I am going to Austria in a month to spread my grandmother’s ashes. My passport expires in November, and I guess certain countries won’t let you use a passport that is set to expire within three months of your travel date, and one of those countries is Austria. So today I woke up and got a new one at UC Berkeley because for some reason they offer that service.

But before that I had to get my picture took. A guy at a photo shop in downtown Berkeley did it for me for $11. It took about five minutes. He handed me my pictures in a cute little envelope. I took them out and said, “Yeah. I look like a criminal.” We shook hands and I left.

See here:

Gross!!

At the UC Berkeley passport place, the woman behind the counter said verbatim:

“We was just sayin you look like a movie star vampire. You look like Twilight. You glide in here all smooth.”

I said: “Noooooo!!! Ugh, OK.” But perhaps I do glide . . . it’s more fun to glide than not.

The damn thing will be here in two weeks! Can you believe that? Last time I got a passport, all the way back in 2008, was at some shitty little post office outside of Baltimore. I needed it right quick because I was spending a whole month in Japan. My old picture is somehow even worse, only because my hair is like stupidly long and bad. Well, what the hell. I lived with that one for a decade, so I can live with this one too. And hopefully we’ll all be dead soon anyway so we won’t have to live with anything anymore, for good or ill.

(lol)

I’m home now. I slept all afternoon because I have residual strep symptoms and I hate myself and wish I were dead. So now I’m going to wander around Oakland and probably end up at Wolfhound, where I used to work, and hope to god my friends behind the bar take pity on my pitiful eyes! And maybe give me a free drink or two. Yeah.

Well: All hands bury the dead. Seeya later.