Now that I think of it: RIP Joey.

I'm in Oakland and drinking scotch and ginger tea in the unheated Huffin, smoking California outdoor grown in kiddie pool pots in Mendocino County. Gregory is eating coco puffs and galloping after invisibles. When I came back to this house there was a picture of Sarah Hill and Michael Finnegan dancing on Halloween tacked near the kitchen door. In the photo Michael is costumed as a "grown man" and Sarah is Courtney Love dark hair zombie. I met Sarah twice and the last time I saw her was in Portland in the basement of RIP after this disasterous party I threw. We had alphabet soup, you know, we were really unleashed on something Sasha Shulgin made and we really scared the other kids at the party. I even shoved many of them, but playfully. Most of the night we were in my bedroom and I had a tounge of truth suddenly and made a couple important conclusions and was clarvoyantly succinct though I was laughing almost painfully. After all, we screamed and laughed and tore through the party and ended up in Stef's room in the basement. We mewled and growled and laughed on tape for about 10 minutes before Beverly Palmer fell through the basement window, grin-first. She screamed and the tape became much louder because we all screamed and Sarah and I were clutching each other in permanent grins. I thought she was in Florida, but she was here in Oakland on Halloween, dressed as a dark hair Victorian zombie.

I was in Boston at a Chinese restaurant seeing Majick Markers on Halloween. Our show at the Middle East was cancelled because the band we were to play with were in Greece on Halloween and didn't even know the story. On that day too we went to this distribution warehouse in Boston, I can't remember the name, and there was an indoor basketball court and maybe 20 Merzbow boxed sets and even boxes of tea like kava kava and roobios. Tom was telling people on tour that I considered shoplifting the boxed sets, but really I do know when to shoplift.

I'm nostalgic for snow, though I never liked it for the 21 years I lived in Michigan except for the times when I was not in Detroit or Lansing. My parents had a cottage near West Branch, Michigan, a mildewy A-frame on Lake Ogemaw in the poorest county in Michigan, and I ice skated there sometimes for 10 years. I sometimes liked the snow but never in conjunction with snow mobiles. I liked taking walks with this boy I saw there on weekends, whose dad was a cop that burned catfish alive in fire pits.

On the weekends Up North there was usually a group of kids and we would paddle boat or hunt turtles or lay in bed and read Little House books or somehow laugh so hard that pants were peed. In the summer we would get on the pontoon boats and jet skis with the adults. We would dock in a deep part of the lake and the kids would swim until exhausted, and then eat of bunch of Cheezits and then swim more, then Combos, then Triscuits, all fuel for swimming in a sand bar too. By the time it was campfire time the adults would become really bombed out on moombas; the kids would go crazy and then one of the rowdy boys would run nuts-first into a flagpole and have to go to the emergency room and then the night would wind down.

I went to some amazing carnivals and county fairs and biker rallies up there in the summers. You could hear biker parties miles and miles away.

The only time I visited a psychic was at a community-center fair at Lake Ogemaw when I was 10. The community center had pancake breakfasts and little events and the psychic was at the summer fair. The fair was very exciting for the kids and we would be crazy on Nerds and Laffy Taffy. I visited the psychic very seriously. I had decieded that I wanted to go to junior high instead of finish elementary school, so I asked the psychic advice on skipping 6th grade. I don't remember what the psychic said but I did do it and it was a weird process. I petitioned them a week before school started and they said yes. I worked in the counselor's office in junior high and saw my permanent record. I snuck a look in the filing cabinets and it was full of strange observations about me and included all school portraits, including my 2nd grade school photo, I am wearing a Girl Scout uniform, missing two front teeth.

Now that I think of it: RIP Joey.