Lottery Logos by State
Arizona		Massachusetts		Ohio
California		Maryland		Oklahoma
Colorado		Maine		Oregon
Connecticut		Michigan		Pennsylvania
Delaware		Minnesota		Rhode Island
Florida		Missouri		South Carolina
Georgia		Montana		South Dakota
Iowa		North Carolina		Tennessee
Idaho		North Dakota		Texas
Illinois		Nebraska		Virginia
Indiana		New Hampshire		Vermont
Kansas		New Jersey		Washington
Kentucky		New Mexico		Wisconsin
Louisiana		New York		West Virginia

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So I've owned this Honda for two years. I put 13,412 miles on it this year. And I've figured out over the course of this second year through meticulous bookkeeping, exactly what each mile costs me. Why is it only truckers don't look askance at me when I do this?

My total cost for gasoline was $1245.67 with prices per gallon ranging from $2.149 per gallon to $3.999 per gallon at Hume Lake, CA. Which of course we all know is bullshit. It's way up in the mountains. Isn't it hard enough to get to without also having to suffer price-gouging? My best miles per gallon of gas calculation is 31.98 driving through Ohio and western New York. Getting a lot closer to the 34 highway that the dealer promised. My greatest expense is of course, gasoline. There were days in May where I would fill up every day, often for days on end. But right behind that is insurance.

If I include all gasoline and incidental costs, my car has cost me $.24 per mile. Excluding all these additional costs, apart from gasoline, tires, and oil changes leaves me a figure of $.12 per mile. Which is awesome. This is way lower than the $.27 I extrapolated from last year.

Addendum: I didn't add the court fees for getting arrested, but that was more a license issue, not a registration issue and I did add the late fees for missing my reg. and all that. I had high hopes last year of escaping IL without paying for that. Oh well, how many people reading this have been arrested? Especially on their way to get fitted for a tux for their own wedding? That's right, suck it, Illinois. I used to say that I wished Lake Michigan would just migrate south and blanket Indiana, but not anymore. Not anymore.

a happening he was always a first-rate jock I've watched him ride for many years on many an afternoon at Del Mar, Hollywood Park, Santa Anita. early this year his wife committed a terrible suicide. those who knew him well said that he would never ride again. and he didn't ride for a while. then one afternoon he accepted a mount and as the horses came out for the post parade and he rode into view the applause began-a gentle steady applause-it continued for many minutes and many a sentimental horseplayer had to turn away to hide the tears. then in that race he came driving down the stretch just to miss at the photo finish. all he said later to the reporters was: "it seems to strange to come home and not find her there." since then he has been riding with a style and an abandon that is unbelievable: driving through small gaps between horses or dangerously along the rail. he is now the leading jock and he continues to win. people have not seen such riding in decades. he's the tiger in the sun. he's each one of us alone forever fiercely ignoring the pain. 1810-1856 one day Robert Schumann threw himself into the Rhine and was then commited to an asylum for the remainder of his life. his wife, Clara, angrily held back his musical compositions and refused to permit them to be played. one might think that she was his greatest protector and critic. one might think many things, I suppose, but I'm glad I'm listening to Robert instead of to Clara tonight.

albums I sat in my cheap room, a young man totally out of place in the world. I hardly ate, just wine and classical music sustained me. I lived like a god-damned fly, or maybe like a confused rat. where I scrounged funds, I no longer remember but I do remember the record store where you could exchange 3 used albums for 2. by buying the occasional album and by continuously trading I gradually listened to almost all the classical albums in that store. but since I was broke most of the time I was often forced to play the 2 albums on hand over and over and over. I drank and listened until each note and musical phrase on those albums became a part of me forever. now decades later I sometimes hear one of those familiar albums on the radio- the same conductor, the same orchestra- and I immediately turn the volume up. and fondly remember that distant melancholy time. KFAC here I sit again as the radio announcer says, "for the next 3 hours we will be listening to a selection of..." it's now eleven p.m. I've listened to this man's voice for many many years. he must be getting quite old. his station plays the best classical music. I don't recall how many women I have lived with while listening to that announcer or, how many cars I've owned or how many places I've lived in. now each time I hear his voice I think, well, he's still alive, he sounds good but the poor fellow must be getting very old. some day he'll have his funeral, a little trail of cars following the hearse. and then there'll be a new voice to listen to. he must be very old now, that fellow, and every time I hear his voice again I pour a tall one to salute him happy that he's made it for one more night along with me.

out of the money there is this superstar jockey that has taken a sudden interest in the written word and one night at my place he asked me, "listen, isn't there something I can read?" I told him, "well, there's this fellow Céline, he wrote a book called Journey to the End of the Night a couple of nights later he phoned. "listen, I can't find that book in any of the stores"; so I told him where he might find Céline. I met him at the track one day and asked, "did you find that book yet?" and he said, "yeah." each time I saw him at the track after that I asked, "you read that book yet?" "no," he'd answer. the last time he told me, "I couldn't get into it. it was too slow." "what?" I said. "yeah," he said. "I gave the book to my wife." "good," I said. "well?" "she said it was depressing." I played out the card and then drove home, thinking, he can't be talking about Céline, not the Céline I read that rainy winter night so many years ago after a long day at the Acme Electric Co. spent packing light fixtures into wooden crates. reading Céline for the first time there in my room I laughed out loud at the crazy truth bounced on the springs turned and beat the mattress with my fist, thinking, nobody can write like this, this is the beginning and the middle and the end of it all! I still see that jockey at the track now and then, he's a good sort, but it doesn't quite mean the same thing to me. we just talk about the horses and let it go at that. gamblers all sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside remembering all the times you've felt that way, and you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway, get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself, like millions of others you enter the arena once more. you are on the freeway threading through traffic now, moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful and so disappointing because we are all so alike and so different. you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and out through your shoes. it's been a tough fight worth fighting as we all drive along betting on another day. - Charles Bukowski

