Colors ooze warping like a rainbow with no horizontal hold. Stale yellow light sputters from the lamp by my bed. The walls are florescent purple, for now but not for long, and already they’re turning blue. It’s 1:37 in the morning.

From above I’m watching younger me romping with April, my girlfriend from fifteen years ago. We didn’t have much in common, but Lord, she had a great body, and I had access to it. I still dream about April once in a while, which is great, but not when it's like this.

The colors absorb her, then me, and we’re gone. Margaret calls collect, though there’s no phone and no sound, and she asks why I’m boinking April, not her. Good question. It is peculiar.

The red numbers on my digital clock are glowing blue. The lamp flickers again. Is the building burning down, and the flames are affecting the electricity? Is that the way it works when there’s a fire? Is there a fire?

Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t matter, and my mind wanders. The blue numbers on the clock are green, but time stands still.

Like a watched pot simmering, I slowly, slowly become aware that I'm stuck somewhere between sleep and purgatory. I want to slap myself awake but my arm weighs about 600 pounds. Half an hour later I’ve lifted it, but it's sooo heavy, and I’m too exhausted to do anything with it, and it crashes down on my face.

Ouch. That hurts, but not enough to wake me up. My arm has lost some weight, and I lift it and drop it on my head again. Still all the colors in the room are inconsistent, and the lamp is flickering Neapolitan. The clock, now yellow, says just one damn minute has gone by.

Trying to open my eyelids is like picking up a piano, but pianos can be lifted, and eventually eyes open. The lamp flickers once last time, whitely, weakly, with a sizzling short-circuit sound. A horn honks on the street below, and I’m awake.

The lamp doesn’t need repairs. It wasn’t even switched on. The clock’s numbers are red like they’re supposed to be, and it’s 1:39. All the above took two minutes but felt like the whole night.

There's no way I'm getting back to sleep, and anyway, I'd be afraid of another dream like that one. I grab a piece of paper and a pen, and race to write all of it before the memory can disappear. Then I read what I’ve written, but writing it is a clearer memory than living it. Typing it a few minutes later, it’s not even a memory, just words.

Dreams are some crazy shit, man. That wasn’t strange enough to be acid flashback, but it was strange enough, and drugs weren’t even involved.

You ever have dreams like that, where you’re locked between worlds, paralyzed, nothing makes sense, and you’re flying through memories and colorscapes and fog and light and fire?

I’ve had dreams like that 5 or 7 times in my life, and always it terrifies me. Maybe it's a medical condition, or mental. Reality is preferred. Or I'd at least like to finish what I was doing with April.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s an hour later, and I don’t remember the dream at all. Dreams fade, but I remember waking up scared out of my friggin’ gourd. I’m still afraid to sleep, and I don’t trust the lamp, and I've hardly slept, and I have to be at work in an hour. Today is gonna suck.

♦ ♦ ♦

Today sucked.

♦ ♦ ♦

I haven’t brushed my teeth in a few days. Keep your distance. Usually I’ll Pepsodent once or twice daily, before work and maybe after lunch. Monday through Friday anyway, thought I never much bother with it on the weekends.

My mouth is full of canker sores, though, and brushing seems to aggravate the situation, so I’ll be Mr Bad Breath until the cankers subside. Right now I'm doing that thing where you hold your hand over your face and breath your breathe? It's not a pretty smell.

Once upon a time, I lied on my resumé that I’m Lotus-proficient, when actually it’s astounding how much I don’t know about the PC spreadsheet program. Today, my boss Darla said, “You’re the spreadsheet guy, right?”

“Whatever you need,” I said, instead of “Absolutely not.”

I took notes about the data she wants in the spreadsheet, and asked where to find that data, and now all I need to know is the first thing about Lotus 1-2-3.

In 40 minutes of frustration I opened a new file, got the headers set up, and keyed in the first few lines of data. How to set up formulas? How to get the thing to add up totals? I have no idea, but the deadline is a week away. I can put together a spreadsheet in a week, even if I have to buy Lotus for Dummies.

♦ ♦ ♦

Sweet Maggie called again, at my counter at work. That’s the only place anyone can ring me. It's the only phone I have.

Usually Sweet Maggie and Sour Maggie call together and take turns talking, but today Sour Maggie wasn’t on the line. Sweet Maggie can be, well, sweet. She deserves a better life, and she might find it, if she keeps Sour Maggie locked up in a dungeon somewhere.

Even Sweet Maggie seems unhappy, though. She has all sorts of problems, and it would be inappropriate to go into detail about her life in my zine, so I’ll just say — it sounds like everything she’s going through is going wrong. There’s no joy for her, and everyone deserves some joy, but making a major change is not an option, she says.

It’s a universal truth, I think — momentum and inertia and force of habit holds everyone back. We all tend to stay where we are, do what’s easy and expected, whether we like it or not.

Momentum or habit kept me in Seattle all through my 20's and early 30's. I wanted out, but maybe I didn’t know I wanted out. I was petrified at the prospect of breaking away, so I put ‘breaking away’ on a shelf, and ignored the idea for years. Things got better when I took it off the shelf and did what I wanted to do.

A life that’s tolerable isn’t much of a life. It’s the opposite of a life.

To Maggie, I said, “Figure out what you want, and grab it."

She thought I was trying to talk her into moving to San Francisco, but I absolutely wasn't. Having her in San Francisco would make me crazy. And anyway, she's decided she doesn't want to live here, and I respect that.

"I’m not telling you what to do," I said. "I'm just saying, do whatever you want to do.”

♦ ♦ ♦

“I’m the happiest person I know,” I told my mom a few weeks ago, when she was here and doing all she could to make me unhappy again. I tried to explain to her what I meant, but she never understood. She never tried.

I’m living a quiet, boring life, with no major goals, few friends, no girl, no God, a job I don’t care about, no corporate ladder worth climbing, and nothing at all I want to accomplish. Yet I’m ecstatic, compared to where I was.

Do I want more out of life? Of course! I’d love a lusty lover, and dozens of friends dropping by for witty, philosophically astute conversations, and something or someone to care about. There’s none of that. Maybe one day there will be, and that would be excellent, but right now I'm alone, and solitude works better for me than fakery.

When I eureka-slapped myself with this understanding, it felt like a 50-pound backpack of bullshit had been lifted off my shoulders. That’s when I knew it was time to say goodbye to the faux friends and shallow social life. I came to California, where I knew no-one and no-one knew me, and here I’ve built my new and improved life around the simple glory of being known to no-one.

And I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Hell, I am happy almost every day of my life, at least when my mom ain’t here. Even on occasional days when I get the blues, I’m still happier than the best days in my old life.

♦ ♦ ♦

When Margaret described her pathetic life today, I heard the life I left behind. Nobody likes a preacher, so I don't proselytize to her about what I’ve done, and anyway, the specifics of what worked for me might not work for her. She’s damaged, and I’m damaged, but our damages aren’t the same.

So I asked her, "What would make you happier?”

“I don’t know,” she said. And then I said some stuff, and she said some stuff, and she said again, “I don’t know what I want.”

A lot of people don’t know what they want. They know they don’t have it, know they’ve never had it, but they don’t know what it is. They wander around looking for what they might want, without ever knowing what they’re looking for. Maybe they eventually find it. Most likely they don’t, but they settle for something that’s sorta like what they never figured out they wanted.

Or maybe I’m full of shit. I’m the only person I really know, and my own story is the only story I can tell. My story is, I spent years not knowing what I wanted, but maybe that’s just me.

Some of this I said to Margaret, in mostly the wrong words, and of course she didn’t understand it. I have barely figured out anything in my own life, and I sure can’t figure out anyone else’s. Probably she was more of a mess after talking to me than before she called.

Sorry, Mags. I want you to be happy, but I am nobody’s shrink or guru or father figure, and there’s no self-help book in me. And also it’s hard to have a conversation about the meaning of life, on the phone at my counter at work.

Most of today was spent editing the August issue, stalking the wild typo and battling my tendency to say the same thing I already said in the previous paragraph. Re-reading my mother’s visit, guess it seemed like she’s a monster, but she’s not. She’s my mom and I love her. What happened happened, though.

These first three months of Pathetic Life haven’t been what my life usually is. There's been a visitor every month, but ordinarily it's just me, going to work and maybe the movies, talking to myself and sometimes the homeless people. Nothing much happens, and that’s been my routine for many months, until the last three, so don’t be expecting guest stars all the time.

♦ ♦ ♦

By late afternoon, I needed a break from all the words, so I took a round trip to nowhere on the 38 Geary. Two buses went past, too jammed with people to let anyone else aboard, and I took the third bus, where there were empty seats. I took two, as I do, and rode far enough to smell the ocean, then came back.

I abhor advertising, but if there must be billboards all over, Heather Locklear’s face is a torture I’ll submit to. She’s currently plastered across almost every bus shelter, her head blown up six feet tall, four feet wide.

She must be somehow computer-generated — Heather has no pimples, no sweat glands, no imperfections. She is myth America: blond hair, blue eyes, a hint of a smile. At every corner she says, “Mondays are a bitch,” because she plays a bitch on some TV show, and the show is moving to Monday nights. I’ve never seen her TV show, and assume it stinks.

Gotta wonder what damage all the billboards with beautiful women do, to women who don't look like Heather Locklear. Very few do, you know. It must be subliminally crushing for an ordinary woman to compare herself to this airbrushed and Photoshopped imaginary-perfect Locklear thing, who probably spent four hours in a make-up chair before the photographer showed up.

♦ ♦ ♦

On the bus ride back, a middle-aged couple sat across the aisle, sharing an open map of the city. They spoke quiet Lithuanian (for all I know), and by their tone and gestures it was obvious that they were lost.

"You folks lost?" I said, but they shriveled in their seats as if I'd waved a gun. I shook my head, turned away and looked out the window again. I’m not often Mr Nice Guy, and when I am people think they’re going to get mugged.

They got off the bus a few blocks later, with a sudden air of assurance, as if they knew where they were. And where were they? At the door of the Mitchell Brothers’ O'Farrell Theater, a pornography palace at a dangerous edge of the Tenderloin. With cheery smiles, they got in line to buy tickets, and I waved goodbye to them as the bus rolled away.

On this lovely Sunday morning, I thought I’d check out the new Pier 32 Market, which promises to give San Francisco something it lacks but needs — a year-round public market.

Walking to the bus stop, I passed up my 4,639th opportunity to take that Scientology personality test. “I have no personality,” I explained to the zombie, and he was off to hustle the next suckers.

Waiting at Market & Stockton, I watched a young slacker climb the scaffolding in front of Merrill’s, to lie down for an afternoon slumber on the lumber one story above the sidewalk. Then an inbound bus took me to the beginning of Market Street, and I walked the sunny Embarcadero to Pier 32.

On the way, a Mexican tourist family flagged me down to take their picture. Guess they hadn’t heard from yesterday’s Lithuanians how frightening I can be. They wanted the Bay Bridge in the background, but mostly what they’ll get is the big “No Parking” sign they were standing in front of.

Sorry to say, the Pier 32 Market isn’t much. They have lots of hucksters selling cheap art and wood carvings and health crystals and tie-dyed shirts, and plenty of junk food stands, but no fresh fruits or vegetables.

I’m from Seattle, where the Pike Place Public Market is a famous and fabulous collection of fruits and vegetables and fish and whatnot, so my standards are perhaps too high, but Pier 32 is a rummage sale. In twenty minutes I'd seen it all, and was ready to leave without buying anything or wanting to. The location has potential, so perhaps I’ll wander back in a couple-four months, but for now it’s a yawn on the waterfront.

They did have a decent band rocking the asphalt, but there was no sign announcing who they were. Should I have knocked on a drum to ask, while they were playing?

After that sunny disappointment, I walked the tracks down the Embarcadero, to what will be the end of a new streetcar line that's under construction, at 3rd & King.

I lunched at Happy Donuts, a good cafe I’d stop at again. My egg salad sandwich was nicely spiced, stood about five inches tall, and came with fruit salad and chips on the side, all for just $5. Maybe that’s expensive where you are, but in Frisco it’s a good price.

