WHERE FRIDAYS ARE FUN, FUN, FUN!!!
Books I've been reading lately: In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez; Foxfire, Joyce Carol Oates; Satan Says, Sharon Olds; The Philosopher's Club, Kim Addonizio; Feminist Theory From Margin to Center, bell hooks; Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin; Jelly Roll, Kevin Young; Places/Everyone, Jim Daniels; Captivity, Toi Dericotte; Limited, Inc, Jacques Derrida.

FASTER, PUSSYCAT, KILL, KILL!
Here's the thing about customer service: sometimes people are feeling pleasant, and serving you well by saying the right magic words is incredibly easy. Sometimes they just spill out. Sometimes the people who are in the service industry actually get some kind of satisfaction from doing something well in their little bend of the system and squeak-lessly cogging away. But not always. Not always. There are times when the person serving you is tired, is freaked out, or angry about something, or has experienced a long day of extremely small setbacks. At times like these, it is best not to give said server a hot shit attitude about routine parts of their jobs, such as asking you for their student ID so your book can be checked back in, or informing them of your intentions to pay a fine. Sometimes it feels as if I have an invisible sign saying, "FUCK WITH ME! PLEASE!" over my head, because why else would I be party to such inane, unecessary nonsense?

CRANKYPANTS! THAT'S ME!

HOLD ON TO YOUR LAMPSHADE, DARLIN'
By the way, I have another (not so hard to find) online journal in the ether of webspace, but I can't decide whether or not I ought to switch over. Maybe I shouldn't have even told you about it, but I guess I want some feedback. Also, no matter which problems I have with blogger, the fact remains that I've been posting here for over a year and the sheer length of my archives column makes me vain and prideful. Also, I figured that if I started over again I could use all of the Blondie and Pixies lyrics over, because I'm running out of the capricious little titles that I give these "diary" "entries." (This title, for example, is from a Guy Clark song titled "Broken-Hearted People," one of my favorite country singers who used to depress the fuck out of me when we listened to him on summer car trips.)

IF YOU'RE TIRED OF THE BIG SO-SO
It still feels to early for summer, but I know that's going to change. I think I need a roadtrip or a late night of talking to keep me going. Not that either of those things is so unobtainable, but I'm feeling more and more in a drudge because of my work schedule(s). Working in the library is great, though. There's a really great, organic feeling to finding books and hunting them down, which has become one of my specialties. Forgive me for sounding so nature mama-ish, but looking for lost books feels like searching for morels (which, for you city folk, is a kind of beautiful, wrinkled mushroom that grows under old apple trees and can only really be picked in early April): you know that the chances of finding something are low, that it's unlikely that you'll walk home with a full bag of them, but you go nevertheless. Your eyes glaze over and you think in some kind of different rhythm for a while, and then you're staring at a morel, which looks almost exactly like the dappled grass all around it. The library feels more and more like a huge, dark forest to me, the lone traveler with a pen behind my ear and an armful of found books, which I'm almost afraid to put down in case they should be soundlessly stollen back by the organic, sinister pull of the Dewey decimal system.