Sometimes, actually a lot of the time, the people I work with are just as irritating as the people I talk to on the telephones.

Like today for example.

The guys sitting on both sides of me, just annoyed me non-stop.

The guy on the right, is new. So, every five minutes when he couldn’t figure something out would turn to me and ask for help. We weren’t terribly busy, so this wasn’t a big deal, but I don’t think I have the words Instrucion Manual carved in my forehead.

Also, his name was Benji.

Just read this aloud to yourself really quickly:

‘Thank you for calling, my name is Benji, how can I help you?’

What adult in their right mind still willingly goes by the name of Benji? If you were a customer and the person you were trusting to help you out told you that his name was Benji, wouldn’t you be a little put off? The last Benji I can think of (besides the nickname given to my cousin) was that little dog from the movies.

But Benji wasn’t too bad. Just annoying.

The guy that I really wanted to sock, kept using the word ‘esoteric’ every phone call that he got, because apparently he just learned that word and felt the need to repeat it over and over and over again to prove how smart he is.

‘It looks like it’s just an esoteric error,’ he’d say.

‘I want to kill you while you’re sleeping,’ I’d say in the back of my mind.

The thing that confused me was that since he was using his new word, every five minutes, and esoteric means ‘limited’, ‘understood by a few’, or ‘private’ how esoteric were the fucking problems he was teching? I mean, I was starting to think he meant that maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. Seriously, the dude used the word ‘esoteric’ every five to ten minutes for 8 hours.

But I’m home now. And happy.

Fuckin’ B.

I just saw Keef and Barb at the grocery store. I was picking up some necessary items for me to keep existing (you know, food). That was exciting.

I also purchased a bottle of wine that is nearly two feet tall. I’m saving that for New Year’s though. Then it will be consumed. I like that we’re having New Year’s in our house again, as I can crawl to my bed at the end of the night to pass out.

I haven’t written down anything in a few days. I’ve been spending the last few days in a drunken haze one place or another (save for last night, where I maintained fairly well), seeing old friends, current friends, making new friends, etc.

It’s been nice. And needed.

Right now I’m listening to the Lost In Translation soundtrack. My friend Drew played it the other night, when I was hanging out with him, Jonah, and Kelly, and I knew that I needed to buy it. It’s so good.

I’m eating a roast chicken sandwich right now. It’s delicious.

One last thing, a note I found in my messenger bag, scrawled down from wednesday night:

‘When did Yugoslavia break up?’

‘The same year as R.E.M.’

-conversation courtesy of the night, witty response courtesy of Jonah.

And that’s it.

Know what it’s time for? ANOTHER FUCKING INTERNET SURVEY. This one was acquired courtesy of my good friend, Mr. Lefholtz.

1. What did you do in 2003 that you’d never done before?

I got my first speeding ticket ever. $116 fine too. What bullshit.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

What are those? And no.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I don’t think so. But I don’t really pay very close attention to anything anymore.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

1 friend from a couple years back. That was pretty depressing.

5. What countries did you visit?

The Altered State of Druggachussets (see Show, Mr.) and Drunksylvania

6. What would you like to have in 2004 that you lacked in 2003?

Peace of mind.

7. What date from 2003 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

8/10/03. Brhino called me at work to tell me that Matt had died and that shocked the hell out of me.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Keeping and maintaining a job that periodically makes me psychotic.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Don’t fucking get me started.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Um, I had some pretty rough hangovers. And one day I broke out in hives at work. That was pretty fucking fucked up.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

The William Elliot Whitmore record.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I’m gonna give this one to Jonah, just because 1) he’s a brave motherfucker and 2) he’s taking control of his life in a way that’s going to be good for him. I have a lot of respect for him.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

I’m not writing this because they’ll read it and things will get blown out of proportion. Sorry.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Rent, my car, the Brother’s Lounge.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Q and Not U and the Black Eyes at Sokol.

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2003?

Everlasting Heart Stopper- Putrescine

Big Black- Bad Penny

Shellac- Mama Gina

Jimmy Soul- Get an Ugly Girl to Marry You

Simon Joyner- Ruby Slippers

Neil Young- Old Man

(I listened to all those a lot)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you

i. happier or sadder?: I’m mainlining.

ii. thinner or fatter?: my beer belly is bigger.

iii. richer or poorer?: poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

hallucinogens.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

calling in sick to work when I didn’t have paid time off.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

with the family for a little while, then drunk with friends.

