We dropped the kid off at her friend’s house, apartment actually, Alpha and I walked her over on a bright cold weekend day. They let her in, we said goodbye there in the hallway, the mom in the doorway and the kid’s friend and Alpha didn’t see him because their Golden Retriever was out saying hi, licking me and jumping on me and she’s not a dog person and so all she saw was dog but I, being a dog person, was all Yeah, boy, howyalikedat Yeah, attaboy and relaxed and I saw him, peeking out from behind his mom, the kid’s friend’s little brother, pure psycho evil and only five years old. Eyes as dark as the deepest pockets of Johnny Cash’s blackest coat. The little kid stuck a 60 watt lightbulb in his mouth and it lit up. Not really, but I imagined him doing it; you wouldn’t be surprised if he had. Gamma came home later with a bruise on her cheek and a wiggly tooth where he had hit her in the face with a big chunk of icy ice when they were playing outside and for some reason her friend got grounded for it. And I thought, we got off cheap and I thought, this isn’t the last we’re hearing about that guy, some day his neighbors will be saying on TV, He was such a quiet person.
And then they’ll stick the microphone in my face and I’ll say, That little fucker’s given me the heebie jeebies ever since he was a little bitty boy.

The way I see it, a guy my age you has two choices when things bog down: 4uto-er0tic 4sphyxiati0n or self-hypnosis.

That’s just one choice, isn’t it? Two alternatives. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m starting out with self-hypnosis.

It can’t hurt. Worst-case scenario: it doesn’t work. Nothing happens. Big deal. So I found some directions on the Internet.

Those are famous last words, aren’t they? “I found out on the Internet how to do this.” Second only to , “Hey, y’all, watch this.”

This is, briefly, how it is done:

1. Count down from 100, relaxing as you go

2. Then count down from 5, telling yourself at each step, I’m getting more relaxed, I’ll make some nice suggestions, etc.
3. Make suggestions
4. Count yourself back up to 5, waking up a little at each step.

Or, in my case, you count down from 100 and around 50 you hear loud snoring and wake up.
It turns out to be a fine way to fall asleep at night. I drop right off. It’s changed my life.
As far as the hypnosis goes, I have to try it sitting up. Not sure if it’s worked yet. I’m totally in the middle of a crisis sort of week(s) and even having panic attacks (standing in front of the elevator at the UN a couple days ago, amidst a gaggle of diplomats, I wanted nothing more than to scream “WAAHHHHHHHH” as a breadloaf-sized lump of misery and panic exploded from my solar plexus; then I looked around me and wondered how many other people there felt the same way), so I suppose it’s shaken something up. I’m taking a positive view of it. In Chinese, the word for “crisis” is written with the characters for “can” and “worms”, right?
And I sleep better.
And the chances of being found dangling from a doorknob in my wife’s clothes are infinitesimal.

Duane Keiser is an artist who does a painting a day and posts it to his blog here. He also has another website here. I came across Mr. Keiser via Negative Velocity, which seems not to have been updated in a while. NV got it from Boingboing.

If I had the money, I would buy paintings from Mr. Keiser immediately. They are wonderful, wonderful details, wonderful colors, wonderful light. Good eye for beauty in all things. That peanut butter and jelly sandwich is making me hungry, and it’s not even nine in the morning.

On my drive in this morning, I thought, that’s how I’d like to write. Then I thought, it is how I try to write. That is it. That’s it. Lime slices, you know? Gum wrapper. Peanut. Pigment. And the grander stuff at the other site. Fine stuff, Mr. Keiser. You’re inspiring.

From now on, all my blog posts are for sale, starting at $100 a piece for the smaller ones.

Imagine walking into a forest. Have you read Kafka on the Shore yet? (That is, Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. Not “Kafka on the Shore Yet?” by etc etc. ) No? Good, because I’m lifting this from him, partly. Say you walk into a forest until you get lost, and then continue on, deeper and deeper, until you’re hopelessly lost. Then you take off your pack, and leave it on the ground with your axe and canteen and keep walking until you completely lose your orientation, any sense of direction. You can’t be any more lost than this. You are so lost, place, distance and direction have no meaning anymore. You even lose yourself. At this point, well, not “point” seeing as how place has no meaning, but at this point in our story, at this point in time, although it’s also a timeless place forest: now, although strictly speaking there is no “now” here, I mean “here”, fear dissolves. For instance. Say. Fear of being lost. Because you are lost. And you’re not getting more lost.
Whom do you meet here?

Mom: What’s up with the string tied to everything? It’s a mess.
Gamma: Erm…
Dad: Did I ever tell you about how when I was bored when I was little my mom gave me yarn and I would stand in the corner for hours making spiderwebs between the curtain rod, two doorknobs and the handles on the dresser? Or how if the weather was good she’d send my brother and me outside where I’d hang bits of yarn from the fence for birds to make their nests from, and my little brother would follow me, picking the yarn back off the fence, and when we got to the end of the fence I’d think birds had already taken all the yarn, then we’d go back to the start of the fence and hang the same yarn back up again?
Gamma: Hehe.
Mom: Thanks for the backup, pal.

90% of my mother’s parenting consisted of ploys to get rid of us, and 10% of trips to OMSI. And yet I have fond memories of so much of it – drawing pictures in the kitchen on rainy days, wandering around the countryside, sitting in my uncle’s garden discussing life with his beagle.

I was listening to Bananarama’s Greatest Hits in my car yesterday because the mix of Jorane, Snow Patrol, Iarla

Spent the afternoon with my favorite colleague from work. His wife just had a baby.
Me: She had it in the car, you say?
Him: Yeah. Right where you’re sitting.
Me: Heh.
Him: Is it dry yet?

We visited his wife at the hospital and saw the baby. They also had pictures, of the car parked at an angle in the entrance of the hospital, passenger door open, midwife pointing at the passenger seat where the big event had taken place. Another picture of the seat itself, a bloody towel and a pair of women’s shoes on the floor.

Later we had lunch, spareribs. I ate so many I couldn’t eat any dinner. I was so full of meat, I woke up at midnight and couldn’t fall back to sleep until three AM. Our lunch conversation went like this:

Him: She pulled her pants down at the light. I looked over and saw the top of the baby’s head sticking out. Which sauce do you prefer, the piquant sauce or the garlic sauce?
Me: The piquant sauce. The garlic sauce is a little, I dunno, noncommittal.
Him: And of course, blood and everything all over.
Me: Check please.
Milan Kundera: There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
Bouncer: [Frog-marches Kundera through restaurant, forcibly ejects him] And stay out.

In other news, coldest day of the entire winter so far today. And Brian made me cry at work. And Novala nearly did too. It’s just the mood I’m in today.