April 2004 Archives

I've mentioned my jacket twenty-two times today.

Saw a thousand beautiful girls at the Trumbull Mall.

Where was my power jacket then? Still in Florida.

Adam, it's time.

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I am going to introduce to you the music term, Mash-Up.

It seems David Bowie is now popularizing it, the term and the process. The process of mashing two albums together, using your dj expertise.

It all started with that whole Jay-Z Black Album / Beatles White Album Mash-Up, the Grey Album. Now people are mashing up all kinds of albums. And now David Bowie is mashing his own albums with... his own albums.

Some suggestions...

Jagged Little Razorblade Suitcase

Cracked Rear View or Someone Like You

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Titanic Motion Picture Soundtrack

Wow, Mash-Ups are perfectly useless and only fun to listen to for about two minutes before the novelty wears off and you want to die!

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Today we drove through the fucking mountains to get to an Arby's. Today we went on an Arby's adventure.

Only in my life is this such an exciting occasion.

Finally, here are some spooky trees.

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Somehow, our interest in the new Denzel Washington picture, Man on Fire waned as its release date got closer and closer.

Somehow, we found ourselves in 13 Going on 30 instead.

Let me defend this decision for a moment without actually defending the movie itself. Jennifer Garner is on the cusp of bigtime fame. She's poised to be the next Julia Roberts. If this movie does well, her price tag could jump ten million a picture. And she deserves that. She deserves that because she is beautiful and also adorable and also quite good.

13 Going on 30 - She was perfect. The movie around her was not. The movie around her was written by a coathanger, I think. Something THAT inanimate.

But like I said, I was doing Jennifer herself a service.

The book sale was big and junky. Couldn't find a single novel. Bought a little book on insects, a little book on space. Nothing else.

We decided to have lunch at Blimpie. I know, I know... yes, we had sunk THAT low. Turns out, Blimpie is the hippest of the hip here in Norwalk. Jeep after jeep of Abercrombie and Fitch looking baseball playing assholes and their dumb girlfriends. It was a joke on us. It had to be a joke. I can go a week without seeing anyone under the age of thirty and yet here was an entire baseball team and their girlfriends.

Do you detect a bit of animosity toward the fuckers? Yes, you do.

Girlfriend to Abercrombie Asshole: Guess what Wednesday is!??!?! Free Scoop Day at Baskin Robbins!

People that plan for Free Scoop Day are idiots. What is it, like $1.50 for a motherfucking scoop of ice cream?

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Jeremy and I were pretty sure that this woman was actually the magical wizard Merlin.

So I stood behind her and took photographs when she wasn't looking.

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Today I wrote two stories... She Suggests an Honesty Campaign andWe'll Bury This Cat Together, Then We Can Go out for Dinner. --------

I plopped a stack of videogames onto the counter at GameStop. There was a dual gasp from both employees.

"We have never seen a copy of Viewtiful Joe come through here."

"Ahh, well... I beat it, so what the heck," I lied.

"I beat it too man, doesn't mean I'd ever sell it."

The other employee, pointing to Viewtiful Joe's case: "This is some sign from God."

I have no idea what they were talking about. I just CAN'T play video games anymore. I just wanted some money so I can go to Norwalk Library's annual book sale tomorrow and go book crazy.

Up here, libraries take their book sales quite seriously. There are 30,000 donated books going out for sale tomorrow, two bucks a hardcover. It will be chaos. Absolute chaos. There will be people pushing people to get to the books, the books too plentiful to go through one by one.

I made thirty-three dollars selling four games.

I am ready, monetarily at least. Am I ready physically, mentally? Time will tell. Time will tell.

Monetarily is not a real word, but it should be.

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Two things...

You'll notice the comment engine that has appeared. It didn't appear for appearance's sake. I thought it was time that there was more of a sense of community here. As long as that community was completely for and about ME. So feel free to COMMENT.

You'll also notice that my email address has changed. I will please ask you to respect this change, even though we all know I will still check my AOL box often. I am however, in the first phase of phasing AOL out completely... the second phase involves downloading AOL Instant Messenger. But I'll wait a while on that... The new email address... in case your blind to lefted content bars is...

