8/20/23 > 5tarted 2 edit Y's book, now that all that [PANK] non5ense is finally behind us. most of the 1st part of the book is in a raw gournel 4mat, so perhaps wheel 5tart writing like that hear, dear Inurnet, treat this az a journihilistic diary, specially 5in¢e we finished 2-byte βeta ei8ht ½ Loops, witch weave bin method acting 4... tho when we think of the word «format» we 5till think «4mat», will be hard habit 2 break. last post we stopped writing in 1st person plural, but still used eYɘ in loo of i. mayB wei'll go all the weighway + + use conventional punctuation/5pelling? how i'm writing now is more or less how Y writes, at least in the journal parts. the excerpt in Sleepingfish was not a journal entry but a sorta story w/in the story. ~6 cups of coffee. mixed in w/ the core journal entries Y documents everything she ingests, not sure why, she doesn't mention needing to lose weight, i think it's just she's a compulsive chronicler like usme. got me 2 thinking i shd keep track of what i eat here, like i did in february + @ other times, along w/ barometric pressure, exercise + other factors effecting my menieres, tho maybe not barometric pressure as there's nothing i can do about that. might sound boring, listing out food/drink intake, but think about how weird that is, that we physically put things in our body + absorb them + they become what we are, fuel our fingers to type? everything else is meta-physical sensory input. we've effectively cut down drinking this summer (i'd cross out the we, but the we now means my bedder-½ + i + maybe i'll just start referring to my bedder-½ as J so i don't have to cmd+c/cmd+v the ½ every time (since Dreamweaver doesn't automatically convert 1/2 to a fraction), that's how Y rolls, refers to ppl by 1st initial)), now to the point where i only have 0-3 drinks a week + no more than 2 in 1 night (at least that's the goal). 2 saturdays ago we had bbq dinner guests over + i had 3 drinks (a beer, a mezcal/kombucha drink + a fernet/soda) + boy did i pay the price... when i don't drink for a while, just 2 drinks will make me hate life the next day, triggering a vestibular migraine + magnifying menieres FX 10-fold. but even if i go for weeks without drinking i still have vertigo, tinnitus + am still 100% deaf in my right ear, so have to start ruling other things out. this past week or 2 we've had ice cream or chocolate or the salted caramel apple pie that L brought over, so want to cut that out next to see if changes anything, no sugar. i've cut down on salt, but not sure i'd be able to go the extreme of no salt (which is what doctors say to do), we're live-to-eaters, not eat-to-livers. 5-6 fish tacos + 3 tostadas w/ guacamole, etc... usually when i say tacos (which we eat more than anything else), that includes cheese, greens + of course salsa + guac made fresh + always corn tortillas. shot of mezcal w/ sum «phony negroni» bitters + lime. the other thing Y does (B-sides inserting her food intake like that) is talk about what she's reading or watching, usually as relates to her personal life. we watched the John Wilson vacuum cleaner episode during dinner. i think it's actually called «how to play the game» + is supposed to be about sports appreciation, but as usual the trajectory leads him down some other random rabbit hole, in this case a retro vacuum cleaner convention, interesting in light of our thriver meme/selfish machine theory (that man-made objects are using humans to propagate them) that seems to be at the heart of the last 2 books i've written Adobe InDesign has made me write (+ i haven't gotten it out of my system yet, or rather the selfish machine meme isn't through using me). how weird is it that there's a sub-culture of people (mostly men) that collect antique vacuum cleaners + get together to talk about it? not for practical use, but just to covet + collect. + (spoiler alert) interesting that Wilson would use this as his coming out episode, something i started to suspect, especially in the last "how to work out" episode. or rather, since Wilson narrates in 2nd person, you/i also came out. also interesting (in light of man-made objects using humuns to do their bidding) is the idea of the haunted house... a few nights ago we started to watch The Haunting (1963), witch was awful but we were fascinated by the house + the idea that people think a house can be «haunted» (also on our mind since moving into this haunted cancer castle). also watched the Japanese movie House (1977) with jaw dropped the entire time, unable to believe what we were seeing, 1 of the most what-the-fuck movies ever. if humans were to send a capsule into space for aliens to find, they should include House + maybe also Spinal Tap + John Wilson's How To series. maybe WTF shd be a genre? seems Netflix or whoever has determined «cerebral» is our primary genre, but if there was a WTF genre that would probably be more apt + by «we» i still mean my bedder-½ + i... after 27 yrs of marriage we have the same opinions about most everything + always watch movies together + she is travelling we have to coordinate to make sure 1 of us doesn't watch something the other hasn't watched. other movies we've watched recently: Blood Simple (been a while since we'd seen it) +Disciple, indian movie w/ all-too-familiar theme about how it sucks to be true to your art (in this case classical singing) when laughable crap becomes popular. oh, + 30-40 minutes of weights/strength training + for the record, i weigh 167. wouldn't hurt to lose a few pounds, or at least get rid of this bloated water weight feeling, which i suspect is at the root of my menieres. maybe i shd just take a diuretic or get that surgery, but 1st want 2 see if i can fix that inner ear au natural.

