I’m blogging live from Chicago O’Hare, which is currently sucking my soul dry. It’s hungry for my soul and I have so little left to give. So little. Currently, my flight is very delayed. Like I’m here for FOUR HOURS. YES FOUR HOURS. AS IN ONE MORE HOUR THAN THREE AND TWO MORE HOURS THAN TWO AND FOUR MORE HOURS THAN ZERO. Damn you math.

I’m wandering the airport looking for a free outlet to plug my computer in so I can at least get some work done. No luck. Every plug is occupied. We need wireless power already. I mean what year is this? Where is my jetpack and where is my mf wireless power! Where is my teleporting? Scientists, get on that shit. Why must you disappoint?

Anyway I hate flying to Chicago. I love the town but clearly they don’t want you to leave. They want you to stay here forever in the airport. It really does feel like Times Square here. Like people are just oozing from every corner. But they are mostly unhappy. Their flights are delayed too.

I was here for 24 hours for work. I spent the bulk of it here though. Actually I’m lying.

I wasn’t in Chicago. I was waaay outside of Chicago. My hotel was near a “gentlemen’s club”. There were many gentlemen indeed. Apparently the first hotel I was supposed to stay at had a beetle infestation and flooded among other issues. So I was rebooked. Beetles dude. Beetles!

Anyway, who’s at the airport? Let’s get beers!

Step 1: Wake up very early morning, shivering. In tight ball. Hands in fists. Head under covers, under pillows. Confusion. Where is heat? Yet another mystery. There is no heat. Nope not even a little. There is a lot of hopelessness and pain, however. A never-ending, recycling supply of sadness. Try to sleep. Pull knees to chest, much like an earthquake drill from grade school. Listen for soothing clanging of radiator. There is no clanging. Only the crackling sound of emo tears freezing against the face.

Step 2: Find the will to leave bed, which isn’t particularly warm, but warmer than the rest of the apartment. Turn on hot water for shower. Wait.

Step 3: Wait.

Step 4: Wait.

Step 5: Wait.

Step 6: There is something wrong. Water is not becoming hot. One might consider it “tepid,” but really, let’s be honest here. When performing a shower, there are only two temperatures. “Hot” and “not hot” which is basically “cold”. No one ever says, I can’t wait to take a tepid shower. You can take a hot one or a cold one, but a tepid one satisfies no one unless you enjoy taking a shower in your own urine, because that is how it feels. Anyway, it appears the hot water is not working.

Step 6: Give up. Turn off the faucet. The knob spins and spins, but water does not shut off tightly. The knob is broken. This happens occasionally, every few months. The super has replaced the knob and washers several times but eventually the knob gets stripped. First the hot knob, then the cold knob. Then the hot knob again. In this instance, it is the cold knob. Which wasn’t even turned on, and yet the knob is spinning around like a top. Sigh. The super will yell in some language. It does not sound Russian. Perhaps a cousin to Russian. Mostly it sounds like this: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH I FIX LAST TIME BLAH BLAH WHY YOU BREAK BLAH BLAH BLAH. Explain that no, I did not break it. Why would I break a knob? There are better things to break. I do not stand there turning on the knob and then turning off the knob and then turning on the knob and then turning off the knob. Wee! This is fun! No. I do not do this. However, this explanation will be ignored. It will get fixed only temporarily. Then, few months later, it will happen again. It is a cycle. The vicious kind that breaks your heart, almost as bad as it was broken only the day prior with the untimely expiration of the cottage cheese.

Step 7: Go to work. Hair, a little greasy. Hands, very cold. Soul, very sad.

Thanks for all the good wishes for my friend yesterday. And thanks to everyone who checked their (or someone else’s) boobies. You are doing a great service to yourself and to boobies everywhere.

That’s a blue-footed booby, in case you were wondering. I am not a big fan of birds, but I do like me some boobies. And the pygmy owl. OH man I love the pygmy owl. Actually I like birds that eat other birds. But other than that, birds can suck it. You hear that birds? Suck. It.

Anyway the surgery went well, my friend woke up totally disoriented and then checked her boob and was like, oh my god, someone signed my breast! And sure enough there were initials on her boob. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, that’s all I have to say. Anyway she was totally on drugs and crazy loopy and was crying, laughing, and then checking out her boob every two seconds, I can’t believe someone signed my boob! I heard the surgery makes your nips hard all the time ha ha ha! I was like I want to BE ON WHAT YOU ARE ON RIGHT NOW. How awesome to be so relaxed. I am not a relaxed person. That may be hard to believe. Hah.