On an impulse I took a 30 Stockton to Fisherman’s Wharf, to say hi to the seals and buy a few new extra-huge t-shirts at the Blue Victorian Fatboy Shirt Company.

The ride back was textbook Muni, with approximately 120 people sweating on top of each other in a bus that seats 50. “How do we get out?” some sweet young thang asked when we got to Union Square.

She was asking her mother, but I answered: “Like this,” and parted the multitudes with my standard line in such situations, “Fat guy coming through.”

Then I loitered in the square for a while, shaking my flab at the marimba player. Union Square is the nicest thing about the neighborhood where I live. That, and my one-block-walk commute to work.

Walking down Ellis Street toward home sweet hovel, the big Les Joulins Bistro banner across the sidewalk always dangles low enough to bump my head, so I make a point of whacking at it with my fist. Today, though, the banner fluttered down to the ground when I whacked it — a pleasant surprise. I’ll whack it twice as hard next time, or maybe scissor out some head room. I believe I have the right to walk on the sidewalk without ducking under their big ugly banner, or having it mess my crew-cut.

I packed a few peanut butter sandwiches for one more bus trip and back, to see a double feature at the 4-Star Theater out in the avenues. Little Buddha is by Bernardo Bertolucci, and it’s a child’s eye introduction to Buddhism. That's perfect for me, as I know next to nothing about the subject, so I became the child and was utterly absorbed.

Going in, I’d have thought that Keaunu Reeves as Buddha might rival John Wayne as Genghis Khan for silliness, but Reeves is believable as an innocent seeker of wisdom. It’s a joyous and thoughtful movie, with a surprising sense of humor along the way. I especially liked the closing shot, after the credits. (You do stay through the credits, right?)

I remain unconverted, though. There's no arguing with the moral of the story, that all is dust, but it's a long leap from that to the Buddhist belief that the dust of us will be reincarnated after death, instead of simply blowing away. As with Christians and their cute myths, reincarnation is a nice idea with no evidence behind it — a fairy tale. I’m a seeker of wisdom too, but in fifty years you and I and everyone reading this will be dust.

The movie’s set-piece object lesson on this actually made my point, not theirs. To illustrate reincarnation for a disbeliever, one of the monks smashes a cup of tea. “The cup is the body,” he says, as he cleans up the mess, “and the tea is the soul. This cup is no more, but the tea is everywhere — on the floor, on the table, in this towel (he wrings it out) and it is still tea.”

That's very zen indeed, but what will the tea be in a week? Dust.

Like Water for Chocolate was the second feature, and it’s an interesting but slight soap opera / comedy about true love, with a wicked mother who forbids her daughter to marry. The lead actress is gorgeous, which happens a lot in the movies. Marco Leonardi is her love interest, which startled me — he was Italian when I last saw him, in Cinema Paradiso, but he’s defected and now he’s Mexican, speaking fluent Spanish. Being bilingual must be a great advantage if you’re an actor looking for roles.

Now I'm back in my tiny room in this skuzzy hotel, and it’s been a delightful day. No conversations, no hassles, and no place to be except where I wanted to be. Toss in enough sunshine during daylight that it's still warm late in the evening, and there’s just no such thing as a nicer day than today.

And all my bus rides were on the same transfer. The fine print says bus transfers expire after two hours, but most drivers don’t even glance at it so mine lasted twelve. Is this a great town or what?

Happy Labor Day. It's a day off from work — the very definition of 'happy' — and with pay. Hooray for that, but what does it mean, really?

Is Labor Day supposed to mean 'thanks' to the people who do the work? That’s me and probably you, but I’ve never felt thanked. I did not receive a “thank you” memo from my boss. Did you? I don’t think I’d want my boss to say a special ‘thank you’. It would be awkward, and anyway, I wouldn’t believe it.

♦ ♦ ♦

Found in one of the hotel’s shower stalls: One bottle of Revlon Normal-to-Dry Flex Brand Body-Building Balsam & Protein Shampoo (“balanced cleansing for clean, healthy shine”), and one bottle of Revlon Dry/Damaged Flex Brand Body-Building Balsam & Protein Conditioner ("penetrates, moisturizes, helps mend split ends”).

Every word on either bottle is bullshit, I believe, with the possible exception of ‘shampoo’. I don’t even know what a ‘conditioner’ is. Both bottles smell like a chemical accident, and people pay to rub this stuff into their hair?

I shampoo with the same cheap bar of soap that cleans my arms, ass, and genitals. People complain about my breath, my manners, and my zine, but I’ve never heard a word against my hair.

♦ ♦ ♦

On a morning stroll to Civic Center and back, I was pleased to see the marquee lit up at the Strand Theater. I loved that scummy, run-down movie palace, and watched many double and triple features there, until it closed a few months ago.

The Strand is open again, and now playing is … triple-X hardcore porn. The doors are glass so I peered inside, and it’s even seedier than a few months back when the place was legit. It’s still a bargain, too — admission $5 any time, says the sign, for “five fleshy features”.

I’m not a customer, though. I've been to porn theaters a few times, years and years ago, and to each his own, but for me it’s an uncomfortable experience. Everyone’s there to get aroused, obviously, but then what are you supposed to do? Step into the men’s room? Whack off in the seats like Pee Wee Herman? You can usually see guys stroking it in the shadows, and you can smell it too. Call me quaint, but I’m not dripping seed onto the floor in a theater.

♦ ♦ ♦

Still enchanted by Bertolucci’s Little Buddha, I went to the Castro for the restoration of his The Conformist (1970). Quirky camera work, in the story of an average Joe Fascist in WW2 Italy, who’s willing to do almost anything to convince himself he’s normal. (Luckily, I’ve given up on that quest.) It’s an intense drama with moments of absurdity, and it’s supposed to be a classic, but it didn’t work for me.

That might not be the movie’s fault, though. I was stuck in front of a non-stop loud whisperer, and we had words (not whispered) about twenty minutes into the show. When I stood up, he finally shut up, but for the rest of the movie I was wondering if he might kick my head from behind.

Then from the other side of the auditorium some schmuck started snoring like thunder over a volcano. The movie was half over before anyone nudged him awake, and ten minutes later he started snoring again.

♦ ♦ ♦

On my way home, I wandered into a few head shops, looking for mace or pepper spray to replace what was stolen at the airport. I bought a very small can for a very big price ($12.95!), but I’m tired of carrying the switchblade. It’s too bulky, and too deadly.

At work today, four new junior executives joined “the team.” Four is also the number of junior executives who were laid off in February.

That’s the way this famous department store operates: Seven months ago, a supersized suit in New Jersey decided that our office in California had too many junior executives, so four of them were axed. Now, some other suit somewhere must’ve complained that we don’t have enough junior executives to do all the junior executing that needs to be done, so we have four new suits.

One of the laid-off junior execs from February stopped in to say hi a few weeks ago, and she’s still out of work, but why would she be considered for her old job? That would be silly, when kids fresh from college are available for a lower salary.

So on the 8th floor today, four new bosses walked around, introduced themselves, and shook a lot of hands. They think they’re starting their careers. I think all of them will be laid off within a year or two.

Welcome to “the team.” We’re in last place, and you’ll soon see why.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jennifer is nominally my sort-of supervisor. We’re the same rank (peon), but she’s the lead peon — she’s been here the longest, so management assumes she knows the most. They’re wrong about that. Jennifer has worked here since the Truman administration, but she might know the least of anyone in my office group.

The peon who knows everything is Marcia. She knows our software and procedures, better than any of the executives. She knows the legal and business and interdepartmental ramifications of coding something X instead of Y. She knows how to sweet-talk the bosses who need to be coddled, and how to cut straight to a solution when something’s gone wrong — even bizarre things that have never gone wrong before. She knows which rules we need to follow, and which rules are merely piffle from upstairs. Whatever it is, Marcia knows it.

Despite her brains and knowledge, though, despite her efficient demeanor, college degree, and her ability to both do the work and explain the work, Marcia will never be management at this job. She was hired as a worker, and she’ll be a worker until she quits or gets laid off. I know of no-one in this company who’s ever been promoted from worker to boss. It simply isn’t done.

Marcia is quietly looking for a job with more of a future, and when she finds that job, things at our workplace will be ... interesting. We had a sneak preview a few weeks ago, when she called in sick for three days. Things that needed to be done weren’t done, Jennifer made a big mistake because Marcia wasn't there to talk her out of it, and all the tough questions that came up were left on Marcia's desk, unanswered until she returned.

A chart is sometimes circulated, showing everyone who works on floors 8-10, with our job titles and work groups, and who outranks who. It's laid out like a pyramid, and of course, Marcia is beside me at the bottom. In reality she’s the cornerstone, and when she’s gone, the whole place will teeter and then topple.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tomorrow I’ll turn in that Lotus spreadsheet my boss assigned to me. It's pretty slick, and it'll be two days early. Call me an idiot, but I wanted to make a good impression, so I stayed late to work on it tonight, on my own time … while the photocopier was printing my zine, to save me from paying $60 at a copy shop.

♦ ♦ ♦

The zines were still warm when I dropped them off at home, and bused to the late show of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T at the Red Vic. It’s not a masterpiece, and parts of it are boring, but mostly it's surreal fun.

The story? A little kid hates his piano lessons, falls asleep, and dreams he’s in Piano Hell. It’s written by Dr Seuss, though, so there’s more to the tale than the telling. There's a stairway to nowhere, green-skinned dancers on a huge xylophone, a piano with 44,000 keys, some very bad acting, and the constant fear that anyone on screen could burst into yet another excruciating song.

It was made for kids, but there are many campy or even kinky moments for adults. There are men on skates, Mom stuck in the lock-me-tight, the dancing and entrancing Dr Terwilliker and Mr Zabladowski, and a song that’s an ode to bondage and discipline. When the plumber and the little boy finish their duet and their eyes meet, you’ll swear they’re about to kiss.

Quoting from the theater’s program, which quoted The Village Voice, the movie “rivals Elvis as the most perverse thing the ‘50s produced.”

♦ ♦ ♦

On billboards in the Haight, Heather wears a nose ring.

♦ ♦ ♦

Here’s something unexpected in the mailbag — it’s a Christian zine, full of Bible quotes, poems about Jesus, and inspirational pictures and articles, all neatly and probably prayerfully prepared. I sincerely respect the effort, but please gag me gently with a cross.

Mucus from the moment I woke up, and a runny nose and scratchy throat. I went to work, of course. They'd have to pay to keep me away — sick leave, it's called, and we don't have it.

If the mucus blooms into a cold or flu that prevents me from seeing tomorrow’s Jackie Chan double feature ... screw it, I’ll probably go anyway. I’m Typhoid Doug.

♦ ♦ ♦

There’s a great crumpet shop in Seattle, cleverly called The Crumpet Shop, where they make crumpets — a British breakfast treat, mostly unknown in America. It's like an English muffin, but softer, sweeter, fluffier, chewier, and tastier.

Living near that shop years ago, I became an addict, but in San Francisco nobody knows what crumpets are.

Now, Beatrice knows. She's a nice old lady who works one floor above me at the office. We’ve interacted a few times and occasionally e-mail jokes to each other, or snide remarks about the company. A week ago, I mentioned crumpets to Beatrice for some reason, and she of course e-mailed back, “What’s a crumpet?,” so I told her about crumpets, and my withdrawal pangs.

This morning Beatrice came to my desk with something hidden behind her back — a package of 16 crumpets she’d bought at Costco. What a wonderful surprise! I said thank you, awkwardly of course. An unexpected gift is like a compliment; they're both rare, and leave me bewildered and blank.

Mmmm, crumpets. I could've eaten the whole bag all at once, but I decided to be nice instead. At lunch I walked home, and came back with my toaster, and some margarine and honey and raspberry jam — crumpets for everyone in the office, except the executives. I e-mailed Beatrice, "There's a crumpet feast going on," and she came down.

