there is no out in down pt 2

So Monday, Bryce and Frank Lister decided that we would go out after work for a drink.  We head to the bar on Chestnut Street (totally not my scene but Bryce was buying so he got to pick.  One word for you- abercrombie & Fitch douchebags who pump iron, smell of some odd foreign cologne and probably still live in their mother's basement).  Anyway, we grab our drinks and sit down at a booth.  The bar is so crowded that neither one of us can hear each other talking.  I mean there were so many times that I thought Bryce looked at me and said that I smelled nice.  Really odd, Bryce is a low talker anyway so that made it worse.  The more I look at him, I really realize that he is kind of a dork who happens to work on the "cool in the senior in high school way" top floor.  I, on the other hand, work on the "we got held back a grade and we are going to some special classes after graduation before getting good old american jobs" bottom floor of the company.  but he should really be down here with us (frankly, I think I should be up their with them.  Just ask my mother)  But I digress.  So, it's loud as all hell and we finally stop talking.  All of the sudden Bryce's nose starts to bleed.  It's freaking hilarious becasue he is wearing a pink shirt (YES A PINK SHIRT) and now the blood starts dripping on it and forming a rose shape.  So NOW it looks like he is wearing a pink shirt with little roses over the boob part.  Sort of like he has rose shaped man-boobs peeking out underneath the shirt.  After a minute or so of blood shed, i decide to tell him that he has rose boobs and he runs off to the bathroom.  My first thought while Bryce was gone was that he was the culprit.  You know the blood on the wall.  But then I remembered that it wasn't him.  I'm convinced it's somone on MY floor.  There are some people that have vendetta's against me because I don't allow certain things to go on with my documents, so there!   So, while Bryce is at the bathroom, I look over and there is TED.  Standing alone in the back of the bar by the bathroom where Bryce went.  I hate this guy so far.  So, our eyes met.  And this is where it gets weird.  So hang on.
Our eyes meet.  At that moment, in that instant it was as if the entire bar stopped in time.  Not a person was moving, or speaking or even breathing except me and TED.  No time, no space.  There was a fly  stuck in the air and a drink floating in space about to crash all over some girls purple pear shaped pumps.  There was nothing.  Just me and Ted and what looked like a third of Bryce's head poking out of the bathroom door.  And before I could really grasp hold out what was going on, Ted smiled at me in this weird shit-eating grin and then like someone plugged us back in;  Bryce was back at the table with toilet paper stuck on the inside of his nose, the Bust A Move Young MC track was blaring, the people were swilling and spilling their beers all over the place.  The douche bags were back in full effect.   And Ted the Electric.  Nowhere.
And now I really think I know where the blood came from.

This is where we go when we die

there is no out in down

it's weird to Frank Lister to see certain things.  Sometimes it's weird when I see a person on the bus carrying a trash basket.  Even weirder than that is the fact that they are also carrying an IPHONE.  Even weirder than that is the fact the trash basket is full of trash and there is no trash bag.  I feel bad becasue I blamed the smell of rotting baby poop on the old guy sitting next me's pants (in my head of course.  The scene in my head was quite hilarious as I made a huge declaration on the bus that some one has pooped their pants and it must be rooted out.  The whole crowd joined in and we all sniffed around like puppies looking for throw-up to eat).

What I saw on Monday night was even weirder than that.

Oh yeah, sorry I've been absent.  (Frank)ly I have had nothing more to say to you until now.
Without going into great detail right now (as I can;t because I am at work) but I am not sure but I think I saw Ted....

Gotta go.

it looks like i have a virus

(   )

a city in the future

kicked in the nuts/lost time

saturday's show was a complete disaster.  It is crazy how Frank Lister could expect anything less than children, who are happy to be at a birthday party, showing absolute disdain for him and his magical prowess.  YES ( to all you people out there that laughed on Friday at work), I am a magician in my spare time.  I picked up the fine art of magicary ( I made that word up) one day when I was looked at some used books at P.A.T.  I thought I could be great at this.  It seemed easy enough.  I mean, it's all convincing, you know?  I've good at convincing.  I've convinced myself many times of many things.  One time I cnvinced myself to see what a fire ant tasted like.  I did it and I am happy to say that they do not taste good (they taste like eating a rusty screw) and I will not do it again.  The POINT IS! I was successful at convincing myself of this so I thought why not.?  I've convinced myself I am happy working here for a long time or working other places so I can convince people that a flower popped out of my sleeve, you know?  And then I thought, kids, why not kids?  kids don;t know anything.  I will be an awesome kids magician.  Do you want to know how it went?

