halloween is my favorite holiday, but i often find myself doing nothing out of the ordinary on halloween. just sitting around, acting like it's joe shmoe tuesday, when really it's the best day ever. and here i am. can't have a good time on a good day.

new york grocery stores do not afford one space. rather, they deal in complexity. the aisles are narrow, and tall, and like a complicated toy they offer layers of detail--what you have never noticed before, the past hundreds of times, you may suddenly and pleasantly find.

you're in line to pay, at the grocery where you buy your lunch every day of your life. suddenly the idea strikes you: look up! indeed you look up, and there, beginning right above your eye level and proceeding up two more feet, on a profusion of hooks, are nuts. bags of nuts--cashews and peanuts and pistachios and hazelnuts, roasted, salted, saltless, whatever.

and forthwith, nuts sound good.

napkins and paper towels are usually up high like that. once i looked up and saw a section of video rentals i never knew about. the new york grocery reminds me of my grandparents' fruit cellar. it's close and crowded, and there are things there you haven't noticed yet.

yesterday i went in and saw my name below my mailbox. it said "josh galloway." this is the "correct" spelling of my name, meaning it is "incorrect". the true correct name is the incorrect one. see?

i'm used to this, and don't care how people spell it. either is fine. but today i went in and it had been changed. it said "josh gallaway." someone had corrected it, by realizing it needed some incorrection.

i hadn't even mentioned it. someone was looking out for me. when i thanked the person i assumed responsible, she said she didn't do it.

i will never know who correctly incorrected my name.

complete and total silence. can you hear the crickets? chirp chirp, i wish i were a bird, but i'm only a cricket, chirp chirp.

parentheses, the blow

let's have three cheers for The Weather, which, this year, is the great alcoholic dad we all wish we could have had. you want erratic behavior? you want mom to cry? that's The Weather, baby. it's essentially 90 today, and it's also been 50 recently, and it's been hot and then cold three or four other times since, say, august. i get the flu and wake up shivering with a fever every time this happens, meaning every two weeks in the past six.

being mad at The Weather is a good lesson for people, me included. who do i file the complaint with? oh yeah, i forgot, i eat it. thanks The Weather, i won't be voting for you in the primary and i won't shop at your store anymore.

i am drinking whiskey and nitpicking the formatting on the final print of my dissertation. i just stuck in a list of symbols, and now i think i used too many symbols.

my friend mark and his wife kristin sent me the whiskey right after my defense--it was delivered at work, just after i'd gotten the news i passed. the best part was that it came with a big pink invoice for one cent. i laughed. you can't plan metaphors of absurdity with that kind of quality. mark, you win.

i hurt my leg yesterday, and today i am limping. listening to the BBC, drunk, alone, at midnight. to all my future employers who have just found this using google mark 10: blow me.

this is a new entry.

i'm a little bit blank. just blank. i have found i have no taste for beer, which is abnormal, and i don't want to read any books--also abnormal. new music grates on my nerves, and i want to hear old things that are familiar. i walked to kim's today and bought animals by pink floyd and talking book by stevie wonder. those make me feel good, because i know the words.

it seems to me that the weather was in the 50's not long ago, and then it was near 90 for a week. it's cold yesterday and today, and although i can't recall looking it up, it seems the weather website was predicting the 80's again later in the week. i've had a fever at least twice in the past week, and one of those times i slept uneasily and had nightmares. i ate alfalfa sprouts a few days ago and they tasted like aluminum foil, so i threw them away. at odd moments i keep worrying that i will never eat alfalfa sprouts again, because they were so bad.

there's not an inch of open space on my desk. in fact, i have a notebook in my lap, because there is no space to write.