Hey: someone important read a story of mine, then she read someone else's and then she decided she liked mine better. I'm a finalist.

So here's a long ass post for you. Today I'm going to find out about a newer better job and then I get to ride on a plane! I love planes. This is more or less the beginning of the project I've been working on forfuckingever (below).

Bomb Day: A Fairy Tale

Dad says it takes just under three months to make a set of Pequot Missiles. They start as chemicals and shells all over and sixty different trucks with sixty different components come through town once a week to the plant across the street from us.

And it’s Dad’s job to make sure that everyone who comes off the trucks doesn’t leave the plant with any parts. Most days he waits for the shipment, waits for them to unload it, and the goes into the back with a flashlight to make sure no one jacked any six-hundred-pound rudder-caps. But if one spring is missing, he has to X-ray the whole shipping staff to prove that someone else up the road messed up.

At least once a month he comes home and puts his lunch back in the fridge. And I know not to ask. Either he had a busy day, or at ten AM they lost a steering chip and he had to strip-search some trucker.

On the twenty first of March, June, September, and December we celebrate Bomb Day. All the other factory families line the street to watch the gleaming missiles on the back of truck beds as they come through town. You might see ‘em on TV later, but the Army doesn’t know how to handle them like we do. Missiles leave the factory gleaming, with a fresh coat of gloss on the stainless steel. Every year some kid in my school gets a passing grade in photo for turning in a print of the parade reflected in the side of the bomb.

They used to do a lap around town on the flatbed and get capped in unmarked trailers, but Dad says he came up with the idea of selling advertising space on the side. Now our national defense network drives through the country in top-secret routes and telling the world: McDonalds: It’s Buuuurgerific!

And that’s pretty much how he got the promotion in the first place.

Dad says everyone didn’t used to go to Bomb Day when we were real young. Way before video killed or tried to kill the radio star. Before the new people moved to town. It was one of those years where everyone gets tired. When overtime is hard to find, people work hard to find it. Then they just go home and fall asleep in front of the TV.

Dad says that they had just strapped down the last Patriot Missile and painted “100,001” on the side. We just went to war with some country and everyone couldn’t wait for the hours to pick up. They tried to make a big deal out of this bomb. One hundred thousand and one. One to grow on. One more for the ditches. Whatever. So everyone stayed after their shift to watch it get sent to the shore along with the others.

They got it ready on a truck that said “Bank One” on the side. Dad’s finest hour.

Hundreds of rental cars came up from New York and down from Boston. Some guy Dad went to high school with made a big scene about the loss of the American soul in the city and put an ad in the New York papers, inviting all these big shots up to see his plans for our town. Development plans. Dad says everyone used to call him Trout.

They came with certified checks and loan guarantees, but the way some people tell it they stormed into town in convertibles filled with burlap sacks with dollar signs painted on the front. Trout said they could visit the town and see a scale model of the new neighborhood. And if they wished, they could pick out the model they wanted, put money down on it now and come back in nine months when they finished building it.

Everyone met at the town hall to wait for Trout’s mini-neighborhood to arrive by truck.

At the factory, Dad and his friends aimed the missile south on route ten.

Trout made a phone call to find out where the hell his model neighborhood landed. The New Yorkers got restless. They had dry cleaning to pick up when they got back. They had baby sitters to get back to. Most of them were double-parked.

Rumors circulated in that Trout—they called him Mr. Trout—didn’t know what he had, real estate wise. He just wanted to make back the money he should have made growing tobacco, and then buy a new truck. They wanted to put the money down that night. Because as soon as those houses go up, the new families will wage a bidding war and Trout’ll learn how much they should cost.

I’ve lived among them for most of my life and I’ll never get over how cheap rich people can be.

Bigger rumors circulated the crowd when Trout left to find his truck. The old Smith/Yale train line used to run through town`. Some people said Trout bought the rights to the tracks and that he had secret plans to build a bullet train to New York City. New York! We’re saved! Honestly, not even Hartford people want to work in Hartford. Did you hear about the bullet train? They’re developing it right now down at the missile factory. They wanted to get back to The Simple Life everyday as fast as possible.

