More and more people are defining themselves not by what they are about, but by what they are against, what they are overcoming, the thing that is wrong with them.

Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.

Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.

So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands.

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?

For the most part my friends can always be more entertaining than the tube ever can be.

Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.