Operation

outside my window
is Mecca and the Western Wall
all day long people bow at walls and
butt heads because
they lack moral compass

I understand this shit
I'm nine years old
almost ten
and I have to watch the news to fall asleep
if you can call it that
news. sleep.

I dream of flying
my parents don't have a car anymore

every morning
at school
we pray
because Tommy S's brother is in Kuwait

outside my window
is Mecca, is the wailing wall
More bombs than Hollywood
Dad says to the TV with his trigger finger on the clicker
he's right
more flashbulbs too
a million lenses
under a million microscopes
all wrapped in paper

Tommy G says that you can't blow up sand
any more'n you can blow up water
you might be able to kill a couple things
but you drop a bomb in the desert
and it's still a desert, drop a bomb in the ocean
it's still the ocean
even with a nuke

we wrote letters to the soldiers today in Library
most of us drew pictures
Mikle J drew a picture of a girl
with big boobs
and said it was our teacher.
he sealed the envelope before anyone could catch him
I drew a picture of a landwalker from Star Wars
cuz I saw something that looked like it on TV last night

I didn't know how to adress my envelope
the other kids layghed
I guess they'd all done mail before

my last home didn't have a window
No Mecca. No Western Wall.
there were pipes that moaned like dying men and spiders
floor boards
above me
I used to think my Dad was dancing
upstairs
it was a stupid idea TV gave me
he wasn't dancing
any more than he was fucking my Mom
footsteps
tread into carpet like dead leaves
marking the roads from fridge to tub
from hopelessness to bed

Dad wears a mask,
behind the mask there is my father
the eyes are the same
in our new home
I've got toys he doesn't know about
little ones
in every pocket
that won't melt in the wash
marbles in the toe of my shoes
even my winter boots
robots that turn into jungle cats
calculators that turn into drug wars
blocks that turn into pistols

Dad moved us
out here
to get away from it all
but my windows say the same things
it's all just winter temperature, TV stations and latitude lines
that seperate panhandlers here from back home
if the war is over when I'm old enough
I'll move too
if it isn't, I'll do what I'm supposed to
Tommy C says that if you don't do what the government tells you to
they take your balls
and Dad says
those are all I got

["Operation" is a sequel to this]

10 things to do in New Orleans when it isn't underwater

[I wrote this last month for use in a friend's magazine. New Orleans is one of my favorite places in the country, and I never expected thins would get as bad as they are now. When I left Chicago, a band was playing the Blues in a terminal; at the airport in New Orleans they were playing jazz. The people I've met in New Orleans (as well as people I've met in Biloxi, and Picayune, Mississippi, are among the nicest I've ever met. This article will probably not hold true for a while. My heart goes out to all the people I've encountered in that wonderful city. Good luck.]


1. Get a crust punk drunk and have them lead you around town. A possible recipe for disaster? Who cares?!

When my friend Diego visited his family in Cuba, he broke off the first second he could and found some street rats to show him where all the action was. They split a jug of the rum equivalent of moonshine and ended up jamming ska music in a dive bar with a bunch of local strippers. I suggest that whenever you're in an unfamiliar area, before you make any new acquaintances who'll undoubtedly hold you back, you should get a drunk to show you around. I should warn you though, that unlike everything else you'll see in New Orleans, this is not a tourist attraction. N.O. punks are particularly resentful of out of towners coming in, pissing and littering all over their city in a drunken haze.

Despite their occasionally clownish appearance, crusty kids are real people. In other words, a lot of them are assholes. Some are really cool though, and if they have a few hours to kill they could show what the city is really about, or at least point you in the right direction. When I tried this I was nineteen, all wide-eyed and full of awe. That might have helped. I also had a few pocketfuls of Chicago pot, which is oddly cheaper than the New Orleans kind, which I�d share with any and everyone I met. Just don't be a dick and a poor representative of Chicago. You're a Yankee the second you get there, like it or not. Most of the city secretly thinks about you the same way as you do about people from Wrigleyville and Wicker Park, just big dumb cash cows who're completely off about their place in the universe.

Because of the abundance of bars, there isn't as much need for underground venues or house shows, so I never found a good punk spot, but a good contingent of the New Orleans crust community gather in Jackson Square Park around the big church off Decatur. Given the location (the heart of the French Quarter), they're more receptive to the presence of curious out of towners. Find someone who's looking to get fucked up, fuck them up, and hit the streets.

Extra: Get into a pissing contest to prove your worth. Lick something strange off the ground. 5000 punk points.

2. Go to 511 Marigny.

I've visited New Orleans three times and every time there was something cool going on at this address. It's an old, unassuming warehouse with cracked windows and faded graffiti. The first time I visited, it was an unmarked costume shop filled with papier mache monsters. The second time it was this place the A.R.K., kinda like a cross between Hotti Biscotti and the Texas Ballroom, an artist's collective that ostensibly sold coffee and regularly had bands, puppeteers, dada theatre, and circus troupes performing. On my visit to the A.R.K., a cabaret-noise band was playing and a group of puppets and drummers (including one former member of Chicago's Environmental Encroachment) led us on an impromptu parade through and against the Mardi Gras masses.

