pretty fly for a white guy

2001.06.08 22.20

08:12 PM CST: Writing on plane flying back to Houston. Waited 30 minutes on runway why 12 planes ahead of us took off. Why'd we even leave the gate? Couldn't the 11th plane have saved our place in line and let us cut in front of the 13th plane?

Listening to loud ass MP3s on my headphones over the neverending rush of the jet engines. In the mood for recent Julian Lennon. He sounds like John, and his stuff is new. It's also a lot like classic Beatles. Not sure why he doesn't catch on. Maybe he needs to get busted on weapons charges and/or date Jennifer Lopez. Whichever, but he's going to have to wait til' I'm done with her. Heh.

First week ended well. We have beautiful comps of what the system is going to look like plus a very lengthy draft of some standards. Was asked what a comp was. It's a graphic representation of a sample layout. I'm still not sure what it really stands for, however. I guess I should learn that.

To do list this weekend includes: wash dirty bassett hound, check DeLorean and maybe attempt to get it inspected no thanks to those bastards from Texaco [spits], some sort of home improvement under the direction of OktoberNight (and the financial backing of The Super Genius), call the lawn mower guy and complain that I can't open the front door anymore due to grass overgrowth, make sure house is still watertight, get estimate on siding replacement, pick up trash on the side of the road for 5 hours, run a marathon, learn to fly a helicopter, bungee jump from the top bunk, and start a nudist colony. I may need to write a novel if I have enough time.

Plane is veering left. Fake zero gravity is nice. Now we're veering right. Wondering if the pilot has passed out from food poisoning and is convulsing left and right.

I guess I will be back in Philly when they kill Timothy McVeigh. Wondering what his last words will be. Do they limit him? If he keeps talking for more than a certain length of time, do they turn up the exit music and go to commercial? I do remember where I was when the bomb went off. I was asleep on the floor in my study. My friend Frankie Paige (obviously not her real name, but nevertheless, the star of my video ''Even More Closer'') was asleep on the blue sectional sofa. Not sure how that happened. Must have been watching the TV the night before. And since we've always had a completely platonic, WIll & Grace like non-sexual friendship, waking up with carpet imprints on my face was no big deal. Took me about 10 minutes to figure out what all of the screaming was about. At first I thought it was a scene from some war or something. But anyway, so they'll kill the bad guy on Monday and we'll go on with life without him. Seriously doubt it will do anything to curb the number of stupid people that exist, but hey, at least there'll be one less. Too bad we couldn't send him to live with my ex-girlfriend as punishment instead.

Listening to Marilyn Manson's ''The Beautiful People'' right now. No one can hear a thing. Beautiful. I learned that Manson recorded a cover of ''Smells Like Teen Spirit'' for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, only to have it promptly discarded when Courtney Love found out about it. She's hated Manson since they briefly toured together in 1999. The Moulin Rouge people had to quickly record the song again with an unknown band. Wondering if I can find the song on Napster someplace. Finally something to log into Napster for. Getting my mys-spelling abilitees red-dee sew I kan fynd the song. Dam fill terse!

44 days til' Madonna. Still haven't determined the date. There are people in the running out there, however, so don't think the effort to do kind things for me is going unnoticed! Of course, more kind things are good. I'll digress and not list them out. Lechery is involved, however. Hey, isn't lechery the art of making licorice? Hmmm. Have to look that one up.

Want to see the movie Evolution tonight. Wondering if I can track down friends in time. Could have went out with my co-workers from Philly if I'd stayed. FunThey are all married. Is this where you go to get married? Is there a line I have to stand in somewhere or what?

I am going to put up a voting dealio on this page to see if anyone actually reads this. Okay, after thinking about it for 10 seconds, I realize there is no way to vote on whether you don't read this. Must rethink strategy. Perhaps Al Gore isn't busy and can help out. And no, Al, you're still not getting my Madonna tickets, so quit writing me.

9:10 PM CST: Just heard from the captain that the weather in Houston has turned crappy and that we may have to divert to New Orleans. Woo hoo! If we wind up spending the night I am totally going to Bourbon Street! What better way to spend the evening stuck somewhere? May have to rethink my ambitious list of to-do's for tomorrow. Darn. Does this mean I won't be able to pick up trash tomorrow morning? And I was so looking forward to it. Don't you love it when I speak cryptically? The pilot has extra fuel for us to just sit around and circle Oklahoma for an hour or so before we try hitting Texas. Not sure if I should be impressed that we were carrying hundreds of extra gallons of fuel. No wonder these suckers blow up in a fireball when they hit the ground, they're always carrying ''rainy day'' fuel.

Going to try to nap up in case I really do get to hit The Big Easy tonight. If not, no loss, I'll just drive by the Richmond strip with the convertible top down and throw a bag of beads out the window. Same thing.

9:20 PM CST: Okay, the pilot has got balls. He says that he's pretty sure the storm system will move on by the time we get there and that a few planes have made approaches and things seem to be calming down. He then mumbled the rest of his assurances and then went off. Something about what to do if we skid off the edge of the runway or something. Either that or he was convulsing left and right again. Guess I'll be cleaning the earth tomorrow morning after all. Looking outside the window the sky is perfectly clear and you can see all the way to the ground (and we're supposedly at 25,000 feet at least).

Wondering how the Sixers are doing. Not that I think they're going to win the second game against LA, but it wouldn't surprise me if they pulled out another upset. You never know in the play offs. I'm sure NBC has a real hard time rigging the games with those psychics in the stands using telepathy and telekinesis to jack with the basketball trajectory. What? You never knew they do that? Yeah, that's right. They use the same people who make it look like David Copperfield is doing real magic. I've asked them to use their powers to trick girls to walk over to me at clubs, but their hourly rates are hellacious.

Plane is shaking all over the place. If this is the last thing I type (and if the laptop makes it to the ground in one piece, tell my family that I'll miss them (although I'll see what I can do about some friendly haunting and perhaps make a Casper The Friendly ghost type appearance on Friday nights. We'll see. I'd still need to bypass that whole walking into the light thing (again).

9:29 PM CST: Remember the ground? It's missing. Clouds in the way now. News at 11.

10:20 PM CST: I lived. It took forever to get home. Drove through some water. All that was more dangerous than the actual landing. More after I recover.