After typing them I realized the first is much stranger and interesting than the second, so if you don't have all day just read that one.

I'm in some kind of restaraunt or hotel with friends. I have to use the bathroom, so I search around (for a very long time, this is one damned hidden-away john) and eventually find the door. I go in and am in a locker-room type of room with various rows of showers/urinals/etc. Well I look for the place to pee and can't find it. None of the objects quite seem right. Everything is very archaic looking. I am standing in front of what I've decided look most like urinals (but which in fact resemble half-size showers) when a man tells me to go ahead and pee. So I climb in and start to pee in the direction I hope is right and the man pulls out this firehose and starts laying it on me. I am slightly surprised but follow his directions to turn atound and move this way and that as he sprays full force. Well eventually we are outside and he's still beaming me with this high-powered spray and then there's another guy there who starts playing in the snow (yeah there's snow on the ground and I'm not even feeling particularly wet). Well the other guy gets this icicle and gives it to the first who puts it through the zipper of his pants (the water spraying has stopped somewhere in the interim). The first guy tells the other to "go down" and then sprinkles a bunch of cocaine on the icicle extruding from his pants. The guy starts lapping it up (not snorting it at all) and I ask if I can have some and the guy says something like we don't know each other well enough and I ask if I can just have what he spilled all over his pants and shoes (there're big piles cause he was so sloppy). He says sure and I try but blow it all away.

<real life pee break>

I'm in a little village in what must be Italy. I'm with assorted musical colleagues from different parts of my life. We're on some kind of tour I suppose (though I'm not sure casue everything happened in this one place). We're all sitting on the side of a small windy road. There's a fence that I sit on a bunch. Generally everyone is just milling about socializing and such. I keep hanging out with groups of mostly guys, shooting the shit. The weird thing was that everytime I stood still I was touching some guy or other, not sexually at all just familiarly. Like I'm straddling the fence and I have my arms wrapped under the guy in front of me's pits and am holding on to his chest. I kept wondering if it was weird and no one seemed to care (or really even notice) at all. Well I'm roving around talking to people and such. I remember me in a group of four or six people and this guy's talking to everyone about this guy who made his own viola, and another guy is like, "he didn't make his own blah-blah (some term for a part in the top of the instrument which I don't think I really know), did he". And the other guy like "oh yeah" and I asked if everyone here was in the orchestra. Whatever. Then there was this girl from Germany we were talking to and she had a funny accent and Paul came over and asked if she was German, and I looked at her and said, in German, "that is german isn't it?" and she said yes but that she was from the west or something. She had what sounded almost like a lisp. Oh yeah, it was very foggy the whole time, I remember asking her about the nebel (fog) and she said it was a shame cause right over the mountains you could see the Himalayans (whoah just realized my stupid dream-self got the Alps and Himalayans confused-hah). Anyways it's a little later and my whole family is there (immediate plus my grandparents on my dad's side) to visit me or something, and I keep running around giving them all hugs and stuff. At one point I grab my grandma in a big hug and lift her from the ground and she says "you always acted so young," but like she meant it in a good way with a smile. Well the fo
g
li
fts and we look up to see a huge mountain and I ask this guy who is oddly familiar to me (though he looks kinda like Holly's Rodrigo) if those are the Himalayans, and he says no it's actually in the way of them, people are always complaining that if it weren't for that mountain they would have a great view. My family and I decide to go see them, so we go down the road to where they've parked their SUV and grandpa's already at the wheel. <I wake>

we's goin out to da movies to see a big fat black lady. They are my favorite kinda movies, ones with fatly funny black women who slap people. Paul this is your official notice since you aint home yet. Today is just beautiful. I walked in the rain for awhile. Oh gift from heaven. Only wored my greenie and nuthin else. So sweet. Maybe tonight sumthin special goan hapin. Matt's gotta new bike!

the flowers that is. just saw a whole pack of flowers deburrowing themselves from winter's cold grasp. Very exciting. Is spring really here? Sure hope so. I am ready to toss my melancholy aside for abounding hope and joy. I wanna ride and ride and ride. For hours. Languishing in the sun. I tried to languish a but today and then it started raining. Hard to languish when you're wet. But, the door is open. The out is flowing in. Reviving the spirit and giving me back some moisture too. Please stay away winter, we've had enough time to play.