As of writing this, it is the home of the Iron Rail Book Collective, think a cross between the Azone (r.i.p.) and the New World Resource Center. The warehouse also holds Plan B, a community organization much like Chicago's Working Bikes. Iron Rail is a community library, book- and record store with a wide selection of zines, fiction, children's books, and progressive literature. On my last visit, I bought LPs by the Last Poets, Bauhaus, Michael Jackson, Cat Stevens and Nazis From Mars, a comic book of unicorns having gay sex, and some vegan praline candy for under twenty bucks. They sometimes have zine readings and events benefiting Books to Prisoners and, if you're willing to sit for two hours in a sweltering, unventilated room, they have community movie night every Wednesday. Watch movies like They Live, Spirited Away, Harold and Maude, and A Day Without a Mexican projected on a big dented foam board.

Unfortunately, 511 Marigny�s days may be numbered. Yuppies are encroaching and making condos of the old warehouse district.

http://ironrail.org

http://planb.bikeproject.org/


3. Motherfucking Skeletons, Yo!

One thing that all the tourists' guides will tell you is to hit up one of the city's historic cemeteries. Because New Orleans was pretty much built into the swamp, they don't bury their dead. Settlers in the 1600s found that the rainy season would dredge corpses up from their graves and out of the mud. Because of this, the dead are buried above ground, many of them in stacked shelving units called ovens. The reason they're called ovens is their unique architecture works to break corpses down and literally bake their skeletons clean over the course of a year. Most guidebooks will gloss over this and say that it's because they resemble a wall of oven doors. Many of these rotate bodies in and out. Couple that with the crazy bleached Spanish architecture of the mausoleums (some with their own rod iron gates) and it'd be cool enough but there's more.

There are so many Goths in New Orleans, it's not even funny. Thanks to Anne Rice, Trent Reznor and a thousand jerks claiming to be descendents of Marie Laveau, the place is overrun with spooky kids, each trying to eke out a spot in the darkness. Many of these kids, new to the city or just passing through, have smashed through the seals to grab a souvenir. Imagine how much cooler it'd be to drink your Vampyre Vodka out of the skull of a recently deceased school teacher. Especially when you tell your friends that it's really the skull of a bartender whore who killed and robbed her patrons at the legendary House of the Rising Sun.

It's more than just Goths smashing cement doors. There are also collectors, high school pranksters, and actual practitioners of Voudun. I'm not saying do this. Just go look. Go to just about any cemetery and you're bound to see at least a tibia. C'mon, how often do you get to see human bones and experience the open afternoon?

If you go to the St. Louis cemetery, off Rampart, you're only a couple blocks away from this weird church with it's own dank cave (or "grotto") and tacky-ass gift shop. Look for the 15 foot statue of St. Jude that looks oddly anime.

4. Go to this bar

Unlike Chicago, New Orleans loves its bars. It's almost cheaper to get a 24-hour liquor license there than it is to not serve alcohol. Because of this there are thousands of bars there; ranging from a New York style warehouse club at an old rubber plant to a neighborhood rocknroll dive owned by Sean Yseult (White Zombie/Famous Monsters/Rock City Morgue) to an upscale place run by Harry Anderson (of "Night Court" fame) that specializes in magic shows. You can drink at the strip clubs, you can drink on the street, there's even a couple places where you can order margaritas at the drive-thru window. It's almost impossible to get a weak drink there and, if you do, it's probably because you're being an asshole.

This said, there's only one place I'll recommend: Behind the 8-Ball. It's an actual pool hall and not a thin-veiled drug reference. It's on Tchoupitoulas in the Factory District and while it's not necessarily in the ghetto, it's closer to the ghetto than it is to anything else. It's this really big pool hall, decked out in mirrors and Day-Glo paint. All of the tables are the lower half of be-thonged ceramic mannequins, oh and there are more skeletons there too. None of this sounds particularly special but it's different than nearly all the bars you'll find there. They also have live music, ranging from country to hardcore, hip hop to folk, and sometimes comedy.

The night I was there I talked to these two awesome bartenders. One was this local girl who had a real Midwestern vibe. She called herself a 'real meat and potatoes gal' and talked at length about her recent obsession with chicken Caesar salads. The other was a fresh off the boat Russian girl, living off a student visa, who talked about literature.

If you walk through the weird ghetto areas, you're an idiot. New Orleans is more dangerous than Chicago just in that there's no discernible good block/bad block. However, If you do end up wandering through the crumbling mansion/housing project areas, you will have more of an adventure.

5. Listen to Mad Mike sing about having sex on crack

Mad Mike is this guy in his twenties who's been living on the streets for years, playing a banjo nicer than anything he owns, singing songs that sound a lot like Ween if they stopped trying. Locals either adore him or think he's a scumbag, but he seems to play a lot of shows. Go to one (or drop some money in his case so he can buy a dimebag already).

Hear Mad Mike at http://hippiebum.com

6. Get out of the fucking French Quarter

It's tempting to stay in the Quarter for days at a time with all the historic buildings, shining lights, street performers, fortune tellers, strippers and cheap booze, but there's a lot more cool New Orleans shit out there. Eat your beignet, drink your Hand Grenade, get your table dance and jump a trolley anywhere else.

7. Don't be a vegetarian

It doesn't work here. If you're vegan, pack a lunch. I say go full throttle and rejoin the food chain for a week. They've got meats there you�ve never even thought of not eating. They've got prawn the size of your forearm, rabbit, gator, turtle, crawdad, and more.

I did meet a guy who writes the Asian Cajun Vegan Cookbook zine but I couldn't find the cafe where he sells his veggie gumbo.