A factory! How quaint! Industry! Hard work! That’s what our children need to learn from!

Do you think Mr. Trout will let us into the bullet factory to see the new Missile Train?
And if these people could spread word this fast and this inaccurately, they were made for this town.
“May I have your attention please,” Trout raise his hand from the door. Half his forearm came out the sleeve of his cheap suit. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry for the delay, but I’ve just received word that the truck has just come over the mountain and it shall be here forthwith,” he said. No one moved. “In two minutes, that is. So if you don’t mind waiting until my staff can bring the models in we can—” the whole crowd funneled out the door.
Hundreds stood across the street after the parade. Husbands, wives, kids, the whole deal. Some of them waved little flags. One kid made a sign: We’re Number (100,000 and)1! Dad says Jay Riley kept the gas station open late and pulled the town’s economy out of the recession after he sold out of Doritoes and individual beer cans. The people who lived along Bombway Avenue walked onto their porches during a commercial break to see the missile come through.
I hope this really happened some other way. It’s a bit dramatic for me.
Here it is! One of the New Yorkers yelled and everyone ran into the street.
No, no, no! That one! Someone else yelled. It’s sponsored by the realtor’s bank! Everyone else ran into the middle of the other lane. Dad’s friend Donovan sat behind the wheel, but sometimes people say Dad drove it. Whenever I ask him about it, he runs into the bathroom to puke.
The two trucks swerved to avoid the fighting crowds, and then swerved back and then back again.
Donovan panicked, jammed on the gas and slammed into Trout’s Truck at five miles per hour, soiling his Air Force uniform. He died of fright on impact.
Everyone from town ran for their bomb shelters. Everyone not from town ran into the truck to save their homes from the trailer.
“People,” Trout shouted. “People, there are plenty of homes for everyone.” Someone ran into him and the note cards for his speech fluttered everywhere.
Dad ran out of the factory and tried to give Donovan mouth-to-mouth.
“Aww Christ,” someone snarled. “The town isn’t even built yet and already those people are moving in.” Dad’s the only one called a fairy in this fairy tale.
The company medic ran out with a stethoscope dangling from his back pocket.
The company engineer ran to the back of the truck with a stethoscope in his right hand. “Trout, you gotta get these people out of here,” he said. “Until I find out why this bomb didn’t go off.”
“Lookee here, Kitten,” Trout planted a finger in the black man’s chest. “If your little cock-rocket blows up my models or my clients, you better hope that you are right in front of it.”
Kaapahck!!
The engineer jumped. They crashed the town model into the street. Miniature trees uprooted themselves. Trout had the entire town planned out. Bombway Avenue looked straighter than anyone had ever seen. But they misspelled it. Bombay Ave. The gas station had a big name sign written on it, and he had the old pumps reinstalled. He made a new old town. But he didn’t bother putting up the factory or the library, just the new neighborhoods. Hundred of houses, each the size of a bootbox, each with their address written on the roof.
“Well, now, people, we will begin the bidding soon, if you would please take a pencil and write down the addressed you’re interested in—” Again he was talking to no one. They knocked into him on the way by, spilling his entire box of Trout Brook Mini Golf pencils and stepping on his fake monocle. They tore into the model, claiming houses by pulling them from their wooden foundations, running down the mini-streets like Godzillas.
“Mr. Trout, how much you want for five-sixty-six Lincoln Lane?” A man in sunglasses held up a plastic flowerbed. “We absolutely adore it. Will the garden be in bloom by the spring?”
“I’ll give you twice what he will!”
“Triple!”
Come to think of it, I like this story better with the burlap money bags.
“We were here first!” another man shouted. “This one has no address, so I want a discount.”
“Strange,” Trout looked it over.
“That’s my house,” Dad said.
“Well I didn’t see your name on it,” the man said.
“No,” Dad conceded. “It doesn’t have my name on it, but it’s a model of my house.”
