Dear Woody Allen...

That movie sucked. Not that I was expecting much. I was lying helpless in bed and unable to move. I feel like I've been taken advantage of. I am not your adopted daughter.

Thank you.

As the critic and novelist Umberto Eco once observed, any text "always constitutes a bet on the way it will be received." It should not surprise us, therefore, that some of Bukowski’s most trenchant remarks on the art of writing refer us back to the track; indeed, he commends it to us. In his story "Goodbye Watson" (appropriately a tale about placing a wrong bet, this time on a boxer), the author avows that "if I ever taught a class in creative writing, one of my prerequisites would be that each student must attend a racetrack once a week and place at least a 2 dollar win wager on each race." Horseracing offers the writer an invaluable mental discipline, for "a man who can beat the horses can do almost anything he makes up his mind to do." Its bottom line, its existential limit, is the "death-wish"—"old stuff," but with "still some basis in it yet." We can recognize this in ourselves and in others and in the crowd around us, since "the reason most people are at the racetrack is that they are in agony, ey yeh, and they are so desperate that they will take a chance on further agony rather than face their present position." The danger lies in forgetting that gambling (and, we might add, writing) is a difficult craft to master and needs careful handling—"just another job, finally, and a hard one too"—and without respecting this we merely left with a recipe for "bad bets" and "sucker bets." But correctly understand, says Bukowski, "the racetrack tells me where I am weak and where I am strong." It is a source of great intuitive insight, freeing the writer from what is fake and routine, and Bukowski approvingly cites Hemingway’s attendance at bullfights, claiming that they helped "old ratbeard" to write. Nevertheless, there is an essential difference between the two writers that goes unnoticed here. Bukowski’s own writing lacks that sustained fatalism that pervades Hemingway’s work, that obsession with our failure to recognize when our luck has run out. In Bukowski’s narratives we repeatedly straddle the fine divide between winning and losing, between self-possession and the illusion of control, and it is this that underlies the bitter comedy of novels like Factotum and Post Office, for in that narrowest of gaps a whole world emerges. Like his days at the races, Bukowski’s fictions remind us "how much we keep changing, changing all the time, and how little we know of this."...

Fortean Times...

Vegas, baby...

I tried posting a test audblog. Didn't work. Might try again when I'm gone. Might not. Might lose a lot of money. Might not.

Probably will.

H.P. Lovecraft's Mother...



A friend spent the night on my couch last night. She asked if I would take her home in the morning, I said that it wouldn't be a problem. In the morning she was gone. This kind of puzzled me because she said that her car was parked at Matt's house which is a good distance away.

I guess she decided to walk or maybe she tried to wake me up and I didn't, I don't know. Anyway, when she got to Matt's house, she thought that her car got towed. But she forgot that it was parked across the street from my house and had to walk all the way back.

Yup.

Jacquis...



So, the girlfriend's in London. I obviously didn't go. Long story. My work is also closed til maybe Thursday. Going to Vegas on Friday. That doesn't really help out in the money aspect, does it? I have to go though, my room was comped by a guy that I know that does business with the owner of the hotel that I'm staying at. I guess he owns two more of the big ones too. Must be nice. But, I have to go, and trust me - I'm grateful - I mean, how cool is that. A comped room for the whole weekend at 170 bucks a night. This includes whores too. No. Just kidding. No whores.

I think I'm going to do some manual labor 2morrow for some more extra cash.

I am now forgetting things.

Trying to construct a funny sentence about cruising the gay park by my house.

I am too lazy to explain this.

Feh...

Dr. Curt Connors' Missing Arm...

It's kind of unfair that all mirrors aren't made alike.

I think that mirrors should give back the same reflection as any other.
because, I mean, doesn't it suck to look okay in one mirror and then later go to a different mirror-only to look hideous? I hate those close-up mirrors that show everything too. I don't think some people should be looked at that close. There should be a law against that sort of thing. Like a restraining order that ugly people can file against others so that they don't get too close. I bet a lot of people would start shouting their conversations to each other on the street.

The only people without vanity problems are those that shatter every mirror that they look at.

Asiatic Anti-Venoms...



Man, you get so lazy - you don't really want to put the effort into telling imaginary people what you've been doing. If what I've been doing involved ninja swords, then I would definitely tell you. I get more enjoyment out of writing nonsense anyway. I only like reading journals of mass-murderers anyway, and they're usually so busy that they don't keep them.

I really need to get back to writing in notebooks.
All of this hi-tech Rosie The Robot stuff sucks more time and energy than the pen and good ol' paper. I'll let you read my books someday. They're all in the garage. I'll vomit them out in the publishing world someday.

Dr. Phil and The Da Vinci Code will stomp on my guts.

Doyle Brunson's Bad Knees...

Wish me luck today.

I Wear This Helmet To Protect My Head From When I Have My Epileptic Fits…

I slowed the car to a crawl in the middle of the street to see the fireworks from Disneyland. I looked to my right to see if the men playing softball were looking to, but they weren’t. Were the cars in front of me moving slow because of the fireworks too or did they normally drive that slow?

I didn’t get that movie soundtrack that I wanted. Tower was sold out of them. The Wherehouse had just closed and Target didn’t carry it. The pimply faced, tall teen told me that it was too INDY for them.

I want a lot of random things. Things like the 18 in. Spiderman figure with 67 points of articulation. A string for my bow and a bunch of arrows. I want woodworking tools. A pet crow. But it seems that when I actually do get something in my head, no matter how small – I can’t. Like I’m thinking about things too late. I know that nothing will kill me if I don’t get it, but the gods kind of scuttle me about like a Boll Weevil whenever they get the urge.

Fireworks. Carrots. Soundtracks.

Writing about important things that seem small.

Tonight, these dangle before me.