I just doused my entire desk with spearmint oil. It smells like mouthwash. It smells nice. It will cover up the smell of rotting mice bodies in our office walls. Mmm.

So now I’d like to talk about James Franco and how I am going to do him.

OK there’s not much more to say other than that.

That is all.

So this morning, I come to the office and just like any other day at the office, I open my drawer to get out some papers. Documents, if you will. But what do I find underneath my documents?

MICE SHIT.

SHIT. FROM MICE.

How do I know it’s from mice and not say, a dog? Good point. I’m not sure. I can only ASSUME it’s from mice. I have not SEEN the beasts who have made the shits. It could very well be a dog. It could also be a minotaur. I hear those shit too. But let’s assume it’s mice. Once a co-worker came to the office and smelled something bad and it was a dead mouse. In his office.

MICE POOP IN MY DRAWER.

But wait! What if it’s just ONE mouse? How do you know it’s mice, as in plural of mouse? Hmm, good point. Well, there was a lot of poop. So it’s either one mouse with a very active and enthusiastic lower G.I. or a bunch of mice was slightly less active lower G.I.’s. But still active nonetheless. There was also dried pee.

I threw EVERYTHING out. All my documents. Totally. Fucking. Disgusting. I doused the thing with bleach wipes. I then I washed my hands with the bleach wipes, put hand sanitizer on them, and then washed my hands with soap.

I don’t even keep food in my drawers. I don’t even have food. Karina has my food, remember? So I think, what if they are LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO NEST. Oh my god. I’m getting the hurlies just thinking about this.

MICE! Poop! In! My! Drawers!

My friend Mary P-S tells me that mice do not like spearmint. You get spearmint oil, douse it on some cotton balls, shove it in the drawers, and hope they scamper off to somewhere else. Most likely to the desk next to me. I just purchased some spearmint oil on the tubes. If this shit doesn’t work, I’m lighting the whole place on fire. You think I’m kidding but I’m not. Do I work in an alley? No. I work in an office. A modern office, not some turn of the century Oliver Twist shit, you know what I mean? At least I don’t work above a Wendy’s, but still.

Hopefully the exterminator will come and napalm the building. And the city with it. But this won’t really help my drawers. I SHALL EMERGE THE VICTOR. I am outnumbered, no doubt, but I SHALL BE VICTORIOUS.

In other totally unrelated news, I am writing a movie on “cups, pints, quarts, and gallons” and was researching on the interwebz and googled “what comes in quarts?” Because, I wanted to know (other than milk, juice and paint.) And then I found this.

http://comesinquarts.com

Keep refreshing!!!

The temperature is 17 degrees F (which is 8.33333 degrees C) outside.

But let us focus our attention on the inside. After all, the inside is what counts, right?

My apartment does not have heat. I’m going to guess that it’s about 30 degrees in here.

I do not know why it does not have heat. But this morning, in the bathroom, I think I saw my breath.

I have called the landlord. He is “on vacation.” I called the emergency number. I left a message. I LEFT A MESSAGE FOR EMERGENCY. That’s great. It’s like calling 911 and them being like “Hey can’t come to the phone right now! Leave a message!”

I am wearing a down jacket. And Pikachu slippers that are like wearing stuffed animals on my feet and make me walk funny because the ears are so big and slam into each other when I walk. I never wear them because they make me walk funny but also because my apartment is so small and has no floor space I really don’t need slippers to walk around in. It’s not like I can say, hmmm I wonder what’s going on in that other room! Let me walk there to find out! Point is, I’m freezing and I’m sitting on this aluminum chair.

People are grouchy,
Holiday season, thumbs down,
Hey! STFU!

Office doors open,
During Christmas to New Year’s,
Who does that, you ass?

Good times, long ago,
Now holidays are a chore,
Don’t go to Macy’s.

Why the long face, friend?
Streaming bitter, emo tears,
Stop crying, stupid.

Twelve days of Christmas,
But a lifetime of torture,
Death, the only choice.

Today I’m going to the dentist, where he will ask me to open my facehole so he can install a crown on my toof. This crown happens to cost eight hundred United States dollars. In addition, while he is “there,” he would like to replace an old silver filling that is more or less the same age as myself. This will cost fifty United States dollars even.

It occurred to me today that the crown is the most expensive thing I own, except for my computer and my keyboard (musical, not USB with the coffee on it). Actually the crown is worth more than my computer since that beast is about three years old. So the second most expensive thing I own is this stupid crown. EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS! I must part with EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS during this economic meltdown! I feel like it should come with a free toaster. A few years ago if you opened an account at a Commerce Bank in Chinatown they gave you a free rice cooker. A FREE RICE COOKER. All I get is a toothbrush, but I have to ask for it because during these tough economic times, the dentist is being stingy with the toothbrushes.

