Wednesday my boss Bill Short got sick halfway through the day and so I sneaked upstairs and read Galway Kinnell's "Selected Poems" for 2+ hours; I have decided that he is my favorite poet, followed so closely by Philip Larkin; the two are very similar; drove out to my parent's house for shrimp spaghetti; watched some videos my sister took of kids at her day camp telling jokes; most were very funny, but only because they were small children; one kid fucked up "Orange you glad I didn't say banana?" by actually saying banana before that punchline; who cares; humble beginnings; watched home movies with Mom and Kelly; had a terribly sad moment when we saw footage of my late-aunt Melissa who killed herself a few years back, and her abusive husband Mike who was the catalyst for the tragedy; Mom cried for a bit but sobered up when we fast-forwarded to baby Kelly and baby Michael opening Christmas presents; baby Kelly kept saying "Wow!" and "Yay!" whenever she got happy and I just danced by running in circles; went back to the Haas house and did some laundry; hung out with J&J and RB on the porch; ate cinnamon cookies in the hammock.

Bill Short was sick again yesterday, so I didn't do any work for the first half of the day; posted a blog on my five albums for summer over at www.rhodesradio.org/blog and looked up prices on scooters for my stint living in Iceland; driving around Ring Road (look it up) on a Vespa will be incredible; ate a bowl of pineapple for lunch; went to Memphis Pizza Cafe for dinner with Jordan and RB; Happy Hour again, so we got $1 off our pizza and Killian's Irish Reds for $2 apiece; a waitress that was not ours came outside while RB was in the bathroom and took our cups; I thought it was Rashida Jones (see below), and am still not convinced it wasn't; got free tickets from Bill Short to see "Much Ado About Nothing" at BPAC; picked up Alicia Queen and got there pretty early; the seating was on the actual stage, and the stage design was very minimal, which worked wonders in this case; very intimate; very, very funny; I had never seen the play before, nor had I read it, and I had a delightful time; Alicia said she could get RB and me into seeing RENT tonight at Playhouse on the Square; let us keep our fingers crossed.


 
I've been at work for an hour now and have only checked e-mail, Twitter, and LJ'd. I bought some strange citrus-green tea Nestea drink plus a Snicker's Marathon Energy bar and some Pop-tarts. I don't really want to think about how much fliff I've been throwing around lately. I start saving money...now.

Life Story
by Tennessee Williams

After you've been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
      Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all
      along,

and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.