Last Beer at Marienbad

When my friend asked if I could work at 8 am the day after Halloween, I did not understand he meant from 8 am to 5:30 pm, and then from 10 pm until 1:30 am (the second 1:30 am of the night)

Recovering from five hours of sleep followed by fourteen hours of manual labor followed by five hours of sleep by drinking coffee

I've been working manual labor gigs after approaching destitution. Spent two days painting walls white, and today I loaded large potted crepe myrtles into the art museum at 7 am, and back out at 10 pm. In between I had to go play a show with my band. My thighs are jelly. Forty is fun so far.

I have to plug Wera's hex-plus allen keys. Purely superior to the standard type. They still own a patent on the geometry, but in ten years they'll be as ubiquitous as flank drive sockets.

Last week I coined the portmanteau 'barp'. It refers to the oral equivalent of a shart.

Nice crank update!

Hanging out in the parking lot of the gas station on Rampart and Governor Nicholls and guessed the wifi password of the Jazz and Heritage Center on the first try. "CongoSquare". Same thing happened in Jackson Square last spring, the password was Pontalba.

Great pedals.

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If you haven't seen the documentary Tickled, I highly recommend it. A New Zealand pop culture journalist stumbles into the world of competitive tickling tournaments and things get wildly weird.

I wanted to get day drunk today, but didn't start drinking until 5 and got sidetracked for an hour trying to buy cigarettes in the quarter after a Saints game. Might just go home and read Montaigne's essays while listening to the contemporary classical radio show, my usual Sunday night routine.

So grateful to the Paprika tour van, everyone in Braddock, my dad's prius, Mikee and Ludwig, Skullfest, Diamond Beach, my road dog Sally, Francis and Sonia, and the goth bartender who flirted with me last night. I can't wait to get home and start looking for a job.

Chance by Kem Nunn, Miss Daniella by Zdravka Evtimova, Irons in the Fire by John McPhee, With Bold Knife and Fork by M.F.K. Fisher, and Journals of the Plague Years by Norman Spinrad

Had a beautiful birthday last week with lots of old friends in Pittsburgh then caught out. My first time, it was fun and boring and also scary. My amtrak got cancelled yesterday so now I'm killing time until this evening's train is cancelled too. I bought five books at Open Books yesterday.

Me eating a popsicle with a big backpack on

I'm forty years old now and I rode a freight train and I'm stuck in Chicago!

Just saw Architecton. Some good shots of industrial processes ruined by a Dune-ass score, interspersed with a luxury goods designer hassling the workmen installing a stone circle on the grounds of his villa. Opens with hashtag stand with Ukraine, closes with bloviation. Nothing interesting to say.

The yard is a jungle and there's a broken truck and airstream back there that I need to get rid of. My neighbor brought her goats over for an hour today and they barely dented it. I'm gonna have to learn to use a weedwhacker

Incredible. As if Frazetta did a cover for Beckett's Endgame.

I'm so happy to be back in New Orleans.

I loved Bill Peet as a kid.

Thanks but I'm just visiting!

Biked from Berkeley to San Rafael this morning. Only 20 miles but maybe the longest ride I've done in the bay.

Another thing I think of often is Gene Wolfe's conjecture in an early short story that technologically competent aliens would necessarily utilize helical threads. I think I agree.

YouTube video by Sir Eric Thompson who is bozo texino? clip

I often think of this hobo's monologue. youtu.be/XdPD015Bu4w?...

Getting into Death by Thomas Disch

I'm on a roll with finding old, out of print books by Thomas Disch. The other day it was Fun With Your New Head and today it's Getting Into Death, another great collection. I hate that Disch seems so forgotten these days, but it makes me eager to preserve these ancient hardbacks.

Struck up a conversation with a lady on the train yesterday and we talked for hours. We were not flirting and she bought me three beers. Connecting with strangers is a survival skill that I worked very hard on in my 20s, and on this trip I've been alarmed to feel that I've let it atrophy.

First page of Cerulean Rodeo by Carlos Lara

This is my shit!

I was in Chicago for less than 24 hours earlier this week, and bought three books at Open Books in Pilsen. Finished The Conversions by Harry Mathews and Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy on the amtrak to LA, and have already disposed of them. So these might last me through the weekend

A Cordiall Water by M.F.K. Fisher, Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby, From Sun to Sun by Kenneth Wishnia, and Like Bismuth When I Enter by Carlos Lara

Drank coffee and bought four books at Bridge Thrift in Highland Park even though I'm living out of two bicycle panniers this month. Really excited for the Fisher and the Lara.

I was in Miami in January and while strolling along a disused boardwalk in the mangroves I stumbled on two teens smoking a blunt and listening to Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd in 2025!

Found a beat-to-hell Long Haul Trucker abandoned in a park last night. This morning I told my crustlord friend that I was going to flip the frame and they said "That's bastard." I said it was a come-up. They think I should just give it to someone. More as the situation develops.