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.

The last thing I remember was Renee asking what kind of Ramen I wanted: sweet and sour something or chicken something surprise. I woke five hours later at 11:30 wondering if I should call in to work, or just try to mosey in without being noticed.

I did neither, instead opting for sitting on the floor naked and staring at a scuff and Nicci’s art on the wall. Clothing, caffeine, and the car were too much to think about.

The night before, we’d spent some time with a much-changed Danielle who implored us to never waste a moment, so we wasted none. After Danielle went home, Roy, Renee, and I headed for Lotus Lounge. The club does suck, but there was no cover, $1 drinks, and good music. Sandra and Gearmo were still there. I’d originally made plans to hang out with them that night. I also saw Brandon, Kat, Dana, Nicole, and Josh there. Photocopy your gametes for Josh!

Intent on not wasting any moments, Gearmo drove aimlessly around down town trying to find where I’d parked. I’m pretty sure we passed my car twice before swinging around the block once more. We caravanned back to 1960 (Houston’s party mecca since 1997!), and stopped at the convenience store for more smokes. I think we killed three packs that night.

After driving the twenty minute drive toward sobriety down I45, Roy decided I wasn’t able to drive the two blocks back to their apartment. I thanked him for his boneheaded sense of safety and gave him the keys. For future notice, if you think I should’nt drive, suggest so before I drive at high rates of speed down a busy interstate.

Back at their apartment we drank more, gossipped, and talked about all kinds of things until dawn came. I haven’t seen dawn in a long time. I think Renee and I toasted my seeing dawn. Woot.

Gearmo and Sandra headed home around four where they left a bizarre message on my voice mail. Sandra’s babbling about their gnomish hostage sounded like an inebriated alien dialing in from Alpha Centauri.

The gnome in question, a bad ass specimen of gnomish temperature-itude has a long, tall slender hat equipped with a thermometer used for inserting into your ass to take accurate body temperatures. The second gnome freed during the daring daylight attack on the R complex was a small, red-hatted fellow who seems very genial. His first request after being freed was for some enchiladas. He said he hadn’t had any mexican food for the entirety of his imprisonment.

The double gnome dispursement will go down in history. Someday, I hope to be like the little tailor, or Gearmo’s mom, and I’ll be able to say “seven with one blow!” Fear me foul gnome slavers.

Last night, I think I was a zombie. I had no energy. I talked to Nitekry for a bit, as well as Tony and Liz. I did meet several new faces, but I was lacking the people power points to socialize. Likewise, I am mentally lacking now. I do not think I could be more apathetic.

We did not waste any moments Wednesday night, but we wasted a lot on Thursday. I do not think any of us went to work. Renee makes good amaretto sours.

Tuesday night was about moments, too. While working at Diedrich’s, I ran across Jade and her friend Holly (and a few other friends of theirs). I hung out with Jade for a bit, walked down to Randall’s and back, grabbed some grub from Taco Cabana, and then hung out at Catbird’s. I had rum and coke and bought a dozen bad ass pork tamales.

When he hawked the tamales, I asked what kind he had. He said he had beef, chicken, and pork. Jade, the vegetarian, said something sarcastic along the lines of “what choices…” I bought the pork because the best tamales are always pork tamales.

I generally do not purchase chicken or pork cooked by other people. Popeye’s Chicken is one of the few exceptions. And I do not eat that much red meat either. Shrimp is awesome. Fish is only good if cooked well, but most people and places do not cook it well.

Last year some time, a friend of Roy’s, some ephemeral ballet dancer and dedicated renny named Jen was trying to get Roy and I a DJing gig at this new bar/club where she was cocktailing. The short-lived establishment located on Richmond called itself the Purple Rooster. It isn’t hard to make the cognitive leap from Purple Rooster to Purple Cock. I spent a couple of evenings wondering how we would promote an 80s night at the Purple Cock. Is that something you tell your friends? ‘Come see me DJ. Look for the giant purple cock on Richmond.’

Fortunately, I never had to have those conversations. The deal fell apart when the one manager accused the other manager of cheating on him with one of the door men and chased the offending manager around the bar and out the door with a steak knife. The nightspot closed soon after.

I am moving soon. Imminently.

One of my earliest memories has me staring up from the bottom of a pile of crisp leaves beneath an evening sky and the palm tree in the front yard of my parent’s house in Corpus.

I’d been raking leaves with my dad. I don’t remember why I was in the pile of leaves, other than I was three, or very nearly, and kids just jump in leaves sometimes.