“Well, maybe if you spent less time kissing your boyfriend and more time selecting a property it could be yours.” He straightened his tie with his free hand. “Mr. Trout, will you tell this man to step back a foot and a half?”
“Pat, I’m doing business here and I’d appreciate it…you know, if you would just…”
“Look, that’s the house I live in. Me, the wife—a woman, my boys. It’s a model of the neighborhood. I mean, you can’t buy it. I live there.”
“Mr. Trout, I’m prepared to double this man’s offer,” he said. “After my discount, of course.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me right,” Dad said. “It’s not for sale, it’s not being built. The house exists right now, and I exist inside of it.”
“Triple,” he snarled. “But that’s my final offer.’
“Look, I don’t even know why I’m bothering with this. Did you see a mini-For-Sale-sign in front of this house?”
“Quit hogging Mr. Trout!” someone shouted from the back of the line. Grown men played tug-of-war with luxury homes.
Some pelted each other with plastic bushes.
Some filled shopping bags with models
Some stacked them three-tall and carried them on their backs like bookcases.
“Trout,” Dad grabbed him by the shoulders. “Get your people out of here before they find out what’s in the other truck.”
“Did you hear that?” a man with a fanny-pack full of little trees smiled. “Mr. Trout has more in the other truck!”
Stacks of houses fell to the street, cast off.
Everyone who didn’t have a house in their hands wrestled with the back doors of the truck. From the side! Someone shouted. It opens from the side!
A man with three houses slapped the fat man on the back with his free hand, “Mr. Trout you’ve outdone yourself today.”
They burst the latches on the side. Up! It folds up! Like a garage door!
They pretended to know how a garage door worked.
“Goddam New Yorkers,” Trout muttered. Everyone on the ground with models in their hands tested the mini three car garages. The Bank One panels folded as the side door slid up along the track.
For the first time all night, the whole crowd shut up.
They saw themselves reflected in the eight-foot wall of the bomb.
Everyone in their designer pants, nursing broken mini-chimneys.
They held onto their toy homes and stared at the steel monster on the truck bed.
1
0
0
0
0
1
Written from tip to base.
MADE IN THE USA.
No one wanted to speak first. And maybe for the first time since they left the city they stood still. Not circling the room at the town hall reception. Not getting used to driving a car again. Not learning how to pump their own gas. Not picking bits of mini-mulch out of their sportcoats. Not adjusting their panty hose.
Mr. Kitten beat his fists against the metal casing of the bomb, bawling.
But no one paid attention to him.
“The train!” someone shouted. “Mr. Trout has the Missile Train engine!”
“My gosh!”
This changes everything!
I could keep my job and do the drive everyday until the missile train is up and running.
Wait’ll the Japanese get wind of this.
Mr. Trout!
Mr. Trout, I will double my double offer if you can get this train running on the double!
Mr. Trout! When will the train be finished?
Can we ride it back to New York?
One woman scaled to the top of the mini-mountain in the street and peered into the truck bed. She found Mr. Kitten punching the U in MADE IN THE USA. He sobbed against the hull of the bomb with his stethoscope crushed inside his fist.
“It’s a dud,” he blubbered, all wussy-like.
A dud?
Hundreds of voices repeated the words. A dud?
It’s a dud?
A dud?
It’s a dud?
A dud? A dud?
“The one-hundred-thousandth-and-one bomb to come out of Simsbury, Connecticut is a dud. Nothing. No click, no clack, no boom-boom. Not even any radiation poisoning. You people should all be dead right now,” he spat when he talked. “And if you’re not dead your children should have strange diseases for life and their children should grow up knock-kneed with three dicks.”
No one missed a parade since.

Last week, for about an hour and a half I was a reporter. When I moved in with Annie, I somewhat pompously promised myself that lifted from the burden of sheltering myself I could dedicate the morning hours to fertilizing the fiction project that has taken over almost three years of my life. But since the election my mornings have gone to shit in the lamest ways possible: deciding when to shower, trying to read the paper before Annie takes it with her for the day, checking the internet in case something happens somewhere.

