Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 14:59:07 -0500 (EST)
From: leroy king 
To: slking-list%lists.medianstrip.net
Subject: [slk-list] reader's digest edition.



In the year since I last sent anything to the list I've written a bunch of
stuff in Leroyese, which is how Leroy talks when he's talking about
himself, so, almost all the time.  Usually that stuff goes here, but it's
been ending up all over lately.  I thought I would send it along for you
in case you hadn't seen it.  So if you've been following my websites as
closely as I have you may get bored.  But how likely is that.  

I still remember one time in second grade, we had some kind of spontaneous
discussion about boredom.  Miss (Mrs?  the distinction seemed so
important in those days) Miz Maloney was trying to argue that children
should by their nature never be bored; at one point she was searching for
an example and I guess she scanned the room for smart kids, and so
naturally settled on me.  "Stewart, I'll bet you're never bored, are
you?"  I just stared at her blankly.  "Sure, all the time," I said, or 
something like that.  I think she was disappointed.  

Anyway there's some e-mails and private journal entries and such thrown
in, so _hopefully_ you haven't all seen those.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

You hear things over lunch: apparently (so I hear) New England fishermen
make their real money off of bluefin tuna.  Like, a single bluefin tuna.  
That's what my boss says: when she was small on the coast, in the 70s and
early 80s, the same Japanese man would come to Provincetown every day,
pick up the bluefin right off the dock, hand the fisherman cash, take the
fish in a truck. They were flown out from the Hyannis airport.  They would
be eaten in Japan (sushi I guess) inside of 38 hours, and the flight alone
is 20.  I didn't hear a price, but they say that 2 or 3 bluefins make an
entire season, and if you get 5 or 6 you're making pretty good money over
the top of expenses.  They're fat like hogs.  They send planes out now
trying to spot them.

You can only imagine the incidence of agoraphobia among bluefin tuna 
nowadays.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
days of leroy #5: a day in the life of leroy
(medianstrip oct. 13)


So I'm rotting up in my room as per usual.  Living at home is a lot more
work now that I live on the third floor, and not the second, so every
time I want something from the kitchen or the tee vee room I have to drag
my long lizard tail up and down the stairs.  The bathroom is four feet
from my bedroom door now, which is nice, but i lose on balance since i
get hungry or bored enough to go downstairs every hour or so, whereas
I've never peed all that often.  Being in the Boy Scouts as a lad,
between the long car trips and the scratchy pine bushes, tightens those
o-rings.  Come to think of it that could explain their homosexuality
policy.

In between trips I sit in front of my computer and ache.  The internet
actually threw my neck out last week.  I was sitting at work at the time,
trapped like a lobster in a rubber band factory hours after everyone else
had left, staring at the screen completely unable to move.  My neck
muscles got tuckered and relaxed one by one until the last one
holding up my giant melon head sprained itself or something.  Hurt for a
week.  Tiny fucker in the middle of my neck, too, impossible to massage
without probably spinal bifidizing myself.  

Then after that healed I knocked this antique glass lightshade off my
ceiling and it broke on me.  I was playing "lightsaber" with this empty
map tube at the time, because I'm a grownup now.  I bought these maps, one
of the USA and one of the world, to put up on my wall and keep track of my
network of people, you know, the geographical distribution, in case I ever
need to know: push pins color coded by the "severity", for lack of a
better word, of the connection: blue for "acquaintances / professional
contacts", green for "old friends I'm sort of in touch with," yellow for
"could crash here given advance notice", red for "could crash unannounced
at 2 AM."  Not that I actually intend to do this to my very good friends
or anything, but you never know.

So the maps came in these clear plastic tubes.  The "world" tube was a bit
too long, but the "USA" tube was just the right length and weight, and
there's a little hole at the end of it that makes a "whoosh" noise when
you swing it.  So naturally I'm swinging it, and, you know, deflecting
blasters and what-not, and the next thing you know I tap something up near
the ceiling, and I'm thinking, well that's not right, and the next thing
you know after that I freeze just as a two pound piece of flat glass
cracks in half across my wrist in mid-air.  

One half lands intact on the futon mattress.  The other half smashes on
the floor.  I end up leaving it there for three days because I don't know
where the broom is and don't have the energy to deal with it.  This bump
starts to grow on my hand.  My girlfriend comes over.  "Watch out for the
broken glass," I tell her.  She sleeps on the opposite side of the bed.  
Finally after three days I clean it up off the floor with a dirty sock and
a credit card receipt, put it all in a shopping bag and lean it against
the wall.  It's still over there.  Now I've lost track of which sock I
used, and will probably put it on again.

