beyond the valley of the unemployed.
journal of a young american in southern california.
may 1st, 2002
uncle darren called to see how i've been doing, told him i'm holding up all right, hadn't found a job yet. he said yeah, it's tough, and asked me where i've been applying. i should have come up with a good lie, but the buffy episode i had on was distracting me, so i blurted out that i hadn't actually been looking. because i've been busy, i said. when i couldn't come up with anything good that i'd been doing, darren said the thing to do is to keep a journal about how i spend my days, so i can keep track of where the time goes. i thought it sounded lame, but he said as a psych major he knows how helpful it is to get an objective look at yourself. so i thought i'd try it, as a joke... i mean, if he knows so much about psych, how come he drives a truck cross-country for tyson chicken?
may 2nd, 2002
slept pretty late, i think, and ate some leftover spaghetti from monday. spent a while looking around the apartment for stamps, but then couldn't find the bills i was suppposed to mail. turns out i'd paid them and sent them out last week, as far as i could figure. then i found an overdue gas bill next to the toilet. drove down magnolia to the post office to buy stamps, but it was already closed for the day. so i went to starbucks, read a paper somebody left around.
may 3rd, 2002
woke up on the couch. stretched and took a walk. stood in line at the rite-aid on riverside with one can of red bull for about 25 minutes while the dumb cashier woman and a customer in a wheelchair flipped through shopping circulars and argued about which kinds of sunglasses were on sale. got seasick from the flourescent lights. gave up, put the red bull back, and stole some candy corn. watched some of the news, but it was too depressing. when will these assholes in the mid-east get their shit together? drank a bunch of tea, ate some echinacea, went to bed early.
may 4th, 2002
fucked up my breakfast omlete because i was all out of pam and i spilled most of the milk onto the counter. ended up making spaghetti and watching trading spaces until mark called about a cookout. barbeque, baby! took the 101 to burbank, got lost trying to find his place, ended up running out of gas and walking like about 1/8 mile to a gas station and back. jesus. found the house once i tracked down my cel phone in a pair of shorts in my back seat. drank tequila and heineken with the boys, dominated this hardcore foosball tournament until my wrists started to hurt. ate three feet of linguica or so, started macking on this hot lisa chick who was totally down with me, and i could tell she was about to ask for my cel number, but then kevin fell off the porch and smashed his face up pretty good. went to get lisa more tequila, but was gone when i got back. probably been dragged away to give somebody a ride home or something. remember eating some funyuns, and both shots of tequila, and something off the grill, i think.
may 5th, 2002
woke up on my own couch, naked and alone. tried to piece together last night, gave up and alphabetized some of my cds. hunted for quarters and drove to the in 'n out burger on ventura to watch people and eat cheeseburgers. went to bed early.
may 6th, 2002
forwarded some funny emails to friends i've lost touch with. figured i should get a haircut if i want to find a job. went to tony's on magnolia, across from the post office. read about medical testing or something in time magazine. counted the glossy photos hanging on the walls, which included kevin arnold's dad and also his grandfather. that guy who was in the big lebowski! love that movie. tony fucked my hair up a bit, so i probably shouldn't fight to hard to find a job anytime soon, since i won't make a good impression.
may 7th, 2002
watched reruns of space ghost and WKRP until the power went out.
may 8th, 2002
vacuumed, for a while. thought about doing laundry. napped on the floor; woke up with carpet prints on the right side of my face. only ate a corn muffin, at about 10 pm. played state of emergency on the playstation until dawn.
may 10th, 2002
yesterday was hot as hell. got ansy, and hungry, but i didn't feel like going out for food so i just ate part of an onion and some caramels. watched a behind the music marathon until it got dark. showered for an hour and called up mark hoping to score a bag, but i couldn't understand what the fuck he was saying, so i hung up. ended up drinking two pots of coffee and wandering through the suburbs, peeking in windows to see what people were watching on tv. bright moon. couldn't get back into my complex because i lost my keys in some rosebush or something, and it was already 3 am. ended up sitting under a streetlight, working on this theory of life interconnecting bubble-bobble, chemical dependence, and the jeffersons. couldn't get ahold of my landlord this morning to get into my goddamn apartment, so i just wandered off towards noho, dozing off in each of the furniture stores on magnolia until the owners would kick me out. ate a bunch of bear claws from yummy donuts. later found my keys in my jacket.
may 11th, 2002
woke up with some kind of meat in my hair. played everquest until mark called to say he was about to come over for x-files with, so i got dressed. but he didn't show, so after x-files i played more everquest.
may 12th, 2002
turns out last night mark had fallen asleep in the hallway of his apartment while gettting dressed. what the fuck is wrong with that kid? lazy bitch. anyway he showed up during dragonball z with a bag and we smoked a fat bowl. watched bill bellamy in def jam's how to be a player and talked about chicks we could call up to get ass. then he got freaked out by this pillsbury commercial and took off. he left the quarter bag behind! hell yeah. so i smoked more, palyed everquest, ate some toast.
