I am bad. I was going to do some house cleaning today, completely clean out the litter boxes, scrub them, and fill them with fresh litter, do some more laundry, and try not to be a terrible bum.

Instead, I read my new astrology book until about 6pm, took a shower, then called my friend Brandy (to whom I hadn't spoken in about two years), then bought the cat litter I needed, then got some takeout from the Kebab Palace over by the old place (conveniently located on the way back from Petsmart), and plopped myself back on the couch where I caught up a bit on the Wired magazines that have been piling up.

Tonight's dinner was something called "Beef Haleem," which I really didn't have much of an idea what it was before I ate it. It was the special, which is why I ordered it. I got to the point when Koog and I lived across the street from the Kebab Palace that I trusted that all the labels of "Halal" on everything and the persistence of their clientele probably meant that everything on the menu was safe for regular consumption. So the Haleem was a goop-based meal (I've had quite a bit of goop cuisines lately) involving (I later figured out after some web searching) lentils, chickpeas, and lots of spices in addition to the beef. It was tasty, and the spices were surprisingly reminiscent of those used in the chili at the Coney I-Lander back home. Or maybe that's just my weirdo taste buds at work.

I will get to eat at the Coney I-Lander in two weeks. Mom is no longer so naive as to believe that my sole reason for coming home that weekend is the ostensible "Mothers' Day" (she is well aware I'm as considerate of my needs as I am of hers) but she's still looking forward to having me there. Mothers' Day brunch and all.

I plan my trips back home around food. This is a peculiar obsession to have, but I guess - knowing the people I know - that it might not be so odd as you'd suspect.

Among other foods, I will also be able to satisfy, temporarily at least, my jones for the only good Squishy drink known to man, the Koolee available at QuikTrip. QT (based in Tulsa) and Sonic (based in Oklahoma City) seem to be the only companies that understand that you don't need to put fizzing agents into Squishy drinks. There's an odd element to the taste of an Icee or a Slushee or whatever, and I have found that there's also an odd behavior to those same drinks that you don't see in a Koolee or a Sonic Slush.

To illustrate, go to your nearest Seven One One and buy a Slushee. It is not necessary to buy a large one, as you're not going to drink it for this illustration. Even the smallest one will still set you back a buck, I believe, which is a crime against Squishy drinks (at QT the Koolees are the same price as all other fountain drinks, the 44 ouncer setting you back a mere $.69 the last time I checked; at Sonic a Slush is a mere $.10 more than a similarly sized fountain drink). Allow this Slushee, for which you have just overpaid, to melt completely. After it has melted, note that it still has a preternatural ring of bubbly foam around the edge of the cup. Taste it. It does not taste like a regular fountain drink. It tastes odd.

They have introduced a foreign element to the Squishy drink - something I believe to be an attempt to make it taste "more fizzy," but which instead imparts an odd flavor and a bad tongue feel to the drink. The same is true of the frozen drinks you can get at Burger King. This is a crime against Squishies and must be stopped.

People often disagree with me, because they have not grown up (as I have) with the far superior Koolee available to them. The Koolee has no extra fizzing agents added. Syrup, water, CO₂, cold. The Koolee is superior to the Sonic Slush only in that the Sonic Slush is so sugary as to make your teeth hurt. While that may be an advantage to some young boys, it puts the rest of us (especially the parents of those young boys, and any adults nearby) at a disadvantage. You can also drink a melted Koolee and have it taste basically like the soft drink that donated its flavor, although at that point it's probably flat.

So I can get my 44 ounces of frozen "Ed Juice" as my old roommate used to put it, drive around in mom's car, and engorge myself upon local foods that I miss as badly as I miss my mom. Some days more so.

From the new astrology book, Secrets from a Stargazer's Notebook, by Debbi Kempton-Smith, in the bit about how your chart affects your tastes in food, specifically Uranus in the sixth house:

"Haphazard gourmets is what they are; they like weird food and are terribly sensitive to all the nuances of what they eat ... When they bother they are spectacular chefs and it's usually foreign fare ... They had weird eating habits in childhood, and when grown up they'll go miles for the food they crave."

