Touch me. Touch me like you didn't touch me last night.

I have attached two pictures.

The first -- “New Hand,” – explains why I’ve been posting sporadically lately. It’s all over now, though, and it was – wait for the loving cliché – easily the happiest day of my life so far. Sara G. kicks my ass. The DJ played about 92% music I provided, including “Sugar in the Marmalade,” a shitty Canto-Pop song that makes all of my friends laugh, and Derek Kurth’s acoustic, ballad version of “Baby Got Back.”

The second – “New Job,” – shows some of the things I’ve been able to get recently from my new job. For SIXTEEN WEEKS AT A TIME!!! I get paid to touch books. Somebody likes me.

And now, I work 8:30am to 5pm. I get to have a life again. I get to plan more than a week in advance, for the first time in…maybe four years.


I get to write every day.
I get to read every day.
I have goddamned surround sound for my kung-fu movies.

The Coolest Girl in the World and I walked into the wedding reception to “The Imperial March.”
I got to profess my love to her in my wedding vows, which mentioned Giant Robots.

I am the happiest/luckiest crazy-ass motherfucker on the planet.

benjamin sTone

Who will be back to writing soon, and who has noticed that his Tourette’s is a lot more subdued after quitting his old job…

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My hypershort fictions and commentaries go to http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/compositemolecules
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Also visible, with a few exceptions, at www.livejournal.com/users/benchilada

    At work last night, I heard a Mary Kay woman say to potential recruits: “You’ve got to learn if you want to earn,” and “Your attitude determines your altitude.”
    I had to smile as I choked back my bile.
    I’m becoming increasingly incensed at the number of Britt Worldwide (Amway/Quixtar shootoff), Mary Kay, Creative Memories, etc. groups that we host. I feel like a bad person when I’m managing on nights they’re in-house. I feel like I should be slipping the marks little pieces of paper that say “Run while you can, they only want your money and your juicy brainmeats!”
    Alas, I fear that this would end in my termination. Well, fear isn’t the right word. I know it would. But I weigh the benefits of this every time.         Whore to the almighty dollar, that’s me.

    On a side note, let’s pretend that an airplane has just experienced a *wee* bit of decompression [it later lands safely, everybody lives, hooray] and the oxygen masks have dropped. They always tell you that if you’re a parent you should put your mask on first, then put the masks on your kids, the logic being that if you pass out first, they’re screwed.
    Now let’s pretend that you’re there with your two kids.
    You’ve put your mask on.
    Who gets the next mask?
    You are so fucking doomed. ;)

    Stories and poems are being worked on right now, one tentatively called “Courthouse Ho’s, or Time Travel and Tube Tops.” I want them to be in good shape before I fire them off, however, so nothing terribly in-depth today.
    I’m still going to work on a writing exercise. I fear that I’ve been working on too many things recently and, as usual, not finishing a damn thing. So perhaps a few short things for you. I’ve got 4000 songs on random, Billy Joel is singing “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” I’ve peed, and I have a mandarin orange Jarrito,

    S’go.

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    Aaron was neither the smartest nor the fastest person to ever flip a burger at Hardee’s. But he had something nobody else did. A creepy prehensile tail with another hand on the end of it. And 17 eyes in various places on his head. So they paid him 50 cents more an hour and let him do the work of two crewmembers. The franchise saved a few bucks and somewhere deep in his heart he knew that it would be pretty goddamned disgusting to be served a burger that had been wrapped some guy’s tail hand.

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That wasn’t terrible, I guess. Now Oscar is singing that he loves trash. And go…
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    It’s raining in my office. No, it’s not leaking, there is a tiny atmospheric disturbance above me which is raining tiny, room temperature drops on me. I’m scurrying about, trying to cover books, throwing papers out into the hallway, throwing a box over my computer so it won’t get ruined.
    How said that we live in such a day and age. It rains indoors and the first thing we think is to save our stuff.
    I’ve changed my mind. I don’t care about the things being ruined, I’m just tilting my head back, ready to taste the sweet, magical water.
    But it’s already stopped.

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Hmmm…
Barenaked Ladies sang a live version of “The Old Apartment.”
Lemme try one or two more, while Django Reinhardt places some old song from 1928.
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A Poem For My Cat

    Hey, get the fuck off of me, oww, oww, stop it, oww, why are you doing this? I am *so* going to throw you in the shower.
    Fuck fuck fuck.
    No, you cannot have a treat.

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Okay, I was going to delete it, but I’m just typing what comes into my head, and for that I most humbly apologize. One more, while Tex Ritter sings “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling,” the theme from “High Noon”
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    Well, we’re in Illinois, what did he expect?
    I thought putting him in a Gremlin, jamming a brick on the accelerator, and firing a flare into the open hatchback would count as Viking funeral.
    Yes, Officer, it was his Gremlin.

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That’s a lot like my vampire one, no?
Maybe there’s something there, trying to get out.

Okay, time to shower and get ready for work.
Hopefully I’ll have “Courthouse Ho’s” done soon.

Have fun, kids. Be back by midnight.

benjamin sTone
Urbana, Illinois
2:12 pm

CURRENT MUSIC: Bizet’s “The Flower Duet,” sung by Charlotte Church
CURRENT BOOK: Still the Da Vinci Code. It’s not that I’m a slow reader, it’s that I haven’t had time. And it isn’t engrossing me.
LAST MOVIE: “The Devil’s Backbone” by Guillermo del Toro