QquegChristian@gmail.com

Gmail is open for MY business and I plan on making my business there. Let's all sing and dance. Can't we all sing and dance?

Send me an email, I want to try out the bells and whistles. I want to feel loved. Don't you see that I love YOU?

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In response to Jeremy's Uma Thurman foot entry in his blog:

1. Tarantino talked about his fetish with feet, and Uma's feet in particular on The View last week.

2. He then started in about Star Jones' feet and made me puke in my mouth a little.

3. Yes, I am known to watch The View.

4. I feel a strange connection to the women of The View after being on it one and a half times.

5. It is precisely Uma Thurman's wispyness that made her shockingly beautiful in person. I think I shall steal that word to describe her in my book.

6. Yes, I do not think twice about dropping the fact that I've sat with Uma Thurman in a greenroom.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 was fantastic. It had everything the first lacked. The second lacks nothing the first had. What does that mean? Vol. 1 was the longest introduction in movie history. Vol. 2 was a really good film. I can see the first being edited down to forty minutes and tacked onto the begining of this one to make a really really good, complete thought. But that would probably piss Lucy Liu off.

Star Jones' feet... a little bit of puke... in my mouth.

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Are the spiders laying eggs in my cereal?

Have I been eating spider eggs?

All the spiders, they seem to have sacks. Egg sacks.

There are spiders with egg sacks in my kitchen.

My kitchen... that's where things like cereal are kept.

Have I been eating spider eggs?

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Today we went into Outback Steakhouse, ordered drinks, looked at the menu, put five dollars on the table, did not wait for our drinks, left.

Outback's lunch menu sucks.

Jim Caviezel has been nominated for an MTV Movie Award for his performance in The Passion. I want to see him accept this. I want to see him hold up an MTV Moon-Man for playing Jesus and pump his other fist into the air. "Yeah!" Will he thank God?

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The house is overrun with spiders. Little brown spiders. I found two more, just now, in the corners of the room. I've killed half a dozen the past few weeks. I never kill spiders.

My mother went to take a sip of her coffee... a spider crawled into her mouth.

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Sony has created a new DVD-like disc that holds five times as much as DVDs today and is primarily made of paper. Yes, paper. Good for the environment and cheap.

And yet, where is Sony on this?

Completely re-arranging my room for prime writing Shui and there are wires, wires everywhere.

Example: There is a cable cord coming out of the ceiling of my closet, and it runs around the ground of one wall, past my computer and then around another wall to my television where it meets up with a three-way splitter. It goes into the splitter where one cable comes back out and goes all the way back to my computer and into my cable modem, another goes out into my cable box and a third goes the rest of the way along that wall and through a hole into my parents room to supply them with cable.

This is how the cable guy wired our house. No coaxial outlets, just wires coming out of ceilings and going through holes in walls.

Fuck wires.

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Something you may not know: When you buy a $50,000 Jaguar, they give you a little stuffed Jaguar in the car... kind of a welcoming gift.

My father drove around and I watched the mileage counter go from nineteen to twenty. Twenty miles. Twenty whole miles.

Here is a picture of the car next to my car. It's hard to tell, but my car is the one on the left.

I'm getting a better car whenever the book deal goes through though. Hopefully one that doesn't emit fumes into the cabin as you drive, which has turned lefty up there into a very car shaped rock.

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Before I conk off, let it be said that a full-on rewrite of Orbiting Ethan Oort is apparently underway. Not sure if anyone knows about this. Anyway, it's time for several characters to meet the ax, time for a completely new main plot-line, time for Ethan and Venus to stop blowing shit. Not a single scene of theirs will survive... not one.

The TV Guide photographer finally finished after six hours. It was a joke... it must have been a joke. Six hours to take a photo of a plate of pancakes for TV Guide! Six hours! It's funny though... now I really want to see that photo! Really see what a six hour photo of low carb pancakes looks like.

Finally this is here... if you care. Just a draft-ish teaser chapter from the diet book.

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Effing stupid. Fucking stupid.

Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper all have "mid-calorie" versions coming out this year. CocaCola C2, Pepsi Edge and whatever stupid thing Dr. Pepper decides to call theirs will all feature lower sugar, calorie and carbohydrate counts than their regular counterparts.

Even lower still would be the DIET fucking versions that already exist and have no sugar, calories or carbohydrates. Stupid, stupid, stupid shit. Who the fuck tasted Diet Dr. Pepper and decided that it didn't cut it, and that they needed a middle ground? You know what? If someone really wants a fucking middle ground, they can buy diet AND regular and mix it in their own fucking glass!

And what the fuck is up with Pepsi ONE? It still exists! We're going to have Diet Pepsi, Pepsi ONE and Pepsi Edge and that's just fucking stupid. It's all stupid.

Also stupid is Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey was walking his dog in London and somebody asked to use his cell phone. The guy then ran off with the phone and Kevin Spacey gave chase. Kevin Spacey then tripped over his own dog and cut his head open on the ground. He then told the police that he was assualted and robbed of his phone, and that that was why he was bleeding. After a visit to the hospital he fessed up and admitted that he was just embarassed that he was conned out of his phone and also that he tripped over his own dog, so he made up the whole assault thing.

So let's all laugh at Kevin Spacey! Dumb Kevin Spacey, falling for a dumb con and then falling over his own dog like a dumbass. Dummy! Gosh... Kevin Spacey is such a dope! Gee golly.

All right, I'm done now.

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TV Guide have been setting up for two hours and it doesn't look like they'll be ready any time soon. Setting up for a still photograph of a plate of breakfast. I thought they'd be in, take a photo, be out. I was wrong.

Then it's FedEx at the door. Two finished episodes of the series. Finished episodes, beginning and all. Watching it, my first thought is, this is very well done. My second thought...

What happened to that opening we filmed? The one that Anthony flew up to be in. The one that we spent all morning filming in a whole foods market in New York. The one with the corny shots of Anthony and I popping up from behind produce. The one that I thought would actually come out really, really good.

It's nowhere to be seen. The opening they've gone with was completely made in the computer, using our photographs.

There is no morphing, another thing I heard word of.

It's still good though... just leaves me wondering why they didn't use any of that day's footage? This is 48 Hours all over again. The cutting room floor loves us.

Also, it should be said that that now makes that the second time Anthony flew all the way up here to film something for no reason. The first would be the time he flew up for our second appearance on The View and they cut him and I out of the segment last minute.

The CEO of McDonald's died of a "sudden heart attack" this morning. Make your own assumptions.

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Walking into Borders today and someone screams at me from a car. It was the girl that works the cafe. She saw me on the newspaper. I predicted that would happen. I knew someone would look at the newspaper and see me in the tie that I'm always wearing around town and recognize me.

In other news, Alias is so shocking and full of twists every single week that it has made me immune to shocking twists.

What is actually being said: "Next week on Alias, Sydney discovers that Vaughn has been working as a double agent for the CIA and an interdimensional race of levitating beasts, hell bent on eating her soul."

What I hear: "Next week on Alias, Sydney enjoys a muffin and sorts her old magazines."

Maybe neither of those is what's actually being said... but you get the point.

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Posted two more Ribcage stories to the left. The Will of God and Staircase.

Don't know when the heck Ribcage will be done. Trying to figure out digital typesetting, so that it will look very pretty. Microsoft Word just isn't cutting it, design and formatting wise. So now I'm working with this typesetting program. It's amazing the shit I've basically taught myself on computers over the years.

What in the hell drove Anthony and I to seek massive computer knowledge?

I'm pretty sure that between the two of us and our different computer knowledge we could clone an eagle.

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Seventy-five degrees out today.

The north needs to get that stick out of their ass and build central air into houses. It was hot, hot, hot in this house today. Opened the windows and there's no breeze, just more heat. If this is spring, then summer will be worse and so, can't we have at least one season that I enjoy up here? Autumn is the one, I guess. Autumn is raking season though.

Speaking of raking. My mother raked up a snake yesterday. So quit your complaining Jeremy. A snake! A reptile! In the north! She says it was yellow and black with a red tongue and so, with my vast knowledge of snakes, I'm going to have to guess that that is the rare and extremely dangerous Rattling Anacobra.

