About.

What's going on.

Sunshine plus one.

Previously.

Cat food again.

self-portrait, with floating heads. self-portrait, nude, in the box store. This web page is the work of Marc Heiden, 23 years old, who . He lives in Chicago. Projects: Players Workshop (Term 6). (Grad show: October.) ImprovOlympic (Level 2). Untitled old-school assemblage. Meat-packing essay. Holy shit, am I unemployed. Listen to the author and friends on Th' Good-Time Radio Archives! Coming Attractions ego incorporated Exploding Dog Fametracker Funny Paper Neil Gaiman Kempa.com Kill Less of Me Man Cutting Globe McSweeney's Memepool Metafilter Misterpants The Morning News NBA Wiretap the Onion oswald.nu Public Enemy randomWalks Salon Magazine Same Day. Different Rat. Thinking of Hesterman This Modern World Weep Magazine Reading this month: American Gods Neil Gaiman My copy is autographed with the message "Sweet dreams". Thanks, Neil! Houdini!!! : The Career of Ehrich Weiss Kenneth Silverman A mammoth biography with impossibly deep research. I'm a two exclamation point guy, myself, feeling that it gives the perfect air of mistranslated excitement to one's endeavors, but the author makes a good case for Houdini's own love of exclamation points and I won't begrudge him that. There's something undeniably compelling about a biography written following the rules of The Magician's Code - don't tell how another magician's trick is done. The code, though it technically only applies to tricks, comes to inform the book as a whole. You get a nearly day-by-day (the literary equivalent of no montage sequences) account of Houdini's life and times without the stabs at "what it was like inside his mind" that are standard to biographies. Essentially, you see the performance in prismatic detail but you don't see what happens inside the locked chest, because nobody knows. (And, really, is it any of your business?) There's a lot to be said for ongoing relevance of the cultural transition that happened during Houdini's life, from the evolution of the role of the entertainer (and dawn of modern "celebrity") to the public fervor moving from Spiritualism (ghosts, mediums) to mechanical progress (planes 'n trains). And, of course, there's Houdini himself. I'm always interested in reading about people in history who were the best, knew it and used that knowledge to take it up even further. There is a picture of a medium generating ectoplasm from her ear that is among the grossest shit ever. My only complaint about the book is that the bit of the Houdini legend that's always fascinated me most was only treated in passing: that he vowed to his wife that he, the ultimate escape artist, would find a way to contact her from the afterlife. I don't know. There's something about that that really gets me. The Tesseract Alex Garland The second novel by the author of The Beach, which was an absolutely great book. I've watched the film a couple times with the specific intent of trying to formulate why it was so utterly mediocre. What went wrong? No budget concerns, great locations, great book, great director, great screenwriter. Leo wasn't right for the lead, but he wasn't the problem. The mediocrity of the film defies easy explanation, as though when the individually sound pieces were assembled, they formed a mediocrity beyond human comprehension, as if the mediocrity were a fourth dimension. (I have made a brilliant segue, as you will soon see.) Anyway, that book was fucking great, and so is this one. The cover design does it a disservice, making it look as though a "tesseract" is some sort of gritty military treaty when in reality the book uses it to apply hypercube theory (segue!) to interlocking short stories about Filipino street kids, gangsters and others. Completely human, thoroughly enjoyable to read. The author has the standard second-book impulse to show off the different narrative voices that he can inhabit, but he actually can inhabit those voices quite effectively, so there's no problem at all. Sin City: To Hell and Back Frank Miller Another yarn from the land where one is either well-versed in the art of murder or about to die. There are subsets, of course: eight year-old girls are generally not well-versed in the art of murder, but they are also generally safe, as big muscular guys who are well-versed in the art of murder tend to consider them sacred. Women who are well-versed in the art of murder and the art of getting one's freak on can expect to pick a little from column A, a little from column B, and then die, unless they are on speaking terms with a ninja or are themselves a ninja, in which case they will probably be okay. The aforementioned big muscular guys are well-versed in the art of murder, but they are distinct from big muscular chubby guys, who learn the art of being murdered. Never, ever hook