Today the US vetoed a United Nations Secuity Counsil resolution condemning the targeted assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin . With three abstentions and eleven members voting in favor of the resolution, America once again stood in the way of international accord over Israel's "security" decisions. I just hope that the current administration takes note that we have given the go-ahead for premeditated strikes against foreign leaders. I am sure that terrorists around the world have also taken note.

it hurts my eyes...

i commiserate (2 m 1 s, or 1 m 2s?) with lilho. I have a stupid sinus thing now too. For like a week and half now. It's disgusting. Who knew I could produce a gallon of assorted sputum per day? I think this is the first time for me having one (though my memory is admittedly less than keen in regards to these sorts of details). Empathy abounds. Please take and share.

sidenote: quote from war secretary John Calhoun to president Monroe around 1819, speaking to the Cherokee delegation: "You see the Great Spirit has made our form of society stronger than yours, and you must submit to adopt ours if you wish to be happy by pleasing him." So, haters of GW should realize that he is nothing new, we've been this way all along. Let's all just get with the program, eh?

Once again Israel has used missiles to kill in broad daylight. Yesterday they assassinated Sheik Yassin, leader of the militant Palestinian separatist group Hamas. There are a couple points worth mentioning. Frist off, assassination is a dangerous game to play. It sets a precedent that killing is okay on the battlefield or off, and yes the terrorists make no such discriminations, but is it a good idea for a modern army to sink to these levels? As Robert Fisk points out (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=5191), maybe George and Tony have nothing to worry about, but what of all our envoys and ambassadors, has Israel made them potential targets? Second, there is the imagery. A frail old man in a wheelchair is blasted out of existence by Israeli missiles fired from a warplane. To use Steve Weissman's words (http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/032404A.shtml) the David is slain by the massive Goliath. And image matters. Like those against the Iraq war keep saying, the more you kill civilians, the more anger there is, and anger breeds terror. It is also worth noting that Yassin was the spiritual leader of Hamas, he is a Muslim cleric, and his killing will reverberate not just through Hamas members, but through a wide swathe of Muslems in general. Obviously the point is that if you use terrorist methods for your own goals you are only going to escalate the violence, create new terrorist troops, and find no support in the international community (US excluded, of course).

trisha got a new hat
trisha got a new hat
oh come angel band
come and around me stand
trisha got a new hat
trisha got a new hat
oh bear me around on your slowly rings
to my immortal home

I am making yet another hat. The first holly graciously took. I am quite sure she will never be seen in public in it. Yeah, that bad. Well the second was much better. It was cream and scarlet and is now atop trisha's beautious kopf. One of her friends actually liked it so much he asked me to make him one. I should start a business. Unfortuantely I hate capitalism and so will just make it for free. Where is my money-mind? I am making a hat now, and depending on how much I like it, it will become mine or his. Holly deserves a respectable hat sometime too. Though I fear if I make her a nice one she will really never wear the other one. It is colored like a bumblebee. It is however gigantic, perhaps suitable for someone with dreadlocks.

sidenote: Sofar two people have died from watching Christ die. Yes, the profit, Mel Gibson, apparently has the power to strike people dead. The Passion (of the Christ) just gave a Brazilian pastor a heart attack , but the killing was not only levied against third world countries. A Witchitawan (KS) also was poleaxed into heaven by the "climactic crucifixtion scene." I guess they are technically martyrs now and are guaranteed a seat at the right hand of god and so on. Maybe I'll take paul's suggestion and render a scene of Christ's last moments upon the cross with crochet (maybe I'll martyr a few buggers too). Halleluja!

