i figured that after a night of taking care of scott's drunk ass and another long night of whoring it in the place that will only be referred to as "hell"…i deserve a night of my own at the bar. lucky for me, chris called and wanted to meet me up at cahoots for beer and killing shit. we hung out, drank a lot, and killed an inordinate amount of digital deer. conversation topics covered everything from the coming tour to billy idol and everything between. "you shoulda been there" is an understatement.

now i'm sitting at home, drinking gatorade, hanging out with my cat on my lap, giving the march mix a test listen. so far, so good.

i've realized that i've lost patience with everyone i work with. this is bad mainly because i've only been back for about a week and a half. everytime they talk to me, i geet all grumbly and walk off. splendid. typical brian way of dealing with idiots.

i mean…i know it's only rock and roll. but…i like it.

so i've decided to start doing a monthly mix cd again. i figure, now that i'm back at the old job, printing covers is a snap. and free. i've already started work on the one for march. it's turning out to be a gloves off rockfest. keep your eyes peeled for details.

yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day, which is quite rare for this time of year. today…snow. this exemplifies why those beautiful days are so rare…

but…snow is beautiful too. right?

i officially hate the bastards at nbc. first they get me addicted to scrubs. when i finally come to grips with the fact that i work past when it's on, i set the vcr to tape it. well…the fuckers trumped me. they put that new show, that god damn watching ellie, in scrubs spot without telling me. you'd think the fuckers could have sent a memo. you know "hey, brian…we're moving scrubs to 9:30 so we can play this hip new show that we won't let run past 4 episodes because it sucks." thanks, assholes. now i have a tape of the pilot for watching ellie. splendid.

bastards. you won't be able to pull that shit on me next week…hell no. i'm checking tvguide.com before i program anything. ha!

damn snow.

tour looks like it's shaping up. it's a wonder what a booking agent can do for a few lazy guys. talk of the tour sparked an interesting conversation:

me: damn…i'm gonna blow a lot of money on booze.
ben: no you won't…"drink tickets."
me: oh yeah…i forgot. that's why we're going on tour. free drinks.
ben: hahaha
me: you think i'm kidding, don't you?

let me just say…i'm not kidding. not by a damn sight.

anyway…matt and i went out for coffee and discussed all the usual topics, plus a few hundred more. we went to target. we bought batteries and cd-rs. now the coffee is starting to burn it's loving hole in my stomach, making it pretty imperative that i eat soon.

today was a beautiful day. i spent the majority of it riding around in the car, blasting the sultans at right around "ear bleed" levels. yeah…and it's supposed to snow tomorrow. mother nature seriously needs to work on her image. i'm thinking she's hovering right around "crack whore" these days. not a good thing.

i could think of a million better ways to be spending a saturday than sitting at work. a million. hell…most of them would include not even being awake yet. ahhh…to live the life of an unemployed drain on society…

my main beef with this job is that they have completely screwed my sleeping schedule. i work in the evenings every day except saturday, when i have to be in this joint at the brain-numbing hour of 9am. needless to say, i'm pretty tired.

and hopped up on an insane amount of coffee.

speaking of coffee…it seems like they were training a new guy at the coffeeshop, this morning. it took forever to make my mocha, mainly because the guy had two of the ever so hard to make "iced cappucino" lined up in front of my l'il order. not that i'm complaining…i just hung out and shot the breeze with tara. i guess my only real complaint is that when i got into the car and took that all important first sip of coffee…there was a total separation of steamed milk and the good stuff (also known as the espresso and chocolate). stir, man…stir! better luck next time, chief.

problem: i have once again finished all the work in my department. this is a problem since it is only noon o'clock. my ass still has to sit in this joint for five hours. five long hours where i have to pretend like i'm doing something. this isn't gonna be easy…

the most pathetic thing about the preceding paragraph is that it takes more effort to pretend like i'm doing work so that i can slack off than it actually does to go find some other work. semantics.

but then again…that's just the way life goes, sometimes.

