My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told her all I wanted was a winter coat. I have only a denim jacket and a leather jacket, and man, neither are thick enough to repel this god darn Oregon semi-winter. Really it is not that cold outside—maybe in the low 40s at night and sometimes in the 30s. But it rains constantly here and I reckon that makes it feel colder than it actually is.

On Monday they are saying it will snow . . . or at the very least it will be one of those quote unquote wintry mixes. Lord!

Well: My mother, bless her heart, really did end up getting me that coat. She was confused that all I wanted was a coat, but I told her that was all I needed (besides huge stacks of cash~~).

I asked for a Schott field coat. It is made of wool and is very thick. Maybe you didn’t know this (maybe you did), but wool keeps you warm even when it’s wet. So hey! Uh! That sounds pretty good to me, what with this being the city of eternal rain.

Anyway this is what it looks like:

Look at that thing! If I can help it I’m going to keep it for the rest of my life (which I will expand upon further below (lol)). It even has those military epaulets on the shoulders! I thought about it for a few minutes, and I decided, hell, it sure would be nice if those epaulets had stars on them— had stars just like my Schott Perfecto leather jacket!

This is what the stars look like:

Whoa! Those are so cool. I love stars. I love them a whole bunch.

So I wrote to Schott and asked them for two stars—one for each epaulet! They quickly wrote me back and said, hey man, no problem. The stars are on their way. They didn’t cost me a dime. Gosh.

The coat itself will be here on Tuesday, which is the day after it would so far be the most useful to me. Oh well!! I guess I’m gonna have to stay inside on Monday and watch the snow / wintry mix go wild outside my window. Yeah!

In my basement I have a half cord of wood, which is 4 ft. × 4 ft. × 8 ft, which is something like a hundred or so pieces of wood, maybe more. A weird old man who I like a lot delivered the half cord to our house a few days ago. He said some weird old man stuff and then he left. I loved the hell out of it. I wish he would have stuck around.

We don’t want to turn on the heat here, so we’ve been having fires just about nonstop since The Deep Dark Cold set in. I mean hell, the sun sets at 4:30 p.m., for God’s sake. And because our little grey Super Mario Bros. 3 mini-fortress sits between an identical little yellow mini-fortress and a small alley, we only receive sunlight in the front of the house for a few hours a day and that’s it. It stays pretty cold in here!!

The fireplace is in the front of the house. I have more or less been living in this room for weeks. I have a desk out here and I add logs to the fire every hour or so. I am, yes, The Keeper of the Flame. And if I were to abandon my godforsaken occupation, we would surely die.

Anyway this is where I will be on Monday when all that madness is coating the city of Portland in snow and slush and every other damn frozen thing.

I want that coat. I think about that coat. I want to put it on and be warm inside of it. I want to wear it inside. I want to wear it while I toss another damp moss-covered long into the smoldering inferno five feet away from where I write all this trash.

I want to glance to the left and to the right and see those little silver stars!!

And one day, maybe a long time from now, or maybe not too long at all, I want to wear it over my denim jacket when they hurl my cold and lifeless body into Mount Terror, which is a volcano on Ross Island in Antarctica (as stipulated in my will (which is file on my desktop (only one person has access to this will, and her name is Laura Rokas))).

Laura: As you will no doubt discover for yourself someday (pending a planet-wide cataclysm), I have willed my leather jacket to you. Go ahead and keep it forever. And please wear it beneath your parka while standing atop the peak of that huge snowy volcano—while watching my earthly remains sail downward into the great darkness of eternity like a sad little scarecrow!

OK good-night!