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A fountain of news

They've improved bug-bomb technology since the last time I used the stuff, five years or so ago. Back then it stunk up the place so bad that even with the windows open afterwards, the room I'd bombed smelled like mustard gas and was uninhabitable for days.

This time, I bombed my room Saturday morning and slept in the guest room that night, but by last night the room didn't smell any worse than the average woman wearing perfume, so I was back in my own bed.

There were some dead roaches on the floor, but not many. Another one came crawling out from under my blanket, but it was staggering like a drunk, weaving this way and that and tripping over its own head. It wouldn't have survived even if I hadn't smashed it between my fingers. I'm declaring roaches extinct at my place in Berkeley.

♦ ♦ ♦

BART got me to my weekly gig at Black Sheets kinda early, so I stopped at the little grocery store near the train station, grabbed a newspaper and stood at the counter to pay.

This was in my old neighborhood. I've been to that store a hundred times, and standing at the counter waiting to pay is ordinary. The counter-guy always has something more important to do, and today he was talking on the phone about his weekend. Hell, that's more important than me standing at the counter.

There was nobody else in the store, just him and me, me standing there waiting while he talked on the phone about the concert and the band and the seats and the drugs. With ten minutes to spare, there was no big hurry, but I didn't have the patience, so after half a minute I twirled the newspaper over the counter and into the air at the boob on the phone.

It was a fountain of news — the business section flew north, the sports pages fluttered north by northwest, and arts & entertainment missed the clerk's head by mere inches.

"What's your problem?" I heard him saying as I walked out, but I didn't answer. He'd been talking on the phone longer than I'd been in the store, so he was probably still talking on the phone, right? It would've been rude of me to interrupt.

From Pathetic Life #15
Monday, August 7, 1995

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

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