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

    
Why a weirdass weekend has to cap itself off with extra-weird shit only hours before it ends is beyond me.

     Why did it involve me having to speed away from a fast-food drive-thru--throwing my card through the window and shouting that I'll be back--so I can confirm the license number of and follow, on behalf of the 911 dispatcher I'm talking to, the car that was in front of me in line? The one where I just saw the female passenger shout "What did I do wrong?!" and the male answer "Everything!" before grabbing her left arm and twisting it behind the front seat. That was when she screamed and the little girl in the back seat screamed.

     They realized I was following them and were driving around strangely trying to lose me. Indeed, a cop would later tell me that we had been driving in the opposite direction of their house.

     Gotta watch the police blotter for a few days.

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Anyway, I wrote you a story:
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    Neil lowered his gun and pointed it at little Johnny’s forehead. Behind him on the ground, chest blown open, was the body of Johnny’s dad.

    “You go on ahead now, boy. You nurse that hate into something monstrous. Then you come find me.”

    It would be eleven years before they met again for the last time.

    When John saw who had ordered the coffee at table seven, he ran back into the kitchen and was sick in the mop sink. After letting out a few short sobs, he wiped his mouth and stood up. He picked up his tray again and spat in the mug.

    By the time he got back out to the dining room, Neil had already paid and left.

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Anyway, I wrote you another story:
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    These things fly like a dream, Brian thought to himself.

    My hands fit perfectly around each one, and all I gotta do is keep ‘em over my head, and fwoosh, off I go.

    The guy I got ‘em from said they had some sort of experimental new battery in ‘em, could fly for a hundred years without refueling. There’s not even any exhaust or anything, the guy said that they repulsed matter on a molecular level to produce the necessary thrust for liftoff and actual flight. Or some shit like that.

    He said they worked because of some sorta nanotech he’d wired to the muscles in his calves and feet. After I killed him and broke his legs off at the knees, it only took a little experimental squeezing around the ankles to make just the right connection.

    It took a bit, but I got ‘em figured out, and boy, do these things fly like a dream.
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Anyway, I made a Valentine's Day Sheet Of Paper for Sara:
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Also, I write myself a lot of weird notes, sometimes on the back of Red Lobster receipts
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Happy Mondays,

b

    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.

---

    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.

---
That wasn’t terrible, I guess. Now Oscar is singing that he loves trash. And go…
---

    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.

---
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.
---

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.

---
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”
---

    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.

---
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