Massachusetts Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

After dealing with a few days of boredom, I borrowed my mother's car the other night and watched Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986) with Rachael and her brother.

I hadn't seen the movie in awhile, and I'd forgotten how good it is. I strongly recommend you see it.

I mean, look at that picture. How bad-ass is that?

The Holidays are over. I spent New Years in Rhode Island. That was fun.

I'm trying to sum up just what this holiday break has been for me, and I must say that it's mostly been marked by boredom, with a few splashes of something strange (Platoon, Tim's absurd fireworks display on New Years Eve, trying to teach Rachael to throw a hip check, etc.).

I bought Henry Miller's Tropic Of Capricorn because I'm halfway through Dave Eggers' What Is The What, and I don't know how much hip San Francisco writing I can take. No luck locating the Houellebecq book I've been pining for, so Miller will have to do. I've heard this isn't as good as Tropic Of Cancer, but we'll just have to see.

I wish I had a stupid job.

I turn 21 in nine days, and I'm going through the process of renewing my license, which, I am told, cannot be done prior to the exact date that the license expires, on my birthday. I really hope that I get pulled over on my way to the RMV and I get guff for an expired license. It could happen, I know it could, and with my luck, it may very well go down.

Jesus, I never thought I'd say this, but I want to go back to school.

The days of catching up with your friends and feeling good about things in general over the college breaks are kind of over, at least, in terms of this winter break. Summer is an entirely different story, I think, but this season has been a bit of a drag.

I see these people and I no longer know what to think. They're not at all the people they were when I really knew them, and I am no longer the person that they knew, and we try to get around that fact. We talk about what we're doing now. Our boyfriends, our girlfriends, our major, who's going to grad school, what the best plan of action is, the peace corps, who's going to get married- all of it. Why? No one is hanging on to anything any longer. No one is keeping up any kind of an appearance.

I left a friend I hadn't seen in over a year today and said "It was good to see you." She agreed, and I stood on my lawn, fumbling for my keys, overcome with the sort of sadness I feel when I drive past the old toy store my mother and I frequented, the boarded up Purity Supreme supermarket- all those stores are gone- it's an entire place I left behind.

Everything changes, and everything has always changed, but recently, it's changed a lot. Maybe you've felt it, seen it as well.

I sit next to Rachael, in my basement, watching John Cusak do his best Nick Hornby impression, listing off the Top Five Reasons For This Or That, and I think that my eyes are no longer my own. I think of what they've seen in this basement. The other people that have sat in her place, the other things I've seen on this television. I should be able to see the similarities, but I can't. It all feels so new. And it makes me think that maybe all that which happened before was for nothing. It's dead now in a way that only a memory can die- as if it never existed at all.

I know that there is a part of everything that will always stay with me, the part that has shaped me, and that part comes to me in abstract memory; in scents and colors that I've never seem, born on my eyelids when I shut them tight and I'm looking at a certain sky, a certain road, a certain face. I can hear it in a laugh, the cry of a bird in the morning, but I find myself looking away quite often. I don't want to go back there. I know it's waiting to burst forward, to the front of my head, push at my eyes and my mouth and try to free itself

"YOU CANNOT REMEMBER ME, YOU CANNOT REMEMBER I, YOU CANNOT REMEMBER THIS PLACE BECAUSE THERE IS NO NEED. THERE IS NO NEED TO REMEMBER A WORLD YOU NEVER LEFT."

I love my friends, and they transcend this reminiscing. They don't exist in my memories. Memories of them surround me, surround them, tie us together in invisible knots.

It's the pain that really sits in memory, and my memory's good, just as sharp as the sting of it all.

- - - -

I guess I've just got too much idle time. I wish I had a stupid job.

Lame Joke #2

My girlfriend and I have trust issues. We're both compulsive gamblers and addicted to crack cocaine. There isn't a cent left in the thing.

- - - -

I apologize for these. It's Christmas, and I've been busy.

Lame Joke #1

It didn't hit me at first, but by the time I was about halfway through my beer I realized the horrible mistake I'd made. The cawing, the flattened roadkill on the menu: This was a crow-bar.