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Walking into the library, passed a newspaper box and saw this...

No one bothered to tell us the story was running today. Just walking down the street and "Oh look... I'm on the newspaper today!"

Also, no one bothers to check facts with us before running a story. There are like ten factual errors. The year we went on the diet. The weight I've lost. The date the series starts. So on, so on, so on.

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Today was a reading day. Also, I finished two short stories that were lying around half written and weighing on my soul.

The TV Guide photo shoot is of food only. They're using a Food Network press photo for my father... so they just need pictures of low carb food.

Tonight is super taped television night for Jeremy and I. He just got off work and we have some viewing to do.

An episode of Friends. The two hour Apprentice finale. Survivor. Penn and Teller's Bullshit.

Four whole hours of power... and they begin NOW!

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Next week TV Guide are coming to the house to do a photo shoot. Time for me to binge diet and freak out about acne for the next few days.

Also... commercials for the series began airing on the Food Network today. Even I am in them, my father said. Yet to see it though.

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I realize that Jeremy's blog goes into all this... but our lives constantly overlap and to think that the blogs will not would be naive of you.

Went all the way to Fairfield to see a movie. Fairfield didn't go out of it's way to dress up for us. In fact, Fairfield looked like an ass. Old, rundown and it should be shutdown. The whole town. Rhymes!

United States of Leland is a movie about a boy that stabs a retarded boy for no reason at all and then there's a reason and you have no reason to discuss the reasoning any longer and therefore it does not elicit thought in the viewer and is rendered useless.

Useless like all of the film's characters and the way they float around each other blubbling bad dialogue and doing stupid shit with guns and knives and needles.

I am going to go to sleep now. Why am I going to sleep? I don't have any idea why I am going to sleep. I don't even know why or where I got the idea to go to sleep.

Also...

I'm going to sleep because I'm tired.

There... that's what it's like to see United States of Leland. That's what it's like.

Goodnight.

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In a sudden writing kick... thank god.

Last night I wrote a few pages of the diet book in a notebook in the Borders Cafe.

This morning I wrote another short story and then put 500 words into the novel. The first time I met my quota in like nine days or something like that.

Also... let me bitch about Fox News' integrity for a moment. Yes I watch Fox News more than CNN... and I know that that is a bad bad thing for me to do, but I have a short attention span.

This morning though, they were interviewing a man that wrote a book about Fox News beating CNN in the ratings and this interview was just plain disgusting. It was an anchor for Fox News asking, "Why do you think Fox beats CNN so badly?"

Reply: "Well Fox News, it's because Fox News has superior coverage."

Yesterday they had Kathy Griffin on to promote a contest she is doing with some deoderant company. Basically, they are looking for America's next big woman stand-up comic. Because they believe that there aren't enough women in stand-up... all right, that's fine by me. How do they choose this woman? With a stand-up standoff, of course. They each have five minutes to perform material... as long as that material is one hundred percent based on sniffing your armpit to see if you are still "fresh." Yes, folks... what an absolutely credible competition! Dozens of women competing to find the one with the best armpit sniffing jokes.

Now all of that had nothing to do with the credibility of Fox News... that comes up because Kathy Griffin asked, if... just once, they could make her a "Fox News Alert!" If they could please "display the Fox News Alert across my rack!"

And they did. They ran the Fox News Alert! graphic across her breasts... for no reason. The same one that comes up when our troops are bombed. The same one that comes up when people are taken hostage. When REAL news is happening.

The one that makes people drop what they are doing and run into the room. The one they already overuse.

There's talk of driving thirty miles to the nearest Arby's, I'll need to go get ready now.

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Not much to say on the newspaper front.

The reporter was a nice Indian girl and she wrote down pages and pages of notes.

The questions were the same. The answers... obviously the same. Boring, boring stuff. I kept leaving the room... a floater.

A man showed up and took at least a hundred photographs of my parents and I. It never ended. He was having a problem with the lighting or something.

The story will run at the end of the month.

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The big five record labels are motioning to raise the price of music downloads on Itunes, Napster etc...

