my “january 2002″ is very probably the best god damned mix cd ever to grace the confines of this stale universe, the best mix made by anyone. ever.

regardless, i plod on, trying to come closer to matching the accomplishment. i have a february 2003 mix that is ready for deployment. interested parties may contact via email.

i want to make another, too. right now. a second february one. that would be crazy and unheard of. shit.

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tomorrow morning i’m getting the laughing gas and this old guy i know is gonna drill a hole in my jawbone. they’ll put a little rod in there, and then the bone will heal around the rod, and in several months, there will be a firm artificial root to put a brilliant shiny artificial tooth on top of. i’m not scared.

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i bought tickets for two godspeed you black emperor shows next week. i did that yesterday. today i was told to be ready to hit the road for job assignments next week.

fate wants me to never ever see godspeed you black emperor again. the last time i saw them, it was nineteen ninety eight, in montreal, in the loft where they record their albums. they were almost complete unknowns, even among the indie-est of them all. it was revolutionary, indescribable. it was important. i sat between the film projector and wendey, who used to be known as wristy. that’s the last time i saw wendey. it was snowing in montreal, that night. there was electricity.

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chad has been my very good friend since we was born. i ended up following him to virginia after college, kind of by accident, but kind of not. this weekend he’s moving back to rochester. it’s a sad thing. it’s nice to have someone you grew up with nearby. so he’ll reclaim rochester. i’ll venture the pioneer lands for awhile longer. on friday i’ll very possibly make my last drive to leesburg.

-

i did my taxes online. it was easier than i thought it would be.

my july adventure is leaning to-wards europe. svalbard was the key. svalbard will have the answers. svalbard must be home to the lost sages and prophets of this world, sheltered in the cold nothing-tundras of the planet.

the travelling should commence thusly:
- plane to london, england. (see london things)
- bus to glasgow, scotland. (see mogwai things)
- bus to inverness, scotland. (see loch ness monsters)
- bus to thurso, scotland.
- boat to torshavn, faroe islands.
- boat to seydisfjordur, iceland. (see iceland things. eat bread, not puffins)
- boat back to torshavn.
- boat to bergen, norway.
- bus to oslo, norway. (see norwegians)
- bus to tromso, norway.
- plane to longyearbyen, svalbard. (gain enlightenment)
(then, time permitting):
- plane back to tromso, norway.
- transit to stockholm, sweden. (check out all the fine blondes?)
- transit to copenhagen, denmark.
- transit to amsterdam, netherlands. (see bogus the clown)
- transit to paris, france. (see marcy and redblooded american highschoolstudents)
- transit to barcelona, spain. (be quixotic, don quixote-style)
- transit to lisbon, portugal.
- plane to athens, greece. (see yanni concert, and maybe the parthenon too)
- boat to crete.
- boat to cyprus.
- boat to istanbul, turkey. (used to be constantinople, yes)
- transit to bucharest, romania.
- transit to curtea de arges, romania. (condemn the ruins of castle dracula!)
- transit to vienna, austria.
- plane to london, england.
- plane to richmond, virginia, united states of america.

under no circumstances should the latter items be taken into consideration until ample time has been given to the exploration and divination of the lands of svalbard. thank you.

p.s. new, tourism-focused advertisements on television shall feature dell kid igniting catch-phrase, “dude! you’re going to svalbard!”

someday, i guess i would have to learn to flirt.

there are no sixth senses.

she is far out, she is phenomenal, and even if i were phenomenal, no one would know just by looking, i would have to prove all of this, up front.

i do nothing up front. i answer yes/no questions. i make only the idlest chitchat. i take no chances. up front, i have nothing phenomenal and nothing to offer.

she is phenomenal, but she has no sixth senses, and she doesn’t have the time or reasons to ask me fifty questions, to even begin to figure me out.

people must offer these up, up front.

someday i would have to learn to flirt.

i am background for your lives. i’m almost tired of it.

-

i’ll get up in a few hours and go to work. maybe i’ll find out where the hell they’re sending me next week.

tomorrow, when i go home.

home feels pretty sad, when i think about it from here. cold floors, blind-drawn windows. stagnant air, a solitary cat wandering in silence. two shades: dim and dark.

i’m not sure what to do there, anymore. except just sit at the computer, put in another load of laundry, over and over until someone calls on the phone and tells me to leave again.

feeling anemic, spend a weekend in the bed, sleeping on and off. keep a blank book nearby, write something neat again, rhyme for me like you used to, champ, remember it rhymed and really meant something at the same time, we used to type them up and submit them for poetry class, and the professor used to like these, and ones by the one other girl, she sat the same distance back, at the back of the classroom, but on the other side of the room, against cinder blocks painted white, inside dullred brick buildings with the squarest corners, always straight boxes and rectangles, the lonely campus that seemed like it’d last forever and even though there was nothing to do and not many to talk to, it was nice wasnt it? we rhymed and handed it in, did it again every night before we fell asleep, a safe cozy place tucked far away from all the other college students.

