My front yard has exploded with mushrooms. I counted thirty-four of them just now. It’s neat to see them rise up, get bigger, then flatten out like an opened umbrella.
13
Sep 03
Insert here
The off and on rain and spending time alone made the world seem strange and empty. As I was driving home in the dark at four in the morning I passed a bad car accident where an SUV had flipped over. The cops were just starting to arrive when I passed, my car crunching over some plastic debris scattered over the highway. I felt concerned that I didn’t feel anything beyond curiosity. Maybe that’s not so unusual.
I stopped by Whataburger to get something to eat and tried to read some more ‘Rules of Attraction’. I was a little distracted by my thoughts and by watching the people that came in and the people that worked there, a miniaturized man with a large cell phone clipped to his waist, another old man with a fixed stare and bulldog underbite clamped under his gray moustache. Human beings are really weird.
08
Sep 03
Iraq bits
- The Pentagon’s Bungled Psyops Strategy: “Lt-Col Russell’s superior, Colonel James Hickey, told AP that “enemy tactics are ‘miss and run’. They’re almost running when they pull the trigger. I have yet to see any degree of military competence. They are not experienced fighters. They fire a mortar, then pick up and run . . . ” Colonel Hickey has described, obviously without realising it, the classic tactics of the guerrilla. The sequence of identifying a target, siting a weapon, firing it, then getting out quickly is precisely what guerrilla warfare is all about. Of course the enemy are not “experienced fighters”. And they don’t have “any degree of military competence”. Most are amateurs, ordinary citizens, who hate Hickey and Russell and all they stand for because their soldiers show no respect for their families and especially women in their irreligious, ferocious and intimidating door-crashing house raids in the middle of the night. ”
- US-led occupation brings frontline against al-Qaeda to Iraq: analysts: “The United States struggled before the war to convince the world there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda network, but five months of US-led occupation of Iraq may have created precisely such an unholy alliance.
Stripped of their privileged positions under the ousted dictator’s brutal regime, Saddam’s henchmen may finally have thrown in their lot with their ideological adversaries in Osama bin Laden’s terror network to wage war on their common foe two years after the suicide hijackings in the United States, analysts say.” - The Battle of Algiers and Its Lessons: “The name of Jean-Paul Sartre occurs only once in Pontecorvo’s film, but he played a major role in changing French public opinion. In his introduction to Algerian newspaper editor Henri Alleg’s The Question, Alleg’s account of his own torture at the hands of the Paras, Sartre points to the real issue at stake:
“This rebellion is not merely challenging the power of the settlers, but their very being. For most Europeans in Algeria, there are two complementary and inseparable truths: the colonists are backed by divine right, the natives are sub-human. This is a mythical interpretation of reality, since the riches of the one are built on the poverty of the other. In this way exploitation puts the exploiter at the mercy of his victim, and the dependence itself begets racialism. It is a bitter and tragic fact that, for the Europeans in Algeria, being a man means first and foremost superiority to the Moslems. But what if the Moslem finds in his turn that his manhood depends on equality with the settler? It is then that the European begins to feel his very existence diminished and cheapened.”
If one changes the words ‘settlers’ and ‘colonists’ to ‘American occupiers’ and ‘Algeria’ to ‘Iraq,’ this is not a bad assessment of where the U.S. now finds itself — or may soon find itself. Watching current TV news footage coming out of Iraq — say, of American soldiers patting down Iraqi men at check-points (and putting hoods and plastic handcuffs on some of them) or ransacking private homes — one cannot help but wince at the racial and religious hatreds being sown right before our eyes.”
08
Sep 03
Junk
I was driving around this morning and on the way back home I saw all this junk people had left at the curb. Presumably it’s one of those days where the garbage company is picking up such things because almost every other house has something sitting out: couches, broken chairs, old doors, and lots of other little things. I had to restrain myself so I wouldn’t stop every time I saw something that caught my eye. My packrat tendencies are putting up a good fight.
07
Sep 03
eeks and paens
I was driving home tonight in the cool dark with my car windows rolled down and heard Bob Dylan’s ‘lay lady lay’ come on the stereo. 
It was like the third or fourth really good song in a row but it was really perfect. The unusually cool night air, the lopsided, orangey moon and the good music all seemed to go together perfectly. It felt good to be alive. Here’s a picture of my friend, Crandall. I needed a subject. My back is hurting again so I’m going to sleep now. I have a big day tomorrow.
05
Sep 03
Last sleep’s dream themes
- Working in a large glass walled office (warehousey). Sales or marketing.
- Diseased zombies taking over the world a la 28 Days Later. I was doing pretty well fighting off the zombies and keeping my friends (and strangely a busload of kids) out of danger until a former friend turned zombie bit me on the arm as I was trying to bar the door. I looked down at the puncture wound on my arm and knew I was about to become one of the undead. The zombie smiled at me with bloody teeth.
- Getting math tutoring and/or guitar lessons from a black woman.
05
Sep 03
Gross
It’s late. I was in the bathroom staring at the hairy, mucky, dark grime where the tub meets the yellow linoleum and in one eyeful spotted both a shiny black earwig and a hairy, disgusting silverfish going about their many-legged business. As if aware of my repulsed gaping they slinked back under the soggy, rotting baseboards. The thought of sleeping with cotton balls in my ears crossed my mind, but I shook it off as that would make me most definitely neurotic.
04
Sep 03
Cats are the ultimate predator
Here’s a comic I drew this morning. It is inspired by the fact that I’ve brought up this topic in conversation with my roommate at least a million times. I tend to repeat myself often. I tend to repeat myself often.