back up with your old girlfriend. I mean never. Those are the lessons of Sin City. The first entry in the series remains the towering best, for art more than story, but they're all enjoyable if you're into the brutal noir style; this one started out second only to the first, but faded a little at the end. Still, not bad. Oh! And be wary of people who are in color in a black and white world. Hoo, boy. The Power and the Glory Graham Greene I find that if I read Graham Greene's prose at a normal pace, it's a slog; but if I go at breakneck speed, barely catching each word, it's great. No idea how that works. Reading this book means that, after six years, I have finally completed my high school AP English summer reading list, except for the play about the lion, whose title I have forgotten. Dali Robert Radford Another Phaedon Press brick-book. A decent essay that traces the creation of Dali's celebrity persona rather nicely, with unusually generous space allotted for reproductions. I was actually kind of disappointed to discover how much of Dali's early-to-mid period work was just straight, vanilla Freud. Still, there's fun to be had, especially in the later (regarded by the author as uneven) pieces. Another Roadside Attraction Tom Robbins I brought this book to read while on a film shoot, figuring that this was the sort of book that film people would like. Sure enough, I was effusively praised for my good taste. It's okay. Funny and smart, of course, but I grew pretty tired of the characters sitting around and being unbearably clever at each other, and it takes a very long time for anything else to happen. I'm not bourgeoise enough to demand jam-packed plots from the books I read - I have no problem with character studies and the like, where very little happens - but this book spends a couple hundred pages insisting that things are going to happen imminently, and if the fact that things don't happen is intended for effect, the effect is kind of annoying. When things do happen, the events are brilliant and inspired, but also over awfully quick, given the lengthy lead-in. Roy Lichtenstein Lawrence Alloway A survey of the artist's career, starting from about a decade in with his first widely known pieces (the comic strip panels) and covering through the early 1980s (when the book was written). Insightful essay that eschews biographical content; well-chosen samples from RL's work. I have a big print of his hanging in my apartment: I Can See The Whole Room. His work cracks me up: reducing signifiers of shallow modern culture to their most obvious form but doing it with such overwhelming sincerity to as not to appear irritatingly ironically detached, well, it's good. Cannery Row John Steinbeck A very funny book of intertwined short stories; they're set in the same area, with an ensemble cast, and they slowly come together as the book progresses. Brilliant characters, beautifully intuitive structure, ace from top to bottom. Steinbeck keeps the extended metaphors that got out of control in The Grapes of Wrath in check here, and though he hangs on to the "every other chapter" diversion tactic that drove many a high school student mad while reading Grapes, it works much better this time around. Dark Knights, Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam Bob McCabe Good, but something of a missed opportunity. Too much of the book is dedicated to garden variety "what was it like making this movie" conversation that's available in any number of other sources; it'd be interesting to have a book that was solely dedicated to a visual analysis of the art itself rather than Hollywood errata surrounding it. The design is fab, though too many pieces are unlabeled. Still, Terry Gilliam is a great interviewee, and it's as good as any other book for a look at his career in sum. Dada and Surrealism Matthew Gale I picked this one up again, inspired by a recent trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, where they have several items from this book on display. Phaedon Press does some very nice brick-sized books on major (and minor) artists and art movements. They feature a good selection of full-color reproductions. As I said before, the Dada half of this book isn't terribly good - most of the art itself isn't much to look at without a vibrant narrative to recreate the excitement and passion surrounding its creation. It gets the history down, but this is a case where straight factual recounting can't tell the full story. The Surrealism half is better. The author does a nice job of tracing the evolution of the ethos and the interesting, now-forgotten political dimension of the original surrealism. Slow Learner : Early Stories Thomas Pynchon Five early (pre-Lot 49) short stories by Mr Pynchon. I had an odd reaction to the first four: I found each one mildly irritating