sidenote(squared): so we learn that the final frog is yet alive. There were three who we were convinced were reduced to two as we hadn't seen more than that at once. Today I come home to all three frolicking frogs. They are little water frogs in a tank with the massive queen angel and her two sentry rainbow fish. The pleckos lie in squallor at the bottom, living off the refuse of the court. The newly arrived frogs simply alight on what they will: a stony outcrop, outthrust leaf, plecko's head, whatever. I think they are more flight or fright. They have two responses to new events: swim rapidly away or freeze stiff in apprehension. They will, in midstroke, become absolutely still and float in any random position for minutes at a time. I suppose that, much like dears, in their natural habitat there are large predators whose hunting is motion oriented. So I refine the langauge: fight/flight/fright. So many ights, isn't it wonderful?

So paulnotpaul is doing this film with translations of some stragne expressions (taken from a novelty calender) in three languages. It started with the French and then an English translation and he asked me to tranlate to German. Most of them were simple enough, but a few idiomatic expressions were not familiar to me. I used the great German online reference dictionary LEO to help me. Here they are:

En) Go jump in a lake !!!!
Fr) va voir dehors si j’y suis--Lit: go look outside and see if I am there!!
Ger) Geh dahin, wo der Pfeffer wächst!--Lit: go where the pepper grows

En) He is going to learn the hard way!
Fr) Il va l’apprendre a rude ecole!--Lit: he is going to learn at rude school!!
Ger) Er muss Lehrgeld bezahlen!--Lit: He must pay with an aprrenticeship premium!!

go to the where the pepper grows and see if i am there and while you're at it jump in an oh-so-spicy lake. and go learn yourself some hard shit at the rude school and pay me an apprentice and shit. yeah!

I've mastered the melancholy smile. I am drunk on my own wistful thoughts. I wist and I wist. How can my lust for melancholy turn the corners of my mouth up. A wistful curl. I am listening to Crazy by Aerosmith. It's a great song, and I remember the video. It was idling through my head earlier. I downloaded it. Now it's reality. It's a wistful kinda song, appropriate for my mood. I am really good at being alive, but not so hot at living. Well sometimes. Who's to define anyways? I am bundling up to go outside. Walks are nice if you're cozy inside. I indulge myself too much on introspect. It gets to be a habit, and it's not unpleasant. It's weird to be lonely inside but happy anyways. We teach ourselves the craziest things. How we twist our inborn feelings, morphing them through thought. Again, my lip curls, a wistful melancholy.

Funny that my last journal says "end the wat." Fucking wats, hate'em! The protest was. My view is that it is just a matter of being there. I am not quite ready to go smashing police car windows and breaking the jail open, which would be something really radical and perhaps worthwhile, but the least I can do is stand in the rain so people watching the 5 o'clock news will remember once again that at least a few people question. So stickboy's right, it was lame. We all milled around. Some people had signs. It was strange at the beginning where everyone was in a ring around the grass, not stepping on it (though we did in pitiful defiance). They were singing give peace a chance, a favorite of mine <ahem>. But as long as none of us is going to do anything really revolutionary...

I am also of the opinion that it's gone too far. That people are just too damn ignorant, too wrapped up in American Idol and McDonalds to ever give a fuck. And I call them the people because they are the majority (and I the screaming nut minority, much less a representation of america). The next big change just might come about due to a meteor or tidal wave. It could be something much more mundane though, a stock market crash, massive unemployment (we're getting close on both of these). Then it wouldn't be a matter of us leftists making things change, but more a matter of us defining in what direction the change goes. Unfortunately the armed Christian militias are way ahead of us in preparing for these times. I wish I were a prophet or a saint. No not really. That's a lot of pressure. I guess to me, I go to the protest because it's the fucking least my lazy cynical ass can do. I don't do anything else besides write on this dumb useless (in a larger sense, though it gives me much personal satisfaction) journal. And if it's only so the fatfucks sitting on the couch in Cheektowaga see a 20 second news blurb then so be it. I didn't have anything better to do.