journal page 3

she walks like
she's angry at the world
july 22, 1999
help me out with this.. i was exploring neighborhoods looking for a new place to live today i'm not making this up, there was a "retarded children's clothing thrift store" in this downtown strip. that's exactly what the sign said. now seriously, are these used clothes that are only for retarded children, or are these used clothes intended for all children but... they were previously worn by retarded children? and in either case, do they really need to put RETARDED all big up on the sign? if they're for retarded children to wear, why are they for retarded children only? do they have to wear some kind of special retarded children's clothes? or if the clothes are for any children, is it really necessary to alert everyone that they had been previously worn by retarded children? and up on the sign? and isn't the proper word like, "disabled" anyway? i can't figure this out.

kara thought that maybe the clothes themselves were retarded. like they were children's clothes and all, but the buttons don't match up, the sleeves are all lop-sided, or the pants have like three legs. that kind of makes more sense i guess. ross found the store in the phonebook and gave them a call. they answered, "retarded children!" and he got scared and hung up.
to answer your singular burning question, no, i did not buy any retarded children's clothes. but i did buy some retarded children. but that was at another store. ok, i just gave it a little more thought: maybe these used clothes are indeed exclusively for retarded children and they're like fireproof or glow in the dark or with built-in flotation devices. like safety clothes or something. do they even make those? please share the answer if you have it. this is clearly really bothering me. and now my newly acquired retarded children are all upset. i just had them out washing the car and they have absolutely nothing to wear. i'm kidding please don't look at me like that.

july 13, 1999
a really high fever and lots of yellow bitter medicine. sick for the past few days. making pouting sick face this very moment. rob had bronchitis a couple weeks ago and i lent him my obi wan kenobi plastic power bracelet and he was better in two days. going to buy fifty more and roll around in them.

dragged myself out shopping last night and thought that instead of UNSCENTED the kleenex box said UNCENSORED and figured that must be some pretty out of control kleenex.

i stumbled across the homepage for the "museum of corpses" in thailand. i'm not sure what the main attraction is but there were lots of pictures of dead bodies floating around in giant vats with happy tourists posing and waving in front of them. i guess they have some famous criminals in there and occasionally they toss conjoined twins in a vat or whatnot, but mostly it just looks like a bunch of blackened dead naked thailand people floating about in jugs. i was telling daniele about this and upon agreeing that it must be pretty embarrassing for the corpses, realized that i'm not really happy with the choices there are in what to do with oneself when dead. neither of us want to be buried because that seems claustrophobic. she wants to be cremated but i don't like the idea of getting burned into nothingness. being frozen or something wouldn't be so bad, but then you're preserved for people to do strange things to later on. so i came to the conclusion that i want my body to be shot off into space in a little rocket. and put a little window on there just in case. that would be nice, because then at least you'd be sort of getting somewhere when you're dead and you get to fly around and it'd be interesting to end up on the other side of the milky way in x number of years. i figured my entire body weight might be a little cost-prohibitive and too heavy to launch and propel very fast, so just my severed head would be fine. propped up next to the window. daniele said she'd get really creeped out if she knew my disembodied head was flying around above her somewhere in space.

but i think i got my fever down and i'm getting work done again. am on the verge of finishing a scene involving hats that's been frustrating me to no end. did you know an anagram of my name is "NEED TO FRZLDHT!" what does that mean?
or how about, "FED THE LORD, ZNT." fascinating. no wait, no it's not.

don

july 4, 1999
the first portion of scenes for the new film are more or less done and my hand is numb from inking all day. the poor little vhs camera i've been pencil-testing with for the past 6-7 years is slowly breaking down into shambles. the fellow is currently bound together with duct tape, and everything it shoots comes out hot pink. moreover, if you tap it, jostle it, adjust it, tilt it, spite it, taunt it, or breathe on it wrong, the lens will short out and go blank. not to be outdone, my car decided to break down late friday night after i spent the day running errands in los angeles. upon pulling onto my street after the long drive back, the engine made a sudden vomiting noise and died, right outside of my place. i coasted out of control down the block staring blankly at the dashboard and wondering why the brakes didn't work yet my radio was still pumping out the funky grooves. i don't know anything about cars, but slamming the emergency brake at twenty miles an hour makes a lot of noise.
so don is now motionless. everyone i know is out of town this weekend, so in lieu of watching the fireworks or going out anywhere, i will be lighting my carpet on fire.