They think that 99 cents is too cheap and want it upped to $1.25 to as much as $2.99 a song.

Let's see now... you can buy most new albums for $6.99 to $11.99 at Best Buy or you can buy the 13 songs seperately for $13, even before the price raise! And the songs are compressed MP3s that are not the quality of an actual cd!

The future is here! Hooray for technology!

I'll buy music online when the price goes DOWN to 25 cents a song.

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The local newspaper is coming to the house for photos and an interview tomorrow, apparently. --------

Groton, Connecticut is the submarine capital of the world. As in, the submersibles, not sandwiches. I learned this from a sign in Groton that was cleverly cut in the shape of a... submarine.

Easter holds no magic anymore. Just a day with family. I'm not trying to say that spending a day with family isn't special... just that it could have been any day. There certainly would have been less traffic between here and Rhode Island on a normal day.

My grandfather made his traditional Easter breakfast, which I had no idea was a tradition because we've always been in Florida on holidays.

I took one for the team and ate the bacon. I really wanted to slip it to my parents, like you slip stuff to a dog. Oh, here's bacon... too much fat... my parent's would eat this bacon. But I was at the counter in front of my grandfather at the stove making more and more breakfast, so I couldn't not eat it. As it was, I knew I was going to have to turn down seconds over and over again. The rest of my relatives were happily eating seconds, thirds. More eggs, more bacon... I would be sick. How strange it is that they were once one of the main staples of my diet... eggs and bacon, not my relatives.

My grandparents cat only has two teeth, but he has a lot of love.

Wrote more in Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Fatness... still not sure what angle I'm approaching this thing. There were like 150 words on Uma Thurman, so very irrelevant, but that's charming to me. Hopefully the agents and publishers will think the same thing.

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It's getting colder today... highs only in the forties.

We're all leaving for Rhode Island... my granparents' house.

It's Easter Sunday.

And the heater just broke.

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Wow... wow, wow.

I haven't wanted to see a movie as bad as I want to see Garden State since Punch-Drunk Love or Royal Tenenbaums.

Fucking amazing preview. Amazing.

Finally something to cure my movie malaise.

And it's written, directed and starring the young guy from Scrubs... which is amazing in itself.

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So my father just signed for that car. A jaguar. We pick it up next week.

A motherfucking jaguar s-series.

He says he's buying me a used car this month. I haven't driven a car since last year. It will be nice to have my own freedom again, I think.

Plus I'll be able to drive myself to work.

I need a job.

I need a job.

Redesigned Jeremy's blog this morning. I was bored.

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Today I went to the movies dressed as a door to door mormon... see...

Yeah my hair is in my face. Do I think that makes me look cooler? Yeah.

At a redlight, Jeremy spots an old pink rubber volleyball and jokes that I should grab it.

So I undid my seatbelt and got out of the car. So I grabbed this dirty volleyball and threw it onto the backseat. This was for the sake of being spontaneous. We are supposed to act on impulses more often now. Do stupid shit like young guys should do. Be idiots while we still have an excuse... youth.

So yeah it's a dirty pink volleyball, but it can mean so much more. Can't you see it? Can't you see?

See look...

Got to the movies real early and the ticket lady wouldn't sell Jeremy a ticket to Girl Next Door. Maybe when he turns twenty-THREE people like her will finally believe he's at least seventeen and old enough to see a fucking R-rated movie. Me... I'll be in my forties, most likely.

Shocking discovery at the theatre tonight. There ARE good looking girls in Norwalk! Saw a later show... maybe this was the key? The girls were simply abundant and I feel I've painted the wrong picture these last few months. Maybe it's just that they're all back from college for spring break, I don't know. Maybe Alamo movies turn girls on, I don't know. There's a lot I need to learn. Like these girls' phone numbers. All of them.

Anyway, we ended up sneaking into Girl Next Door because we're WILD. We're so fucking spontaneous. We grab volleyballs off the side of the road and sneak into R-rated movies when we forget our drivers licenses. Next it's cliff diving!