But last week it paid off. I heard about a famous person doing something famous two subway stops away and told a features department far away that I was close enough to work for them. They went for it. I made a hundred bucks on the way to my bullshit job for the day.

And then I get this forwarded to me:

This story is so full of misinformation it's not even funny.How do you let this get online? Opie & Anthony are going to be on XM.And how could Sirius hold a protest across the street from its own
rally? XM is the company releasing the walkman type device, not Sirius. This is a very poorly written article and Brendan Sullivan should be ashamed of himself for writing something so poor!
sincerely,
A Guy Who Obviously Talks Like the Comic Bookstore Guy From The Simpsons

Now. It is the reporter's job to report the facts, no matter how minute, lame or fucking worthless they are.

I'm reminded of a story someone once told me about how when The Count of Montecristo was broadcast on the BBC its viewership during a climactic scene. Not because the main character couldn't have survived a violent beating, not because he was thrown off a 500 ft. cliff onto a rock jetty. But because when he survived he swam back to shore using the Australian Breast stroke which, in the interest of accuracy, was only invented five hundred years after the time setting of the film.

It will just go down as another one of those times that matter to me for a week, total.

But when you get fired from enough jobs and you look at your credit history and can't understand how having no money means you have even less money and you catch an old eminem song and, for a second, think Yeah, that's right at least someone understands what it's like and you get excited to find, finally, an ATM that dispenses ten dollar bills and you have alot of time on your hands to wonder what the hell you think you're doing all day.

I wonder if there will come a point where I will do something and do it really well.

I did a crap job of doing one job (reporting) and it made me two hours late for another job (safeguarding art/reading in a chair). And neither of them will me pay for another two weeks meaning I will once again drop by a student cafeteria, walk out with pizza I haven't paid for and slip under the turnstile to get home.

But really--and if you said this in a movie I would say it was sollopsystic and vain and boring--if I get work done, reall work--pages down, verb tenses changed--for four hours every morning I could float through the rest of my half-assed days and continue not caring.

As a matter of public record I was fired from my last job for under reporting my tips. But there were plenty of really excellent, tangible reasons to fire me. And I'd like to offer them now:

1) I don't work the graveyard shift because my boss thinks that I have a job editting for writers who live in both New Zealand and England, and thus I need to be free so we can hold late-night/early-morning teleconferences.

2) On my final night at work, when it was slow, I sipped from a coffee mug of our most expensive whiskey. And, of course, did not pay for it.

3) That night my only customers for about an hour--who of course got a free drink each--offered to by me a drink, and I said it would not be necessary.

4) When I finished my mug of expensive whiskey (Maker's Mark, in case you keep track of what designer dresses my liver) I filled it, repeatedly, with Brooklyn Lager and drank it openly and in the company of mangers, who thought it was hot chocolate.

5) Every night at the beginning of my shift, I don't punch in the first three drinks but I take the money just so there's a ten dollar buffer zone in the computer at the end of the night in case of a discrepency later.

6) When I did work the graveyard shift, I had the moronic task of weighing every liquor bottle in the place so that the managers, doing complex calculations which would involve knowing intuiting intricate drink recipes from the register report ("...let's see 'Mixer $7, so that's probably a Cosmopolitan which we all know is .6 ounces of cointreau, 2.2 ounces of mostly likely Absolute vodka...). I hate doing things that are supposed to create the illusion of a watchful eye. So when I have reported for the liquor movement of the shift, I usually have a nice glass of expensive whiskey on the next shift's watch.

7) Not ever night, but enough nights, I had a nice dinner on the way in and had the manager put it down as my shift meal. And then do the same on the way out when the next manager's on.

8) Once, in clear violation of New York State Law, I served a flaming drink.