Oh, and she says that the house the Moon's in affects the things you want - mine's in the fifth house, which she likens to being a big baby who throws tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants. (See previous entry)

I think she's been spying on me.

link (2000-04-30)

I am so envious of my friends who own houses that I could spit, or go stomp off in a huff and pout in a corner at least.

I so want to be a homeowner. I don't, however, want it badly enough to take a house that isn't exactly what I want. I used to have an Elvis Costello quotation in my email .sig, that went like this: "It isn't that I don't know what I want, it's that I want it now." This is the way I want a house of my own. I want something that's mine, all mine. Me me me me me. This is the house where Ed lives. This is my place.

Problem: the houses for sale here are not the houses I want. I've looked; I'll continue to look. I know right now that the thing that's right for me isn't there. I'm too ideosyncratic, too selfish, too persnickety, too too. I have a very certain way things need to be in order for me to be happy with them. Houses built to other people's standards don't fit this bill. At. All.

The one place that was within easy walking distance of work, near my friends, and affordable, had blue ceramics in the bathrooms and would have required the kitchen to be redone immediately. Brown carpet upstairs. A window into the utility room, which is a waste of a window if I've ever seen one. Now, most of that stuff is fixable, but there are issues. Losing the blue toilets would mean replacing them with low-flow models, which are unacceptable. The kitchen could be done for $8-10K, including appliances, but that would be money I'd have to pull directly out of my wallet. After kitchen, carpet, new washer and dryer, etc, I'd add another 20% on top of what I spent for the house, which doesn't seem right to me. I shouldn't have to pay that to undo what somebody else did in order to get what I want.

So now I'm starting to entertain the notion of having a place built. I'm insane. I don't know if it's possible to get builders interested in a custom project under $500K, and mine would definitely be under that number. Way under. But the idea of spending the money to get exactly what I want instead of some approximation is, well, the way I buy everything. I'm selfish, I'm particular, but I'm always very happy with what I get when I've gotten it My Way.

Me.
Mine.
Now.

I am a two year old.

link (2000-04-29)

Word of the night:

Trepanation (although the American Heritage seems to prefer Trephination, I saw it the other way first).

Had a date with another chyk from the personals.

Nope. Nada. Nichts. Nothin'.

Nice girl and all, and she's actually a grown-up, but there was absolutely nothing there. And I did almost all the talking. Ugh.

If people ask me questions, I'm pretty much going to spew forth with words, which is what I did tonight. Except the people I actually deal with regularly feel free to interrupt, interject, and otherwise push the conversation into other directions (into, well, the direction of conversation instead of monologue). She did not do this. And I was left to be the only interesting party at the table.

Ehhh.

At least we went by DCCD. The loot:

• Buena Vista Social Club CD (used)
• Peter Gabriel CD (the third one, melty-face, used)
• Elliot Smith, Figure 8 (new)
• The Modernist, The Modernist Explosion USA (new, bought because the cover was constructivist)
• Meeting people is easy. A film by grant gee about radiohead DVD (new)
• King Crimson, deja VROOOM DVD (new)

Sigh. I'd like to meet a chyk from the personals I, uhh, actually have something in common with.

link (2000-04-28)

Me and my big mouth (hands?).

Just last night I typed:

Sigh. I'd like to meet a chyk from the personals I, uhh, actually have something in common with.

So this afternoon I get not one, not two, but three emails courtesy of swoon.com (a Conde Nast joint). Two are from chyks who can't count and aren't really looking for somebody serious anyway, and the other is from one whose ad I responded to last week, didn't hear anything from, and after finding out the remailer wasn't working right, to whom I sent another email later in the week.