That's what it was like.  I had a child, couldn't have been more than 5, tell me, with his cute litle doe eyes and little cow-licked hairbowl haircut, wearing his John Cena T-shirt ( that is his 1st problem, if you don;t know him then google worst pro-wrestler in the universe), that I sucked as a magician and I should get a real job but I would probably suck at that too.  At that moment, in my head, I tried to make him disappear, which worked, except that he kicked me in the nuts and he disappeared becasue I blacked out ( I thought it was weird that I kept seeing unicorns all of the sudden).  So, this day was a disaster.  On the bright side, I still have another chance to redeem myself this saturday at another party ( a super sweet 16.  hooray!)

On a quick work note.  Copies don;t copy themselves (that is the pearl of wisdom from my boss).  I had my project meeting with those assholes upstairs (been a very busy)on Monday.  All went well until Bryce introdced me to my new project partner.  Ted, the temp.  What a douche (he said he likes to be called TED, the Electric).  I asked him to do all the stuff, staple, copy, collate, scan.  Didn;t do any of it.  I ended up doing it all.  He would talk to me in a circle about why I needed to do these things instead of him.  it was like he was trying to convince me ( the convincing master)  What a waste of my time.  I just ended up doing it all myself.  he googled himself all day.  Will definitely let BRYCE know.  We're having drinks at the Mom tonight.

Finally, the blood is still on the wall.
Can;t remember how I got to work all last week.  Did I walk or take a bus?
Why are there 5 pairs of shoes (one belonging to a rather large footed woman) under my desk?
Why am I not remembering things?
Ted is a douche.

must disappear

Frank Lister had nothing to report yesterday.  I was buried up to my pajama knees in snow, again.  2nd snow day in a row.  All I did was watch some bad movies and make a little noise.  remember how I talked about listening to noise in my IPOD?  Well so, far it hasn;t told me a whole lot however I do think I heard a recipe of some sort and a to stay away from the dog that lives next door.  Apparently he has a dirty mouth.  Anyway, I have to be short today (okay, I'm short every day).  back at work (suck one).  Papers don't paper themselves, you know?  Anyway, Blood is still on the wall.  Now that I am thinking clearly (as I was not during the blizzard).  Started thinking some crazy shit, like how fruit flies can appear out of nowhere or how I thought I could hear the sun actaully getting warmer.  It sounded like a gas burner or like bacon burning (which I don't eat.).  Anyway, I checked the bathroom first thing and the blood is still in both places.  It certainly was not me.  Number 1:  I don;t do things like that (as I told you before)  I only think about them.  i do not execute these commands.  Number 2:  I can't remember doing it.  Number 3:  It looks really gross and I am sure my blood does not look like that.  I really think it is one of my 3 suspects, since they don;t wash their hands they make perfect sense to me.  Anywho, saturday is here tomorrow and I have my 1st gig after the incident tomorrow so I have to practice after work.  So tonight it is a dinner of wheat gluten sandwiches and sweet potatoes and MAGIC! 
Side Note:
Found out I have a project on the floor above starting next week.  Bunch of assholes is what I think.  Regardless, I will smiley face and wear my good tie.

