Author: jkonrath

I have been copying Type O Negative albums to MiniDisc all night long. Working on Summer Rain and writing email to Conan O’Brien. Once I get 1000 messages to him, I am putting them all out as a zine.

I have declared war on my apartment building. It is 2:45 here. In a minute, I am moving my 200 lb dresser in front of the door, turning my bass amp up to 11 and practicing scales to a metronome for about 4 hours. I guess I should go to work tomorrow, though. We had some sort of party today, and the most interesting part were those cans of Guiness beer with the nitrogen widget in the bottom. When you open them, the nitrogen releases and carbonates the beer. I have no idea how much it costs per can, but you can probably charge a lot from people who think it’s important. In my opinion, beer is beer. Sorry.

I should either go to bed or get back to work on the book.

Time for an update, I guess.

My typing has been poor all day, for the last couple of days really – I don’t know if it’s a slow net connection or some kind of mental problem on my end, but it’s annoying me. I’ve had a lot to do in the last few days, but all of it’s invisible – lots of emails, moving around files, tweaking websites – none of it real, visible projects. It feels once again like there are about 6 hours in a day. I think “I’m going to get started on my real work any second now” and then I realize it’s 2 in the morning.

Lots of stuff is going wrong. My car stereo went out, but then magically came back. My caller ID is broken, or maybe it’s just that nobody calls me anymore. I went to the dentist and got fillings, and now one tooth perpetually feels like its got popcorn husks stuck underneath it. And my fucking apartment rental company is fucking me over on my last months’ rent. I paid a last months’ rent, and now they are saying I have to pay a last month, and I will somehow magically get that money back when I get my deposit back. But I know and they know that in about 8 years, I will get a check for $47 and a receipt for a new washer and drier or something. The company is Equity Rentals. Never, ever trust them.

I’m trying to get as much of Summer Rain done as I can, given current circumstances. It’s slowly getting there – I have about 6 of the last 15 chapters done now. I’m hoping, as always, for a good weekend. Since I’m close to broke now, thanks to my apartment management, I’ll probably be spending the whole weekend inside, doing nothing but writing and playing bass. The bass is good, but I have a long way to go. Having a good amp helps. Falling asleep at like 7pm for 2 hours every night does not help.

The cleaning/packing process continues. I gave away or sold a handful of items here at work today, which is good – I had no idea what I’d do with a 12″ monochrome monitor. I’m also frantically throwing out everything I can, in an effort to at least make the place look a little more vacant. Because of this apartment bullshit, I won’t be sending out any boxes for a bit, but hopefully I can get a bunch of them packed this weekend.

I think it’s time to go home now.

I am still sick. I managed to sneak out of work on Thursday afternoon and catch a doctor's appointment at the Polyclinic. After reading a March 1998 issue of Forbes for about an hour, the doctor gave a quick listen to my cough and determined that it was bronchitis. He gave me antibiotics and told me about 9 times to drink lots of water with them, or I would explode and possibly kill other people nearby. He also said I should be better by Tuesday, which blows the whole idea of being better today. I do feel somewhat better today – not as much coughing or aching. Of course, my thirteen hour nap helped somewhat.

I wish Seattle would give me some nice weekend days before I left. I woke at about noon today, and the sun was peeking out a bit. Now it's 3:30 and it looks like the sun is going to set in about 2 minutes. I don't know what I would do if it was sunny, except maybe drive to the mall or bookstore or something. But dammit, I want one good Saturday with some sun and my sunroof before I junk the fucking car and go to riding the subway. I hate driving in traffic, I hate I-5, I hate parking, and I hate my car, but nothing beats a steady speed on some winding hills with the Rush song "Red Barchetta" in the player.

