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Oklahoma
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1/11/03 Sometimes you forget to update for a week or so and then next thing you know it's the middle of January and you just got back from Sam's Club and ate some Long John Silver's and made yourself a pistachio milkshake with your wife's new THUNDERSTICK that she ordered off the TV while you were in Georgia for your mom's wedding but right after she ordered it you turned to her and said "Okay...if you get to order the Thunderstick, I get to order those Beavis and Butthead DVDs" and she says "fine" and so you did but they have yet to arrive and you have a new car and your sister has a new baby which is your first ever niece and both Thanksgiving and Christmas have come and gone and DAMN THIS PISTACHIO SHAKE IS GOOD and you're another year older because you were born on the same date as Elvis and it's a whole new year and you think "Diaryland? Never heard of it."
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Colorado
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9/24/02
The Girl vastly prefers "children's" music: the canned beats, the cheesy synths. How is it she can even tell the difference? And so now, instead of
Springsteen getting caught in her head, I wander the corridors of the school where I teach humming "...Oh who are the people in your neighborhood,
in your neighborhood..."
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State Unknown
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9/18/02
all of these things are a part of the ritual. i feel that i was just as addicted to it as the drug itself. preparing for everything. getting everything *just right* sharpening the point.
drawing it up, tapping the air bubbles out. breaking the skin. finding a vein. pulling back a little on the plunger. a rush of the blood mixed with the heroin in the syringe.
pushing the plunger in. a rush of pleasure. flushing the syringe with water. taking the plunger out and storing as two separate pieces so the rubber doesnt get
stuck. putting everything away. you are now well enough to plan your next fix..........
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Phillipines
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9/17/02
A bunch of ragamuffins came walking around the street asking some plastic from the vegetable vendors. They would then proceed to the fish vendors and beg for something.
I expected that the tindera would give a small fish to the children. Instead, she took a huge milkfish with screaming red eyes, maybe weighing a kilo or more, and gave all three kids a piece.
And then, the kids went to another stall, and then the vendors would add more fish in their plastic bag. By the time they're through I bet it weighed more than the contents of their schoolbags, if ever they go to school.
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California
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6/17/02
I resisted shaving for years, thinking of it as some elitist cycling fetish. Then I bought my Colnago MasterLight and my attitude changed. It seemed almost
sacreligious to sit astride such a work of art with a pair of hairy limbs, so I decided it was time. It took me over an hour that first shave. About halfway through
I began to wonder if it was really worth the trouble. But it's not like you can stop halfway done, so I scraped on till the floor of the shower was covered in hair.
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Maryland
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9/23/02
After finishing our business, we left the building smiling, stealing glances at each other as we made our way down the steps and towards the crosswalk.
That's when another woman stopped us.
"Marriage license, right?"
"Is it that obvious?" I asked.
"It's written all over your faces," she said.
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Connecticut
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12/10/02
After that conversation, I knew that something wasn't right. An hour later, my phone rings and my grandmother says "Here, talk to your grandfather." I spend the next half hour trying to map out the family to him. Who I am, who he is, how he is related to me, that 'the lady over here' is his wife. That he has children, grandchildren. He asks me how I know the lady. I tell him that she is my grandmother. He doesn't believe me. I am unable to resolve the tangle of his mind, I can not bring the pieces of this puzzle together for him, and he is getting angrier and angrier. Finaly, we hang up.
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Minnesota
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01/24/03
That strange
milieu of pulsing discotheques and beautiful people and nightly excess is her livelihood, and she takes it as seriously as I take my
job. Her closest friends are all denizens of that world -- other dancers, bartenders, djs, club managers -- because it's the
business ties that bind. They're a source of gigs, an extended network of referrals and party invites, a way to get free drinks
and never ever pay cover. They circulate from club to club, visiting each other at work, forming up for after-hour parties,
gossiping until dawn. "I'm working even when I'm not working!" she protests, when I ask her why she has to go out every night
of the week.
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