I just spent OVER AN HOUR trying to find parking in this town. I started in my neighborhood, went down to Tribeca, then toward City Hall, then toward South St. Seaport, then Chinatown, then I said, fuck this, I am going to go to over the goddamn Manhattan Bridge to DUMBO, went there, then went to BK Heights, and then was heading toward Boerum and realized what a horrible decision that was and then turned around, went over the BROOKLYN Bridge and then went back through Chinatown and Tribeca and then contemplated paying for a parking garage which would’ve easily been $50 but decided I rather spend my $50 on anything else other than parking (pants, eggs, crack, not in that order) and then I ended up a block away from my apartment in a “Monday” spot, so I have to move it tomorrow morning before “street cleaning” happens and do this all over again. OH GOD. THE. ABSOLUTE. WORST. I have no idea how people have cars in this city, but holy crap I wanted to die. Apparently Chris and Roz spend hours moving their car each week. And everyone knows the goddamn city does not clean the streets so alternate side parking is a joke, plus half the fire hydrants are dead and yet we still can’t park in front of them. Seriously, I almost started crying it was so awful. Let me tell you, the streets are lousy with douche right now. Turns out there is a UN General Assembly plus the San Gennaro festival but that doesn’t really explain why Brooklyn parking situation got me by the short and curlies. But anyway, hello. I am back. The wedding was awesome, congratulations to John and Karina, they are among my favorite people on this planet, I mean that. Actually the wedding sucked, I mean, people were crying everywhere and it wasn’t at Burger King. The BrainPOP Jr. team made an animated biopic of them and it totally blew everyone’s minds and made Karina cry. That was the point, to make her cry. I’m apparently good at it, for what it’s worth. In a related note, I woke up this morning with the worst hangover I’ve ever had in my life. OK maybe not my life, but definitely top five. My brain felt like a dehydrated apple ring. Spongy and moist yet dry and chewy.

This is for you architects out there, go ahead and hate me:

Santiago Calatrava is a steaming pile of douche. I had no idea, because I am not an architect, but holy shit on a stick. He pretty much embodies the worst of architecture, as a person. I was reading the New Yorker (oh yes I was) which is the “style issue” (oh yes it was) and there’s a profile on Calatrava (oh no they didn’t) and all I can say is the guy is high on his own supply of hot air. You can read the full article here but I recommend waiting at least an hour after your last meal. Kind of like you’re swimming. In a pool of douche.

I am so sad. There are nice, modest, humble architects out there that do nice things and build nice stuff and shut their faceholes and wouldn’t it be nice if people created/designed/wrote totally anonymously and then this guy is all behold! My boner! Let me release a pair of doves over my creation! He’s just totally out of touch. Anyway I just needed to vent because it was piling up inside of me. AND YES, I understand that architects are not the only blowhards on this planet. You can read the Marc Jacobs profile in the same issue. Not to say that he’s a blowhard, I actually found him sad in other ways, but he’s also not claiming to give back to “deliver something to those who don’t have anything” whenever he makes something.

Also, my office now has mice.

My co-worker and friend Brian is going to be on JEOPARDY! Can you believe that shit? It’s not surprising because Brian is seriously an idiot savant except he is not an idiot. I guess that would just make him a savant. He goes to pub trivia every week at Pete’s Candy Store and schools everyone’s asses. The only time he doesn’t win is when he is HOSTING it. It’s ludicrous. You know, I don’t even go because what is the goddamn point? Brian won’t let anyone on his team if they can’t name the vice presidents in order. To be perfectly honest, I always get too drunk at pub quiz to answer the questions so by the time we get to the visual round I am leaning on the table with my head in my hands and saying “oh god I think I am hungover already.” And then Mr. Pony yells at me, “ANNIE! Dude! WHO IS THIS SILENT FILM ACTOR?” And then sometimes I hobble home on the train and think, wow, why didn’t I take a cab? Because I was TOO DRUNK to think about a cab. And all this happens on a Wednesday. My problem is that it only takes one drink and I am absolutely stupid. I just can’t hold it. I mean I’ve tried and tried and have gone through rigorous training sessions, but it just hasn’t worked out for me. One drink and I’m stupid. At least I’m a cheap date. Anyway, congratulations Brian. Bring home the big bucks.