                                                          Is this me in the future?

it keeps bothering me

This blood thing keeps bothering me.  I'm thinking about this thing and it keeps making me wonder.  all I can think about today is that blood on the wall. You know? At first I was very angry about it. It's one thing to put boogers on the wall (which apparently happens in every men's bathroom) but to swipe blood on the wall is another. That's like taking your finger and putting it in your shit and smearing a little bit by the door handle. It's flat out wrong. Plus it's just weird. I'll be the first to admit, I've thought about doing that before (not blood but the shit part). I remember being in an office somewhere being denied some sort of help or cooperation for something. I can't exactly remember where or when it was but it probably was in a financial institution or on one of the offices on my list from above. I said I couldn’t remember specifically! Plus, it's not important. I may not have even been there. I could have been on the phone with their customer service department at my house. I DON'T know. But, YES. I was so angry at the time that I thought about smearing shit all over the bathroom wall. But the difference between me and this person at my job is that I did not smear anything on the wall, much less BLOOD. I went into the bathroom again later to see if it was still there. It was. No one had either seen it or thought about cleaning it up. An office full of people and no one even thought about telling anyone that there was blood on the wall. What kind of assholes do I work with? An hour later I went back. Still blood. 11:00 AM, blood on the wall. Before I ate my lunch, blood on the wall. 1:00, blood. 8 hours after the first sighting. Blood on the wall. I walked around the office, which was now empty since the whistle had blown and all of the cattle were herded off to the train station to be transported to their individual holding pens before coming back to the slow slaughter house again. It’s nice when the office is empty. There is a feeling that you can do and be whomever you want. I sing outloud when I’m there alone. But I sing really offensive songs. Songs like 2 LIVE CREW would sing or I sing like I’m in a death metal band like NECROSIS or NECROPHILATICCA,whatever. When the office is empty, I walk around and look at people’s desks. I don’t look in them, just at them. I had no idea so & so had an eight year old son and a black dog. That’s what I say to myself. Or holy shit, that is some weird looking family. Are you adopted? I thought I had pegged the culprit of the blood smeared on the wall. There is a guy, actually a few guys that don’t wash their hands after they shit. Naturally, I went to their desks to look for clues. There may be some ladies but since I never go in the ladies room I would not know whether they wash their hands or not. One of the desks is behind a locked door, EXECUTIVE. So the only way to get to that one is to either break in or get fired and get hired as a janitor and work my way up through the ranks to be the head janitor and get a master key to all the offices so I can break in or just wait until tomorrow. So my other suspect has a thing for sports related Lego figures. Fucker has about 30 of them sitting on his desk. Like a little family having a party. All sorts of them. Eagles, Buccaneers, Cowboys, Mets, Yankees, Blue Jays, Weird shit. He’s even got a photo of himself standing in front of a photo of these weird little people wearing sports outfits. He probably plays with them at night sitting on a wool rug while naked except for a pair of ladies shoulder pads (not sure if those even exist). There it was. Staring up at me. A smear of blood right where my hand was. I had touched it when I leaned on his desk to get a closer look. Right where my hand was. Sitting underneath my hand the entire time. I wiped a booger underneath his desk. I was so angry. I took out my IPOD, which has a video camera on it. Crazy these electronic devices these days. If I were paranoid I would think the government was watching us with them. I took a movie picture of the blood, firstly to incriminate him (maybe he has something I need or want, you know) and then to compare to the smear on the wall in the bathroom. Singing Shake Yo Ass at the top of my lungs down the corridor from no handy washy guy number 2’s desk, I ran to the bathroom to snap a movie picture of the blood on the wall. I practically kicked the door down, having to pee like a race horse. What does that even mean? Am I implying that race horses have to pee really bad which is why they run so fast? That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. In fact, I am going to stop saying it. I had to piss like a mother. So I glanced, on my way in, at the wall where the blood was and BOOYA (I am also going to start saying that more often) and there it was. I hopped over to the urinal, looked at a booger next to me on the wall and then I nearly fell over. If I weren’t so scared of getting even a drop of piss on my skin, I probably would have fainted (is there a difference between fainting and passing out in this situation?). There was a smear of blood right in front of my face on the wall next to the urinal handle. I am not sure why but I think I may have put it there.

not to scale but this is what it looks like to me.