And here I am.  The end.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 19:54:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: leroy king 
To: Christina Hodge 
Subject: Re: bruno


> can I see you tonight somehow?

yeah.  through a telescope!  ha ha!  just kidding.  your place or mine?  
feel like coming over?  i feel sort of like staying in, but could be 
persuaded otherwise if you looked really sad.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

<long pause>

"You're a mixed fruit boat."

"What?"

<pointing at menu> "Mixed fruit boat.  You."

"No-oo..."

"Yes.  You're Polish and English, right?"

"Yes..."

"So you're mixed.  And you're a fruit because..."

"No, I"

"... you came from a tree.  Do you float?"

"I... not very well."

"But do you sink?"

"Well, no.  I float a little ways below the surface."

"So you're a submarine.  That's a kind of boat.  Cogito, ergo 
mixed fruit boat, QED."

<silent fit of some kind>

"I'm not a mixed fruit boat."

"No, but you have to admit I made a better case than you were
expecting.  You know where you could have had me?  On the fruit
part.  I skipped over that pretty quickly because I knew I didn't have an
argument.  Come to think of it, though, people are a lot like fruit - an
attractive, fleshy exterior to lure observers to the seed within."

"Except for, like, hair."

"Hm."

"And organs and things."

"Yeah, that's true.  We're whole organisms, while fruit is just a sort of
snack wrapped around the seed, so the insects or birds will be
tempted and carry it away to a better place."

<pause>

"So, in a sense, we're like the fruit and the birds all rolled into
one."

"You'd better write that down before you forget it."


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 18:18:05 -0500 (EST)
From: christinahodge 
To: leroy king 
Subject: Re: typical


[...]

mm.  but then where do relationsips go?  that's the one thing I'm not
really goal oriented about I guess.  school and work are all about killing
time and jumping hurdles and dissatifaction until the big payoff.  or
buying new shoes.  there are these shoes I think I want for our trip.  
and I *know* I want a dark blue jean skirt, knee length, with just a
little stretch to look good in the ass, you know.  and um some funky print
shirt, or maybe a slightly see through blousey type thing.  I need some
sort of outfit for the symposium anyway, something in a casual chic that
says responsible, brilliant, edgy, hip, young academic who gets her butt
checked out by internationally famous archaeologists.  oh and I'm getting
unaccustomed longings for a hip little purse of all things.  and one of
those leather notebook covers for you know my all important notes but the
one I really want isn't on sale yet fuckers.  you shouldn't let me go to
urban outfitters, they have orange suede passport covers there.  or to
jasmine.  and I must must must cut my bangs and get new glasses. oh and
pay off the damn credit cards. and stop buying archaeology books, well,
just after this new report on a big quaker cemetery excavation in
virginia.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
days of leroy #7: leroy makes old friends older
(medianstrip oct. 18)

This is something I just found on my hard drive.  About a year ago, my
high school journalism teacher retired.  Mrs. Little.  
I always liked Mrs. Little.  She was on the conservative side, and once 
got me in trouble by somehow convincing me to write an editorial condemning 
the girls' volleyball team's gym shorts for being too sexy.  I didn't feel 
this was the case at all - not sexy enough, not by three inches - but 
I didn't have very much conviction back in high school so I wrote it.  
It was anonymous, but of course word got out that it was me.  I think 
the volleyball team still hates me.  

But despite the occasional speed bump, I liked Mrs. Little.  We got
along.  So she retired last year, and some of the current journalism
students sent out e-mails to all of the alumni they could find asking for
contributions for a goodbye issue.  I sent this.  Everyone was
horrified.  I have no idea why they printed it, given the
circumstances.  

----

1

I was told this had something to do with journalism, but that's turned
into a dead end already.  I don't want to talk about journalism because I
have nothing to say.  It would only inspire contempt.  If you're anything
like I am you're already analyzing this for signs of weakness, trying to
reassure yourself that on a good day, you could do better, than I'm no
better than you are really.  Maybe I'm just an asshole, but I do that to
everything I read.  And I might even be right, but the problem is that I
can't prove it because I never bother to write anything of my own.  So
first of all I want to thank you for this amusing little project, which
has given me a much-needed kick in the ass.

Back to the point.  I have occasional sportscasting fantasies whenever I
listen to local Red Sox games on JCN and somebody tries to say something
funny, but that's absolutely the extent of my current journalistic
ambition.  Once I dreamed of national syndication and global influence,
but now that I'm a college graduate I have to think bigger than that.


2

Naturally I'm unemployed.  When this turned into an essay on my current
career status I don't know, but as they say, write what you know.  There
are a couple of plans on the stove.  One of them is to get a job.  All of
my experience currently has to do with web page design, one of the least
relevant career avenues to come down the pipe in decades.  Back when I was
going through Harvard's recruiting process I nearly went ahead and tried
to annihilate the whole idea of a meaningful career by going into
advertising, but then I thought about it a little bit and realized that I
was going to wake up one morning at age 34 and realize that, while my
father spent his career doing things like working on the Apollo project, I
was spending my life creating websites about flavor crystals.

