Is this what life would really be like if I didn't write? It's fun, in a way. If I had no abmitions in life whatsoever I would definately keep this lifestyle. If i weren't writing and instead had a big, driven 8 AM-7PM workaholic job I would have no fun.

Last night I picked up a writing assignment for a music magazine. I was really unimpressed with the band I went to see, but I'm glad I stuck around. Because at midnight the secret guest appearance turned out to be Annie.

Through a series of annoying tech-problems (the producer, in his thick accent, screamed through the mike: "we haf no munitors!") the band stayed on stage, waiting for lightning to strike them dead for almost two hours. The producer briefly go into a fight with the lead singer of the band that everyone actually came to see.

Instead of hooking up the real monitors, they borrowed an amp from one of the bands and plugged it right into their machines. Annie herself hides remote hearing aides under her blonde hair and doesn't need monitors. At almost three in the morning they finished a six song set and Annie said in her sweet, beatific voice "Shall we do one more?"

The producer grabbed the mike, "Yeah, I got one more for you." He took the borrowed amp, smashed it down on the stage, jumped on top of it until the components started getting stuck on his shoes. "And I will fecking pay for it too eef anyone asks!"

A friend of mine who works for Annie's record label checked his watch and turned to me, "Tomorrow morning's gonna suck." And I thought, Yeah, it really will. I'm almost out of pancake mix.

Life has become a little bit depressing without novels to write. When I am writing one I have a reason to get up in the morning--no, I need to get up in the morning. I also need to go to bed early in order to do this.

Since I rarely have to work until four o'clock in the afternoon, this means I find myself, as I did last night, sitting in my living room at three AM, watching The OC like I'm still in college.

I had thought I might work on short stories for a while, but they were all on the hard drive that crashed out. I need another all-consuming project/career to get into or I'm going to start gaining weight and sleeping from 4-noon.

1) Don Adams--aka Maxwell Smart aka Inspector Gadget--just died

2) Annie is taking a class at her prestigious university wherein they are creating a children's television program. I met her professor on the street one time and Annie credited me with coming up with several of the jokes in her script assignment. The professor said that I would be welcome in the class anytime.

I, of course, took this to mean that anytime they had class, I was welcome inside of it. The room was full of the ridiculous performance of undergraduate classrooms. Local, non-NY sportsteams were over represented in homesick baseball caps and folders. Some of the kids wore Spongebob gear and some of them wore Gucci. There was also clearly one kid who really worked hard on his neo-trucker hat ensemble.

"Who are you?"

"I--" I said. "I met you on the street. Remember me? You said--"

"I know I met you, but what are you doing here?" Just then the class Mr. Lateguy walked in with his requisite, yet unprompted joke ("Is that clock right?"). The teacher covertly discussed with her unneccessary teaching aid (I've had dinner parties larger than this class) and pulled us aside.

I had worked up a whole "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were bestowing me with uneccesary pity when you invited me to you talent-dry, crypto-classist pow-wow" kind of speech. But the teaching aid had an errant lazy eye which was, I swear, looking behind her. And I, cursed with the losing 50/50 chance, always look in the wrong one. I left quietly and even returned the pen I had borrowed from neo-trucker hat guy.

This is further what I mean when I say I am losing my edge.

Moments after leaving Officemax my hard drive crashed. I've long wondered if electronics come with a 12 month warrentee because they are only given a 13 month lifespan. Everything goes like this.

Right now there are only two copies of my manuscript in existence. One is sitting in the office of the agent who buys me drinks. One is sitting in Officemax waiting for me to pick it up.

I'm very happy about this because I can't think of a single other reason for me to stop working on this draft and call it finished.

Today I went to the Office Max to buy two reems of paper. It's aways such a moment. My manuscript now numbers 409 pages. It now takes me an entire reem for each copy I print out.

One will go to the agent who buys me drinks.

One will go to the agent who can't spell my name.

Annie is having an operation of sorts in the morning so she is not allowed to eat. I put her to sleep by reading short story's from Truman Capote's final collection Music For Chameleons. Just before she fell asleep I was reading a lengthy dialogue between Truman and Marilyn Monroe.

And before I print out these final pages--these final, final pages because tomorrow morning I'm going to start another project and maybe some short stories--I'm going to read it out loud while Annie's medicine keeps me from becoming too self conscious to go through with this.

Right now I'm reading the new Zadie Smith novel On Beauty. I can't believe it is good. But the only thing I don't like is the same thing I hated about Indecision, The Book of Joe and every other work of new fiction. It's so current. All of these books have detailed description of iPods and burned CDs. Beauty goes so far as to quote "Hey Ya!" and talk about pre-election Bush.