I haven’t jumped in any leaves in a long time. At some point, approaching adolescence, rolling around in dry, scratchy leaves and getting poked by twigs lost its glamour for me; a lot of childlike things lost their glamour with me.

That’s too bad. I imagine a maniacal kid grin slapped across the face peering out from that pile of leaves. It must be insane kinds of fun, or so many kids wouldn’t do it.

I was almost a maniacal kid a few nights ago. On the brink, I tell you! Going for an illicit swim in the middle of the night when an early morning and a long week were just peeking above the horizon. It was fun. I smiled. I laughed.

Nothing is more fun than thrashing around on the floor wrestling like idiots. Or rolling down a hill. Or bouncing around the house singing your heart out to the imaginary, sold-out, cheering crowd. Or throwing food at someone.

I eat sweets. Sleep in. Relish clean sheets on the bed. And breathe a little deeper when I smell a pretty perfume. These things are important. You have to enjoy the world you live in.

But you have to act like a kid sometimes, too.

I’ve forgotten how much fun it can be to be covered in mud.

It was a humid, damp cold, the kind that clings to you. I read a remarkable story by Chekhov this evening: “Big Voldya and Little Volydya”. I keep several collections of short stories and essays near my bed, and tonight I was reading Chekhov. Recently I had been reading Borges, a collection of stories, each one more amazing than the last, but not so with Chekhov.

Alex says short stories are more useful for adults whose lives are taken up with more pressing matters, but this is not always true. Short novels also have their use. Just last night I finished Slaughterhouse Five, a juggernaut of 200 small pocket-paperback sized pages.

I sat half in, half out the door reading Chekhov, smoking a clove, sipping a “fortuitous bottle” of Herbsaint, a refugee of last Tuesday Night, a Tuesday Night I did not attend.

The cold, and the clove remind me of Austin. Everything reminds me of Austin. Everything reminds me of other places.

I imagined for a moment reading and smoking in a damp, humid cold in Alaska. How awesome that must be, at the top of the universe, isolated from the vast balance of the world. The few existants I am aware of in that mysterious northern fantasy-land seem so intriguing.

And I was listening to the Pain Teens: Stimulation Festival.

I first heard about the Pain Teens as a reference to an “internationally regarded noise band” from Houston, Texas. It was in a music review in the sadly missed Industrial Nation. I can’t remember the subject of the original review, but when I came across Stimulation Festival in the Sound Exchange on the drag in Austin, I purchased it feverishly; most likely with my last few dollars.

I purchased everything in Austin with my last few dollars. Perhaps, in some attempt to preserve the heydays of my youth, I am always purchasing things with my last few dollars.

This evening I purchased a wrap of honey mustard chicken. It was delicious.

Thanksgiving is always a lonely time for me, even when surrounded by a heaped high plates of food, and heaped high piles of friends or family. I spent a cold, gray weekend in Austin alone one Thanksgiving. It was by my own choice. I think it must have been a lonely time for me, even then. Why else would I ditch family gatherings and friendly pot-lucks to wander campus alone?

UT, during the holidays, becomes deserted, a ghost ship, drifting through cold, gray winter holiday weekends.

One winter was so cold. Somehow. Somehow. I don’t remember the circumstances, but Brian and I came to be stranded at the frat house of our friend Steve Cunliffe. He was a jovial guy. Surreallity dragged behind him like a tattered cloak precariously attached with an old safety pin. How he ever fit in with a frat is beyond me. Probably beyond any of us, but Steve was never concerned with what may have been within anyone’s grasp, much less his. There is a freedom there.

Ice and maybe snow had shut down the city. That must have been a dry cold. It felt electric. Bundled in South Texas winter coats, we clenched and shivered outside, worn sneakers skating on the ice covered sidewalks. We tried for campus, sliding down gradients we’d never noticed before. We settled for a careful climb back uphill to Ken’s. Fresh, warm donuts on a morning like that are a treasure. I can’t believe I hadn’t remembered them until now.

Nicci drug Stimulation Festival out sometime earlier today. I haven’t listend to that album in what must be years. I used to own everything by them. I still have Beast of Dreams and the double-release of Case Histories and Born in Blood. I also scored their debut self-titled noise thing on vinyl, and a demo tape of random loops and songs. The rest of their discography must’ve been sold when I moved down from Austin. I sold everything I had that wasn’t a collector’s item or rare.