Oh, Vagrants

I'm waiting in the deli line with Rachael today at Stop & Shop in Dorchester, she's getting a pound of everything: cheese, roast beef, turkey, all pounds. I'm from a half-pound-sliced-thin family, and the pounds look inherently flawed.

One of the women behind the counter looks past me and says "Hey, you gotta get out of here- if a manager sees you, they're gonna throw you out."

I've been spacing out a little bit (sandwich meats have that effect on me), so for a split second I think she's talking to me, then I realize there's this bum hobbling around, asking people for change as only a true bum can: in the bum vernacular that is essentially just sprawling incoherence.

What struck me was the fact that not only was he in a store, he was in a supermarket. Now, the only reason that most people ever give a bum change is if they're sure that they're actually helping a guy out, that meaning, they need some kind of an indication of what the bum intends to purchase.

If you're begging for change in a supermarket, it could go either way. It either seems like this guy is just cutting out the middle man (that being the walk from the corner to the store) or he's just broadening his horizons a bit, and he's going to buy crack.

I figured out, after seeing him walking around eating food off of the shelves, that he was probably going to be buying crack, and I felt like stopping him and explaining the error of his ways.

This guy didn't just steal an apple either, he went to the fucking soup and salad bar and picked out a meal, filled up some tupperware, and continued asking for:

"manadollahhelpamanagotsouthummmininsidethebestkindohohohdatsdawone"

Bum had balls, I'll give him that, but he forgot about one thing: the debit card.

This is, I'll be honest, how I get out of giving bums change. In the days before debit, I had learned to tighten the muscles in my thight so as to muffle any jingling of change coming from my pocket as I passed them.

But with the advent of the debit card, I am useless to a bum.

"Sorry man, no cash on me."

That's it. Game over Jamal.

That's not a racial joke, seriously, I knew a bum named Jamal that used to hang out downtown. He was alright, then I learned he was a heroin addict, and it saddened me a bit. He seemed pretty well put together in a lot of ways. I didn't stop giving him change, he was always smiling.

Probably because all of my change kept him fucked up twenty four hours a day. Whatever.

- - - -

I said earlier in this that people are less willing to give bums change if they feel they'll be buying drugs with the money. I think that's a really terrible way to look at things. If you're gonna give a bum change, just do it. Don't judge the guy, he's living on the street, in his own filth, being judged by everybody walking by him. Cut him some slack. I'm not saying you should give them cash all the time, I hardly ever do it myself, but, when I do, I give it out like it's nothing. Like your buddy needs an extra quarter to get on the train. You're not Mother Theresa. Flip the guy a quarter and maybe give him a nod.

Maybe I'm too much of an idealist, but I think sometimes that it's not too hard to make somebody's day.

- - - -

It'd make my mom's day if I got a decent grade on this paper I'm putting off, so back to that.

King Of Weird Dreams

I had this dream last night (actually early this morning) that I was shopping with my mother. First off, she was driving like ninety miles an hour all the way to the store, and I was terrified. I think I was actually whimpering because we were going so fast around these tight turns, I was sure we were going to crash. But we didn't. We made it to this bizarre shopping area that I guess was kind of a strip mall. We had to walk through a KB Toys to get anywhere else. Some old woman with a walker said something really cryptic on the way out of KB Toys, but I can't remember what it was.

Walking through the parking lot again (or maybe this happened first, I can't remember the sequence) my mother stops at a mini van with the door open and starts going through all the shit inside of it, which looks like CDs and index cards in a bunch of canvas book bags. I don't know if she's stealing or what, but she starts saying something like "They can't possibly stay organized like this," referring to the index cards, I think. I say, irritated, "Well, maybe they just have another method, would you get out of their car before someone sees?" The the car's owner comes back.

It's a young couple, and the husband seems to be more than happy to explain some kind of organizational method to my mother, but I think he's talking about something other than what she was referencing. As I'm about to say something, I realize how insane this all is and I just start walking away.