She didn’t care for the crumpets, though. Nobody much did. Crumpets from Costco, really, what can you expect? They were frozen, factory crumpets, not fresh-baked like at the Crumpet Shop. Not great, but crumpets, and they’re all gone now. 4¼ were eaten by others, 3¾ were eaten by me at work, and the other 8 came home, and they're all in my belly now. Thanks again, Beatrice.

♦ ♦ ♦

Do you have e-mail? They added it at work a few months ago, and it’s a marvelous invention for introverts. No worries about saying something stupid. You type, change it around, delete it and start over, or do other things for an hour until maybe the right words pop into your head. Then you hit 'send'.

It’s the opposite of talking — you can take your time and make sense, or even seem clever. Too bad e-mail is only at work. I want e-mail in life. I'd like to stop talking entirely, and when communication is needed, give other humans my e-mail address instead.

♦ ♦ ♦

With some recent reshuffling of duties and workflow, there's been less work than usual for my group. Jennifer came by today, and told each of us one-by-one, “Work slow.” I always do what I’m told.

♦ ♦ ♦

Between buying t-shirts on Sunday, pepper-spray Monday, lots of stamps for the zine yesterday, and a FastPass today, I’m suddenly poorer than usual. There’s $27 in my wallet, and another $20 stashed away for just-in-case, but that’s all there is. No bank account.

It's not an emergency, and unless there's a stick-up I'm fine until payday (Friday), but I’m only a week ahead on the rent. Gotta start budgeting better, especially since my job is anything but secure.

♦ ♦ ♦

From the mailbag:

I am in complete empathy with your views of family and co-workers, and would rather spend a night alone with a good book than a night out with a bunch of wanna-be alcoholics at a bar. My zine tends to be as social as I get…
—Joel Epanouri, Chaos

We’re a couple of anti-socialists, Joel. Maybe some guy down the hall in my building would be the best friend of my life, but I’ll never know, because I’ll never say anything to him.

♦ ♦ ♦

Knocked off early for bed, still with that scratchy throat and drippy nose. Jackie Chan tomorrow, though.

Slept well, but woke up with that dry throat and leaky nose again. What’s the worst it could be? Throat cancer, I guess, but more likely it's a flu.

Obviously, I should've been a responsible adult, called in sick, drank plenty of fluids, got plenty of rest, blah blah blah — but I wanted to see Drunken Master (1978) and Drunken Master II (1993) at the UC Theater, and the movies played only today.

At work I really sold it — sniffling and moaning and groaning — and then “went home sick," but instead of going home I walked straight to the BART station. Catching the matinee instead of evening show was cheaper, and got me back to the rez hotel and tucked into bed nice and early.

I’d seen Drunken Master before, which is why I needed to see it again. Chan plays a street-fighter named Wong Fei-Hung, or as the bad guy calls him, “Good Guy.” His domineering father sends him to learn advanced kung fu from a legendary master of the martial arts, and the master’s secret is heavy drinking — wine affects him like spinach affects Popeye.

It's ridiculous, and the exaggerated crack-crack sound for every blow gets tiresome, and some of the subtitles are clunky (“Only him are quite enough you”), but so what?

It's an action movie so action is what matters, and there’s plenty, and it's all like nothing you've seen before (unless you've seen other Jackie Chan movies). The training sequences are especially marvelous, but all the stuntman-free stunt-work is breathtaking, and it’s a jolly good time.

Drunken Master II, you’ll be surprised to learn, is a sequel, and like any sequel, it’s disappointing. The fights and stunts are even more amazing than the original, but a movie, even an action movie, cannot live by action alone.

In the first movie Good Guy's father is tough, overbearing, and our hero can’t get away with anything at home. In this sequel, Dad is simply a buffoon, played by a different actor, and both Good Guy and his mother (who was unseen in the first movie) can and do fool him often.

Also, in the first movie Dad wanted his son to learn the "drunken boxing" technique. He sent him away to learn it. After learning it, Good Guy used that technique to save his father's life. But in the second movie, Buffoon Dad is adamantly against his son’s “drunken boxing” technique. Why the change of heart, Dad? It's never explained.

I hate what they've done to Dad — it ruins an essential ingredient, like redoing Full Metal Jacket with Pauly Shore as the drill sergeant. But enough about Buffoon Dad. The furious fighting finale overcomes the sequel’s shortcomings, so you ought to see Drunken Master II, too.

Drunken Master III is now playing at the Great Star Theater in Chinatown, and Drunken Master IV is playing in Hong Kong. Just like Hollywood, anything that’s a hit will be duplicated for as long as people buy tickets. Neither III nor IV has Jackie Chan, though, so why bother?

The Roxie is running a Norma Shearer retrospective all week, and since I haven't seen many of her movies, I went to tonight’s opening double feature.

Private Lives (1931) is an adaptation of Noel Coward’s witty stage farce about a divorced couple falling in love and hate a second time. Ms Ex (Shearer) and Mr Ex (Robert Montgomery) are both honeymooning with their new spouses ... at the same hotel ... and in adjoining rooms (which seems unlikely).

Amusing shenanigans ensue, of course. They smooch, then argue, smooch again, argue again, and it's screwball sinful pre-code stuff, so thumbs up from me. Also, you want to buy popcorn when you're at the Roxie. They have the best popcorn in town.

The second feature was The Divorcee (1930), and it was not so funny. Shearer plays a devoted but rather boring wife, whose boring husband confesses to a brief affair. “I was plastered,” he says. “It didn’t mean anything,” at which point the boos and hisses from the audience nearly drowned out the soundtrack. (San Francisco does not approve of your pretty infidelity!)

Norma mulls it over, and wonders, if his affair meant nothing, will it mean nothing if I have an affair, too? She decides to find out (San Francisco approves of this). For about fifteen minutes, as issues of sex-defined morality are pondered, the movie is quite compelling, but everything that happens before and after is hopelessly dated, and also overacted and melodramatic.

♦ ♦ ♦

After the movies, chomping a cheeseburger deluxe at the Sincere Cafe, I read what the Examiner’s film critic, Barbara Shulgasser, had written about what I’d just seen.

Usually I envy film critics their free passes and private screenings, but avoid their commentary, because (at least in this town) a movie critic can’t simply say whether a show is worth seeing. Nope, they're required by the Critics Union to list every plot element, tell a comedy's best jokes, and reveal all the should-be surprises in the plot. So I sometimes quickly skim a review to help decide whether a new movie is worth $5, but never really read a review in advance. After seeing the movie, maybe I’ll read the review.

Under the headline "Shearer heaven at the Roxie," Shulgasser writes about this week's Shearer shows, but it's cockeyed. She has the star and co-star of The Divorcee right, but all the plot details she recites are just plain wrong. Whatever movie she's writing about is not the movie I saw half an hour earlier.

Is her review based on mistaken recollections from watching this movie long ago? Probably. She's a solid critic, maybe the best in the city, and after writing about thousands of movies, I suppose it would be easy to misfile an index card and get the facts wrong. Maybe she's accidentally described the plot of some other Shearer movie from this week’s festival.

The article says Shearer spent most of her career playing modern, liberated women, who are usually punished for their non-conformity by the end of the movie. That’s a fair summary of The Divorcee — and that’s what made the movie such a let-down for me. I wanted the protagonist to be modern and liberated and not punished for it.

♦ ♦ ♦

Checked my messages from a phone booth at the corner, and there were two calls from Mom. First, she invited me to visit on the last weekend of this month, and then she called back, offering to buy my air fare. Her church’s 75th anniversary celebration is coming up, and Mom doesn’t want me to miss it.

Sigh and yawn. She’d mentioned this big event during her visit last month — several times, and several times I’d replied that I might visit Seattle some time, but the church’s birthday bash didn’t interest me.

Nothing against the church or the people who attend, because hey, they're good people, and I have some happy memories there (mostly un-sanctioned by the pastor, in the basement or boiler room). I'm just not a churchgoing man.

I called back and told Mom “no thanks," or rather, I told her answering machine. Ten bucks says she calls tomorrow to ask again.

♦ ♦ ♦

Walking the few blocks from BART to my rez hotel, there were roller-skaters everywhere — hundreds of them, wheeling by in wave after wave down Powell Street. Seeing so many skaters is unusual, even by Frisco standards, and it made me laugh. I wanted to ask what it was all about, but they were moving too fast to be asked.

Anyway, the answer is obvious: They were roller-skating by the hundreds because they could, and because it’s fun.

♦ ♦ ♦

I know you were worried, but my throat is no better, no worse. Muscles I never use are kinda achy. Had to go to work today, though, and share whatever this bug might be, because there’s no sick leave and I’m on a budget. And then I had to go to the movies, because I'm an ass.

I’ve been feeling poorly for days, so like a good sicko I stayed in bed all day. Overdosed on vitamin C, read lots of zines and about ⅓ of Les Miserables, until the book began to bore me. Everyone says it’s a great novel, so I tried, but — Victor Hugo, my ass. The protagonist is too ceaselessly righteous to be believed.

And along the same intravenous vein, let’s look at a few brief snippets from the zine’s mailbag over the past few days:

“… As I read more of your journal, I begin to worry that you might be considering suicide. That’s no answer, Doug …”
—Aaron Jacobs
“… I hope the keeps you from putting your head in the oven one night…”
—Jeff Koyen, Crank
… Just remember, Doug, there’s no easy way out, and some of us really care …”
—Phillip
“I don’t know if ‘enjoy’ is quite the right word for my feelings about a zine with as much pain in it as yours, but I’m fascinated by it …”
—Arthur D. Hlavaty, Derogatory Reference

This is becoming a recurring theme, so let's put an end to it, pronto.

This is my life, folks. It’s not The Brady Bunch. I have few friends and keep my family at a distance because I prefer the space. I live in a hovel because it’s cheap, and leaves more money for movies and ham sandwiches. This is the life I’ve chosen for myself, and I’m generally quite pleased with it.

I reserve the right to get depressed now and then, but nothing here is a frantic plea for help, honest. If it comes off as some kind of suicidal wall-to-wall woe-is-me, please adjust your fine tuning and enjoy the angst, as I do. I’m about as happy as a hermit can be, but SWEET JESUS WHERE’S MY PROZAC?

I didn’t open my eyes until noon, after 11½ hours of snore time, and I was feeling two-gazillion times better than the past few days. I glanced out the window, saw a beautiful day over the dumpsters, and had an urge to take a walk to no particular destination.

Britches on, plus a t-shirt and shoes, I stepped out of the rez hotel. Flipped an imaginary coin and went left instead of right, and my feet took me to the financial district. Monday-Friday those blocks are full of asswipes, but it’s beautiful when it’s deserted.

I wandered among the Embarcadero buildings, and at the foot of California Street, I saw Angry Man_._ He’s one of my favorite street people, a white guy who’s probably 40 but looks 60, and likes to scream at people. A few years back, I had a crap job in the financial district, and often enjoyed Angry Man being angry. In my better moods I’d yell back at him.

We had no disagreements, though. He’s some kind of a lefty pinko, and so am I, so I always thought he was right about whatever he yelled about, when I could make sense of it. He would yell and I'd yell back at him, but I'd only yell my sympathies and acceptance with his finer points.

Today he was sitting on the bench at the cable car turnaround, and here's the part of his shtick I love best: He’s sly. He’s quiet for long stretches, until everyone nearby thinks he’s just another homeless guy in ratty clothes ... and then without warning he starts screaming angry politics, and people jump in fright, and then they cringe or hurry away, and it's hilarious.

He was still in stealth mode when we saw each other this afternoon, and he recognized me as soon as I recognized him. He waved at me, and I waved back, and thought of James Taylor:

Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I'll be there, yes I will
You've got a friend

And then Angry Man started screaming — at me. Something about Hubert Humphrey? I’m a big guy, so I walked toward him with a big smile, thinking we might yell at each other for a few minutes for old times’ sake. But he bolted and ran as I approached, before I’d even decided what to yell.

Guess I could've yelled, "He was the vice president!" but I'm just not that passionate about Humphrey.

♦ ♦ ♦

After Angry Man ran off, I took the seat he'd vacated on the bench, and watched humanity for a while. Tourists count as humanity, technically.

