Thursday, 08 May 2003 | Cold

Cough. A nine-year-old girl played drums and sang while a slide show of horn-rimmed glasses and faded color clicked by behind her. She's in a band with her parents; her her dad plays the keyboard and the guitar and her mom advances the slides and adjusts the focus in real time. Apparently they search obituaries for estate sales, search estate sales for old slide collections, and then make up insane pop songs based on the slides they find.

Sniff. Janeane Garofalo made me laugh about the depressing state of the country, and made me wish that I could express myself like that, be funny like that. I can be funny sometimes, but the conditions have to be a certain way for it to happen, as if humor were a science, or weather. I don't know how to be funny on demand. Anyway, I'm glad I can laugh about things that normally disturb me. I'm glad someone can make me laugh about things that normally disturb me.

Sneeze. A girl wearing nothing but a triangular bra or a bikini top and a g-string and a hat traipsed passed the windows in the building across from my office today. I think she was being photographed. She was skinny and confident and immodest, from what I could tell.

Blow. On the way to work, underground, a man with a cane called me "shorty." When I turned to look, he was on the other side of the comb-like revolving doors, looking at me through the bars. "Give me your address so I can come over later," he said. I don't think he thought it would work, and I'm not even sure he wanted my address; I think he was bored. I probably don't need to say this, but I didn't give it to him.

Moments of my week are punctuated by this stupid state of half-sick. Or the other way around.