9) I had this conversation with a customer: "You know why I hate food service? I've got a booger right now that I can almost see from here. And I want to pick it so fucken badly right now." "Just do it." "I can't." "Get a tissue." "Nah, I'll just wait until no one's looking."

10) I kept my bag behind the bar in case someone who owns a better bar came in for take out. This happened twice and both times I gave them my resume. And that's why I DJ up the street now.

A bill collecter calls me this morning.

"Blah blah blah, you're a complete loser and this check bounced."

"Okay?"

"And we're the agency in charge of settling this debt." She goes into this long thing about how it is her bounden duty to reclaim the cover price of a paperback I bought two weeks ago. Only she does it without any conviction, just the proper nouns and verbs. It sounds like a verdict given by the judge in My Two Dads.

"Look, I..." the eleven shitty jobs I've had since graduation, let alone the previous fifteen, have given me the worst empathy for people with shitty jobs. "I know you must get other poor people yelling at you all the time, but I don't know why the check bounced. I'll have to figure that out. Meanwhile the only thing I can do is give you my credit card number, which just happens to be the same account that you're so upset about."

"Sorry we don't take credit cards."

"Can you send me a bill then?"

"One was sent to your house...lets see...two days ago. You should be getting it in the mail on monday."

"So you're just calling, what? To find out what I'll do on Monday when I get the hypothetical bill? Does this go on my credit report? No." I hung up the phone. And then I started thinking. Wow, now I'm totally the woman who's always in front of me at the bank.

What are you doing this sunday? I'm DJ'ing at a bar in Williamsburg and I'd love to see you there. It's right by the subway. The place itself is like the bar in "Swingers." No sign, etc. You just have to think you're cool enough to go there, which means that it's usually full of these types.

You know what'd be great? If I had either an assistant or a really specific magic eight ball to make narrative decisions for me. Right now I'm sitting here, stuck in the middle of chapter nineteen thinking, Now, if I keep the scene in Waffle House then I can accomplish one thing, but if I change it to Biscuit World then I can be free from the assumptions of the setting, but I will have to make the decriptions almost mirror those of Waffle House. And, I mean, am I really even free then? Or have I just created too much work for myself...

I'd flip a coin, but since I lost my job I'm kind of out of luck on that front.

Since most of my immediate heroes are either dead or middle aged, I have little to look up to. Today at my volunteer job we signed a contract with a very talented, hilarious, and gifted writer to get a collection not of his short stories but of his favorite short stories that other people have written. People would line up to purchase his books or pay tickets to see him speak as they did last summer and here he is making a mix-tape anthology. And he was cleaning other people's apartments in New York until he was 40.

I wonder if someday I'll give up. It's way to early to do it now. But I wonder if someday I'll realize that I'm just dreaming like this to keep myself distracted. And I wonder if I would feel the same way if I had a real job.

Damn. There goes another perfectly terrible job.

There's probably no sympathy out there for this, but it's on my mind. I have a job now that's three days in a row at a gallery. I sit in the corner with my laptop and read. The exhibit should be entitled "Things German Rich People Owned When We Were Burning Witches." It's about six million dollars of craftspersonship from the 1700s. If an art thief comes in to steal any of these precious items, I have to put down my reading and walk around the gallery so they know someone's there.

But the worst part is that I now feel like I have to wear something different everyday. Which means that only once a week can I wear my warm sweater. Today will be a cold day.

(Worthless Writer Gushing So That In Six Months I'll Remember This Class. Possibly only of any interest to Adrianne)

Taking a class on writing really only reminded me of what a terrible student I am. Great writers, writers whose writing I admire and wish were my own, spoke and I could only copy down their rehearsed jokes or the sidenotes they stressed.

Hopefully my weak memory will not tape over this night and I won't recall only William Lycheck quipping, "They don't call it submission for nothing." Or Jonathan Franzen on short stories: "I sold one--ever."

