The worse are your enemies the better are your friends.

I


  had a terrible headache this morning. The vino; I blame the vino.


G


uess what happened as I slept last night? A fire broke out in the kitchen. It seems that one of the inextricable houseguests decided to cook an incompetent basket of popcorn. In so doing he somehow managed to start a raging grease fire on the electric range. Thanks go to Zachary. Then Monster Boy made an incompetent effort to extinguish the flames, and of course that only worsened the problem. So now the ceiling and wall around the stove are darkened with oily soot. Attempts to wash it off have only been partly successful.

Far worse than the actual damage (which is thankfully fairly minor) is the stress introduced into my life. I've considered the danger of thieves, skinheads, psychotic webmasters, the police and even out-of-control-housemates. But now I have to worry about fire. And fire is a scary thing. When fire is part of the picture, I find myself lapsing into unproductive obsessive-compulsive behaviour. I'm not a true obsessive-compulsive, because I believe that when I check something once, that's enough, unless others are there to fuck things up.

For him, the future greys out into oblivion beyond the space of time it takes to get to the nearest convenience store.

And others are. Zachary is the most prolific author of entropy I've ever met. He's probably worse than Morgan Anarchy. He seems to lack an ability to learn from mistakes, and he has no sense about the effect his decisions have upon the future. He lives in the constant hedonistic Now. For him, the future greys out into oblivion beyond the space of time it takes to get to the nearest convenience store.

It's not enough that none of my friends have any identifiable skills. Some of them, such as Zachary, have tendencies that require a crew of skillful people to undo the damage they continually wreak upon the world. Zachary drives his car extremely recklessly (he should be showcased in a Toyota advertisement), he does unspeakable things to both bicycles and the tools used to fix them, he willingly fathers a child neither he nor his wife have any means of supporting, he can't hold a job to save himself, and now he's incinerating my kitchen. My feeling is: he's more than welcome to fuck up Peggy's life, but I don't want him fucking up mine.

I


  checked my email obsessively today, resorting to computer labs at UVA. Nathan and Janine have returned from a vacation in New Mexico. He wrote to tell me I should visit him alone. He had some very expensive tequila he wanted to share with me.

It was authentic too; on the thirty dollar bottle there wasn't a word of English to be found. Once we'd finished a shot of the expensive stuff, we moved on to relatively cheaper $20/bottle tequila for the making of Margaritas. When they were done Janine appeared with Sam Adams, we each had two of those and then my head went swimming.

In this intoxicated condition, we took Harvey the ancient hound dog for a walk.

He wants to label every remarkable feature with his urine, much like a compulsive patriot flying flags from every fencepost.

Harvey's a complete male. This isn't difficult to tell, because his balls hang unusually low from an exceptionally deforested pubic region. Most of Harvey's powers of sight and hearing have faded away, but he still retains the quintacentially mammalian sense: that of smell. He carries his head low to the ground sensing every trail worthy of pursuit and every affront to his territorial ambitions. And is he ambitious. He wants to label every remarkable feature with his urine, much like a compulsive patriot flying flags from every fencepost. But Harvey doesn't budget his urine well. He never knows how long the walk is going to be, and ends up expending the bulk of his reserves on his first tag. By the end of his walk, however, he's doing his best if he can squirt out one lousey drop. Nathan tells me that sometimes when Harvey's bladder is extremely full, he can't maintain his balance long enough on three legs, and is forced to let the raised leg drop. Piss splatters everywhere.

B


ack at home, Steve Weiner the pot bellied human was visiting. Just looking at Peggy and Zach put me in a bad mood, and I took it out on Steve the pot bellied human. He called me an "asshole" but I didn't care.

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