Author: jkonrath

I had the best cheeseburger of my life yesterday. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been sick with some kind of stomach flu. I thought I was almost over it, but it continued on all weekend, and I had a hard time eating anything because of this crippling nausea. And before you say “why didn’t you try some ______?”, go fuck yourself – I tried every single thing known to modern and ancient medicine, plus seven others. It was bad because, if you google stomach flu, you’ll see that there is basically nothing you can do but wait it out, which means if I did pay $800 to see a doctor, he would say “there’s nothing you can do but wait it out”. So it’s been a very rough week. And then yesterday, I felt good enough to actually leave the house, drive to Safeway for another 60 gallons of Gatorade, and stop at McDonald’s on the way home.

And I know you’re saying “why the fuck would you go to McDonald’s? [Insert knee-jerk screed on how evil fast food is]” Well, it’s funny that I can be so nauseous that an ounce of applesauce would make me retch, but a hamburger is fine, but it’s true. So after not eating anything more than bananas and jello for a week, I had two cheeseburgers, and they were absolutely THE. BEST. EVER. The ketchup tasted like an exotic spice ten times more expensive than plutonium, and I couldn’t believe meat and onions could taste so good. So I’m back on solids, albeit at much smaller capacities, and I’m ten pounds lighter, but I’m sure that will be back in a week.

Laying in bed or on the couch for a week has been strange, only in that there are times I don’t exactly know where I am. Andrea mentioned in her journal that she finds it odd that I am not in New York instead of Denver, and sometimes I feel the same way. I get these weird bits of locational nostalgia, because I haven’t settled in here yet. Like I was sitting in bed the other day with the windows open and a nice breeze blowing in (despite the fact that our floor to ceiling windows only open like four inches. REMEMBER THE CHILDREN!) Anyway, I just got this very distinct recollection of when I lived in Colonial Crest, after Andrew left, when I had the place to myself and used to sit in bed, listening to Brian Eno, looking out the window at the clone building across the parking lot, thinking about writing but never doing anything. I just remembered I published a story about this in issue 10 of the zine.

There are also these odd, surreal moments that happen when I’m sitting at the computer with this huge parking lot in the background. Yesterday it was sunny and beautiful, and then two minutes later, it was dark as night, and giant stormclouds were tearing across the sky. Because of the altitude, clouds that are at like 6,000 feet for those of you in the plains states are at about twelve feet here, and it gives this eerie landscape, like the sky is about to open up and alien ships will jump out. Instead, it poured rain like I hadn’t seen in ages. It rained in New York, but it always got diffused a bit by the buildings, and there was never a wide open area where you could see so much of it at once. (In Seattle it rained a lot, but you’re between two mountain ranges, so it’s very broken up, and there was like one thunderstorm there in the four years I lived there.) I tried to take a few pictures of this, but they probably look like shit.

Okay, I need to go work on other shit now.

For a person who has written extensively about vomit in the past, it may be surprising that I’m not a big fan. I’ve been down with a flu or maybe some food poisoning for the last few days, and it hasn’t been pleasant. I won’t go into any specifics, but I think the worst part about this particular downtime has been that I didn’t have any TV, so I couldn’t sit in bed and flip through channels. Okay, the constant nausea was far worse, but if I had a good distraction, maybe that would have helped. Anyway, the fever and stomach stuff is done, but now I haven’t eaten in days, and I can’t just go to Little Caesar’s and get a bunch of crazy bread and $5 pizzas. I’m trying to get past the applesauce level, maybe to something with protein. As we speak, I am eating one of those frozen microwave pretzels, since it’s pretty much all bread, and that’s working okay.

I’m starting to get a little ancy about the land. One of the magazines I read ten times yesterday was a Popular Science, and all of the tiny ads in the back half is all of the stuff I wish I could teleport down there: plows, tillers, steel buildings, log cabin kits, well drilling machines, the magic “make your lawn look like a golf course” grass plugs. I don’t know how many trees or bags of gravel will fit in the back of the Subaru, or if I can get one of those Farm and Fleet 8×10 metal sheds in there, but I want to try. It’s also good to have a Denver address, because if I ordered some plants or whatever, I could have them shipped here, and then drive them down. You can’t do that in your carryon on a NY->CO flight. (My land does not have a street address, and even if UPS or RHL or whatever would drive near there, I would get a bunch of baby trees dropped off and not find out about it for months.)