Some pink pages blew by — that’s the Sunday Chronicle’s arts and entertainment section — so I chased them, and came back to the bench with something to read.

Found an interesting movie listed at the Lumiere, Freedom on My Mind, the new documentary about people who risked their lives to register black voters in Mississippi in 1964. I’d been planning to see it at the UC, where it’s also playing, but instead I rode the California cable car halfway to the stars, and stepped off at Polk Street, where Heather is still gorgeous despite graffiti on her face.

♦ ♦ ♦

Freedom on My Mind talks to some of the brave blacks and a few whites who tried to change America thirty years ago. The movie had me weepy in places, and wondering whether I’d have half the courage of those men and women. It's also infuriating but not surprising that President Lyndon B Johnson and his Democratic Party were among the bad guys.

I have a major complaint about the movie, though. The filmmakers plugged in songs from that era, some of which I’d never heard before, and played the music, often quite loudly, while all the interviews unfolded. Why would they do that? It kinda defeats the purpose of tracking down and interviewing all these heroes, if the audience can’t hear what they’re saying.

♦ ♦ ♦

After the show, my mind wandered back in time, so here's a flashback to Martin Luther King Jr, and my father’s opinion of him:

Our family always watched Cronkite at dinner, and one night there was a brief clip of something King had said. I don’t remember what it was, or what I thought of it, if I thought anything at all (I was just a kid).

I remember what Dad thought of it, though, because he told us. “He says he’s a man of God,” my father said, disdainfully. “Well, if he’s a preacher, he ought to preach the gospel to his congregation, and not be trying to change the world as it is.”

Have I mentioned — need I mention — we were white. Matter of fact, we still are.

♦ ♦ ♦

The cable car runs every twelve minutes on Sundays, says the schedule, but the schedule lies. In an hour, I saw only two. Tired of waiting, I walked around, and missed both my rides down the hill.

That’s OK, though. It's a cool neighborhood, and there’s always something to do. I browsed a bookstore, did some slight grocery shopping, found a donut shop and then a second bookstore, and by then the afternoon had become the evening.

Took the next cable car to Powell Street, and walked a few blocks home, stopping at Double Rainbow to buy a pint of raspberry/vanilla. I ate it while typing this, and now these keys are getting sticky.

It’s been a good day. Damned good, honestly, and I don’t understand anyone who disagrees … like my Mom, and Margaret, and probably everyone I know. Ah, well. That's why I'm here and happy, and they're there and not.

I checked my messages, and won my ten dollar bet with myself — there were three fresh messages from my mother, asking me to come to Seattle for the church’s big celebration at the end of the month. The third call was more telling me to come than asking.

Having already declined Mom's invitation, I will not be returning these calls.

♦ ♦ ♦

Beatrice brought me more crumpets, but it wasn’t a gift this time. I’d given her $20 to please buy and bring more Costco crumpets, since I'm not a member and can't shop there. Turns out $20 buys more crumpets than I’d expected. Poor planning on my part.

Two crumpets are a snack, and four make a light meal (but I don’t usually eat light meals). Six is more filling, and eight is enough, but I now own thirteen-dozen crumpets. 156 crumpets. My tiny freezer is already full, so they’re all on a shelf, and gotta be toasted and eaten fast. Even if I eat only crumpets, the last few dozen will be moldy before they’re opened.

♦ ♦ ♦

On my way home from work, I saw a man and a woman walking on the sidewalk, him yelling at her and her yelling at him. Both of them were furious, and screaming so loud that their volume was what got my attention — from a block away, in downtown San Francisco, which is not a quiet place at rush hour.

I can’t know their story, of course, but that won’t keep me from ignorantly assuming they’re married and madly in hate.

Maybe they're Bogart & Bacall having a bad afternoon. I suppose that’s possible. They didn't sound like rookies, though. There was no shock in their voices, no surprise — it sounded like habit. Old habit. Like they'd long ago said it all, heard it all, memorized it all, and this was just another day.

I can sort of understand being shitty to strangers, if you’re an ass — and god knows, I’m occasionally an ass. But I can’t understand being shitty to people you’re pretending you love.

If I’m right about my ignorant assumptions, if their lives are anything like the minute-and-a-half I witnessed down the street, then why — two why's, actually: Why are people are so shitty to each other? And why would either of them settle for life with the other?

Here’s my day at the office, which I’m recounting just for the challenge — is it possible to make the company’s stupidity make sense? I'm not sure it is, but here goes:

I work in the administrative offices for a big chain of department stores. Each store has a three-digit number. That number is important. It’s how the computers keep track of what’s selling and shipping where, who’s working where, and everything else. As people have been reduced to numbers, so too have buildings.

The company buys all sorts of crap to sell in the stores, and most of those purchases don’t pass through my department, but if buyers order something shipped to one store, and later change their minds and want it shipped to a different store, that paperwork comes to me. A week or so ago, a series of invoices landed on my desk, telling one of our cut-rate suppliers to redirect some of their high-profit, low-quality merchandise to location # 181.

Location # 181 was a store in South Fresno that closed in 1989, years before I was hired. Obviously, we don’t want to ship merchandise there. On the form, right next to location #, staff is supposed to write the name of the location, so we can look it up and easily solve this problem — but whoever filled out this form left that line blank. Literally clueless, I sent the paperwork back to the suit who'd signed it, with the notation, “Invalid location.”

Today the phone rang, and An Important Executive screamed in my ear that location # 181 is valid, and how could I be so stupid? It’s a new store in Bumfuck, Utah, grand-opening on Saturday, and because I rejected the paperwork they won’t have any bathrobes to sell, and I’ve cost the company thousands of dollars, and ... insert the sound of grown-ups talking on a Peanuts special.

When the stranger on the phone paused in his tirade to take a breath, I told him curtly that complaints go to my boss, gave him her number, and hung up.

First off, if you treat me like an ordinary adult ordinarily treats other ordinary adults, I could solve this problem, prioritize the shipment, and get those fluffy overpriced bathrobes to Utah by Saturday. If you scream like a toddler, I won’t.

And also, I’ve searched through all incoming memos for the past three weeks, and nobody’s informed my department that a store is opening in Bumfuck, Utah. Our list of locations still showed location # 181 as defunct. I’ve updated the list, but why would you keep it a secret if we're opening a new store? Send a frickin' memo!

This company is in the process of being bought by our largest competitor. When that multi-billion-dollar deal is finalized, we’ll probably all be out of work, so how much should I care about a bunch of bathrobes in assorted sizes and colors? If we lost money due to my stubborn refusal to input something that looked like a mistake, well, finally I’ve found satisfaction in my job.

My apologies for bringing you to work like you're my daughter.

♦ ♦ ♦

Margaret called today, as she does once or twice weekly, but today she was the craziest she’s been yet. I don’t think she went four sentences without changing the subject, and her tone of voice was jittery like too-much-coffee all the way through. “Relax, Maggie,” I kept saying.

I like Margaret, and worry about her, but there’s not much I can do about her issues, short of dismantling my life and moving to Eastern Washington to help her take care of herself. She’s asked me to do that. She asked again today.

I like Margaret, and worry about her, but I’m not doing that.

♦ ♦ ♦

Crumpets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But that’s OK. I like crumpets.

It’s hump day (does anyone actually say that?) and that’s reason enough to treat myself to a double feature at the Tower Cinema. I love this theater — even the night shows are only $5, and you get Spanish subtitles at no extra charge.

The first feature was The Lion King, and I knew going in I'd be annoyed by anything from Walt Disney Inc, but like a train wreck, you gotta watch. Disney cartoons are huge hits every year, selling millions of tickets and videos to millions of families with kids. That means the next generation in almost every country on earth is being brainwashed by these movies, so let's see what damage Disney is doing now.

Aladdin teaches subtle racism, in the lyrics of the songs, and in the skin shadings and accents of the good guys and bad guys.

From Beauty & the Beast, we see that the way to win a lady’s heart is by kidnapping her.

The Little Mermaid shows that a girl’s highest aspiration is to get married.

So I paid my five dollars and watched Disney's The Lion King, and what's the moral of the story this time? Bow down to his Royal Majesty the Lion.

It's never questioned that the jungle must have a king, nor that the king’s son is the best of all possible future kings. Our leaders are kind-hearted, and always have your best interests at heart. These lions are vegetarians; they're not going to eat you. So yield to authority, trust your masters, you don't need a union at work, and heck, why even bother with elections every four years?

That's the moral and subtext of The Lion King, and yes, I'm a solid 60% serious about all this.

I hate Disney because I love movies. When the lights dim and the movie starts, something should happen that you haven’t seen a hundred times already. Every plot development shouldn't be obvious and expected before it happens. Movies (especially movies for children) should have some smidgen of brightness behind them, something to spark an audience's intelligence, something you might think about, even briefly, after the movie is over — and without cringing.

Disney manufactures cinema. Their product is product, calculated to tug at your heartstrings but never challenge your intellect or preconceptions. And at Disney, it's always as much or more about merchandising than storytelling, because the really big profits come from Aladdin plush toys and Little Princess t-shirts and Lion King dishware.

What pisses me off most, though, is that I liked The Lion King. It's bland and cuddly and plays like an hour-and-a-half pat-on-your-head, but it has some smiles, most of the songs aren't too stupid, and the scenery is watercolor pretty. I let go of my Disney hatred and had a good time, and I hate that about me. Typing this the next day, I'm still humming “The Circle of Life,” damn it.

The second feature was The Mask, an enjoyable comedy/fantasy in which a meek bank teller suddenly has the ability to get revenge on those who done him wrong. The effects are great, the script is not 100% predictable, Jim Carrey is Jim Carrey, and newcomer Cameron Diaz gets an on-screen introduction almost as memorable as Omar Sharif’s in Lawrence of Arabia. The story is sketched, not really told, and it ain't 2001 but it's fun.

Also, I got hungry and the Tower sells yummy nachos with spicy gooey cheese, plus a pina colada non-alcoholic beverage that's only $2 for an extra-extra-large cup. Remember to say "no ice," though, or it'll melt in an hour and water down your drink.

♦ ♦ ♦

In the Mission, Heather wears an Afro.

It was a bad day to be fat. 92° on the sidewalk, and of course hotter than that working in a corporate office where the executives have air conditioning but the workers don’t.

At home I took a shower to wash away the sweat, before riding BART to movies in the Mission.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’m a sucker for film noir, the shadowy black-and-white dead serious dramas of the ‘40s and ‘50s, where people have ulterior motives or dark secrets, or both — kinda like real people. If there’s a film calendar with noir, you’ll find me in the ticket holders’ line.

Tonight at the Roxie, two directed by Anthony Mann, who made a lot of great noir movies.

Desperate (1947) was not one of them. It's a story so convoluted I couldn’t suspend my disbelief past the first ten minutes. Yeah, right, a criminal gang is going to plan a burglary and hire a truck driver for their getaway — without telling him it’s a heist? And then get angry when he won’t go along with the crime? Even in the 1940s, I don’t think bad guys were that stupid.

Raw Deal (1948) is about a good boy who grows up to be a bad man, and a semi-floozy dame from Corkscrew Lane who’s helping to break him out of prison so he can chase down the man he took the fall for. The storyline is almost as implausible as the first feature, but Raw Deal is exponentially more fun. It looks great, too — it was photographed by the master of darkness, John Alton.

Picture this, from the picture: A murderer bangs on the door, comes in, confesses that he’s just killed his wife, and the house is soon surrounded by police, and the murderer runs out to the front lawn and gets shot dead — and that’s two minutes in the middle of the movie, only tangentially related to the rest of the story. There's a lot going on in Raw Deal, and it adds up to excellent.

♦ ♦ ♦

I had to raid my cash stash to go to the movies tonight, and couldn’t even afford popcorn.

Not sure what exactly is going on with me and money right now. I’m barely a responsible adult so I don’t have a budget or anything, but not so long ago, I had a job that paid less, an apartment that cost more, and ate out more often — yet I always had a few hundred dollars stashed away. Now I earn more, pay a lower rent, eat out less frequently — but I’m nearly flat?