Items of note from the afternoon's email:

• The two chyks who can't count are below the age limit (again)
• One of them "mostly just dates women" (oi!) (Woo-hoo!) (I wish my friends said Woo-hoo and meant it).
• The third one, who is indeed tall, er old, enough for this ride, had written me already, which I didn't get because the remailer was broken, and also didn't get the first message I sent her for the same reason
• And worst of all (or best, but I'm thinking worst) my ad is the Hot Personal from the front page. Well.

[editor's note: the Hot Personal is apparently only up for one day, and has already rotated away] The tag line was stolen from Was (Not Was), but nobody has picked up on that yet. I guess it's sort of flattering, but I don't know how the Hot Personal is chosen, as it seems to be distinct from the "Editor's Picks." I suspected before that it was merely random, so I don't know if I can take it as a compliment or not. I didn't really sign up for being linked from the front page, but I guess you get what you pay for. Or what you ask for in your diaryland diary. Or something.

Anyway, I'm afraid that I'm guilty of having a Bad Head (see the woo-hoo link above if you haven't already) because I've already ruled out one girl (who seemed nice enough) because she didn't capitalize the beginnings of her sentences and she misspelled things. I came up with other reasons (it all really boiled down to the fact that she was still 22, in about as many ways as you can still be 22), but the noncapitalization thing is so 1995. And spelling, well, spelling I can't excuse.

So I got the email from the third chyk listed above, and there shining out towards me in phosphors was "your" where she needed "you're." Twice. Now I can hear you already, saying, "Fedward, get the fuck over yourself. So what?" Well, it's hard. I can get over a lot about myself, but certain English usage pet peeves are never going to go away, and one of them is the your-you're thing. (I'll also pick your nits clean away if you misuse "comprise" when you mean "compose," or vice-versa).

So I'm writing her back, I mean duh (I'll probably also write the 23-yo LUG, since I'd be run out of the next Straight Men's Club meeting if I didn't), but the former English major in the back of my head is going, "NOOOOOOOO." Because I do indeed have a Bad Head.

I think I'll call it a night. When I wake up tomorrow maybe the Bed Head will have vanquished the Bad Head.

link (2000-04-28)

I'm going to expand upon and clarify something I said (or tried to say) in my last entry.

I guess what bugs me about the online diary thing isn't that it's used so much as a writing exercise or whatever, but that people quite often tend to fall into one or both of two traps:

• Confusing validation of their writing skills with validation of their life choices
• Delving so deep into the author-as-subject gonzo method of writing that they can never get out again and are doomed to become Salon columnists

About the first:

The problem I have with the diaryland community, if you will, is that it's so feedback-loopish (as I mentioned in the previous entry). I'm all for writing about yourself. Hell, it's all I do here. :-) But, I'm made uneasy by the idea of soliciting somebody else's approval of it. Where do you draw the line? How do you tell the difference between "good writing" and "good life?"

So yeah, part of the problem there is that some people seek validation for the one as a redemption of the other. And I guess that's part of growing up and making life choices, that you need those choices validated too. I'm down with that need, I guess, although it has always been far beyond me to seek it or provide it to those who do. I'm a bit too literal for that. (News Flash! Sagittarius takes people at face value! Film at eleven!)

About the second:

Bigger problem. There but for the grace of [insert name here, I dunno, Dave Eggers? Doug Coupland? Samuel Beckett?] go I.

I'm all for sharing. I'm all for using yourself as your own best subject because, well, you probably are. I can talk about me for hours. I'm not really sure how many perspectives it's possible to have on your own navel before you become unbearable. (That's rhetorical, BTW. Nobody here that I read has become unbearable yet). I just fear that people will get so entrenched in writing "I" that they won't be able to write anything else.

Quoth my dear friend Krapsnart, "We are born alone and we die alone. We should do our best to make whatever connections we can along the way." I guess I don't agree with her there on the bits at either end, but I do agree with the middle (if that makes sense). My definition of birth and death doesn't include loneliness, I guess. I don't think when you're born you're conscious of being alone, and I think when you die you have with you the memories and souls of those you've known. I think you're only truly alone when you're conscious of being alone.