while I was reading it, and was then surprised to find myself feeling that I'd quite liked the story when I was done. Take that however you will. (The fifth story unreservedly kicks mountainous ass.) It's probably a good idea to skip the introduction until you're done with the rest - in it, Pynchon tears each story to pieces in brutal fashion while bemoaning his own incompetence as a writer. It's funny but unflinching and pretty fierce. Martin Scorsese: Interviews Martin Scorsese, et al Interviews, with Martin Scorsese. Not as comprehensive as Scorsese on Scorsese, but more personal: the interviews (from various sources) were all conducted at the time of the individual film's release, so there's a nice evolution in Scorsese's perspective, and his speech patterns aren't cleaned up and reconstructed as they are in S on S. Dream Story Arthur Schnitzler The novel upon which Eyes Wide Shut is based, though with transposed setting (from 1920 Vienna). The author studied under Freud, according to biographical capsules, and the psychological profiles of the characters are drawn in a precise way that makes you nod and say, yep, I bet he's taken some psych classes. It's an enjoyable and compelling book; though shorter than the film, it's no less explicit. The tone carries over nicely. peeps: Another Room Oregano Pelican Video Red Secretary Ron Rodent Skinnyguy resources: Wes Anderson Antarctica Jobs Babelfish Tim Burton Douglas Coupland Eatonweb Portal FTP Explorer HTML Help Infiltration Second City The Simpsons Webwasher Orson Welles b-side wins again 2001

010831 Since there's not much else going on, I would like to take this opportunity to make a retraction: every single usage of the letter 'o' on this webpage dating back to March should have included an umlaut (those two dots above the vowel). Please go back and make the change. Then re-read the pages. They should all be much better now. I cannot stress enough that one of the Soggy Bottom Boys directed the movie O, the forthcoming high school basketball adaptation of Shakespeare's play Othello. If you don't believe me, check for yourself. I can't decide if I'm more single, unemployed or tricky. The great thing about me is that I am nothing in moderation. In response to my recent job application, the aquarium sent me a letter telling me to suck beluga whale cock. I found their command of marine anatomy and basic physics to be fairly questionable, especially given that they're supposed to be experts and all. Of course, that wasn't exactly how they phrased the rejection, but having the phrase "whale cock" on this webpage when the search engines come through should put me right behind Yahoo and Amazon.com on the charts. In a related (true) search engine story, photo page 16 is the third most popular piece of HTML on the entire whatjailislike.com domain (behind the index pages for Hesterman and here). Take a quick look. Can you guess why? These words: photos + shit-eating. Oh, man. (1) Fucking Shakespeare never had to wonder how people were going to hypertext archive his work. I am censored by the depravity of my fellow man. (1) Couldn't they have chosen "god + fuckers" as their search engine query? Boy, that would be intriguing. I'm going to go try that right now. Probably get a bunch of shitty nu-metal band lyrics pages or something. 010830 When the rain lets up, I'm going out to find a cookie. Many people do not realize this, but I am an escape artist on a par with Houdini. The only difference is that, instead of upside-down water cells or straight-jackets hanging from tall buildings, my incredible feats involve getting up off the floor. I read a story in Boy's Life when I was eight years old that left an impression on me. The narrator was a teen who felt estranged from his father, irritated by dad's tendency to fall to the ground and start shrieking in public. As it turns out, the father was a Vietnam veteran. His small platoon had been surrounded by the enemy and everyone but him had been killed. It was night, so the enemy couldn't find him, but they had the area surrounded, so he couldn't leave; and he knew that in the light of morning, they would find and kill him. He laid a few of his dead comrades on top of himself for cover and sat there all night willing the sun to stay down, focusing on the fact that he was fine as long as the sun never came up. Eventually it did, and for reasons unknown to him, he was never found. The son and the father come to terms with each other, but it's the bit about the sun that interested me most. I kind of feel that way about having to pay my rent. If the 5th of the month never happens, I'm safe. Just have to keep that sun from rising. Some friends of mine talked me into participating in a fantasy football league with them, because they needed more teams. I don't know anything about football other than the fact that the 1985 Bears were the greatest and that some day the punky QB Jim McMahon will return from injury / rise again to save us all, so if you have any useful knowledge that could help me in the football league, please send it to me. 010823 Here is something you can look forward to: I went to the store today and I bought some grits. I've never had them before, and I figured that experiencing this culinary staple of the American South was the responsible thing to do, as an artist. So, what happens when my sassy wit hits a bowl of grits? Fun, that's what! Stay tuned. 