A thought: when one screams as one dies, what is it but pure altruism?

But he's homeless and jobless and probably not sociopathic enough to convincingly lie that he is in fact a paragon of conventional societal ambition.

L


eah, Matthew Hart's on-again off-again lesbian girlfriend-now-wife, was knocking at my door at almost 1pm today. Of course, I'd worked the night shift and this was my period of sleep. But she was going to be touring the potential new house that we might be renting on Observatory Street, and she thought I should come along. Originally Monster Boy was to be going with her. But he's homeless and jobless and probably not sociopathic enough to convincingly lie that he is in fact a paragon of conventional societal ambition. So I was recruited. On paper I look pretty good; I've been gainfully employed for almost a year and I've paid off my student loans. According to Leah, paying off ones student loans is above and beyond the call of fiscal morality.

We were only five minutes late as we parked at the Observatory Street house and looked around for our tour guide. He was in the house. In fact, he was the present tenant. I thought the idea of having a tenant conducting the marketing for a rental apartment most peculiar, but what the hell.

One of the bedrooms is very small and Leah and I know who will be living there: Monster Boy.

The house has a kitchen, dining room and living room on the first floor and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. One of the bedrooms is very small and Leah and I know who will be living there: Monster Boy. But really, who needs a dining room? We could make that into yet another bedroom.

The building is in good shape, better than any place I have ever lived. The paint isn't peeling, and there's even evidence of real architecture; the rooms upstairs have elegant little angular junctions between the walls and the ceiling.

The biggest surprise was the basement. It's a real basement. There's a huge earthen structure along one wall, but it has a reasonably high ceiling and a concrete floor. It's given to flooding on rare occasions, but a raised floor would not be difficult to build. The present tenant has a small music studio set up in the basement. That's encouraging. Perhaps we could make the Big Noise down there, or rent it to Raphæl as studio space.

The landlord himself showed up briefly. He seemed anxious, as if there was some deep dark shady secret he wasn't telling us. Or else, as Leah suggested, he was eager to go play golf. It was a Wednesday, after all.

The present tenant was eager to please and entertain. He cracked jokes, pointed out little flaws, and even suggested that Leah and I might be romantically involved. For our part, we came across as a youthful but respectable couple. Leah was even wearing a dress. We were obviously intelligent, seemingly sober, and perhaps even well-educated. We did have an Achilles' Heel, though. If the landlord had happened to look inside the car in which we'd arrived, Matthew Hart's Vomit Comet, we would have surely been dismissed. It's rolling recycling bin.

We were told that if we were interested we should fill out an application at the landlord's business office.

As Leah and I drove away, we were satisfied. The tour had gone well and the house had proved unexpectedly large and in unexpectedly good shape.

L


eah took Monster Boy off on a much-needed job hunt and I went to UVA's Cocke Hall to do computer work. As I rode my bike under the 14th Street C&O Bridge I saw Toni Dirtbag and Morgan Anarchy's "on the road girlfriend" Kriana sitting on the sidewalk, spare changing (begging random people for money). The C&O Bridge is such a hot spare changing location that I find myself taking circuitous routes to avoid it.

As I worked at Cocke, I was distracted by thoughts of other CDs that might have been stolen during Space Party II. Since the initial shock of my missing CDs on the morning of the 10th, I've discovered that two more CDs than I'd originally thought had also vanished: a Bad Religion CD and my Polvo CD. Chaz is still on my hit list.

Returning to the Dynashack, I played around with computer hardware. It was frustrating work.

The aggravation made me crave a different experience, so I went off to the Corner for a Two Moons burrito. Monster Boy came with me. Cory, the Java Hut coffee cart girl, works at Two Moons now. She's a silly girl, giggling and calling me "Buttface Jackson" for humourous effect. As I ate my burrito, I discussed the connection between friendly girls and free restaurant food. Still, I'd paid real money for my burrito.

We ran across housemates Steve and Elizabeth at Higher Grounds, and Elizabeth made a comment that my hair was looking bad, as if it needed to be cut. I'd been thinking the same thing all day, so back at the Dynashack, I excised the proto-mullet behind my ears. Then I sat on the porch, playfully trimming off the hairs on my left forearm. I later progressed to shaving it. Around this time, the goth girl who works at Little Johns showed up. She's been expressing interest in Monster Boy of late, and he's pleasantly surprised with the situation. They're going to be attending a big goth show in Richmond tomorrow, along with Cecelia the Brazilian Girl. I'd been drinking a cup of Higher Grounds coffee and was pumped up. I was full of myself: making lots of jokes and being silly but amusing.

Cecelia and Leticia the Brazilian Girls arrived and all four goths went off to Cocke Hall to surf the web and check their email. I stayed behind to sleep, but became distracted by computer hardware work.

T


hen, unpredictably, Deya showed up. Her freshman year at Warren Wilson College is finally over. She and I have not been corresponding via email, and I'd assumed she hated me now. It's just that way sometimes when a romance goes sour. But she hung out for awhile and even expressed an interest in possibly living in the basement of the new place on Observatory Street if in fact we manage to secure it. That would be an awful lot of Aquarius under one roof. I have nothing against Deya, but I'm very concerned by the fact that we occasionally end up sleeping together despite the fact that neither of us really wants to.

Deya went off to track down the goths at Cocke Hall and I began my pre-work nap.

---

If you can imagine punk rock with the ska influence removed and replaced with polka-by-way-of country western or perhaps Memphis, then you've got Honky Tonkin'.

I


  bought another CD today, Mekons' Honky Tonkin' for $8, which came out in 1987. It's on the Twin Tone label. If you can imagine punk rock with the ska influence removed and replaced with polka-by-way-of country western or perhaps Memphis, then you've got Honky Tonkin'. Some of it also sounds somewhat like the Pogues. I don't think I particularly like this album, though it is most original. You see, I find it disturbing that so many Europeans regard as "refreshing" or even "progressive" the familiar down home banality of southern and western American culture. The best songs on this album are precisely those that have the least Honky Tonk influence. Also: I prefer the louder guitars of later Mekons stuff.

The X album, Hey Zeus, that I picked up yesterday is better than expected. I have to say that the male/female vocal harmonies remind me of folk or even country music, but that's okay. There used to be something off-putting about the harmonies in X, but I've come to accept them. The instrumentation, on the other hand, reminds me a little of slow-tempo Pixies. There's a quality to much of the passive guitar that reminds me hot summer days spent sipping a beer on a front porch.

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