Nil by Mouth

Welcome August

It’s out of character that I’m not more excited to buy a brand new Titanium G4 Powerbook tomorrow. But I’m not. Not really so much at all. The thing is I love my black G3 Pismo Powerbook. Like I seriously love it. When I first got it I wanted to take it to bed with me, all cushy and smooth and round as it was. But that was 3 years, 2 hard drives, 1 dead battery and a new CD-R drive ago. And more to the point, even with all that replacement hardware, it’s just shot. My theory is that poor Pismo just couldn’t take so much OS X for so damn long. It makes bad wheezing and ticking noises almost every day. It might be acute TB. In any case, it’s got to be replaced. And it’s got to be soon, so I can make several deadlines before attending a wedding in St Louis and then a vacation out west in late August where I want to do absolutely no work.

Buying a $2000 plus sharp metal thing wasn’t in the financial plan yet. Rats. I’d rather get shoes.

Maybe once I bring baby home it will all be roses and faeries. Maybe the new kid will prove himself a worthy replacement of trusty Pismo. At least it will be lighter to lug to California even though I’d like to barely turn it on. But I’m only kidding myself ‘cause I just can’t stay away from the glowy screens in my life.

In Cali I’d like to do nothing but stare at my toes and play with my new ab muscles, and in between that take a nice long drive through the desert wearing mirrored sunglasses and too much music to be believed. And hell, I’ll have to start smoking again, maybe Kent Golden Lights cause that makes me think of summers in the desert. And drink Carta Blanca and eat only tacos…

• Jul 31
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Weekends Away

To those of you missing me – I understand – but I’ve been trying to do some real writing lately, the kind that ends inked up on paper and that you can mail to your family and keep a hundred stacks of in the corner of your living room. It’s not going particularly well, but I still have hope.

This weekend I’m heading up to Boston. It’s been a long time since I was up in Beantown. The last time I was there I came home very embarrassed after, with the help of lots of alcohol, behaving very very badly. I behaved so badly, in fact, that I had to come up with a new philosophy on life: namely that people who don’t appreciate my bad behavior, love it even, don’t love and appreciate the real me. Yep – just turn the self-loathing outward and things become a little easier. This trip I suspect will be far more tame. Besides for a lesbian cookout there aren’t any parties with kegs planned, and there aren’t any boys I have latent festering crushes on. At least he’s not in Boston.

Last weekend was another getaway, to suburban Long Island where no one escaped unscathed from the magnificent quantity of canned beer we bought at the local beer distributor. It was my second year going to Rocky Point beach, notorious for its drunk amateur pyrotechnicians, with a bunch of science nerds. What fun! As opposed to last year when we stumbled into the mayhem sober and unsuspecting. This time we were as sauced as any respectable American, and had our own fireworks. People with families inched away from us because we were the obnoxious ones. I even set off fireworks myself, which I had never done before. It was pretty great. I wanted more more more, but there were only so many bottle rockets to go around. Even though I flirted my way into one guy giving me his share. Mu ha ha.

Later while sitting on the beach the next day we had a group argument about whether or not you can be friends with an ex. No definite conclusion was reached.

One last thought: I remember the first five or six years that I lived in New York I could never go away for the weekend because I always thought I’d miss something. These days I couldn’t be happier if i was away every single weekend of the year. A sign maybe?

• Jul 11
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