My intense drive and creativity are inextricably bound up with a need to say what's on my mind in as public a forum as I can find.

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y mother, Hoagie, and Nathan VanHooser both visited me at work today. They mostly talked to each other. My mother's incessant high-pitched babble reacted badly with my hangover and I kept wanting them both to just shut the hell up. As might be expected, Hoagie also talked to me a little about the skinhead incident of last night. As my mother, she's naturally concerned about me, but all I could say was that "I gotta be me." My intense drive and creativity are inextricably bound up with a need to say what's on my mind in as public a forum as I can find. The skinheads will either learn to leave me alone or they will kill me, there is no middle ground. The suspects in my hypothetical future murder are all listed on my web pages. If they think silencing my evidently powerful writings is worth going to the electric chair, I find becoming a martyr kind of glamourous. I'd rather fight more interesting battles with more intelligent foes (people with more interesting techniques than primitive violence), but if tough guys insist on remaining an active part of my life, then so be it.

Just to demonstrate that I'm not going away easily, I put up more Rich Kid Skin Head flyers on the Corner advertising my web site.



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fter work, I was eventually joined by my housemates, who had gone to a baby shower for the imminent spawn of Peggy and Zachary. Peggy is an odd thing to behold these days. Her body seems to exist for one purpose, to bud, to invest a new combination of genes into humanity. Zachary has grown rather plump of late as well. You can see it in his face. Perhaps it's all the Guiness he's been drinking. He used to be such a skinny white boy.

As they have been doing every day of late, Natalie and Sarah came over again this evening. The plan, orchestrated as usual by Matthew Hart, was to go for an evening swim at the quarry in Louisa County. Swimming season is rapidly drawing to a close. At night there's a nip to the air. But Matthew isn't one to take inevitability lying down. Back when most of the 703 area code region was changed to 540 to expand the crowded DC suburbs phone list, Matthew refused to dial 540 whenever he called home to Waynesboro. He only started dialing 540 when his old beloved 703 number was finally switched off.

It didn't look like I was going to be able to go along on the trip to the quarry, since I had to go down to the Artspace to break down my Frat Boy Machine. It seems another show is going up there immediately. But Sarah said she'd help me if it meant I'd be able to go to the quarry. Since Sarah was providing the bulk of the transportation to the quarry in her white Bronco, that meant that I would have lots of help in the removal of the machine. Peggy and Zach rendezvoused with us in their car and helped out as well.

At the Artspace, I videotaped the machine for posterity and the musings. I also got some good stills of my various chums sitting around being bored. Then we tore the machine apart. Aside from little things like circuit boards and cables, it really didn't want to come apart. The basic form, built completely without the use of a saw, was held together in a concave seven-sided form by glue and screws (see the diagram at right). But as Natalie, Sarah and I dragged it down the long back hallway, it fell into pieces, which I leaned against the wall outside and abandoned. The others carried most of the little odds and ends that I hoped to salvage and piled them up in the back of Sarah's Bronco.

We couldn't go to the quarry without beer of course, so Sarah drove us (Natalie, Matthew and I) to the Pantops Food Lion. I went in to get some 32 ounce Budweisers, somewhat charitably included in the category of "40s." No one had any money except Matthew and I, and Matthew only had pocket change. But I was in a generous mood because of the help I'd received, and I bought Sarah and Natalie Budweisers so we could all drink together on the drive.

The sky had grown dark and the air had assumed its usual September chill by the time we reached the quarry. Still, Zach and Matthew leapt off the cliff just like they did back in the dog days of Summer. The only thing they had to fear was the possiblity that a log might be floating in the void into which they plunged. I'm pleased to report that they had no such bad luck.

But the subsequent experience in the 2nd floor study area of Mudd library is one she will never forget.

The moon was a wicked crescent that never fully revealed itself as it hung low in the western sky. It hid behind irregular clouds that it lit up from behind in an ever-changing sublime little light show. Meanwhile, the black ground was interrupted with the occasional constant cool blue pinpoints of light broadcasting the sexuality of September glow worms.