010818 Only one update last week. So, where was I: I was at a casino, up by the craps tables, pretending to be a cowboy mobster. Oh, you say, nodding. Yep, that's pretty much how I imagined you spend your time. And then you walk away. I shrug and mumble that there's more to the story, but you have already caught the train and left town. I turn and talk to cats for a while. The History Channel, that bedrock of basic cable that bravely dares to document The Forgotten War, World War 2, are doing a True Crime series scheduled for broadcast early next year to break up the monotony of all the Hitler stuff. Serpico is in there, and so is Manson. They decided to do one on the real-life events behind the book and movie Casino, and since everyone who would have anything to say on the topic other than the book's author Nick Pileggi is either dead or won't talk because they're in the mob, the production company decided to do a lot of re-enactment footage to show underneath Pileggi's narration. Now, you may think that every major production involving Jewish gambling mobsters has my number on speed-dial, but they don't; I had to audition for the part. I slicked back my hair, put on a suit and headed downtown. A brief note about suits: I have worn a suit on only two occasions. Once, to a wedding; the second time, to the audition. When I graduated from college, my mother bought me two suits without asking. I wore the brown one to the audition. I figured that mobsters might like brown. I wear the suits so rarely because I am a dedicated t-shirt and regular pants kind of guy. I don't trust anyone whose value system takes off points for wearing comfortable, low-cost clothes. I didn't think I would be cast. I have no professional experience, I showed up late, I am way too young and my left leg was shaking uncontrollably during the audition. I don't know why. More than three weeks later, though, I got a phone call from the casting director saying that they had the greenlight and wanted me for the film. I played coy. She said there would be free food. I danced like a fool. The film was shot in three places: the cornfields of Manhattan, Illinois, which didn't quite turn out like the original Manhattan; Las Vegas, for exteriors; and a major real estate baron's riverboat casino, which is one of those shady operations where it's permanently docked and only technically a boat (land-based casinos are illegal for everyone except Indians, I think, outside of Vegas and Atlantic City). At the casino, the first half of the shoot was in a steakhouse. That was where the opulent scenes of mobsters eating and making decisions took place. The second half was in the casino itself, up with the hardened gamblers. You may have heard that acting is hard, because actors have to wake up early. Well, that is true. I had to wake up at 6AM. It was hard. Once I arrived on the set, I put on my suit. I brought a few other outfits, but they liked my snappy suit and had me wear it for the entire shoot. Once I was dressed, I headed for the food. There was a fruit plate, bagels, muffins, mountains of donuts, orange juice, bottled water and a single Diet Pepsi. I ate until I was content. There were three leads - the Robert DeNiro part, the Joe Pesci part and the Sharon Stone part - and four people, like me, who divvied up the other acting parts. (A few more more arrived in the afternoon.) The leads were usually busy running back and forth, though the Joe Pesci character had less to do than the other two. When not on camera or standing in, the rest of us spent our time sitting around and having what I immediately knew - even though I've never been on a film set before - were Actors Conversations. Professional actors are fine one on one, but every conversation with three or more devolves into stand-up comedy, desperate attempts to make each other laugh. It's extremely irritating. After lunch there was a political discussion, which was even worse. Several people who talked to me later assumed that I was really smart because I had looked disinterested and said little during the discussion. (No, I'm just poorly socialized.) There was my character's wife, a grizzled vet who had just worked on the upcoming Tom Hanks / Sam Mendes