There's a reason I'm telling you this.  People in school, students, think
they already know that getting a corporate job hawking products is for
sellouts and your life has to mean something, but you should know that
right around the point that you come out of college there's suddenly a lot
of pressure to get a job, any old Microsoft, junior executive job, just
whore yourself out to make some money for a while right out of school so
that you can live with your friends like you're on "The Real World" and
pay the rent and buy yourself a DVD player and some nice shoes.

Which is okay, and I probably will, but I'm also working with my roommate
Chloe to produce a film.  We've batted the idea around for ages, but one
day last month I walked into the living room and said to her, "We have to
make the film now, because if we don't do it now we're never going to do
it."

You have to make sure that you do the things that you want to do, and the
only way to make sure is to do them now, before you get a chance not to
bother.  But now I'm starting to sound like William J. Bennett.


3

William J. Bennett is the biggest square in America.  At some point one
president or another appointed him Secretary of Square Affairs, at which
time he was charged with turning America into a nation of squares with a
ruthless, yet well-mannered efficiency.  The way he planned to do this was
by having parents across America read two 500-page books of moral lessons
to their children, thereby passing on the neglected wisdom of the ages.

In these books, said wisdom is encapsulated in an endless litany of
parables, each with the moral spelled out in bold-face text immediately
before the story.  The following is an actual example from "The Moral
Compass":

The Blacksmith's Apprentice

There are some bad people in the world.  Sometimes, they do some bad
things.  Don't be one of them.

One day, little Bobby's favorite riding horse threw a shoe.  Being a
responsible little boy, Bobby immediately picked up the shoe and led the
horse down to the blacksmith's shop to see if he could get it fixed.

When he got to the blacksmith's shop, Bobby was so excited that he burst
through the door without knocking (a very naughty thing to have done!).  
He was shocked to see the Blacksmith laying there naked, moving up and
down in a strange way on top of his teenaged apprentice, who also was
naked.

"What are you doing?" Bobby asked.  The blacksmith's head jerked around.

"Nothing," he said, searching hurriedly for his pants.

"Is that your apprentice?"

"No," the blacksmith said.

"Hullo, Bobby," said the apprentice.

"Who are you going to believe," the blacksmith snapped, "me or that
ninny?"

"What were you doing to him?" Bobby asked.

"Sodomizing him," the blacksmith replied.

"When I have a profession of my own, can I sodomize my apprentice too?"

"Of course not," the blacksmith said, "that would be immoral."

"What about women?" Bobby asked.

"Not until you're older."

--o--

Of course, all of this ignores the basic fact that if parents were willing
to take the time to read and review 1000 pages of writing with their
children, most of the other problems would almost certainly take care of
themselves.

Anyway.  William J. Bennett has his brand of moralizing, and I have mine.


4

It's the most pathetic, disheartening thing in the world to realize that
you're getting old.  It didn't start happening to me until about a year
ago, when I started really examining people in their thirties and realized
that I only have about eight years left before things start going to hell.

Chloe and I and our friend Lisa have made a commitment to each other to
live forever.  We're planning on taking advantage of advanced gene therapy
to stop the aging process around the time we turn sixty, then wait around
for a decade or two while they work the kinks out of the process to
actually reverse the effects of aging that's already happened.  It's not a
completely ludicrous idea; some of the new research is pretty exciting.  
That way we should be able to hang around throwing bottles, making noise,
wasting all the afternoons we want until the universe implodes again,
unless we come down with cancer or get hit by a FedEx truck in a big hurry
to deliver flavor crystals to some understimulated teenager somewhere.

In the meantime, though, I have to consider that a contingency plan.  
It's entirely possible that we're a generation too early, so I may be put
in the uncomfortable position of having to make something of myself inside
my own natural lifespan.  Basically that just means that I need to keep
busy, which is something that I'm fundamentally incapable of doing for any
meaningful length of time.

Chloe's in the other room right now.  "I hate everything," she just said
out loud.  "You know, my life is really pathetic."  She's by herself in
there.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.23.0
the myth of sissyface

two inspirations yesterday.  one survived, the more important one: anne
frank's weblog.  ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha.  ha.  more later.


