A battered woman is staying at my house, and her two kids. I feel bad because the place isn’t clean. The dishes aren’t done.

I forgot how children look under everything. Her son, two months shy of three, in one hour-long inspection, found the lost cat toys: every single one of them. Everything demands a brief inspection before moving on to the next wonder.

The left side of his moms face looks like she had a golfball implanted on her cheek bone. When she looks at you, it seems like someone sewed together two halves of different faces.

When his mom says it’s time to go to bed, his big eyes wonder, grasp at why. He asks, “momma, we sleep here”?

Not even three and he’s already mastered incredulous.

Friday, instead of going to the art opening or the birthday party, Sandra and Gearmo, and Sahar came over and made sammiches. Well, not really, but Sandra and Gearmo BBQd chicken and hot dawgs and we chowed the fuck down. We also started drinking kind of early, and kept drinking, and kept drinking, and you could use our conversations as an inebriation thermometer. For example, we discussed poop shapers, at length. And various lengths of poop coming out of shapers, and various colors you could use for your poop in combination with the shapers for more interesting poop shapes.

The highlight of the night (for me) happened at the end of the food fight. Sandra and Sahar were sitting on the couch and I hit one of them with a piece of broccoli. So Sandra jumps off the couch shouting “It’s ON NoW!”

She starts throwing random food at me: chips, broccolli, carrots. (Some dipped in hummous.) Then, as she reaches back to throw, she elbows Sahar in the eye, and Sahar’s all “Owww. My eye.”

Sandra turns to her: “Bitch. I told you it was on.”

And Sahar, pointing at me: “But I thought it was on over there.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Soon after this Brandon, Mike, and Kim came by to hang out and that was very cool. Especially cause I was tired of talking about poop shapers. Sandra and Gearmo are some scat-happy freaks.

Saturday, Roy and Renee dragged me out for alcoholic smoothies. (Renee says if you call them smoothees, it makes them healthy.) We head over to Sliders for one, or two, and then to Magick Cauldron where I snagged some fabu incense and we ran into Skott. I’d had dinner plans, so Roy and Renee and I met my friend Cecily for dinner at Paulie’s over there near Diedrich’s. The food is pretty good, but a tad pricey. However, the proportions are HUGE, so that kind of makes up for the price.

Later that night, I somehow ended up at Roy and Renee’s drinking martinis and beer before heading home. I think they abducted me.

Sunday I met Alex and Leah for fast food pad thai. Always go with tofu and never shrimp. It was Leah’s birthday weekend, so we visited, and then they took me to Alex’s mom’s so they could placate my tummeh with the porto. We talked politics.

Sunday at Havok was awesome. All the people who were there last week when it was D.E.A.D. came back this week and they all brought their friends. That’s like the best endorsement you can get. Everyone had a great time. Plus, I think I must look sexier in the Havok booth than at Numbers. (Maybe I should turn the lights down more at Underworld.) Girls Gone Wild was filming, so the naked dancing chick bothered a few, but really, we’ve seen the same at Numbers.

Dude. This weekend is gonna rock. I met this chick the other night. Even though I said I’d stay away from the young ones, I don’t care. ( She’s fucking hot )

I’m not sure what we’re gonna do, though. I think I’m movied out. I saw I, Robot Tuesday evening, and it was cool. I don’t know what crack Joel was smoking. It doesn’t necessarily follow the Asimov stories, but it’s still a good story in its own right.

On Tuesday, I saw King Arthur, which was ok. All of the criticism I’d seen about the movie concerned it being gratiotous on all levels. but really the movie was very tastsfully done, and the only gratuitous bits were Arthur’s political meanderings.

Overall it felt like it was meant to be a lot longer but was mercilessly slashed. The worst effect of the editing? You don’t get to know the characters very well. You feel like you know Guinevere and one of Arthur’s knights (the one with the big, fucking axe). This may be because those two actors did a good job of acting.

Wednesday I saw Catwoman due to Debbi’s immense kindness. Whenever she hears the Ghostbusters song and they say “who’re you gonna call?” She says “Austin!” It’s possible I owe her some chocolate cake.

And finally, the Object A website is available with submission guidelines and some information about our background so we don’t seem like a fly-by-night operation. We’re more like a stay-up-late-doing-nothing-productive operation, but shhhhh… don’t tell no one. If you enquired about being an editor, you should receive an email from me this weekend.