The evening began when a major American magazine editor sat down next to me because he thought we had met once before. I pretended to think so as well only we disagreed on what night. We were both tired. Me because I babysat drunk assholes in a diner until 6:30 in the morning. He because he flew to Pittsburgh to see a Bob Dylan concert. We touched on the finer points of rock journalism which lead to name-dropping at shop-talk, which lead to us both knowing the same person. And us both agreeing that he's just a great guy.

It's strange to mash writers and wanna be writers together in one room like this. It's very self-helpy. Everyone crowds around the coffee machine and bathroom with their heads down and pages through their one-sheet program.

I've never been the dating type but that's pretty much how this operated. Everyone decided who they wanted to get in bed with: the novelists, the agents, the editors, etc, and drooled all over them on breaks and afterward. They exchanged email addresses and I can only imagine the panelists going home to email-inboxes like the answering machine in "Swingers."

"Hey Jon, great to see you, I think we really connected to night and I..." "...maybe if you're not working on anything we could get together and..." "It's funny, cause we had that long conversation on how just meeting an agent doesn't mean you've found an agent, but then when we left I realized that I'd really like to work for you and so I was thinking that tomorrow I'm done with work at about" "Hey it's me again. The guy from tonight. I don't know if something's up with your machine, but anyway. What was I saying?"

But I did get some practical advice. I found out the new things I'm going to have to obsess about. Read Poets & Writes. Read Publisher's Weekly. Edit aloud (Franzen said it took him years to figure that one out). Read the acknowlegements page and research the names that pop up. The only urgency in writing is your urgency to get the deal, which is completely unimportant to the work. But if you haven't heard back in six weeks, drop them an email.

It was also nice to hear what failures these people were. Jonathan Franzen's first book was a 1200 page novel connected to itself with boring scenes and highly alliterative sentences. It took three boxes just to send it out to publishers. And sometims he couldn't understand why they wouldn't even agree to see one box. He admitted to being a slow reader. The youngest novelist on the panel talked about how after getting her expensive education her parents wanted a job payoff that never came and that even now on her second novel, the way she makes money is by writing young adult novels under a pseudonym. But that they can't stop being proud of her.

They also said alot of meaningless things. Or, if not meaningless, they really only mean what I want them to mean, and I'll attribute them to famous authors if necessary. Trust your instincts. You have to be your own best editor. Be fair to your characters. Murder your little darlings, etc. etc.

Last night a customer at five in the morning told a waitress that he would call INS if he didn't get her a beer. This was five thirty in the morning. People are commuting to work. I asked him to kindly pay his bill and when his friend did so, he tore the money out of my hand, ripping the twenty in half. I took it back, taped the bill together mentioned that he was more than welcome to get the fuck out of there.

Tonight I'm taking a writing class taught by Jonathan Franzen. See? Everyday is a new adventure.

You know what I love? Movies.

Some Memories:

1988 In our first grade classroom we held a mock-election. The teacher had a magazine cutout of each candidate and asked us to vote. I went for "the guy with the red face," whom I think was actually Reagan. The bus ride home was filled with dirty jokes from Steven Heaseman, my old bad influence. "Presidents are bad words. Know why? Cause we're voting for George Tush and Michael Du-caca." A year ago I ran into him. He has full sleave tattoos of things like naked women inside martini glasses ("Man's Ruin" (sic)). He was working at the Dunkin Donuts drive thru window somewhere in Massachusetts.

1992 "Mr. Perot's job is to take votes away from Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton is very good at telling people what he wants." My fifth grade teacher said that. And I was so confused. We had the proto-internet service Prodigy back them on a black-and-yellow computer screen. And it's strange to think that every election we regress so much with such better technology. When I vote for Dick Cheney in 2012 I'll probably laugh about that black-and-white screen that took up a whole pocket and could only hold ten thousand songs.

Before I went to bed I checked Prodigy. Its openning text message said, "We're staying up all night for you, and we won't sleep until we find the winner!" I couldn't beleive the newsmedia cared so much. I asked my mom what we would do if Bush won again. "We'll move to Canada," she said. When I woke up in the morning, the newspaper didn't have a winner but the computer did. And that amazed the shit out of me.