I am never alone.

link (2000-04-27)

"Ladies and gentlemen,
here's my disease.
Give me a standing ovation
and your sympathy"

Poor old Johnny Yen,
Set himself on fire again.

So I was thinking tonight about this whole online diary thing. And I remembered a conversation I had with a friend recently, where she expressed that she didn't want to be one of those people who defined themselves by how fucked up they are.

See the gene-genie
on his highwire act,
at the back of his mind
lies a suicide pact.

Poor old Johnny Yen,
Set himself on fire again.

The conversation occurred after we'd both already started diaries here, but she wasn't just talking about here. She was talking about life. Between us, we know far too many people whose only idea of self comes from a bizarre fun-house mirror - either the view through depression, or the misguided notion that you only exist as other people perceive you. The idea of self on its own instead of reflected that way seems to have gotten lost somewhere for a lot of people.

See the young men itching to burn
Waiting for their own star turn
Needing danger, a war would do
If they can't let it out, they'll pick on you.

Poor old Johnny Yen
Set himself on fire again, on fire again
Poor old Johnny Yen
Set himself on fire again

So tonight I surfed through the ever-increasing list of diaries I read online and, well, I was given pause. This diary thing, at least in the case of the diaries I read online, isn't limited to people who define themselves by how fucked up they are. I guess there are plenty of diarists out there who do define themselves that way, but of course I don't read those diaries. At the same time, however, there's something disquieting about the idea of a public diary as a writing exercise.

See Houdini in his underwater tricks,
you were sitting at the front hoping his locks would stick.
Watch Knievel hit the seventeenth bus,
you got crushed in the souvenir rush.

Poor old Johnny Yen
Set himself on fire again
I said, poor old Johnny Yen
Set himself on fire again

I mean, that's why I'm here. I don't have a counter on here, I have received no email from people who randomly found my diary or who were referred to it by someone else. My argument for this endeavor was that it made me get out my words, put something down [the on paper is implied here, I guess maybe on phosphors is what I'm looking for] and not delete it immediately, have a vehicle for expression on the days when I have something to say and nowhere else to say it. I'm not here for any validation, I'm not looking for comment from random strangers (although the friends who know this diary is here comment on it in private). At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

See the young men itching to burn
Waiting for their own star turn
Needing danger, a war would do
if they can't let it out they'll pick on you

Poor old Johnny Yen
Set himself on fire again, on fire again
I said, poor old Johnny Yen
Set himself on fire again

But what the hell? There is some excellent writing going on out there. Don't all these online diarists have another venue that's a little less, I dunno, feedback-loopish? This is a freakish sort of exhibitionism for people who otherwise seem perfectly well adjusted to their lives and how they fit in them. In one sense I can see how this is actually a very healthy writing exercise since you're writing in your truest voice here (one would hope) and you have to be able to master that before you can write in any other voice. But at the same time you're laying your heart on quite a bit of a public sleeve. It's a little sick, don't you think?

Ladies and gentlemen, here's my disease. Give me a standing ovation and your sympathy.

This meta moment brought to you by Fedward. Lyrics by James, ©1986, used without permission.

link (2000-04-26)

A couple years ago I came up with sort of a theory of dating. I guess it's a theory of dating, but it's really a theory of sociology that just happens to apply as a general rule for selecting people I might want to date.

It goes something like this:

Young adults (viz, 18 and up) age basically in spurts. Or bands. Or waves. Or something. Anyway, what that means is that at some ages the people either a year younger than you or a year older than you are really at about the same emotional and mental stage you are (what's important to you, how you address problems, how you think of your future, yadda yadda), but at other ages the next year either way is in a different age cohort altogether. So I came up with some rough groups:

18 to 21
21 to 24
25-2x
2x-3x
...