5.24.0
high-calorie ted

another inspiration, shortly after the other one (shh!  a secret: it's
been more than a day) - "The Collected Emails of Abraham Lincoln."  
Matters of state, with emoticons (and so on).

the weekend: went to the p-town with hodge.  stayed in a motel.  hung
around the room a lot.  went into town.  saw almost famous at one of those
remote suburban theaters.  pretty good.  sat in the parking lot for an
hour (we got there at 8, it didn't start until 9:35), listening to fight
club soundtrack, radiohead 'kid a' which just came out on tuesday and to
which we listen attentively round the clock.  we, you and she.

went to taunton mall on the way home.  wasn't as good as we remembered it
- becoming jaded with retail and malls, finally, probably.  no doubt a
good thing, although it feels like lost youth, off in a hidey-hole,
crying.  did find some nice bargains at TJ Maxx.  ha ha.  wearing them
now: hooded gray quicksilver longsleeve, sunglasses.  look like Unabomer.  
also yellow nautica reversible, blue (also nautica) jacket with leather
collar.  nice jacket.

wanted to draw this weekend.  had nothing to draw with.  will ask jean
where she gets sketchbooks.  


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 18:12:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: leroy king 
To: released by bears 
Subject: A Letter.


                                                17 Ossipe Road, #2
                                                Somerville, MA 02144
                                                August 23, 2000

Ms. Chloe Joan Lopez
PO Box 381766
Cambridge, MA 02238


Dear Ms. Lopez,



     P.




Sincerely,



Leroy S. King

----------------------------------------------------------------------

So on Friday night Mike, Amos and I sat around my house trying to drink a
gallon of Guinness each.  Mike and I bought three of those convenient 
eight-packs and wrote our names on them.  Prior to the shopping expedition 
there had been a disturbance in the kitchen having to do with
unit conversion, which we thought we had resolved via some canny mental
math and a close reading of milk cartons and soup cans until it turned out
that a can of Guinness is only 14.9 fluid ounces, not sixteen, so really a
gallon is about eight and a half cans.  We ignored this on aesthetic
grounds.  

Amos arrived two cans behind and finished while Mike and I were still
paddling around in number five.  Amos, you should realize, is maybe 6'7"
and large.  Mike, more realistic than your narrator, realized he wasn't
going to make it at around that time and eased off the throttle.  I was a
little ways into number seven when the pizza arrived and, losing all
composure in the face of the bounty available, I foolishly wolfed down
three slices.  A little while later I passed out upstairs.

In the morning I was supposed to prepare the house and coordinate movie
suicide weekend, the renting and watching of 12 consecutive full-length
motion pictures.  I was still faintly drunk and felt sort of spongy
in the head.  Standing up produced a sensation unlike weightlessness.  
I got Holly to drive to the Porter Square video store but they didn't
have "The Last Dragon" _or_ "Death Race 2000" so we declared that
video stores suck, went home and ordered everything from Kozmo.  I cleaned
my room as best I could, limited as I was to short, declarative gestures
with no force behind them.  My closet ended up four feet deep in a kind
of sweater-and-CD goulash which will be unpleasant to deal with. We
watched movies from 1 PM to 6 AM and again from 9 AM to 10 PM.  Let me see
if I can remember the complete list.

Happiness
Bring It On
Death Race 2000
Heathers
Waking Ned Devine
Network
The Shining
Tai Chi Master

By this time it was 6:30 AM or so.  People had been having trouble staying
awake since Network.  Dave, Phil, Corinna, Jean and Amos had gone out to a
party and come back.  Phil and Julia had never seen the Shining before, so
we showed it to them.  I had lapsed into a state of 3/4 asleep and 1/4
subconsciously creeped out when suddenly Jean next to me started thrashing
around and kicking her feet and my body jolted into a fight or flight
response for at least a second and a half.  Luckily I was too confused to 
pick one or the other.

For some reason Amos declined to spend a second consecutive night on our
couch.

Chasing Amy
The Fifth Element
The Iron Giant
Underworld: Everything, Everything (plotless dinner break)
The Birds (first half)
Koyaanisqatsi
The Book of Life (first half)
2 hours of the fucking Sopranos

Then after most everyone left Mike and Holly wanted to watch The Matrix in
my room so we did that too, 2.35:1 widescreen on a 13" screen with audio
piped through the stereo mixer.  It's a strangely wonderful setup in a way
I can't quite explain. I fell asleep before it was over.

On Monday night Mike, Holly, Dave and I (and eventually Jen) had a small
dinner party at Mike's place.  I tried to explain my idea for a society of
music and machine experimentation, but I think the wine may have
interfered with my self-expression.  Dave, Mike and I agreed that it's a
good thing when your friends show up unannounced and knock on your door
insisting that you come help them with this new plan or scheme.  Holly
didn't vote but I'm sure she agrees too.  I love that idea more than
almost anything but I never actually do it to people because my natural
introversion is still strong there, the overdeveloped respect for what
other people are already choosing to do with their time, the unwillingness
to say "come do this with me."  I will beat it down until it dies.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to family story hour.  My grandparents have lived in the same
house since my mother was around 8, back in, what, 1947 or thereabouts.  
It's in Walteria (south central Torrance), on Adolph Avenue, which was
sort of an unfortunate street name given the times - there's a story about
that but I've forgotten it.  Anyway, some time after they moved in, some
neighbors came around with a petition against allowing hispanics to move
into the neighborhood.  They were getting quite a few signatures.  My
grandfather told them to get the hell off his porch.  They got the hell
off his porch.  