As an aside, Popular Science is the biggest piece of shit this side of Fader magazine. It’s filled with stuff that doesn’t exist, but makes it sound like by the time you get to your car and drive to the store, it will be waiting for you. But of course, it never will. They have this ha-ha funny thing on the last page that shows covers and articles of the magazine from years ago, so you can get a laugh out of the mag saying in 1967 how everyone will have a jetpack and a robot butler by 1974. Well you don’t have to do much math to determine that the 200 mph hybrid hydrogen car on the cover of this issue is going to look like a huge joke five years from now, let alone 25. I also hate their “how-to” section, which on the cover says something like “Make your car controlled by a computer! Instructions on p.78!” So I’m expecting actual step-by-step instructions on how to do this. And when you turn to page 78, and step one is “go online and buy this computer kit for $2700.”

So why do I subscribe? I bought a bunch of subscriptions for my nephew’s school PTA. It was either Popular Science or Elle. Sarah was smarter: she bought a bunch of food and told my nephew to keep it. Another tip: if you ever do subscribe to Popular Science, give them a fake email address. Or give them president@whitehouse.gov. Because you will never, ever get off of their spam list.

I thought today would be the perfect day to go to a baseball game, but the Rockies are coming back from Shea, so no game today, and Friday and Saturday are night games. I’m really itching for a good day game so I can go get $4 bleacher seats and work on a nice sunburn. We have tickets for the Yankees game on 6/19, and it’s funny how heavily they push those three games. I don’t expect much of a game there, but it is commemorative desk item night, as if my desk doesn’t already have enough shit on it.

First things first – I have a story in an upcoming anthology by Luca Pierro and Black Arrow Press. The book is called Santi: Lives of Modern Saints and will be out around the end of the year. Luca has made a trailer for the book on YouTube, and it’s pretty damn good. It’s here. It also has John Sheppard and Tim Gager in it, along with a few dozen writers I don’t know. So stay tuned for more details.

On Friday, I picked up Sarah from the airport (always a disconcerting drive, since you get to the airport exit on I-70 with only seconds to spare because of gridlock – a long forgotten concept to me – and then you realize that there’s this 87-mile long airport service road, and even though you’re on airport drive, you’re closer to the St. Louis Arch than you are the terminal.) Anyway we stopped in Stapleton on the way back to go to Target (how did I live for eight years with no Target and no car?) and we stopped at this place, I don’t remember the name, but it’s called Outdoor World or something. We always saw it from the highway, and I was curious what it was like inside.

Outdoor World (or whatever) was basically like Ted Nugent’s house times ten, minus the guitars. It was a giant aircraft hanger with a Noah’s Ark full of dead stuffed animals, heads on walls, and a fish tank bigger than our apartment with giant fish inside that must have weighed 50 pounds each. The general decor inside was in the “I voted for George Bush twice, and I’ve got more guns than you”. And there was every conceivable outdoor accessory you could imagine inside.

Now, I’m not trying to take a piss on people who hunt or fish; it’s just that after so much time in a giant metropolis, it’s very different to see an entire display case full of kits to make beef jerky from moose entrails. And while some people might be put off by this sort of thing, it absolutely fascinates me. I had to make a complete lap of the place (which took like an hour and a half) and look at all of the gadgets and toys and gizmos for hikers, climbers, hunters, campers, and fishers. And it was difficult only in that I saw about 16 million dollars of stuff I immediately wanted to buy, throw in the back of the Subaru, and drive down to my land. I’m not much of a camper, but after about $20,000 in purchases, I’d damn well try.

One thing that interested both of us was all of the various hiking and backpacking stuff. Colorado is like backpacking central, and we’re within an hour of at least a hundred good hikes, ranging from absolutely simple to Mount Rainier impossible. I absolutely hate the gym, even though I have one that’s free just three floors below me. The only exercise I’ve ever liked is utilitarian. When I lived at Colonial Crest and had to walk everywhere, I was in the best shape ever. Running on a treadmill does nothing for me, no matter how many songs I have on my iPod. So the thought of getting out on a Saturday and walking around a lake or a mountain or something interests me a lot more than staring at the LED hill on a treadmill. We did not make any huge purchases in this area other than a pair of Gatorback water backpack things, because they were on sale and cheap, and looked cool.

(The not buying anything was important, because if you read any hiking or backpacking book or guide, they tell you that you basically have to buy $7,000 of shit before you leave the house. I.e. you shouldn’t wear jeans; your tennis shoes are wrong; your coat won’t work; no cotton t-shirts, and so on. I didn’t want to buy anything until I could determine that I would ever go hiking more than twice in my life. So blue jeans and tennis shoes, for now.)