I had many weird dreams last night, which is strange because I'm trying to lay off the NyQuil after a 14-day stand. I wanted to learn to fly – a plane, I mean. In the dream, my uncle Jim used to have a pilot's license, but it was decades expired and he couldn't teach me. I was going to get LASIK surgery on my eyes to pass the flight physical, and I even went up on a test flight with anotheer pilot. Then I remembered I was going to New York, and I got all depressed because I thought it would be almost impossible to find a place to take flying lessons if I lived in Manhattan. My parents were mad at me for wanting to fly. I was in New York and my uncle died. When I went home, I had a neighbor I didn't know who looked like Nancy Travis who was in a wheelchair. I was strangely attracted to her. I went to visit my dad at work, where he was raising bioengineered plants like the ones in Jurassic Park. I was trying to get him and mom to pay for a summer program at Rutgers. I started thinking about how I would set up my .forwards on the Rutgers email accounts, and then use gnus on 34.216.9.77/ to read all of my mail. When I woke up, I had a strange, intense feeling where I missed my old Escort, and how I should sell my VW and buy a Corolla or something similar with a really nice interior.

And right now I'm listening to the newest Pat Metheny album Imaginary Day, which does remind me of the Escort, and the trip I made up to Bremerton last summer with the MiniDisc, listening to Metheny. (Look in the 1998 entries in the beginning – it’s in there somewhere.) This shows that I can be nostalgic about something that happened less than a year ago, which shows that I’m completely insane.

The Karate Kid was just on. If I ever make a movie, no matter what it is, I’m going to cast Pat Morita as something.

I better go do something before the hundred mile an hour winds start.

I’m still sick, but I think I’m making progress. I slept almost all day yesterday, and thismorning it didn’t feel like my lungs were full of paste. I’m still not up to 100%, but I have hopes of being functional by the weekend.

I’ve started reading alt.hackers again, and it’s got me all messed up on this early-90s technology kick. It’s amazing how little things have changed in some ways. If you ignore all of the internet explosion bullshit and Bill Gates’ totalitarian wet dream, the old iron was still the same. Unix machines have become more powerful, and now anyone with a PC can have one, but the basic tenets are the same. Gcc, sed scripts, X11, sockets programming, it’s all there. But back then I was logged in via a 286 running Procomm and a Sytek 2400bps connection, instead of a Pentium and an ethernet connection. Even with all of the crap on the web, I really miss the days when usenet was a cool place to talk and find information, and there were a few cool internet BBSes to mess with.

Nothing else is going on, and I think I’m going to get back to being sick and stuff.

A quick update… I stayed home from work today (Tues) and slept, to try and beat this cold or whatever it is. I feel pretty decent now, but still disoriented. I also threw out my back a bit, although after lying on the floor for a few hours, it feels much better. Bad things always happen in threes right before trips, so I’m expecting my car to get firebombed tonight.

I’m almost entirely packed for this trip. I’ll be in New York until Sunday night, so there won’t be any more updates. This will be my last trip to New York as a visitor, so it’s pretty weird. I still remember the same type of trip in Bloomington. It was the summer of 1991, when I was dating the astrology chick and visiting every couple of weeks. I drove down about two weeks before my final move-in, with a carload of stuff and a bunch of appointments at the bursar, registrar, psychiatrist, landlord, etc etc. This move was a return to Bloomington after spending a year living with my parents in Elkhart and going to IUSB. Usually when you transfer back to a regional campus, you never make it back to Bloomington. You fall into a rut of a class a semester and an all-encompassing day job, until you stop taking classes. Everybody told me I’d never make it back. And then, on that August day, I was walking through the arboretum, on my way to the shrink, looking at the sky and the trees and the people and thinking that I was back – after two more weeks of work, I’d have Bloomington as my playground again. I guess I feel the same way about New York. Once I return, I think I have four weeks of work, two weeks of time to myself in Seattle to pack and say goodbyes, and then my two week roadtrip. Then New York is my playground.

Okay, time to finish packing and maybe watch Conan. It’s a 1pm flight, but I’ve been sleeping all day for the last few days.

I’m still sick today. I spent all of yesterday sleeping, and bought about $40 of various cold remedies and vitamins. I feel somewhat better today, but I hope for more improvement before Wednesday. There’s nothing worse than flying with a head cold.

I got my GPS today. It’s a Garmin GPS-12, and I haven’t had much of a chance to play with it yet. It’s very small, almost as small as my cell phone, and has a very cool-looking display. On my way to work, I got it to lock onto 4 GPS satellites, which gave me my location and altitude. It also read my speed as I drove into town, which was cool. I need to read the instructions and start making a bunch of waypoints, for the hell of it.

