Here is a collection of very short items I found scattered across a series of NYC notebooks I kept in the early 80s, during the NYC Angst period. Some of these are original ideas, and some are snippets of conversations or mad rantings of lunatics overheard during my travels in the great Metropolis.

Raving toothless black man, standing shriveled in the rain on 42nd St, yelling:

"AH DUN A YOOO-TOIN ... [huff] ... INNA SIX-TON AHMY TRUCK ... [squint, squint, cough] ... GOIN' SIXTY MAHLZ AN OWAH!! [squint, spit]"

He was born not with 20/20, but with 4/4 vision — the musical vision, the one that sees more than others know is there.

The world has so many side-effects.

My mental shelves are bending.

Seriously, these white men look way more dangerous than anyone else...

That guy with the black eye who looks like he's fresh out of a fight stands up and leads the crowd in singing "Give Peace a Chance."

I traded my sensitivity for NewYorkCity.

Parasitic encounters surface like farts under the water of NYC daily life.

Jump off of the plane of your existence.

Nose-picking as an alternative lifestyle for the hermetic stuck in NYC: the cultivation of nasty habits to assure solitude amongst the multitudes.

One learns to spot chemical imbalances in fellow citizens.

It is a constant struggle to control one's own pusillanimousness.

Subway Syndrome: the inevitable mechanical breakdown at the very rumor of my presence.

That man! There's electricity in his teeth!

Live and loin.

Coney Island Beach: Beware the tide of tampon inserters.

The sani-flush in the urinal is a deep swimming pool blue. He doesn't know whether to pee or to dive in, so he pees, and it turns green.

Some say she keeps him on his toes. Actually, she keeps him on a tripod.

The where-did-it-go-ness. The I-don't-know-ness.

Sometimes I feel like an amoeba in pond scum.

English is a CocaCola language.

He'd fuck anything that moves, and if it don't move, he'd put roller-skates on it.

On his head is a moot point.

I used to work in a 5 & dime. They fired me because I couldn't remember the prices.

He had a bad case of penis elbow.

All he ever goes out with are dead women who live.

We know his word is worth its weight in shit.

I'm talking to myself, telling myself I've got no one to talk to.

I'm being inundated by a tidal wave of bullshit.

It was one of those gnawing little agonies, like an inner ear itch that no Q-Tip could scratch.

He's got a wanderlust, that one. When he gets the urge for a change of scenery, he buys a cheap, junk car and settles wherever it breaks down.

He advertised it as a painting after Modigliani — actually, it was more like a Larry or Curly Digliani.

No painting is not made to decorate apartments. (Pablo Picasso)

Reality wasn't a very nice place to visit, but there was nowhere else to go.

He had a face like the surface of the moon.

A new shine on the shoe of life.

He was so foul he seemed to grate the very air around him into an aura of maggots.

Ok all you feeble-minded fucks! Toilet is open and smokin'! (screamed every night at 11pm by a dealer on 2nd St & Ave B, on the advent of opening a "hole" in a burnt out building for junkies to buy smack in)

Some of these guys can't chew gum and blink their eyes at the same time without having an epileptic fit.

On war: "The scumbags are tearing each other's guts out over the bunghole of creation."

Headline: Man Eats Own Toes — Wife Watches

You shitheel! I'll play you like a xylophone!

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away. (Philip K. Dick)

Q: Hey no-collar, what's happening?

A: I got dis hunger, ya know -- not the kind inda belly -- I got da hunger in my head.

He's a fucking soup-sandwich!

Aw, dat guy fell outta his own asshole.

Grand Prize: this fabulous L. S. Diesel Coup!

Pop song title: "If You See Kay"

I use technology in order to hate it more properly. (Nam June Paik)