It's December 30th and I'm thinking about this year and about the next. You've got to. It is written. I haven't smoked in a year. I have no intention to smoke in the next either. Just tell me you're proud of me. I started to exercise. A solid 4 months I did. At least I tried. Stopped eating meat and cut down on cheese and other things. Added a lot of foods to my plate, and obviously lost a few. I kept a journal for every day. I plan to do the same for next year. Got moved to Wilkinsburg and thought I wasn't going to make it. But it turned out to be a good experience and still is, though its not without many daily challenges.

Everyone's thinking about resolutions. Here's what I am thinking of for next year. I want to make a list of books to read and to actually read them. How novel. Pun. I want to write more. Like stories and the like.

So far my list is pretty solitary. I feel like there's going to come a day when I will want to meet new people and challenge myself socially. But, in the words of The Strider, IT IS NOT THIS DAY!

I also really want to learn how to paint. With acrylics and oils. Mainly portraits. Like Murdock. Speaking of Murdock, we are planning to film tonight. That's right: "In This Life." Murdock is the main character tonight. Hail Hail!

The day is young as am I, as is next year. Listen to "Everybody's Down" by No Age and you'll get it.

The impulse to keep a diary is to actual diaries as the impulse to go on a diet is to actual slimness. Most of us do wish that we were slim diarists. It's not that we imagine that we would be happier if we kept a diary; we imagine that we would be better - that diarizing is a natural, healthy thing, a sign of vigor and purpose, a statement, about life, that we care, and that non-diarizing or, worse, failed diarizing is a confession of moral inertia, an acknowledgment, even, of the ultimate pointlessness of one's being in the world. Still, rationally considered, what is natural or healthy about writing down what happened every day in a book that no one else is supposed to read? Isn't there something a little O.C.D. about this kind of behavior?

"Woke Up This Morning"
Louis Menand

And what of blogs? And what of the person who both diarizes and blogs? And what of Christmas?

I have yet to buy or make anyone anything. Ok, not true - I made that mix. But that's all. I have the day off however and I plan to spend it in class. I've rented a limo and a gentleman's whore, which is a bottle of James. I'm buying a greyhound and a couple clodhoppers and plan to go on the hunt with the boys: Chet Christopher and Pastor Buck. My buoys! w007!

I had a dream last night where Emily called her friends her fries, but wouldn't acknowledge how weird it was.

I just finished Paul Auster's Ghosts. I think I liked it more than City of Glass. I am now trying to read Seize the Day by Bellow but can't really get into it. I think it's because I just want to read I Am Legend. Which you may think is my way of being funny but I really do want to read it.

So it's my day off, like I said. Once again, thrice!, I have consulted my most trusted resource. Here's what it says:

Dear friends, be safe on your daie offe! Venture out, yes! (but be careful) Spend your day adding safety to your seat, and calming to your brow. All merchants, if they be proper, have a wall, be it in the vestibule or what-have-you, where they poste safety recalls. DEAR FRIENDS, LOOK UNTO THESE WALLS! Have you boughten some thing that adorns these walls? For Saint's sake, take a hard look. You could have unwillingly allowed hazard to enter your domain. So, look! For as it is written in Exodus, 2:12: "He looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand." I am having a laugh of course, a whimsy. My only resource, my only confidant, is and has always been Sir Lorenzo the Magnificent. And so, in this watchful-eyed time of precariousness and danger, where we spend our daies-off in fear, pushed upon the precipice with our balls in tow, I go to him for a few words of aide: "Never to fear the dread-realm, we go about with our eyes bespectacled."