movie The Road to Perdition; there was a guy whose voice was like David Schwimmer sharpened into a knife and plunged into your heart, who flirted laboriously with every woman he met and whose cheerfulness turned into anger as the day grew late and he realized that only his torso had been visible in any of his scenes; there was a Steve Martin lookalike, a nice guy whose bleached hair blinded everyone who saw it; and there was another girl, who seemed very confused about everything that was happening and kept retreating to her Collected Works of William Shakespeare. She was auditioning for Othello the next day. I explained the exclamation "Zounds!" to her. Getting screen time was a constant competition in which posture, placement and countless other intangibles were vital to winning. The director would come by, scan our posse and pick who she wanted for the current shot. I had an unfair advantage, being as charming as I am; I wound up with the most screen time after the leads (although you never know what will happen during editing). Because of how the shot-to-shot casting worked, character continuity was a little strange. (Odds are, though, that no viewers will notice.) I wasn't assigned a name, so I named my character Tony Cosenza. (1) I wound up playing an amalgam of the pit boss, the incompetent cowboy, the Asian businessman who wins a lot of money and then blows it all, and a maitre'd. Since there was no sound, we improvised all of our dialogue; in one scene, I sold my wife into prostitution to pay off my debts to the Robert DeNiro character. The Joe Pesci character did an amazing monologue about a hallucinatory set of nipples. Lip readers will love this film. I also did a lot of stand-in work for the DeNiro character, who went through upwards of forty outfits in one day. His character smoked a lot but the actor himself didn't, so he used these cabbage-weed cigarettes that smell dead-on like marijuana. They did some shooting in a house, and he had to use real cigarettes there because the residents didn't want their kids thinking that they'd been smoking pot. Film acting, for simple roles, is extremely easy. You just figure out what you feel about whatever is happening in that shot and feel it for however long it takes, usually for no more than one or two different motions, because then they'll set up for a different angle. For complex roles, of course, it would be hard to keep track of your character's evolution, but for me, it was all "Hmm. I think he'd feel bad about getting fired. Okay, I'll look like I feel bad." I was in one scene at the blackjack table where I got pretty worked up; the dealer (a real employee) gave me several thousand dollars worth of chips, and the director told me to bet heavily. They wanted several takes, though, and I kept needing refills from the dealer because I lost so much. Had that been real money, I'd have lost over a hundred thousand dollars. Crazy. I was dizzy by the end of it because my character kept going to such heights of agony and ecstasy. The dealer confessed to me that he never gambles ("except when I take the Dan Ryan (expressway)"). He was getting irritated by the end because I kept forgetting which color chips were supposed to be stacked on top of which other colors. Since the casino was technically a riverboat, all of the craps tables came equipped with lifesavers, and due to Coast Guard regulations one of the employees had been designated "Captain", although I didn't meet him. As for the people who were actually there to gamble, the retirees arrived earliest and petered out by the afternoon; crowds of grim-faced Asians arrived in the early afternoon, but kept exclusively to the poker tables; the afternoon and evening belonged to locals who looked like they should not be spending their meager paychecks from their industrial jobs at this casino but were doing it anyway. Most of them dressed up a little for their day out, but one drunk guy who kept yelling at the actresses wore only a wife-beater and shorts. The employees were a tense and moody lot. The production company was shooting there for free, the people in charge figuring that the advertising was payment enough, but once we were out of the unoccupied steakhouse and in the casino, tensions ran high. Actors were not allowed behind the card tables for any reason whatsoever; as a result, they had to use actual employees as the dealers. The employees claimed that if any playing cards went missing, the whole building would be locked down and everyone strip-searched. During the afternoon, the Joe Pesci character and I had a long inactive period and we hung out behind the camera, happily ridiculing everything within sight. (2) At one point, the casino supervisor came over to talk to the director. His face went from red to purple as he passed, and his bottom lip