Today I am in a bad mood and I am not going to write about why. It�s not a big deal, anyway. I applied for a whopping three jobs today. One of them sounds like I might even like it a lot if I could ever manage to convince anyone that my being able to do it was within the realm of possibility, and in the cover letter I fibbed almost not at all, a sure sign � muttered the unemployed cynic � that what�s decidedly not within the r. of p. is the convincing. For the second, the disjunction between the job title and the job responsibilities lead me to infer that the salary would be kind of like a sharp stick up the ass; the application involved an Orwellian web module where you had to choose the correct response from various drop-down menus before it would let you continue, and as for the fib factor look no further than, e.g., my craven drop-down selection of High for "Interest in financial modeling using Excel." Or perhaps it�s not a fib so much as creative sentence-parsing � if I were high enough, who knows, maybe financial modeling using Excel could get pretty fucking interesting in a hurry. (In situations like this, no fooling, I keep a record of every false claim I�ve made on my resume and in the letter. That way, in case I should get hauled in for an interview, my little lies.txt will serve as a cram-course curriculum.) The third I pine for less than I do the first yet am apparently willing to bullshit for more, but it�s probably not an issue because this company�s HR department is notoriously difficult to get past unless you�ve got someone on the inside, I mean if you�ve got someone on the inside you are abject enough to ask to intercede on your behalf and sorry sister, I am not. Not yet. I wrote a new cover letter template and managed to use at least 75% of it in my application for each job, though I get so superstitious and paranoid when I write a 75-percenter that I check it over at least a dozen times and any time-saving advantage is totally lost. And one, two, three, that was that.

Killing time in a bookstore Thursday night before the movie, I leafed through a new edition of Bennington grad Donna Tartt�s "The Secret History." This new edition seems to believe itself, sunnily, to be capitalizing on something I know not what � it can�t be the sales of her dud new book, and who�s heard from Ellis in years � but the point is that it has one of those reading group guides in the back and it�s a howler, truly heinous, and after the Jarrell I laughed meanly out loud at the unchallenged claim by D.T. that "Bennington�s literature and languages faculty were keenly aware that they were teaching young artists as well as young scholars." Keenly! Let�s just let that one go. Also I notice that Diane Middlebrook, whom I secretly like to think of as Diane Middlebrow, has a new Plath biography out � in ten years, I swear, there are going to be Sylvia Plath boutiques at malls just like Sanrio Hello Kitty kiosks, selling red headbands and black turtlenecks. Look out, now I am getting cranky. At Powell�s on Saturday � we went to Portland anyway � there was a first edition of Collected Jarrell for thirty bucks and I wanted it so much but then I asked myself Thirty dollars for one book, are you barking mad? and I answered no and I put it back on the shelf and stocked up instead, as though being conscientious about my USRDA of fiber, on Latin manuals and textbooks. (Party on, humble correspondent.) I got a Wheelock because mine�s in deep storage, that old devil North and Hilliard�s "Latin Prose Composition," a reader published in 1936 and targeted to British schoolboys, and a well-penciled copy of the first Catilinian oration, because a girl has to start somewhere. Also I got "Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts" on the cheap and ditto some Rexroth, since I had none, and maybe I should have privileged appetite over hunger after all because I paid eight bucks for a used copy of "Girl With Curious Hair" due to an inexplicable sudden need to consume "Little Expressionless Animals" � if you�re as bad with story titles as I sometimes am, it�s the one about the Jeopardy contestant � and if eight dollars for fifteen minutes of gratification is a price I�m willing to pay, then why not four times that much for joy that is exponential? I was willing, if briefly, to cough up forty for the Lowell. I thought of all this in the car on the way back and I don�t mind telling you I brooded. Maybe I�ll call Powell�s up later this week and if it�s still there I�ll have it put on hold or sent to me. When we got to Powell�s, Steve and I parted company in one of the lobbies and agreed to meet up there in an hour. I kept an eye on the time just like someone who is indeed conscientious in all things, and I couldn�t believe how slowly time was passing, it seemed like I was bending the hours to my appetitive will, I was going to be able to browse in every section I wanted to� and then there was an announcement on the PA that the store would be closing, and I realized my watch had stopped.

I�m going to see John Vanderslice November 1, am excited to pieces (1) because I know it will be terrific and (2) I�m looking forward to the opportunity to exorcise the memory, no, the impression of the last time I did and to divorce one more tangential association from a time that was so hellaciously bad for me in every way; Vanderslice live exists for me in the background of what was a tenuous hold on my self-respect, he is the bass-in-floor soundtrack to what I didn�t see then was one night in a series of nights of one long sad self-degradation � please don�t read too much bitterness into that, I only mean to diagnose � and I need to see him again because he deserves better, because we both do, and also to take something back that frankly I hate myself a little for not feeling like it�s mine wholesale; why do I say "take"? There�s a whole �nother entry percolating along those lines on the subject of music and how the past year will go down in self-history for me as one long (sad?) day the music died, the kind of entry where if I were sitting across from Catharine in the dear old college-town coffee shop we�d start with rapio and go like gangbusters from there. I say it is percolating but then again I don�t know that the brew would be potable, so how about if I refrain from making any promises just yet. It is strange how a heart can be broken and totally mended at the same time, the former a counterpoint to the major-key and exultant latter. I feel guilty for still being so wounded and not tidied-up healed, betrayed by my own (oh god) seroconverted and non-clotting blood. And watch me still avoid proper nouns, tentative, effacingly, like I don�t have any claim to those either. Fuck. OK. Steve is coming to Vanderslice, hooray, and on my three tickets so is either Mrs. Roboto or a player to be named later. J.V. sings on the new Mates of State, good for him and good for them.

What about somewhere like Leuven for an M.A. in Latin � wouldn�t that be a gas? Oh, and I heard back from the Princeton Review. I�m going in on November 6 to "audition" for an instructorship with a zippy peppy interactive three-minute presentation on the topic of my choice, and I am thinking Texas Hold �Em poker and a very short skirt. The Knoxville accountant won it all when the other dude went all in on Jacks (?) and he had fours and fives both, so heartwarming.

I�m avoiding my stats counter. It was freaking me out. Love you madly, of course � don't go anywhere.