And at work today, Jennifer said again, “Stretch it out. Work slow.” After being swamped with work a few weeks ago, tasks have been restructured, and now I have about six hours of work to do daily, and eight hours to do it. It wouldn't surprise me if there are layoffs soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Bottom line: I’m damned poor, and my job ain't secure, so I'm going on a money diet. Tomorrow is payday, but instead of cashing the check, I’m going to stash it in a drawer and live without money for a while. Next week’s rent is already paid, and there’s food stacked on my shelves, so until next Friday’s paycheck there will be no movies, no restaurant meals, not even fast food or a newspaper. Bay Guardian doesn't count — it's free — but Chronicle or Examiner only if I find a copy in the break room or lift one from the trash.

A week without spending will be good for my soul, and good for my wallet. I’ll miss out on a few movies I’d wanted to see, but I can spend time entertaining myself, instead of spending money to be entertained.

It was another too-hot too-sticky day in the office.

One of the air-conditioned executives wandered into the sweltering jungle where workers work, to drop a short stack of documents at the empty desk where Louie sat, until he got laid off a month and a half ago. This exec always gave his paperwork to Louie. I don't think he's even aware that Louie is gone.

"Hot out here," he said, before retreating back to his 70° office. I sat there with beads of sweat on my forehead and dripping off my nose, looked at him, and wisely didn't reply.

♦ ♦ ♦

At home after work, I put my paycheck in a drawer, and read some zines, 1½ newspapers, and the new issue of Spy. Yelled at a neighbor who had an open window and a loud radio, but we both laughed about it afterwards. And I didn’t spend a dollar all day, and didn’t do a thing.

Even on the hottest days, it's fairly cool in my rez hotel room, if I leave both the window and door wide open. So tonight the mumbling man walked past my room, glanced in at me, and stopped mumbling for a few seconds (alert the media!). I am a sight, I guess. I'm fat and shirtless and my breasts are bigger than either Audrey or Katherine Hepburn's.

♦ ♦ ♦

Excuse the politics, though I don't even think this is politics. Once in a while it’s so damned obvious what’s right and what’s wrong, you’ve gotta say something.

I don’t know much about Haiti, but I know that a lot of their problems come from American intervention there. I strongly suspect that our all-American CIA was behind the coup that toppled Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and now the US Marines are going to put him back in power? It makes my head spin and eyes roll. A better long-term solution would be ordering the CIA to overthrow the Marines, and vice versa.

Hey, I’m going a week without spending money. Could America go a month without toppling or installing a foreign leader, or invading someplace, or dropping bombs on non-white people?

When American soldiers die in a war, it be nice if we could at least say, “They gave their lives for their country.” It’s been fifty years since we could say that about any American killed in battle, but we’re always willing to send soldiers to die for Somalia, Kuwait, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Korea, this time Haiti, and next time wherever there’s a ‘strongman’ who doesn’t let American corporations make as much money as they’d like.

♦ ♦ ♦

“I hear hemorrhoids are varicose veins of the rectum, from pushing hard dry stools out. Have you tried psyllium husks as a preventative measure? High fat / low fiber diets aggravate rectal problems — but I’m biased, since I gave up meat four years ago, and have had smooth bowel movements since (unless I binge on cheese). Sounds like you enjoy cheeseburgers too much to go my route…” —Tim Ereneta

Actually, Tim, I’ve gone vegetarian twice, both times for health, not philosophical reasons, for half a year or so each time. I don't know whether meat causes hemorrhoids, but it’s difficult to be fat without meat, that's for sure — I lost weight both times I went vegetarian. I missed the cheeseburgers and fatty porky Chinese chow, though.

When my mom visited, and we had breakfast and lunch at Jack-in-the-Box, she showed me a thousand photos of the family. Most were sweet and happy, though it got boring after the first 150 or so.

One of the snapshots was of my niece, Kimberly. Her hair was clipped in a crew-cut on one side, longer and colored purple on the other. She had a ring in her nose and several studs scattered along her ear lobe. I’m an old coot who can’t comprehend these stylistic choices, but Mom was clearly annoyed by it, so I approve wholeheartedly.

Kimberly was just a kid the last time I saw her, but time goes by and she’d be 15-ish now. At that age, or any age, my parents would have grounded her for the haircut and called an exorcist over the piercings, but luckily for Kimberly, her mother is my sister Katrina — the sanest person in my immediate family.

When my mother showed me the picture, though, she mentioned that Kimberly had been saying suicidal things. I gotta be skeptical, because my mother is drawn to drama and exaggeration, so it's entirely possible that the kid said something like, "I'd rather die than eat these green beans," but ... it wouldn’t hurt to write Kimberly a short letter.

It’s two months since Mom's visit, though, and that letter still hasn’t been written. I’ve procrastinated, made excuses — like, how I hated unsolicited advice when I was her age, and the 57 ways I’m not a role model for troubled youth. Excuses won’t mean crap if she’s dead, though, so here’s what I wrote …

Dear Kimberly,
You might wonder why your long-lost Uncle Doug would send you a letter? Just because I remember you, and think of you now and then. Of course, the Kimberly I knew was a little kid, and you’ll be almost grown now.
When I was your age, I hated it when old fogies like me said ‘when I was your age’ because whatever followed would be boring. So this will doubtless bore you, but I'll be brief.
When I was your age my life was hell. I didn’t fit in anywhere, high school was like prison, everyone in the world told me what to do and what not to do, and everything I wanted to do was against the rules.
Maybe your life isn’t like that, or maybe it is. Either way, Kimberly, it gets better. It gets so much better! It might seem like forever now, but in a few years you can do anything you want — go to college, or tell college to go to hell, join the Marines, join the circus, move to Mozambique, really, anything. On your 18th birthday, you can give the middle finger to everyone’s expectations.
It gets not just better, but damned terrific. That's all. End of sermon.
Please don’t answer this, unless you want to. My feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t.
Have fun, eat pizza, fall in love at least twice, skip school now and then, and remember you have a fat uncle in Frisco who loves you.

Re-reading it again the next morning, I’m not wild about what I wrote, but it’ll do. Into the mail it goes. Good luck, kid.

Half a dozen crumpets for breakfast, and the other half for dinner. Bought a newspaper (two quarters don’t count as spending) and I was tempted by the movie section, but nope. I’m serious about going a week without money.

Wrote a few more letters I’d been putting off, tidied up the apartment, read some zines, and rode around on public transit (I have a pass, so it was free) just for the view out the window.

♦ ♦ ♦

Home again, I turned on the tube and clicked to Channel 9, the local non-commercial station. After two commercials for other commercial-free programs and seven corporate sponsorship announcements, Ken Burns's new documentary on baseball started. It's cleverly titled Baseball.

I like baseball. Hey, batta batta batta. Baseball is my favorite sport, but Baseball kinda sucks.

Why is Billy Crystal starring in this documentary about baseball? In movies he's funny sometimes, sometimes not, and I have no grudge against the guy, but I get nothing from watching Billy Crystal talk about baseball.

And next up, Mario Cuomo talks about baseball? Just — why?

Talk to a peanut vendor at Fenway Park. Talk to someone who chalks the lines. Talk to a retired flange salesman who played second-string second base on his high school team. There are many thousands, maybe millions of people who'd have more interesting insights to baseball than Billy Crystal and Mario Cuomo.

At intermission, when more commercials came on and the seven corporate sponsors got their logos and ads again, I clicked it off. There are eight more episodes of Baseball, but I won’t be watching. Guess I’ll miss the interviews where Jami Gertz and Pauly Shore talk about baseball.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve been watching TV less often, since starting this zine. Instead of unwinding after work with back-to-back episodes of Roseanne and Star Trek: The Next Generation, now I come home and write.

Watching TV, even watching a good show, tends to feel like a fog descending on my brain. Anything creative is better than staring at a box designed to transmit ads into my eyeballs.

Commercial television — ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox — is the leading cause of soul cancer. PBS is “TV worth watching,” or so they say in their endless ads, and sometimes (not tonight) it is worth watching. Even public TV is powered by commercials, though — and worse, by pledge drives.

Pardon me if this sounds all huffy and puffy, but after turning off Baseball, I unplugged the TV set and put it in the closet. I can take it out and plug it in again if I need it, but for now I'm liking the extra shelf space on my ex-TV stand.

Midway through a week without money, I haven’t spent anything but small change. I wonder how much I’ve saved. Thirty bucks? Forty? And it hasn’t been hellish. It doesn’t feel like I’m missing out on anything urgent or vital.

Without the current crimp in my budget, I would’ve gone to a movie on Saturday, and bought popcorn and a Diet Coke; instead I wrote a letter to my niece.

Probably I’d’ve eaten at a cheap restaurant on Sunday, or more likely Saturday and Sunday, leaving me poorer but my belly no more full than if I'd eaten eleven ham sandwiches here in my room. Which I did.

If I'd had the money, I might’ve purchased some other silly diversion over the weekend, and maybe bought a microwaved breakfast burrito in the company cafeteria this morning.

Maybe I’ve been working too steady for too long. Haven’t had more than a week out of work in years, and I’ve grown accustomed to having money in my wallet. It’s made me a cinch to succumb when something new glitters at me.

I’ve slipped away from my philosophy of poverty:

① The less you spend, the less you need money.
② The less you need money, the less you need to work for it.
③ The less you need to work, the more time’s left for living life.

That’s why I’m in a bum hotel, after all. That’s why I don’t have a car, or a bank account. By choice, I live close to the margins, but lately it’s been a little too close, so I’m going to re-dedicate myself to ①②③.

Money spent is money wasted, I believe, unless it’s spent on something absolutely wonderful, or something inarguably necessary. When this week without spending is over, I’m going to be a cheapskate again.

There will be nights at the city's movie palaces, because that’s a wonderful experience, worth the price of admission. But there won’t be popcorn and Diet Coke. I’ll sneak in snacks instead.

There will be meals in affordable restaurants like the Sincere Cafe, because I can’t cook, don't even have a kitchen, and a meal out is the only hot, healthy food I ever eat. But restaurant meals two days in a row? No, that's only for swanky people.

Tomorrow I’ll need to break the rules of a week without money, to buy a loaf of bread. I won’t grab a shopping basket when I walk into the store, though. No wandering the aisles, wondering what else I need. I’ll just buy the bread. Easy as ①②③.

I bought the bread, and nothing else. $1.49.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s sheer nuttiness, writing a diary and mailing it out as a zine, 'specially since I'm a freak about my personal privacy. Invade my space and I'll smack you in the head ... but here I am, typing everything for strangers.

(Well, almost everything.)

When I have no-one else to talk to, it's nice knowing that at least a few strangers are the mailing list, and they'll be reading this (or skimming it) in a few weeks.

Dear diary, then, since nothing interesting happened in my life today, here’s a scummy confession from long ago, that's still on my conscience:

Had a friend, a damned good friend, who lived with me when we were in our early twenties. He knew a lot about carpentry and homebuilding, and thought he could make a good income by buying fixer-upper houses, repairing and improving them, and selling them for a tidy profit.

He asked me to help him on his first fixer-upper, though this was not the kind of work I’d ever done before. We shook hands on the deal, and went to work on a dilapidated dump of a house he was making payments on.

I did my share of the work, for a while, but I wasn’t good at knocking down walls and hanging doors and tiling floors. I had to work on the house evenings and weekends, after working my regular job — exactly as we'd agreed — but I'm lazy and I hate hard work, so after about six months I said, “I need out of this deal.”

Being a good friend, he let me out, and didn’t even seem to hold it against me. He finished fixing up the house with no further help from me, and he made a small fortune.

Then he bought another rundown house and started repeating the process. He was still working his day job, and too exhausted to do all the work alone a second time, so we talked, and agreed we’d try working together again. He even promised I could have a couple of nights off every week, away from the hammers and nails and spackle and paint.

And again, our arrangement lasted a few months, but I couldn’t handle it and begged off. Again he let me go, and never held it against me. But I held it against me. After that, I could hardly look him in the eye, and our friendship faded.

Those aren’t the only times I’ve been proven untrustworthy, either. Other examples come to mind, but even in a diary zine I’m entitled to keep some things to myself. Suffice to say, my one constant trait in life is that I’ve been a dick.