8. Juan's Flying Burrito

So you're all like, "Screw you Eric, I'm from Chicago, I'm not going to New Orleans for a burrito. I'm gonna go get some of that rabbit meat you were talking about."

No. You're wrong. This place on Magazine Street in the ironic t-shirt district (think Belmont and Clark with less fourteen year olds) is the greatest. This "Creole taqueria" is the only worthwhile burrito place in the city. First off, all their waitresses look like Suicide Girls and they're playing metal and thrash the whole time, so your sitting there drinking Patron or Negra Modelo or whatever thrashing your head to like S.O.D. or Flux of Pink Indians or Amon Amarth or something, working up an appetite. Then, you find out that they do shit to burritos that towns with actual Mexican populations would never even think of doing. Order up a jerk chicken burrito or a shrimp juaha roll, which is kinda like a sushi taco with three types of cheese, and tell me it wasn't worth holding off on another alligator andouille. This is also one of the few places where vegetarians aren't totally S.O.L.

www.juansflyingburrito.com

9. Zydeco Punk

A month ago, my favorite bullshit concept was zydeco punk. I really like zydeco. It's distinctly American and it kicks fuckin ass. My eyes light up whenever I see a big dude unloading a washboard before a show. I figured that certain aspects and instrumentations could be adapted (bastardized) for punk bands the same way traditional Ukranian music has been for Gogol Bordello and Celtic music has for bands like the Pogues and the Tossers (and to a lesser extent, Flatfoot 56). I thought this would be another unrealized dream until I found the horribly named band Zydepunks on Myspace. They mix Cajun music with a host of other ethnic groups and give it all a thrash breakdown. Hopefully they stick around long enough to draw imitators. I look forward to seeing them next time I head down.

www.zydepunks.com

10. Do DXM.

On that trip when I was 19, I took some bunk chocolate mushrooms during Mardi Gras. Pissed that they didn't work, I went to Walgreens, grabbed some Triple C's and Robo-tripped the night away. As of three years later, I was still meeting people that I was talking to randomly that night.

"Hi, my name's Eric, can you see me? It looks like I'm right here talking to you but I'm really over there, three feet back, watching myself talk to you."

The next day I spent a wonderful hangover piecing the night's events together via notes I'd written myself:

"I am the Lord. The Way to the light is through me."

Of course, this is just another bad idea but, you know what, that's what New Orleans is for. Binging, acting like an idiot. There's no way to go too far. Everyone around may hate you while you're going crazy, but when all's said and done. They've seen worse.

shortstack

inappropriate uses for Beatles songs
1. transitional music for pro war talk show ("She's Got a Ticket to Ride")
2. Muzak version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" featuring absolutely no guitar that I have to listen to when I argue with the phone company

I found something good to say about the Cubs
Wrigley Field consistently hires weirdos for vendors
including
Party Steve, Arvo (aka Mister Fuckhead), Shimon Sapphire-Bernstein (think of a Talis and yarmulke dipped in bongwater wrapped in Grateful Dead mythos), and Jae Storm, who's been fired and rehired three years in a row for stealing shit at Wrigley

line of the weekend: I'm gonna tittyfuck that box of Peeps

R.I.P. Bob Moog

R.I.P. Lakeview Lounge

R.I.P. Randy Turner

when we were goths

-for Dinah-

we met with skinned knees and by the time we got together we'd scabbed over
so many times
we were reptiles

Darling, do you remember
when we worshipped dog butchers and men who sipped cyanide at dinner parties? Red and yellow, the colors of circus tents and waterbugs
we curled phonelines around our knuckles
talked til dawn of the end of the earth
Oh we could dream
like no others
was it you with sand
or me with fire?
perhaps the two of us together under the sheets
alchemists trying to wrinkle time
so your mother would never come home

we were orphans to the best of our abilities
trying to decipher German as we chased the moon back into the ocean
you gagged on soot
vomiting pills
and I pressed you for more
face like a dog's
you offered so many times to do it for me
scars wrapped in flannel, enveloped in what television told you to be, you were everything I needed to save

Everything was death to match our demeanor
we laughed with dead men
read the words of dead men
hymned with long haired women the songs of dead men
resurrected
we dance like no one we'd ever seen dance
back when all we'd seen were weddings and music videos
death matched our demeanor
heavy metal was jazz enough
and to the rest of the world our name was a door slammed

the darndest fucking things

kids say the darndest fucking things:

Kid: Does uncle Zappa ever smile?
Mom: Well, I'm sure he has. He has to have smiled ONCE, dear.
Kid: Maybe he doesn't smile because he doesn't get any respect.
Mom: [pause]
Kid: Like he used to be young and handsome and very nice, but he didn't have any money and no one gave him any respect so he doesn't smile anymore

cabbies say the darndest fucking things:

Cabbie: Where to, Mac
Me: Augusta and Cicero
Cabbie: Why the fuck would you wanna go there?
Me: [Pause]
Cabbie: Bowels of the fucking Earth down there. Motherfuckers don't even have DNA down there that you can test once they fuckin do something!

goths say the darndest things

Goth 1 with a million fucking curleycues drawn around her eyes:
" ...and then he nailed her upside down to this big woolden cross"
Goth 2 who attacked her fucking backpack with glitter glue band insignias:
"Wow, that's really hot."