may 13th, 2002
drove to the sherman oaks galleria by the 405 to find a shirt and tie that might be good for an interview, but i couldn't find any stores there. just tower records and a jamba juice or something. so i read some zines at tower and picked out 5 new discs, but couldn't pay for them because my card was maxed out. got lost trying to find my car. the galleria is like the machine the aliens built in total recall.
may 14th, 2002
i got high today, then got really, really productive. i love that! i cleaned the kitchen, surfed the web and then wandered around outside trying to figure out how many kinds of trees i could find that i knew the names for. ended up at blockbuster where i rented the total recall dvd, but i left it in the store and didn't realize until i got home. by then it was late.
may 15th, 2002
got high and drove to the guitar center on ventura because mark told me about this hottie who works the door there. i ended up spending about two hours in the keyboard room, playing with dj equipment. that place is so awesome! i'm definitely going to take guitar lessons when i get a job. afterwards i went to mel's for a reuben and "forgot" to pay the check. rear ended some woman on woodman ave. she started bitching at me, but her car looked fine, so i backed up and took off. hid from the cops in one starbucks after another, until i made it home.
may 16th, 2002
woke up feeling depressed, so i drove around and bought some crullers at yummy donuts. ended up sitting in the parking lot listening to this old whitesnake tape, reading some installation manuals for 386 ibm clones that i found in a box by the dumpster. funny stuff. later found a frozen pizza in the fridge, but i couldn't find mark's bag of cheeb i'd been smoking. this sucks.
may 17th, 2002
spent most of the day pacing around the small courtyard of our complex, wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a blindfold, trying to develop practical echo-location skills. eventually my neighbors were yelling down at me so loudly that i couldn't concentrate, so i zapped two tina's burritos and hopped in the shower.
may 18th, 2002
ate some pretzels, drew these elaborate rube goldberg looking illustrations in photoshop, diagramming various ways one might assasinate government figures in public places that involve both a spider monkey and a model of a sailboat. took a nap, then went to bed.
may 20th, 2002
everquest. oh, yesterday i went to the autozone, for some reason. and mark showed up for x-files, but i didn't let him in. that kid is a wastoid, and annoying.
may 21st, 2002
finally went grocery shopping! after i put away everything and ate some hot pockets i was feeling really good about myself. drank three bottles of trader joe's brand wine and woke up under a booth at el pollo loco, covered in what looked like a pool of my own urine but turned out to be guacomole mixed with generic fresca. tried to clean up and apologize, but i scared some children and couldn't feel my hands.
may 22nd, 2002
got a new credit card in the mail! filled up my gas tank, drove around for a while, then filled up again. later i went to ikea to check out midriffs. sexy-as-shit chicas everywhere, but they were all with boyfriends and husbands, shopping. ended up spending a few hours sabotaging the displays, moving trinkets around, putting chairs into showrooms where the totally didn't match. corporate fuckers! i also keyed the urls of porn sites onto luxury cars in the parking lot.
may 24th, 2002
my hard drive crashed, so no more everquest. i needed a fix, though, so eventually i gave up trying to untangle the cords of the playstation controllers and drove to the theatres on van nuys to hit up the arcade. but i forgot my wallet, and didn't have any quarters in my car, so i had to mug this couple that had just finished watching what's his name in that chick movie, about a boy. i figured they had it coming. played timecop for a while. also i mugged some other people.
may 25th, 2002
spent most of the day mugging. ate a few altoids, then puked them right up. i think. these guys started fucking with me, but i flashed them the west-side hand signal and they chilled the fuck out. i'm cool like that. also, slept for a while on top of a bread truck.
may 26th, 2002
mugged old people and drank red bull & bourbon until what i thought was bedtime, but the cops say was really mid-afternoon. woke up in el pollo loca covered in a pool of what i thought was lemonade mixed with pico de gallo, but turned out to be my own urine. ate some chips.
may 27th, 2002
mugged old people and drank... wait. that was yesterday. is today thursday? i might have also done that shit today.
may 28th, 2002
stole a gun and smashed up a green jaguar, played mariokart, and made some calls looking for acid, but it turns out my phone was shut off. so i jacked some rittalin off this freckled kid, hit up rite aid for six bottles of sobe power drinks, and sprinted to the lenscrafters in the fashion square mall to get my pupils dialated. ate five ounces of nutmeg. what i trip! spent a while mugging, but it's not over yet!
may 30th, 2002
woke up behind the counter in a wig shop on hollywood blvd. shot at a guy, stole some jamba juice. my face hurts. i sort of rember climbing a jack in the box last night. looking for their secret recipe, i guess.
may 31st, 2002
can't find my apartment. can't read what i'm writing. june is definitely the month for finding a job, if you ask me.
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