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1300. Opened mail. Unemployment check: check. What's this? It's from Baruch... Holy cow! they're giving me another $400. Now I can buy textbooks!
1330-1400. On the subway, read an article in the New Yorker about Martha Stewart. Is she being punished because she's a bitch, or because she's a self-made icon and it's time to squash all self-made 'men? She's a paradox: empowerment and liberation via brutal conformity. Consider her aspects as the Hestia/Hera of pop culture. Maybe I should be studying semiology? But Christ, I don't want to be a professional academic.
1400ish. Deposit checks, run next door to Whole Foods and buy five ginormous bottles of water for $0.69 each, but now I'll have to carry them around all day. Splurge on a pound of yummy Whole Foods coffee.
1500. Walking cross-town. Ruminations on Martha remind me of the Anatheon, a comic I've written parts of. It troubles me, too ambitious. My erstwhile writing partner thinks that the Anatheon should be written very pulpy, at first anyway, with all the mythic stuff strictly subtextual. But then why Anatheon? Tying it in with my jokey strip about Alan Moore's secret identity would solve my narrative problems, but would fold in even more ambitious dimensions. I'm in over my head already... Shit! Left my watch home.
1530. At Shakespeare's, buying textbooks. Goddam, college students are idiots. I'm in line in the basement listening to them and they make me want to barf. Two more years of this... $135.00 for Pre-Calc/Spanish. Short stories of Robert Graves: $5.00; Allan Quatermain: $1.00. At the Baruch bookstore, two more Spanish books and -- help me! -- $180.00 for the goddam calculator. I tell a pretty girl that she can get the Spanish book $10.00 cheaper at Shakespeare's and she acts like I'm hitting on her. Now my bag weighs about 50 lbs; I've spent all the budgeted book money and have two more classes to shop for. Will have to dip into Moving Money.
1600-1730. Check email/bboards from library computer then settle down to Multiplication of Matrices. Piece of cake.
1740-1920. Pre-Calc.
1940-2120. Writing II. Is the professor a pedantic asshole or a nice lady in an awkward social position? I can understand, just, why we're reading short stories in a non-fiction composition class, but are these group discussions really appropriate? The final grade is 20% class participation. Goddamit, Earnest Hemingway's Cat in the Rain does not have a feminist message. Why are we expected to treat short stories like Easter Egg hunts? I thought the point was... Okay, knock it off. Just do the work.
2130-2330. Subway to girlfriend's house. The bag of water & textbooks weighs at least 150lbs. Dinner of veggie stir fry with crispy tofu. Too tired & mentally stimulated for effective cannoodling. Some CNN blowhard on John Stewart & Bernie Mac on Howard Stern. I like Bernie Mac, but he's coming across as a fuckin' blowhard, too.
2400. Sleep.
0900-1000. Having bathed, eaten, and, uh, "related", girlfriend leaves for school & I do the dishes. An hour flies by as I play Minesweeper. What is the hold this stupid game has on me? As I'm playing, I think of a story about a minesweeper after WWII who stomps on a mine so that he won't have to take any more orders. How to make it more dramatic than pathetic? Rather the same question that has led me to imagine a story based on Minesweeper. Okay, go home, young man.
1100-1230. Phone calls. Employment agency, real estate agent, financial aid office, &c. Make some yummy Whole Foods coffee. This thread makes me imagine a hilarious mockumentary where I dress up as Nick Fury and 'cover' both signings as though they are the same author. Have William Gibson autograph my SenseNet business card; Hunter S. Thompson... an 8x10 glossy of Gonzo from the Muppets. Question for Hunter: If Rainbird from Steven King's Firestarter (played by George C Scott wearing an eyepatch -- like me in my Nick Fury disguise) offered to kill any single person you wanted, who would you choose? Pray, pray, pray, he says, "You."
1300. I still have not unpacked my bag. |
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