noise fans say the darndest fucking things

Noiseguy 1: Man, that video ["RVs and You"] they were playin behind Satan3000 tripped me out, man. I've got a real problem with winnebagos!
Noiseguy 2: The video before that had a woman being raped with her legs sawed off. You've got a problem with winnebagos?

animals know when you're out of film

-For Andre Noseworthy-

Monday night at 1
I was returning to WLUW
there was this lone man, an older guy sweating bullets as he ran around
Loyola's racetrack.
One of those brown rabbits
who've just this year
forayed to Roger's Park
had become startled and run onto the course.
Unsure of where to veer
it just made sure
to stay ahead
and let itself be chased
by this crazed older man

I picked up an infant
waiting to get bitten,
and put it back down

by 2 I was unusually tired
and well aware that the entire school
in its first week of classes
had picked up the undeniable smell of urine

It's a Jesuit school full of Muslims
I don't completely get it

Northeastern
with the exception of WZRD
smells like a hospital
and put me in a foul mood

I used to arrive at WZRD just in time to see the sun setting over a Slavic graveyard.

WLUW has a lot more rules than WZRD, even after the big shakeups.
perhaps that's the difference between freeform and commercially-viable, uncommercial product.

The place lacks history. It's pristine, with walls completely undefaced. Their turntables are hidden like some bastard behind a locked door.
Their no alcohol and drug policies seem more than winks and nudges and Don't get caught. By the time I was done at the Wizard I was practically straightedge anyway, at least within its hallowed halls.

Two years ago we were kings. We owned monday nights and the city had no counteroffer to distract us. It was James with the tits, Skateboard Dan, and then myself. Me and Dan and random skate kids and coeds til classes started. Brett would come in and play us ragtime covers of punk songs. Mountain Dew and Popov and corn moonshine and random games of truth or dare and the school security showing up just as someone was getting dressed again. Half a dozen fake bands, a few handfulls of mushrooms. There was a time when anyone could just show up and everyone did.

One night, nearly everyone who was a part of my life decided to visit me in groups of two or three. Twenty people, including my roommate's drugdealer Coco, whom he wanted to impress. It was pretty beautiful, even though the station manager showed up and had me kick out the lot.

It was a smaller group then: Miriam, Budros, Vicky, Brett, Dan, Livewire, Sosa, Casey, Tourettes Liz, Tania, Cowboy, Duo, whoever I was dating. We went through the couch one night. It was the comfiest couch in the world even if it did smell like anus, and half the city's avant noise community had probably fucked on it at one time or another, if not at the Wizard, then afterhours at the Nervous Center, where it had lived before. Inside the cushions we found a dagger laced with powder. The dagger, we found out, was placed there by Carol. She's placed a Wiccan protection spell on the blade for the sanctity of a place we freely acknowledged housed ghosts that had as much options for places to stay as we did.

She was outraged by the cocaine though..

As I walked home Tuesday morning, the sun was just rising out of the lake. The water looked like a white newborn's head, all soft pink with ripples and tremors of purple. No one was out but the combers and residents of the beach, who shifted and turned to try and hide from morning. They had set up forts, in groups of twos and fours all along the park. Soon there would be joggers and dew, and everywhere you look August in Chicago's fat spiders. By 7, the streets were packed with girls who looked like pornstars walking dogs that looked like wildebeests.Not wildebeests as they exist in nature, but more wildebeests the way they appeared in your head when you first heard the word. I locked myself in a basement in my old neighborhood and closed my eyes, vowing to wake up earlier from now on.

---

lab and pack rat-i do this more for me than for you
here's a set list

the Eric Burdon and War set:
Eric Burdon and War - "Paint it Black"

the crazy saxophone set:
Les Baton Rouge - "Chloe Yurtz"
Essential Logic- "Music is a Better Noise"
Motorpsycho and Jaga Jazzist Horns - "Theme de Yo-Yo"

softer shit set:
Nick Drake - "Three Hours"
The Baptist Generals - "Creeper"
Wire - "Practice Makes Perfect"

the teensy, tinsy set:
Colin James and his LITTLE Big Band - "Marry Anne"
Stiff LITTLE Fingers - "The Only One"
LITTLE Richard - "Bama Lama, Lama Loo"

ANNOUNCEMENT: Get it? Teensy? Little? I'll keep pulling that cornball crap if you don't call in and make requests.

the female vocalists enticing the wrong element set:
Portishead - "Strangers" (by request)
Gabby La La - "Pirates"

the loud rock bands that we may see again but not in the same form ever set:
Dead Kennedy's - "California Uber Alles" (playing soon if you can stomach the band sans Jello)
Guitar Wolf - "Highway Baby" (RIP Hideki Sekuguchi)
the Wayouts - "Better Days" (old Chicago pop punk, broken up I think)

dj shit set:
DJ Shadow - "Stem/Long Stem" (request)
4th Pyramid - "Aquatic"
Felix da Housecat - "Everyone is Someone in LA"

the I don't know set. One of the best
Bob Marley - "Judge Not"
Opium Jukebox - "Paranoid"
Sun Ra and his Arkestra - "Pleasure"

female vocalists:
Sons and Daughters - "Broken Bones"
Siouxie and the Banshees - "Happy House"
Azita - "Wasn't in the Bargain" (faded out after a minute because the song sucked so much ass)

hip HOP and dance:
Felt - "Marvin Gaye"
DJ Signify w Buck 65 - "Winters Going"
Gold Chains and Sue Cie - "No Tomorrow"