That's where I kinda ran out of ways to tell the difference. I'm pretty sure there's a definable difference between, say, 33 and 27, but those two are seemingly (from my not-at-all-representative sample) about as close or far apart as 24 and 27 are. So I guess I'm deciding at this point that maybe 27 is the cutoff, then it's 27 to 3x where 3x is not defined yet (too little sample data).

Anyway, those loosely match (as you may have noticed) with:

College
Post-College
Actual adult
Spouse, homeowner, etc.

Anyway, where the rules come into play is that I came to the conclusion it was okay to date somebody one age group away, but not two. I think the groups do get larger as we age (so, for instance, it could be 25-29 and 29-34, but I can't tell right now if 27 is the turning point, or 29, or something else entirely), but the rule still applies.

This comes into play now, of course, since I'm currently actually attempting to go on dates where before I just had a handy way to rule possible candidates out, although I wasn't really making any effort to find anybody to keep or rule out as the case may have been.

Anyway, I put up a personals ad on one of the web thingies and I specified that I was seeking someone between the ages of 25-33. And really what I meant was someone of an age greater than or equal to 25, up to and including 33. Older than that, I dunno (although I guess I'm open-minded enough to try). Younger than that, I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

So after some apparent technical difficulty (I have now confirmed with somebody I'm emailing with that the personals site manages to lose email messages it's supposed to be forwarding) I started getting some responses on my ad. From chyks who are 22 or 23.

Now. I've emailed back to a couple of them for at least one response, and they're seemingly nice girls and all, but they're just out of college and they have that just out of college thing going on. Like the one girl who doesn't capitalize anything in her email (so 1995), or the ones who still hang out with all their college buddies and get wasted just like they did in their apartment. In other words, they're too young. Or, in other other words, I'm too old for them.

They apparently don't seem to think so. They're wrong, but they don't. This raises a couple of questions in my mind:

• Why don't they think I'm too old, or they're too young, when I say in my ad that I'm looking for somebody no younger than 25? Can't they read?
• Are there other men out there my age who are happy to date these women? If so, are they emotionally still in college themselves?
• If that's the case, why do these women want to date them anyway? Are they looking for somebody who's "older" but who really isn't? Does this mean that the men in their age cohort are even less out of college (emotionally) than the women are?
• Finally, isn't there anybody actually in the age group I'm looking for who's also out there looking?

The answer to that last one is, finally, yes. I'm now a little disturbed that maybe I need to go back and re-respond (at the risk of being a dork twice, or a dork squared since dorkiness increases exponentially and not just geometrically) (QED) to the ads I initially responded to, citing technical difficulties ("and if you think I'm so lame I don't even warrant a response, please respond anyway so I can go back to assuming I'm a loser instead of holding out hope")? But I am emailing with somebody who holds promise for at least the reason that she liked my ad enough to respond to it twice (instead of assuming that a non-response expressed disinterest on my part, as I had done when I got nothing back from the women whose ads I responded to myself).

And she's 33, not 23. And she writes in complete sentences. And her life doesn't still revolve around her college experience. Yay. Now I wonder if there are others.

link (2000-04-25)

Sometime in the past 24 hours, I had my Saturn Return. Exactly, according to Astrolog. Those of you who are complete Doubting Thomases (or Eugenes, or Francises, or Leopolds, or whoevers) may not want to read the next few paragraphs (as of now I don't know how many paragraphs I'm going to spend on the subject) so consider yourself warned. Otherwise, I will now ponder the significance of my first Saturn Return (similar I guess to My First Sony, but Oh So Different).

A Saturn Return, for those of you not astrologically inclined or educated, is the point in your life when Saturn (the planet) returns to the exact point in the sky where it was at the moment of your birth. It's sort of a good delineator, and tends to indicate certain types of things happening in your life. It happens somewhere between your 29th and 30th birthdays, so all this lines up very nicely with that otherwise round number so the Doubting Whoevers can just write all this off to "I'm Turning 30" angst and leave it at that. Those of us who don't dismiss it out of hand, however, can look further into the astrology books and say, "hey, what does a Saturn Return mean for me?"

