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). Sick, broke, unemployed. sometimes, I also write for Thinking of Hesterman, because I'm like that. 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 Metafilter Misterpants Morning News 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 Woody Allen Eric Lax 3 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. 4 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. 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

010622 I would like to use this forum to appeal to DeAndre for a moment. DeAndre, they are looking for you outside. Why do you not respond? Clearly, there is urgency in their voices. Presumably they exhausted the usual channels, such as phoning (did you hear it ring, DeAndre?) and using your buzzer (buzz, buzz, the buzzer rings for you, DeAndre), before resorting to standing around in the courtyard yelling for you. No man is an island, DeAndre. Much as one might like to hide from the world, from the occasionally bewildering web of social obligations, there comes a time when every man must face the world he wrought. DeAndre, this is your time. 010621 I had some of the major issues of our day all lined up and ready to be considered, but then I forgot them. So much for that. Be sure to check back tomorrow, when I will consider some of the major issues of our day. Here is a minor issue of our day: I made scrambled eggs. I didn't have any other plans for those two eggs, so I figured, what the fuck, eggs, I'm going to scramble the both of you. They were generated by a chicken whose womb has some sort of device that writes in pink letters on the shell when the egg will go bad, so that was useful, because I have no way of remembering. Here is another minor issue of our day: I am thirsty, and you do not bring me anything to drink. Why is that? The funeral of local sportscaster Tim Weigel turned into a major fiasco for my mother. Her office was having some sort of open house, with various important business figures coming by for wine and cheese, and the funeral took place across the street from her office, so everything was very crowded and apparently the funeralgoers were a rowdy bunch. I went by there to see if I could talk my mother into giving me five dollars, and all the other churches in the area had signs on their door telling the Weigelfans to fuck off, not in those words, but it was rather like a comet, in that the chance to see a city gripped in Weigelian melodrama doesn't appear too often. There was a clip on the news later that night of one of the subWeigels telling a joke about WeigelPrime, and her delivery was way off, so I don't think she'll achieve the kind of media prominence that the Number One Weigel did. The lesson, it seems, is that the uberWeigel comes but once a lifetime. When did you get dressed today? 7am, because I had to go move my car to the other side of the street for street cleaning. Then I came back, went to sleep and didn't get dressed until I got out of the shower at 4pm. I didn't have any special reason to get dressed, as my plans for the evening consist mainly of throwing socks at the TV, but I don't know, I was really in the mood to wear some pants. 010620 You should subscribe to the Premium version of this website. I haven't decided what will be in it. Probably sex, in some form, because that's what's always in Premium versions. I don't want to talk about sex, though, and believe me, 'Love Den' would rank somewhere in the low seven-hundreds on a list of nicknames for my apartment. I don't know. I have decided, however, that the cost of a subscription to the Premium version of this website will be very reasonable. So, you've got that going for you. I know a guy who's playing Officer Frank Serpico in a History Channel documentary. That's so fucking cool. Another day, unemployed. Contributing nothing to society is wonderful. (1) It's fun, I turn on C-SPAN and wait for some Republican commentator to come on TV and then I laugh and yell Bring it! and I'm your worst nightmare! and Welfare state, motherfucker! and I throw my socks at the screen. I've been keeping some socks under the sofa, because normally, I only have two socks with me. I have been very sick for several days now, which is a shame, because I make the world brighter when I smile. I didn't want to go to a doctor, because I don't know where any are off the top of my head and also I don't want to pay them money, so I watched some movies and tried to figure out what my problem is. I gave myself back spasms for a while, because that's what Toni Kukoc always had, but then I settled on heroin withdrawal, because it just seemed to make sense. When did you get dressed today? 2pm. I have to go pick up my car, and I want to get it back here before rush hour, when all the streets will be crowded and there will be few parking spots. (1) Except this website, of course. And I paid for an ice cream cone yesterday. [The following entry has been edited for legal reasons.] 