I waded into the water only enough to moisten my ankles. I had no desire to dry off in the cool breeze that blew the clouds across the moon.

We all sat on a blanket and swapped stories. I told the one about the time in Oberlin when I collected hallucinogenic mushrooms, back when I was taking a fungi class.

Flashback: I took a bag of the mushrooms back from class, cooked them to kill any maggots, and put them in the Harkness refrigerator, promptly forgetting about them. A few days later a girl named Judy Atrubin came to dinner late, as usual. Going through the refrigerator in search of something good to eat, she came upon my mushrooms. With a little salsa, they were really quite good, she told me later. But the subsequent experience in the 2nd floor study area of Mudd library is one she will never forget.

Natalie (left) and Deya in the Downtown Artspace today.

On the ride back to Kappa Mutha Fucka, I was in an especially silly mood. I mentioned a chemical called "fecol," something I'd heard about vaguely at one point or another in my studies. Fecol is what gives shit most of its odour. It's a clear alcohol (meaning it contains an OH group), and in a vodka bottle, fecol would look like vodka. My mind raced through proposals for various kinds of pranks to play with fecol. Wouldn't it be cool to do a quick substitution of fecol for a shot of vodka at Millers? The unsuspecting patron would suck it down before even noticing, and only then would the horrible odour present itself.

We picked up a bottle of expensive wine along with a bottle of Mad Dog at Farmer Jack and then, at Kappa Mutha Fucka, proceeded to drink the expensive stuff. Both Matthew and I were exhausted from last night's drinking and eating a large amount of pizza earlier, and could barely muster the strength to drink.

But she wouldn't accept a simple "no" easily and I ended up having to be kind of rude.

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  found myself cuddling again with Sarah on the couch. It was pleasant and even erotic, but again I didn't really have any interest in actual sexual stuff. When Sarah tried to get me to come outside to talk with her alone, I viewed it as a sort of trap that could only lead to our sleeping together. I rebelled and refused to go. I wanted to be nice, because I like Sarah and had no desire to hurt her feelings. But she wouldn't accept a simple "no" easily and I ended up having to be kind of rude. When she left, she had a horrible look of dejection about her.

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ll day today, I had to deal with the fact that my left thumb barely functioned. To move it caused great pain. Basically, on the left side of my body, I had no prehensile thumb. I was a throwback to more primitive primate times, when proto-apes picked things up by tweezing them between forefinger and middle finger. I am right handed, so the loss wasn't debilitating. I notice that I almost always injure the left side of my body when I'm involved in accidents or violence. Something in my subconscious acts to protect my strong side.

Since my sprained thumb is a direct result of skinhead violence, which is in turn a direct result of my web page, I can honestly now say that I have suffered physically for my writings. I like being able to say that. Very few in America can make such a claim.

My best bet is to abandon the skinheads to the unfriendly jungle known as the American Justice System.

I considered pressing charges against Chaz for yesterday's incident, and I definitely would have had I been less lazy. Say what you will about how the cops suck, my right to say what I want in this country is guaranteed only by the State, and the State provides its guarantees through the police. If I want to say whatever I want in this country and skinheads say I must only say what they agree with or else there will be violence, then there are only three alternatives:
1. I agree to say only what the skinheads agree with for the sake of peace.
2. I defend my rights outside the law.
3. I appeal to the law to defend my rights.

While it may be a more exciting and ultimately heroic thing to defend myself without the aid of The Man, I know from the experience of others that only ruin can come of relying on ones own personal justice system. Not that I won't defend myself on a case by case basis, but in the grander scheme of things, my best bet is to abandon the skinheads to the unfriendly jungle known as the American Justice System. With its own uniquely Kafkaesque irrationality, drudgery and deliberateness, it deals far more torture than any gun, fist or web page ever could.

See some images captured from video shot on this day.

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