My particular Saturn Return is complicated by the fact that just as Saturn was getting really close to the position it was in at my birth it went retrograde, astrogical lingo for what happens when an object in the sky appears to stop going "forward" (the direction it goes most of the time) and starts going "backward" instead. "Planets" (just about everything astrological is referred to as a "planet" for convenience's sake) only go retrograde for a bit before they "go direct" and go the way they normally go once again. Last August Saturn got to within one degree of where it was in my birth chart before going retrograde. This means that all the typical "Saturn Return" stuff that usually happens got dragged out eight months longer than necessary, but it also means that it came to a head this week.

And how.

Thursday night I was reading along here, and I discovered that Sheepish's grandmother had passed away (she knew it was coming soon enough), which reminded me of what I'd written about my brother's death when a friend's dad died (see previous entry), which reminded me about when my brother died, which set off a chain of remembrances.

Also, by coincidence, my oldest friend-that-I'm-still-in-touch-with Ben, whom I've known since elementary school, was getting married this weekend. Here, as a matter of fact. So I started thinking about how amazing it was that I've known this guy since we were about 10 and he's getting married (wow!), and that set off a whole 'nother chain of remembrances.

When it all was done, my whole life had passed before my eyes. Not in that flash you supposedly get when you think you're going to die, but in highlight mode. The game film, if you will. A summary of the first almost-thirty years of my life (30 in November).

It's weird.

I don't think of myself as a "failure," but I'm not done. I can't say that as of right now I've hit any sort of marker, anything equivalent to passing GO so I can collect the karmic $200. But it's also hard to tell when you're in something what your position in it is. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as applied to a human life. So looking at what appears to be the overarching theme of my life, I'm not sure that I've reached any stopping points. But I can't say that I haven't either. I Just Don't Know.

It's weird because I can see all of the pieces getting ready to fall into place, but they haven't yet. It's like now is happening in slow motion. My life is a pool table where somebody is slowly knocking things around, apparently with no motive, but there's a portent that they're really setting things up so that they can run the table, corner-side-corner-corner-side-side-corner-eight-ball-corner-pocket wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am insert-your-own-cliche-here. And until they started you didn't know it was coming. I am suspicious that's what happening now.

I can size up where I've been, and where I am, but I can't tell right now what's next. Usually I have a clue, but now I'm at this blind corner. I'm not sure if that's the corner marked GO or if it's just Free Parking.

I'll know soon enough.

link (2000-04-23)

What a fun Saturday I had.

For starters, my very dear old friend Ben (I've known him since fourth or fifth grade) got married at 11am. The wedding, conveniently enough, was out here (his family moved out here around 1990, I moved in 1998).

The wedding itself was fun, but nontrad. His little - excuse me, younger - brother Paschal was Best Man, and did a reading at the ceremony itself that was a rather nice little essay. Good job Paschal. Then the Matron of Honor also did a reading, but hers was over as soon as it started and left no impression on me at all, to the point that I can't recall anything about it now except for its brevity.

Then Groom and Bride (that's Ben and Bits to you and me) did their own readings (I think Ben Sr. wrote the poem Ben read, and Bits read something too), then the judge presiding (a judge presiding in a church, who'da thunk it?) did the vows part, then we were done and it was off to the reception.

The reception was in a pretty good location, in a lounge on the 16th floor of a hotel with a good view of the Pentagon (heh) but also of the Washington Monument and also the Capitol and all the other sights of DC that are tall enough to be noticed (the Shrine at Catholic U, for instance, which I wouldn't be able to identify if it weren't for my voice lessons on campus there, being a heathen and all).

