have not seen the rat in over a week (knock on wood)

six spring traps, two glueboards, 12 cubes of poison
several globs of peanut butter
three spools of steel wool
one huge hole burrowed into my basement wall
one gnawed purse
fights with landlord
friends no longer visit me
contemplating suicide

and I was seriously just now thinking, I wonder how hamsters are as pets

another wandering weekend, San Francisco

a dream I had whilst in Berkeley

Last night I had a dream my dad was looking for a little health food store/eatery that was supposed to be amazing. We were in a rundown section of some big city I did not quite recognize and we couldn't find it anywhere (of course) but we DID find a rather bleak street market. I came upon an old Thai lady selling khanoms. In this dream my Thai was a bit rusty at first, but she revealed that the health food store had a new name and explained its complicated coordinates. She and my dad were enormously pleased with me for, respectively, being a bilingual Falang and for solving the mystery, which appealed to my fallacy of approval. I think she was an oracle.

I've been immortalized on canvas. And sold

Will part of my soul fly west to California in a crate?

http://robchester.com/

David Foster Wallace Posthumous Adoration Club

The first essay, and therefore our inaugural discussion, was on Big Red Son wherein DFW reports (for 50 pages) from the Annual AVN Awards -- the Academy Awards of the porn industry.(1) As expected we all had snack and drink and chatted for a long while first, eventually getting to the points everyone wanted to make about porn and/or the essay and/or DFW himself. Brendan asked the group a two-part question: "who here watches porn, and if so how much?"(2) Then I think I suggested we might put some on in the background, but we never did. Someone [Catherine?] thought DFW seeks a bit too much to imitate Hunter S. Thompson in his journalistic style. Helly opined that DFW's footnotes are a bit decadent.(3)

Do what we did and consider the book Consider the Lobster for your next book club meeting.

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(1) Am not attempting to review here but I remember thinking it was unclassy that the Expo is held in conjunction with the Awards. Of course it's somewhat catered to the fans who want to geek out, in fact some of what he wrote was about how accessible the starlets were to their fans. That seems a shame. Of course it's advantageous from a business perspective but as irony would dictate having a porn Expo at all seems to destroy the fantasy aspect of porn content. It depends how idealistic one is about one's porn.

(2) Everybody allowed the obligatory awkward pause, for fun, before sharing their answers with the community

(3) I suggested it may have been comments like these that drove him to suicide, but when I typed that in the original text it seemed disrespectful. Thus it was moved to a footnote.

head slightly larger

Thank Krishna we coerced our friends to come to our show at the Rock and Roll Hotel last night. We won the Zipcar talent contest and got a taste of real celebrity, carried away into the night on the shoulders of the crowd [metaphorically]. It all went to my head immediately.

Testimonials

"We've been singing your Google song around the office ever since the audition" ~ Zipcar staff

"I don't mind paying the $5.....I'd pay TEN dollars to see you" ~ Julia

"I take it all back, you guys aren't too bad" ~ Avi

"You guys pulled a Freddy Mercury" ~ Dave

"I'm as relieved as anyone that you guys pulled it off" ~ Rob

"I'm devastated I didn't come" ~ Helly's mom

"Hi, I tend to stalk girls with guitars, and I'm stalking you" ~ strange man who saw us perform last week at Artomatic and showed up randomly last night....yeah I'm a little weirded out by that one

The flier we handed out

Pittsburgh

When will the residents of this city enact a bill to get themselves a better name? Best one I've heard so far, "Andy-Warhol-Lived-Here Town"