seemed to suddenly double in size. Four chips were missing, he said, and he started talking about lawsuits. The director took him aside, and I didn't get to hear how she handled it. The last scene of the shoot involved the DeNiro character firing my character, though, and the supervisor got in on the act, laughing and telling me I was fired whenever I saw him. I guess he calmed down. The production crew was amazing - tight, fast, clear, concise, relaxed under pressure. I think the documentary will probably be very good. Word on the set had it airing in January. I will, of course, raise the roof when I hear more. I'll have only thirty seconds of screen time if I'm lucky, but boy! It was fun. While I was getting dressed in the bathroom at a sushi bar across the way, the PA played a muzak version of "Gangster's Paradise". I thought that was nice. (1) In-joke. Sorry. (2) Some people think that I am hard to talk to. That's not true. If you want to make friends with me, walk up to me and start ridiculing everything in sight. "So how about these fuckin' guys, eh?" It works every time; I smile and join right in. [The following entry has been edited for legal reasons.] 010817 [DELETED] [DELETED] I finally went on a job interview. Cover letters have always been a struggle for me, because I can't adapt to the writing style. I hate talking about myself unless it's setup for a monkey joke, and I hate faking like I'm interested in some office job for any reason other than basic sustenance. If you get me into an interview, I'm charming like a baby polar bear, but my cover letters always come out sounding like alien love letters or streams of expletives, so it's pretty rare that I get to the interview stage. This one was for an office job at an aquarium, which would be great. I'd start writing on the webpage every day again about all the fishes I saw, and if I ran out of material, I'd go find out what the penguins were up to and report back. I won't get the job, of course, because fucking [DELETED FOR LEGAL REASONS] blacklisted me, but it all sounds very pleasant, at least right now. If only I was more fictional, I could let everyone vote on whether I get the job with the fishes. I'd have a better chance then, I think. 010810 There used to be a handicapped parking spot right in front of my building, but the signs designating it as such have been removed, and anyone can park there. It doesn't change much; I don't remember ever seeing a car with a handicapped permit in the spot, just shady characters hoping the cops wouldn't catch them. I call those guys "handi-shammers", or I would, if I had reason to make reference to them. Here are two paragraphs about yelling while watching moving pictures: First, let me say that if you want to go see Monty Python and The Holy Grail while it's being re-released in theatres, you go and do that. It's your right. You are smart, and it is funny, so you should get together. If people start calling out the lines, turn around and tell those people to shut up. Those people have never seen the film outside of their mother's basement, and you can beat those people up, so lay down the law as soon as they start and enjoy the film. Monty Python are brilliant, but most of their fans are not; do not let them ruin it for you, though, because they are weak, and they can be crushed by you. Take back the Python! A major part of the modern unemployment experience is time spent sitting in front of the television, arguing with images of people who cannot hear you. (1) One series of images that has been on my mind lately is a commercial that promotes the Visa credit card. The commercial begins with the interaction between a mother and her very young child. She is a stay-at-home mother, evidently, because the story opens with a montage series that follows her through an entire day. The events in the montage are intended to be humorously frustrating for the mother: the child causes a mess while shopping at the grocery store, for example, and spits its food back up at her after it is fed. It has not been an easy day for the mother. We are led to understand that she does not significantly interact with people other than her infant child, for when her husband returns home from work, she is only able to speak to him in the cooing "babytalk" vernacular. Victim of her own feminine infirmities, she is helpless and must be saved by her husband, the provider. Fortunately, as can be extrapolated from the mother's ability to stay home all day with her child, the family dwells in economic privilege; through use of the Visa card and The Internet, the husband brings his weak-willed wife down from her hysterical state by ordering tickets for a showing of "Romeo and Juliet". We follow the husband and the wife to the theatre, where it is confirmed that Visa and the husband have