Shit, I Don't Like Penmanship Anymore.

I'm only writing in this because I like typing now much better than longhand.

I like typing now much better than longhand.

I didn't say I liked that fact.

So I'm not posting to post, but only to write a private journal entry. I believe those belong in ink in books. Because when am I going to go back and read my blog entries? Well, how often do I go back and read my paper journals? Aside from when I'm reconstructing my life's timeline like it was freaking Ancient Egypt.

What is safer, apocalypse-wise, paper or the Internet? That's silly. If there is an apocalypse, it all goes, but we don't know what will go first. I'm betting on paper lasting longer.* The Internet will be gone before my personal possessions. Unless there is a terrorist attack.

Anyway, I don't care about that. Really, it just bothers my slight OCD that journaling is now bifurcated. It's too messy to have my diary in different places. It also bothers me that I just used "journal" as a verb. Well, a gerund, actually. I had been really against that usage. I'll try to keep up the fight.

Sometimes I start to crack, grammar-wise.

"_______-wise" is a horrible construction, so horrible that it may be used to excess for effect. If you use it unselfconsciously, sorry. No offense. Besides, I just did the same thing.

If all I had was a paper journal, I wouldn't have written this entry.

*I need to follow up on this. There is a market where people make money betting on exactly stuff like this. Betting on future possible events like what will be destroyed first in the apocalypse. It's all legal and stuff, too. I kid you fucking not. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Why I Want To Be A Star, And A Plug For An Expired Event.

Isabelle Huppert, hot French actress of a certain age, was the subject of a photography show. She is a) ravishingly beautiful and b) old enough to be a great-grandmother in Maine. I am sure the purveyors of beauty secrets bury her in an avalanche of freebies to help her preserve her hotness.

This brings us to the reason I want to be a star. I don't have the time or the resources to find the best products. I want to make it in showbiz just enough to help my anti-aging efforts. When you are a celebrity, spa people start coming out of the woodwork.

I'll bet Isabelle Huppert complains about all the free products and spa people that clutter her hot French life.

Hangin' With The Conspiracy Theorists.

I went to the most incredible party the other night. I hung out with all my new best friends, the conspiracy theorists.

The party was held in a former squat in the East Village, one of the six squats that was squatted so industriously, safely, and passionately that it won special legal squat status and was not senselessly destroyed by Giuliani's wrecking ball.

It was nice to see that squatters can live as well as rich people. The capacious former squat was lovingly appointed with a piano, a giant stained glass disc, an aquarium, pretty cabinetry, and more. The party was appointed with many intelligent, well-dressed, well-spoken apocalypse enthusiasts.

It's kind of racy to be enjoying cocktails and munchies in an attractive, well-lighted environment while catching snippets of possibly foreign-accented conversation, such as:

"Where you gonna be when the shit hits the fan? You got a plan?"

"Well, it's not like they haven't framed me and put me in Rikers before."

"I'm thinking about Canada, or Hungary. How can I get a passport?"

DVDs debunking 9/11 were traded. Emails were collected to facilitate arranging protests at city hall. The powers-that-be will be taken down, or we will exile ourselves somewhere. Heavy-duty.

I'm leery of hanging with conspiracy theorists not because I think they're full of it, but because I think if I learn what they know I will have no choice but to become one of them. And then I would have to commit to the overthrow of the government. And I'm just so busy already. Their parties are great, though. I'll keep going to those.

I Was Totally Wrong About Jamiroquai.

I've done some research, and everything I thought about Jamiroquai is wrong. In the most completely humiliating ways!

First, it is a band, not a dude. Second, they are British (why ??? did I think they/he were/was French?!). Third, Jamiroquai is derived I guess from lead singer Jay Kay's name and Iroquois, a Native American tribe whose philosophy he "identifies" with. Yes, those were quotation marks of derision.

Thanks for so thoroughly showing me up, Jamiroquai. I hate you more than ever.

Just kidding. I'm so, so sorry I completely wasn't paying attention to what you are all about. To prove it I might illegally download some of your music.

Sordid Confession.

I don't like Jamiroquai.

Zut alors!

That's right! Je n'aime pas Jamiroquai.

How could I not? He seems to be this beneficent, munchkin-like, totally cutesy French dude with all these positive, practically celestial lyrics and easygoing grooves!

During Freshman year of college, I pretended to dislike, perhaps loathe, Prince, because everyone around me was in a frenzy over him, and my roommate screamed at me, "Wait a minute, you don't like Prince?! What is the matter with you?!" Lots of eyebrows, open mouths, and shrieking. I couldn't stand to go with that tide. A few years later I got to enjoy him away from all of those bitches.