That’s not entirely true. I landed in Houston with Stars of the Lid, Portishead, Pornography, and the Sisters. In my first room here, an oversized closet in my father’s apartment off Memorial, I slept every night to Stars of the Lid’s Lactate’s moment. It’s still the greatest ambient song I’ve ever heard. “Without the tedious intrusion of drums or vocals.”

I used to know Brian McBride from Stars of the Lid. He was on the UT debate team with me, as was Eric Emerson. What ever happened to Eric? I spent several years in Austin living three lives: my life with Eric, his brother, and girlfirend in an apartment on Red River; my life as tangential observer and alcoholic understudy with the Austin goths; and artistic malcontent at the University.

Now I live only two lives. Problematic web designer at UH and tangential observer and alcoholic refugee with the Houston goths.

I asked an old friend earlier this week if they remembered when they were young, telling themselves money wasn’t important, they’d just get some job, get by, and live a happy, fulfilling life.

Eric, his girlfriend, and his brother smoked so much goddamned pot. All the time they were smoking. They even lived in some sort of pot dealer collective, a four bedroom they split with Nick, the bull shitter, and crazy Michelle. Pot seeds and leavings littered the counter tops. I spent a lonely Christmas weekend with them. I wore an old rainbow checkered sport coat all the time ‘cause it was cold, and the coat was warmer than my t-shirts. I may wear the coat tomorrow. Just for kicks. I had this horrible acid trip that weekend, but I guess I’ll talk about that later.

I love old school goth rock. I’m not talking the 80s goth and death rock. Much of that is shit. I love it. I have a weakness for the stuff, but when you throw it next to Bauhaus or the Pixies or Bowie or Nirvana (I’m thankful a band in my time could measure up to the greatness of the ages before), it’s all shit.

But I’m not talking about the 80s stuff. I’m talking about the 90s stuff. The stuff we’ve all forgotten. I listened to Love Like Blood, on cassette, in the car today. Three times. I did a lot of driving today. Bought lots of gas with my last few dollars…

My supervisor called me during lunch today wondering where I was and why I hadn’t been at work. I think she thinks I’m not working. Maybe she’s right. I don’t work a lot of time. Maybe I’m young and have other things to work towards. She’s married, has raised two children and seen them married.

Me, I’m reading through short stories and essays in a humid, damp cold at 1:40 AM. I have no regrets that my lifestyle sometimes spills over into my workplace. They should be happy I have more to do in life than correct shitty HTML. Hah.

I’ve never looked like I work much. I’m a thinker. I doodle. And sketch. And figure out ways to make things better. Ways to work better, faster, more efficiently. More perfect. I stare a lot. Off into space. That doesn’t mean I actually work better, faster, more efficently, though I could, but there’s so much space to stare off into, so many places for the mind to be besides here, now.

Like Alaska. Or Austin. Or Prague, or Bucharest.

Bucharest because there are no facts to dispel my illusions. Even their websites are sorely lacking. It’s as if the reality elves haven’t gotten around to Bucharest yet. It’s possible it’s not even there. That the maps feature imagined mountains and towns that no one’s ever seen. Maybe I should go see them. I’ve got a few last dollars…

When people say idealist or dreamer, it’s derogatory. It’s like Christian Death. These divine, perfect concepts have these horridly negative connotations. But I suppose I am an idealist and a dreamer, but an imperfect one at that.

I’ve got a revolution to run, but I’m caught up in unrevolutinary details: designing the website; printing costs for a zine (You hear me Alaska?!? I want your words and pictures.); working the revolution into my work-a-day schedule. Can we throw the imperialist scum to the wall after 6:00 PM? I’ve got a meeting this afternoon.

That makes me laugh.

I used to have this compilation called Stars, Hide Your Fires (It’s a Shakespeare reference), a compilation of 90s goth rock by bands like Forbidden Fire, the Tors of Dartmoor, and other such. The 90s stuff was so great. I probably sold that comp when I moved down from Austin. I used to listen to it all the time when I worked at the State Capitol. I spent a lot of time there not working. And eating lots of reception food, I ate reception food for six months. I became very dexterous. I can hold a drink, balance a precarious plate of eggrolls, cheese, and veggies, eat and gesticulate wildy with my free hand.

I’m great fun at parties. Maybe that’s where I should be now. Maybe the revolution needs a party.

“If it’s not in Houston, it may be in Beaumont. If it’s not in Beaumont, it may be in Lake Charles, Louisianna…”

So, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna show up tomorrow, play a bunch of old school goth rock, some Pain Teens, a Danzig song, and then I’m just gonna’ leave. I’ve got places to be. And miles to go before I sleep.