So last week I briefly entertained the idea of starting my own personal journal or diary again. I kept one pretty faithfully in my youth, but there was some unpleasantness where someone read it who shouldn’t have and blah blah blah teenage STURM UND DRANG. Ever since then I’ve maintained the privacy of my own thoughts by… frequently publishing them on the Internet. Hmm. (Oh, but there is so much I cannot tell you, Internet! Sometimes I think my internal dam will break and all this stuff about my life and my family and friends will come rushing out and while it will be the interesting, raw stuff that good writings are made of no one will ever talk to me again and who will see the A-Team movie with me then, huh? WHO?!)

Anyway, in truth I was inspired to start my own diary via discovering the singer Amanda Palmer. She is really neat, and engaged to the equally neat author Neil Gaiman. I was simultaneously pleased to have discovered new music that I like and kind of irritated that such perfectly interesting artistic couples exist. Further stalking of Ms. Palmer turned up that she is a dedicated diarist, which seems like the kind of thing that people who are talented and fascinating do. I would like to be talented and fascinating! Perhaps there was something to this.

I sat down the next day with a new bound book and a nice pen (I do not like Bics — I like blue Papermates) and pondered how to best summarize my day. What inner demons could I expose with only myself for an audience? What true, fascinating talent would appear on these private pages? And thus I wrote: “Dear Diary: Today I ate a steak for breakfast AND dinner and watched 10 hours of Australian cooking gameshows. It was rad.”

So, anyway, new game plan: screw the diary. I think in its place I will practice anti-diarism: instead of remarking the passing of the days, I will try to never mention them again.

PS: I made egg noodles from scratch last night and they tasted like NOODLES. They looked like big thick retarded noodles that had been cut in the dark, but by god they were distinctly noodly and not at all like strips of dumplings as I feared.

This is me (in the back) and my skeptical friend Mari at the hippo enclave at the Seattle Zoo last weekend (taken by the lovely Kate). I love this photo for two reasons.

First, because it LOOKS like my mind has been fucking blown by those hippopotamii. I’ve seen hippos before, but I look pretty dang amazed and a little concerned here.

The second reason I love this photo is because I was not, in reality, making a shocked expression. One of our zoo companions told me that a hippo’s mouth opens 170 degrees around. I wanted to see it for myself, so I was entirely logically yawning at the hippos so they would yawn back at me.

So, for the record, I am not some rube who has never been to a zoo before. I was just yawning at the hippos.

PS: I haven’t written a dang thing in at least two weeks. Not here, not for the internets elsewhere. My temporary disappearance isn’t personal.
PPS: I have been on a huge Deadwood bender for the last week, and I would like to apologize now to all my friends and family for my current irrepressible, liberal use of the word “cocksucker”. It’s a phase.