So in the fullness of time a large hispanic family moved in next door to
my grandparents and started stealing everyone's hubcaps.  I'm never sure
what to say at the end of this story.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Nosotros tenemos hablamos espanol aqui ahora.  Tenemos hablar.  Yo
(Leroico) ayudo muy espanol en la escuela primera, pero no recuerdo muy
bien, como tu vez.  Primero, yo necesito recordar como typar los acentos -
é - !  Buénó! Y también el n pequena -
necesito searchar el Web para este - Googlar - yo Googlo, tú
Googles, ellos Googlen - ah, es simple.  Tengo entrar la caracter
especialmente -  - y espero que ningún malo suceden.  Que
lástima.  <br><br>

En un gran coincedencia, ya deseo escribir en espaol aquí antes de
Christina del Fuego me dice que ella va a estudiar este lengua para, como
se dice... graduada escuela.  
Grácias, <a 
href="r.pl?go=http://babelfish.altavista.com/">babelfishto</a>, como
no me
dices "Ayudas Grandes".  Sarcastico.  <br><br>

[ free babelfish translation: 

We have we spoke espanol aqui now. We must speak. I (Leroico) help espanol
in the school very first, but nonmemory very well, like your time. First,
I need to remember like typar the accents - -! Bun! And also the pequena n
- I need to searchar the Web for this - Googlar - I Googlo, you Googles,
they Googlen - ah, is simple. I must enter the special character - - and
hope that no bad one happens. That pity.

In a great coincedencia, already desire to write in Spanish before
Christina of the Fire says here to me that it is going to study this
language for, as she is said... graduated school. Grcias, babelfishto, as
you do not say " Great Aids to me ". Sarcastico.

 ]

<!-- 1/25/1: capoeira -->

<b>1/25/1</b><br><br>

He estado interesado en <a
href="/r.pl?go=http://www.capoeiraarts.com/articles/history.html">capoeira</a>
desde que primero oí hablar él. Como con tan muchas cosas,
la primera indirecta que existió algo como esto era algo que vi en
la televisión.  Demandaron que un amo del capoeira podría
derrotar un amo equivalente de cualesquiera de las formas del este. Ahora,
pienso que son mentirosos. De todos modos cualquier juego de la
cosecha-polvoreda el luchar brasileno del esclavo que baila es un amigo de
mmí. Actualmente la suma total de mis artes martial que la
experiencia es algunas lecciones precipitados de Tae Kwon Do, pero puedo
tener que dar a esto un intento si puedo encontrar una escuela. Voy a <a
href="/r.pl?go=http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/usr/h96b/h9650297/cap-basics.html">practicar
en el país</a> poco un primer y a acumular la fuerza superior del
cuerpo así que no hago a un tonto de me o mi cabeza, si sucedido a
Cabeza de Vaca.<BR><BR>

[ 

Been I have interested in capoeira since first I heard speak he. Like with
so many things, the first hint that existed something like this was
something that I saw in the television. They demanded that a master of
capoeira could defeat an equivalent master of nobodies of the forms of the
east. Now, I think that they are mentirosos. Anyway any game of
harvests-polvoreda brasileno fighting of the slave who dances is a mm
friend. At the moment extreme the total of my arts martial that the
experience is some lessons precipitated of Tae Kwon Do, but I can have to
give to this an attempt if I can find a school. I am going to practice in
the country little a first one and to accumulate the superior force of the
body so I do not do to an idiot me or my head, if happened to Head of Cow

 ]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 18:55:37 -0500 (EST)
From: christinahodge 
To: leroy 
Subject: dinner tomorrow?



I have to go to school after work tomorrow to figure out what the hell I'm
supposed to read for tuesday.

do you want to do the legal seafood thing?  the birthday/valentine's day
mood is kind of gone but I like you at least as much as always, maybe
more, a sentiment which surely deserves... crustaceans!  or bivalves.  
etc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


I don't actually know what a lot of words mean.  I learned them all by
reading a lot.  By necessity I got really good at picking up the basic
meaning of a new word from context.  Then when I would run into the same
word a few books later, I would apply the context from the previous book,
lay that over the context from the present book and drop that construct
back into the bank.  Twenty years later, whenever I see the word
"stately", my brain processes that as a sort of amalgamation of everything
stately I've ever read about in the past, and that's all it means to
me.