8/21
slept ok, 7 hrs waking up 2-3 times. ½ an Absolute everything bagel. a couple handfulls of blueberries. 5-6 cups of coffee (speaking of diuretic... + yes, i have tried quitting coffee but it didn't help... tho wouldn't hurt to cut it down some). 40 minutes of swimming. probably a more than a few handfuls of peanuts (½-salted), we're always eating nuts. continuing to edit Y's book. we're on page 50 of 250 but it's hard to quantify my progress, when i started it was 350 pgs (granted 75 of those 100 pgs i cut from the beginning). there's some interesting + unique phrasing that is not always grammatically correct (the original was written in Chinese, so in effect it's a translation), it's a fine line to have it be raw + authentic (purposely leaving some typos), but also readable. it's not something i can ask The Gotham Grammarian for help with b/c it wd drive her crazy.

for the 2nd time as Cal A. Mari, i'm feeling perhaps too heavy-handed like Gordon Lish? + to think PANK was gonna publish it as is, not a single edit. i'm probably the least qualified person to be editing it, not just cuz i've nvr taken a grammar or writing class, but as a humun i'm the opposite of Y in every respect. there's some graphic parts where i feel like a male gynecologist (which always strikes me as weird, that a guy would choose that as a profession) + most of the interpersonal communications take place via texting, something i loathe (tho i enjoy the misinterpretations auto-correct features often come up with). nevertheless, at it's core it's a brutally honest, touching love story that most anyone should be able to relate to. stir fry w/ seitan, oyster mushrooms, red peppers, garlic, gai lan leaves, spinach, gingko nuts, peanuts, scallions, cilantro, mint + chili oil, not too salty (a little fish sauce + soy sauce) + white rice (1 of the best things about our newish digs in the haunted cancer castle is that we're near an H-mart). it's also all about moderation + portion size... gonna try to generally eat less at dinner + a bit more during the day to not have such metabolic swings. watched S2E3 of Winning Time + then started to rewatch the Magic & Bird documentary. took a magnesium before bed, oh, i've been trying melatonin for the past few weeks but stopped a few nights ago b/c it didn't seem to be doing much besides make me groggier.

8/22
5:00: slept good, 7 hrs, woke up twice. tinnitus not too bad, a little dizzy/groggy. 4-5 cups of coffee. (gna try to least a bit less every day). ran the short ~4 mile loop around central park, no energy + a bit gimpy from doing weights 2 days ago + i knew we'd be walking later. bowl of granola w/ blueberries + soy milk. 166.4 lbs. 2 handfulls of peanuts. 1 handful of thai-spiced almonds. walked up to 125th to meet my bedder-½ then further up past 140th to ROKC, 7 oysters, 2 "deviled egg + egg + egg" (uni + caviar) + ramen w/ uni + salmon eggs + a Mexican firing squad (mezcal, pomegranate, bitters, etc.) mixed by master mixologist Kodai (who used to tend bar @ Angel Share). walked back along Riverside, 4.2 miles RT.

8/23
slept good, 7 hrs, woke up briefly twice. feel same as yesterday. maybe i can hear a muffled 25% w/ my right ear (as opposed to 0%) but hard to tell. there's online tests that are more quantitative but U have to give a working phone # + then they call u trying to sell you hearing aids. down to 1 copy of Ohle' The Blast so formatted it for POD, had to futz around a bit to get it to spec. 4 cups of coffee. bowl of granola w/ blueberries + soy milk. handful of peanuts. often when i'm reading a book + i see a typo or something worded strangely i wonder if the editor noticed + intentionally left it that way. there are many such instances in this book. when i was a kid + used to do yardwork for neighbors + was mowing a lawn or trimming a hedge + saw a weed i used to think if i picked it they'd never notice, but if i didn't pick it, they'd notice... is this a catch 22? + why 22 + not 23? the novel was actually originally called catch-18 before he changed it... would the saying + book be popular if he'd stuck w/ 18? on page 100 of Y's book... hard to quantify progress, now the total pg count is 242 + i'm jumping around a lot + when i get to the end i'll probably go back to the beginning + undo some edits. 45 minutes on stationary bike. 166.2 lbs, my weight is more stable, in the past i could swing upwards of 5+ lbs in a day. 2 quesadillas + 2 pickle spears. handful or 2 of wasabi-roasted peas. also walked 1 mile RT to PO b/c i missed USPS p/u (sold 2 books). turned leftover stir-fry from 2 days ago into fried rice, w/ hot pepper japchae dumplings, soda water.