i moved south. i started living in hotel rooms. i didn’t stay put. orlando, charlotte, houston, medina, richmond, greensboro, richmond, greensboro, richmond, medina, richmond, orlando, richmond, minnesota, richmond, franklin, greensboro, richmond, orlando, richmond, cleburne, richmond, houston, richmond, franklin, reidsville, richmond, medina, richmond, medina, richmond, franklin, richmond, houston, richmond, joplin, richmond, reidsville, richmond, reidsville, richmond, orlando, houston, new orleans, mississippi, richmond, bristol, richmond, huntington, richmond, medina, mexico, medina, richmond, lincoln, richmond, huntington, richmond, galveston, richmond, medina, richmond, reidsville, richmond, huntington, medina, louisville, richmond, medina, richmond, maryville, lincoln, richmond, houston, richmond, las vegas, san francisco, orlando.

i know the list from memory. it’s not like i have amnesia. i remember pretty well, sometimes.

tomorrow i’m having another comma, another place. but that’s where i keep my bed. and my quilts.

i’ll buy milk. i’ll pretend i’m sickly.

thanks so much to nora for keeping tabs on the mail and keeping linus in line. i owe her a lot, i know.

-

we’ll keep those places dry, where you decide to keep your identity.

from now on, or until further notice, tired orbit records will be an entity, will be a new music label, will be accepting applications, will be in business.

will do all of these things, plus retain a colourful heart-beat.

(meaning that there will include personal touches, which in turn will be color-coded.)

when i look up, the clock on the microwave oven is 4:44, maybe two-hundred-twenty-two from the devil or three-hundred-thirty-three from heaven, closer to hell, regardless, and a sign that torturous monotony is imminent.

within the confines of a shoddy and not-quite-nostalgiac hotel room, i stand face to face with the backside of the closed door. the people of the world are all out there, and there was a time that i claimed dominion over all of it, with help from a green paper crown, thinking about the symbolism of folding the paper crown into a tiny rectangle, as tiny as i can get it, though it becomes so much more difficult to fold, the smaller it gets. and once it is folded to the maximal of my efforts, to slide the folded paper rectangle under the door, onto the floor of the hallway.

waiting for someone to walk by and claim the dominion. the dominion symbolizing _________.

i send vibes and thoughts out, beyond the door. the situation flashes deja-vu. i send thoughts and vibes out to the people, beyond the door i stand behind, through all the other doors in the world, whether they’re open or not. these say “the definitions can come later & the actions can come now or never.”

something has been wrong with my physicalities, and not just my digestive system over the last severals. bouts with queeziness and dizziness and then the insane acid-gurgling heartburn, i try to knock it out but it takes 3 zantacs twice a day, i’m staying away from caffeine, more away from caffeine and have only drank milk and beer and water in the last thirty six hours or so. oh wait and a chocolate shake.

i just got here, it’s my familiar orlando hotel, looking a hell of a lot more run down than it was when i used to stay here.

i left on a valentine’s day, once.

this year, i got a valentine from a band called “zoo station”, who seem to make a living by covering u2 songs in and around san francisco. the valentine said things that it didn’t really mean so i left it at the bar. maybe it’s still there. ireland32′s on geary. go get it if you feel like you need it.

they did “electric co.” alright, i guess.

adam picked me up when my plane got there on friday. he’s not my valentine, though, just a friend.

on saturday, adam honked ruthlessly at a gridlocked car, while driving through an intersection.

this is normally no big deal.

except that the intersection was haight and ashbury. where all the hippies were born. we got lots of nasty looks for the careless display of aggression.

sorry, hippies.

san francisco is home to the best damned record store in the world, also, which is amoeba records. i managed to drop less than one hundred dollars. an extremely frugal accomplishment which i have to owe to the fact that i was completely overwhelmed and had forgotten everything i may have been wanting to buy.

i kept getting drunk and falling asleep in the car on the way home at night. that happened at least once.

sunday was interpol at the amazing fillmore. excuse me… The Fillmore. Interpol.

holy good god was that a great show. i didn’t even get too hot, that’s how great it was. they played everything that’s on the album plus a new one.

plus, it was hipster central. which makes sense, maybe. hipsters and indiekids are probably just spawned from the hippies, with the simple addition of assloads of shame, maybe.

that’s not a concrete theory yet, though.

man, interpol are great. i don’t care how many stupid people end up touting them.

we slept through the protests. i guess they weren’t hurting without us, though. nobody misses my apathy or extreme lack of focus on having any clue what to think about global issues of drastic importance. i will simply make my way through the world that the rest of you end up creating. it’s what i’m used to.

also, adam’s couch really is the comfyest piece of furniture on the planet. no matter the years of attacks from semen stains and fart onslaughts. and my digestive system problems sure didn’t help matters./ much.

adam dropped me at the airport before dawn today. it was way too early. far too little sleep. my day will have twenty-seven hours. when it’s over. from san jose to denver, i had a row to myself and lots of legroom. from denver to orlando, dylan (who just turned 4) sat next to me along with his mom and he was good and watched “the secret of nimh” on a tiny tiny little dvd player. i was proud of dylan but i was really trying to go to sleep.

there are blizzards in the north, but i am at seventy-five degrees here, slightly windy conditions. that’s the plus but the minus is homesickness, again.

i hope my cat’s alive and happy. cross fingers for the basics.