Just in Case You're Bored

Crater Lake	Puget Sound

Kind of disappointing, I thought I was more of a Waldorf

You Are Gonzo the Great

"Is something burning in here? Oh, it's just me." You're a total nutball who will do anything for attention. The first to take a dare, you'll pull almost any stunt. You're one weird looking creature, but your chickens don't mind!

The Muppet Personality Test

You Are a Chimera

You are very outgoing and well connected to many people. Incredibly devoted to your family and friends, you find purpose in nurturing others. You are rarely alone, and you do best in the company of others. You are incredibly expressive, and people are sometimes overwhelmed by your strong emotions.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Portland, here we come!

words like wine, words like blood, words out of the mouths of past loves dead. words like bullets, words like bees, words for the way the good die and the bad live on. words like putting on a shirt. Barfly Jane, who has been dead for 31 years, never could have imagined that I would write a screenplay of our drinking days together and that it would be made into a movie and that a beautiful movie star would play her part. I can hear Jane now:"A beautiful movie star? oh, for Christ's sake!" Jane, that's show biz, so go back to sleep, dear, because no matter how hard they tried they just couldn't find anybody exactly like you. and neither can I. the hardest birthday for me was my 30th. I didn't want anybody to know. I'd been sitting in the same bar night and day and I thought, how long am I going to be able to keep up this bluff? when am I going to give it up and start acting like everybody else? I ordered another drink and thought about it and then the answer came to me: when you're dead, baby, when you're dead like the rest of them. Democracy the problem, of course, isn't the Democratic System, it's the living parts which make up the Democratic System the next person you pass on the street, multiply him or her by 3 or 4 or 30 or 40 million and you will know immediately why things remain non-functional for most of us. I wish I had a cure for the chess pieces we call Humanity... we've undergone any number of political cures and we all remain foolish enough to hope that the one on the way NOW will cure almost everything. fellow citizens, the problem never was the Democratic System, the problem is you. Charles Bukowski -

the difficulty of breathing small unnerving occurences keep coming up one after the other: haphazard dumb accidents of freakish chance- the tiring tasks that are part of our routine and the sundry other ever-recurring annoyances- all these inevitable small defeats and sorrows rub and push continually up against the moments the days the years until one almost wishes almost begs for a larger more meaningful destiny. I can almost understand why people leap from bridges. I even understand in part those people who arm themselves and slaughter their friends and innocent strangers. I am not exactly in sympathy with them and I decry their reckless behavior but I can understand the ultimate undeniable persistent force of their misery. the horrific violent failure of any one of us to live properly says to me that we are all equally guilty for every human crime. there are no innocents and if there is no hell, those who coldly judge these unfortunates will create one for us all.

The Re-construct

This page is being rebuilt as it has recently fallen in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Angelfire swears it's not their fault. Sigh. So I'm putting back up everything I can remember. Not easy. So, uh, don't mind the dust, we're still open during construction.

Rachel's Christmas Present

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White umbrella		Piet Mondrian's Lozenge Composition

Snow Day!

Those pits stains were there when I inherited this shirt, I swear to it.

Sarah took some pictures: here's the rest.

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24+ hour days for 2006 (since keeping track)

01-01-06 01-26-06 01-27-06 02-05-06 02-11-06 03-12-06 03-19-06 03-20-06 04-01-06 04-25-06 04-29-06 05-14-06 05-20-06 06-03-06 07-01-06 07-06-06 07-23-06 08-01-06 08-07-06 08-08-06 08-11-06 09-12-06 09-27-06 10-07-06 10-10-06 11-03-06 11-04-06 11-17-06 11-23-06 12-10-06 12-15-06 12-30-06	24 hours 26 hours 31 hours 24 hours 35 hours 36 hours 26 hours 28 hours 24 hours 26 hours 25 hours 24 hours 31 hours 26 hours 30 hours 33 hours 27 hours 40 hours 24 hours 30 hours 38 hours 24 hours 31 hours 29 hours 25 hours 24 hours 25 hours 26 hours 26 hours 24 hours 25 hours 25 hours	New Years Day + work day + work work + Curt + Adam + bar day + work Dad + work + parents + Indiana work + day + Derek, Rachel, Curt Curt + work work + Rachel birthday + work day + work moving + work parents + work work + Patrick + brats + Rachel Curt + work work + Rachel moving work + party prep Ozzfest + work day + work + California church + work work + IKEA + Rachel work + Curt's cabin no good reason + work work + Dr. Dan work + Trout Valley work + dentist downtown + work work + Kathy C's party downtown + work Portland + work Rachel + work downtown + work + photos work + the Office
A mind of machines and metal.

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