After a bit of homework on the web, we packed up on Saturday morning and headed for Lake Dillon, which is about an hour fifteen west of Denver, and according to some web site, has a pretty basic hiking trail. The weather was perfect, and it was a pretty decent drive. As we got west, we really hit the Rocky Mountains, and our altitude doubled in a half-hour or so. Everything became switchback roads and those truck runoff ramps full of sand. It was absolutely striking how much the terrain changed in a matter of a few minutes outside of town.

We got to Lake Dillon, which is a reservoir made when the river was dammed a few years back. Now it’s a ski town and has a bunch of outlet stores, but it’s still a very small little dot on the map. We drove around a bit, and realized… we had no idea where the trailhead was. The instructions I found on the web basically said “drive down this street, you’ll see it” and we didn’t. Eventually we found a paved path that went around the lake, so we parked there and started walking.

And here’s the stupid part. We walked maybe 100 feet before realizing it would be absolutely impossible. It was paved, it was a nice view, but it was about 20 out, and we were dressed for weather in the 50s and 60s. Also, there was this 40-mph wind whipping in over the lake that made it feel more like zero. And this wasn’t a trail – it was a sidewalk. (After more research when we got home, I think we totally missed the actual trails.) We got back in the car, and spent some time looking at all of the weird little vacation homes built into the sides of hills. We then headed back, but stopped in Idaho Springs for lunch, at this pretty incredible pizza place (and I can’t remember the name). The city there looked like Northern Exposure’s town; it used to be a gold rush town a hundred fifty some years ago. Now it’s a strip of strange little shops, and the high school team is called The Golddiggers. Odd.

Anyway, we went to Tattered Cover, Denver’s cool bookstore (Think Elliot Bay in Seattle, Powell’s in Portland, the former Morgenstern’s in B’ton) and bought a bunch of books about places to hike and crap to see around here. So plenty to do next weekend, provided it isn’t like the weather today, which is pitch black and pouring rain.

I’ve said it a million times before, but smell has to be my most sensitive sense; some things always bring back the strangest memories. This morning, I was eating a bunch of red grapes while typing away at the computer, and I noticed after a while that they had a very slight sulfurous smell to them. Maybe it’s something with this region’s grapes, maybe I should wash my fruit. But the smell immediately brought me back to Treasure Island, Florida. The water there, especially the water they used for sprinkler systems, had the same sort of sulfery smell to it. It wasn’t overpowering, like driving through Gary, Indiana in the 70s, but it was just enough to remind you that you weren’t showering in Evian. So that smell, the grapes, brought me immediately back to my first trip in 2001, and my return in 2004, as if I boarded a magic DeLorean and hit the gas pedal to 88 miles an hour.

Denver’s got a pretty high allergy situation. I had no problems with allergies (other than aspirin) since junior high, after a childhood of tests and shots and pills. New York would give me about four days a year of allergy problems, but that was largely exacerbated by the fact that New York has the shittiest air quality in the country. I didn’t expect much here, but got completely slammed with allergies this week. It’s pretty dry, which ups the pollen count, and the fact that the air is thinner from the altitude makes respiratory-based allergies even more a pain in the ass. I have no Proventil, and haven’t been to an allergist in ages, so I went on a hunt for Primatene Mist today. Aside from the fact that the tree-huggers are trying to ban the stuff, there’s currently a nationwide shortage. I lucked out and found a store brand at a Walgreen’s in Stapleton. (And yes Larry, that town’s name does always remind me of a certain cheerleader that had a sex tape scandal an eon ago.) Anyway, I got the inhaler, gave it a couple of blasts, and the smell and taste and weird feeling of inhaling cold, dense adrenaline in an alcohol suspension reminded me of when I was ten, and every time since then I had an allergic reaction to crabgrass or tumbleweed or lawn clippings and had to hit the pipe.

In another fit of nostalgia, I bought the aforementioned grapes at a King Sooper, which is a regional grocery chain. We got a gift card to them from our apartment broker for some reason (imagine that, New Yorkers – we didn’t have to pay 17 months of rent in advance in cash to a broker, on top of deposits – we paid zero and got $50 of free food) and so we went for the first time the other night. I immediately found out that King Soopers is really Kroger. As we wandered the aisles, we found all of the Kroger and Big K store brands, some unchanged since 20 or 30 years before. I practically grew up in Kroger, and my parents only bought store brand, so this was pretty much like going back to the kitchen of my childhood home. I was very happy to find I could once again shop at Safeway, but now I’m going to have to trade off between the two or something.

