February 10, 1993

A One-Act Play (Part X) is just about done. It's three pages long so far. Here's a sneak preview: The part begins when John and Danielle argue about haggis, "the Scottish dish, commonly made of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep." What a riot! And then R0ntaya¹ comes over for dinner and John begins a lengthy conversation with the queen of the syrups, Mrs. Butterworth. Wait, it gets better! Ryan calls John and announces that Mrs. Jan0ski will be coming over for dinner, too. That's where I am right now. Hoo boy! I could hardly keep myself from laughing. Well, actually, I could because that paragraph isn't funny at all. U don't seriously think I would reveal all the humor in my journal, do U? Pardon me for a second while I write in the top five. I should stress, of course, that the top five that appears beyond the margin in my journal is stolen from Billboard magazine's Hot 100 Singles chart and is not, in any way, intended to resemble or reflect any or all of my favorite songs. That would be ludicrous because I've never even heard #s 2 and 5. Just to clear things up. Actually, I've been thinking that I should start of the JMC² Top Five within this journal on Thursdays or Fridays, instead of sporadically sprinkling them about at random. (Is that redundant? Sporadically / at random? Can I be sued for that by my faithful readers? Do I have any faithful readers besides Jay and Clarissa?3 Will this ever be published? Why hasn't Clarissa been in school for the past week? Should I care?) Those were my inner thoughts let loose. Most of them are irrelevant, as is my life. Of course, I'm kidding. All of them are irrelevant. Anyways, I think I should write a book of questions, seeing as I'm so good at them. They just flow out smoothly like fresh wine from a spigot at the bar mitzvah we call life. Damn, that was a good metaphor. I'm just rambling; can't U tell? Why else would I be talking about bar mitzvahs? Actually, that's probably the first time I mentioned "bar mitzvah" in the journals. I like to get in touch with my Jewish background. But wait, you say, I have no Jewish background! That's why I like to get in touch with it; because it's not there and I need to find it and experience it. I'm going crazy; can't U tell? Jerry Seinfeld is God.
JMC 11:55 AM

1 Googleproofed because previous, unGoogleproofed references to Ms. Bailey by first name alone resulted in the girl herself e-mailing me a few weeks ago (after 12 years!) and wondering what I was doing writing about her. (Apparently searching for "r0ntaya" only turns up five total hits, and the first one is this blog. Oops.) She claimed to be "flattered" at the mention of my crush, but since she has absolutely no memory of me at all (which certainly doesn't surprise me: we sat next to each other in Spanish but hardly talked), I can't help thinking that I may have creeped her out, just a tiny bit.

2 I was mildly obsessed with my initials: not only did I sign all my journal entries "JMC," I referred to the series of notebooks as "JMC Journals." Hence, my personal favorite five songs comprised the "JMC Top Five," and my favorite movies every year received honors in the "JMC Movie Awards."

3 It's amusing to me now that I so willingly let others read my journal, but for the first couple of years (1992-93), I didn't have any secrets or emotional crises or even embarrassing thoughts, really, and so I mainly wrote just to waste time during homeroom (which didn't stop me from having an inflated sense of myself as a Writer who would someday be published).