My offenses are misdemeanors, not felonies. I’ve never killed anyone, never seriously injured anyone, never turned state’s evidence, never robbed a bank, and never cheated on a woman. But I’m an irresponsible asshole, and I wouldn’t loan me fifty bucks.

In my defense, I’m trying not to make commitments any more. Making no promises, I’ll have no promises to break. Having no friends, I’ll have no friends to doublecross. Twice.

♦ ♦ ♦

Due to an unexpected dose of ex-president Jimmy Carter, the US invasion of Haiti has been called off, at least for now.

I’m not sure that a negotiated settlement is what the current president wanted, though. Clinton had argued so loudly for an American war on Haiti to save it, my impression is that now he’s disappointed with peace.

Oh, well. This is America. If it’s not war today, there's always war tomorrow. We’ll invade or overthrow some country somewhere — a tiny country that can't much fight back — probably before Clinton’s out of office.

Most of the building where my office is, isn’t offices. It’s a giant downtown department store, western flagship of the chain, where tomorrow the store will host its big annual fashion show. The corporate CEO will be here — he's flying in from New York City — and everyone in the office is really excited, like the King of Earth is coming to town.

I do not share the excitement. This is a stupidly-run, bankrupt business that treats its employees awful, and he's the man ultimately responsible for every dumb and cruel decision. Until the rumors and whispers of his impending visit, I didn't even know his name, but I am not a fan.

Just based on the executives I've interacted with, the higher anyone's rank, the more they're an asshole. So tomorrow, our company's widest gaping unwiped asshole will be here, shaking hands in the store and walking through our offices.

And people are happy about his visit?

♦ ♦ ♦

I eat shit, in large quantities. Not literally, of course, but I shovel the worst things down my throat regularly — hamburgers, pork, bologna, ham, Spam, and all sorts of salty processed soup from a can. None of it is good for me, and it’s made me repulsively fat. My daily regimen of lack-of-exercise hasn’t helped, either.

A thought has been brewing in my mind since that letter from Tim a few days ago, where he mentioned that better bowels and reduced hemorrhoidal itch can be side effects of going vegetarian.

No, I am not going vegetarian. I’ve done that twice, and returned twice to meatballs and franks and other glorious forms of broiled or baked or fried animal flesh. But I’m going to buy and eat less meat, and more fruits and vegetables, bread, tuna, peanut butter and such.

And obviously, if I’m categorizing tuna as “not meat,” I’m not taking this too seriously. A major life change it ain't, just a minor adjustment. At the Sincere Cafe, I’m still going to order the Number 1, which is pork, prawns, and more pork. But meat will be an exception, not on the daily menu.

♦ ♦ ♦

Here’s my next thought, in sequence: I’m getting too old to eat like a teenager all the time. For as long as I can remember, I’ve eaten (shit) whenever I felt like it, which is not at all the same as eating when I’m hungry.

Honestly, I haven’t felt genuine hunger very often in my life. It’s habit, never hunger, that leads me to eat three meals daily, plus snacks. How American is that?

If I keep my mind occupied with other things, I can forget to eat, and miss a meal entirely. Which is good. I could stand to miss more meals. In the last few days, staring at the typewriter and getting all introspective, first about money, then guilt, and now health, I’ve forgotten to eat two meals. I should try keeping that streak going ... but I won't.

♦ ♦ ♦

Two letters from the mailbag …

… I’m not sure what to think of your zine. You seem to have a lot of hostility toward your mother, but there isn’t anything so awful in your description of her behavior. She’s eccentric? She gets on your nerves? Big deal.
She is your mother, and one day she’ll be gone, like my mother is. When that day comes, you’ll miss her then. You’ll give anything for a few days with her.
It’s like, come on, what would it have cost you to trade rooms with her? Nothing, and it would have made a nice old lady happy, instead of making her cry …
—Fred Moore

I never know what to think when someone says they don’t know what to think. You think what you think, that’s all, and apparently you think I should’ve moved out of my room and let my mom live there. If that’s what you think, that’s what you think. I’m not offended that you’re offended, but I’m not moving out of my room.

When my mom is dead, I’ll miss her and have many regrets, but I won’t regret anything I did or didn't do when she was here last month. My manners were impeccable, she was quite rude, and I'm going to decline your invitation for a guilt trip.

Your breath is enough to gag me. Your fingers up your nostrils are easing up a bit, but your gas is enough to make a dead person vomit. You are a joy, a treasure, and I’m still deeply in love with you. Your especially darlin’ babe,
—Maggie

In honor of the CEO's visit today, I’m eating a can of chili for breakfast, in case he and I ride the same elevator.

Was that too subtle? It's a fart joke.

♦ ♦ ♦

Whoops, I was mistaken — all the flyers on the walls at work say "Fashion Show 9/22," but the small print I hadn’t read says it’s tonight, not today. The King of Earth (CEO) arrives this evening for caviar and cocktails and watching women on the walkway, and then tomorrow he’ll be floating through the store and offices all day.

I’d need a bigger thesaurus to describe how much I don’t give a damn, about fashion, about the fashion show, and especially about the CEO’s visit. All the suits are in a dither about it, though, and the building's top executive sent everyone an electronic memo, marked “highest priority":

“FYI — Due to Mr (CEO)’s visit tomorrow, Casual Friday has been canceled. Sorry for the late notice.”

That is frogshit, even by company standards. Should we all just drop to our knees and drool on his ring and peel grapes for the CEO?

I mean, is Casual Friday a secret? Is it something we’ve been doing behind the CEO’s back? No, it's company policy, posted on the wall, and mentioned in new-hire orientation — office staff is allowed to dress down on Fridays. "Unless the CEO is here" has never been part of the deal.

So I'm dressing casual tomorrow. Call me a rebel.

I don't expect the CEO will bother saying hello to our dusty corner of the eighth floor, where there's no window, no air conditioning, and a few drudges input price changes and merchandise transfers. If he does make an appearance, if he sees me in a slightly-stained pullover instead of a button-down business shirt, will I be in big trouble? Guess we'll find out.

One of the junior executives stopped at my desk in the late afternoon, and suggested that for the CEO's visit tomorrow, I should wear a necktie. I laughed and said I don’t own one, and he offered to bring in one of his ties for me — which, in a corporate way, was a kind gesture.

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” I said, “but I won’t wear a tie. It’s a philosophical thing.” He walked away bewildered, and maybe I've made another enemy. Hope not. He’s the only executive who still seems borderline human.

♦ ♦ ♦

In the rez hotel, I’ve rearranged the mess on my TV stand. Without the electronic cyclops, the new focal point is zines and letters and movie calendars. It's much more 'me', and nice to have more space for that stuff.

It sure is different, though.

How many hours, how many years of my life have dissolved into staring at the telly? How many hundred-thousands ads have I absorbed, and jingles have I unintentionally memorized?

Before I was even a teenager, I’d saved up earnings from my paper route to buy an old television set for beside my bed. 11-year-old me was so dang happy when I found a big black-and-white RCA for $10 at the thrift store — and it worked! I bought it, lugged it home, plugged it in and tweaked the antenna, and then I could watch any show I wanted, not just whatever my mom and dad and older brothers and sisters wanted to watch.

I watched Star Trek in my bedroom every night at 6pm, and Wild Wild West at 7, and stayed up late to watch old movies on the non-network channel, or Tom Snyder blowing smoke on Tomorrow in the middle of the night. Having my own TV felt like freedom, and there’s been a TV in my room ever since, everywhere I’ve lived.

Now there's not. It's in the closet, sure, and I could plug it in any time I change my mind, but tonight it feels like freedom, not having a TV in my room.

The CEO has left the building, and flown back to New York City. He came and went without shaking hands or saying hello to any of the little people. I never even saw the schmuck from a distance, and he never saw that almost everyone on the eighth floor was dressed to the nines.

Several of the men who usually don’t even wear neckties came to work in fancy suits with vests. Some of the women wore long, colorful skirts and high-heel shoes. Even the few people who dressed in their ordinary work clothes seemed to be wearing their very best ordinary work clothes. It looked like a wedding reception, or backstage on some snooty PBS show imported from England.

“I didn’t get the memo” that Casual Friday had been canceled, so here’s what the well-dressed fat slob wears to the office, bottom to top:

• Black tennis-shoes. Tennies aren’t allowed even on Casual Fridays, but I wear them every day. You can get away with it if they’re all-black and with no logos or swooshes or anything. The security guards don’t inspect your feet.
• Jeans are allowed on Casual Fridays, but I don’t own any jeans so I wore my normal cheap polyester slacks. All my slacks are black, and today’s were the same pair I wore yesterday. I don’t do laundry often enough to change britches daily.
• Dark blue pullover, with light blue-and-white piping on the arms and a small Big Mac sauce stain above the right nipple. $2 from Salvation Army. Added the stain myself. There’s also a big and obvious mustard mark at the very bottom, but you can’t see it when the shirt’s tucked in.

Monday-Thursday, all shirts are required to be button-down, so the pullover was my only expression of Casual Friday. But I was in open revolt against The Man, rules be damned, even though I was the only one who knew it or noticed.

♦ ♦ ♦

The only jeans I’ve ever owned were gifts. I never buy jeans, and I just remembered why, so now I'm gonna wax philosophical about bluejeans:

When I was a little kid and Mom was still buying my clothes, we went to a department store — Sears, probably, or JC Penny — and she told me to try on bluejeans. I did, but didn’t like them, and talked her into buying me some slacks instead. She didn’t ask why I didn’t want jeans, but I remember that, too.

It was because most of the kids at school didn’t like me, and I didn’t like most of the kids at school, and most of the kids at school wore bluejeans on most days — and especially all the mean kids. Never got bullied by any kid who wasn't wearing bluejeans.

I was a kid, and like any normal kid I wanted to be a normal kid, but … I didn’t want to wear the mean kids' uniform.

I still don’t.

♦ ♦ ♦

It's payday, and I cashed this week’s paycheck, and last week’s paycheck. Going a week without spending was a semi-zenlike experience, and I recommend it and might do it again some time. Ordinary humans go on a diet to drop ten pounds, right? Go on a money diet and save fifty bucks.

I paid two weeks’ rent and the water bill, and bought some oranges, carrots, and bananas for a semi-healthy feast. There’s a good chunk of cash left over, and that’s the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it (uh-huh uh-huh).

♦ ♦ ♦

I just had my first pangs of TV withdrawal, when the theme from The X-Files came in the window from someone else’s window across the dumpster-patio. My instant impulse was to turn on the TV and see what Scully and Mulder are up to, but the feeling passed almost as quickly as it came.

I usually have trouble getting to sleep and then wake up intermittently, and last night was worse than usual.

Sometimes my body seems to operate on a 28-hour clock, and won’t let me sleep until I’ve been awake for 20 hours. Then on the weekend, like today when I wanted to sleep in, the brain wakes up and starts fidgeting at 6 or 7, as if the alarm had gone off on a weekday morning.

It's like my body is not on my side. Like, take this uncooperative penis — it's hot when I’m not, but not when I’m hot. It perks up at the oddest times, when I’m taking out the trash or typing something utterly unsexy. This morning it demanded attention when I didn’t particularly want to shake hand, but if there was an actual opportunity to put it to good use, I'm not so sure it would stand up straight.

♦ ♦ ♦

For a man who loves movies so much, I’ve always had an odd aversion to gangster dramas. It’s not the prude’s complaint that they’re too violent, because I have nothing against violence so long as I’m not the victim. I just don’t like bad guys.

People who kill without cause ought to be locked away until they die, given only bread and water and maybe mail and TV privileges if they’re well-behaved in prison. But gangster movies expect me to care about these creeps?

So, as much as I’ve admired the movies of Joel and Ethan Coen, I’ve never wanted to see Miller’s Crossing. But I liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and those are gangster movies. If Quentin Tarantino can get through to me, maybe Francis Ford Coppola can?

Coppola makes great movies, but I’d intentionally missed his famous gangster movies until tonight, a double feature of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II at the Castro.