This is not the case with Jamiroquai. I am not trying to go against the monstrous, crushing, Jamiroquai tide. All his songs sound alike to me. I don't understand his name, and if he made it up, I think he did a bad job. I will give it to him, however, in that I think he occupies a niche of one. There is nothing else like Jamiroquai, thank god.

I might have just heard the "track" that will make me change my mind, and that makes sense, because when I get this contemptuous of something it's usually when I'm about to come around.

"Wife Swap" Trounces "Trading Spouses."

After regrettably-scant research, I conclude that, next to its wife/mother-forced-to-live-with-hostile-strangers rival, the robust and in-depth Wife Swap, Trading Spouses is but a flaccid, flimsy impostor. But still riveting.

Aegean Orgy.

Pulverize some tomatoes and calamata olives using a mortar and pestle. Stir in some crumbled feta and broken shards of Suzy's Sesame Salted Flatbread. A Mediterranean taco salad, if you will. Best if eaten while you are in a reclining position, togaed, and watching Rome.

God's To-Do List.

If I were God, I would take away the Internet all of a sudden, and all of its contents, forever, to teach everyone a lesson.

Do Not Cease To Believe!

Someone on the second floor of my building routinely blasts the Journey song "Don't Stop Believin'." I hear it through the elevator doors for three floors running. When I step out of the elevator on the first floor, it floods down the stairwell.

This tune was the theme song for my prom in 1987. Who the hell was on the prom committee? The song had been out for years already! Why that song?

I must admit, it's rousing and passionate. A joyous homage to the ordinary lusts and longings of all us deluded, searching sadsacks. I like it a lot better now than I did in 1987.

Good ole "Pipes" Perry. Who can stretch a vowel out like that these days?!

Canopy Of Cum.

I hope I can recover from what just happened.

Don't ask me what I'm doing up at this hour. Somewhere between 5:30 and 5:45, I was leaning out my open window that faces the street, thinking how lovely it was to be up so early, admiring my fire escape garden, enjoying how crisp and cool the air felt, and hearing birds actually chirping.

When I noticed the naked dude masturbating on his top-floor terrace, across the street and one building over from me. He frantically pulled on his penis for the next half hour. The cloth awning directly below him actually became stained with his spooge.

So I call my local precinct and they say they'll send someone. They never come--but my neighbor sure does, over and over by the looks of it. I call 311, and they tell me this is a 911 call, to report "lewd behavior." So I call 911. For a half an hour, while I am on the phone with the police and then waiting for them, he remained, leaning over his balcony railing, pulling on his weiner and jizz-drizzling on E. XX St.--or more accurately, the awning directly below.

A couple times, he darted into his apartment for a few seconds, maybe to grab more lube. Once, he disappeared for a longer time, only to reappear outside on the ground level: he stood around on the sidewalk outside his place for about a minute dressed in a black basketball tank top and beige pants. Then he went inside, reappeared on the terrace, masturbated clothed for a while, then disappeared only to return naked again.

He disappeared for good while the cruiser crawled up the block looking for the address.

They couldn't arrest him because he was inside now. The 911 lady called me back to ask if I wanted to file a report. I was enraged. I kinda felt I had to, but filing a report did nothing except inconvenience me further, and I realized while I was standing there between the cop car and the dude's apartment, pointing to the awning and explaining that the spreading amoeba-shaped puddle was made of his DNA, that I was probably being watched by Jack-on-the-Block at that very moment.

I wonder if his neighbors know that when they are leaving or entering the building they are walking under a canopy of his cum.

German Needs Me!

German, I don't really know you. But I know all I need to know. You are very compound word-dependent. Your clunky syllables are my giant, awkward legos. I vill play with you now. Together, we vill build new German words for new German future.

Gesichtverrat: When you run into someone one the street and first you smile, then you remember how you know them and your face for a second betrays your real feelings, before you can think to hide it. [Face Betrayal]

Verdaungpuenktlichkeitsstoerung: You're taking a dump, making dump sounds, the phone rings, you're late for work, the doorbell rings. [Poop Late Crazy]

Nachtarmtot: You wake up in the middle of the night to find you slept on your arm and the entire limb shoulder to fingertip is completely dead, it feels like an inert weight hanging off your body, and you have to swing it around to wake it up but it's so dead it slaps against you and surprises you. [Dead Arm Night Hang]

Mobiltelefonhass: Hatred for your cell phone.

Fremdenmobiltelefonhass: Hatred of other people's cell phones.

Eigenmobiltelefonbegehren: What you love about your cell phone but won't admit.

Wortueberbelastungseffekt: When you stare at a word so long it becomes meaningless. [Word Overload Effect]

Metaschadenfreude: Deriving pleasure from the knowledge that there is a word to describe your feelings of pleasure at others' misfortune.