The band was a jazz combo with a singer chyk who needed coffee in order to perk up and get a little stage presence (even then she was lacking) but who had a nice sounding voice regardless (even if she also needs to learn to enunciate). The band was good. I did a "surprise" number with the band for the first dance ("More," as recorded by Bobby Darin), then a cobbled-together last-minute version of "Brazil," then gave the mike back to the band and sat back down at the table of people who also hardly knew anybody else at the wedding. It was fun though.

On the way back from the reception, I got onto the HOV version of the 14th Street Bridge, as did an Angry Black Man in a Dropped Down Sentra, who apparently didn't think that my 15mph over the posted limit of 45 was fast enough for him, so he flipped me off. I maintained my speed on the ramp, and as soon as he had a chance he zipped around me and glared in that Angry Black Man in a Dropped Down Sentra way, so I kissed my palm and blew him a kiss.

His passenger (also a Black Man, but not, it seems, an Angry one) thought this was hilarious. The Angry Black Man apparently didn't, as he then attempted to force me into the Jersey Barrier, then once I was safely behind him straddled both lanes in his Dropped Down Sentra in order to delay me from getting where I was going. Interestingly, he realized he was being discourteous by blocking other traffic, so he moved over into the right lane (in front of me) to let the other cars pass. Then he moved his Dropped Down Sentra back into the middle of the road (preventing me from passing, a maneuver I had no intention of attempting anyway) before finally getting back into the right lane so he could merge back onto 395. Since I was actually going onto 14th Street, I moved into the left lane. As I passed, he glared at me again in that Angry Black Man in a Dropped Down Sentra way, so I puckered up for an air smooch, gave a little ta-ta wave with my right hand, and continued onto my exit.

I am unaware as to whether or not the Angry Black Man realized the humor in the situation. He was five seconds later because of me, and that's all that counted in his Angry Egocentric Universe. Of course, once he set about trying to delay me, he made himself even later. Whatever. Dude, it's DC. You're not going to get anywhere quickly.

So I got home, changed clothes, and headed over to the painfully twee bookstore Politics and Prose, which was hosting an appearance by Dave Eggers, whose book is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, along with Sarah Vowell, she of Salon and This American Life, who also has a new book, Take the Cannoli. I farted around after getting there early intentionally so I could get a seat (had a lovely mango "Shakespeare Soda" though), and ended up seatless. But then it was announced that we could sit on the floor up front if we desired, so I did so.

I commented to the people who sat down in front of me, "wouldn't it be really awkward if I turned out to have Tourette's?" I think they were amused by this. I'm not sure. Anyway, when Eggers and Vowell came out, he discovered to his dismay that they were expected to sit in some comfy chairs behind a table and use mikes that were placed on the table, instead of standing at a podium as he was accustomed to doing. There then commenced a bit of business as the podium was moved from its place nearby to a position between himself and Ms. Vowell, the table was scooted forward a bit to make room, and then the issue of the microphone was set upon.

Now. The authors had been provided with two microphones; one of these was attached to one of those silly 6-inch stands on top of the table, the other was mounted on a rather dodgy mike stand of the variety you usually see at public events. The 6-inch stand was too short for comfortable use on top of the podium, requiring the speaker to hunch over awkwardly. The more useful mike stand, however, had shortcomings of its own: it was wobbly and wouldn't stay adjusted to its full height, and it also happened to be supporting the less functional of the two microphones.

I suggested that the taller mike stand be adjusted for use with the podium. Mr. Eggers liked this idea, at which point I commented that I had been in the AV Squad in Junior High school, and you can never really get past it. This suggestion was adopted immediately, but required some rather artful fussing by the "Events Coordinator," Vanessa, in order to get the mike stand to stay in something approximating the right place. Fussing done, Mr. Eggers leaned down into the microphone and discovered that it was shorting out. At that point I suggested placing the other, more functional microphone, on the taller, more useful stand. Mr. Eggers requested that I, the AV Man, make this happen. I did.

Microphones thus handled, the evening progressed.

