Oh racquetball, I am afraid. You make me pretend for a moment I am a coked-up misogynic stockbroker, all in white, rainbow sweatband, polo collar erect and brushing my veiny red neck. I am looking forward to the euphoria-inducing white walls, the bloop! sound of the ball when it�s cracked just so, the release of grrrr as well as the phlegm tri colori that emerges just to make sure it heard right that I was exercising. I have not played in so long and I�m hoping the delightful Ms. JT and I can make it a habit again. We used to play every week and walking into that huge bare white room with crazy acoustics would shock me into such uncontrollable fits and giggles that I would find myself apologizing to her for my seizure of hysterics. Silly, since she is used to my antics, spurting things with the rapidity and randomness of a crack whore. My humor is sometimes incidental, subconscious, backburner, and all the while on overdrive. I�ll say things sometimes and a friend will laugh, and sometimes Conscious Me doesn�t get the joke that Subconscious Me has told until Conscious Me picks it apart. Maybe everyone is like that. I should do some research on this. My subconscious self is way funnier than my conscious self is. I would like to take it out on a date, get it drunk and pick its brain.

Do you ever affectionately remember the smell of someone�s hair in the morning, sun and dragonflies ebulliently buzzing at the window, giving each other Sanrio stickers, fruit and fresh bread (the sun and dragonflies gave each other all of those things?)? That just happened. Maybe I need to wash my sheets. (Fuckin� Microsoft Word��Sanrio� is in spell check but �pentylenetetrazol,� �Tereus� and �underslung� are not. What�s up with that?)

As expected, it seems I�ve angered a saboteur Indiana Jones-style. I tiptoed up to the stony Beast and in an attempt to reclaim Ruby, disturbed its slumber, whereupon it Decreed that I will No Longer Write for Amplifier Magazine. Fair enough. It has the authority and the territory. It brought me into that world and hence can take me out. But it was a fine experience and I learned a lot writing for them. I will miss it. But I have some quality clips. Loss = Loss. Tit for tat. Ground Zero. I don�t believe in personal revenge or sabotage. And I find it angers one to chalk one point off on one�s dartboard when the other person isn�t playing.

I had such a lovely friend day yesterday. Whenever I hang out with her she opens the bell jar and coaxes me out. I was looking at her and thinking, �I�m so glad we outlived that Bizarro Summer. I don�t know what I would do without her friendship.� And I realized how comforting it is to have friends that know your shortcomings and love you anyway.

I just want to let everyone know that my Britpopstar name is Izzy Kizzelsby. I will be Sir Izzy as I grow older and will take tea with the lugubrious Sir Thom Yorke and the earth oddity Sir Robyn Hitchcock upon which Sir Thom will choke on a cucumber sandwich that I shall dislodge by giving him a firm biff to the sternum with the sterling fist atop my walking stick. As I so ignorantly invaded his personal space, Sir Thom will first hit me with a streak of drill sergeant billingsgate, but will ultimately realize j�ai sauv� sa petite vie and will be eternally indebted, writing me the tribute album Ok Izzy, but it will bomb, and Sir Thom will go back to being the loveably miserable scoundrel we all know and love. There will be one song about me on the new and lauded album, Hence, I, but it will be about the pain caused by the sterling fist to the boyish chest and how it parallels his experience with the music business.

Word of the Day for Sunday June 23, 2002:

sobriquet SO-brih-kay; -ket; so-brih-KAY; -KET, noun:

A nickname; an assumed name; an epithet.

In addition to his notorious amours, he became distinguished for a turbulent naval career, particularly for the storms he weathered, thus bringing him the sobriquet "Foulweather Jack". --Phyllis Grosskurth, [1]Byron: The Flawed Angel

At a small reception on the occasion of my twenty-fifth anniversary in this position, my good friend Izzy Landes raised a glass and dubbed me the Curator of the Curators, a sobriquet I have worn with pride ever since. --Alfred Alcorn, [2]Murder in the Museum of Man

There was an omnivorous intellect that won him the family sobriquet of Walking Encyclopedia. --Eric Liu, [3]The Accidental Asian Sobriquet is from the French, from Old French soubriquet, "a chuck under the chin, hence, an affront, a nickname."