By this point it was 4:30 and I dropped the idea of sets and everything gets more interesting

Skamaphrodites - "Claw Hammer"
Tom Waits - "Shake it"
Dizee Rascal - "Learn"
Nobukazu Takemura - "Conical Flask"
Kinski - "Hot Stenographer"
Nancy Sinatra - "2 Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad"
The Damned - "Neat Neat Neat"
The Residents - "Easter Woman"
Mutantes - "Hey Boy"
Hayden Thompson "Rockabilly Girl"
Ursula 1000 - "The Shake"
Max Cloud - "The Informer"
I am Kloot - "An Ordinary Child"
Balkan Blues - the Romanian track
Elvis Costello and the Attractors - "Green Shirt"
Ravi Harris and the Prophets - "Path of the Blazing Sarong"
Quasar Wut-Wut - "Beaver Fever"
Firewater - "Some Velvet Morning"
Monolake - "Pipeline"
Lord of the Yum Yum - "Habanera"
OOIOO - "Sister 001"
Twang Bang - "I feel Weird"
Folksongs for the Afterlife - "Death by Melody"
Mayumi Chiwaki and Pilar Stupa - "Slice of Life"
Blondie - "X-Offender"
Zolar X - "The Horizon Suite: Overture or Air/Tomorrow is Sunrise/Inside the Outside/Sound Barrier"

Currently listening:
Lillian
By Alias

i was born at the end of 1982/I was an avid reader of huH magazine

confessions and revelations

1. In 1996 I thought that Wicker Park was a suburb that produced a bunch of wack punk bands, kinda like a more-prolific libertyville

on the other hand they had the Wesley Willis Fiasco and some place called Lounge Ax, which would close just before I turned 18

2. I will never fully trust anyone who owns an Alkaline Trio patch, hoodie or tattoo

Not simply because of their music, but because I had to compete with them for all the high school girls that didn't think they were lesbians when we were 14 - 17

3. Ditto motherfucking Kill Hannah

4. I can tell how old most crackers are by what volume of Punk O Rama they keep around their house or car

5. Remember the Orphan Punks? They were my favorite pop-punk band. Whatever happened to them? "Kick rocks at the Rich Girl" was a great song.

6. I had a grey camoflage baseball cap with a Pantera patch on one side, Wu Tang Clan on the other and a big Anarchy sign in front

7. It was like, "Fuck you man, I like metal AND rap" and shit

8. One of UIC's buildings used to be a Jewel and they used to sell 40 ouncers of King Cobra for 60 cents.

9. There used to be a lot more homeless people around the UIC campus

10. There were years where I would've told you how Sublime's "40 Oz. to Freedom" cassette changed my life. The story still holds true but I'll be damned if anybody hears it again.

11. I miss techno. It truly is the music of the future. "Throw out your guitars, guys."

But no really, I do miss it.

No, it's not still around. It's fucking different.

12. Wide-leg JNCOs were gods gift to fat kids and skinny kids alike

13. The Offspring's "Smash" is still one of the few albums I can listen to, front to back. At one point, I had an Offspring shirt for every day of the week.

"Smash it Up", from the "Batman Forever" soundtrack, was my second-favorite Offspring song, and I didn't realize until years later that it was really a carbon-copy of a Damned original, with much shittier vocals.

14. Flux was the best magazine ever

15. I saw one of the bookcases that used to live at the Nervous Center at a loft space the other night and I must've stared at it transfixed for a good three minutes

to be continued

working backwards through the detritus (a week in the life of Eric lab Rat)

In my dream I had the same fever that I fell asleep with, and it was starting to cause hallucinations. If I was smarter, I would have told myself that it was a dream, just as I was telling myself that they were hallucinations as I watched myself succumb to them. It was the day after I'd gone to sleep and I was coming from a meeting I have yet to go to today. When I got home, there was a band, Environmental Encroachment, playing in my bedroom in wigs and glitter. A handful of people were watching them, standing on piles of clothes and debris.

"Not today" I tried to tell them. "You're supposed to be at (Logan Square) Sarah and Jessica's thing on Saturday." Slowly after, the band and people left on their own. My head was pounding. Nate and Tania were pissed. But...but...I mopped the floor, I told them.

"Yeah, kinda."

I was sorry. I went to bed and thought about turning off the air conditioner to sweat out the fever. I took off my pajama bottoms. Soon hallucinations started visiting. I don't remember the first. The second was Sarah, my Sarah, naked and taunting me with sex and a fiendish, impish laugh, hunched on my ankles at the foot of the bed. I reached down and grabbed a bottle of water and poured it on my head. It felt cool and hissed as if turning to steam at the touch of my skin. I threw a handful of water at her and it dispersed with a plop. She must be real. I asked her to hold me and she jumped at me, through me, right through my chest, through my bed. If she was real she was a ghost. More hallucinations visited me. More ghosts, and I find myself, against my own command, naked below the waist, screaming high pitched back and forth through the darkened hallway. My cock has never felt this small. I need a towel, but I can't will myself to stop.

