About.

What's going on.

Sunshine plus one.

Previously.

Cat food again.

self-portrait, with floating heads. self-portrait, nude, in the box store. self-portrait, wet, in mouth of whale, with fish. This web page is the work of Marc Heiden, 23 years old, who . He lives in Chicago. Projects: Players Workshop (Term 5). Awaiting blissful unemployment. Very dizzy. sometimes, I also write for Thinking of Hesterman, because I'm like that. enjoyed by the author: Brianne's Diary Coming Attractions ego incorporated Exploding Dog Fametracker Funny Paper (M) Neil Gaiman Kempa.com Kill Less of Me Man Cutting Globe McSweeney's Memepool Misterpants Morning News NBAtalk Notes From Jail NME.com the Onion (W) Oregano oswald.nu Public Enemy randomWalks Red Secretary Road to Springfield Salon Magazine This Modern World (M) us|against|them Weep Magazine Recent reading: 1 Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, in Theory : Histories of Cultural Materialism) Jean Baudrillard 2 The Sandman Companion Hy Bender, Neil Gaiman Neil Gaiman's coming to town soon on tour for his new book, American Gods. This is a neat, chunky little volume with extensive interviews, footnotes and the like. 3 Ghost World Daniel Clowes I liked this book. Not much to say about it. I was a big fan of Daniel Clowes' David Boring. The publisher should get rid of the blurb on the front cover about this being how 'kids really talk' - not that the dialogue isn't well-observed, but claims like that make me feel bad, because they're talking about my generation, and that wasn't how me or my friends talked. Publishers are always trying to market on that hook. Who are they marketing to? The image of creepy middle-aged dialogue vampires arises. With the Giffen-era Justice League defunct, there probably won't be any more comics that feature writing that sounds like how I talked when I was a teenager. 4 FROM HELL Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell Kind of feels like it should be capitalized, doesn't it? Alan Moore is best known for Watchmen, but he's been writing nonstop for decades, and all of his work that I've read is easily on a par with Watchmen; FROM HELL is the best of the lot, an awe-inspiring example of what can be done with the medium. It's a phone-book sized graphic novel about the "Jack the Ripper" murders, with incredible research and excellent, evocative art. Mesmerizing. Without realizing it at the time, I was in a lot of the key locations while in London a few months ago. Makes me want to go back and see the rest, of course, shake my fist at those rotten Freemasons. peeps: Another Room Pelican Video Ron Rodent Skinnyguy WEFT 90.1 FM art 'n resources: Wes Anderson Antarctica Jobs Babelfish Tim Burton Douglas Coupland Eatonweb Portal FTP Explorer HTML Help ImprovOlympic Infiltration Second City The Simpsons Webwasher Orson Welles b-side wins again 2001

