Saturday, January 06, 1996 5:03:32 PM Wow, talk about powersleeping. Went to sleep around 1:00 am, woke up around 4 pm. Was up and about sporadically, frantically thinking that i needed to be busy so i could make up for all this excessive sleeping. I have such a wretched cold, i guess it's probably a flu. i'm sure that sitting here with a spaceheater under the chair blowing heat on my ass will cure me. isn't that what granny always said? 6:19:29 PM It's later. not a lot has changed. tried to practice but coughed too much and just don't feel like practicing. a lot of musicians have this fear that they will suddenly start sneezing or coughing during a performance. i don't really care if i do or not, and someday i hope to belch like a frog on a concert stage while performing all the great keyboard works of some fatso like Scarlatti. the sanctity of concert halls has always annoyed me. you'd think it was a cathedral, and all the soloists popes, making the audience nothing more than a gathering of lowly sinners and supplicant lay-people. It looks like a few my bills are going to be late. i'm late with bills sometimes, and don't really care. i grew up with the outlook that there's just no such thing as a really late bill, and there can never be too much debt. A number of people have written this week, most of them anonymously, to inform me of some payphone numbers at different locations throughout the U.S. J.D. Heilprin wrote with numbers and descriptions of places in Los Angeles, and unnamed sources submitted several numbers from Illinois and Wisconsin. I have updated my list of payphone numbers accordingly, and will soon add several numbers of phones near my apartment building, and from wherever else in the world I receive information. i called several of the mid-west numbers tonight, and without exception got either a busy signal or no answer. i kind of don't have the nerve right now to call all these places and ask for me, but as the night wears on and i continue to be sick like this, my restraint might will diminish, and maybe Payphone America will be shouting my name. i almost forgot i did this, but i just remembered that once at my previous job, i kept getting calls from this woman who was just bugging the hell out of me, asking me questions about some product that i insisted i knew nothing about, and could she please call this other person. she kept calling me, though, and after 6 or 8 calls i got so annoyed that i transferred her call to a payphone out on Amsterdam Avenue, and never heard from her again. Mongolia is now connected to the internet!!! Tracing route to 144.228.76.34 56 bytes from 144.228.76.34: time=1164 ms 1 1822 1822 137.39.126.11 NetBlazer4.New-York.NY.ALTER.NET 2 327 -1495 137.39.126.8 Fddi0/0.New-York3.NY.Alter.Net 3 209 -118 137.39.100.6 Hssi2/0.CR2.NYC1.Alter.Net 4 163 -46 137.39.58.21 104.Hssi4/0.CR2.DCA1.Alter.Net 5 163 0 137.39.33.130 Fddi0/0.CR1.DCA1.Alter.Net 6 162 -1 137.39.100.78 Hssi2/0.Vienna6.VA.Alter.Net 7 164 2 137.39.11.1 Fddi0/0.Vienna1.VA.Alter.Net 8 157 -7 192.41.177.241 sl-mae-e-F0/0.sprintlink.net 9 165 8 144.228.10.41 sl-dc-8-H1/0-T3.sprintlink.net 10 296 131 144.228.10.18 sl-fw-5-H4/0-T3.sprintlink.net 11 247 -49 144.228.30.6 sl-fw-6-F0/0.sprintlink.net 12 225 -22 144.228.10.30 sl-ana-1-H2/0-T3.sprintlink.net 13 251 26 144.228.70.6 sl-ana-6-F0/0.sprintlink.net 14 882 631 144.228.76.34 sl-mongolia-1-s0-128k.sprintlink.net host reached SOMEONE DO SOMETHING, I'VE BEEN IN MY APARTMENT ALL DAY WITH THIS CRAVING FOR WHEAT DOUGHNUTS AND HORMEL CHILI, AND I'D HAVE BOUGHT THOSE NASTY VIENNA SAUSAGES IF THEY'D BEEN IN STOCK!!! one day last year i found a ring in my toilet. Not mineral deposits, and not stains or misses. it was a woman's ring that i found in my toilet. it happened on a day not unlike this one, where i was home sick and couldn't really go out for fear of SPREADING THE DISEASE further into my frame. i had decided that activity was a good thing, and to busy myself with cleaning the apartment. passing through the bathroom, an object in the toilet caught my attention, as toileted objects often will. it was a woman's ring. cheap, plastic, it had no charm or grace about it, and i thought it might have come from a 10� gum machine. i used various utensils to retrieve the object. i never touched it, and i hope i never do. it's here on my desk right now. i moved it here from the counter in the bathroom with the help of some tissue. i don't care how long it's been out, i just don't know if i can adequately handle something that came from a toilet. i guess someone had flushed the ring down their toilet, and it resurfaced in mine by some burp in the plumbing. i can't tell you, though, how scared i was that i would look in that toilet a moment later and see an arm, or a hand, or an eyeball, or some rotten piece of flesh that had once been host to this ring. the ring had all kinds of residue and film on it. it looked sticky, and after it dried it seemed to stick slightly to the paper towels with which i handled it. i couldn't see or think about the ring without seeing a hand reaching after it. i felt bad, i felt bad for the way people buy jewelry and attractive clothes so they can make themselves look better, and look nice. it seemed like an indignity. my thinking did not disintegrate, though, into silly metaphors in which cosmetic pursuits were themselves flushed down the toilet. i did not see this ring having been specifically hurtled away in disgust, nor did i next expect lipstick containers or eyelash applicators to float to the top. i don't know why i keep it, but the ring is still here.