It works pretty well, but I suck at giving explicit definitions of
things.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hodge, my little daffodil, my little machine-stuffed confection, accused
me of preferring processed food over the weekend.  I realized that it more
than likely was true.  What is life but a metamorphosis of chemicals?  
Why fight the cave food of the future?  I was lucky; if I hadn't already
exhibited this preference on any number of past occasions she might have
gotten upset when I looked downcast after realizing that by "waffles" she
meant iron-waffles from scratch rather than the toaster eggos.

But it's true, and I admit it, and really it reassures me, in that (a) I
can eat for cheap and walk off smiling and (b) it fortifies my belief in
the adaptability of human taste and endurance in the face of constantly
changing environmental conditions.  The fucking bomb!  When all food comes
packaged like a fruit roll-up, eventually, people will get used to it.  
Yes!  Veal roll-ups for dinner!  I hope they're the kind that's actually
made of paper.  I love those.  I had a similar revelation concerning the
city one day while I was standing out at a bus station on Mass Ave with
Chloe and Grace about a year ago.  It's the one right in front of the
church, near Davis Square.  It was a hot summer day and the sidewalk was
hot and covered with broken glass - this is definitely connected with that
car exhaust thing from a few days ago.  First I realized that it reminded
me of home more than most parts of Massachusetts do.  Then I realized that
I liked it, and that in a way, it was like being in the wilderness.  They
cry for the loss of range lands and trees, and so do I, but at the same
time, if in the fullness of time the entire world is plunged under a layer
of human habitations and other constructions, it almost can't help but
present a new wilderness of its own.  They make movies about that all the
time.

Have you ever really looked at cities from outside the human perspective,
as naturally occurring formations - as you would an anthill, or a crystal
lattice, or coral?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
days of leroy #8: the food court
(medianstrip oct. 24)


There's only so much old Leroy can do to try and stop himself from
becoming a regular at a food court restaurant.  He tries not to make eye
contact but they've all started recognizing him anyway; shows up at all
hours from 11 am to 4 pm but the place seems to be run by one gigantic,
amorphous shift of hispanics so the same people are always there, raising
their lush tropical eyebrows at him; mixes up his order every few days so
they won't start anticipating what he's going to get but sometimes the
register girl sees him coming and says "Pepsi?" and he hasn't figured out
how to weasel out of it.  "Yeah."

One day old Leroy (never one to care that much about money) hands over a
20 and starts to walk off without his change.  But he hears the owner
saying "Friend... friend..." and goes back.  Everybody can use another
friend.  No, it's the money.  The register girl's faintly sarcastic 
smile becomes less faint.  

He can't figure out what the place is even called.  The sign says
'Poulet Rotisserie', but the shirts the employees wear say 'Petit
Rotisserie.' Is this some kind of scam?  What are they up to with the
french, Leroy wonders.  Maybe they aren't hispanics; maybe they're
actually portuguese or something.  Who knows, maybe they're italians.  
His recent record in terms of these subtle ethnic distinctions is nothing
to write home about, wherever home might be.

And how many different kinds of chicken do they have? Steaming metal
bins of the stuff set out in rows, eight or ten different kinds, sorted by
color and texture: dark brown, light brown, orange, white - crinkly,
juicy, entire birds, whole breasts or cubed.  They keep coming up with
more - two new ones just since Leroy started coming here.  One is simple
fried chicken, which was clearly a gap in the existing menu, but the other
one is just called 'poulet chicken' (you should see the ingredients list)
and it looks like they invented it themselves.  Leroy likes to believe
they have a state-of-the-art chicken research lab on site, back in the
kitchen - a subterranean warren where white-coated scientists flash-roast
test breasts dressed in soy sauce titrated with exotic vinegars.  Okay,
probably not.  How much of this invisible space is there, though, in the
city?  Restaurant kitchens stacked with dog-eared cardboard boxes, chefs
and busboys, unattended deep fryers, pinup girls, cherished posters of
Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, the Crown Princess of Thailand.  Access
tunnels between subway tunnels, hell, entire abandoned subway stations.  
You get glimpses of these things and after a while there seems no end to
it.  You find yourself looking at a storm drain and thinking, "Who's down
there?"  Chicken science isn't so far-fetched - they could have anything
back there, space shuttles, Nazis in hiding, cursing Anne Frank for
turning the tables on them - in this forest, millions of cubic feet: nooks
and crannies, parking structures, service entrances, snapping little
piranha rats choking down leather upholstery to survive in warehouses
rented so deep in the budget nobody knows to check up on them, roofs of
strip malls, median strips and those slopes under highway bridges; plenty
of space for that secret lab the wife's been bugging you for.  This city's
a white canvas with spread legs, Leroy thinks to himself.  Then he eats
his lunch and goes back upstairs to work.

