I Love America... For Freedom.

In the grocery store parking lot, I helped an obnoxiously patriotic old-man veteran of some dumb war or another (his clothes and his scooter were covered with every possible patch from military units; little American flags waved all over the place; he wore one of those funny hats with even more stickers, patches and pins) free his mobility scooter wheel from the raised edge of the hydraulic lift designed to gloriously lower him from his van, which in turn was festooned with way too many "I'm a veteran" stickers and logos. His service dog whined helplessly from inside. Later, inside the grocery store, America's "Horse With No Name" played over the subliminal Muzak machine where I purchased various snacks for tonight's New Year's Eve bacchanal.

Hospital lobby

5 young medical professionals stare into their iPods silently as Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out" plays softly in the Starbucks coffee bar across the way.

Nathanael West

Nathanael West, Cormac McCarthy

Dick Clark Prepares for New Year's Eve #3

Under cover of darkness, Zombie Dick Clark is whisked away in a black SUV to the furthest reaches of the Denver International Airport to a much-unused runway and an unmarked private jet. A lone passenger has already boarded and dreads his arrival; during the flight to New York, Zombie Dick Clark will receive the last of a series of horrifying blood transfusions. A sullen Christina Aguilera has sadly accepted her fate; the show must go on, yet she is overcome with ennui.

Dick Clark Prepares for New Year's Eve #2

Dick Clark's animated corpse relaxes in a white bathrobe on the balcony of his Crowne Plaza hotel suite in downtown Denver. * A man from an unspecified government agency briefs him on key events of 2011. To re-acquaint Zombie Dick Clark with his distant past, a television plays classic reruns of American Bandstand. In an adjoining room, being prepped for a series of hideous blood transfusions is a sobbing Stacy Ann Ferguson. Despite the best efforts of her attorneys, the contract is ironclad; she must endure the procedures.

 * he is immune to cold.

Preparations for the New Year #1

Deep beneath the Denver International Airport, the corpse of Dick Clark is wheeled out of the cryogenic chamber to the center of a pentangle drawn on the floor of the re-animation chamber. Five red candles are lit. Eerie, unearthly chanting is piped in through unseen speakers in the ceiling. In a room nearby, being prepped for a series unorthodox blood transfusions, is an anxious Ryan Seacrest.

The Beast of Kandahar

The Beast of Kandahar
Landed in my Backyard
It winked and said I was a 'Tard
We ate some chicken Fried in Lard

The Beast of Kandahar can See
What people Do So Secretly
It writes things down DiliGently
It kicks up High Just Like Bruce Lee

The Beast of Kandahar is Best
At Finding Out at the Behest
Of Men who Know and are Well Dressed
You are Almost Under Arrest

The Beast of Kandahar
Can Spy with Its Electric Super-Eye
All things Below And Snitch and Lie
To Creep-Spies who Identify.

The Beast of Kandahar
And I are Best of Friends
We go to Dinner, Drive Around
It soars On High Without A Sound

The Beast of Kandahar
Flies High Above The USA
And Saves the Day from Terrorist Elves*
To Save the People From Themselves

The Beast of Kandahar
Sends Pictures of My Neighbor
Sunbathing Nude in Her Backyard
I Love The Beast of Kandahar

* Give me a break, what I needed something that rhymed with "themselves"

graph paper stuff

Cervantes.
Verisimilitude; scintillate; Valdes Leal; sardonic; taciturn; obsequious
Book Notes: Basim forbids dancing.  Lamya dances for Sabir to spite her husband.

Reading A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham.

Here are some notes, written on green graph paper.  It makes a great list of things I know nothing about:

Le Cid; Gogol; Lermontov; Turgenev; Chekov; Byron, Shelly, Walter Scott; Thackery; The Revisor; Congreve; Wycherley; School for Scandal; Kotzebue's Kleinstadter; She stoops to Conquer; G.B. Shaw; Ruritania; Katzenjammer; Sacher Masoch; The Hounds of Heaven; Oblomovism; Eugene Sue; flipperty-gibbet; Julien Sorel; El Greco; Resurection by Tolstoi; Octave Feuillet or Cherbuliez; Flaubert; Maupassant; Concourts; Huysmans; Princess Mathilde; Herzen; Bakunin; the reign of Alexander II; Uvar Ivanovitch Stahov; On the Eve; A House of Gentlefolk; Anthony Trollope; demagogues; compte rendu; Balzac; Jane Eyre; The Waverley Novels; peroration; Saint-Just; Bolsheviks; Charles Frohman; The Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; Polynesian Garden of the Hesperides; the book Main Street; epigrammatic; mythomaniac; Le Cousin Pons; sycophancy; turbid 

stuff written on graph paper

1. Saturnine countenance
2. Alexandre Tharoud, Erik Satie: Avent Dernieres

Scotty wore a red shirt

Scotty wore a red shirt. He beamed down to the surface. He survived. You will survive too. You are not an extra, you are a recurring character.

this ungodly hour

Who is awake at this ungodly hour? Who guns their car down empty boulevards? Who types hyperbole into the ether, in darkness, into phantom glowing keys? Who drinks alone in front of dying embers? Who stands the watches of the night, in restaurants, gas stations, Walmarts, cop cars, army bases, shotgun shacks and marble kitchens? Who is awake at this ungodly hour?