(i, of course, have two legs, if you catch my drift.)
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come on leroy. one finger in front of the other. vft5 that isn't working. it's too late now to tell you everything that's happened since i last wrote. i'm still not sure i can explain it anyway. i lost pressure in my head for a spell. it's all sort of a blur, like damon albarn holding a hummingbird on a string. i'll have to work backwards and see how many of the gaps i can fill in over time. bear with me. in the meantime here's the news. i seem to be mutating into some kind of hippie. i've started riding the bus to work since i can't stand to drive my car any more because i read too much about global warming on the internet. the first day i rode the bus there was a dude in the back who complained loudly all the way from LAX transit center to redondo beach where he got off about the cheap $10 lugggage that he'd bought downtown and how he was never going to buy that cheap downtown luggage again, it wasn't worth it, he needed to get him some, what you call it, Samsonite, that Samsonite luggage. things have quieted down a bit since then. so you'll be glad to know that global warming has been taken care of. also i'm transitioning to vegetarianism, in a halting, carnivorous sort of way. eggplant is slimy. my backyard was full of lizards for a while. they would bask for energy and then wrestle each other. it was awesome. like tiny civil war reenactors. brother vs. brother! master vs. slave! fireman vs. terrorist! i wanted to make them little pipe-cleaner muskets. but i'm afraid that the local cat ate most of them because i don't see them much any more and the cat's started hanging out in our yard a lot. i like cats as a rule but this one is on the shit list. whenever i see him i run outside in my bare feet and chuck a tennis ball, which is also known as the 80-year-old-man biathlon. they're adding it to the olympics in 2016 (fort lauderdale). one night i was sitting in the dark out on my beautiful new patio set that me and hodge spray-painted to perfection, investigating the possibilities of this new medium called internet, when i started hearing these sounds from out in the backyard, sort of near that big potted ficus tree that's been sitting on the corner of the lawn. kind of a scraping. for a while i ignored it. i thought: it's probably nothing. then i kept hearing it. i thought: there's really something out there. then i thought: somebody's fucking with my lizards! i went in the house and got my machete. i couldn't find a flashlight though. so i'm standing there in the dark, in a trenchcoat, holding a machete. i can hear this gnawing sound. hmm. then i remember we have candles on the patio table. so i go in and get some matches and light the candle. so i'm standing there in the dark, in a trenchcoat, holding a machete and a candle. no candle-holder, now. just the candle. so whenever i move hot wax sloshes around. the other thing is that it turns out candles are actually not all that bright. so i'm creeping out into the yard, able to see about two feet instead of one thanks to the candle, trying to locate the cat or whatever it is, brandishing the machete, and stopping every couple of steps to pour out the wax from the candle. oh and i'm wearing flip-flops. i get out near the ficus tree and a black shape sort of gallops past the outskirts of my radiant candle and over into the carport. roughly cat-sized. i follow it over there. it's staring at me. its eyes are glowing. it looks kind of strange and i can't tell exactly what it is, so i chase it down the garden path waving the machete until it runs up a tree. it's definitely not a cat. cats don't act quite like this. it's too slow. i creep up - ow - pour the wax - i creep up under the tree, holding the candle aloft. possum! it shifts around on its chosen branch. we stare at each other. i point the machete at it. it inches a little further back. "leave my lizards alone!" i say, and bang the machete on the tree. it inches a little further back. all right, i'm going to give this thing a heart attack. i think i've made my point. i leave him in the tree, go back to the patio, put the candle back in the lantern. we now return you to the industrial revolution, already in progress. there will be no further commercial interruptions. i am a one man reality show without the reality show. actually in the mornings instead of the bus i usually bike over to carrie's and carpool with trimmer. in just two weeks i've got it to where i can do it the whole way in a sprint. now i'm thinking about taking the bike all the way up the beach to work. fifteen miles can't be that far. of course when i watch sports on TV i'm always like "this looks easy. i can take agassi. let me at him." then me and julia play tennis and it's all, damn! why does the ball keep hitting the edge of the racket like that! fucking racket. i'm wearing a black jackass sweatband on my left arm. it came with the movie. my instict is to go down to mississippi and just talk to people until we sort this thing out. last night i put on my big black leather coat and went out around 11 pm and walked around the block. there was a raccoon up on a high porch eating some cat's food. he saw me and booked. i stopped up on the corner of newton and nancy lee, and just stood there for a while. looked up at the sky and listened. it gets quiet down here in the suburbs, actually it does. everything here shuts down after ten. you can focus on each single car, and there isn't always even one. i heard something shuffle over by one of the houses across the street, so i looked over there. -i heard that.- i assume that whoever or whatever it was saw the seriousness of my look and settled down. i closed my eyes back up and tuned in to my ears for about five minutes and then walked on back home across the dark school field (using the north star and the yellow glow of the snapple machine as my guides) or at least i walked until some kind of flying animal started screeching at me and then i grabbed the sides of my coat like a big skirt and ran like a rat until i got back home safe in bed. 
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