Kyle steps out of his room. "Dude are you alright?!" He's not pissed, I can see in his face that he's worried. My eyes flare and I wail. All I can think is that I need to get a towel. I feel a blow to my head. I think it's a wall, I think I've jumped into it. I pass out and wake up in my room. The wall at my feet feels less like it's six feet away and more like forty. As my eyes adjust, I notice a stairwell. A grand stairwell. It's a test. If I can climb it, then it must be real, or else I've completely lost control, any semblance of logical control over myself. I ascend it and find myself in a blank room. It's lit fluorescent and kinda like the art room at Decatur Classical. There was a buzzsaw on a table and a slab of brown marble like a blank headstone, warped and cut in two. I hear the buzzing of wings and a voice. It is my voice, not the one I hear in my head but the one that comes out when I speak into tape recorders. It tells me what I have to do to break the hold. The lies in my head are the lies in my head and I have to kill them with the truth, and all of the things I see will be true.

I told myself that I was jealous of the leader of the band, of the leaders of most bands. I told myself that I was worried about my relationship. I told myself, which I imagined to be the air two feet in front of me, how much I truly hated him. Me. A wasp buzzed around me and landed on my arm. I couldn't tell if it was real. It moved and I couldn't tell whether ornot I'd been stung. I ran out, knowing I needed to talk to my parents. It was the second floor of the townhouse, where we lived til I was four. My Dad slept on his stomach in the center of my parent's old bed, under the Magritte. His arms and legs were spread like a snow angel in tighty-whiteys and an orange t-shirt.

"Dad, you gotta help me," I yelled like I did when I was five.

"You don't know how uninterested I am in whatever this is right now" He snorted.

"It's medicinal!" I pleaded, "I need Mom's syringe. The Epipen."

My mother was out of town. Shw was allergic to bees and wasps, as was my grandfather. As they suspected I was. I heard music. It came from my room, and my grownup sisters'. From my room was some sort of glammed metal like the Plazmatics; from her's some sort of frat hearthrob music, Jack Johnson or something. It converged where my father was trying to sleep and sounded awful. He'd given up. I felt my hand begin to swell, and I gave up too.

.
take that freud.
.

I can feel the veins behind my eyes,the cavernous passages that connect my eyes to my throat. The veins feel like they're overwhelmed with blood. The passageways feel like they've been scraped with a fork. I feel more hopeless than I really am. I can take care of myself, I tell myself this as I cut up a potato.

my priorities are all fucking off.

Matthew McGrory is dead and I truly feel bad about it. Matt Drudge is the first thing I see on Kyle's computer, and I truly feel bad about this. They're exploiting another one, another woman who's lost her child. There's bile in the back of my throat.

I've never felt so successful and so much a failure as I have this week. it's been manic and, then again, it hasn't.

I threw a costume party last friday. The Walkie Talkies played. Hannibelectro did too, and it became an electroacoustic dance party. A jam session even. It was beautiful, and I would like to thank the bands, the drag kings and queens, the savage woman, the moose, the bear, the ewok, the hockey player, the cybernetic man, the porn star, Captain America, Shaggy, zombie Hunter S. Thompson, the Viking, the janitor, the gift, the Coronactopus, the lawyer, the Rabbi, the Bush supporter, the fairy, the princess, the prostitute, the Souljacker, the abusive couple, David Bowie, Milo Oblong, Tank Girl, the Polish handyman, the football and futbol players, the pirates, the dark lord, the punk rocker, the topless librarian, the masqueraders and everyone else who was there. Your zombie pope is appreciative.

nothing was broken that we didn't break, nothing was stolen that we didn't steal, we threw out an old charred american flag before the party and were blessed with a new one. by the by, did you know that it is possible to light a faucet on fire? shampoo is flammable; and floating candles should only be used under romantic supervision

The weekend was full of dance and drink. On saturday the Gentlemen Callers ended our run of "the Vicious Cycle" at the Theatre Building. It was a miserable failure and a rousing success. We'd failed to advertise it beyond our friends and families so we never had a good audience til closing night, despite the fact that it really was our best show to date. It never went right either until Saturday; there was no real comeraderie, we infought. Only half of us came to the afterparty and it all felt weird.

-for the record, i really do not trust anybody who thinks that Club Foot is really better than going to any other bar, or that it itself constitutes 'going somewhere'-

-I wish I knew someone who knew a lot about prog-

Sunday I danced. EE. JBTV. Logan square Sarah, Jessica, and Jessie. a couple new people. feeling like a high schooler around people I had crushes on in high school. feeling like a failure among people that i respect. i would feel the same way around Emerson, and to a lesser extent, Kate, because they do things. it was only when i was dancing (poorly) that I could stop feeling, and it felt wonderful. I still don't dance enough, and never, it seems, on weekdays.

then came my radio show. tuesday mornings. four hours, and a half. it felt good to be back. people called in to make requests but i didn't get any sleep. didn't regiment caffeine like I'd planned to and couldn't stay on top. it was at about 27 hours of being awake that the depression hit. my weight is fluctuating, but mostly going up. i'm ugly and have no initiative. no one who's doing anything worthwhile has any need for me, even if they keep me around. that sort of thing.

i was awake for maybe 42 hours, literally as useless as i felt and slightly unaware that a virus was taking over. i made it through a whole 'nother day of work, listening to the trails behind people's voices before i passed out.

kate told me that if i really want to do with sketch comedy what i told her i wanted to do, i'm in the wrong group. i can't say she's wrong, i just haven't figured out where the right one is. lazy. scared. damn near comfortable. i watched a movie last night. Lemmings. National Lampoon's take on Woodstock. Lauded by my father. I lack context. Geniuses, acting to the best of their ability, incredible energy and physicality and character work and it wasn't funny at all, most likely because I lack context.

