I'm really okay. I really really am.

Mad. Mad. With the worry of the floor. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump. These goddamned cats. I could... No. Not the cats. Not them I'm so filled with hatred for. So trapped in my own home. My own... No. Not mine. Someone else's. Merely trussed up like a cheap whore. Mine for just the night. Say it like I told you. Say it.

Headphones on, slippered feet, water bottle ready to punish. For being yourself, yourselves, in what you call your home. Never be yourself. Never do what you want. Don't listen to that so loud. Don't hang that with so many nails. I'll be bald in the morning. Hair fistfuls clenching at the floor.

I hate this life. I hate this life. I hate this house. I hate this place.

But that's no way to say hello...

I hate this place. (Ohh, that sounds ever so familiar.)
I mean, this site, this vulnerability, this wide open sense of being a book found open on a coffee table.

That's why I never talk to you anymore. You're faced, now, and tangible with opinions and commentary and needless worries. I can't simply scream - it must be an edited yell.

How was Christmas? Oh mine was delightful.

Today I was violently bored.

Capitalism is the new slavery of the 21st century.
Customer service in the off season is the new sadism.

Nine hours of my life, gone... I feel sick.

I could have slammed my head into the counter until it was hamburger.

It would have given me something to do.

Link pizza.

Looking for an impressive, beautiful, weirdass waste of time?
You found it.

Immigrant Song

Oh baby... I was bound for Mexico.

Or Canada.
Though Canada's a bit more difficult to get into...

I'll probably just stay home.

D'y'all have a Wal-Mart there?

"So where d'y'all live around here?" he asked, nodding at the noticeable lack of residential areas in the national park outside the windows.

"Oh, just a few miles up the road, in Boulder City," we replied separately, well-rehearsed, having said it so many times before.

"D'y'all have a Wal-Mart there?"

And suddenly incensed, I shot back only a blank stare. Katie continued, unflinched, as I stood seething.

"No," she pouted at him. "But they have some in Henderson. There's a lot in Vegas."

"Well, we come from Arkansas, and they're just all over the place there. But we haven't been able to find a single one since we got here," he replied, in half pride and half disappointment.

I remained silent, but could have screamed a hundred things at him. Like...
"No, we don't have a Wal-Mart... THANK GOD." "How can you support that evil pile of shit?" "And you're proud you have so many Wal-Marts?" "Maybe you should go back home so you can do some one-stop shopping for beef jerky and plus size pants."

What happens to people around a Wal-Mart is an ugly thing - the lowest of capitalism at its most self-absorbed. It takes a true and complete disregard for the community it's overtaking for a company to relocate a sacred ancient burial ground to sell 97 cent groceries. There is no upside to that. Wal-Mart can take its low prices and shove them up its collective, lard-fed ass, because they come from sweatshops and low wages and the ability to destroy a town's small businesses and dignity. To be able to say my town has not a single Wal-Mart makes me proud; proud of its people's conscious rejection of ill-gotten deals, cheaply made products, and low standards.

No, we'all don't have a Wal-Mart here, and God help us if we ever do.

Wal-Mart Watch

Shiny thin edge.

Every day, I step closer to it. Losing my mind. With anger, malaise, boredom, disappointment. This is not my life. This is not my life. This is not my life.

It is.

Crap.