I like to make jokes. That is kind of what I do for a living, to varying degrees of success. Anyway once at band practice, I was playing the glockenspiel and we were messing around with a hot jam and I said, “I’ll put one hand on my glock.” I literally thought it was the funniest thing I have ever said even though it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever said (maybe) and then I laughed and laughed because I am not afraid to laugh at my own stupid jokes and then realized, shit, no one else was laughing. Instead they were filled with hate. These are my friends, mind you. Filled with hate. ONE HAND ON MY GLOCK!!!!!!! Come on! When do you ever get to make a joke about a glockenspiel? NEVER. It is a ONCE IN A LIFETIME opportunity, except we practice every week and it is absolutely ridiculous to think that I hadn’t even thought of that joke before now. Anyway, damn them. It was funny to me. I don’t know how comedians not laugh at their own jokes. It’s like too calculated. Like they’ve been practicing in front of a mirror. I like it when comedians kind of smile, but then sometimes when they smile they get the rep of being a smarmy dick, kind of like Michael Ian Black, who I think is awesome. It’s all confusing. Chris Rock does that. He’ll make a joke and he’ll smile, but there’s something about his smile where he is not really smiling at his own joke, but something else about his joke. His eyes are kind of crazy and opened wide and detached from their retinas. I dunno, when you see Chris Rock, just watch for it.

Oh that reminds me of another time in yoga class where the teacher was like talking about the head and was saying it was an eight-pound weight on your neck. Then she stopped, “It weighs eight-pounds, right?” And I was like “well mine weighs a lot more because it’s FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE.” Hahahaha. Yeah. No one laughed at that one either.

I spent Friday night at the Apple Store trying to get my keyboard fixed. My Apple Care expired about two weeks ago, so, of course, nothing was covered. Luckily it was just the keyboard that had the issue and not anything else. So somehow my computer was spared from actual water damage to the hard drive. I don’t think i could’ve survived another hard drive failure. Anyway the replacement keyboard cost only $40. I’m like sweet, I can totally pay that. I am very happy and pleased even though the genius helping me is kind of smug. They are always smug. You know those PC vs Apple commercials? The PC guy is John Hodgman and the Apple guy is some snarky know-it-all hipster douchebucket? Well I happen to like the PC guy way better. John Hodgman is the shit. I’d buy a PC if they didn’t suck more than Macs.

So anyway the keyboard was only $40 which might be the cheapest thing Apple actually makes. Like even the iPod cozies are more expensive. But then the labor charges…were $85. DUDE!!!!! $85! I was like, why can’t I just BUY the keyboard from you and install it myself for $0. I mean seriously you do not have to be an APPLE GENIUS wearing a shirt that says “Not all superheroes wear capes” (that is actually what they wear by the way) to install a stupid keyboard. You literally take it off, and then plug the new one in. But they don’t do that. You can’t just buy the part and walk away. No. They want to do it themselves because they are “geniuses.” I’m like listen, an idiot can do this. An idiot like me. I don’t think I should pay anyone $85 for something a monkey could do. I mean I could even get a monkey to do it FOR FREE and in five minutes or less. The genius says they run “tests” to make sure it’s working properly. I’m like, what tests could you possibly run on a keyboard? Yo mean like TYPING? Gasp! And maybe opening up a document and typing? Oh that is really advanced genius-level crap. Please let me pay you $100 for all your trouble and your genius skills. So then with the powers of my CHARMS they agreed to not charge for the labor only because my Apple Care had expired two weeks before. Oh how gracious of them.

But then it took them THREE HOURS. I got there at 7:30 and they were closed by the time they finished it. Ugh. I’m like JUST GIVE ME THE GODDAMN PART I WILL DO IT.

So I have a new keyboard. I am never drinking water again.

In my line of work, if you can call it that, I do a lot of apple-c/apple-v if you know what I mean. As in, cutting/pasting. So I think it would be a ballsout experiment for you to all hit apple-v (or control-v) and see what comes up and then talk about it. Here is mine:

why don’t you just shoot me then because right now you are killing me slowly.

i have a headache. look at what you’ve done to me. i’m a shell of a person. i used to laugh.

Hahahahahah that’s awesome!!!!!!! OK, that is from an email I just sent to my coworkers. OH well, now it is here. I was cross because no one pays attention to the schedule except me. It’s as if a schedule is really a suggestion to them. Like oh hello, you can take it or leave it, this is just merely an idea or a construct that may not make sense to you. PLEASE the last thing I want to do is to apply my deeply personal, completely subjective rules of TIME unto YOU. Why I even bother MAKING a schedule is a complete mystery. Anyway I cut it because I thought it was too dickish but then I was like wtf am I talking about, it’s all totally true, and put it back in, so there you go.