Otherwise, the rest of you maggots best wish me luck. I have an important presentation for work on Monday, and if I do well, the entire world will be officially obliged to kiss my ass. You want to get on my good side early.

[Edited to add] Last night, before Underworld, I saw the Murano glass exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. On Thursday, the museum is free. Some of the glass was seriously awesome. I say glass, but it was mostly a bunch of vases and such. And they were indescribably beautiful. Go see.

I also ran into Samantha there, tooling like a hussey through the museum’s barely lit underground tunnels. The scandal!

While I was there, I also glimpsed a little of the Inverted Utopias: avant-garde art in Latin America, and it looked keen. Especially neat is an installation piece outside the front door of the museum that you can walk into. It’s yellow and just swallows you whole. And inside, it’s kind of like swimming. It’s so cool.

I still need to go to the Menil, but someone refuses to go with me.

(Contrary to vicious internet rumour, this week is not national blow-job week. An exhaustive poll of men at Underworld last night revealed this was either a blatant rumour or a vast conspiracy by women, a femspiracy, to cover up the existence of this holiday. The nation mourns.

Last night almost sucked, but then I spent the rest of the evening with Brooke and Brad. Good times. Met Brooke’s friend Vanessa (again) and we all met James at Katz’s for pickles. They have this bad ass rasberry jabanero sauce there that rocks.

Slept in and am back at work till 6:30 when I head over to Havok for the Bella Morte show. Hearts Fail opens. Naika and I spin and Roy should be dropping by for a guest set.

Danseparc was coolish, and definitely got cooler later when the music picked up. The early set reminded me of Union’s boys and girls club on Wednesdays (no cover, allegedly $2 drinks): almost awesome but missing some oomph.

Sunday, July 25 is Sahar’s birthday bash at Havok. Next Thursday, July 29 (not this Thursday), is the Leo’s Ball at Underworld with the Last Dance.

Object A is coming along. I swear.

Meanwhile I’ve been having weird dreams because they take place and seem just liek real life, so I’m having trouble what I’ve really done and what was just a memory. For example, the only reason I didn’t hang out with Danielle last Thursday is because she’s in D.C. Otherwise, things have been weird. When I figure out what’s going on, I’ll post a memo.

At some point, all highs are the same. The world static suddenly shifts to clarity, every leaf in every tree distinct. I only get high because I’m bored.

I am not high now. Nor am I low.

I was sitting at work when my head fell off. It detached at the neck and fell over on my right shoulder. All at once, my vision unbinoculared into my skull, and I wondered if Dr. Maser knew my head had fallen off. She made no easily discernible reaction, but at the intersection of her lips her smile cracked and I knew that she knew. Even if Dr. Maser pretended not to know, her soul knew.

I wasn’t concerned with missing what Dr. Maser was saying. The other people in the meeting were taking notes, and I could fake it later. At the time I was thinking about this girl who knew I was playing the game, but I continued to play the game anyway, and she continued to go along. It was the 4th grade recess kickball game of dating: we were bored and the cool kids were doing it, so we played along too.

In middle school I read Jack London books voraciously. I must admit they form some foundation for fantasy: the great white, the nature, the disparate solitude. They are how I feel. But New York? New York is how I feel I am.

I was in New York tonight.

In a club Madonna owns, they have a Co-Ed bathroom replete with showers and a hot tub. Magi neophytes not realizing they’ve begun training cavort high on E, one tab after another, rolling till noon. People wiggle betwixt eachother, engulfed in total velvet caress, oblivious to the truth:

Every word leads to enlightenment.

Oblivion. Decay. Not doing well. You cast your spells carelessly like spittle from dry, nervous lips. I would ignore your spells, but I end up playing Missile Commander, intercepting your bad Mo Jo. I’ll be damned if you blow my high, but cursed if you blow others.

There was some evil about, coalescing in deep irredescent green reflected in the backs of large beetles fucking in the gutters. At least I think they were fucking. Draped in London Fog, the Top could very well have murder about, but that bothers me not. Tonight is too dark to discern whether it’s blood, drizzle, or humid night that glitters in the cobblestone runnels. And I don’t care. I hop from soft, yellowed gaslight-glow to soft, yellowed gaslight-glow, and I have already had this dream. Upstairs in my apartment is a drawer that will fill with viscous, fresh blood.

This is just one of the infinite multiplicities of Now, but I have engagements. The Faerie Queene has invited me to tea and I am expected to witness blood on a saucer.

The streets are quiet. Far away the pulse of lonely au-to-mobiles feeds the sleeping city.