that’s my beautiful grandmother a long time ago

my friends are dante, laura, tracey, hali, kendall, hal

Have you ever heard someone say, “He’s like . . . foreign or some shit”? Because I have.

Also every time I go home, both sides of my family make a point to mention what someone’s ethnicity / skin color is when they’re telling a story when 99% of the time that has absolutely nothing to do with the story at all.

Also one time a guy I knew was defending his friend, saying his friend wasn’t homophobic, but was just “creeped out by gay people and didn’t want to be around them.”

When I left New Orleans for Greeneville, Tennessee, I rented a car instead of flying. It was cheaper and I thought the drive would be kinda nice. I requested a fuel-efficient economy sedan. I went to the airport to pick it up. The woman behind the counter handed me a set of keys and a pamphlet and told me my car was waiting at “B13.” (This is a recurring alphanumeric combination for me, by the way. It is my Southwest boarding number tomorrow . . . and has been like a million times.)

Anyway: I thanked her and walked to the parking garage. I found B13. I looked at the car parked there. I looked at the tag on my keys, thinking there had been some mistake. No, the space and the tag matched up. Imagine the horror I felt when I realized this was the hideous perversion of design and engineering that I was to be imprisoned in for 10 hours:

Not only is this not a fuel-efficient economy sedan, it’s also the absolute dumbest looking car since the Nissan Cube and the PT Cruiser. What the hell kind of person buys this thing? It’s not a car, it’s not an SUV . . . it’s a big stupid clownish crapwagon that I reckoned appealed to no one except maybe the blind. It is called a Honda Juke for God’s sake. JUKE. I quickly realized that the reason they had given it to me was because I was taking it on a way-way trip, and they wanted to get this thing the hell away from them.

Notice how you can’t even really tell that the back doors open. Also notice how the headlights rise above the actual hood. Yeah, so when you’re driving at night, you can see the light as it shines into your eyes instead of on the road in front of you! There is no comfortable way to drive it. Every chair / steering wheel position is wrong. There is no amount of leaning back or forward that makes sense. It feels like driving a fucking cereal box. Every time I had to stop for gas I was so embarrassed. Even my cat, who sat in the front seat and who has no idea what a car is, much less what an ugly one looks like, seemed embarrassed that we were kicking around in that shitmobile.

Here is what I wanted to say about this car: I figured this was a car that the public would loathe. Like, there’s no way anyone would go to a dealership and pick this damn thing out. Honestly I wouldn’t even take one for free. But the terrifying reality is that EVERY SINGLE TIME I HAVE DRIVEN AROUND I have seen one of these at a stop light or in a parking lot. Sometimes I have seen multiple Honda Jukes together, like a small tribe of lepers!!!

I’m telling you, look around, man. They’re out there. This thing is selling big time, and we as a species inch ever closer to that final midnight called TOTAL ANNIHILATION.

You know what, children and teenagers make a lot more sense to me than adults, because at least they’re not full of shit.

I keep thinking of time as a tube that I am crawling through, and at some point I will be outside of it. I just wish that I could crawl in reverse, or at least bore a hole in the side and go back to some nicer part of the tube.

i can’t believe that in college i wanted to be an “intellectual.” how embarrassing. thank god i snapped out of that one.

this is me, by the way

another translation i like: “in the midway of this our mortal life, / i found me in a gloomy wood, astray.”

i have read ‘the divine comedy,’ ok?! all of it! i read almost all of ‘inferno’ on a plane to california!! ok?? dante is one of my heroes—both the poet and my cat! my cat is named after the poet!!! (i named dante’s brother virgil, but alas, i lost him in the divorce.)

hey i know my birthday was nearly two weeks ago, but if you’re still shopping around for presents for me, i wouldn’t mind having THIS or THIS ok thanks bye

My buddy Dan Tabár (acute accent!) is a photographer, and the nicest dude you could ever hope to meet!!

Anyway I was looking at his portfolio tonight, and I noticed something real funny:

That’s me! God, what. I promise I was not posing in that picture. I was at Actual Cafe a few blocks from my house in Oakland hanging out with some jerks and Dan took that with a camera that I’m sure cost more than everything I’ve ever owned in my entire life combined.

Later we drove to Berkeley and got pizza at Cheese Board, which, hell, if you’re ever in the Bay Area, go over there and get some of that stuff because it’s real good. Just ignore the live Carlos Santana-sounding dad jazz band and get the pizza to go.

Anyway Dan took some pixxx of me and my friends Tim and Kerwin that make it look like we’re planning a heist:

So I made this, which I’ve posted here before, and which is modeled after the DVD cover of David Mamet’s “HEIST,” which is one of my favorite movies:

Hell I don’t know, hire this guy! He’s a nice cool dude.