I’m trying to remember what year Coke introduced Cherry Coke. I could do a web search but that would be too easy. Coke was always available as Cherry Coke back in the day of soda fountains, but they didn’t start putting it in a can until about 1985 or so. There used to be a pretzel shop in the mall where I grew up, and they would make a Cherry Coke for you - they had a pump full of the cherry syrup, and they’d add it to the fountain Coke. I think that approximates the taste of the original soda fountain drink, and it’s very cherry-flavored. The stuff in a can is barely any different than regular Coke, and I remember first trying it at the Elkhart county fair, when I was there with Tom G. and his folks. I think his dad was the kind of guy that had a stockpile of 200,000 cases of “old” Coke when they switched to “new” Coke, and he didnt’ like the Cherry Coke. I didn’t really like it either, but it was one of those things where I was glad I tried it, just so I had a conversation item for future use.

I almost forgot why I started talking about Cherry Coke, and that’s because they changed the can, I guess to be more inline with the new Vanilla Coke, which I still haven’t tried, and probably won’t, because I hate the taste of vanilla. I liked the previous cans better, and it’s weird that I can’t even describe what they’re like. It’s always weird how Coke and Pepsi cans morph over time and you barely notice it. I have pictures from ten years ago and Coke cans look completely fucked up. And they were even more strange in older movies, like when they had the old-school pull-off poptops. Does anyone even remember those anymore? I was collecting them, because I wanted to make a suit of chain-mail armor out of them. I think I got like one line about a foot long. Oh well.

Five new copies of Rumored are on my desk. I’m not sure where they will go, but I need to send out more review copies or something.

Slow afternoon. I need to get back to it…

Very little is going on here, just picking at these journal entries that will become a book, and trying to figure out at what point I should consider them done. They actually don’t have a lot of issues, it’s just a matter of space and size and whatnot. I also need to write some kind of introduction and figure all of that stuff out.

I’m vaguely planning what I will do in November for the next Nanowrimo contest. I am going to write a book, but I want to make sure it’s something that I will be able to iUniverse after some rudimentary cleanup. I have some thoughts on it, but it’s basically going to be like rumored but with a bit more structure and it will be much more violent, demented, obscene, and humorous in general.

Starting to plan the next Vegas trip in January - Bill wrote today to ask about it. Duffin and his chick just had a kid, so he’s probably out. If you’re interested in heading out to Vegas around January 17-22 next year, drop me a line - I’d like to get a few more people onboard.

Back to writing…

It’s been an odd little three-day weekend, although absolutely nothing noteworthy has happened. It rained, poured all weekend and I barely left the house. I was in a weird, low-level, melancholy depression that is almost enjoyable if you have no obligations or other social requirements. But the fact that holiday weekends are rare and I felt like I was on the spot to do something wonderful and exciting, I spent most of the time feeling weird.

Sometimes I think if I had absolutely nothing to do, if I had all the time in the world and no work or other obligations, this kind of depression would gradually mold itself into a creative passion. I think about the times when I’m away from work and people for long enough that I get into my own natural cycle, and don’t worry about the value of time. At the end of 2000, I took about three weeks off of work, and did absolutely, positively nothing. I was also sick during that period, and didn’t want to do anything except sleep and play Nintendo. But after a certain period of time, it all fell in place and I managed to stop thinking about what I should be doing and instead thought about what I was doing.

I guess in 2001, my time like that was in Florida, although when I was there, I felt a strong urge to be doing something touristy or whatever, and every day I would wake up and think about driving to Cape Canaveral, and every day I would chicken out. I didn’t get a lot of writing done down there, and I didn’t write a story about my trip, although sometimes I wish I would. The problem about writing travel journals, at least for me, is that after writing three or four of them, you realize that the travel changes but you don’t, and the journals are all the same. Despite where you go or what you do, you look for the same things, or look at things through the same lenses. Maybe I’m nuts in thinking this, but it’s why I’m not a travel writer.

Not much else here. Spent the day watching a so-so TV movie about the Unabomber starring Dean Stockwell as the postal inspector. I’ve been putting in a lot of time on editing the journals for the next book. And I went to the street fair on 30th Ave today for a minute, in the drizzling rain. No luck on the bamboo plants, and everything else looked pretty sub-par.

