whenever we were interviewing someone at my old job back in san francisco, we would all take turns during the zoom call asking The Tentative Candidate two or three questions. we could ask whatever we wanted. i always endeavored to give them weird ones that had absolutely nothing to do with the job. and usually i went last so they got some dreamy ones to go out on. you don’t want to hit someone with some heavy stuff when you’re the final inquirer! you gotta go easy on them.

anyway: one time we interviewed this girl whom we ended up hiring. her name was julie and she and i worked together as writers for almost two years. i liked her a lot. the questions i wanted to ask her were all about dreams and premonitions and space and ghosts and phenomena beyond human comprehension. you know, fun stuff. sue me! but my boss politely asked me to scale it back a little (lol)

i kept this question:

“What is your favorite color, month, day of the week, geometric shape, and celestial body?”

i think that’s a good one!

my answers WERE and REMAIN:

• purple
• november
• thursday
• tesseract
• jupiter

to me they all feel spiritually like the same thing. you know?

(ask yourself: what are your answers?? perhaps they are more crucial than they seem . . . in fact, go ahead and tell me if you want!!)

a long time ago now, during a job interview for a writing gig in austin, i met with this guy who was essentially mid-30s me and vaguely i suspected that at the time. he wore all black and had the shades closed and used lamps with the overhead light off and showed up to work at 10:30 am on account of him being an insomniac. he did not ask me any questions pertaining to the position for which i was interviewing. instead he made me take two proto-buzzfeed quizzes online about which wings i would have and what country i would be. i got “bat wings” and “egypt” (???). anyway, he hired me based on my results, and because we both stayed up till 3 am and had black circles around our eyes. i love it!!!

wow i just realized that because 2024 was a leap year, my birthday this year skips saturday and goes straight to sunday . . . i got robbed. such is my tale.

i’ll probably be in new york on my birthday so i reckon we will just do something on saturday the 25th, which is virginia woolf’s birthday, don’t you know. (mozart is the 27th. i am birthday sandwiched between THE GREATS. and i share a birthday with paul newman and eddie van halen, which rules (rest in peace, brothers).))

also just fyi you only have sixteen (16) shopping days left to get me presents (plural…..)

Years ago I dated this girl in Oakland. She was the drummer in a band and I got her number at a house show she played in my neighborhood. I liked her a whole lot. It only really ended because she moved down to Los Angeles to kick a habit. At the time this seemed like the worst possible place to go for that sort of thing, though hey: she did it.

Recently I learned that she is now dating this Internet Famous guy who makes videos that get millions of hits . . . all due respect to him, but they’re pretty bad. Though yeah, I found out because a bunch of my friends sent me some of his videos she’s in, saying, “Didn’t you date this girl???” I won’t say who it is but you definitely can’t mistake her for anyone else . . . she’s the prettiest girl who ever talked to me on purpose.

Anyway: Good for her. She’s really cool! It just paralyzed me for a moment is all on account of I’d accidentally seen some of his videos before and it was surreal to see her suddenly appear in them like that. For millions of people no less, for whatever that’s worth.

I last saw her spring of 2019 when I visited her at work at a sort of horror store on Sunset Boulevard. I had a fresh haircut and was in the midst of falling in love with a g-g-girl. (That was a good Ryan Era, and maybe one of the best. I still mourn its end!!) I don’t think I visited LA again until 2021 cuz of the pandemic. By then her store had shut down for good . . . I know because I drove over there to see her and found a vacant storefront, so I guess that’s that. Otherwise I suppose I’d just have to run into her again somewhere in LA or the Bay, which is not at all out of the realm of possibility, though who can say. Only the Watchers and the Seers know for sure, and even then . . .

snow day at the winter palace
[location undisclosed]
10 january 2025

amissa update

(bonus text from shaina (when searching “amissa is” in my phone)):

aw lol . . . i love my friends

(also i love that my phone has created a whole album for baby tower!)

((when my phone generates slideshows showing pictures of dante and me together, i almost want to kill myself. but i lack the constitution for suicide, and also don’t have the heart to turn them off . . . ))

Lord help me, I got them

NEW YEAR BLUES

But it’s fine. All things must pass, and so too shall this. I went out walking through Oakland and Berkeley on New Year’s Day on account of McCune was hosting karaoke night at his very own HESHER’S PIZZA in beautiful (just kidding) Jack London Square. So I went a-walkin to TAKE IT IN one last time before I head back to the East Coast. It was spooky as hell out . . . often I was the only person around. New Year’s is always eerie in that way. I always wonder: Where are these freaks? Though yeah: So long for now, Oakland. Goodbye to all that! I am flying to Tennessee to spend a week with my beloved Pep-Pep, and then I will drive east to Virginia, and lie low for a little while . . . and I think I will take a bus up to New York for my birthday again. Why not?

At my dad’s fortified compoundI will finally have time to write about all the clownish adventures I have had since last time I was in New York, which was in November. After that I went upstate into Vermont and into Canada, to Montreal and Toronto, and west towards Detroit and Chicago, where I caught a plane back to Los Angeles. I have been on the West Coast all that time. Two weeks ago I was in Portland cat-sitting my nephew Bilbo for Monty while she and her family went to Boise to scope out houses, and then I took a bus to Seattle to see Jackson, and finally I drove north to Vancouver where I had a strange night stoned out of my mind traversing the entire city all covered in wintry rain, and later ending up in a fleabag hotel downtown to sleep the way I imagine the dead do. Next day heading back down to Seattle towards Tacoma I was apprehended at the US-Canadian border by US Border Patrol, who suspected I was a sort of international drug trafficker on account of my short trip and minimal luggage and them finding my Austrian passport. And on the same day I drove another 14 hours through nearly a thousand miles of rain to get back to Vallejo in time for Christmas. It’s a long story. I have already begun typing it up, so please anticipate it! But only if you want to . . .

OK: Tomorrow is my last day in California for a while, and I have to be up early to catch a ride with McCune from McCune Compound in Vallejo back down to Oakland to hang out at Hesher’s finishing up my Christmas cards . . . and in the afternoon I will take BART across the Bay to San Francisco to crash with Laura and her sister Eli for the night on account of I have a godforsaken flight to catch out of SFO at six in the god damn morning on Saturday. It was the shortest flight I could find. That is a miserable flight no matter how you cut it, so it behooves one to shave off as much time as possible, even if it mere minutes, as I have done.

For now, sweet dreams from my dear nephew Tower and Beezer the cat and me:

☆彡

i feel a foreboding. i don’t like it!

“and stay down!” (1998)
charles keegan