so you're high right now? what brought that about?
now? yes. definitely. our pipe that we affectionately call dr. grabow brought it. but dr. grabow is currently broken, which makes me a little sad.
so you had to improvise?
well, see brian… not to get all high-talk on you, but… i had to remove the stem of old dr. grabow (he's actually an old wooden tobacco pipe, those glass things frighten me) because he was so clogged with resin. bobby, my neighbor with gold teeth, said he'll bring over some pipe cleaners and clean it for us. we don't have pipe cleaners
anyway, point being: you can still smoke grabow without his stem.

do you think it's a good thing that i have my favorite chinese restaurant in town on speed dial on the celly?
why on your celly and not on the ground line?
my ground line's speed dial is archaic, making it more of a nuisance.
and whatever, let's not talk about chinese food… let's talk about you calling your cell phone a "celly." how zack morris of you. have you seen him on NYPD blue? brilliant.
i was trying to be "hip" for about 30 seconds. my normal terminology is "ball and chain" or "handy."
normal to an ape.
moving right along…
just kidding.

what's the most fun you've ever had with a monkey?
my old roommate works at the city zoo and the zoo area of busch gardens. so, she's played with monkeys. she never let me play with the monkeys though, so actually — the whole monkey thing is a sore spot for me. i don't like to talk about it.
ironically, this same roommate also claimed she was into beastiality one evening when drunk. hm.
i've always wanted a monkey to comb my hair, though…

knowing bits and pieces of your past, how long should we expect to wait before you write your tell-all autobiography entitled "a girl and her retarded lovers"?
hahahaha! i like that title! very fitting. um, i think i have to wait for this bridget jones fan-wave to die down first. you know, lay low… plus, someone will probably want to sue me … again.
he backed off though, right?
yah, i guess i'm not as cowardly as i always think i am. he threatened and threatened, you know "defamation of character" and all that, but i was like "deny anything i've said, deny it!" cause i knew everything i wrote about him was true.
so yah, he tried to sue his school too…right before he threatened me. he didn't finish his master's thesis so they weren't going to let him graduate. he threatened with a lawsuit and they just gave it to him. the education system is so fabulous these days.

so how's the unicorn collection going?
unicorns! augh, you know this isn't even cool in an uncool sort of way but, i love unicorns. i think they're just the greatest. since i was little i've always loved unicorns, and of course its cousin, pegasus… i still have a lot of my old unicorn collection back at my parents house in atlanta. i started collecting on my own again a few years ago too. It's magical. unicorns are so magical. when i was a kid i used to imagine that the whole world was made of chef boyardee beef ravioli and unicorns. a year ago or so my friend simon and i were at a pizza place and he said he knew of this really large sattellite dish, on a freeway that goes to pennsylvania, that he could swipe for me. it's has like a 12 foot diameter, but he insists that he can manage it. he's living in pennsylvania again now, and promises me that the unicorn will still be mine.
what the hell does a satellite dish have to do with a unicorn?
oh, absolutely nothing. i think that it's a cover, like it transmits signals to alien spacecraft.

what's the funniest nickname you have ever come up with for someone?
um, i guess "african nugget"?
was there any reasoning behind that?
well, he was a czech dishwasher at a restaurant i worked at — he really liked chuck berry and cured salmon. sometimes dumb things just sort of tumble out of my mouth, and one day "african nugget" was one of those things. and he liked it. so we stuck with it.

what are three things the world should know about jackie carlson when she's stoned, for their own safety?
1. these days i've been really worried that my minor weight gain is going to turn into a major one. like, no matter what i eat or don't eat, or how much i exercise, i will just keep getting bigger and bigger. and the doctor's won't know what to do. and it'll be some new crazy disease called "the carlson" or something horrible. and i'll end up becoming the typhoid mary of our generation. i think that is my worst fear.
2. only come over to my house if you're ready for me to go "look at my kitties" every 5 seconds cause i think they're doing something really great, like sniffing carpet.
3. you're better off knowing me when i'm high.