22. Did you fall in love in 2003?

No. I became a little more bitter though. Does that count?

24. What was your favorite TV program?

Scrubs. Reno 911. Not much else.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Yeah. Yeah I do.

26. What was the best book you read?

Women by Charles Bukowski.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I think discovery is a strong word, but I really fell in love with the music of Leonard Cohen.

28. What did you want and get?

Paid vacation from work that I got to spend in a different city with a very missed friend.

29. What did you want and not get?

Satisfaction? Fuck, I dunno.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

Gigli. PSYCHE!!! PSYCHE!!! Probably X-Men 2 since I saw the damn thing 3 times. I don’t remember. What happened this year?

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I got drunk at the Brother’s Lounge with an army of my friends. It was awesome. I turned 22.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A nice anonymous blow job from a toothless junkie. These questions are starting to all sound the same to me.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2003?

What’s clean or doesn’t smell like booze?

34. What kept you sane?

A steady diet of books, booze, and broads. Ok, not so much the last one. Fucking broads.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

No.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

The war in Iraq would have really bugged the shit out of me if it didn’t so closely resemble the movie ‘Wag The Dog’.

37. Who did you miss?

A lot of people really. Kaitlin, Brizzi, Brhino, and Mikey in Iowa City. Jonah in Chicago. Some friends around these parts that I just never really see anymore.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

There’s two people on this bad boy. First, my co-worker and friend Kevin Green. The dude and I just hit it off really well, and he makes my job 1000 times more bearable. He gets number 1, because I met him first. Secondly, Jonah, who is raking up the entries in this survey by the way, for just being an awesome pal. I like good pals. I need good pals.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2003:

Beer before liquor never been sicker, does not apply if you take enough ephedrine. Oh yeah!

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

‘Nature doesn’t abhore a vaccuum just to hear itself suck.’

-Simon Joyner

I know, I know. It’s lots of fun finding things for your family members that they’re going to enjoy, and it’s fun to get things too. But honestly, if you ever meet a person who tells you that they enjoy Christmas shopping, I want you to run them through with an oversized candy cane and sacrifice them to Santa Claus.

Today was sunday and I actually went to work. Allright!

I would have called in, but I did that yesterday. See, I went to the bar friday night and then went to a party afterwards. Because of the ephedrine, I was able to drink a little more than usual and stay very awake. I killed a flask bottle of whiskey from the gas station at the party after being in the bar for a few hours.

Now, that’s a lot more than I usually drink these days. I can still put away quite a few, don’t get me wrong, but friday night was the way drinking in Iowa City was. I passed out around 5:30 AM in the Dewey living room on one of the couches (my little sister passed out on another one, go team!), and when I woke up at 9 AM was still drunk as a sailor.

Luckily, since my job is open 24 hours, I called in to a supervisor I will never see or meet, at 4 AM.

Anyway I drove home, went to bed, and woke up again around 2, still a little shaky but not drunk anymore.

That was pretty intense.

Today I worked. It was nice. Not too busy even. I drew a lot, read a little bit, and got an e-mail from an old friend that was nice to see.

Also, my friend Kevin and I spent a little while discussing one of our co-workers. The man is about 35-40 years old and dresses like a pirate everyday. He always wears a bandana, tri-corn hat with a cross bones on it, admiral’s jacket, blousey white shirts, and tucks his pants into his knee high boots.

We were wondering if he dressed like a pirate at his job interview.

We were also wondering what his resume looks like. Maybe he had plundering and hoarding under previous work experience? Raping and pillaging? I don’t know. Honestly, no matter how much I can like pirates, this guy scares the shit out of me. He’s like a middle aged Paul Chambers (if you remember that guy, those of you I went to high school with).

I love winamp. And Minutemen bootlegs.

And that’s all I got.

I’m really out of it today.

I just realized it was 8:30 and I haven’t eaten yet. So I went to Taco Bell to get some food.