OK your turn.

Also: Homies. I’m behind and I’m sorry.

I realize that many of my friends who should read my blog, do not actually read my blog.

But, of course, many friends do read my blog. I am counting the friends who are regular readers whom I’ve never met. That is nice. These people I have never met are actually better friends than the friends I’ve met who should read my blog but don’t, the ones I mentioned above. Not that reading my blog is a necessity to be my friend, but you know. This is all I’ve got.

So, why not do SHOUT DOWNS? I am tired of “giving props” and “giving shout outs” to the peoples who deserve them. I should be shouting down to the people who deserve them too. Yin and yang that is what I always say.

I shall begin with:

JoMo: You are a dick. But you knew that. But you are a dick.

Roz: Do you even know I have a blog? Sniff, sniff. You are a dick.

Chris: Your jeans are expensive. You are a dick.

Dominic: See above.

Karina: I don’t care if I see you everyday at work and yell at you. You are a dick.

Lizzie: You may be tall, but I can take you downtown to Painsville. You are a dick.

Jeff: Put the beer(s) down. You are a dick.

Yoko: You don’t have a mean bone in your body, but guess what? You, too, are a dick.

Jared: Paging Dr. Jared. Dr. Dick Jared.

Leila: I’d sue you for being a dick but THEN you’d countersue and then win and I’d be totally fucked. For that you are a dick.

Kumar: Come here so I can kick your ass, you dick.

OK, if you were not on the list above you are very lucky in addition to not being a dick.

Now, if you are on the list and you actually read this garbage blog, then you have my apologies and I suggest reading your name and shoutdown again, but this time replace the word “dick” with “delicious cabbage” or “sweet lover.” Shoutdown becomes shout out. This is why words are better than numbers.

I have been writing, for those who care (i.e. friends who are not dicks). I’m trying to do many things, among them write the second book. Also I must do my taxes. (YES I HAVE NOT DONE THEM YET.) Also I have to write something for an upcoming publication called Field of Gray led by my friend Israel. Which reminds me.

Israel: You are a dick and I am running late with the story. That does not change that you are a dick.

Man, so many shoutdowns. I am tired from shouting down.

Everyone else: you are delicious cabbage.

I was house-and-cat-sitting on the Upper East Side again, this time for the Siben-Manning-Davies family. I realize that is what I do for a living now. I just go to people’s apartments and pick up poop and marvel at how all of that can come out of something so small. A total mystery. Anyway, the S-M-D family has a cat named Bailey who is the most non-cat cat I’ve ever met. And I don’t mean that it’s like a dog, it’s just not very cat-like. Like if you try to chase it, it immediately rolls over on its side. WTF? What cat does that? It’s docile and passive and I am used to Aura’s cat which will fill a tube sock full of rocks and smack you in the balls when you aren’t looking. And if you DON’T have balls, it would find the nearest set and smack them just to send a message. Kind of like how you have to beat someone up in prison right when you get there. This is why everyone who visits Aura’s cat has to wear a protective cup. Anyway this is not the point.

I decided to be healthy and take advantage of Central Park while I was house-sitting. Their apartment is a block away from the park. I figured, OK, Annie, time to jazzercise and run even though nothing is chasing me. Just run willingly in the name of health. So I did it.

It sucked.

First of all, every single plant in Central Park was blooming. Do you know about this? Apparently in the spring, all these stupid green things decide to do stupid things like grow and release anthrax into the air and this causes my face to blow up and my eyes to start watering and my nose to start running and it is like I’m taking a shower in my own snot (in Korean “snot” is translated directly to “nose water” which sounds a lot nicer than it actually is). So I run around for a bit, crying my eyes out, and then I run into a SWARM OF GNATS. Do you know about this? They swarm in like large patches and then ultimately I run through it because I don’t run with my glasses on. Then they decide to swarm around me for the rest of my run. And then when I opened my mouth about half of them went down the hatch and I ended up swallowing it. So my guess is that I ate 20% of all the gnats in Central Park. Good news is that I’m not hungry.

Now, if you excuse me, my entire office is going to go bowling.

