journal page 6

november 28, 1999
3:12 am
a long, long week but an interesting one. unexpected persons can make me happy without even trying. well, almost. haven't been sleeping very well though.

ok. so you kids have been sending increasingly odd mail lately. it always seems to come in waves, and yes it's all very much appreciated, well mostly, but among the largely happy mail has been some very strange *things*. so i'm going to try and clarify this mail thing all over again for you special few who don't read the FAQ. now, if any of the following applies to you or the mail you're planning on sending us, it is probably best to take a moment to reconsider:

- i can't finish this. maybe don will eat it.
- i am an actor person. if i send headshots maybe don will cast me in a cartoon.
- i have named my toes. don should really know about this.
- "i am very interested in applying for a job at your radio station"
- there is a small toad living in my ear.

we scold because we care. ok
i did another of too many interviews the other day and the lady says, "so, we love your films. i am interested in knowing what else you have up your sleeve." and i say, "it's an arm! haha ha!" and i don't think she was very amused. i am taking a break from interviews now.

i got a new program upgrade for my internet connection thing and it talks to me now. it says "welcome!" when you turn it on and everything. but what bothers me is that when you exit the program it says "goodbye," but not like a normal"goodbye," but with a long accent on the last syllable. she says, "good-bye..." with this sort of lingering, condescending tone on the end of it, as if i've done something wrong or really stupid. like a guest who's overstayed his welcome you're bitterly showing the door to: "good-bye..." it would have been just as easy to have her say a cheery little "GOOD-bye!" and instead now i get really sheepish at the thing because i feel like she's always talking down to me.

the "new" 35mm projector i picked up is finally in my studio but the lens isn't here yet. it's one of these drab green iron fellows that was reportedly in the korean war i think to entertain the troops at sea. i'm still trying to figure out how to load it properly and it has so far been doing a stellar job of slicing my test film perfectly in half right down the middle. the struggle continues. this has been a very strange production from the start. i animated "rejected" before i had a camera or even the studio space, then started shooting it without any editing gear, and now we've been editing without any means of viewing anything yet, making cuts without having projected a single frame. hopefully this projector, now lovingly dubbed "stupid old shitty bastard," will work properly, but i have a sinking feeling that it is going to happily continue shredding my work prints while projecting a big round fuzzy white spot.

on his web site, the amazing kreskin, the self-proclaimed psychic guy, is now telekinetically predicting the exact date of his very death. and i hate to say it, but am i the only one thinking that's just not a very impressive trick? all he has to do is mark his calendar and then walk in front of a train.

this december 22 not only marks the winter solstice (longest day of the year), but also a full moon, and *also* the lunar perigee, the closest point the moon ever comes to the earth. all three of these occurances at once is what scientists call *super fire rare* and happens once every thousand years or so i guess so you must all go look at it because it will be really big and pretty and you will thank me later. i have prepared an exclusive COMPUTER SIMULATION PREVIEW of this stunning celestial event just for you:

don

november 17, 1999
2:34 am everyone needs to watch the leonid meteor shower tomorrow night (night of the 17th/early morn of the 18th). really. it is at its most intense peak every 33 years and i actually read about it when i was really little and thought about the year 1999 when i might actually see it for myself. in 1833 panicked townsfolk believed the sky was falling and the end of the world was at hand, with 100,000 shooting stars per hour. i caught a preview of it last year when they passed close. nobody wanted to go out at night with me to look at them and it was sort of overcast so i got in the car and drove on the freeway until i could see stars again. i parked among the skeleton buildings of a new neighborhood under construction and lay down on the new sidewalk to stare at the sky in the cold and it was the most gorgeous thing i'd seen. sun-bright streaks of them from horizon to horizon. coyotes were howling all around me.

orange and chocolate were never meant to be in the same cookie. i have been trying to eat better. i got a big thing of carrots, but you can't eat the carrots plain so i had to get the fat dip to eat them with but doing that just encourages you to get the chips along with the carrots and the fat dip and pretty soon i am just eating the chips with the dip and the carrots sort of look at me with this perplexed, "what kind of idiot are you?" expression.

here is the latest poem from our world news correspondent, roberto. he is the self-proclaimed lord of socks. his spelling is getting better.

the lady in the cubicle told me a storry today
She was telling me about some ffamous movie star
who had a conjoined twin in his body that was dormant
and he didnt know about it.
it was the size of a tennis ball.
when he reached his twenties the twin began to develop.
It started growing in his body and eventually killed him. with a knife.
well maybe not with a knife but he died

i watch quite a bit of odd television here, and after seeing these conjoined twins on documentary after documentary for the past year, i must now break my silence and comment. these two brothers are joined by the forehead. each has one eye, and their faces are kind of at angles. so one of them walks forward while wheeling the other one backwards in this shopping cart thing. the little guy sat in the child seat of the cart. he had very tiny feet. i'm sure they're very sweet people. this is simply the situation. so one of them water skis. i'm kidding. but apparently their skulls are fused and their brains are actually connected so scientists were testing them to see if they actually shared the same thoughts along with their blood and tissue, which was really quite interesting. so anyway you see them go about their daily life, walking around hunched over wheeling around this little cart and talking about their individuality and how they're strong people and not freaks, and one of them brings up the fact that in fact he really wants to get married and have children one day. and the interviewer gently wonders how they would deal with 'intimacy'. and they say that they try to give each other private time in the bathroom or the shower and are used to "blocking out" what the other one is doing and then the little one blurts out, "i mean, it's not like i'm a virgin or anything", and then the rest of the program was like watching a fiery train wreck.

20% more fruit filling
that is not your hat
october 30, 1999

it is getting nice and stormy outside. i was standing in the supermarket the other day and there were three sparrows flying around in the chips aisle. this old guy with some sort of navy guy boat hat walks towards me, loudly singing a song about coca cola while looking at the bean dips, sort of like, "cocaaaa... cocaaa colaaaah..." and i swear he is singing at me so by now i'm pretty ready to return home where things are not strange and i end up driving past that taco bell and there's gas mask guy! he's standing on the street corner staring at the traffic as usual and sort of wobbling in place. and everyone goes right past him like he's not even there.

and now a new feature for your forum, the weekly world news report from our friend roberto, who, despite some spelling difficulties, continues to enthrall and fascinate with his poetry. roberto's book of haiku comes out early next spring.

at a cirrcus in mexico last week
an elephant named maggie pickd up her trainer durring a show
impaled him on her tusks then crushed his scull with her feet.
they shot maggie nine times.
the guy is dead
but they think maggie will be retrning to the ring by the end of the year.

STUPID GIMMICK
if you dress up like a giant bucket for halloween, your friends at bitter films will send you free shirts! just send us a photograph of yourself wearing your giant bucket costume, and we will pity and clothe you. please be aware that anyone wearing tiny buckets will receive nothing. what are you trying to prove? we said giant buckets. no tiny buckets. and no, a costume consisting of multiple tiny buckets doesn't cut it either. several tiny buckets do not make up for one giant bucket. not dozens of tiny buckets and not a few regular sized buckets. your costume must be a singular bucket of giant size. one (1). it's just that simple. your giant bucket does not need to be filled with anything in particular. except maybe.. love?

why do people keep e-mailing me these chain letters? i hate to be the one to break it to you, but e-mail does not have the power to grant you wishes. really. i'm sorry. your e-mail is not supernatural. i'm not sure who told you that. you are sad animals.