Had a big Italian dinner (a can of Spaghettios and a can of olives) and snuck some dried fruit and water into the theater to save money, and went to the show with some skepticism.

The Godfather (1972) introduces Vito Corlione — the Don, the Godfather — as a near-ultimate bad guy. Someone’s beaten the hell out of a young girl, and the girl’s father is pleading with the Don for vengeance. Corlione negotiates, gets what he wants from the man — respect, and a promise of future service if needed — and grants the man his vengeance. And the movie won me over in the first scene.

Vito is all about violence and money and crime, sure, but he’s also about honor, loyalty, respect. Gotta respect that. If I ever found anything in life to believe in, I could be loyal to someone that deserved that loyalty. Not saying I’m looking for a job with the mob, but I can understand it.

The movie’s story, tracing Vito’s evolution from an innocent civilian to becoming the ruthless Don, held me spellbound. In fact, for the whole 6½ double feature (these are both long movies!) I only glanced at my watch once, and that was at intermission to see if there was time enough to pee.

Is it sacrilege, though, to say I wasn’t all that impressed with Nino Rota’s Oscar-winning score? Whenever The Godfather's famous riff recurred, it sounded to me like the theme from Perry Mason. It’s adequate mood music, very compelling, underscores the drama like movie music should, but it’s not music I’d listen to without the movie, like the soundtrack to Star Trek IV that I often pop into the cassette player.

I have two books of film reviews on my shelf at home, and curiously, both give Part II higher praise than the original, but that wasn’t my reaction. The sequel held my interest all the way, and when the end credits began it didn’t feel as though another three hours had gone by, but it lacks the honor, loyalty, and dramatic impact that made me join the applause for the first film.

Part II pursues two story lines, both engrossing, one about Vito’s troubles with gangland disloyalty, the other about how his father began the business years before. But these two central characters merely react to their circumstances, making the decisions and taking the actions necessary to get what they want; neither character feels transformed, as Vito was in the first film.

That isn’t really a complaint — Part II is very good, and betrayal from all sides can be thrilling — but the original Godfather is a better film.

Despite being a bit sleep-deprived, I was wide awake all through both movies, and had a lovely night at the Castro. The moral of the story is, fuck morals — bad guys can the protagonist in a good movie, and I guess I'll open myself up the the gangster genre.

♦ ♦ ♦

In a better world, Heather would’ve grown a mustache in the Castro, but her beautiful face has been replaced with other ads all around town.

♦ ♦ ♦

Waiting for the late-night Muni home, a gray-haired gentleman struck up a conversation, and it soon became clear that he was flirting with me. It’s not too common that anyone finds my flabby self attractive, so I was flattered and flirted back.

I opened the last package of crumpets to have some for breakfast. They have three weeks before their expiration date, but you're supposed to keep them in a fridge or freezer, not on a shelf, and these have been on a shelf. There's no visible mold, but the first bite tasted peculiar. Tossed ‘em before eating, instead of after.

♦ ♦ ♦

Crank came in the mail. My review is elsewhere, but it’s always awkward when I send my little photocopied text-only one-man personal zine as a blind try for a trade, and get something back that’s like Crank — tri-color cover, groovy graphics, genuine typesetting, and so on. I should feel like I’ve gotten something for almost nothing, I suppose, but it’s embarrassing, like trading a kindergarten finger-paining for a Renoir.

♦ ♦ ♦

I wrote some letters, but not as many as I owe. For lunch, microwaved Japanese noodles, with boiled tuna mixed in — quite tasty, thanks. I’ll mail you some if you’d like, for $5 plus postage.

♦ ♦ ♦

Seeing a couple of good movies yesterday made for an enjoyable evening, and after a few years I’ll probably pay to see either or both Godfather movies again. I’ve heard that the third one sucked, though. Keep milking it, Frances, just like Drunken Master and Beethoven the dog and Beverly Hills Cop forever.

I’d rather see a great movie a second time, than a sucky sequel to a great movie. Some movies are so dang well-made I’ll pay to watch them over and over again, like Harold & Maude, Casablanca, Ms 45, and others. Every rewatch, there's something new to be discovered, or just enjoying the same old perfection again.

Two movies on my unlimited re-screening list played tonight at the Castro, so there I was, for Blade Runner and Brazil. But these were new and improved classics.

Blade Runner (1982) is a lavish science-fiction noir set early in the next century, when replicants (androids) are corporate commerce, sold as slave labor for the off-world colonies. Built stronger and smarter than their creators (“More human than human, is our motto”), the replicants revolt and return to Earth, where they’re hunted by the LAPD’s Harrison Ford.

I love science fiction, and I love film noir — put them together and do it well, and you've got me. I went to the first matinee show the day it opened a dozen years ago, and Blade Runner was an instant favorite. It was only slightly marred by Ford’s somewhat clumsy Sam Spade-ish narration, and by a “romantic rape” scene that’s always bothered me, but not bothered me enough to stop me from re-watching the movie time and again.

In 1991, a director’s cut was announced and released. I was living in Bakersfield back then, and I’d already seen the original a dozen times, but I drove a hundred miles each way to see the new version at the Nuart Theater in L.A. It was familiar but altered, arguably better than the original, with the narration eliminated but the rape sequence intact.

Then, a year or so later, the director’s cut I’d seen was revealed as merely a compromise cut. The hype began again, and soon came what was purportedly the genuine director’s cut. Of course, I had to see that version too, and this time the changes were more pronounced and noticeable, the superb Vangelis score seemed more prominent, and a unicorn came trottin' across the screen for no discernible reason. Still no narration, and still no escape from horny Harrison Ford when he wants to get laid.

Tonight was maybe the tenth time I’ve seen this final director’s cut of Blade Runner, and I've decided that the studio was right, not the director — the movie needs its original narration. It was cornball, yes, but it got you inside the character’s head more than the new cut does. So the third version is second best, but it’s still a great movie: action with a triple-digit IQ.

The second feature, Brazil (1985), is also not quite the same movie that played in American theaters back then. This is the British release, and it’s bleaker. The Brits are perhaps better equipped to deal with irony?

Versions smersions, though, it’s just a great movie, and here's an interesting fact: It has nothing to do with the nation of Brazil. The story of an everyschmuck trapped in a heightened version of modern reality, it gleefully subverts everything — work, technology, beauty, bureaucracy, movies, and all the rules and hypocrisies we take for granted. It’s outrageously funny, with guts and a soul, and the office scenes could've been filmed in the building where I work. Bonus: Nobody gets raped.

Only one complaint, and a warning.

My complaint is, the British version is better, yeah, but do we need to see the original British prints, too? Tonight’s print of Brazil was choppy, splotchy, skippy and scratchy, and detracted from the movie. That’s not the Castro’s fault, of course, and I overheard the manager explaining that to an angry customer in the lobby. They’re entirely at the distributor’s mercy, and the distributor doesn't give a damn.

And my warning is, don’t see Brazil with me, cuz tonight I laughed so loud people got up and moved to different seats farther away.

Over the past week at work, I’ve updated the store list, the vendor list, the department list, the size and color code list, the interoffice phone and e-mail list, the emergency contact list, and the divisional list. Today I updated my list of lists. Yes, my lists are orderly, accurate, and they would help me do my regular work more efficiently — if there was any regular work to do, but there isn’t much.

About a month ago, I was instructed to teach the buyers’ assistants how to do what used to be part of my work. Now they do that work, and I run out of work every afternoon by about 2:00. After that I do whatever I can find, trying to give the company their wages’ worth, but there are only so many little tasks you can do before you're staring at the spackling on the wall.

With no work to work on, the company paid me to write these paragraphs, while humming the theme from Perry Mason (because The Godfather is still on my mind). Then I sat at my desk and rifled through papers, trying to look busy. Hey, does that make me a professional actor?

It’s as though my job is being eliminated, but they forgot to tell me. If I’m laid off on Friday, though, I’ll win a $10 bet with Beatrice. When we both survived the previous layoffs in July, I told her I’d be canned within two months, and that’ll be Friday. Today I reminded her of our bet — "Cash only please, no checks."

♦ ♦ ♦

My ‘doing nothing time’ at work was interrupted by a big dumb meeting, where the Human Resources (nee Personnel) manager revealed the results of last spring’s employee satisfaction survey. Guess what? Employees are not very satisfied.

I had taken the survey myself, and answered every question honestly, which means I gave the company terrible ratings in each category. Even I was surprised at the results, though, in three ways — 1) how negative all the ratings were, B) how determined the boss lady was to put a positive spin on the negative numbers, and mostly, Ⅲ) that they revealed the results to employees at all. Chalk it up as just another stupid decision by management.

In the survey, we’d been asked to rate the company in 15 categories, such as job satisfaction, work stations, your boss, your benefits, and nebulous things like ‘trust’ and ‘career development’. Only the commission plan got more than 50% positive ratings, and I’m not part of the sales staff so I have no comment on that. In every other category, though, the results were between 60% and 80% negative. That’s impressive. That’s a message to management, but nobody's home in management to take the message.

It was hard to suppress my chuckles when the HR boss, reading these dismal results to the dissatisfied, said for the third time, “Of course, if the survey was taken today, I’m sure we’d do much better, reflecting recent policy changes.”

This being allegedly an “open forum meeting,” where bosses are not invited and we’re all encouraged to speak our minds, I stuck my hand up and waved it around until I got her attention.

She said, “Yes?” and asked my name.

I did not say my name, but I think she knows who I am. I said, “What policy changes are you referring to, that would make employees happier now than a few months ago?”

She answered, incredibly, that when a large number of full-time workers had been demoted to part-time, their health benefits were continued as if they were still full-time. This, she believes, makes happy employees. Well, I guess that's better that a punch in the face, but I kinda know some of those people, they’ve been with the company for years, and I haven’t heard any ‘employee satisfaction’ from any of them recently. One by one, they’re quitting. And management doesn't care. I think management wants them to quit.

At the top of the meeting, the HR doofus had stressed that she wanted our honest opinions, but I was more honest than I’d intended — I started giggling, just a little at first, but I couldn’t stop. I left the meeting as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, still giggling, while someone else asked a question. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said quietly, making my way out.

It took ten minutes hiding in the men’s room to regain my self-composure, and then I returned to doing nothing at my desk instead of going back to the meeting.

Now I know I’ve won my bet with Beatrice.

This morning I awoke with a newborn pink pimple on the bridge of my nose, and I smiled.

In high school, and dang it, well into my twenties, I was horrified whenever acne sprouted on my face. I cared more what people thought, back then.

I still care, but not as much, and less and less. So there’s an itsy-bitsy baby zit on my schnoz. It’s going to get bigger before it’s old enough to squeeze. After squeezing, maybe there’ll be a scab, or maybe a bandaid. For the next few days or weeks my nose will be ugly, but my ordinary nose ain’t chiseled in granite. A big juicy red bump will give my face more character.

Yeah, I’d love to be People’s Sexiest Man Alive, but that ship has sunk to the seabed, long ago. I am big enough to be two men, and it’s fat, not muscle. I wear a crew-cut because it’s low-maintenance. My clothes come from thrift stores, and are replaced only when they’re in tatters. I shower once or twice weekly whether I need it or not, and often wear the same underwear as the day before. I buy deodorant, but keep it in my desk at work, and only put it on if I smell myself stinking. My teeth are yellow, and beginning to wobble and tilt.

So why not add a giant inflamed puss-filled soon-to-explode pimple on my nose? It finishes the image, suitable for framing. I am the Unsexiest Man Alive.

♦ ♦ ♦

Late this afternoon at work, we unexpectedly received a large volume of rush-rush gotta-get-it-done work. Oh my god, this was important. People could die, nations could topple, there could be pestilence, radiation poisoning, tidal waves, knock-knock jokes, and won’t someone please think of the children?

Well, the oh-so-important rush-rush work didn’t get done. Sorry, Mr Dude, but you can’t drop a big box of documents on us at 4:15 and expect it all to be organized and input by 5:00. It wasn’t important enough for the boss to offer overtime, so we were gone at quitting time, same as any other day.