At the radio show I found one cd that I was truly impressed with. Gabby La La. Listen to her. It's kinda like Puffy AmiYumi but with better musicality. She plays a sitar, a toy piano and a theremin, Les Claypool assists. It's incredible.

for posterity's sake, here's the playlist:

Saul Williams - "Black Stacey"
the Adicts - "My baby got run over by a steamroller"
Radiant Darling - "Familiar" (perhaps my favorite song this summer)
Tom Waits - "Chocolate Jesus"
Kid606 - "King of Harm" (kid606's new album is a huge disappointment. it is just very boring.)
Los Crudos - "Asesino"
Eyedea & Abilities - "Glass"
Roky Erickson - "Night of the Vampire"

it is about this point that my set strarted to get more interesting as I stopped dipping soi much into familiar tracks from my personal collection

Bauhaus - "God is in the alcove"
Sparks - "This town ain't big enough for the both of us"
the Pharohs - "Black Enuff"
Joy Division - "Disorder" (by request)
Prefuse 73 reads the Books - "Pagina Dos"
Madness - "Israelites" (apparently the second wave ska group Madness is still kicking around England. Their new album is not a reunion. It is, however, a shamefully cheeseball collection of covers of great reggae songs by the likes of Desmond Dekker and Max Romeo)
Curtis Mayfield - "Get Down"
Klaus Nomi - "Lightning Strikes"
Clorox Girls - "Walks the Streets"
Social Distortion - "Mommy's Little Monster"
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graftitti - "Envelopes another Day"
Petra Haden and Bill Frisell - "Satellite"
Frank Zappa - Bobby Brown/ My Guitar Wants to kill Your Momma (by request)
Jello Biafra with Mojo Nixon - "Are you Drinkin with me, Jesus?"
Buzzcocks - "What do I get?"
Sage Francis - "Crumble"
Quintron - "the Beach"
Gabby La La - "Be Careful What you Wish for"
Melt Banana - "Shield for your Eyes, a Beast in the Well of your Hand" (by request after I found out the station had no OpIvy)
Clouddead - "Twenty"
Nob Dylan and his Nobsoletes - "Highway 61 Revisited" (Rev. Norb!)
Plugz - "Hombre Secreto"
The Philadelphia All Stars - "Let's Clean up the Ghetto"
the Walkie Talkies - "Son of Sam"
Dosh - "Naoise"
The Ex - "Mother"
Hole - "Doll Parts" (freeing an earworm)
Subhumans - "Glad to be Alive"
Peanut Butter Wolf - "Umbrellas"
Brian Wilson - "Heroes and Villains"
the Dolls - "And that Reminds Me" (from "60s Girl Groups" comp)
Kevin Ayers, Brian Eno, Nico and John Cale - "Heartbreak Hotel"
Ween - "the Stallion, pt. 3"
Preservation Hall Jazz Band - "St. James Infirmary"
The Smiths - "Handsome Devil"
Afrika Bambaataa - "Metal" (with Gary Numan and MC Chatterbox)
Les Georges Leningrad - "Sponsorships"

(short twangy set)
Reverend Horton Heat - "Wiggle Stick"
R Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders - "Sing Song Girl"
Hasil Adkins - Wild Man

Coaxial - "Forewarning"
Jan Paderewski - "Overture"
Handsome Boy Modeling School - "The World's Gone Mad" (with Del tha Funkee Homosapien and Barrington Levy)
Chin Up, Chin Up - "We should Have Never Lived"
Kraftwerk - "Radioactivity"
Manu Chao - "Clandestino"

and then as I waited for the guy who was supposed to go after me to get there late I played Aphex Twin, Blockhead and the Bad Plus.

now i'm bedridden, but i have meetings to go to. i can't sit still, but i don't want to lay down. my room is too much like a cave., the basement hasn't fully recovered, and kyle and nate's rooms are kyle's and nate's rooms. all i want to do is watch shitty movies with elves or aliens. dark city. return to oz. et al. thank you.

Currently listening:
Big Calm
By Morcheeba

conspiracy of firmaments, part the last

Her mother did not rest on the night that she was born. She put on her clothes, shoes with heels, a brown housecoat, bobbypinned her hair back, scooped up her daughter and walked to the front of the clinic. She telephoned her sister, whose husband picked her up and brought her home, where she made dinner for her husband. She sat in the sink as her mother chopped vegetables, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and onions. They didn't have much chicken but she threw a months' collection of bones into the broth. She laid there, susceptible, exposed to the elements as the smell of potatos and the spirits of chickens danced above her in the light.

She would grow older, crawl and walk; get sick and turn yellow. Her first word would be 'Saint.' There was a picture that her parents put up in the dining room to cover a spot on the wall that needed to be covered with a picture. She would point and her mother would say "Saint Christopher" who is not really considered a saint anymore. Her first words in succession would be 'stop it'. She would go to school and learn to lie and become quite good at it. She would fake ear infections to get out of library and periods to get out of gym, as soon as she knew what they were but well before she'd actually had hers.

Her arms grew earlier than her legs and her legs grew earlier than her trunk, freckles were born and dotted her body like some crowded star chart. Her favorite color was glitter, her favorite flavor was bubblegum; her least favorites were green and the medicine that was supposed to taste like strawberries. She exceled in math but found no practical use for it.

