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29 october 2000
daylight has been saved Long time no write, prompting me to revisit the last entry to figure out where my life left me off, or vise versa. And so much has happened since then, then being thursday, I think. Sunday now, three days by, I'm sitting in the office staring at the rain, so grey yet so welcome. Rain doesn't go with desert palms. It's been pouring all day, yet it's beautiful in a way, I'm rambling away, and I'll stop now, okay? My mind has been escaping me lately, and yet I've never welcomed insanity like this. My dreams are getting stranger and stranger. Just last night my ex appeared out of nowhere, saying she just wanted "to fuck." No hello, no how-are-you, and she never talked like that anyway. How strange. Even stranger was my response, ever the gentleman even in my dreams: "I don't think that would be a good idea." "Why?" "You have a boyfriend." "So?" (and at this point my mind-within-a-mind confirms that yes, breaking up with this disloyal person was a good idea) "I won't fuck anyone I'm not in a relationship with." Why am I justifying myself to an evil foul-mouthed dream-version of my ex? "So, let's hook up" she replies. "You have a boyfriend." I'm a broken record at this point. Yes, the whole exchange was a confusing as it reads. In the end, we didn't fuck (do I regret this? i dunno, i might have enjoyed it), and I walked off into the sunrise of the dream's next chapter, which somehow involved a fantasy of making passionate love to someone I am desparately in love with, but cannot identify, and just as I was about to tenderly whisper her name into her ear, the scene dissolves around me and finds me circling a building in Northern New Jersey looking for a FedEx package that someone had sent me from California. Inside was a bicycle with training wheels, and I was to ride it back to Los Angeles using only the interstate highway system. I wish I could remember my life as well as I do my dreams. Perhaps my dreams are making a bigger impression on me than my life. Or maybe my life is making a huge impression on my dreams, as opposed to on me. Friday night I went out with Rachel and three of her friends for a scrumptious sushi dinner at Asakuma. I hadn't been in a long time, and the food was still excellent, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Rachel remarked that I was a bit out-of-character at the restaurant, and I wondered if it was in anyway linked to this nagging feeling that I may be losing my mind. What is out-of-character for me anyway? I honestly don't know. After dinner we retreated to Rachel's, and we talked, and listened to music. Rachel turned on an electronic keyboard/piano and I started playing my new song "Shake," which I found strange since I won't even let the band hear the song yet. I drank some port and sherry, we talked some more, and then Rachel was tired so I drove back to Malibu to sleep. All in all, a fun evening. Saturday ... work. I spent the afternoon in the office converting two magazines from Quark to HTML. It was mindless, but I finished and was going to start populating our editorial web database a full day ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, my password was no longer working, and the only person who could fix it was in Nebraska. So I fired off a rather nasty email and headed across to the Dume Room, where I got invited to their Halloween party, which was to take place later that evening. I remarked to no-one in particular that I wish I had a camera. Five minutes later I drove over the hill to Fry's Electronics and picked up a new digital camera to replace the one that got destroyed in NJ a few months back. And it's a Ricoh RDC-7 Image Capturing Device (their words, not mine). It takes pictures, it takes movies, it records sound, and I think I'm gonna start adding some multimedia to the journal pretty soon. Leaving Fry's, I realized how close I was to one of my favorite sushi bars in the city, which is actually a little Japanese market with a fish counter in the back. I don't think you could officially call the place a restaurant. It's run by a guy named Go, and in the four times I've been to this place, I've never been disappointed. Go always seems to shoot me some of the most exotic seafood in the world, and it's in such marked contrast to the atmosphere of the place, where it often feels like you're sitting at a counter in the middle of a 7-11 store, as people are walking in and stocking up on random groceries and beer while you're enjoying your sushi. The bar was crowded with Japanese businessmen last night, and the first nice surprise from Go was a plate of ankimo sashimi with glittery fish skin flakes on top. Delicious. Next up was a slightly crunchy yet otherworldly tasting piece of whitefish that tasted like a cross between kampachi and mirugai. It was one of the most incredible pieces of fish I had ever tasted. Just at the moment I noticed a little tingle on my tongue, the businessman sitting next to me said "So, is your tongue tingling yet?" "What do you mean?" "You just ate Japanese blowfish..." No way. So I turned to Go. "Hey, that one was really good, what was it?" "Fugu." "You slipped me fugu without telling me?" I nearly screamed. "Why, you mad now? No good? You still alive." He's laughing now, along with everyone at the bar. "Nah, it was great, you should have told me first so I could appreciate it more." "If I told you, you wouldn't want it." Point taken. "Can I have another piece?" "Hai." And he picked up the piece of blowfish to cut me another slice as I picked up my camera. The tingling tongue is from tetrodotoxin, the poison in the blowfish. Chefs are taught to leave a tiny bit of the poison in for the tongue-paralysis effect. Too much poison, your whole body gets paralyzed -- when your respiratory muscles go, that's when you die. Check out the import guidelines on the FDA website. I had always told myself I'd wait until I was in my eighties before I tried fugu. That way I wouldn't miss too much life if the tetrodotoxin kicked in. Instead I tried it last night, twice, and lived to tell about it. On the check, it was ten dollars per piece. Somehow, I expected it to be more expensive than that. The Japanese guy sitting next to me told me there were only two places in all of LA that you could get fugu. I was sitting at one of them, and the other was Ginza Sushi-Ko in Beverly Hills, which is notorious for being the most expensive restaurant in California -- they take your credit info when you make a reservation. I was also informed that Go-san must "really really like" me if he gave me fugu. So the whole sushi experience put me on a bit of a high, and that was how I arrived that the Dume Room's Halloween party. The first thing I saw was Jack, one of the regulars, dressed as a nun. My new camera was a hit, and Ralph, the geriatric owner of the bar, put on a black wig and asked me to take a picture of him with the Jagermeister girls, which I did. I sat and drank pumpkin shnapps, hung out and talked, took pictures until the battery died (the pictures started looking really cool as the battery went), and finally headed home. I wonder if the blowfish had anything to do with my weird dream last night... And here I am now, back in the office, still without a database password, and pretty useless as far as getting work done. It's pouring rain and the Dume Room is right across the street. Maybe I'll pop over for a quick one. ~~~ Later now, around 9:30. The Dume Room wasn't for me today; I was tired, didn't feel like drinking, and feeling incredibly guilty about getting next-to-no work done this weekend. I retreated home to loneliness, and wrapped myself in a blanket of morose, inviting feelings of self-pity and general worthlessness. I hate feeling like this, yet when it comes I invite it inside me with a welcoming passion. I don't deserve to be happy right now ... I want a sense of accomplishment, and yet I find myself just surfing through life on the shoulders of my existence. Maybe this work thing is getting to me more than I thought -- I keep telling myself I should have found a way to finish today, but there was nothing I could do, and that made me feel no better, sitting there feeling helpless. Could be work, could be loneliness, could be the time change, an early sunset coupled with endless clouds and pouring rain. It's simply been a depressing day. Gonna go read and invite sleep, if not more messed up dreams. Here's hoping little orphan annie was right about tomorrow... 29 october 1999: : on hiatus til december 29 october 1998: : on hiatus til november 29 october 1997: sweet mental pain : It was the seat that was bad, according to Pete the Plumber, as he calls himself. The seat is what the washer sits on, and it had a giant piece chipped out of it, most probably caused by the "incompetent fool" who was in here last. [ swim back | email me | swim ahead ] |