8/24
didn't sleep great, in bed 7.5 hrs, but just laying there most of the night. thus i feel dizzy. nothing diffrent in diet or mindset. barometric pressure took a dip corresponding to the time i had trouble sleeping, but it took a similar dip 2 nights ago when i slept ok. as i've noted before, it's all quite arbitrary.

or it's just a 2 steps forward, 1 step back sort of thing. ½-lucid dream about pink babies juxtaposed again gray architecture (empty buildings + parking lots)... if you can call it a "dream," that's all i remember, that contrasting image circling through my mind, more like a nightmare, a visual interpretation of the intro to "this way out" by wall of voodoo. haven't been dreaming much this year. did i mention we finally made the switch to tidal? like it much better so far, at least our conscious does, knowing they pay artists better + dont cater to sensationalized misinformation. we considered going w/ napster because they pay artists the best, but wasn't so impressed w/ selection or interface, far different now then what i helped design (i did the wireframes + requirements doc for the 1st (legal) iteration, but that was 20 yrs ago). bowl of mueslix. ran 5 mile loop around central park (also took last month off from running b/c of calf injury, so getting back up to speed (the full 6 mile loop) + i like skipping the bottom part of the park to avoid tourists). 167.2... 1 pound more than yesterday, for no reason (same time of day, after breakfast, exercise + pooping) except for whatever reason i'm retaining more water, can feel it, i feel bloated. up to page 139 of Y's book, a little more than ½ way. J had dinner w/ a colleague so i ate the same leftovers as last night (fried rice + dumplings) + glass of sake when she got back (start of 5-day staycation for her)

8/25
slept a bit better than yesterday, but still not great. groggy, spilled coffee over the back of my hand so have frozen raviolis on that hand typing 1-handed with the other. walked to 125th to the P.O. (6 books sent) + to get aloe then waited for my bedder-½ at a clinic next to Apollo Theatre while she got an ultrasound, speaking of gynecologists.

book printer along 125th

dinner at sushi W, 17-piece omakase (really 19½ since my bedder-½ gave me 1½ of her pieces + i ordered an extra) + 2 asahis. then split a bottle of brut cava rose (it's bedder-½'s staycation) watched The Eight Mountains, which (spoiler alert) was like an unrequited/rated G Brokeback Mountain, in the Italian Alps.

