| | - 5 FebruaryFebruary 1997
- Heaven or Hell or Paradise
- Steve gave me a quick tour of my new accommodation from two adjoining windows.
"From this window," he said pointing to the fundamentalist ministry across the street, "you can see you have a choice between heaven and hell." "But, if you pirouette gracefully to the next window," he said as he pirouetted gracefully to the other window, "you can see there's also paradise." I made my choice without hesitation, and passed quite a bit of money to the proprietors of Paradise Liquors behind their bulletproof barriers. It was a good investment.  - 6 February 1997
- Ridiculously Cold
- It's unfathomably absurdly cold. It's been snowing constantly for the last two days, every structure, twig and corpse is covered by a tall pile of perfectly-stacked snowflakes. It's too cold for the air to move, too cold for any color to vibrate: everything I see is either dark grey or light gray. I look at bricks that should be red or pine needles that should be green, but everything is just grey.
It is ridiculously cold. - 7 February 1997
- White Boy Thing
- I was walking down the street late at night when a man walking the other way muttered "just doing your white boy thing." He seemed to be talking to himself; I'm not sure if he wanted me to hear what he was saying. It didn't matter. I was without a doubt doing my white boy thing.
- 8 February 1997
- Meretricious Proposition
- I saw a man standing on the sidewalk wearing a very large button that exhorted me to "Work from home, Ask me how." He didn't talk to me; he was busy talking to someone else on a mobile phone. And of course I didn't try to talk to him; he was a terrible advertisement for his dubious product.
- 9 February 1997
- Fifty-Fifty
- I've been living as a nomad for the last six years; all my analog recordings and books are stored in a friends' chicken coop. As a result, it's been quite a while since I've bought any books or recorded music. (Why buy something to put in a chicken coop?)
Of course, I do miss having a library of music, images and text, but the deprivation is not without its rewards. In particular, it keeps me from memorizing songs. (There are some songs I've listed to so many times that I can't hear them anymore.) I listened to Frank Zappa's Fifty-Fifty for the first time in years today; it was better than I remembered it. The recording hadn't changed since I first heard it twenty-some years ago, but I'd forgotten some sections of the music and remembered parts that were never there. I figure the odds really are fifty-fifty. 
- 10 February 1997
- Photograph
(no title) - How ironic: this is the first photograph I've made in years that I haven't wanted to present with text, but I have anyway.
- 11 February 1997
- Cat Semantics
- Michael explained how cats talk: Wilbur begins every sentence with "I want" and ends it with "now."
Wilbur doesn't say "I'm hungry," he says "I want food in my bowl now." That gives him the option of eating when and if he wants. Similarly, he says "I want the door open now," which should not be confused with "I want to go out." Wilbur runs the show, and he knows it.
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©1997 David Glenn Rinehart
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