Atticus And Marlo Toward The Light

Free Time

Extra time being the greatest conceivable gift, I've been getting pretty fuckin' pumped about Leap Day. Everything that happened tomorrow was gonna be like gravy, like a free side of icing with my already iced cake. But then I realized that tomorrow's Wednesday and I just gotta go to work. Why couldn't Leap Day fall on a weekend, goddammit?!

I guess it's a good thing anyway, though. Shit's been pilin' up pretty bad at the office and I definitely could use the extra day to catch up...boss man's been on my ass lately like sticky on putty.

Fun fact: in Muslim cultures, Wednesday is their Friday (i.e., the workweek's final day, which is, as we all know, the weekend in spirit). Lucky bastards....

A Hardscrabble Life

Whenever I start a new game with someone on the Internet Scrabble Club, I say "hi and gl," which means "hi and good luck." It's pretty much standard practice to do so (although a lot of folks simply write "gl"...the salutation is implied, I guess); everyone types "hi gl" or "gl" or whatever into their respective message fields while they're waiting to be connected to an opponent and then, once connected, they just hit the send button real quick as they begin playing. But I never mean it. I'm always actually wishing them the worst of luck. I'm hoping that I'll get both of the blanks. I want the x, the z, the j, and a steady supply of esses. I want everybody else to keep pulling cees and vees. Fuck 'em. I don't care about those people. And I don't believe that they really care about me. It's a dance of lies.

Open Letter To The Chinese

Dear Chinese people,

There are no dragons. There were pterodactyls, but that was millions of years ago. Dragons are total bullshit. So you're celebrating the year of the total bullshit. I don't even know what a lunar year is. At least the other animals in your zodiac are all real.

I'm not trying to denigrate your culture. I know your food is awesome, and I'm sure you have a lot of other great stuff going on too. But the whole "dragons" thing is bullshit. You're not fooling anybody.

Yours truly,
Il Vermicello

Mary Mota

My new pot dealer, Mary, is now selling hash! (She is, of course, continuing to offer her kind, green bud as well. She's so cool. She rides around on her bicycle delivering shit. I think she might be nutz (not 'cause of the bicycle, per se, but just generally (well, actually, the bike often does factor heavily into her weirdness (either the gears aren't working just right or she fell off of it and hit her head ("...good thing I was wearin' my helmet...brains woulda been like chili on the street...ha, ha, Bloody Mary!") or she's asking me if I "think the law sez [she's] gotta carry [her] bike light around even during the day so that [she's], like, ready for the night when it comes?" or some such shit))).

Another weird thing is that it seems like there's always some sort of a pig (OPD, BPD, BART, whatever) who just happens to be stationed right there or who's driving by or poking around or whatever whenever and wherever Mary and I meet up; we often have to wait a couple minutes or else we have to walk around a corner or something in order to do our bizness. (At first she kept suggesting that maybe all the pigs had something to do with me (and I kept arguing that there's just too many pigs around, that's all, and that neither of us was a narc (while simultaneously intimating that, for all that I knew, it was she who was the narc)), but by now we've pretty much learned to accept it as coincidence. It is weird, though.)) Hash!

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

I'd like to have a turtle with a realistic likeness of my face emblazoned on its back. That way, since the turtle would presumably outlive me, it'd be like I'd always have a little me crawling around the apartment...hanging out on the floor, sleeping, molting or whatever. I can't imagine why I wouldn't make pleasant company. And I mostly eat lettuce (very slowly), so it'd take only pennies a day to feed me. I wonder if I could learn to crap inside of a cat box or something.

Happy New Bug!