OUT 2

Five thousand pounds of laundry need to be sorted and put away before tomorrow morning. But eff that – it’s nice again today and I am gonna sit outside to try to raise my pallor from Corpse to The Very Ill. That’s like a full two shades up, pretty ambitious.

The first thing I notice as I bring out my boombox and bottled water and stack of magazines is that the $20 worth of steaks I had to toss in the dumpster yesterday has made the air smell like rotting death. This is not appealing at all, and seriously cuts into my enjoyment of my serene lounging experience. It is a testament to my desperation for some sun exposure that I will continue to sit there, breathing shallowly. Oh, well. It doesn’t seem to matter to the dog, who is on her side sleeping in the shady dirt. She probably prefers it.

A loud scary little black helicopter flies overhead and I squint up at it, frowning. It looks like a horrible black wasp, and I feel like shooing it away or blasting it with a jet of Raid WASP-NOT. Nasty thing.

Ko Melina’s incessant nervous laughter on her SIRIUS Underground Garage show also interferes with my happiness. Stop it, ma’am. When she stops talking for a second at least I get to hear “Green Fuz” by The Green Fuz, which maybe be the lowest of low-fi garage punk classics. Ahhh. Now that’s more like it. I love how the drum break sounds like a junior-high-school drum section bashing away, and I hope it was.


My god, those steaks smell so BAD. HA HA.

As I read, everything from pop culture garbage to cool California driving trips to new iTouch apps to fiction reviews to quotes from Clarence Darrow to microdermabrasion recovery times to the long and disturbing cultural trend of binge drinking in the UK, four things cross my mind:

1. Making real connections to other people and things is what makes life rich, expands the mind and heart, is the frosting on the cake, but you cannot depend on them to be your life. Your connections are not you, just adjuncts and hopefully very good and positive adjuncts. At the end of the day, you are on your own.

2. Statement #1 is not sad. It just is.

3. You can’t grasp the responsibilities nor appreciate the depth of the possibilities of the freedom you were born with until you accept #1 and #2.

4. Perhaps the rancid steaks are poisoning me.

Time to go in from out, get back to the laundry, not as white as I was but I never tan anyway.

Rolling Stones -- "I'm Free"