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

That makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

        In any event, here are a few usless bits of nothing. I’ll send you a few pages of my recently-revived screen treatment of Ray Bradbury’s incredibly underrated DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS, maybe tomorrow morning. I can’t sleep, so I made Sara some hashbrowns in the wok. I used kosher salt, garlic powder, and a little bit of chili powder and cheese. It’s for her lunch today. Monday, that is. I also cut up part of a cucumber for her. She can grab a banana for breakfast on her way out the door, as I don’ work until 3pm.

        Anyway, I wrote these because I was bored and completely unmotivated to work on current pieces, so here you go.

        I’ve been trying to nudge myself back to works I’ve already started, but I just cant get the old flywheel spinning tonight. Screw it, I’m gonna go watch a Hong Kong cop drama until I fall asleep.

        Fair warning, a goodly bit of swearing in the second one:

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        It’s not always easy to smile through the pain. The pain of having a pig’s head. I find it difficult to express how much I hate you all.
        *snork*

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        The old man sits in the corner and chain smokes, clouding my view of the monitor. I’d ask him to stop, but it won’t help, what with him having been dead for twelve years. I swear to God, he’s got to be the most useless ghost in history. He doesn’t rattle chains, or fling plates around the kitchen, or make the walls bleed, or even give us a good, raspy moan from time to time. He just sits in the fucking corner and smokes.

        The first couple of years were gravy for us. We could bring in any television program, phone up any university, and just milk the bastard. Barbara Walters tried to interview him, but he doesn’t speak. The military briefly entertained the idea of “ghost soldiers,” for a while, but they couldn’t get him to stand up, let alone try to shoot somebody. We were pulling in checks left and right. Goddamn high life, I tell you.

        After about three years, though, the offers kinda dried up. Sure, I’ve got the first ever provable example of life after death sitting in my house, but does that help me pay the god-damned mortgage? Do you think people give a shit about a concrete manifestation from the spirit world that doesn’t do anything but stain my walls yellow? Does he ever do the washing up after dinner? Does he give me a shoulder to cry on when my wife and I fight? Does he even look me in the eye?

        Fuck, no.

        So here I sit, wasting my life in front of the computer, entering countless online sweepstakes, playing with online casino sites based out of goddamned Tonga, and masturbating half-heartedly to the same tired porn every day. He doesn’t move, just smokes his fucking Dorals and makes me wonder where my life went so wrong.

        And makes me wonder why I’m so infuriatingly jealous of him.

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        People keep asking me who died and made me God. I would think the answer is obvious.

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benjamin sTone
Urbana, Illinois
2:58 am

CURRENT BOOKS: Still WEAPONSHOPS OF ISHER by A.E. van Vogt and LIZARD by Banana Yoshimoto.
LAST MOVIES: THE TUXEDO with Jackie Chan (Hey, it was free at the Insect Fear Film Festival) and HEROIC DUO, a Hong
Kong film about a cop trying to catch a pair of evil criminal hypnotists. Heh.
MUSIC: the club mix of “9 pm” by ATB, then “Yawning or Snarling” by the Tragically Hip then “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Bing Crosby.