Here is a photo of a dresser and mirror on the side of a building in South Norwalk. You would think that these were ordinary furniture pieces, ordinarily placed on the side of an ordinary building. No. These are in fact, solid metal art pieces. They are ART.

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Simon and Schuster have solidified a book deal with my father.

Simon and Schuster are writing up the contract.

Simon and Schuster are supposedly sending me a bunch of free books in the mail. An advance of Stephen King's new Dark Tower book and as many of the list of twenty something books I gave them that they have in stock. PERKS.

It's exciting to see deals get bounced back and forth until both sides are happy. Yesterday I wasn't very excited about the offer, today --the new offer-- is very exciting. So it was accepted.

I need to work on a proposal for my book. I want to have some sort of proposal for my father's literary agent within the next few weeks.

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Things to remember when writing diet book...

1. Girls will read it.

2. Make myself real funny for them girls that could read it.

3. I've got to be really awesome seeming.

4. Girls have got to get the impression that I was dealt a bad hand. A real raw deal. And that I deserve sympathy.

5. Girls will not be impressed with my knowledge of fiber rich foods, instead I should write entire passages about motorcycles and how I repair and do stunts on them.

6. Maybe I also get into fights all the time. That I win. But it's always to protect my girl, these fights.

7. That girl died though and I'm real bent out of shape over it.

8. I could use some sympathy right now.

9. I know magic.

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Started writing in the diet book. I am now referring to it as A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Fatness. Maybe you get the reference, maybe not. Maybe you are my friend, maybe not.

I need to buy my name's domain name. If I had money I'd buy my name's domain name.

GeorgeStella.com was purchased back in January. Back when Low Carb Revolution aired. Someone trying to make a buck.

Low Carb Revolution is in fact re-airing FOUR times the first week of May as a lead in to the show, two more times than previously thought.

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Lest you think I made up the fact that that weird graffiti was on TWO different buildings...

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Driving off into the sunset, after several hours in Borders sipping coffee and tea respectively, something catches Jeremy's eye.

Let me first say that we do not drive off into the sunset as most that ascend into sunsets go, heroes... we are but loiterers. Loiterers with $1.75 for coffee.

So now then...

There's graffiti on the side of the RadioShack. We think it's graffiti on the side of the RadioShack. We can't really make out what it is though. Just a small drawing and words that are too far away to make out. It's strange, but life moves on. We drive on.

So now then...

Walking out of Wal-Mart, I've got another coffee. Jeremy is holding bread. It is very important that you know that Jeremy is holding bread. Halfway to the car, there it is again. The graffiti. The drawing. The words...

"YOUR PERSONAL VALUE"

Right there on the side of Staples.

What does it mean? I have no idea. Just what is that drawing supposed to be? I have no idea.

Maybe you have some ideas? Discuss. Discuss the bread as well.

The bread really had no importance.

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There is a spot on my arm where I dropped a drop of super-concentrated liquid Splenda earlier and now if I lick that spot it gives my gum back it's sweetness for at least another minute.

Who needs flavor crystals?

Wrote another quickie vignette type story this morning. Maybe I'll post it when I'm feeling more brave.

Also submitted various things to more online literary magazines. I think I've submitted to over ten now. I'm going to collect the rejection emails... trade them with friends.

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From the Food Network message board to my father...

"You did not lose all of your weight by living the low carb lifestyle, we know about your gastric bypass. So spare us all of your lies and come out with it."

What an absolutely awful person. This isn't even the first message board he's said that on. (I'm guessing it's the same person anyway.)

To think of how much work this has been, how many years we kept at it, to lose and keep hundreds of pounds off... and then people can just be heartless motherfuckers like that.

Food Network's media woman tried to warn me that this stuff was inevitable. I just didn't expect it so soon.

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A fortune cookie just told me that I "am the chosen one."

That fortune cookie's been watching too much of The Matrix.

Yesterday I took a couple photos in Hastings, NY and they are now up here.

I haven't written anything tangible in DAYS. I'm going to have to do something about that. I am the chosen one.

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They wrapped my head in tin foil... I was a baked potato.

They put me under red heat lamps... I was french fries.

My family at the Food Network's favorite salon... our hair... it always takes HOURS.

