick up phones, i do not know.

we are having orange leaves without jackets. it is so unnatural. i do not like it. if i had it my way, summer and winter would be allowed one week apiece. spring would get three months and the autumnals would get the balance.

it takes so much restraint to even make sense. can you understand? someday, children will be able to figure out the meaning of life after just a little digging around on wikipedia. crises averted. we, on the other hand, are in-between luxuries. no benefit of easy knowledge, and no ignorance either. i wonder about other people. how can they be so calm? all of the ticking clockks.

where are the runts collecting? where are the little thousands?

i has a sno

today i was back in hamilton. i was walking with my supervisor towards barton street, it was warm but i did not notice any of the prostitutes. i told my supervisor that i would not be lasting much longer in this employ. i have no good reasons for good income, is what i said. i am unbelievably tired, is also what i said.

unbelievably. all of my panderisms. awash in lostability. escape aids.

i fantasize thus: the resignation is taut and just. the cancellation of the lease comes next, then the paring down, because that is what a buddhist would do. perhaps only a backpack would remain. and then i join an organization to perform philanthropies, and then i would become jaded with even that. which is wholly tragic.

i am always in desperations, lately. my chest is always hyperventilated, or the opposite. it is a completely unreasonable state to be in. i do not want to be a fortysomething permanent frosted over with thorazine, so i feel like i must start walking. this is how my brain works.

though if someone were to invite me to dinner and drinks, then everything would change very suddenly. it is all very twingy. full of twings. i promise that i am not a phony yet, though. i am just very good at being normal, when i need to be, which is less often.

pictures of pretty girls make me depressed. it is just like everything else, darling.