The Kind of Day I'm About to Have

[I woke up, as I do at least half the time, at 4:30 a.m. I woke from a dream that combined the most paranoid aspects of Lost with being chased thru the streets of my old neighborhood, Tender Heights. I kept finding little LED tracking devices on my clothes. I'd pluck them off, throw them into the gutter of, say, Jones Street below O'Farrell, run away, and then find another. It might even have been the same bug, because they seemed to have this magnetic quality that made tossing them away really hard. I ended up with Violet, at the last minute and for no particular reason, in the lobby of the building where I had my first, and so far only, studio apartment. But that lobby was decorated more like the building John, Sean, and I moved into up the street back in late '98: red carpets, woodwork, etc. Violet and I stood above the main lobby and scanned the crowd that had inexplicably gathered until we found the bad guy who was following us. He was tall, dark, definitely gay, and wearing a red flannel shirt. His thin, evil face had acne scars. We had no plan. Acne Lumberjack spotted us, glancing at us casually with unmistakable menace, and then I woke up.]

[I looked at the clock, lay there for a few minutes wishing for another hour and a half of sleep, and then gave up and have been reading Chris's copy of Douglas Coupland's 2006 opus JPod. I'm sure there will be some sort of soul-affirming passage later. (I still get choked up when I reread the last thirds of Girlfriend in a Coma and Hey Nostradamus!) For now, Coupland's too busy showing off, demonstrating yet again how useless it is to feel anything to be important in this commodified world. In Coupland's world, rereading anything (including, one presumes, Coupland's novels) is the height of useless foolishness.]

[I reread books all the time. I listen to old pop music. I watch the same movies again and again. Clearly, I'm out of step. New retro's OK, like that Swedish band Chris listens to that sounds exactly like the Cure. But actually listening to the Cure? Now? C'mon!]

[So...Happy Thursday of Cheery Planned Obsolescence.]

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