Everyone’s talking about World War III . . . but I’m over here planning Starsailor World Tour III! Because what else am I supposed to do with my life, now that I live in the shadow of it? I made this cute little image last year before I left Berlin to see the world once again. I suppose I will make a new cute little image in the next few days . . . I just gotta figure out where I’m going. Certainly I’ll be up and down the East Coast, and I’ll spend time in New York and California, and on and on. I’m definitely going back to Vermont. And as long as the Canadians let me in, I’ll go back to Canada on a journey through the past. I love Canada. I go there like three times a year. Actually, last time I was in Canada, which was Christmas Eve, returning to Seattle from Vancouver, I was detained and held by US Border Patrol (and not the Canadians) for reasons that were never really explained to me. The Canadian border guards I spoke to in Quebec and BC were just fine with me. They were friendly and said, “Come on in!” and waved me through just like they always do. Yet my own country distrusted me. On the Washington-British Columbia border I was questioned by these dudes who had bad haircuts and guns and bulletproof vests and who treated me like a criminal simply for traveling and visiting my friends. And this was before that guy took office! Next time they’ll probably throw me into a fucking dungeon in Château d’If.

Anyway . . . I have been writing a long entry about how Nobody Knows How To Hang Out Anymore . . . it keeps getting long and longer, and perhaps I ought to just finish it and post it here. And so saying, I don’t want to repeat myself when my grander rumination on this emptiness I feel is imminent, though here’s this: I am pretty lonely anymore. Though you know me as a worldwide celebrity adored by millions, for some reason I cannot make friends in this city. Trying to hang out with people in Berlin feels like catching a ghost with a fishing net—which is to say, you can’t do it. The people here are intangible. You meet them and then they’re gone like the morning mist, like it never happened. You wonder if you dreamed them up out of desperation and then were betrayed by that dream. And so I am alone here in my high tower in Schöneberg, muttering to myself beneath the glow of my galaxy light. Outside the westerly gale rattles my flower boxes. Often days pass without my uttering a single word to another human being. I’m serious as a heart attack. Even the friendly cellar spiders who usually guard the corners of my apartment have vanished. No one invites me to do anything nor do they reply when I ask them to do anything. It’s becoming increasingly difficult not to take this sort of thing personally. Being this isolated makes you feel like you’re dead. Meanwhile, whenever I’m traveling around the world with just a backpack and a duffel bag, as I am wont to do, people treat me as though Santa Claus has come to town. That’s a great feeling! I sure could go for that feeling right about now.

My intention was to try to establish a life for myself here, but what am I supposed to do? Just rot up here? That’s what I’m doing, by the way. Heaven help me, I got needs.

I’m waiting to hear back from this company in the Bay Area who wants to hire me to do freelance writing for them. Apparently they’re finalizing my contract. And once I sign on the line which is dotted, my income will double, and then I’m gonna take the money and run. I’m going to walk the earth again for the third time in as many years on account of my life has been an empty hell for reasons that you maybe already know, and if not, I am not going to write about them here nor anywhere ever again if I can help it because I’ll feel compelled to jump off my balcony. I’m sitting at my desk across from my balcony and the temptation to jump is already too great as it is. It would not take much more. And I have to finish my book first!

I feel like I’m nagging. And here I am once again talking about my own premature death. Forgive me. I have no hate in my heart. I’m not angry at anyone. When I really get down to it, I just wish I could watch a movie or go on a walk with a girl. Seriously, that alone would light the lanterns in my eyes again if such a thing happened tomorrow night. But sure as you’re born, it won’t happen this week nor the next. I’d bet a wad of cash on it. Is that asking so much though? To spend time with a friendly stranger? I don’t know, it seems like it . . .

Well! Time to visit The Other World for a little while!!

A gone shipmate, like any other man, is gone for ever; and I never met one of them again. But at times the spring-flood of memory sets with force up the dark River of the Nine Bends. Then on the waters of the forlorn stream drifts a ship—a shadowy ship manned by a crew of Shades. They pass and make a sign, in a shadowy hail. Haven’t we, together and upon the immortal sea, wrung out a meaning from our sinful lives? Good-bye, brothers! You were a good crowd. As good a crowd as ever fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or tossing aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a westerly gale.

joseph conrad (from a book whose title i ought not write out here)

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money’s worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I’ve had.

Perhaps that wasn’t true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

the sun also rises

My best friend Laura Rokas, the world-famous Canadian multimedia artist, has a show up in San Francisco. Tonight was opening night! I’m so sad I could not be there. All her paintings are food-themed and based on those old recipe cards people had in the 60s and 70s. She even baked a (vegan) cake in the same style for the opening:

Aw :,)

Anyway: if you’re in the Bay Area and want to go see it, the show runs till August 2nd at Rebecca Camacho Presents, which is located at . . .

526 Washington Street
San Francisco, California 94111

. . . and for God’s sake, buy something!!!

(. . . asked Odessa~)

There is a page on this website, don’t you know, called WEIRD JUNK, which can be found at all times up there on the topbar (if you’re on your phone), or to the right of here on the sidebar (if you’re on a desktop). It’s a sort of junk repository where I toss everything that has no other place to live on this here website. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to rework and expand upon it for literally a year, but I never seem to get around to it. Well! I went ahead and redesigned it and added a few things. I’m still working on it. I need to add sub-sites beyond my skincare routine, including ones for the Kermit the Frog funeral and resurrection (which have been done for years), a recipe for the smoothie I make every day (which people are always asking about), a form where you can request pro bono services from me (like if you need a wedding date or a pet-sitter or private investigative work (I’m serious)), and two more about the cars I’ve owned and the houses where I’ve lived, and on and on.

I have a lot of ideas . . . I just need to finish them, and make cute little icons for them as well. Another thing I want to do is have PDF and ePUB downloads for my books. This is mostly done . . . I’ll add those soon. And I need to make a place for all the essays I’ve written here over the years, which are just sort of lost in the enormous archives right now. As of today, my website has 6,100+ posts written over the span of 12 years (whoa), and lord knows you’d really have to go digging to find a lot of that longer stuff. Although I don’t recommend doing this anyway. Why would you?

BUT FOR NOW this is what I’ve got. OK!!!

P.S. Are you proud of me? This is the 26th day in a row that I’ve made a post here. I’m on a hot streak. I just gotta keep it going . . .

P.P.S. I’m sure eventually I’ll break my streak. It will be painful. But even still, just so you know, I’m going to keep updating this website till the day I die. Thanks for reading!