YM magazine was on the counter where I was sitting. The cover said, Who would win in a fight, Jason Schwartzman or Jason Biggs? At first, I laughed at how absolutely hilarious that match-up is... and then, with nothing to think about for the hour that my hair was fondled, my thoughts turned to... Just who would win in said imaginary fight? It had become Discovery Channel's Animal Face-Off. I wanted to know what the "experts" at YM had to say about the battle and who they had decided came out on top.

I picked the magazine up and flipped through it, but teen magazines are so convoluted and full of ads and designed for people with short attention spans and so I could not find the page. So now we'll never know. Now we'll never know.

The highlights are drastic this time...

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Patheticticut... that's what all the peeps call Connecticut, so says the girl at the Borders Cafe.

In other news, I put in an application there today and she seems like she might pester them into actually LOOKING at it. That would be nice of her.

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Kitchenaid sent us a spectacular $130 blender that matches all of our red appliances. They're sending us pots, pans, knives and things next week.

The perks of television, folks.

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Do you live in any of the highlighted areas on this map?

Enjoy the cicadas! Enjoy your swarming locust like insects that only emerge every seventeen years and disgust people into going away on vacation to get away from them.

"I calculated that in the greater Cincinnati area alone there were something like five billion of them,"
-some biology professor on their last appearance

Could be worse, I suppose. You could be one of those thirteen people that were just killed by vampire bats in Brazil.

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I haven't been sleeping... haven't been writing. I think I slept maybe three hours last night, uncomfortably bent like a Z between two absolutely comatose dogs. I had given up kicking them off, they had practically given up breathing. Bent like a Z, is that even possible?

I can't decide if my problem sleeping is directly connected to coffee or directly connected to being awake in the daytime.

Really disappointed in Ben Kweller's new album. Some reason that inspired me to spend all morning mixing Need You again. I'm not sure if that makes me a perfectionist or just compulsive. This is it this time, I swear. Never again, baby... I mean it. I am content.

Finally, I declare tomorrow "Super Writing Day." What does that mean exactly? We'll see tomorrow, I suppose.

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Jeremy started drawing me. He may be finished, he may not... he may draw the Cheez-It logo beside my head is what I think he said.

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Few points of friendly concern... If you are not my friend, and or not relatively voyeuristic, you can skip all this...

Adam Bolduc, man oh man, get yourself a new phone! I have a cell phone now you crazy bastard, and you still haven't gotten one that works?

And also, how much to send me my jacket? I'll put the money in an envelope with Damien Rice's EP and then I won't have to feel so naked anymore. Please oh dear lord please don't tell me the cat has peed on it during all this time. I took so much care to keep it away from him while in town and then took no care to remember to take it back to Connecticut with me.... go figure. I don't think a box of clothes will cost that much through UPS... maybe ten dollars? I would be absolutely delighted to pay that, trust me. And also, you should really make Snow Patrol's Final Straw your newest CD purchase... I think you would dig it... and it's cheap everywhere right now.

Ryan... Ryan? Ryan? Eight days since you've updated your blog or I've heard from you. You. Are. Dead. Here is a page I've made for you to download your songs. MP3s are good enough for millions of people who pay the price of a cd for them on Itunes and Napster, so they are good enough for you to send to Trampoline Records on Monday you bastard! Make Need You the first song on the CD and after that I don't care what songs you put on there. (It should also be noted that the version of Need You that is online right now is yet a THIRD version... new mastering... new today, so download) You could hold out for more new songs before sending to Trampoline, BUT who says you can't send them more demos later? I say, don't wait any longer. I've all ready started whoring myself to literary magazines and I don't even have a short story that is longer than a page.

Adam Wekarski... you believed that Wesley Snipes killed himself and I have still not stopped laughing.

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Yesterday I got a few pictures of an amazing cemetery down the street from my house. Also, pictures of bunnies.

All of the pictures are up here.

We were out searching for jobs, something we've done every other day for weeks. It's really got me down, how there are no jobs. How I seriously have to consider places like Wendy's and how ridiculous that is.