8/26
slept OK considering we had 4 drinks, not too diffrent than the 2 nights before. Megan Boyle started liveblogging (the blog that eventually Tyrant would publish as Liveblog), b/c she thought "if she documented each thought and action on the internet, then she would begin to behave in a manner more appropriate to the life she wanted to live." perhaps the same can be said about 5cense, during the periods when we chronicle our day to day, in 1st person (which we've been doing pretty much our entire life). if anything, i become more self-conscious of how much, say, i had to drink. Compared to Boyle, i am like Mr. Rogers. and of course once she made this announcement about her liveblogging, her behavior got worse, it's human nature. nobody wants to watch a 24-hour video of a train unless there's a sign it's gonna derail or wreck. a train chugging along on time + w/o incident is boring, though as with vacuum cleaners i'm sure there is a whole subculture of people that just like to observe trains. when we were last living in Rome in 2018, Gian asked me if he could borrow my Adobe login so Megan could transfer her blog into In Design so he could publish it. i think he thought it was like a sign-in for HBO, that any 1 could just use it + i had to explain that they only allowed so many (2) computers to use it + i needed it on my iMac + laptop. for years, we used an HBO sign-in that Gian gave us, it was actually Chris March's login. can't remember when HBO finally clamped down on that, but i remember using it even after Chris + Gian had broken up + Gian then married Giu + i always felt weird about it + wondered if Chris ever looked at his viewing history + was like WTF. i think we may have even used his sign-in after he died (in 2019) which was even weirder. i couldn't give out my Adobe password, but offered to lay it out for him/Megan, but then it seems Megan found a copy of In Design or another way to lay it out. liveblogging is subject to the Copenhagen interpretation of QM... by virtue of having an observer, your behavior changes. did Megan sniff cocaine off Tao Lin's balls b/c she wanted to or b/c she wanted to write about it? Y's journal is different than Megan's in that it was private. Megan's 1st book is selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee, perhaps she is more honest with herself in this book since they were unpublished blog posts? but did she edit them is the question. @ 1 point Y mentions Panda Express in her journal, actually in the "Little Bee's Kindergarten" story/chapter, but not the excerpt we put in Sleepingfish. but Y doesn't refer to Panda Express in an ironic way for hipster street cred. she also points out that Panda Express has a sister restaurant called Panda Inn, that is a "higher-end, sit-down restaurant serving Chinese food that is less American." the other thing about liveblogging is, how can you live your life when you are busy blogging about it? unless you hire a personal assistant to document your every move. remember that person in the early days of the Inurnet who put cameras in every room of her house 24/7? i'm sure it's a common thing now, it's basically what everyone does on social media. i liveblogged an event once + it was stressful, it was a scientific convention + i had to summarize what the speakers were saying + i often didn't know what they were talking about + many of the speakers were foreign + hard to understand + if they went on a personal digression or told a joke, did i summarize that? Is this live-blogging now? it's Saturday morning at 8:49 + just answered an email to Y, responding to her responses to my comments. i'm onto my 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee + am thinking of making an egg + cheese on an everything bagel + now that i've thunk it it sounds like a good idea + i think i'm going to do it + then eat it.

... ended up just eating a 1/2 an Absolute bagel b/c when i broached the egg + cheese idea to J she wasn't into it. as i was toasting my bagel i was thinking maybe i met Megan Boyle once, around 2009 when we were living on 8th ave/14 st. Deb Olin Unferth called or texted unannounced + said she was in my neighborhood + asked if i wanted to go to a nearby Muumuu house reading (up in Chelsea, as i remember). she probably just didn't want to show up alone (+ this was before she started writing mean-spirited stories about us in Vice). So i went w/ her + i think Tao Lin + all those hipsters assumed we were a couple (J didn't want to go w/ us, why would she want to be subjected to such a reading?), which was awkward. Tao Lin introduced me to his girlfriend, who i think was Megan, but i could be wrong, i have a terrible memory + it's hard to get such information by googling. i'm sure Tao Lin will email me now to correct me. the Panda Express book wasn't until 2011 so maybe this was pre-Megan? now Megan is married to Blake Butler. i'm so glad my partner has nothing to do w/ the literary world.

C train to Spring St. on the train i started to read Captain Maximus b/c i've nvr read Barry Hannah before... decent writing but i dunno, feels dated, to much like Carver or Hemingway or Bukowski, macho fishing stories. meandered over to Indigo hotel to meet L + H who are in town from the UK.

the ever evolving Sleepingfish wall @ Ludlow + Rivington (i think the last time we took a pic of it was 2014)

also remembered to bring charcoal + paper so i could start doing rubBeings from the streets again, but this is all i got today:

walked around w/ L + F, so perhaps doesn't quality as official remapping Maphattan... + our trajectory was rather random. ate @ Altesi (calamari + seafood tagliolini). went down to the Film Academy where their son is just starting. they were tired so taxiied back up to their hotel, had Van Leeuwen's ice cream (marion-berry cheesecake (as a nod to our ex-town) + earl gray + ate it up on their roof w/ a nice view.

J + i continued on, 1st to the St. Marks Printed Matter, chilled in their reading room + sat up on their roof, a little secret oasis in the East Village (we had time to kill before our concert) + also down in a basement was an cool extrasensory exhibit by Lap-See Lam: Tales of the Altersea. continued on through the village over to the river (to avoid midtown crowds) + up 11th st to Bryant Park to see free concert. 13.5 miles of walking on the day.

grabbed a chicken/cheese arepa w/ guac + Guinness sat/laid on grass up front. 1st act Ka Baird was interesting @ 1st but her shtick (highly processed flute + mouth noise sound FX) gets old after a song or 2 b/c they all sound the same. we were there for the 2nd act, 75 dollar bill, who we'd never seen before. the main 2, percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen, were accompanied by a bunch of their friends/collaborators (Little Big Band) they probably didn't need, but amazing nevertheless.