fantasmatical thorr wrote:i am going to give blood later today. i made sure i drank wrong amounts of guiness on sunday so that my iron levels would be sufficient...well, that's not why i drank so much but it certainly helps.
i don't wanna be all preachy but, if you don't give blood and you can, then i think you should. there. i've said it. it's a good thing to do.

there i am the other day selling plasma.

Mike Greenlees wrote:

The house across the alley from my office looks rather chipper this morning.

This brightened my day inthat it reminded me of one of my favorite books as a child:


I haven't thought about it in forever.

This is the time of the flies.

My workplace is currently besieged by bluebottles. They are proliferating around one end of the floor, and the man there killed thirteen flies yesterday. A more sensitive and more elderly colleague in the area let one out through the window. This influx of flies has led the floor to conclude that something, or someone, in, or on, the building, is dead and has been for a while. It hadn't occurred to me before I began writing this but perhaps tomorrow I will take the joking around this subject down a level and suggest a head-count of staff.

Perhaps I am the one who is dead, though. I went into my bedroom just now to put the heating on for a while before I retire; but found a big ol' fly making death dives at my bedside lamp. He was too quick to be defeated, and too lamp-fixated to take my offer of an opened window to the outside world. Of his own accord, however, Brother Fly made for the hall-landing where he was lately engaged in making up to the lamp-bulb there.

Returned to my living room, I found that the spider I had spied earlier tonight on the ceiling - an advantage of drinking every last drop from your can of beer is a spontaneous survey of the ceiling, my friends - had moved from his position of hours to a more attackable site. I generally find a way to remove spiders from this flat without killing them, but that is generally because they are as big as my fist and I want them where I can see them. This was a little fella, though, but destined to grow, so I went for a hard whack with a paperback volume of the Mini Oxford Dictionary (section seven, as a point of fact). Almost too easy, especially when compared with the fly problem.

That was when it occurred to my dull mind that I had just killed the spider that would kill the fly; and for some reason I concluded that I should post this information here. Let's face it, even though I know that the big fly is on the landing, I'm not going to sleep comfortably anytime soon knowing he was hanging around my pillow but recently. Buzz buzz buzz.

In other news, I recently heard the latest album by this band 'Oakley Hall', having heard a track on WFMU. I like some of it. Is the prevailing wind of opinion with, or against, this group? I can't make my own mind up but I think they're okay. All knowledge in this regard will be gratefully received.

I just went on a date. It was the first in quite a few months. Now I am a giddy little boy.

Jon

that damned fly wrote:

fantasmatical thorr wrote:i am going to give blood later today. i made sure i drank wrong amounts of guiness on sunday so that my iron levels would be sufficient...well, that's not why i drank so much but it certainly helps.
i don't wanna be all preachy but, if you don't give blood and you can, then i think you should. there. i've said it. it's a good thing to do.

there i am the other day selling plasma.

I gave blood yesterday, inspired/reminded by you two. Salut! I'll drink the Guinness (retrospectively) tonight when I go to see Cardiacs at the Astoria.

I got home from last night's party at six-thirty am. I marked this by sitting down and having a beer.

Today has been an incrediblygreasy day in the north of England. As I looked over the roofs of the terraces earlier, from my flat, all the roofs looked like someone had taken some bacon fat and just greased them all a little. It's been raining and windy like a fucker. It's brilliant. The sky looks furious about something.

I attended a reading by a poet named Josh Bell on Thursday evening, and it was one of the most entertaining readings I've ever been to. His poems are just as smart and funny and sad on the page, and I recommend to anyone interested in poetry his book, No Planets Strike (Zoo Press). Unfortunately, his series of hilarious Vince Neil monologues is brand new and not in the book, but fans of Jim Tate, John Ashbery, and David Berman will, I think, all find much to enjoy in it. For example:


Milk Division

I duct tape a border down the middle
of every room--my side, your side--
so I won't be able to watch the clock
and you won't be able to see the mirror
while you dress each morning, and I'll
have to lean across the plants to tell you
what shoes you're wearing with what hat.
It's a good system. If your toes wander
onto my side of the bed, I'll keep them
and raise them as my own, and one day
you'll come home early and you'll catch me
with your half of the milk. This is all
in the future. Goddamn, you'll say,
we should have tried this years ago.


And:


Ramona's Theme

We were happier in the old songs
when the pale spiders came to take us
back into the earth. My thoughts
belonged to time. Each world we passed
was older than it seemed, deceptive
in its roots, every drop of water
a dirty moon bound to dearer,
blinder seas, our foraged bodies
clean and bright, like little teeth.
What's there left to talk about now?
We've come up from the tunnels
that once belonged to mice, where
the scared worms dreamed of men.
Be careful with me. The night is cold,
and I can still see the deep fish
twisting through the earth like swans.

--Josh Bell

the cable guy come over to fix something and we got sucked into "That's So Raven"

me:"how do you even get a mechanical bull in yr living room?"

cable guy:"whose parents even let you have a mechanical bull at a party?"

I'll tell you what has made me happier than almost anything lately. On Thursday, I came home and found that the plumber had come and installed a new toilet while I was at school. My toilet had not flushed properly for nearly two weeks, and because I live so far out in the country, it is difficult to get repair people to come out. I was sick all last week, and struggling with a plunger every time I used the bathroom--even if I was just going "number one"--had filled me with frustration and rage. Tim, the plumber, had assured me that he couldn't come out until next week, but I later called his receptionist (also his wife--and I had their daughter in class once) and told her to plead with Tim to come out by Thursday because a "famous poet" was coming to read and would be staying at my house. I'd already prepped Josh on the toilet situation, but when we arrived at my house and entered the bathroom as I was giving him the grand tour, we discovered a gleaming new commode in place of the one that, as Tim had told me, had been manufactured in 1973.

I think I would go see a band called the New Commodes.