MONDAY, 31 JULY, 2000, PHILADELPHIA

New toys! New toys! I love new IIF’s. Especially when they introduce me to good beer, good kitsch and they’re not axe murderers. So many bloody axe murderers running around these days, y’know. Okay, so my Gracious Host™, Lees© seems to have requested pictures from my jaunt up to Bahstan this weekend. I should be an Ungrateful Rat-Peasant-Scum Tenant® indeed if I were to disappoint. These two pix come from a perfectly enchanting extended barbecue/fête-d’alcool at the infamous Casa de Krebstar which we have all read about before if we are Loyal Fans® of Lees™. And we all are, n’est-ce pas? It’s weird to read about the Kreb-Kidz, about Kev© the houseboy, about Paula and Ad and Jess and all those recurring characters, then to have them delivered unto your outstretched hand — like reading Dickens then actually meeting the characters. I couldn’t get over the surrealism of the whole imaginary/manifestation thing inherent with meeting people one has read/read about for so long yet never met. When fiction becomes corporeal. It’s true, the bloody marys at the Krebstar shindig were truly and extraordinarily memorable, as we have all read. Fiction condensing on the rim of a glass and rolling over your tongue. Imaginary droplets of veggie and vodka goodness that sting going down then make your synapses synapse. My drive up to Mass. from Penna. and, even worse, the drive back down, were so excrutiatingly trafficky. Five hour trip extended to 8 up and 10 down. I blame it on the Connecticutians. And New Jersey of course, but that should go without saying. Nevertheless, the absolute hells I encountered on my travels didn’t even begin to encroach on the perfect bliss and fullness-o-life-or-whatever that I experienced in my short stay in my hosts’ home town. And I hereby pay due respects to Lisa’s better half, the affable and searingly classy Mssr. Inkwell who let me snap a photo of him in his pottering-about-the-house-in-the-AM ahhn-sahhm-blahh. Now let us just hope he doesn’t mind me posting said snap on a global publishing system as the internet. Hmm? A house so well-hung with kitsch and a bathroom so chock-full-o-Elvis that I berate myself for not spending two hours documenting the walls, cabinets, other surfaces and excavating the toilet with my little digital camera. <CLINK> So, a toast to you two with the beer I toted back down from MA. Yummurz! </CLINK> Meanwhile, back in Philly, I had a very sleepy, pissy day back at work. Nine days and counting till I’m out of a place that has left me with an oppressive combined feeling of frustration, anger, fatigue, annoyance, boredom and a general bad attitude — all quite springing from my own dysfunctions for I do love the college, my coworkers and so many other things about this job. I’m just not a 9–5’er. I thought maybe I could be for once and it’s just not my bag, baby. Oh well. Live and learn. Won’t make that mistake again any time soon. No more full-time day jobs for the Marquis. He seems to prefer the sketchy, comparatively over-worked and financially unstable world of freelancing and contracting better. Just another whiney voice of a generation. Never mind me.