Why is it that the authors of our generation insist on chronicling the year preceeding their work's publication?

Yesterday I had a great meeting with an agent. I didn't have to take the night off from work and she paid for the drinks, so that's pretty good. She also represents a "young" author (nearly 30) who has written a book that isn't very good. It would be easy to tell you how not very good it is if anyone would bother reading it.

It was on the cover of the times book review AND arts section, but neither reviewer seemed to have read it. I ended up holding my tongue for the entire meeting and instead I let her get me tipsy on the corporate Amex.

But this is really important. I want this to be on my official record:

In 2010 there will be alot of novels about the turn of the century. In 2015 there will be films about it and this will be the plotline for everyone:

So there we were, enjoying a strong economy and paying off the debt we acrued during the Reagan/Bush years and instantly, electronically mailing people across the country. Amazing! We were so young and making so much money but then the president got a blow job. The older people didn't get computers and they also thought that the president had sex, even though he had a blow job. I mean, you woulda had blow jobs at work all the time if you knew that a computer glitch was going to destroy the planet in one year!...But then it didn't. Isn't that funny? Here we were all worked up over nothing. Planes stayed in the sky, and I received mail across the country, electronically. And then ahh! terrorists! I totally didn't see that coming at this point in the story! How could we have been so self-involved! It was a time of emotional turmoil, francophobia, and the loss of the baked potato. No wonder everyone started websites and devoted them to their inner thoughts.

And we're back...

Like too many things in this world, my web hosting only works when you pay the bills on time.

I have nothing to say about this. However: Liam Boycott--the main character of my unpublished novel, Breakfast Anytime--muses on the constant imbalance of income both in the home and in his community, while delivering pizza:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this neighborhood, it’s that they all want to believe that everyone in the world makes the same wage, and that they were the ones who pulled overtime. As if Dad just knocks off everyday after lunch and that’s why we never have power at the end of the month.
They don’t want people to think they’ve had anything handed to him. But if that were really true they wouldnt’ve ordered delivery.

I got my first rejection the day the service ran out. I figured that I didn't have to face up to it if no one could read about it on the internet. As if my real life only happens once it has been recorded in weblog format. And then today I got the same rejection letter from a different agent. "The writing is strong, but I'm just not into the story."

In seventh grade they converted to bubble-sheet report cards. The teachers could no longer write in comments about your behavior. Instead they could fill in pre-written comments that would print up on that old dot-printer computer paper with the artillary holes along the edge. I was somehow either "a pleasure to have in class" or "Failing to turn in assignments on time" for seven differnt teachers.

Yesterday I was working on some character development and I let Liam go on a diatribe about how money was a disease ("Like Chicken Pox, you want it till you got it. Like cockwarts, you're only supposed to sleep with people who already have it.")

Then today I got my first paycheck from my new job. I rejoiced. I cried with joy. This is what I mean when I say I'm losing my edge.

I can't fucking wait for the Truman Capote movie to come out. The trailer makes me warm.

Yesterday I was walking in Union Square and one of those big-hearted college student stopped me to see if I cared at all for starving, orphaned childred in AIDS-stricken Africa. "...some of whom have to walk for miles just to get water and will die of dhyarhea. Isn't that stupid? We're so lucky in this country. We can get Pepto Bismol right at that corner store anytime we want it.

In Williamsburg I had a good rhythm going with these people. I would walk past very fast and say "I'm sorry I can't talk but I love what you do." I know that most of them are tired sociology undergrads who get spit on and sassed at frequently enough that sometime they want more than just a donation. They want the satisfaction of helping someone and I instead just give them satisfaction.

But this girl stopped right in front of me and I ended up listening to her whole spiel and then struggling to find ways to tell her that she is a great person but that I don't have a bank account to subscribe to her help system with.

I spent the rest of the day arguing with my manuscript. There's a scene I'm working on making believable. The make character becomes speechlessly in love with a complete stranger in Seattle and then runs into her days later in San Francisco. How can I prove that it's the same girl without using words like "that fucken hottie?"

Ben, Pete and I went to see The Baxter later that night on the other side of town. I asked a woman for a light and she said "Hey! It's you! I saw you in union square today." The manuscript frequently leaps out of my bag, making me wish that I understood magical realism. "You were talking to that girl about helping children in Africa. I remember you." She smiled at me. I was friendly back, but I need to know how this happened. Why did you notice me? Why did you remember me in another part of town? What is it about me? Do I have an accent? I wanted her to help me fix this chapter. Can you come up with a scenario where I would find you as compelling as you apparently find me?

But you can't say stuff like that without sounding like a pompous dick.