1180

"I'm never coming back there again," vowed the Sleeptalker.
"Oh well, it was good to know you," I said, echoing a 50s song.

Even though it's only mid-January, I suspect that might well qualify for an award: Understatement of the Year.

He appeared in the game very briefly on Tuesday and minutes after saying that, said "they are chasing me out of here" and left. A library, a store? In any case, I assume he is back in Waianae. But experience tells us that his "never" is not too serious because he'll soon get bored out there in the country and show up at UH-Manoa.

I suspect he had yet another explosive conflict with his Chinatown Patron. He amended his in-game story about the Patron wanting him to leave because he didn't want people to think the Sleeptalker was gay, later telling me the Patron had said, "take your damned glass pipe and get out of here." That makes a lot more sense to me.

Tuesday was a pleasant, but boring (aside from his appearance) day. It had been predicted that we'd have solid rain on Wednesday. It was very gray and there was one heavy downpour but the biggest problem was the wind, which was fierce. It was rather amusing to watch the little zebra doves struggling to stay on their feet as the wind pushed them along, even at the Rainy Day Bench at the mall.

I didn't go to Campus Center to hear Bush2's speech but as I said elsewhere, I have to wonder if there's a point where he can be declared "certifiably insane"?

1181

Synchronicity.

A lady of a certain age walked through the secluded grove and said, "Good to see you reading. I wish I had time for it."
"You have plenty of time."
"None," she said, rushing on to whatever she had to do that was more important than reading a book.

And Mitchell Dwyer, in his spendid "Chalkdust", wrote in his January 15th entry: Reading. As much as his many exploits interest me in a wide-variety of ways, what I most look forward to when I read his journal is an update on what he's reading.

Okay. Right now it's William Coughlin's The Court. I know Grisham is generally considered The Master of legal fantasy, but I think Coughlin is even better at it. My only problem is that I am coming very close to having read all of their books and, unlike Tom Wolfe, I'm not sure either of them deserve a second reading. But then, that goes for Patricia Cornwell and so many other contemporary writers.

I usually consume a book a day unless it's very large with small print when it might take two or three days. Not many of those found on the bargain shelves.

I don't remember when or how I learned to read, but I certainly knew how before I started school. And one of the nuisances of school was being assigned to read books I'd already long since read, sometimes more than once. (As a child I was more apt to repeat readings with a patience and interest I no longer have, with some exceptions.) Couldn't begin to count the number of times I've read and re-read Swiss Family Robinson. Or in later years, Steppenwolf.

Speaking of re-reading, as this Year of the Ram draws to a close I have been re-reading the Tales from it.

Yes, life was more interesting when the Bad Boys were more constant cast members.

1182

Well, after having praised Coughlin I have to admit that The Court is definitely not one of his best books. It just fizzles about three-quarters of the way through, like some of Danielle Steel's books. Maybe they just lose interest and rapidly finish it up to meet a nagging publisher's request (or to restore a positive balance on their credit cards)?

John Case's The Genesis Code is more engrossing with a praiseful quote from no less than Norman Mailer, but I'm only halfway through it so don't know if it will "fizzle" or not.

There has been, unusually, a drop in population at the Black Hole after the first half of SocSec retirees got their hand-out on Second Wednesday. Lucky people. But it has been sufficiently full that I've had to sleep in the smaller area for a couple of nights when the only bus that goes there in the evening has been very late in arriving at the mall. The arrival of that bus, where I find a spot on the floor for my mat, and the mystery of the campus locker .... the things in my life which need Valium to counteract the anxiety, such as it is. (I know, I know, I constantly tell myself it "doesn't matter".)

That requirement about emptying the locker on the first and third Saturdays of the month seems to be nonsense. For two months now, I've sat on one of the comfortable chairs at Campus Center with a view of the lockers and no one has arrived to do anything about collecting money, much less emptying out the lockers. That, of course, is fine with me. But the strange thing is, since this academic year began, those lockers have all been taken and yet no one is ever seen getting into one of them, not even on first and third Saturdays. I suspect the company that supplied the lockers is not making much, if any, money and hope they don't just abandon the project, take the lockers away. Yes, once again, I know, I know, I should just get a commercial locker and rid myself of this twice-monthly fret.

But do I really want to add to my monthly overhead? Okay, one more time, I know, I know, I could just throw all that stuff away and wouldn't be much worse off without it.

Saturday's "opera" from the Met was "The Merry Widow". No thanks. Of course, had it starred Fleming, I would have listened.

Thanks to a couple of kind folks who played Santa during the holidays and more especially the continued absence of Bad Boys in my life, this x equals time is more comfortable than usual, although still very tight. The felines will have to endure human food for three days, poor dears.

And me? Would I rather have had parties with Bad Boys during the past month and a penniless week before Third Wednesday? I don't suppose I need to answer that question.

1183

"Never" in the Sleeptalker's dictionary evidently means a couple of weeks, or less. After (finally) making a trip to the laundromat on Sunday morning and having lunch with the pussy cats in the secluded grove, I timed my arrival at the Rainy Day Bench so I'd be able to listen to Lasser's show. Didn't work out that way since the Sleeptalker and Tanioka were sitting there. When I teased the Sleeptalker about his "never coming back" vow, he said he had to see Tanioka. I translate that as "I wanted to smoke the pipe" which they had been doing during the night. Tanioka looked thoroughly wrecked but the Sleeptalker had managed to get some sleep so wasn't in his usual dour hangover mode.

He was all excited about an idea he has for a new area in the game and we spent some time talking about the details and the problems, a conversation he's eager to continue. No idea if it will go anywhere, especially since we're both too lazy to learn the technical details to produce a finished module, would have to rely on the Boss Lady to put in that stuff. Well, maybe I'll print the manual and see if I have the mental energy to learn at least some of the basics. Amusing exercise, anyway, talking about it.

The Sleeptalker had managed to bag a bottle of cologne and Tanioka had an expensive set of CDs so they eventually went off to sell the stuff, after the Sleeptalker had eaten most of the bread and cheese I'd bought for dinner.

I spent several hours on the holiday Monday with Helen R as we roamed from Manoa to the mall to the Black Hole and back to the mall via the Immigration building while she took photographs of the main places which were important in the early tales, part of a project I can't write about yet. Amusing, but made somewhat tedious by the holiday bus schedules which involved several lengthy waits. She kindly bought lunch when we finished, more than welcome since both cash and foodstamps were running on empty.

They were even more empty the next day when the Sleeptalker arrived on campus. He was just about to get on a bus to leave when he spotted me, also waiting for a bus across the street from where he was. He ran over and joined me on the trip to Chinatown. He was hungry but it was still a couple of hours before River of Life's free meal, so I bought him chips and a soda with foodstamps (plus a can of mackerel for the cats) taking the balance down to a little over two dollars, the lowest it has gotten in months.

I'd gone down there to get the cheapest cigarettes in town, told him it was unusual because in the week before Third Wednesday I'm usually limited to the roll-it-yourself variety. "That's because I wasn't around," he said. Yes, I confessed I had written about credit due to the absence of Bad Boys. No need, of course, in his presence to question which I'd prefer, a week of being broke because of his being around or having money because of him being missing.

Third Wednesday. I wonder if that brown envelope will be in the mailbox. Let us pray ...

the tales