010619 Although I've been unemployed before, it feels like something new every time; and although I should therefore know better, I'm always surprised by how hard it is to get anything done. I have all sorts of plans: write a play, go buy a fan, sell all my shit online, talk to the guys on the corner about the ins and outs of collecting welfare, there's really no shortage and that's just the minor stuff. I don't feel unemployed yet, though. The weekend was the usual weekend (in which I was inert, violently sick), I had crap to do all yesterday, and today just feels like I took the day off. My cats think it's great. I value their opinion over society's, that's for damn sure. Man, let me take a moment to talk to society. I have heard you, society. Perhaps you think that I was distracted when you said those things. Let me, then, correct that misunderstanding. I heard your ideas, society. I thought they were terrible. We all thought they were terrible. We crumpled up your ideas and threw them away, and then we set the waste basket on fire, because we do not dislike the garbage man so much that we want to risk subjecting him to your shitty ideas. We were still so incensed, however, society, by your worthless ideas, that we painted them on the wall of a nightclub where shitheads are known to go, and then we took turns peeing on that wall. We then made a videotape of shitheads agreeing with your ideas, and we plan to send this videotape to you when you least expect it. Perhaps you will have your ladyfriend over, and you will be putting a sexy movie into the VCR for the both of you to enjoy. Well, surprise, because we are one step ahead of you, jerk. Do not think you are safe because you upgraded to DVD format, society, because we had the videotape burned to DVD, in anamorphic format, with both widescreen and full frame formats on the same disc, and no fewer than three commentary tracks, all of which feature us calling you a jerk. Okay. When I was in grade school, we were issued regular warnings about why we should not join street gangs. I don't know who tipped the St Ignatius faculty off that the Latin Kings were recruiting for scrawny white Catholic kids, but it was apparently a very trusted source, because they talked about it a lot. That didn't stop them from making our school uniforms gold and brown, which was nearly identical to the Latin Kings' gold and black and which usually got us in trouble with other city grade schools on field trips, but otherwise, they took it seriously and brought people in to tell us 'insider' secrets of the gang lifestyle. Once, a teacher got it into her head that we thought joining street gangs would be okay because we could just leave the street gang when we were bored, and she decided to spend some class time correcting that. Oh, sure, you could leave the gang, she said. But they had a very fierce ritual for leaving. Everyone in the gang would line up in two rows facing each other, she said, and you had to walk between them and make it all the way through while every member punched you as hard as he could. (1) Well, leaving [DELETED FOR LEGAL REASONS] except transposed over lptrixie.com. I bought some comic books on Sunday. The original comic book store for me was a place called Larry's, which is at the intersection of Devon Avenue and Broadway / Sheridan in Chicago. I went to Larry's as a pre-teen, newly liberated from the poor selection at the 7-11, and was from my first visit terrified of Larry. The man was a sadist. Stringy thin black hair in a wildly incompetent combover, Larry ran a comic book store during the height of the early 90s comics boom and used that power to the fullest. He had two stores right next to each other but his only personal interest seemed to be in the massive collection of Dr Who magazines in the front of the store. Anyone who came in for anything else, which was everyone, was subject to his violent scorn. You were always under his hateful glare while you shopped, and he knew how to express his contempt for you in even the most basic of exchanges, from answering how late the store was open to adding up your purchase. You learned not to ask questions. That was my comic hookup for a couple years before I found a nice store in Evanston and began going there full-time. I've only been back to Larry's twice; once to fill some holes in my Sandman collection a few years ago and then this weekend. The comic book industry is in the toilet right now and oh, has it taken a toll on Larry's. I don't think that was him behind the counter, so I don't know how he's doing personally, but he's down to half of his former area with absolutely no markings out front that there is a business inside. You just have to know. It's all black, quite dark, and looks like it's been locked up and abandoned for years. Inside, it's a classic case of a man who has barricaded himself in and is Waiting For The Day. He probably owns that storefront by now and has nowhere else to go. There are untold thousands of comics in there, though remarkably few are any good. Larry never believed in polybagging any other than the most valuable books, so none of them were preserved at all, and the smell of rotting pulp is pretty strong, an inch past pleasant. Nobody on this planet is ever going to buy those comics. You look at them and you know without a doubt that this is their final destination, like Larry himself; that, together, their age is definitively past. It was an oddly powerful experience. Larry was always fairly incompetent about knowing which comics to order, so I was only able to find a quarter or so of what I was looking for. He does still order new issues, fortunately. It's hard to find comic stores any more, and even harder to find non-hipster ones. (1) Presumably they didn't stand too close, or they might accidentally hit each other. Back in the day.