My neighborhood has been kind of a pigfuck, if I may use that term, because they are filming LAW AND ORDER on my block. This means that the good people who actually live in these buildings get stopped three steps short of their front door by a guy carrying a walkie talkie, talking on his cell phone, and wearing a headset, saying, no, no, you cannot pass through, we are filming. Why is he talking on his cell AND carrying a walkie talkie AND wearing a headset? I don’t know, but it seems like he had communications COVERED. If you need to talk to him, he is definitely available, via different forms of communication. You could probably page him.

Sometimes, I just want to go home and not be stopped by a guy carrying a walkie talkie, you know? Especially, most especially, when I have to pee so bad that my bladder might spontaneously explode and pee oozes through every pore. Not a pretty sight. Perhaps if there were a STAIRWELL I would pee in it. That’s how bad I had to go.

Anyway, later I saw Vincent D’Onofrio get into a car on my street, and then get driven TWO BLOCKS to King Street. I know that he was going to King Street because I, too, was walking from my block toward King and actually beat him to it. On foot. As in, like, hoofing it. I just felt a little empty in side. Vincent, please. Just walk. I promise you fans will not ask for your autograph. Also, to be honest, you look like you can lose a few pounds. The walking might help that. Minimizing both your carbon footprint and your waistline! Zrzly. He was “bloaty.”

I also saw Eric Bogosian. He was rocking a stylish Jewfro. Want to know something funny? My DAD GOT A PERM in the 80’s. Like straight up perm. Not like waves. But a perm. He had a Korean fro, or KorFro. I have pictures to prove it. VERY disturbing. I don’t know why he wanted one. He just did. So he got one. I don’t know if he was trying to look like the Hoff and have these waves, but Korean hair doesn’t really do that. When you perm it, it GETS PERMED. It does not relax. He kind of looked like a pubichead. Which is not a description one wants to assign to one’s dad, but there, I said it.

My mother straightens her hair, but it’s already straight. That is a mystery to me. I don’t even get it.

NY Times had a funny little article about books and dating. The way people will judge you based on what you have read or haven’t read. I am the first to admit I haven’t read a lot, which is rare for a “writer.” I am actually a little scared of reading because I worry it will infect my own work or paralyze me with fear. Like why should I even bother writing if this person is so much better and more awesome, I should be ashamed of myself for sucking so hard. Not that I really think that way, but it’s a possibility. Words are really irritating animals, like fruit flies, which I have in my apartment right now and the funny thing is that I have no fruit so it is like they spontaneously appeared out of nowhere. A total mystery. Anyway, this quote struck me:

Judy Heiblum, a literary agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, shudders at the memory of some attempted date-talk about Robert Pirsig’s 1974 cult classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” beloved of searching young men. “When a guy tells me it changed his life, I wish he’d saved us both the embarrassment,” Heiblum said, adding that “life-changing experiences” are a “tedious conversational topic at best.”

One word: awesome.

Sterling Lord happens to represent me (hi Doug) but more importantly, I was at a party over the weekend and someone actually brought up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and quoted from it and I had no idea what he was talking about and then he was all, like dude, it’s from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I was like how the hell am I supposed to know that I am not a douche and then I vomited in my own mouth, just a little bit. I don’t know if there’s some kind of anniversary edition out or something, but just so you know, if you’ve read this book, don’t tell me because I will be sad. Or angry. I may throw things at you. I’m not saying you have to read Proust or Sebald or Beckett or anyone else for that matter, just don’t read that book. Read anything but that book. I don’t care if you read The Da Vinci Code twice, read the back of the cereal box, or read palms, just don’t read that book. I want you to promise me. If you have read it, I want you to go to your room and think about what you’ve done. OK, fine, just control-z that shit out of your memory and move on. If you feel like quoting it, then you have been warned. Someone might throw something at you. That someone might be me. Just saying.

Also, I am thinking that everyone who likes and quotes from Zen has a beard. I don’t know if Judy Heiblum’s date had a beard, but he probably did. Not that there’s anything wrong with beards, but I just associate beards and that book. Or maybe a goatee. Some kind of facial hair.

Steve just told me that his Homie got SNATCHED. He received an envelope with my note, but with no Homie. I’m really sad. And in addition angry. If you have to steal and be a jerk, then take money or drugs or some electronic equipment that you can actually GET MONEY FOR, YOU MORON. LEAVE THE HOMIES ALONE.

So now I worry that all the Homies I have sent off in the world are going to be Homie-snatched too. And all of you will remain homieless. I’ll have to start some kind of fundraiser for the homieless. So to my human homies, I apologize that New York-based United States postal workers cannot be trusted with toy Homies, I’m sorry if you don’t receive yours because of some filthy Homie pirates.