1996 Connecticut was a swing state and the debates were in Hartford. My registered republican grandmother had free passes to sit in the State Armory and watch the debates on a big screen and then wait for Bob Dole to come there after and address the crowd. She took my father and I. The republican party took away everyone's hand made signs on the way in and handed out twenty times as many pre-made signs. (Dole Slogan was something like "17%!" It referred to his fuzzy-math tax relief. I thought it was a terrible slogan then, and I think it's even worse now.) There was no admission fee and they had hotdogs and hamburgers for everyone. "Who's paying for all of this?" I asked my dad. "The party." "Where do they get all the money?" He shrugged his shoulders (this was before they pretended to care about campaign finance reform). And from then on politics just pissed me off.

On election night, Clinton beat the crap out of Dole. I remember crybaby Californians standing at the polls at four in the afternoon (west coast time), waiting to vote on an election that was called the night before and confirmed at seven o'clock (eastern time). Goddammit! We're the most populus state! We're the swingstate! We were in bed before their polls closed.

2000 I voted absentee in Connecticut for Nader from Ohio. The school lost the registrations of hundred of students would who have voted in a swing state if they had gone through. I remember Bob Dole being really hilarious on The Daily Show. At about midnight, after the fourth person tried to explain the electoral college to me, I heard Gore was going to win and went home. When I got to my door, the asshole next door was on the phone. I skateboarded to the bathroom (I did that. I was so college) and when I got back he put down the phone to tell me who won and I couldn't believe it.

When I went to sleep, I consoled myself thinking that, if nothing else, our new president was just an easy target and the next four years would be hilarious and full of budding comedians, funny-men, and political humor. But then it would be over.

2004 Annie and I voted at a public school up the street. Actually, I went with her to vote and abstained, since I voted absentee in Ohio a week before. I'm registered in NY (and Illinois and Connecticut) but I only voted once. I just want to be commended for not cheating in the worst working democracy. Five of us met up in Brooklyn. We don't have a TV, so we spent the beginning of the night drinking and reloading our web browsers. New York Times won't give anyone any state until it closes, USA Today basically just changes the colors from light blue "Leaning Kerry" to dark blue "Solid Kerry." And releases them about half at a time. Fox News is a little gun shy, but still hands out the easy states by reporting who the republicans "say" they've won.

We went to a bar around the corner and everytime Kerry won a state the crowd cheered at screamed. Bored people on cellphones would put them down, What? What? What happened? I fell asleep drunk for the first time in weeks, having no idea who won. I still don't. Secretly I hope they count the absentees in Ohio and give the state to Kerry by one vote so I can walk around for the next four years being self-satisfied in my benign voter fraud.

If Bloghosts.com were worth the money I pay them, I would be able to upload "The Monster Mash." Because, honestly, I have to let go of it every year, but today is the last day I can play it outloud.

All night, bar managers haunted me in mydreams. "You heard we're hiring? Well, you musta heard wrong." I spent all last night walking from Union Square to the Lower East side, walking into every bar and pretending that--since I go there every night--I heard they were hiring.

At my only good lead (one out of about thirty) and the only bar I'd been to before (once, after a movie) the girl looked at me, "Oh, are you, uh, are you a regular?"

"Yeah, definately."

"Oh, well, then wait for Carrie to come in."

This is kind of embarassing, but I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight. Tomorrow's the election and I can't stand this anymore. What's going to happen? Who's gonna get screwed?

Last time, I beleived Ralph Nader would get 5% of the vote and that Gore would win. (Nader-voting is so out of fashion now that I feel like I've just confessed that I listened to Greenday. We did. We all did. It was okay then.) The worthless polls predicted it too. Now what? I sure as hell won't sleep no matter what happens tomorrow night, and I can't afford to pass out drunk both nights.

If you're in Brooklyn on election night, email me (--------->) and come to the election parties. Most of the bars here have free drinks if Kerry wins.