Where are you taking me, mister?

My apartment is great. It's big enough to jump rope in, centrally located, cheap rent, cool wallpaper. There's no hot water but when you think about it how much do you really need hot water? If you want a warm shower all you have to do is boil several pots of water, add cold water, wait, wait, wait and pour them over yourself in the tub. Don't forget your oven mitts! It only takes five times as long as a normal shower but when it's over, guess what, you're a little cleaner. If you drink wine during the process it's almost bearable. The other great thing about this great apartment is that we don't control the heat. Someone else does. Who it is I haven't a clue but I picture him with a long white beard and flowing robes. And this guy clearly doesn't think it's cold enough to turn the heat on yet so I have to wear jacket and gloves inside. I'm going to start praying to him to please turn it on. Although I'm sure the controller, in his infinite wisdom, has a higher purpose and I'm supposed to be learning a lesson from this suffering, I don't want to end up like the Little Match Girl. I'll learn a lesson later. I'll learn some other lesson, I promise. This is called negotiating.

I grind my own pepper using a mortar and a pestle. That shit is a workout. I didn't make this choice because I'm cool, I made it out of necessity. We don't just own a pepper grinder. This ain't the Ritz. My roommate/landlord Stefano showed me how to use a half moon to chop vegetables. It's a knife shaped like half of a moon and you chop it like it's hot like a hot see-saw. Big pimpin, Flaminio district, baby.

Before I go to the store, I make a list of vocabulary words I might use. I'm learning Italian in many easy steps. So far I have successfully purchased limoncello, melanzine, pomodoro, fichi d'India, pesca, insalata, basilico, ribes, ricotta, mela Smith, peperoni rosso, e fragolini. As you may remember, my last attempt to make eggplant resulted in severe burns. I still have scars on my arm from that sweet trauma. Thanks to the advice of one Miss Karen Saar, I successfully fried a melanzine and maybe I went a little crazy on the salt but it was good and the hot oil didn't attack me. Congratulations all around.

I understand now why there are always crazy people on the bus. Because the bus makes you crazy. I took one hellish bus trip home that lasted three hours over three seperate buses. Teenagers making out all around me, a lady with a full beard and mustache hacking and hacking just about everyone is hacking it seems like. So many teens and beards and germs. I can only listen to all 255 songs on my ipod so many times.

I got up at 6 AM yesterday to go to the eurochocolate exhibition in Perugia. The train was so packed, there were no seats left, I had to stand up in that section between two traincars does it have a name? Well I had to stand up in there for three hours next to the open window crammed in like cookies in my mouth (that's how I eat a bag of cookies, I cram them) with all these other eurochoco fans. Was that fun or what. Three hours! I wish Perugia was twelve hours away, I could have stood up next to that open window all day! The choco fest was the most crowded thing I've ever been to besides the Vatican museums. But the choco! Oh, the choco! I tried hot choco and figs covered in choco and panna cotta choco, grapefruit choco, mint choco, date choco (the best one), ginger choco, and sacher torte and I pretty much made myself sick. I saw choco churros and had Feria flashbacks. I left after a couple of hours to fall asleep in the sun on a park bench (homeless). I ate at this trattoria where the menu was written on blank paper in magic marker and stapled together. The guy said "You want the lasagna" and I love a man who takes charge so I said Yes and it was pretty good lasagna (Garfield). I wasn't cramming it but it was pretty good.

Saw The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus last night. Terry Gilliam was there. He's kind of a douche. I don't know, maybe I was cranky from the seven hours on the train but I thought he walked down the red carpet rather pompously and they started the movie almost thirty minutes late because of him and his stupid photo ops and I'm like "Excuse me! Terry? Can you please take your seat? I stood up on a train for three hours today. I know you made a movie and it's very important because Heath Ledger died but sit the fuck down". He finally did and I immediately fell asleep because it was BORING. Rose McGowan was there too, I don't know why. Where was Johnny Depp? Where was Tom Waits? Jude Law? I wouldn't have fallen asleep if Jude Law was sitting next to me. I would have been nervously trying to act cool. But they never seat the big stars in the balcony all the way to the left, do they?

You know, I'm not actually sitting in my chair right now. I'm levitating above it at a height of one angstrom. Our electrons are implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.

See you all in two menstrual cycles!