The guy in drive-thru said ‘have a nice night,’ to which I responded ‘no thanks, man.’

He looked so confused and then as I was pulling onto West Broadway I realized why.

Whoops.

Christ, I love Ivan Brunetti.

homepage

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More wonderfulness

Well, I now know who I’m voting for next November.

LBJ!

jonahsandwich: godfucki’mdrunk

IAmBillLatham: 2003!!!

jonahsandwich: 2004!!!!!!woah!!!!almost!

IAmBillLatham: 1986!!!

jonahsandwich: 1981!

IAmBillLatham: 1492!!!!

jonahsandwich: shit i’m going to be 23 in a month and 4 days

jonahsandwich: COLUMBUS SAILDED THE OCEAN BLUE

jonahsandwich: *SAILED

!!!!!!!!!!

IAmBillLatham: !!!!!

jonahsandwich: my beers are all in my stomach

IAmBillLatham: they made it home allright?

jonahsandwich: all six of them,

Sometimes I do amazingly stupid things. I know it’s hard to believe (heh), but true.

Like last night I was at this party in Ted and Wally’s in the Old Market after they closed for the night. After 9 or 10 beers, I was starting to feel like punching things and so was my friend Brian. So, we started punching each other in the arms, just to see who could hit harder.

And while I won by a long shot, and kept going fine with this new game for the rest of the night and with several other people, I woke up this morning and my wrist was really sore. It was then I remembered somewhere along the line I mislanded one of my punches, because Brian moved out of the way. I kept playing though, and even though I was a little sore then, I was also drunk and it didn’t bother me that much. I vaguely remember laughing and saying ‘that’s gonna hurt tommorow.’

Doy.

It is feeling better now, but maybe in the future, I’ll be more careful.

Wait, no. No I won’t.

Argh.

In other news, Stewart, eats his pees, poops, and boogers.

Apparently.

And I’m not disputing it.

I really need to get the correct adaptor for the scanner Jonah gave me. That way I can actually put up things I’ve drawn on here and not always depend on paint for reproduction. Maybe some week I’ll drink $20 less in beer and take care of that. Hurm.

I’ve been drawing a lot again. I’ve noticed I go through spurts with the different things I like to do. Writing, Drawing, Cartooning, etc. Right now, it’s been a period of just drawing again. This would be a lot more interesting with pictures. I’ll shut the fuck up now.

Last night David and I got drunk and put up the Christmas tree. I committed to moving to Chicago in May a few days ago. David reminded me that it would be my last Christmas in this house. That was a strange feeling. But also an exciting one.

It also feels good to be in my last winter as a vehicle owner. I’m going to sell the Blazer when I get there. I’m not a big fan of driving places, and I’m an even bigger fan of not paying for gas or car insurance.

It feels better to not deal with owning a vehicle after the snowing and icing around here lately, which has sucked the proverbial dick.

Work today was very long and fairly irritating. I’m not going to go into it, because, fuck that noise.

Now I’m drinking scotch and listening to records. That’s what I call medicine.

Raymond Pettibon makes me happy.

But not as happy as taking a paid Sunday off again for the fourth time in four weeks.

Basquiat! Hoo-ha!

So basically, one pay period every month I go buy records. I wish I could do it more often, but really, this is the only way I can afford to do it anymore.

Happily, today was that day. I like record shopping Friday a whole lot. It’s one of my favorite days of the entire month. I’m kind of glad I do record shopping like this nowadays, because I get even more excited about records when I buy them.

I stopped off at Antiquarium and picked up copies of the new Dirtbombs LP ‘Dangerous Magical Noise’, Leonard Cohen’s ‘I’m Your Man’, and a copy of the Horrors LP ‘Vent’ because my cd player is kind of fucked up and has a hard time playing half of the cd’s I own lately, and I’ve been wanting to listen to that album more. Man, I should take care of that soon. The only cd it doesn’t ever have a hard time queing up is the laser lens cleaner.

I had a good conversation with Dave, so that was nice. I always enjoy stopping in and talking to him. He’s definently one of the reasons I go to his shop before any of the others. Well that and they usually have what I’m looking for cheaper than everywhere else.

Man, this Dirtbombs album rocks.

And that’s all I got for now.