shit on the floor

When you have a dog, sometimes when you take her for a walk that walk becomes how you define yourself as a human being. If she doesn't take a shit, you have failed. Especially if she's not shitting because she has already taken a shit on the floor, which makes you a double failure, because your dog is house-broken, you thought. The reason why she did this is obvious: you've been gone a lot, lately, and even though you were only leaving for a few minutes this time, you even told her, in plain English, "I'll be right back", she doesn't know this, and she acts accordingly, logically. Put yourself in her shoes, or paws, maybe: you have to take a shit. The bathroom has just been closed off, indefinitely. Do you sit around, patiently waiting for the doors to open, or do you just say "fuck it" and enjoy your time alone without undue asshole pressure? The answer is clear: you shit the floor. Then the owner returns, minutes later. He eyeballs your big steaming load and he starts saying "Shame" as hard as he can, but how were you supposed to know? Stepping back out of the dog's perspective, we can see that you, as a dog-owner, are failing in the very simple task of giving your dog a reliable schedule. This reflects negatively on you, because you also have no reliable schedule. You are stretched thin, doing this and that and in the end having nothing really to show for it. You are a grocery list that's gotten to long, and you want to say "fuck all this shit, I'm going to fucking Taco Bell". But you don't. You eat Taco Cabana, instead. And it is good. You and your wife spend time together, and when you return to your apartment, there is no shit on the floor.

me and the girl

JLB rationalizes God

Picked up a collection of Jorge Luis Borges's fiction, and opened it to a random page. This is what I read:

"I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine , eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer—not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc.—is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists."

JLB, that doesn't make any sense, man.

hell day 3

Third hell day of the three-day hellathon. Morning. Took pooch for a walk. Didn't bother to put a shirt on, or underwear, because that's not the kind of day today is. It's overcast and windy. Chilly. Kahlua's turd was bigger than mine usually are. She is a beast.

Went to dinner with the family last night. It was fun. We joked around, there was no serious family talk. Grandma and I shared a Mudslide.

At work we play this song by the Jackson 5, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." It bothers me because the kid in the song has two options: 1) His mother is actually kissing his father, and there is no Santa Claus, or 2) His mother is a whore. It's interesting that a child's revelation that there is no Santa Claus would coincide with his understanding that his mother, his totem of purity, actually has sex (!) on a regular basis.

BOLANO

The word of the day is BOLANO. There's an en-yay on that N but fuck it, I'm tired and lazy because Black Friday kicked my ass.

I will keep this short: please go out and read Roberto Bolano. I'm working through his whole oeuvre before I get to "2666", which he never finished before he died. Words I've seen used to describe it: apocalyptic, noir, pulp, sci-fi, raunchy, violent, inventive, brave. It's essentially five novels in one, all circling around the murders of the women in Ciudad Juarez, right over the border from El Paso.

This is a big deal. I'm in the middle of "The Savage Detectives" right now. All I can compare it to is when I tore through "Infinite Jest". Never been that engaged in words since.

saturday and sunday

I decided to say "Fuck it" and go with the flow. I wasn't going to kill myself at work, trying to do three things at once. Occasionally I did, it can't be avoided, but I didn't freak out about it. At the end of the day I felt much better and I think overall people were much nicer, as they could sense that my vibe was much more laid-back.

BLOOD'S A ROVER

From Sobel Webber Associates:

BLOOD’S A ROVER
by James Ellroy
(Knopf, Fall 2009)

Foreign Publishers
France: Rivages
Germany: Ullstein
Italy: Mondadori
U.K.: Random House Century

At long last—James Ellroy’s greatest work of fiction.

BLOOD’S A ROVER is the third volume of Ellroy’s Underworld USA Trilogy. Volume 1, AMERICAN TABLOID, covered 1958-’63 and ended with the JFK snuff in Dallas. Volume 2, THE COLD SIX-THOUSAND, covered Dallas to the MLK RFK hits and their hellish aftermath. BLOOD’S A ROVER takes us on the wildest historical ride of them all.

There’s a horrific armored-car heist, replete with a stash of missing cash and mysterious emeralds. There’s J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes moving into their psychopathic dotage. The FBI’s out to infiltrate two evil black-militant groups in L.A. The mob wants to plant lush hotel casinos in the Dominican Republic. There’s a voodoo vibe in Haiti, and, brother, it be bad gre-gre. Two rogue cops and a kid private eye are locked in a consuming fury to claim the Red Goddess Joan.

Sex and history—on an unprecedented scale.

Raging love stories, the clash of race and ideology, the moral fire of a great American time.

Playboy will publish a 10,000-word excerpt in this year’s Christmas issue on sale Nov. 10.

Alfred A. Knopf will publish BLOOD’S A ROVER in fall of 2009.

Feel the all-encompassing heat!

Fear this book.

I must have this. Now. Going out to buy Playboy. Need...excerpt.