If I knew then what I know now I'd have sold my porkbellies.

I can make these decisions.

Anyhow - to speak of what's ongoing - Events! Persons! Acquaintances! Enemies! Even enemies. I know right? How weird to have enemies? It's generally not worthwhile to have enemies, but sometimes people really, really want to be your enemies - and if they try hard enough you're basically compelled to oblige them. Enemy.

I'm getting way ahead of myself though. True Story - I'm basically drunk. Basically all day I have been sun-drunk and cold-medicine drunk and exertion-drunk - I'm basically destroyed today where I feel like I can feel parts of me falling off, or threatening to.

Here's how it's gone though - So earlier in the week I did some substitute teaching for money. They called and said walk on over to the 5th grade - but upon arriving I learned I had been tricked - the 2nd grade - and I might have refused had they been truthful - but that's the way they get people - the ol' bait-n-switch. Anyhow the teacher settled me in to the long recess of his kids. 1 hour playing video games, followed by an hour of lunch/recess, and after that twenty minutes of writing a sentence and then an hour of movie. You can see why I maybe hate schools. I do hate schools. Low expectations you see. And not just for students. I ended up having to send kids to the office and there was that whole scenario - the ugly scenario of what it is to be a teacher. First someone walked in to the computer room to yell at me about video games - but it was right on the lesson plan! Right there, my job to carry out the plan of letting kids play video games. Next, a really, really angry - ferocious man appeared in our room to shout at a boy and make him sit in the corner - then he picked out ten children from the room and just left with them - pied piper like - I had no idea what was happening - and then he shouted at them that they would have to have icecream in a terrifying way. Then some other people came into the room to yell at the children and then I was pressed because of the gross pressure on the teacher to keep children confined and silent - and tragically indoors. I was looking at the teacher's planner and it was all: June 11th - find a new job, June 12th - find a new job etc... I was looking for a new job by the end of it too.

Next day was Agatha's last day at her public school. Grade two herself. She solved it like a puzzle - the Riddle of Second Grade. Still trying to persuade her mom that school is no place for children. Said me: "I'll work nights and teach her in the daytime - I'm good at that." And maybe it could happen. Just a maybe.

Anyhow I went and got her and then we went around and had times... Uh. What'd we do? Oh! Gramma's house. Just to go to, to visit - on the bus-train-bus to Parma and have some dinner and have some of my dad's ridiculous energy drinks - which is all he drinks - talk to him about jobs, the jobs we're both looking for. Hanging out. I borrow a car and drive home, camp out and get ready to go see Andrew's job - where I pick up a summer job- probably, most likely. Talked to a guy. He wanted to talk about me - I got into it slowly - but in the end said the thing that my dad has taken to saying to people when he meets them: "I lost four million dollars last year." The guy said - "you got me beat." In a way that made me realize that it's probably close. We complained for a while about the credit crisis to each other, lamented the thievery of banks and then talked shop. Data entry. Painesville.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to commit to a daily 4 hour commute - two there and two back - to keep my nose pressed at the grindstone for the next three months and write this years book on the bus. I think I should write at least one book on the bus. You know - unless something better is offered soon.

So went and did that, then made a carton of cigarettes, then checked in with the temp agency, then went to go get kid at gramma's house - have some supper, conversation and hangouts - then back to home - where we rested up and got calm for Saturday.

Saturday - today - was the Parade. Have some pictures. My favorite is easily the Pangolin costume. Pangolins!



Baron Saturday was represented


Also - Mecha


The Joker said he was handing out hundred dollar bills but they were phony!


I guess this is getting ahead too. On the buses to the parade I told more story - the Queen of the Fairies and how she got to be the Queen and her back story - I'll get it down here soon enough. True story - my Friend Susan approached us at the Parade to tell me how much she liked those stories and also to suggest that I could make some money writing them. I'm not averse - but as you must have figured out by now - I have not cracked the riddle of Self Publishing. Second grade is a snap compared to self-publishing man.

Oh. But I said an enemy - and that's a thing! True fact, an enemy. So in my more personal diary I've put up the e-mail chain for all to see - the ugly facts of the E-mail chain, and the wretched story of the pitiful souls who lived to tell the tale.

Anyhow... Okay - I'll go back to last year this time. Last year this time there was this girl who was all about trying to be with me but who I did not trust. She tried and tried to persuade me to be with her and I was finally persuaded. And basically at the moment that that happened she ran off with some other dude! I was kind of amazed and obviously not at all happy. So I said - "done." And was done. Which seemed fine. She burned her bridges with all our mutual friends so I was fine.

Then, like, out of the spam folder I start noticing all these messages from her - and they're... Well for months she's been trying and trying to pull me in with some kind of conversation. I gave her offer to hurt my feelings again the barest consideration before choosing to decline that thrilling opportunity. An exciting offer for sure, but I've somehow been able to resist that siren call to oblivion. Anyway there are all these ongoing emails and I finally was just: "leave me alone." With as little explanation as I can muster because - well there's obviously no need for explanation. So today I was all glad that I headed that off because I saw her at the Parade and was super happy to have given her the electronic kiss off rather than have to have some kind of confrontation at the Parade - the Parade being a favorite thing of all to me.

And then later - we were on the bus home - going down Euclid. There were these boys - and they were doing that thing where they listened to loud rap songs on their phones but I smiled and stared at them - because they were rude songs. They got happy and kind soon enough - then the other paraders were around and they noticed what Agatha was reading - Great Expectations and then me and these kids had a little conversation about that book.


"You gotta be friendly to everyone - maybe you'll some day meet your own Magwitch and then your goodness will be repaid." But then the dudes noticed a car of ladies outside their window and they were hollering at them trying to get their attention - and who is it but my goddammed enemy again! I as a little disappointed that the dudes couldn't get the numbers of her and her cohort, but it was a fun try.

Finally we got home, all dusty and sun-drunk to lay around all day under the fans eating and napping and playing games and reading comics - lazy saturday.