Assassinate World Leaders. Assassinate John Ashcroft. Assassinate the FBI Representative Who Will Come Looking for Me After Finding This on the Internet.

Flags Flying on Coffins, or at Half-Staff.

Kill All Extremists. Kill All Fucking Extremists. Kill Bin Laden Kill Hussein Kill Bush Kill Blair Kill Pyongyang Kill the People That Try to Fill Their Shoes Keep Killing Them Until They Are Dead.

Everybody Assumes That Killers Can’t Draw A Line or Won’t Know When to Stop But It’s Worth Another Shot.

Assassination Raga.

This, or Apply for Canadian Citizenship.

this is the first hotel i’ve stayed in that gives out free chocolate chip cookies and milk from 6-8 every night. they have been etched into my heart.

-

i’m working with a guy named forrest, here, and forrest is much better at what we do than i am. forrest doesn’t take anything too seriously, which is an envious trait most of the time. he says funny things, like “…shakin’ more than a chihuahua shittin’ a peach pit…” and “…more frustrated than a three-legged cat trying to bury a turd on a frozen pond…”

there are others, but they’re not as PG-rated.

-

adam hung out with me this weekend in vegas. he lost three-hundred dollars altogether. i agreed to go along with him, at one point, to play blackjack. i lost eighty dollars in about five minutes. at no point in the five minutes could any “fun” be considered to have been existing.

adam has all of the typical male weaknesses, which he readily admits to, to his credit. many times, he thought that calling a stripper to the room would be a good idea. we both thought that the waitress outfits around town were fabulous ideas. in the end nothing happened for him. i think i’m bad company for his bad habits.

my favorite part was blaring the anti-capitalist sentiments of godspeed you black emperor whilst cruising down the las vegas strip, but then again, i am a big nerd.

very shortly into our adventures, we were both of us shouting “fuck vegas!” aloud and with force.

i dug into my wallet on sunday. “this is all the money i have left…” (but remembering that adam had lent it to me about an hour before) “…and it belongs to you.”

fuck vegas. shallow greedy heartless motherfucker of a city, impressing the middle-aged and my mom with its artificial glamour and neon flashes.

yesterday, adam left on a plane and i left for a hotel in a faraway suburb, where they give out chocolate chip cookies from 6-8.

-

today, they told me it would be a good experience, to get up at 4am and ride along to barstow california with a company salesman from houston. we would go to a meeting to get details on a possible job, something maybe i could be assigned to, if i were unlucky enough. “to get a better idea about the stuff that has to happen before you go to work” they said. so okay, we drive through the desert and mountains at five and six in the morning, and i answer questions bent on conversation-igniting, to the chagrin of my antisocial tendencies. i get through all of it, but it’s hard to believe i actually care about any of it.

on the way back to las vegas, there is dirt and rocks and sickly, dry shrubs that stretch up all the way to the khaki mountains on the horizons. every horizon. the land is barren and unwelcoming.

but then, the joshua trees start. the fields of determined, tragically gorgeous joshua trees. they brave the endless miles of nothing.

they have been known to invite irish rock bands to their photo-shoots.

and where the joshua trees end, nevada starts, and there is a tendency to place glittering casinos and shopping malls out in the open, in the middle of a lot of nothing, cut off from everything, just on their own, very awkward looking with no accompaniment, very little nature, even. just rocks and dirt as far as you can see, and a casino/shopping mall complex.

i guess that it’s the only way for a desert to make any money.

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i have a new cat named linus. i don’t think i’ve mentioned that yet. he’s black and white, like gar was. linus is the best, but i guess he’s realizing the difficulties of a long-distance relationship, now. he probably won’t even remember me, when i get back. i’m not sure when i’ll get back.

i have to go to orlando, next. it’s like i’m on tour. and i might ask my boss if i can divert through san francisco for the coming weekend, where adam would pick me up from the airport, and we would go see interpol, who completely mesmerize us.

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hello, people out there. i killed my old journal, mostly because the name was well past its prime, and since a few years ago everyone thinks it’s a thing i stole from radiohead or something, but also because i wanted to feel like i was hiding a bit, i still want to feel like i’m hiding, i wanted a way to get rid of people who listed me as their stupid livejournal friend when they really don’t give a fuck but just feel obligated after too much time, mostly disappear and forget, forgotten, distortion and feedback, people i never knew trying to make amends, fuck amends, weasels and crocodilios, scattering but never colliding,tired of orbiting that situation,

orbits being the end-effect of gravity, movement, and time, endless time, stuck forever circling in outer space, orbits conscious of the monotony, getting tired, so tired, praying for a collision, even through the zero-possibility, the collision that would send them drifting, further and farther away, free of that gravity, finally free of that gravity, that trap.