I have a dozen other things to do, plus I’m sick, so I better scoot.

I feel a need for an update, but I’m sick today. It hit all of a sudden, and it’s more fatigue than the scratchy throat/raspiness thing. Some hot soup at Denny’s helped some; a four hour nap was even better. I wanted to get so much shit done today, but now the day’s pretty much over. I hope that massive doses of vitamins and rest will get me back to semi-normal status by Wednesday, so my trip to New York will be uneventful. (I mean btw of problems. It should be a very cool trip, although short. Marie said that next week, we are going to a party in the apartment (it’s now a condo) where Burroughs lived when Lucien Carr showed up to tell him he killed David Kammerer. That’s kindof cool.)

I bought a bunch of boxes, and I’ve been trying to pack. It’s a slow process, and incredibly nostalgic, which makes it go even slower. Every single thing I pull off the shelves to put in a box reminds me of a ton of stories and other mental baggage. It’s always great to live in the past for a moment and explore the stream of memories, but it makes me take hours to pack each box. I bought ten boxes today, and when those are packed and on a UPS truck for New York, my apartment will look threadbare. I’m also hoping to get as much of the breakables and invaluable items to New York on my trip. I’m packing as little as possible for the three days, and filling the rest of my luggage allowance with journals, photos, video masters, my whole Nintendo setup, and as much as I can get into the 3 bags/70 lbs each limit.

You’d be suprised how much broccoli seems to help a cold. Most be the vitamin A. Anyway, I can barely think, so I better quit for today.

I’m building an arc. Math majors and/or biblical scholars, please tell me how long a cubit is. I will not be bringing any animals, except for Marie’s two cats. They are both males and fixed, so it’s not part of a plan to populate the world with cats. That would, however be a good scifi movie – Planet of the Cats. Charlton Heston yelling “get your paws off of me you damn furry kittens!” It would sell to the SciFi crowd and folks who think cats are really cute.

It’s still raining, which makes the days go by faster. When I can’t leave the house and I spend all of my time eating, sleeping, or watching TV, it only takes about 6 or 7 hours for a day to pass. I’m not writing right now – I have completely run out of steam on Rumored to Exist. I think I will go back to Summer Rain this weekend, and maybe get the last third close to done by the time I leave for NY for good in March. The difference between the rain in that book and the rain here is that in Indiana, it would pour rain, and then instantly become sunny. I’m pretty sick of the rain now, but if the sun came out in a split-second, I would run around on the wet pavement and smell the earthworms and thunderstorm ozone, and enjoy it more than this 40 days/40 nights shit.

Although I get more positive comments about Rumored, working on Summer Rain is ultimately more satisfying. I can write more per night on SR, especially when I get caught up in dialogue that works well. I can take things slow, and carve out scenes with a lot more visual impact. I also like to build up the characters more. Rumored is fun, but it’s very hit or miss, like writing copy for a newspaper instead of actual prose. But, more people enjoy reading it, and I enjoy reading it, and it will probably manage to sell someday, while Summer Rain will never really be finished. The only distribution methods I see are printing a hundred copies and giving them to my friends, or someone finding the ms long after I’m dead, and publishing it posthumously. Oh well, it’s fun anyway.

I thought about describing this company meeting I attended yesterday, but then I realized there there wasn’t much going on there. It was at the Moore Theatre, where me and Bill Perry saw Henry Rollins perform spoken word on his birthday, 2-13-96. Rollins spoke for so fucking long – it was great, but my bladder was exploding during the third hour. I ran to the bathroom, and it was the worst torture of North American plumbing – the trough. Luckily, this time there was no trough – they removed it and installed a bunch of stalls. After the meeting, there was a bunch of beer and food, and the line for food was very long while the line for beer was negligible. So, I started drinking right away on an empty stomach – hey, it’s free. I didn’t do anything stupid, except not cash in on the free food, and after they bussed us back to the office, I had to sit around for a few hours playing on the web and sobering up.

I’m more into this reuben sandwich than writing, so I better split.