I am (mildly) curious to see what happens tomorrow, when management understands that the work that suddenly, desperately needed to be done today, didn’t get done today.

Yesterday’s urgent work that didn’t get done? It didn’t matter today. For reasons too silly to explain, not getting it done will affect someone’s numbers somewhere, but now they're last week's numbers. We can take our time with what’s left, as long as it’s processed and input by next Tuesday.

But next week, a voice on the phone explained, Tuesday’s stack of work will seriously need to be done by Tuesday night.

Like yesterday, I giggled. This job is making me giggly. “Well, if you bring us a stack of work a foot tall, at 4:15 on Tuesday,” I said, “it won’t get done by Tuesday night, any Tuesday night. We're gone at 5:00.”

The voice said OK, but I’m skeptical that my meaning was understood. Next week’s huge stack of Tuesday work will probably arrive at 4:15 or so.

♦ ♦ ♦

After finishing my ordinary work at around 1:30, I worked on the Tuesday pile for a while, but I’d come in early so I could leave early, to go to the dentist.

It was my first visit to a dentist in years that wasn’t a toothache emergency, because for the first time in years, my teeth are covered by insurance. Have I got a great employer or what? (The answer is, what.)

Just before my appointment, something statistically unlikely happened. I was standing at the front desk, and the receptionist was talking at me, when I looked out the window for no particular reason. The dentist’s office is at street level, and at the very instant I glanced out, a man walked by and glanced in — and two years ago that man was my boss and borderline-friend at a job that was reasonably pleasant, conducting phone surveys about everything from personal computers to politics.

I went to the door and so did my ex-boss Tommy, and we talked there for a few minutes, and he offered me a job. The catch is, it’s the same job I quit a couple of years ago — and asking survey questions on the phone was OK, but even my crap job at the department store pays $3 an hour more. And I know from experience, survey work isn’t always forty hours a week. So my answer had to be no, but it’s nice to be wanted.

The receptionist semi-shouted that the hygienist was ready for me, so Tommy and I traded numbers and promised to keep in touch. Hope we do, but we probably won’t.

♦ ♦ ♦

So my teeth got cleaned, and the dentist poked around inside my face, and presented me with a long list of dental work that’s needed. For me, though, it’s about money.

My employer’s dental plan pays 100% of the cost for cleanings and check-ups, 75% for the first filling or extraction, 50% for further fillings or extractions, and jack shit for anything else. So as the dentist presented his grand plan for my mouth, every time he said words like cap, bridge, or root canal — and he said those words often — the price I’d have to pay went higher and higher, to thousands of dollars I’ll never have. And if I did have thousands of dollars, I wouldn't spend it on my teeth.

Extractions will be my plan, then, same as when I had no dental coverage. When a tooth starts hurting and aspirin doesn’t help, I’ll have it yanked, and I certainly hope a tooth needs yanking before I lose this job, so I can get 75% off.

♦ ♦ ♦

After the dentist, I BARTed to Berkeley to see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus at the UC Theater.

Cuckoo’s Nest is another movie I can see infinite times and always enjoy. In fact, me and the Cuckoo’s Nest go way back — when it was originally released, it was the first movie I liked so much that I paid to see it a second time, at the Town Theater in downtown Seattle. And a week later I came back to see it a third time. All three were matinee shows when I was supposed to be in school.

All my best memories of high school are the days I skipped.

Anyway, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) is a solid drama about a petty crook who pretends to be crazy, because he’s decided a stay in the nuthouse would be better than a stay in prison. Once he’s committed, though, he finds that the mental ward patients aren’t nearly so mentally ill as the nurse in charge. In high school I thought it was an allegory for high school, but now I recognize that it’s an allegory for life.

Not often, but occasionally at an old-movie screening, someone involved with the movie is invited to attend and answer questions. Tonight it was Saul Zaentz, who produced both halves of tonight’s double feature. He's a plump old white guy with a white beard and a quick wit, and between the movies, he fielded half an hour of questions from the surprisingly small crowd.

“There’s eight more people here than saw my latest film, At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” he joked. There weren't many questions, but he answered them all, thoughtfully, modestly, and at length but without being boring. He summarized the state of Hollywood films (“When they’re good, it’s only by accident”), and reminisced about some of the people he’s worked with.

Having read Ken Kesey’s novel Cuckoo’s Nest, the movie always seemed like a faithful adaptation to me, but Zaentz said Kesey has always refused to even see it. “Ken says, after what we did with his screenplay, seeing the movie would be like watching his daughter get raped in a parking lot.”

And what did they do with Kesey’s screenplay? The simply didn’t use it. Zaentz said that Kesey wrote his screenplay as a surrealistic satire of his book, “with the nurse wearing a Valkyrie helmet, singing opera, writing in blood on the hospital walls. We had liked the book, and wanted to film the book instead.”

I have no notion what to make of that story — true, false, or fractionally-true — but it’s funny so I wrote it down, and now I’ve typed it and you’ve read it. We all gave Mr Zaentz a round of applause, and someone asked if he was staying to watch Amadeus. He said yes, which surprised me. I mean, he made it, so I gotta assume he’d seen it several times before tonight.

Amadeus (1984) is a cute comedy with serious pretensions of drama, supposedly based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I had seen it when it first came out, and remembered it as an amusing but rather hollow thing. I wondered then and wondered again tonight whether it’s fair in its treatment of the brilliant Mozart and the forgotten, not-so-brilliant composer Antonio Salieri.

Everyone on Earth agrees that Amadeus is great, but it seemed long and lackadaisical to me. My impatience was amplified by three college kids making jokes, and by Tom Hulce’s Oscar-nominated overacting, so I left before it was over. Great music, though.

And I’m pretty sure Mr Zaentz was already gone.

My co-worker Marcia has found a better job and given her two weeks’ notice. Our boss Darla was all smiles and congratulations announcing it, because she doesn’t know what this means.

It means everything will start going to hell in two weeks.

Nobody else knows half of what Marcia knows, about the myriad little and big things we do, and the consequences of doing any of those things wrong. Our group’s lead, Jennifer, is a nice lady but none too bright, and the only thing she’s smart about is that she goes to Marcia for answers. We all do. Even some of the smart executives turn to Marcia for answers.

Darla, I think, hasn’t been the boss long enough to know any of this. Or maybe she’d never know it, even if she’d been the boss for years. Management always thinks employees are replaceable, like fuses, and of course most of us are, but some fuses carry much more amperage than others.

There will be cake and a card, if such extravagances are still within the company's crimped budget. And then, without Marcia to answer everyone’s questions, questions will go unanswered. Maybe unasked. We’ll all be guessing instead of knowing, and some of those guesses will be wrong, and there will be repercussions. Little things won’t run quite as smoothly in our department, and occasionally big things will blow up — expensive mistakes that Marcia’s answers would’ve prevented.

Our little and big problems will ripple and be felt in other departments, all through the building, and all through this multi-billion-dollar chain of perfume-and-sundry stores. Managers a thousand miles from here, who've never met Marcia and don't know she exists, will have more and bigger problems on their desks because she'll be gone. Her absence will be felt all the way to the company's red-ink bottom line, and all because one very smart, hard-working employee is leaving, and management has never noticed who’s keeping this place running.

It’s not management. It’s Marcia.

Two weeks and counting.

♦ ♦ ♦

I put it off for a few days, and then put it off again until late afternoon, when there was nothing else to do, but finally I walked over to Human Resources and apologized to their boss lady, for Monday. She smiled and said not to worry about it, and even laughed about my laughing at the meeting. She seemed human for a senior executive, but of course they’re programmed that way in HR.

She wanted me to talk about my feelings toward the company, and I think she was trying to judge whether I’ll be back with a gun when I’m laid off. Relax, lady. I’ll go quietly when the gig is up. I have no feelings at all toward the company.

The nose pimple is shrinking, damn it. I’ve enjoyed watching people avoid looking at it, and toyed with the idea of painting it red and topping it off with a dollop of White-Out to heighten the effect, but alas, it’s almost gone.

♦ ♦ ♦

Usually the crazies aren't up so early in the morning, but today a Christoholic was preaching at the corner of Powell and O’Farrell, on my walk to work. There’s often a preacher a block down Powell, at Market Street, but this wasn’t that guy. I do hope they’re not franchising.

“I say, sinner," he said, "are you ready for the Rapture? Are you ready to be judged by Jesus?”

It’s futile to respond to the street people, so I kept walking. I felt sorry for the guy, though, because he didn’t seem to know that the Rapture already happened. Christ returned in the winter of 1987. He couldn’t get booked on the talk shows, but he found both Christians and took them back to Heaven with him.

♦ ♦ ♦

I don’t have any interest in learning any of what Marcia knows about workflow in the company, but after her, I’m the worker who knows second-most about things. Our lead, Jennifer, probably comes in fourth.

With Marcia leaving, today's the first Friday I’ve been certain I wasn’t being laid off. Yeah, Marcia’s new job gives me job security, for at least as long as it takes to train some new hire on the basics — a couple of weeks, maybe. By company standards, though, that’s a career.

And there’s still not much work to do at work. So why do we call it work?

♦ ♦ ♦

By not getting laid off, I lost my bet with Beatrice. Tried to give her a tenspot, but she said she’d rather I buy her a beer some night after work. She’s twenty years older than me so that’s not a romantic invitation, just an offer of friendship, but I don’t much even like beer. And jeez, am I looking for friendship?

I like Beatrice. Apparently she likes me. When we’ve kept the conversation superficial and mostly work-related, it’s flowed smoothly. And she’s my crumpet dealer. So ... OK, we’ll guzzle a beer some night, and see if we’re friends when the talk isn’t so shallow.

♦ ♦ ♦

That’s enough social interaction to get my membership in the Hermits’ Association canceled, but wait, there’s more:

Kallie is a co-worker in my department, and her TV fizzled and died a few nights ago. When she mentioned it yesterday, I offered mine. I meant it as a loan but didn’t quite make that clear, and when she said she’d take it if I didn’t want it, fingersnap, just like that I decided I didn’t want it. Not even in the closet.

So this morning I put the TV in my backpack and brought it to work, to give it to Kallie. It’s an old, small black-and-white set, and I don’t know what it weighs — five or ten pounds? Kallie has back trouble, though, so she offered me dinner if I’d deliver the TV.

Uhhhh ... Kallie is about my age, and she’s attractive, and a little overweight, which could go nicely with my “a lot overweight.”

Am I allowed to think such thoughts?

No. I’m certain it’s not a date, and if it is a date or ever becomes anything like a date, Kallie will have to explain it to me and she'll have to bring up the subject, because I sure won't. But we're having dinner at her house within a week or so, “when I can afford to cook,” Kallie says.

♦ ♦ ♦

Two social events are on my calendar? Even one would be almost unprecedented, but two?

If I didn’t know these ladies I’d be nervously squirming already, but I do know them, so I hope I’ll be able to relax and be me, not the tongue-tied petrified run-and-hide shy guy that I’ve always been when humans are around. Especially female humans.

I hate navigating the social realm, though. I am introverted, with as much to say as a table says to a chair. I fumble all over myself trying to make small talk. And I’m fat and ugly in my own eyes, so even a fleeting thought of smooching some dame seems like an insult to her.

Margaret was my girlfriend mostly by mutual default, but except for her, I haven’t so much as held a woman’s hand for … nine years. (I had to stop and think.)

And except for Bruno, a friend I left behind in Seattle, and except for maybe a few zine-weirdos who hang out in my mailbox, there isn’t even anyone who’s really a friend.

Maybe it’s time for one or the other.

♦ ♦ ♦

End of month postscript & call for art submissions:

Words, words, more words. It’s hard on the eyeballs. What this zine needs is some artwork — a few comics, drawings, or imaginative doodles could class up the joint and keep readers awake.

If you’re looking for a creative artistic outlet, you’re invited. It doesn’t need to be funny, doesn’t need to be on any particular theme, doesn’t even need to be all that good. It just needs to be not too profoundly ugly and fit onto a piece of paper. Or why not shoot the works and give the next issue a cover?

Payment? No.