Articles from: 2001

Another casualty of war for the other side discovered this morning. However I’ve also noticed three out of the four other spring loaded traps not having a shred of peanut butter on them. I guess they’re not as sensitive as I had thought. I’m thinking about gluing hard candy to the metal levers but then it occurred to me that I haven’t seen mice licking any lollipops lately. But you never know. They seem to have liked the remains of my chocolate muffin. While drawing at Rittenhouse square yesterday a woman came up to me and asked if I was interested in doing any modeling. At first I thought she meant in a figure drawing class or for a painting or something but she actually meant in fashion. Yes folks, you’ve heard right. It seems the current trend in fashion is toward short, bony asian males in sunglasses with long narrow heads. Actually I’m not sure about the short part: she asked me how tall I was since I was sitting down and I told her 5’7″ and she seemed a little disappointed. But she said to show up at my appointment anyway, which is this Saturday at 11am. She said to bring a picture too. I’m not 100% up for this idea but who knows. I’m kinda curious.

Chalk up another kill for me, this time using a sticky trap. I haven’t really figured out a good way to dispose of them so I’ve been just triple bagging them and sticking them in the freezer. I think if I was irrevocably stuck to a large piece of cardboard, that’s how I would want to go. Actually I’d much rather take an overdose of sleeping pills (ahhh … sleep) but it’s not very easy to feed pills to a squealing mouse. My friend Rob from Uof W called me at work yesterday and told me he’s coming to town for a chess tournament next week. It’s going to be good to see him although he seems a little apprehensive about staying at my place with the current mouse situation. The air conditioning at the office has not been working during this inopportune season of 90 degree weather. I’m thinking of it as preparation for my next trip to Syria.

On Sunday I went to Home Depot and got three kinds of mouse traps — the sticky traps, the ones with the trap door, and the generic spring-loaded ones. I’m using peanut butter as bait which seemed to work for one mouse which I found dead this morning lodged in a springy trap. Yay for me. The traps with the trap doors catch the mice alive and I always wonder what I’m going to do with them if I ever catch one. I imagine all the demented forms of torture I could inflict and as tempting as that is I’ll probably end up releasing them far away from my place. Maybe I’ll ask around to see if anyone has a pet carnivorous snake.

One of the highlights of my trip to Thailand was watching an inflight documentary on hotdog stands in America. Maybe just because I was hungry at the time and I hadn’t got my airplane food. I think I like airplane food in general although the portions are small. I did some drawing on the plane and read a chunk of Fellowship of the Ring. I can only sleep on planes a few hours at a time. In Tokyo my brother Texas and I were rerouted though Singapore. My mother through Hong Kong. I got to fly business class to Singapore because Texas travels a lot. They had TVs in the armrests but they weren’t showing any movies as interesting as that hot dog documentary. I just started Return of the King but I think I might postpone it until my next trip. If everything falls into place, I’ll be going back to Syria again in a few months.

This morning, I came across one of my mom’s old emails. She writes: “I read your own website. I also saw the Legend of Mana movie. In “About me” section, it’s funny when you mentioned laundry part. I always think that I feel good about myself when my body is refreshing cleaned after the nice warm bath. And I also wear nice clean clothing. Then I feel marvelous and free. To me, to be free is to be responsible for myself. I think I am getting to know more of you from “About me” what you like, what you miss, what you feel at that particular time. I appreciate what you share in your website with me. Keep up.  I hope you are feeling better now. Take good care of yourself and drink lots of water.” I think she may have been thinking of a different movie…

I think I have the habit of checking my email every fifteen minutes. I also have the habit of saying to myself, “Hmm, I wonder what’s on the internet…” right afterwards.  And after surfing for fifteen minutes I check my email again.  And then I think “I wonder what’s on the internet . . . “