I went to put in an application for the Borders Cafe, even though they never called Jeremy back from his application put in WEEKS ago.

Someone was asking about a job when we walked in, so I decided to eat lunch in the cafe first, then grab an application. The girl working the cafe was really nice. She was there the last time and is interested in our insistence on sugar free teas and coffees. Jeremy sits down. She asks me more questions about sugar. I'm always vague on this, because I know that if it comes out I've lost 160 pounds, I'm in for a long CONVERSATION. She gets on to calories, because of my baked chips and then asks if I've "lost weight or something." So here came the long CONVERSATION. And then she moved on to the topic of my tattoo and one knows that the tattoo is one huge flirtation device and I realized that this whole conversation was inadvertently flirty so I had to slink away in a very shy fashion, because that's my whole deal.

So eating my sandwich I came to realize that filling out an application for the cafe after this whole conversation with the girl that works there would make me look like an absolutely pathetic bastard. Like the idea to get a job there came about only because of her.

And so I continue to look... maybe I'll apply at Borders at a later date. Maybe a few more lunches in the cafe and this girl can put in a good word for me. I'm convinced that that is the only fucking way to even GET a job in this town with all of the persistence Jeremy has had and how no one even bothers to call him back.

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From Food Network's site...

NOW the reality of the show sinks in.

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Finally finished out that chapter... had to print it out, mark the shit out of it and revise it to make myself happy. Took forever. Next chapter is what I've been building up to since DAY ONE. Day one was a very, very long time ago. 2002.

50 pages now.

Last week it was 37.

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April Fools Day was Worm Day for the birds of my backyard.

Sparrows, bluejays and cardinals going apeshit over our rainy weather. It's been all winter these birds have been waiting. So I watched them all step around in the mud, stabbing the ground with their beaks. Step, stab. Step, stab. Step, stab.

I went out with my camera, but birds don't like the paparazzi, and also they have wings. Birds can fly away from crazy camera wielding pajama monsters.

Damn.

And the ground was fucking freezing.

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Google is going to be rolling out a new email service, Gmail... and I can't wait. Gmail will be completely free because of advertising... but there will be no pop up or banner ads... just non-intrusive text ads similar to the ones you don't even notice on Google's search engine. I'm about ready to cut ties with AOL completely when this goes live, depending on how well Gmail's spam filters are, because AOL's are suprisingly effective for me. I can deal with text ads... I'm about damn sick of aol's moving, flashing, animated screen stealing ads shaped like M&Ms and cars and what not when I sign on. Not to mention the full-on Usher music videos and Everwood commercials that play in the little news box without my permission... sound and everything. AOL knows I have broadband and they're not afraid to fuck me over with commercials because of it. Between AIM and Gmail, AOL is obsolete.

And did I mention that Gmail's FREE emailbox has a 1 GIGAbyte limit?

To explain... AOL's mailbox can hold a theoretical maximum of 1,000 new emails and 500 read emails. I say theoretical because read emails disappear on their own after about a week.

Gmail's gb limit will allow about 500,000 previously read emails to stick around. And unless manually deleted, they DO stick around in organized archives.

Then there's the search engine. You can easily search for a word or phrase in these past emails. In the future you could pull up results from emails you read years and years previous.

This is incredible.

I'm going to have to create a seperate account just to send myself research and facts for future reference. Say I'm writing and I need an interesting fact on insects... Instead of searching the net endlessly, I search my personal fact collection and pull up anything that I've ever sent to myself about insects. Since it was I that sent the facts to myself in the first place, they are most likely quite interesting and my work is done. This thing could be my second brain... a perfect memory.

Filing cabinets worth of notes... at my fingertips from any computer in the world.

So yeah... I'm excited. Of course, it better live up to the hype.

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A brief update on all the low-carb stuff...

Publicity for the show is about to get underway...

There's a small blurb about it in Low Carb Living magazine. Next month there will be a whole story on the family.

48 Hours story is in convenient readable form here.

Food Network's show page is here. It still isn't completely finished.

The Low Carb Revolution special airs two more times the first week in May. A kind of lead-in to the series.

And let's just say that Simon and Schuster was on the caller ID the other morning.

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