010615 Almost out... 010614 There is an unspoken agreement here at work that no one plays music out loud. It seems to be more or less acceptable to wear headphones if your job doesn't involve telephones, which mine doesn't, but not over speakers. I think that's a good agreement. I shudder to think where my co-workers' musical tastes run. It's hard sometimes, though. Sometimes, you find yourself at a certain kind of website, and, whoa, the mute volume on your computer just clicks off, and before you know it, you're helpless to slow the inevitable climb of the volume... Next to last day at work; the second-to-last supper, a story which I will write, some day. I am coughing, and crap emerges from my mouth when I cough. I can only hope that it's not consumption. Probably not. That would mean that my blood is green. (news) The Mouse House had shelved the project, and it was believed that Bruckheimer would set it up at another studio. Now it's again with Disney, subject to an undisclosed budget figure. Guerin, a reporter for the Dublin Sunday Independent, was gunned down in 1996 by the drug dealers about whom she frequently wrote. That's part of the reason why I write about monkeys instead of drug dealers. I figure the monkeys won't shoot me if I write frequently about them. Yep, I got that one thought through. I didn't make it to work until noon today. Kim from Lakeshore called. She's from the agency that put me here and is handling the search for my replacement. I was sitting around in my underwear, talking to my cats, and she called. Kim's so good at what she does. "Why aren't you at work today?" she asked, and she did it perfectly, hit just the right note, played the entire thing as though that I'm a rock star who never wants to go onstage and she believes in my talent and the fans love me so why aren't I out there? I think she means for it to sound that way, because it probably flatters lazy bastards. This was the first time anyone had actually noticed that I arrive to work several hours late each day. Apparently, they had come looking for me because they wanted me to be part of the interview process: seven individual interviews, done consecutively, then compare notes. Lum says she covered for me. I was trying to explain to my cats about ice cubes. I thought would be important for my cats to know about them because it's hot outside and I've been filling their water bowl with ice cubes. Hiro met Deion Sanders today at NikeTown. (study) Even nonviolent shaking of an infant can accidentally cause brain damage and death, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday. That will come as a real pisser to the baby-shaking enthusiasts of the world, whoever they are. The target audience that is implied by this study is a hell of a thing to imagine: for example, crotchety old midwives who insist that shaking the baby is a good for its health as long as you're not angry when you do it. Shakes up the four humors, it does. Are those people really going to change their ways because New Scientist magazine says they should? People are talking in whispers about the upcoming layoffs. The final decisions are coming down tomorrow, which has a neat symmetry because that's when I'm laying myself off. They're doing it in a fashion rather similar to the old Roman practice of just taking one out of every ten men and killing him as shorthand for the entire group; each "team leader" has to axe one person. The team leaders are pretty mopey about it, but the underlings don't know about it yet, except me, because they thought I was listening to music at the time and the CD had just ended. I'm not sure if the affected people will actually find out about it tomorrow. I really don't wish them harm, but I hope they do, because I'm callous and curious. (upcoming movie) Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, authors of "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing," got 75 hours of taped interviews with McVeigh and access to his family. But one of the producers for the upcoming CBS mini-series, Gerry Abrams, told Variety that McVeigh will not be the focus of the television production. Instead, the mini-series will follow the approach taken in "Traffic," the Oscar-winning film about the U.S.-Mexican drug wars, in which "seemingly unrelated people are involved in a common crisis," Abrams was quoted as saying. "When I read the book, I was left feeling that because so much attention had been devoted to McVeigh, that the public was unaware of so many individual acts of heroism from people involved in the Oklahoma City incident," Abrams said. Including a man...and a woman...and a love so powerful that no fertilizer bomb could come between them. "Oklahoma City". Coming soon. 010613 I'm in limbo until I'm out of here. This is a non-week. 010612 Not done yet. My idiot supervisor suddenly, without notifying anyone, took most of this week off, so she is not here and has not done any work toward finding a replacement. I'm gone by Friday either way, but I had planned to spend most of this week in my underwear, so I'm pissed. Today, I went ahead with a long-planned experiment: I was here relatively early, having thought that I'd have to be on time for once so I could spend five or six minutes training my replacement in the full range of my duties; no replacement, though, so I turned on my computer, read some things, left for seven hours, and came back long enough to turn off my computer and mark down a full day on my timecard. During the seven hours, I went to Borders. I read comics, slept, and then I read about Iceland. Then I got a sandwich. Honestly, it was pretty boring. After a while, I sort of wanted to go back to work to write email and stuff, but that would be copping out on the experiment, so I stayed. I guess it was a success. No one seems too bothered. 010611 I didn't go in to work today. I had plans that didn't come together, so I decided to catch up on lounging around. Tomorrow might be my last day at work. I'm not sure. My supervisor wasn't too clear, but I think that's what we agreed. It's so nice to not be at work! It's fun to walk around and see all the other people who also aren't at work. Yep, that's something all of us had in common, not being at work. I went and I had a milkshake, because being unemployed means being employed being me. Here is another thing that you can do to make my terrible life better: my car is having troubles. I will tell you the troubles, and you will tell me what you think is wrong. It won't start. I had my friend jump the car, and it started, ran fine, so I waited long enough for the battery to charge and then I turned the car off to go home. The next day, the car wouldn't start again. Do I need a new battery? Alternator? International action star Don "The Dragon" Wilson? If tomorrow is my last day of work, I might do something impulsive with the rest of the week, like go to a forest where there's a stream and trees and shade and a sunny field, or maybe to Las Vegas, I don't know. Do you want to come? The Internet is supposed to be interactive, according to the drunken ramblings of a homeless man I met on Sunday, so I'm trying to 'get with' that. My connection from home and my aging laptop are both quite slow, so I ain't linking to shit any more, except when people send me links by email. Otherwise, you'll just have to take my word on certain things. I won't tell you lies. Except sweet ones. Although this web page is your number one source for monkey news + news about how charming I am, there is one monkey about which I have spoken very little, and that is the Gibbon monkey. The reason that I do not talk about the Gibbon monkey very often is that I went to school for eleven years with a guy whose last name was Gibbons. He has been my primary reference point for all things Gibbon. However, I have decided that it is time to start talking about Gibbon monkeys again, so you can expect some of that in the future. There was a news report last week about Charlie Sheen's daughter getting arrested for shoplifting. I was very excited to read that news report, because I always thought you had to be emerge from the loins of a Sheen to qualify as a Sheen, but then I realized that you can marry into the Sheen dynasty, so that's good news, and that's probably what I'll work on while I'm unemployed. Back in the day.