February 13, 1997, Thursday

Cool thing to say today: Deserts are dangerous places to wander through, but if you're penniless in the city with too much pride to beg you might as well be in the desert.

Then I could bring wine and cheese and have rich little old ladies come sit in the desks to "experience" it.

I was on my way to UVA to do some computer work but was distracted by Cecelia the Brazilian Girl and Monster Boy, who waved at me from up the hill on University. They were bored, and so they joined me on an adventure through UVA. We ended up in one of the larger classroom buildings on campus, in an old classroom filled with bolted down desks, the kind that have an integrated chair and writing surface. In an amusing scene that would have been good in a hypothetical movie about this generation, we moved from desk to desk and called out the band names we found scrawled in the layers of accumulated graffiti scratched into the wooden writing surfaces by generations of bored students. There were also numerous references to fraternities. I had an idea that the classroom could be viewed as an artistic installation. I could call it "art" and it would suddenly be mine in a Dadaist sense. Then I could bring wine and cheese and have rich little old ladies come sit in the desks to "experience" it. Certainly looking at the graffitit on the well worn desktops was at least as good as 60% of the art openings I've been too.

It just happened that we were in a classroom in which Portuguese had been taught, and Cecelia busied herself by replacing the trite phrases on the blackboard with darker, more gruesome sentiments in her native language.

As we left the classroom, we waded through crowded halls of very normal looking students, the kind you can safely take home to mother. By contrast, Moster Boy and Cecelia look kind of...weird. Monster Boy had a spiked collar around his neck and Cecelia...well she has a big sector of her head that's been shaved and bleached.

Back at my house we drank three high quality beers I'd stolen from my parents' place. Then Monster Boy went off to work. He works at the C&O and the Eastern Standard, both on the Downtown Mall.

Cecelia is trying to give up smoking before participating in a medical study later this month concerning the common cold. It's worth $750, but she cannot smoke. Her attempting to quit today was manifested by "skipping" cigarettes that she craved. It still seemed that she was always in search of cigarettes. She apparently can't afford to buy any herself and is given to reflexively asking people for them. This was particularly embarassing when she asked Andrew, now a nonsmoker, for cigarettes. Not once, but twice.

She and I went to Theresa and Persad's and I only stayed there briefly, continuing on to Comet to check my email.

Later Cecelia joined me and my housemates at my place for a surprisingly sweet episode of the Simpsons. She and I then watched some old Big Fun videotapes.

During my uncomfortable walk to work, I waded through sleet that had accumulated a half inch on the ground during my pre-work nap.

At work, I'd just made my way into Sam 'n' Ellas Punk Rock Chat when someone calling herself dee mented claimed she was from Bryn Mawr College. I asked if she knew Matthew Hart's friend "Leah from Virginia." It's a small punk rock world because it turns out that she did. She was getting booted off the computer and so wanted my phone number. And she proceded to call me up here at work. Of all things, she was just then coming down off of tussin DM. The only snag in our relatively brief conversation was when she did that most annoying of punk rock things, asking what bands I like. I didn't know what to say in as much as I would hate to be defined or stereotyped by the kind of music I like. It's best not to discuss music with someone until you know him. So I told her nothing to satisfy her.

Later I conversed with blixa about such things as genital warts, a recurrent problem amongst the sexually active of Charlottesville. I posted a picture of genital warts in the chat window, followed by a picture of a cauliflower.

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