I’ve lived in a few rough areas. But oddly enough, I’ve only been threatened once or twice while wandering around the neighborhood.

Summer in Tacoma is a wild experience. Everyone who’s never lived there claims it rains every day, and that we never see the sky, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Really, I’ve never experienced a more temperate and enjoyable climate since, and it’s easy to wish for the broken clouds and crisp breeze off the Puget Sound now that I’m sequestered here in the harsh extremes of Illinois. July of 1990 proved no different than the rest, and we’d recently moved to a house in the northern end of town.

Dear Freddy Krueger,

I have long enjoyed your work. Eviscerating children is also one of my favorite hobbies! I was wondering about the specifications you used for the glove blades, and the honing/stropping methods you used. All of the limb-gouging tools I create never quite seem sharp enough…

What are hobbies, exactly? They’re things that take time. Sometimes, too much time. Copious, extravagant amounts fully enabled by circumstance to derail anything improperly prioritized. (For me, that’s basically everything.)

I have a desk job, folks. It’s not the worst thing for a writer, but I’ve also decided to learn to play the piano after something like two decades of indecision on the matter. And of course, I must maintain a relatively strenuous aerobics regimen to keep my malformed heart in working order. I can do it–Rabbit Rue is proof of this–but doing so while making progress on my steadily growing “to read” pile is significantly difficult. I do it anyway, or I’d go insane rather quickly; I’ve been voraciously consuming fiction practically since I could lift a book, so why stop now?

It would seem that I read a lot more than I thought. My book pile was dwindling and I wondered how that was possible, since I had at least six or seven in the pile before the holidays. Well, as it would turn out, between the train rides and reading before bed, I consume more than my fair share of books. So, what did I read during January? In order:

Well it turns out I found a couple forums discussing the same thing as my rant from yesterday with one major difference: the forum is apparently frequented by morons. Granted, these particular unabashed cretins are capable of utilizing a computer, but its clear these computers were manufactured by Fisher Price, and are likely caked in drool and feces. It’s time to put the internet to its actual purpose! Do you know what that is? Porn? Perish the thought. Videos? Games? Facebook? Sorry Bub. The real purpose of the internet is to shamelessly taunt and belittle other people on the internet. Since this is me, and I pride myself on being unnecessarily mean-spirited for no apparent reason just for the entertainment value. Let’s see just what my esteemed cohorts over at the Topix Forums are mindlessly babbling about, shall we?