i send all of you happier things. in the form of this star. *

i had this dream several years ago that i was on one of the cliffs overlooking the ocean around here with a few friends. it was late at night and sort of foggy and humid and there was a party far below on the beach that featured a giant three story rose that was all lit up alongside an equally huge tic-tac green couch. i remember thinking, "geez that's quite a couch they've got there." i wandered away from my friends to this really dark end of the cliff, where straight below a deep part of the ocean flowed directly up against the cliffside.
and if you leaned over the edge and squinted your eyes just right, you could barely make out the gray shapes of several murky cars deep beneath the surface that had driven off of the cliff over the years. and as the currents passed over them, the undertow would quietly blink their headlights off and on. the beams of light were pretty to look at, but i was afraid to go any nearer because the water was haunted.

june 14, 1999
we were driving around yesterday and got stuck behind this big ugly truck with a personalized license plate that said, MAD DOOG. what? so MAD DOG was already taken? and MAD DOOG was the best you could do as your second choice? MAD DOOG??

work continues on "rejected." i will wrap the latest scene this week and will continue writing the short as i go, along with a couple of other projects up in the air. did you know that in france they had otter-pop knockoffs but they were flavored lemon, cola, and mint? i got a lot of culture in france. so anyway the new film is getting there, and i hope to have animation close to being all done by around the end of the summer.

CUI TINGXUN, a teacher in China's Shandong province, was practising the esoteric healing art of qigong with his wife when he suddenly attempted to gouge her eyes out, saying he had received instructions from a 'greater being' to change her facial features. Cui then attacked his wife's jaw with his teeth, saying her mouth smelled badly, before finally decapitating her with a meat cleaver. Police found him holding the shoulders of his wife's torso, exhorting her to sprout a new head. Hong Kong Eastern Express, 7 May 1996

june 7, 1999
12:50 am
back from cannes, finally lucid, and with a little time to write. our first screening was disastrous. of the dozen shorts in competition, the french fates would decide that only ours would get screwed up technically. throughout "billy's balloon," there was a loud, incessant buzzing noise like an angry giant industrial groaning hornet in the right speaker. BZZZZZZZZZ! it would drift in and out of the film hypnotically every ten seconds or so, easily drowning out the soundtrack: billy gets thumped by his balloon... audience laughs... then, fading up, BZZZZZZZZZZ! laughs die, heads cocked towards the speakers confused. it fades away just long enough for you to get comfortable again, and then, fuck you! BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! i came close to storming angrily out of the theater in a flurry of amazing primadonna cannes cliches but somehow remained seated, staring bug-eyed at the speaker that was singing such sad and horrible noises over the movie. people afterwards told me they assumed the horrible noises were intentional, like some sort of stupid industrial-abstract-statement on my part. ouch.
we had another screening to worry about after this and through an interpreter i argued my case with the french projectionists that no, my print wasn't defective, and that something was wrong with the sound system. we checked the print in another room on another projector and the buzzing was gone. they conferred with each other in french and finally said, "IT IS MYSTERY." and that was that.

the coolest thing i saw at cannes. kids zip around on little motorcycles and vespas in every direction. a beautiful young girl pulls up to an intersection on a little motorcycle, as a crowd crosses the street. she pulls out a cigarette and a dozen young boys instantly freeze and whip out lighters and matches before her.
of course i didn't have my camera on me and missed the shot. though elsewhere i did have it in time to capture strange and impromptu photos of the back of david lynch's head.