One day Leroy arrives late enough to miss the regular register girl and
her Pepsi thing.  Now it's the other one, older (still probably in her
thirties), slightly motherly.  She says something Leroy doesn't
understand.  Cocks his head - she says it again, he still don't
understand.  Now he's run out of lifelines and still in a bad position -
either she was asking what drink he wants or she was making conversation.  
Not sure.  He bites the bullet, asks for a Pepsi.  A second later he 
realizes it's a mistake - serious consequences if she was trying to talk
to him - his behavior around here has already been pretty bizarre, and
now he might be actively brushing off their efforts to be friendly.  She
glances at him, gets the drink, takes his money without saying anything 
else.  He leaves wincing.

Two days later he goes back.  She's there again.  At the checkout point
he decides to break policy and take the conversational offensive.  "I
keep on forgetting to take my lunch break."  It's 3 pm, the meaning
should be clear from context.  Also he smiles a lot, big American heart
on him.  She looks at him and says "Eh?", not understanding.  He says it
again, she still misses it.  He leaves.  So.  At least we're all in the
same boat now.

Finally he gives up.  One day the regular register girl, Register Girl
(with the faint sarcasm, or maybe it's simple professional detachment, who
knows these days) is there with her prime-time sidekick, Drinks Girl.  
Leroy arrives.  "How are you doing?"  says Register Girl.  "I'm all
right," sez Leroy.  "How are you?" asks Drinks Girl a beat later.  
"Fine," Leroy says.  Everyone smiles.  Fine, Leroy thinks.  Have it your
way.  I'll act normal.  Deep down, Leroy probably likes it.


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My new subway reading is Maurice Nadeau's _The History of Surrealism_
which I was supposed to read for class two years ago and never did.  I
still have most of my expensive college education sitting around my room
unfinished.  I hope it doesn't start to go bad.  I was a little concerned
for the surrealists back in college; what they were doing seemed
absolutely correct to me on a gut level, and yet some of what Breton told
me in those manifestoes was clearly bullshit.  The future resolution of
the states of dream and reality - I don't even know how to finish this
sentence.  I wrote Andre a letter asking for more concrete details, maybe
a diagram, but he didn't reply.  I probably should have known better than
to take it literally and absolutely, but in my own place and time there
was something of a backlash against irony in progress and I was moved by
his apparent earnestitude. Is there a noun for earnest?  Sincerity?  Is
that exactly the same thing?  Anyway, I was a sucker, and today we have
moved past sincerity again, past reason and rationality, and finally
beyond irony and even absurdity into something else.  But we still have to
wash the dishes here, which I think is what was confusing me before.

On the same subject, today I woke up and beyond the orange glow of my room
the sky outside was a strange grey.  I told the other person who was there
that it looked like we had some kind of unusual precipitation, and
together we recalled the ice storm of 95.  I dressed, tied on my boots and
left the house.  A warm snow was falling thick in the air, great wet white
gobs of it even as long as half an inch, so you could see each individual
flake from a block away.  As I walked down Simpson I was thinking about
the material in the previous paragraph, and specifically about the fusion
of dream and reality and how distant it seemed from my ridiculously
ordinary day-to-day life.  I looked up from my feet and discovered the
snow falling thicker than ever, and, as it was on the point of melting as
it came down, appearing to fall straight through the ground and vanish,
like snow from another dimension.


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[very slightly edited]
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 17:28:09 -0500 (EST)
From: leroy king 
To: Lukas Bergstrom 
Subject: Re: you need this

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Lukas Bergstrom wrote:

> Ok, so that was depressing.
>
> http://www.dailyradar.com/features/directhit_feature_page_1719_1.html 
>
> There.  Don't you feel just a little better?

actually, that helped a lot.  i'll tell you why.  over the weekend my
company somehow found itself in the position of needing to turn out 2,400
pages (which is to say, all of [major website]) by sunday, which
eventually became wednesday.  and not just any pages.  oh no.  these
fuckers were constructed on the fly out of the unholy union of a gigantic,
indecipherable css file and a gigantic, indecipherable jhtml file, all
stirred together by some kind of back-end template that we didn't even
have access to.  this meant that fixing a small spacing problem took half
an hour and was sometimes impossible.  really nice-looking pages, though,
and that data updated on the fly!  so sexy!  i'm sure it all seemed like a
great idea in the planning stages.  but i digress.  i finally wrapped up
the [sports team] at around 2:30 last night.  probably would have been
done a lot sooner if i hadn't been pausing to gape at cnn's florida
results page every five minutes.

