I'm a sick head.
    Some expressions just stick.
 
    So anyway, I've got a bit of a headcold.  Jed and I just had a big debate about what medication helps you "get your Z's."  I thought it was Nyquill, while Jed thought it was Nytol.  So I called a bunch of people, and both Matt and Jen thought it was Nytol.  Matt went so far as to elaborate "Nyquill is the 'nighttime sneezy, sniffling, sore-throught, headache blah blah so you can get your rest medicine.'"  So I talked with Matt a bit.  We're weird people.  I'm finally starting to see why we're a hard group of people to feel comfortable around if you don't know us.  Especially watching the video of us at Tonic of Friday night.  I couldn't believe some of the stuff we were saying and doing. I find it very hard to believe that other people act this way, or anything even close to it.  But we're not mean people.  Though it may seem that way at first, for the first few years.

    So I was staying late at work today.  My boss wanted to know how long I could stay, and I was like "whenever.  It's not like a have a life to get back to."  And she looked at me like she didn't think I was kidding.  that's always embarrassing.  So awkward cure number 1 is usually "Uh... was that out loud?"  That produced a chuckle.  Anyway, as I was about to leave, I got an email from one Rebecca Makkai, my girlfriend for the second quarter of 1996.  I mention her occasionally here.  Which is good, since that's how she found my email address.  her friend rachel found the page back in August, and I'd sort of been waiting to hear from her since.  After a month though, i figured she just found it, was unamused, and resumed her mild disinterest. I'd emailed her during a fit of nostalgia about a year ago, but never heard back from her, so to me that was the last effort i was going to make.  So it was nice to hear from her.  She's in Baltimore, teaching 6-8 year old kids.  But she's getting married and moving back to Chicago in July.  Her mother's house is close to where Mr. T used to live, which I always found fascinating. I may have to look her up when I take my DC trip.  Don't know when I'll have the chance next.  So I've officially got a boatload of people to see when I go down to DC next.  Maybe I should wait till I have a long weekend or someting.
    Right at this moment, I'm listening to the Wilco song "Remember the Mountain Bed."  It's on the Mermaid Ave. - Vol.II cd, which is shared with Billy Bragg.  It's on the cd I made at work last week.  The lyrics are from unfinished songs written by Woody Guthrie in the 1940's, right before he died of Huntington's.   The liner notes mention him whithering away, knowing his time was short, so he just started writing and writing thousands of verses to hundreds of songs.  It's a beautiful song to begin with, but when I listen to it and know that the words were written by a man who knew he would soon die, and writing because of that, it makes it all unbearably, but beautifully, sad.  Just the image I have in my head, I guess, of writing about your wife and children and beauty is really powerful to me.   In all honesty, it almost drives me to tears.  Then again, I'm not feeling so hot lately, so that might have something to do with it.  Oh, who the hell am i kidding?  It has nothing to do with that at all.  It's just me.  Sue me.  
    So I started re-reading Cat's Cradle today. It's weird how books can take you to other places.  I don't mean in the traditional, Reading Rainbow kind of way.  I mean how they remind you of places you were while you read them.  Breakfast of Champions will forever remind me of France.  The first half read mostly in Rodzilla's apartment, and the second half read on the train between Bordeaux and Sarlat.  Very good memory, very good book.  Cat's Cradle, maybe my favorite book, unpleasantly enough, reminds me of the New York City transit system.  I read about a hundred pages, at least, while I was on my way to JFK airport to see Nora for two hours back in January, when she was flying to Germany from California.  She had a two-hour layover in New York, so I thought I'd go see her.  Don't ever say I'm not a good, devoted friend.  But I still remember where I was standing at certain points of the book.  it was a nightmare getting to the airport, by the way. About 20 degrees out, and I had to transfer to a bus for the final leg. I really hate the transit system hear sometimes, especially since I had to say "transit system," instead of just "subway."  Because something's always going wrong with it.
    Anyway, now that I'm thinking about what different books remind me of, I'll continue with a list of the ones that stand out:
    The book Shane reminds me of my 13th birthday, April 10th, 1989.  I was sick.  I was wearing an ugly white sweatshit with light blue collar and light blue stripe my grandmother had gotten for me. it was really warm.  I put the book down to have my birthday cake, then went back to my room and finished the book.  I was a real go-getter back then. And I had a bad haircut.  Anyway, I was pretty sick, but I enjoyed the book, and may have called it my favorite book until highschool.
    The Fountainhead reminds me of the hallway in Wilson highschool, outside Mr. Dean's chemistry class.  I did a lot of reading and homework sitting there after lunch and before class.  Oh, the linoleum.  It also reminds me of the plane to Spain int 1994.
    White Fang reminds me of sitting alone in my cold living room in the winter of 1989.  I was watching Head of the Class on a Wednesday.  that's about all I remember of the book, except that at one point I was kind of scared, being home all alone, and the book didn't help.
    I read the book The Princess Bride was based on, over the course of a few summer evenings in my room one year. Not sure when. Probably the first book I was ever excited to read that I picked up to read just for my own pleasure.  An excellent read.  Wonderful characters. And one of favorite movies.
    Finally, the Bloom County comic strip collection "Tales too Ticklish to Tell," reminds me of throwing up. I couldn't read that for a long time afterwards. I was staying home sick, and i was reading that a lot. come to think of it, I was also reading the Calvin and Hobbes collection "Attack of the Deranged, Killer Mutant Monster Snow Goons."  I'd be surprised if I got that exactly right. Anyway, both remind me of sitting in the bathtub, delerious, trying to get some sort of pleasure out of a miserable, sickly existence.
 

    Our upstairs neighbor forgot his keys today, as he often does.  So he came down and sat in our apartment for a while, as he often does.  I was flipping through the channels, and stopped at the Real World.  One of the blond girls was on, the Mormon, and we were saying how she was very religious, and he was like they all are, but they look like they should be slutty.  I believe his exact words were:

"if you're going to be blond and hot, you should be a ho. God didn't give you that shit to go to church."

    In fact, I know those were his exact words, because right after he spoke them a came into my room to write them down because I knew I'd want to write about it later.  This is not noteworthy because of what he said, but because he spoke these words in a convincingly heterosexual way that you can't really fake.  We always just sort of assumed he was gay.
 

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