The first thing she got really good at lying about was the bruise on her mother's eye. "She's fucking stupid and she hurts herself." She was pissed about her Mom ruining a sleepover, and her mother would be fucking stupid for many years to come. She would play and quit sports on various school teams and the coaches would hate her more than if she hadn't shown any talent at all. She would run track for four years and every year she was a little worse. She would diet and quit dieting and dabble in puking though no one had ever called her fat. She got a reputation for being fast and lost her virginity under a bed.

She liked guys that had cars because she liked being in cars, though they made her sleepy in the passenger seat. She tried many times to leave her home but every time something would happen. She would get pregnant or dumped, lose the baby, lose a job and she kept trying to leave until her fucking stupid mother got sick and had to be taken care of. She taught her daughter the old recipes and died in her sleep and ceased being fucking stupid any more.

She learned to type, and to flirt with customers and fend off bosses. She would write many memos and love letters, all typed, and carry many, many trays. She would fill thirteen hundred crossword puzzles and lose six hundred and five lottery drawings. Her clothes changed with the seasons and the trends. She never lingered on any one for too long. After long days she would clean her home and smoke pot and go to sleep or go to bars where she picked up things like pool and men and heroin and got a reputation for being easy. She found herself falling in love as her father started to give in to cancer and she moved her boyfriend into the house she grew up in on the outskirts of the industrial district and it was bliss. They slept together on the roof all summer long and tracks dotted their arms like the stars above.

They would shoot each other and fight and make up and never get married. He would read always and get inspired and tell her to leave and beg her to leave but sometimes she was as stupid as her fucking mother. Their favorite movies were E.T. and Dr. Strangelove. Their favorite band was the Rolling Stones. Their least favorite food was potato soup which is what she was making on the night that he left. When he saw her next, she was just lying there susceptible, exposed to the elements with the ghosts of potatos and chickens dancing above her just below a crescent moon and crowded evening sky.

some led zeppelin album title

crickets are naturally social animals. they communicate by crossing their wings slowly and striking them quickly. basic instinct. sharon stone's thighs as semifore. unlike buzzing insects, their chirps and clicks are intentional; and come in a wide variety. they are the only animal that I can recognize communicating, that does so without adressing the other. there is no intricacy to their language, no expression to read. they are precise

the other day was the last day of school. one of my students was steve, a black journalism student who slept through class most mornings. he wasn't dumb, or a bad student; he just didn't think that much was expected of him. when he got his grade, a B, maybe with some sort of a or -, he pestered Wanda for a half hour to give him a better grade. she showed him his scores, he persisted and left.

an hour later she left for australia, thinking him petulant.

then he returned, a little less composed. there were tears in his eyes and he stared at me. i told him wanda had fled the country and asked if there was anything i could do. he told me only if i could get him out of iraq, half-smiled and as his eyes began to flood, he left

yesterday i met a man named wes. he was the third wes i've met, and the second who was completely insane. i've only known one other wes, and he drank himself grey by 23.

this one stood still and proud on the train, anouncing his vision in a slow and deliberate tone. he had a beautiful speaking tone. he had an accompanying painting:

"...it was the night of January 20th, 2004 that the vision came to me. it was a vision of a square pit surrounded by green green grass under two groves of trees, where the weeds wrapped around the branches and a group of gnomes who suffered elephantitis and old age syndrome followed the call of the birds. have you ever heard a blckbird ask a question? you should...because...it's really hilarious. The blackbirds came to me because I was unChristian and in being unChristian I was being antiChristian, and in being antiChristian I was in fact the anti-Christ, because I did not read my bible every day..."

the picture showed the gnomes, each one in a pinstriped suit throwing gnome pats, arms and legs, into a burning pit. the train rolled to a stop and i got off. at the bus stop, a man with a huge zircon in his ear talked for five minutes about the amazing Cambell's Select New England Clam Chowder he'd made himself, and how it made everyone on his floor lean out of their doorways and breathe in through their nostrils at the same time.

these men were eloquent. perhaps their priorities were fucked, but they could speak.

for the past week or so i have been unable to communicate. at Bite with Nell and Emerson. at the Heartland with Breanna, Charles, Chris and Dan; at Ted's house with Randy, Matt, and Jason; i have been unable to intellectually meet the people around me. it's torturous.

for a few days, i thought that i could only communicate with my roommate Tania but it turns out that, for the moment, i can only function on two levels

one-on-one

and

party

where i can jump in and be a dick and add my voice to the many
i'm trying to put the words back into my head
i've picked up books, collections
of poetry by Amiri Baraka
and comics by Berkely Breathed
but my head isn't working yet

for the past three weeks i've had the Hole song "Doll Parts" stuck in my head
for the past three days i've had the Type O Negative cover of "Innagaddadavida" stuck in my head

and sometimes i envy the insects
and the time they get inbetween when i toss them leaves of cilantro to nibble
and jefferson takes them up by the head in his snaplock jaw
for their brief moments of conversation

Currently listening:
Cabin Fever
By Rasputina

this one is strictly for the jews

so i saw this guy wearing a shirt that said
Mikvah Challenge

it can't possibly mean what i think it must

if you know what this is, please don't tell me
i'd rather live the dream

Currently listening:
Silence Is Sexy
By Einsturzende Neubauten