saved the day and the woman can now speak in an adult manner. The commercial attempts to provide a humorous punchline: in contrast to her "stupid babytalk" earlier, the wife, now removed from her domestic context, says something "incredibly smart". We are supposed to be impressed by her sudden intelligence: "Wonderful use of iambic pentameter", she says, because only "incredibly smart" people would know what iambic pentameter is and be able to say something so insightful while watching a play. Yeah. She must be really smart to compliment the usage of iambic pentameter in a production of "Romeo and Juliet", by William fucking Shakespeare, who wrote all of his goddam plays in iambic pentameter, you posh cow. "Wonderful use of iambic pentameter." As opposed to all those times when Shakespeare messed it up? Wow, that's some horribly misused iambic pentameter, Shakespeare. Yep, the weak-willed woman can be smart too, except it doesn't work, because that's a fucking stupid thing to say. Fools! I yell at the commercial, and I throw things at the innocent screen, but nothing ever changes. (1) This does not work as well with books. 010808, late I am a laser weapon. 010808 Idea for a play: INTERVIEWER: And what do you have on this shelf? CHARACTER: This is my Sam Neill shelf. I have all of his movies. INTERVIEWER: Mm. You don't have them organized alphabetically... CHARACTER: Nope... INTERVIEWER: By release date? CHARACTER: Nope. INTERVIEWER: By genre... CHARACTER: Getting warmer... INTERVIEWER: I give up. CHARACTER: They're organized by accent! In this one, Sam plays an Australian. That's easy for him, because that's where he comes from. I put those ones first. Then I put the ones where he's just some American. After that are the ones where they cast him as an English guy, an Irish guy, so on and so forth. INTERVIEWER: And what's this one at the end? CHARACTER: Oh! That's a soft-core porn film he did early in his career. For some reason, he's Ukrainian in it. I thought about filing it under 'L', though, if you know what I mean... INTERVIEWER: I have no idea. CHARACTER: For the language of love! INTERVIEWER: Please don't touch me. I don't know what happens from there. I think the neighborohood association might petition to have the character evicted, and then homelessness and the struggle of keeping the movies in order would come in, so that might be compelling stuff. Can I get Sam Neill for the end? Only if he doesn't demand script control. And he agrees to do a French accent. The employment agency called today. The phone was out of reach of the area in which the fan was blowing, so I didn't pick it up, but according to the answering machine message, they had some computer job they were hoping I might take. It's suspicious, because as far as they know, I'm still happily employed at the job I supposedly left Beelzetron for several weeks ago. I think they know that Beelzetron, powerful multinational consulting firm that it is, slapped a blacklist down on my name and that's why I can't get a job anywhere, and they figure I'm at the breaking point right about now. Yeah, well, I'm fine. I've got a bed, and a Christmas tree, in my head. I am very good at being unemployed. Guys who are unemployed are always talking about going to Free Days at museums, but they never do it because they're trapped in the inactive malaise of unemployment. Well, I did it, so I'm great. The Art Institute has a very nice exhibit of late Edward Weston photographs on right now. Mostly it's just fun to walk around with a friend and horrify tourists with our comments. Hey, I worked in a museum. I have the right, just like Snoop can do whatever he wants in Compton. I think there should be a law that they have to play some decent music every once in a while. And also, no more dirty hippies. I'm sick of those guys. And a sandwich, while you're up. Thanks. 010804 Here is more of what I have planned for the bastards: using my bioinformatics skills, I am going to isolate the gene that makes pirahnas grow teeth. I am going to remove that gene, and I am going to breed a lot of pirahnas. Then, I am going to take the bastards swimming. They will enjoy the pool, for it will be a hot summer day. When the bastards are all in the pool, I am going to flip a switch, and the pirahnas are going to come rushing into the pool. The angry pirahnas will furiously gum the bastards, and it will be a very creepy feeling that the bastards will not soon forget. 010802 You may not realize it, but all they ever talk about on Telemundo is how much they like you. 010801 I don't give a damn what Congress says. I'll clone all the human beings I want. I'll create a powerful army of guys named Milt who have prehensile tails and make you feel uncomfortable when they sit next to you on the train. I'm not fucking around here. Back in the day.