The sun eclipsed behind the clouds

It's snowing again today.  It's actually the first snow day that Frank Lister has ever been a part of.  Don't get me wrong, before the gun was pressed at my neck and I was pissing my pants, I had seen snow and had a day where I could not go out of the house.  However, today is the first day that the white powder ( not that kind) has hindered my ability to go and put money in the pocket of a shadowy man on the top floor of the building.  Today I slept till noon, I did nto shave, I did not put on a nice pair of slacks.  I did not put on a matching shirt.  I have yet to brush my teeth.  I am drinking a cup of rich coffee that I brewed in my own pot.  Today I am owned by no one. Except CitiBank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank Of America, Comcast, PECO, PGW, Sallie Mae, United Health Group,  and mainline fertility clinic (who swears I owe them a co-pay but I don't).  But other than that, I am totally FREE today. 
On a side note: Something very odd happened yesterday:  I saw a swipe of blood on the wall in the bathroom at work.  After looking at on eight different occassions during the day, I can;t figure out who would have done this.  Also, the liibrary had none of my books on my winter reading list.  That is just weird.

hugging

I'm so bored

Frank Lister is so bored these days.  Is this all there is?  When that gun was shoved into the base of my neck and I was kneeling down pissing myself, all I could think about was how mundane my life has been for the past years (too many to quantify).   sometimes, I will place myself in sitations that aren;t really me.  daydreaming I guess.  In the above case, I was that dude in Fight Club.  The asian kid who Tyler Durden was going to kill but wasn;t going to kill casue there were no bullets int he gun to begin with.  The one who had the best tasting breakfast the next morning.  Some days I pretend to be that guy.  Or I'll be a pro-wrestler and hear theme music that accompanies me everywhere i go.  I'll enter a room and throw back pretend curtains and make some grand motion with my hands.  You know, something that says AAAAAGGGGHHH!!!!  I am big bad and powerful.  One day on the bus I pictured myself punching a guy in the face.  He was talking really loud on his phone and that just pissed me off.  he was much bigger than me, which isn;t hard to be since I'm small.  B ut I jsut looked at him and looked at the lady who sitting next to him, who looked equally annoyed and I gave her the look.  The look that said, I got this.  My theme music hit and I just popped him.  Popped him in the nose.  He dropped his phone and I picked it up abnd placed it between my teeth and just crunched it like a bowl of cereal.  Then I pointed to the SEPTA sign that had a cartoon dude punching another dude in the face with the caption, TALKING LOUDLY (and for long periodsof time) ON YOUR CELLPHONE ON THE BUS SHOULD GET YOU PUNCHED IN THE FACE.  everyone cheered and some people even offered me some candy for what I had done.  Then it all came rushing back.  I passed the same shit I pass everyday on the way to work.  I made sure to catch the eyes of every person who, like a zombie, clawed their way onto the bus not quite knowing why and not quite in full control of thier faculties.  In theoir eyes I saw things.   I saw things that disturbed me.  I saw how all of the things that I thought I would accomplish in my life have amounted to absolutley nothing.  I am in the same place that I was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that.  Right now, life is a boil on my neck that is pulsing and pumping posion into my mind.  I feel insane most days.  Not sure If I am moving at all.  insane, not sure if I am staning still or traveling backwards through time.  Some days I only want a little.  Some days I expect a lot.  If I stop for a brief second ,I realize what it is that I want.  But it comes so quickly that I cannot remember what it is if I start moving again.  What I don't want is this.  I don't want to be riding on the bus going to the same place as these people everyday.  Not sure where I want to go but I don't want to go anywhere with them.  I never knew that lawyer guy from my work lived in my neighborhood.  He got off the bus and asked me if I was on the same bus.  I said, no. I told him I walk to work and this was a weird coincidence.  That's too close.