Back to editing…

I’ve been editing down this bunch of journals from 1997-1999 to make it into a book, and it’s harder than you’d think. The first thing is that it’s difficult to throw away pieces of it to get the size of the book down. I’m currently at about 140,000 words, and I want it below 100K. The other thing is that it’s so difficult to look back into time and relive that era. Nostalgia is a curse for me, and I always look back instead of forward, so doing a project that explicitly requires me to look back can be a bit pained.

The strangest part is reading about how, back then, I wasn’t interested in my life and I wanted to go back five years and live in Bloomington. Now, five years later, I wish I was in Seattle. And I bitched constantly about never writing, but I produced an incredible amount of stuff in that era. And I wished I archived more stuff, took more pictures in Indiana, so I’d have them for Summer Rain research. Now, I’m digging through photos from Seattle, and I realize I don’t have much useful stuff at all.

I do want to look forward. The more I think about it, the more I look outside of my life for validation on Rumored, the more I realize the next book should be twice as experimental, twice as dense, twice as violent, twice as detailed. I think Rumored was in 100% the right direction. And I don’t think it’s an inferior work. I think it’s a good first step. And I think there should be more.

A lot of stuff fell into place today. The landlord’s son came over and fixed my kitchen light. I have a new fixture and a new switch, and the new switch has a much “softer” feel to it, so it’s easier to flip on when you have both hands full and you jab at it with an elbow. For some reason, my cable TV mysteriously started working again, so I will be able to watch ER again. I got tickets for Quiet Riot, and I got the Pollock soundtrack. That CD is truly incredible, a very motivating 18 tracks of sound. It’s going to be up there with the Naked Lunch soundtrack as far as CDs to listen to while writing. I also got a Motorhead DVD-Audio. It’s interesting, but not entirely worth the $25 (except I will be able to lord it over Ray that I have a Motorhead thing that he doesn’t, and he’ll bitch endlessly.)

The shitty cafe around the corner from me closed. When they were getting ready to open that place, I gave it a year. If you could bet on this like this, I’d be so rich, I’d pay someone to write these entries for me.

It’s a cool Friday night, with a nice temperature that makes it feel like October. It’s even a three-day weekend, and even though I didn’t line up a trip out of town, I feel pretty good about staying here. This is the first time in a long time it’s felt like a Friday night of years ago, back when I lived in Seattle, when Fridays meant fast food, hacking away at the books and listening to music. I didn’t have a TV, and I had high hopes of someday seeing Summer Rain in print. The evenings had a strange feel to them, like the only possible outcome would be pushing an emacs buffer well past midnight, watching the story unfold.

I think I feel very nostalgic about Seattle because I’ve been spending some time editing my old journal entries. I’m going to put out a book of the Seattle entries soon, hopefully by the end of the year. I know it’s close to Rumored, but I don’t care. It’s not like if I wait a year, I’ll sell another 10,000 copies. I’d rather have another book up on the shelf and have nobody buy it. Anyway, I’ve been editing those old journals, reading about Seattle, and I really do miss the place. I’d like to go back at some point - I know I will visit soon, but I wouldn’t mind living there. If I had it to do over, I’d probably get a boat in Lake Union - just a little speedboat I could take out on the weekends - and I might live in Belltown, or Freemont. I’m not sure, but it can get all depressing to think about, so I’ll stick with editing the journals for now.

I watched part of the movie Pollock tonight, and I really loved what Ed Harris did in there. The movie is very inspirational to me, the way he paints and really turns out these genius pieces of work. It’s also a good story between him and Lee, his wife. I wish I could convince someone like her to enter my life despite my delusional tendancies. Maybe I need to get more stuff published.

I got tickets to see Joe Satriani and Dream Theater on the 14th of next month at Jones Beach. I have no idea how to get out there, though. Someone told me it’s a two-hour train, but I should get on the LIRR site and get that shit straight. I also have tickets to see this Zappa tribute band on the 18th, and I’m getting tickets to see Quiet Riot on the 12th, so it’s like live music month in September.

Not much else here. I’m a bit ancy to get back on this journal editing, so I’m going to load up some music in the player and get to it.