so just as i'm leaving cnn calls florida for bush.  i decide to walk home,
since the T's closed, i don't like taking cabs by myself for some neurotic
reason and it just seems appropriately masochistic somehow, given the
occasion.  as i'm crossing the harvard bridge i call up holly at work and
start screaming into the phone: "mother fucker!  he can't even READ!"  
before i even get across the bridge both my hands start to go numb and i
have to put the phone away.  walk up mass ave, turn up into the beacon
zone, stop at a store 24.

last time i did the long march a few months ago i wore very bad shoes,
started to get a blister in the center of the bottom of my left heel and
wound up stumping on past 69 beacon muttering "arr, the whale wound she
feels a storm a-comin' on."  this time i'm in sneakers and my feet just
get warmer and comfier as time goes on.  i hum a little.  there's some
kind of screaming match going on inside a lone hatchback stopped at the
inman square stoplight.  i throw away the last half of my bad store 24
italian sandwich and keep going.  too much onion.  

as i'm going up the last leg of beacon street, i remember that one
apartment chloe, holly and i shopped over the summer before we decided to
stay at ossipee, over behind the star market right on the commuter rail
tracks.  self, for all the time you spend daydreaming about pleasantly
aesthetic nighttime urban adventures and mischief, i think to myself, you
really don't do much about it.  so i cut over a block and check out the
fence around the commuter tracks.  as if to say "you made the right
choice, son," the fence presents a gaping hole directly in my path as i
come up the street.  i walk straight through.

i walk down the middle of the tracks, whistling 'stand by me'.  why am i
checking over my shoulder?  the commuter rail doesn't run at 3:45
am, does it?  of course not, but who knows, they might move the trains
around after hours once in a while.  watching your ass is the better part
of valor, i decide.  i continue to watch my ass.  i start to think about
what i'm going to tell any bored cops who hassle me - "it's the
commuter rail, isn't it?  well, i'm commuting."  and, say, how am i
getting out of here?  another well-placed hole in the fence may not be as
easy to find down around porter with all those, uh, walls.  

at one point i turn around at random, look up and see the signals i've
just passed between without even noticing - two red lights on my side
(wrong way!), one yellow and one green on the other.  they're way up,
like, ten, fifteen feet in the air, and huge.  it snaps me into train
scale, brings home how big these things are.  within ten yards i step
into the dark under the beacon street overpass, and my spine tingles with
- what's this now - genuine fear.  stupid, adolescent
putting-yourself-in-danger paranoia.  it's the most immediate, pure thing
i've felt all year.  i smile.

climbing out at porter turns out to be no problem.  anybody can just waltz
out onto the tracks at any time of day, it appears.  a little
disappointing.  i consider scaling the wall just on principle, but i'm
carrying this bag.  no cops appear.  walking up elm street this street
sweeper goes by, dodging in and out between parked cars like a big robotic
water beetle or something.  it's kind of like being in blade runner only
without the pervading sense of anticipation.  

on my way up simpson (last leg!) holly calls back.  "are you still
up?"  "i'm on simpson, i'm not home yet."  "turn on the election
returns.  florida's down to 500 votes and gore is refusing to
concede."  "i said i'm on simpson, i'm not home yet."  "what?" "i'm not
home yet."  "you're not HOME yet?"  "no.  i can't turn on anything."  
"it's been an hour and a half."  "i know."  "that's a long walk."  "yes."  
"well, when you get home, turn on the election.  it's interesting."  
"okay."  "bye."  "bye."  

i get home.  it looks like there's been some election-related rioting in
the living room - stale bowl of salsa, jackets and boots on floor, laptop
sitting on arm of couch just asking to get knocked off, open jar of peanut
butter, some kind of awful torture i can't even describe inflicted on one
of the couch cushions.  my "transformers: the movie" DVD has arrived.  i
turn on the news.  it is as holly said.  i put in the transformers movie,
which i've actually never seen.  it's awful, unwatchable.  the great
climactic battle between megatron and optimus prime that i heard
breathless tales of in elementary school happens in the first fifteen
minutes and has the most awful '80s music imaginable PERVADING the scene
in some horrible parody of movies that you watch because they're so bad
it's funny.  this is much worse than that.  what happened?  i start
cursing and turn it off.  lesbians, flushed with the victory of the new
bush regime, come downstairs into the living room and start smooching each
other while they watch gore supporters stand in the rain.  i stumble
upstairs, where i get your e-mail and check out the URL.  my shaken faith
in the icons of my childhood is immediately restored.  you were in the
right place at the right time.

finally at 5 am, disgusted with the american people as per usual, i go to
bed, with only this advice for the gore campaign:  "Don't Make Component
Super Weapons.  These tend to explode into three pieces that land in
various corners of the globe."


s.


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