Trapped like bees in a hive.  Scared of getting old.

my winter reading list:

I have laundry list of things to do as Frank Lister, which I will share with you as the days before my eventual demise draws closer. I say eventual demise, number 1 to be dramatic and number 2 to remind myself that I will eventually track myself down again, wake myself up and find out what I need to know about myself.  One of the things is that I think I forgot how to read so I am having to learn all over again.  I have decided to read a particular genre of books during this long pale winter.  Since I have another serious case of S.A.D. and there is only so much wine and aspirin that I can consume, it is better for me to occupy my time with something more producutive.  I'm going to maybe write my own (insert genre here) novel, which maybe when I am finsihed you can read it.  Or maybe you can read it as I write it, kind of like this.    I'm also working on finding a weird you tube page to follow along with.  You know, devote myself to one artist and follow their work.  Like I have done with Palanhiuk.  he has a new book coming out in MAY.  Anyway, I have a lot of stuff to do outside of my boring job, which I may or may not talk about i am not sure yet.  When it is all over I guess I will spill alot of things however I can't reveal them all to you today.  If I do that then I will have nothing to write about in the future (if there is a future, which I am not exactly sold on how that whole concept works. But I'll probably deal with that later).  Any, to be short, here is my list and a picture to describe the genre.  Can you figure it out?

1.Swan Song- Robert R McCammon

2.The Long Walk-Richard Bachman

3.Shadowland- Peter Straub

4.The Glamour- Christopher Priest

5.Carrion Comfort-Dan Simmons

his name is....

Somedays I want to punch my stupid self in the face.  My name is Frank Lister and I feel like everything is about to come crashing down.  I just said that really loud outloud and people are totally looking at me.  Not the sentence about everything crashing down but I said the word THAT really loud.  Sometimes at work i will just shout weird things out.  For a while it was PANTS.  But eventually everyone got used to hearing the word PANTS so I started saying ALIMONY, then later I would say MACARONI becasue they sound a little similar.  That is to throw people off.  LAtely I have been saying the word THAT.  I gotta tell you that I am totally freaking out a little these days.  You don;t really know me but eventually that will change and you will probably either like me a lot or not like me at all.  Those are really the only 2 options, you know.  You can't sort of like someone.  You either like or not.  Regardless, I am bugging a little.  I've been listening to a lot of noise lately.  not noise music but total noise.  Jackhammers, constructiuon sounds, incoherent yelling, crowd yelling, clicking, static, multiple flocks of birds making their noises at the same time, TV shows played in reverse.  You know normal noise shit.  I found this site on the internet that is nothing but noise.  Put hours of that shit on my IPOD. Crazy these electronics these days.  if I was paranoid, I would think the government was watching us with them.  I think there is something to be learned from noise in your head, you know?  There has to be a reason for it.  It can't just be...becasue.  Hey, have you ever noticed how easy it is to misspell because?  I always do that.  I put the S before the U.  So , the noise.  Lately my head has been quiet which makes me a little scared since I am used to having thoughts and things ruinning through there al lthe time.  So in an effort to make some positive changes this year in my life (more about that at a later time) I decided to keep the noise alive.  So, I'm trying to hear something in the chaos.  I guess it is a little new agey but I am trying to just be still and listen.  Maybe what I need to do will come through all this nonsense.  In all honesty, which is not to imply that I have been anything less than honest in thre sentences before, it has been a rough few years for me.  if I feel up to it I may get into some of that stuff, not sure that I can do that right now.  I'm just trying to get started.  get something going again.  I stopped a lot of things becasue of lack of noise.  Maybe the noise turned into things.  Things that became all consuming so I couldn't hear the noise anymore.  Somewhere there is a guy that looks like me.  Sleeping.  I have to find him and wake him up and ask him what he saw all this time, while he was sleeping.  Kind of like Rumplestiltskin, right?  No not Rumplestiltskin.  What an awesome name that is.  RUMPLESTILTSKIN.  Could you imagine if you named your kid that.  IF I ever have a kid I'm going to call the kid, RUMPLESTILTSKIN.  You know just for fun. ... I should rephrase that in an effort to be more positive.  WHEN I HAVE A KID.  Very good.  Anyway, I'm actively looking for a guy that looks like me that has been sleeping for 12 or so years now.  He was last seen in Florida without a care in the world probably dressed in a some ridiculous get up trying to get some attention becasue (there it is again) his dad may have not shown him enough.

who is that guy punching that other guy in the face?