I will be mad pissed if my Homie doesn’t make it to Australia. Can you imagine? It takes like a hundred years for crap to get there, and then on the other end, you just get a stupid note without a Homie. Like what is the point of even living.

Boo.

I am cleaning out my apartment in order to turn my 187 square foot COMPARTMENT into a PALACE. How do I do this? I’m glad you asked! It is a very complicated process, but I like to think of it more as a voyage of discovery. I am thinking that as I clean out my junk, my crap, my shit, my detritus, and my late 90’s and early ought clothing, I will actually find a door that leads down a hallway into ANOTHER ROOM and I will discover that this entire time I was actually living in a ONE BEDROOM PALACE and not a COMPARTMENT. Then all of the sudden I will realize I am getting a very, very good deal on my PALACE. By the look on your face, I see that you are very excited.

What I discovered on my voyage of discovery is that I am really just keeping the same amount of shit, but reorganizing it so they are in different boxes. This creates a problem. In order to turn my compartment into a PALACE I actually have to get rid of things, as in move items from my compartment to a location off the premises, most likely the trash or Goodwill. What I found is that I actually don’t have a lot of stuff. My apartment makes it seem as if I have two tons of shit crammed in a one ton truck. But actually, I have probably half a cup of shit, but my apartment can only take 3 teaspoons of it. Therein lies my problem.

I wish that as a like, totally famous writer, oh my god, I lived in more glamorous conditions, but instead I live in a compartment surrounded by my own shit. I have to say it’s really nice shit though. I mean look at my table. It’s from IKEA. Nice right? It even has a funny name. I also found a big bag of Homies which I decided I could not part with and instead, I will be giving them away to my peoples. If you want a homie, email me and I will mail you one for the low, low price of free. Because, like I said, you are my peoples.

I am walking down the street with Mr. Morrison. We are discussing dry cleaning for some reason. Since my family is Korean and know the owners of every dry cleaner in the greater Los Angeles area, I wait until I visit to dry clean EVERY ITEM OF CLOTHING I OWN. Seriously. I hate paying for dry cleaning. It’s like paying for toilet paper. I wonder, why the hell do I have to pay for this crap if I’m gonna wipe my butt with it? Seems unreasonable. It should be free. Everyone uses air, and that’s free. Why should toilet paper be any different? If you vote me president, I promise free toilet paper and in addition, ending the war. I’d also levy a huge fine on people who don’t pick up after their dogs and people who do not laugh at my jokes. You think I’m joking? Being president is a very serious job, I don’t know if you know that. That’s not to say that I use my dry cleaning to wipe my ass, but I could since my dry cleaning is free and therefore cheaper than toilet paper. I think I’m overexplaining here, I hate when I do that. OK back to the story.

Anyway, a late nineties Civic is stuck in traffic on Sixth Avenue (ha ha ha I mean Avenue of the Americas). There is very bad music coming out. It sounds like Korn or something like that. I don’t even know what Korn sounds like, but I’m 99% sure it’s Korn. Korn is really hardcore because of their use of the K. All really hardcore things use a K, like kasserole, kite, kanana, and kookie. So you know Korn is like, wow, you guys must really rock. Not like that fake Led Zeppelin “band,” I mean they don’t even have a K IN THEIR NAME. Maybe if they were Ked Zeppelin they’d be a lot bigger and things would be different. Anyway this dude in the passenger seat rolls down his window and yells at us, HEY! YOU READ MUCH?

I am like, huh? So, I say, Huh? I SAID, DO YOU READ MUCH? Then he laughs and they drive off. I kind of don’t get it, until Morrison points out that we both wear glasses and that the car is from Jersey. Because most people who drive up Avenue of Americas (ha ha ha I mean Sixth Avenue) in my hood, are coming from the Holland, which is like a big urinary tract that empties in Jersey. That is to say, if you are from Jersey you might think reading is, like, a bad thing and you should make fun of people who might actually do it and, holy shit, actually enjoy it. OH MY GOD YOU TOTAL LOSER. And if you wear glasses you must read “much” and therefore you should be stuffed in a locker. The point is, I don’t think everyone from Jersey sucks, but that if you are listening to Korn and you are from Jersey and you might, just might, BE A TOTAL DOUCHEBAG.

And the sad part, is that I don’t read enough. I don’t even write enough. Given that is what I do for a living, it is a very complicated and sad situation.