Eventually, my mother catches up with me, and we stop in this sandwich place for lunch before we start shopping. The place is dirty. There's a blue countertop, the room is big, but there are no chairs. The guy behind the counter is fat and dirty and he keeps denying our orders, saying that there's no this or no that or they don't make this after one in the afternoon. He's got some kind of southern drawl, his gut is hanging out, and I despise him, but we can't leave. We have to get a sandwich.

My mother finally gets her sandwich with some success, and I ask if they have steak and cheese subs. The guy's face lights up and he says "Of course we do, and here's one right here, already made!" He wraps it messily up in clear plastic. It looks disgusting. Interestingly, the bread is in the shape of a hand. My mother is irritated because I unknowingly ordered the most expensive thing on the menu.

Then my mother goes crazy. She leaves her sandwich at the counter and runs outside. I follow her. She goes back to the minivan. She is laughing and playing with the entire family in the minivan. I think she is embarassing herself, I tell her we have to leave, but the family seems to like her. They think she's funny. They don't understand that she's going crazy. I finally run off feeling defeated, flustered, alone, and I hurl my stupid sandwich at a car and scream "THIS FUCKING WORLD!" at the top of my lungs. As I do, my brother is there, and he says, you ruined a perfectly good ham sandwich. I say "It was a fucking steak and cheese." he replies, laughing, "Oh, jeeze, sorry."

I look down and my sweater is dangling in a small puddle. I'm on my knees. I can see a little bit of my breath, which is weird, because it wasn't cold out. Someone says "Oh my god, look, it's snowing!" and it's Rachael. I stand up and I'm in front of my dorm, walking with her to her car, and it is snowing.

The weird part is that I really did do that last part like an hour before I had the dream.

If I Worked At The Pharmacy

CRUSH TABLETS UNDER ONE DOLLAR BILL WITH BASE OF LIGHTER, COOK CONTENTS OF TABLET WITH WATER IN TABLESPOON, ABSORB LIQUID FROM SPOON WITH COTTON SWAB, TRANSFER CONTENTS OF SWAB TO HYPODERMIC SERINGE, INJECT CONTENTS OF SERINGE INTO LEFT ARM. MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS. ALCOHOL AND THE VELVET UNDERGROUND MAY INTENSIFY THIS EFFECT.

POUR CONTENTS INTO A SMALL PLASTIC SANDWICH BAG, PLACE SANDWICH BAG OVER MOUTH & NOSE AND INHALE DEEPLY. DEFINATELY OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY, IT WILL BE FUNNY LATER.

TAKE ONE TABLET BEFORE ENTERING NIGHTCLUB, DRINK THREE GIN & TONICS, LOOK AT YOUR WATCH AND SAY "IT'S NOT WORKING," TAKE TWO MORE TABLETS IN THE BATHROOM, DANCE FOR TEN MINUTES, SMOKE EIGHTY CIGARETTES OUTSIDE AND TALK ABOUT KAFKA FOR THREE HOURS WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND.

PINCH POWDER FROM SMALL PLASTIC SANDWICH BAG ONTO COMPACT MIRROR, MIRROR REMOVED FROM WALL, GLASS COFFEE TABLE, OR FRANK ZAPPA CD CASE. BREAK POWDER INTO AN EVEN FINER POWDER WITH YOUR DRIVER'S LICENSE, STUDENT ID, OR BARNES & NOBLE GIFT CARD. ROLL A TEN DOLLAR BILL INTO A TIGHT TUBE. SWEAT A LITTLE BIT. INSERT SAID BILL INTO NASAL CAVITY AND INHALE POWDER. WRING HANDS, SWEAT MORE, SMOKE EIGHTY CIGARETTES AND TALK ABOUT KAFKA (OR TUPAC) FOR THREE HOURS WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND.

I'm Rather Well Cultured, And This Comforts Me.

Rachael Gammie is going to have anonymous sex in a Japanese Love Hotel and ruin my life.

- - - -

Seriously though, Rachael is going to Japan, and I'm reading this article in Believer magazine about the video artist Laurel Nakadate, who films herself in various sexual positions, alone in a love hotel. I could go on and explain the film's meaning, but the main point is that it momentarily freaked me out... You should just read the article.