Onglet.

Oui. Shit oui.

These are low fire days and once--not a week ago, okay maybe two, I felt one of those mortal convictions one has (e.g. "I will throw up if I crawl back to religion...or to so and so..."), and believed it was impossible to live without those encumbrances. Eh.

I've been stocking shelves at a grocery store which is hardly as dehumanizing as it sounds. Truthfully I don't care any longer what I do for money. As long as it ends in money, and after money the work is there to make more money I guess it's just shoving verbs at nouns and waiting for the managerial compliments to roll in. They roll in like hatemail, and I get 20% off pretty much everything, save for The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, which is hardly worth a verbal gripe--certainly not worth typing, though nevertheless...

After years of buying the Gray Gal--it's price expands as it grows ever smaller, I don't even wince (outwardly) anymore when paying the floor price for the, geez, there really is no nickname for The Gazette. Malnourished. People definitely see it in the deep end of my gaze, which has gained a troublesome opacity in the last year, the concoction of which involves being willfully depressed, sleeping little and literally eating oily mud along the side of the turnpike between residences. I can't help it, I love Pennsylvania.

Today was another grand dream. I got slightly high the moment I woke up, and walked the dog. I was nearly late for work. I was 15 minutes late. This evening I made some flank steaks in the cast iron skillet with spring onions and almond romesco. Oh shit yeah: corn on the the cob. I tell you, if Chanel could just bottle it she'd be famous all over again. But then it wouldn't feel quite like this.

Forget what I just said.

Ella, sensing my dolor at Frick Park today, acts out one of my absolute favorite scenes from Paths of Glory.

This Dog Has More Common Sense Than Me

Occasionally one loses the way, falls out of love. I'm not talking about a particular person, or people. It's more a love of momentary things.

Well, luckily there's something biological or anthropological or something that makes it stick. It's kind of like getting old motor oil on your hands, hard to get off, and you secretly want it to stay there so everyone sees it and knows what you've been up to.

So I'm nursing a terrific hangover this morning, having spent the better part of last evening with Dan at my pal, John Doran's, dj night at Kelly's Bar.

John played lots of great punk--if anyone was gonna get me to enjoy Mission of Burma again, or The Saints, or any rock, which I didn't think I liked anymore, it was gonna be John. We drank beers until the whole place and its long mirrored wall slid off the edge of the cliff of all nighttime, and must've looked, from certain East Liberty hills, like an upset dinner table, with a lot of laughing people just sort of heaped in with the broken crystal stemware and the cursive name cards. I wound up with a lemon garnish in my hair and a pork chop stuck to the lapel of my jacket. I saw people I hadn't seen in many years. The dirty table cloth, I remember thinking, looked like a sleeping Dalmation, spotted, and eyes turned inward.

As we passed late-nite Wendy's there was a caravan around the place for the drive-thru. I remember shouting, "You fucking people are gonna burn yourselves out young, eating that shit!" Though in truth I just wanted to make a funny kind of connection and felt shouting was the most cosmic means. I passed out with my forehead pressed in a cold quinoa flan, and awoke with the dog licking maple sugar crystals out of my hair. It was sort of embarrassing since I tend to think of myself as the dog's father.

But man, that music was fantastic. It was sort of like being in that hotel in The Shining. Only, you know, just the good times...