The great book I pledged to finish this summer still hasn’t had word one added to it since the move. I have been busy, writing a short story for the zine, and then writing another story for someone else’s anthology. There’s also the matter of learning Ruby on Rails and how to write stuff using Google Maps, for another project for someone else. I still can’t believe how my days vanish so much faster than when I was at the helm of a desk with a salary job.

That said, I’ve got two short stories in first draft mode, and want to get them done eventually.

Some announcements about the zine that you have probably heard elsewhere: it is now located at ParagraphLine.com. That just points to the same dir on rumored, but looks nicer and simpler. Second, I redesigned the site. Hopefully it looks more modern or whatever. And third is that I’m starting to take submissions for #12. The theme is “weird, paranoid, insane”. I’m looking for 2000-6000 word stories that fit the theme and the rest of the general guidelines. Deadline: July 1.

(If you submit a story shorter than 2000 words, even though I’ve mentioned at least six times, your story will be reprinted in our sister publication _I Am a Stupid Fucking Idiot Who Can’t Follow Directions_.)

It’s too nice out to be writing in here. I think I’m going to try taking my bike out for a few laps of the parking lot across the street. (Related: yesterday, I saw some idiot on a rice-rocket with another friend, and he was whipping around the lot real fast and making sudden turns, and he was headed right for a busy street and started to turn hard, and WHAM, right on his ass, and his plastic motorcycle slid into the road. I am absolutely amazed that a) he wasn’t scraped up; b) his bike wasn’t completely fucked, and c) that a car on said busy street didn’t run over either him or the bike.)

My new “office” (i.e. our second bedroom, where my computers, stereo, and PlayStations live) has a wall-to-ceiling window facing north-northeast, and I’ve chosen to put my computer desk in front of it, so now I’m looking off to the horizon as I work. There’s a huge row of townhouse/lofts being built to my left, and as the sun creeps up, they turn different colors of orange and red. There’s a parking lot directly in front of me, and it’s almost always empty, except for the occasional heavy equipment being used as the lofts are being built. It’s also completely held hostage and repriced at insane rates for baseball games, as is all parking in this area. Monday was opening day, and spots were $40; yesterday was game two of the series against Arizona, and it was only $10. It’s fun to watch people tailgate and fight over parking from my safe little enclosure. It’s far more interesting than looking at an off-white wall, anyway.

If you’re interested, here is where I am. See that half block of nothing that’s northwest of the pointer? That’s where my building is now. My window is on Park, between Market and Larimer. Our apartment is on the northeast corner, which means the other window in my corner office looks out to the parking lot at Park and Larimer. It looks like, from the satellite photo, that they completely tore down the old tire factory before they built this, which makes sense. They did keep a sign from it to put in the lobby downstairs, to add that shopping mall historical marker touch.

I drove around yesterday, trying to find a Long John Silver’s, because I keep seeing commercials and it’s been like five years since I’ve been to one. It’s weird how my default location in any city is always where I first saw it. When I moved to Seattle, I stayed with Bill in Mountlake Terrace for a few weeks. After I moved to Pil l Hill, I always found myself driving back north to the mall at Lynwood, or the movie theaters back near where Bill used to live. In New York, I worked in Times Square for a while, and always ended up going back there to go to movies or to eat. And now, we stayed in Stapleton for our first week here, and I keep heading out there to eat lunch or wash the car or whatever. I think part of it is ease of parking and familiar chain restaurants or something, I don’t know. But it’s an odd migratory pattern.

Since I’m always on the same computer, I decided to switch mail clients. I have been using the same mail reader for 15 years now: the emacs editor plus the VM package, which lets you read email in the editor. It’s a pretty geek way to do things, but I always liked it because it stored my mail in a very non-proprietary way, and it let me read my mail from work or home easily, including my old saved mail. But it didn’t do some things, like it didn’t handle attachments well, or let me send attachments, and links were not hot in email messages. Also, spam processing has become a nightmare. So I switched to Apple’s Mail.app, which is pretty cool sofar. It’s very integrated into the other Mac stuff, especially the address book, which I like a lot. The spam control stuff is also good, and you can train it to pick up on what is and is not junk. Importing my old mail was not a huge pain in the ass, although I really need to do some housekeeping. Another nice feature is that it integrates spotlight, so searching is really great. Anyway, ask me again in a week if I still love the thing or not.

I just saw Rumored to Exist listed on eBay in the nonfiction books section, with a buy it now price the same as a new copy on Amazon. I’m guessing it’s either robots or really stupid people in third-world countries that are doing shit like this.