[jackie posts semi-regularly to the asian book of wisdom, and likes to be referred to by the name of one of her cats. to the best of my knowledge, she is the first person to answer seven questions in any sort of altered state of being.]

just to fill up space and provide subtle clues as to my mood, as of late…here's the tracklist for the mix cd i made over the weekend:

february 2002: a musical retrospective
pigs on the wing (part 1) – pink floyd
i am trying to break your heart – wilco
like spinning plates (live) – radiohead
needle in the hay – elliot smith
sweet and low – fugazi
quit – hey mercedes
superstitions in travel – elliott
pigs (three different ones) – pink floyd
open all night – son volt
turnip farm – dinosaur jr.
how i made my millions – radiohead
the missing piece – faraquet
wild horses – the stones
reservations – wilco
pigs on the wing (part 2) – pink floyd

yeah…that should bring you up to speed…

friday evening. i'm really hating this "working on friday and saturday" business. i yearn for the days where i just had to pack it in and truck my ass into work on sunday morning. those were the days…

so there were a bunch of ladies in earlier. they had these huge hats on. they were insane. i was seriously thinking it was derby day or something, and no one had told me. really. big hats.

i'm digging for material, these days…i really must be. i'm talking about big hats.

but then again…the big hats are probably way more interesting than the endless tick tock of seconds clicking their way through my life. or the petty dramas. or my recurring insecurities concerning just about everything.

yeah…where the hell is "hook guy" when i really need him?

whew. i tell ya what…i had some crazyass dreams, last night. i don't know if it was all one long dream or if it was a bunch of insanity run together, but i'm gonna make my best attempt at reasoning it out…

it seems that scott and i were looking for a new apartment. i think we had a girl with us that may or may not have been dating me. we found this really big spread somewhere, and we were looking at it. i guess the prior occupants were the guys from the casket lottery, because they were all there. we wanted to check out the bathroom, but heard nate senior in there taking a shower and singing something. there was a lot of noise coming from downstairs, so we went to check it out. on the way down, one of the neighbors told us that lenny kravitz lived down there, but he's a cool guy, so don't worry about it.

well we get all the way downstairs and we hear what sounds like a lenny kravitz version of body count. from what we were to understand, lenny was starting a straight-edge hardcore band, complete with bandannas. yeah. weird.

and at some point, i was on letterman and there was a black woman breast feeding a child. then she looked at me and said it was my child, and that i would have to breast feed it. i said to her "baby…i don't lactate."

i seriously hope none of this makes sense to any of you.

i was walking around the house, minding my own business, singing "the gambler" by kenny rogers. who knew this would lead to a strange confrontation with my roommate?

me (singing "the gambler"): there'll be time enough for countin'…
scott: what are you singing?
me: "the gambler," man…kenny rogers.
scott: you're gay.
me: yeah? well…your face is gay.

yeah…scott and i aren't always the best at witty comebacks.

work was stupid. i ended up getting all the computer services work done today, leaving me with nothing to do for the last two hours that i was there. oops. so i worked on a cover for a mix cd i made over the weekend. nothing better than doing personal shit on company time.

and now i'm sitting around eating some cheesy potato, chicken, and broccoli soup. yum.

and life…she is not interesting at all…

a few months ago, sebastian and i were joking and decided we were going to start calling people "chief" and "champ." we laughed and laughed about it, but the funny thing is…we put it into practical application. little by little, people around us started picking up on it and using it. why not, right? it's funny.

well the funniest thing happened, yesterday. i opened up a copy of entertainment weekly and starng me in the face on their "hot list" is "calling people 'chief'." i was astonished. after all that work, sebastian and i have finally gotten our due. even if it's not by name.

and yes, jimmy olsen…we are totally stealing your word. if you want to do something about it, you little redheaded punk…bring it on.

yesterday was a classic high drama day for me. i really don't know how certain things are going to end up, but…oh well. the only thing you can do is sit and wait. it's always a pain in the ass when someone thinks they know the complete story when they don't and they start shooting pretty intense accusations in your direction. that's never what you'd call "a good thing."

today is my last day off, this week, so i plan on doing as much nothing as possible. i really don't want to completely hate my job before i'm through with an entire week. that would be a mess. and i have enough messes i'm dealing with, at this point.

time for me to shut the hell up and eat my pop-tarts.