October 10, 1998.

It's so good to be on a connection that doesn't cut out every 10 seconds. Have I mentioned that I came home to keep my brother company while my parents are on their cruise? I don't really like sleeping here...there's too much residual guilt from the parental units for me to be entirely relaxed. But there are a lot of compensatory comforts.

The computer I'm working on right now uses a picture from the anniversary party last month. Just about everyone who attended is in it...it's been blown up & plaqued, not to mention scanned & installed as wallpaper here. Trevor & I aren't in it. Nobody seems overly concerned with that fact. I didn't even know the picture was being taken until the plaque showed up (talk about your delayed communications!)

If asked about my absence, my planned answer is that I was doing something unspeakable with Trevor at the time. But I was probably just getting a Corona.

There's a poetry mag coming out on Thursday. Trotski & Poet are 2 of the 3 editors. I was not asked to contribute. I just surfed by the website, and I feel slighted...although I know that my writing has never done anything for Trotski, and he seems to be the energy behind this project.

But I have to go to the launch anyway, snarly petty feelings aside. I simply can't pass up the opportunity to see Sven & Poet read (I've seen Trotski read before, so it's not a novelty anymore). Although I'm prolly in trouble with one, some or all of them for this section...they all read the journal sporadically. Oh well. No sense in festering about it.

Yesterday Trevor pointed out that "Mechanical Animals" is remarkable like a Pink Floyd album (after we'd listened to it twice in a row, like any obsessive Floyd fan). To my horror, I agreed. Kind of like Pink Floyd without the sickly aftertaste that comes from actually listening to Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd Lite, if you will.

Did you know that Malcolm McLaren first spotted Johnny Rotten because Johnny was wearing a Pink Floyd shirt? Rotten had written "SUCKS" after the Pink Floyd logo. (I saw him on Judge Judy the other day. No joke. Why are old-school English punks on crappy American pseudo-justice shows?)

"We're just 2 lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year."

When I was in high-school, I couldn't go more than a day without taking a shower. (I also got up at quarter after seven every day, which I can't believe either). I mention this only to provide context for today's silly announcement: I haven't showered since Wednesday afternoon.

In Romanticism class yesterday, my professor mentioned the word "fester" in context of Blake's "Marriage of Heaven & Hell." Veronica & I just smiled at each other knowingly as we repeated the word to ourselves. It's kind of a shame that I'm doing some of my best festering outside of Ferg, but change of location is no excuse not to try for excellence.

Veni, vedi...what's Latin for "I festered"?