1:35 pm | 21 September 2004 | WRAPPING UP THE TWO-FIVE like a bad burrito

so i am turning 26 on saturday and i am getting plenty sketched about it. it's not the aging thing (since i try to keep my blogging frank and non-deluded you are no doubt aware i have "pretty issues" but those are not really factoring in here, so much, since i seem to be getting slightly hotter each year, probably largely due to growing into my face), but more the what-am-i-doing. i can make all kinds of excuses about being busy or whatever--this is shorthand for "convincing myself to not just lie in bed all day, gnawing pepper jack and staring moodily at my Disintegration tour booklet*." this does not, however, translate to "doing anything of actual importance." like where did my big writing-a-book plans go? into a folder called "&@#^(@ novel" on my computer, who--she is dead. it's doin' me a lot of good there.

on the other hand, i guess i did a ton of stuff i hadn't expected to do**. i don't think last year i had even planned to move yet. i certainly didn't anticipate these friends or the fast-dancing times. the past year as truly sucked many a dong, but according to my boss's obsessive astrology readings, libras are supposed to come into luck (something about jupiter?) now, for the first time in TWELVE YEARS, which is eerie when i give any thought to my past twelve years, but y'all know i'm doomy, anyhow. what's luck?

i then am happy-esque to usher OUT the Year 25, which was as a series of uncool ninjas attempting to impede my scaling of Mount Awesome. well i will NOT be impeded, fucktors. have i not always been a leader in Things Awesome? anyhow, twenty-six is a pleasing number, having no real relevance to anything (i think 25 felt monumental because we use a ten-based number system or because of quarters or something, but fuck that), and barely divisible except for being twice thirteen, which i will read as the negating double negative, the "ain't not" of unlucky, and off i go, black cat stapled to my forehead, allergies and torpedoes be damned.

I TAKE ALL THAT CONTEMPLATIVE STUFF BACK
total high points from the last year

� making a gingerbread lighthouse;
� the duchamp 'zine;
� new actual paying writing gigs;
� getting "suggested to quit" (fired) for being sad;
� writing the following magical phrase: "I am mostly whatever but still partially ohmygod";
� friends totally having the back of claude in times most troubling, 'specially joelington, zipper, tasia, katherine, jammy b, pants, family, narkleptic, guinn, and other assorted parties;
� being able to be there reciprocally for assorted parties in need;
� moving to long beach HOLLAH WHAT?!;
� getting the bitchinest anchor tattoo of all time;
� starting print and online presence loupe: a journal for essays, which is not quite launchable yet but what the hell, y'all can go, you're special; � probably eating own weight in sushi;
� definitely drinking own weight in sweet nectarous Jameson;
� and motherfucking so definitely seeing THIS beautiful piece (above), which is sort of everything i want to be, big and funny and majestic and pastried and heavy-sad and everything, just not extinct, no way dudes. clm.

*not that i went to that tour, though i'd surely have loved to--but i was like ten years old then, or something, and probably wouldn't have been able to hang.
** oh wait what's this? oh it's a design from derrick's new chapbook, done by yours truly, available from his shit if you want to read radtastic work or just look at the pictures. it's a limited edition so if you are obsessively collecting my shit hoping to make bank when i kick it (ha), then hook it up, dicks.