Mr. Eggers' first reading was a piece that had been intended for the book but didn't make it, a geographically appropriate bit about him and Toph happening across a bunch of Secret Service activity in front of a restaurant in Berkeley, where it turned out none other than Bill Clinton was dining. I can't do justice to the piece, but it was good, and after a rather awkward nervous beginning Mr. Eggers was revealed to be quite a good reader of his own work. This is good to know, since he and the other characters in the book will be playing themselves for the audio book version. I'll have to buy that when it finally comes out.

Ms Vowell's first reading was the first part of an essay in her book about a trip taken to Disneyworld with a gay Canadian immigrant who didn't seem particularly taken with the whole idea, but the whole thing seems to have gone off well in the end. She's a great presenter of her own work (the voice helps, really, although that's difficult to admit) and comes across as sort of a female counterpart to David Sedaris (not the David taken to Disneyworld, but also, it turns out, a friend to both authors).

After the first two readings, they traded off with shorter pieces (Mr. Eggers read a few of the fake reviews posted to Amazon as a result of the McSweeneys contest), there were questions at the end, then a rather long line for the signings, which turned out to be at the absolute other end of the store. So I was almost last in line after being right next to the authors for the reading. It's a fair trade, I guess.

Ms. Vowell's signature:

to Ed for a.v. prowess
[her signature]
4/22/00 d.c.

Mr. Eggers' signature:

[he was apparently drawing something in everybody's books]

A good day it was.

link (2000-04-23)

I'm cheating here, sort of. This actually dates back to 12 July 1994 when I was a columnist for the Oklahoma Daily, the campus newspaper for Oklahoma University.

But I was going to say something here for Sheepish and it occurred to me that I probably still had this column around on disc and it was as appropriate as anything else.

Anyway, here's the paste:

A family friend died last week.

He'd been my dad's roommate in law school. His son is my age, and we've been friends for years.

This has made me realize, once again, how ill-prepared I am to deal with death.

It is, admittedly, a difficult subject. That, however, doesn't make me feel any better.

Normally, when a friend has some sort of trauma, you go to his side. You attempt to do the right thing to make him feel better. What, possibly, can you say when that friend loses his father?

There is not a "right thing" to say. The best I can do is to have a pained expression. Words fail me.

I think back to the death of my brother. It was three weeks before my eleventh birthday; he would have been twenty the next month. Twelve and a half years have gone by, and I'm still not "over" his death.

I lost the person closest to me in the world. All I could do was sit on the floor in front of the TV, eating peanut butter cookies and Rice Krispie treats. A bunch of people I didn't know came by the house and tried to offer their support. They were friends of my parents, but that didn't help me.

Relatives came in from both coasts. Mom thought it would be a good time to get some new family pictures since so many of us were there. The photos reveal severely dressed people, eyes raw, faces trying vainly to smile to hide the pain.

I sat in near silence, wondering what I was supposed to be doing. After only one day of that, I decided to return to school.

My parents thought I shouldn't go, and they fully expected me to call them from school, wishing to return home. Nevertheless, they let me go. I went through the whole day in a haze, but I made it.

All these years later, I'm still not any better equipped to talk about death. I can write a column every week, but I can't come up with one thing to say to a close friend whose father just died.

"Here, have some peanut butter cookies. They worked for me."

I feel terrible. I want desperately to say something, to express that I've felt that pain, to show that I want to help him, but there aren't any words there.

I think back, and I remember the people. They all wanted to say something. Most of them found some sort of words, but those words seemed hollow. The peanut butter cookies didn't help either, but they gave me an excuse not to talk. My mouth was full.

Maybe someday I'll be able to deal with death on a personal level. Until then, I still don't have any words which express what I feel, and I don't much like the idea of stuffing my mouth with food so I can avoid talking altogether.

All I know is, those of us who are lucky enough to remain here should provide a fitting tribute to our deceased loved ones, and then try our best to cope.

Life goes on.

In loving memory of Jon Mark Poe, 1961-1981

link (2000-04-21)