Diary entry: It seems these vet’s bills are more than what the animals are worth, I’ve mentioned before the cat’s ongoing chronic anal problem, anyway, that stupid cat has me and the dogs scratching now, how much can a man and his dogs take, now this isn’t my dear Little Goober, Little Goober was the light of my life but he had to go, this is Big Goober and he has a big digestive problem, he isn’t digesting his Panda Express squid leftovers too good, Paulie woke up on the bathroom floor this morning with a squid stuck to his face, Paulie loves his Big Goober but whew, Paulie remembers the words of a wise old man, “A small turd can have a big stink”, well, maybe there is another wise saying, “When a large cat craps out whole squid it’s time to drop him off in the country”… Diary entry: Panda Express, day 1,492 of my murder investigation, this investigation has had more twists and turns than a drunken hula dancer in a bouncy castle, how do you make heads or tails from a two headed coin, who knows, anyway, Panda Express, a tall, pretty, dark haired, Oriental waitress delicately set my Saki and noodles on the table, then she bent over and whispered softly into my ear “Foo Key Yoo Paulie”, yes, “Foo Key Yoo”, this Foo Key Yoo must be the name of the One Eared Man, the distant cousin of Mr. Kim, Mr. Kim was the most powerful man in Shing Dong Prefecture, there was only one man in the world that Mr. Kim feared and that was his distant cousin, now I had a name to go with the hideous one eared face I had seen weeks ago in that dark alley behind Panda Express, I decided that I would need a new strategy, a strategy to stalk a most dangerous beast and bring him down, I ordered another Saki and pondered my options, I grabbed my hat and thanked the pretty dark haired waitress for all she had done, then I headed to the office to map out the next leg of a marathon in which the winner was yet to be decided, don’t venture far from the “Diary” as the fire is hot and the rice cooker is about to boil over, shalom… Diary entry: Paulie the coroner has sharpened his cutting instruments, his digging tools will dig, dig deep, they will not stop nor will they fail, tonight Paulie will open up a murderer and collect his guts into glass receptacles, on this night, this very night, a murderer will be dissected, this murderer will no more study, study his evil plans and intentions, no, this night the murderer will be studied, the study will be from the other side, Paulie the coroner’s side, so grab your bibs and your aprons and your rubber gloves, lean in close, view the angry coroner’s vengeance on a fiend… Diary entry: These pills the vet gave me are making me scratch… well, Paulie’s love itch for his people will never go away, love, peace, and shalom to you all…

Diary entry: Hey, it’s Paulie again, Paulie has written previously about living out here in corn country and let me tell you, we have the same problems out here in Farmington that exist everywhere else, many people out here seem to be searching for some kind of identity and they all join gangs, Farmington’s Mayor Cornelius Cornwell is attempting to deal with our ongoing gang crisis, one particular gang hangs out in the back room of a little bar and grill west of town, they are all gay members of a gang they call The Corn Borers, they say it’s always Harvest Time at the Corn Borer Bar and Grill, Mayor Cornwell has been considering a roundup of The Corn Borers, townspeople have been murmuring that the mayor may have opened up a real can of worms this time, anyway, as I was saying, well, maybe I’ve said enough, this could be the right time to snap one of those rubber Tupperware lids on this “Diary” entry, burp it, and say shalom… Diary entry: We here at “Paulie Gee’s Realtime Diary” would like to take this opportunity to announce the formation of our brand new complaint department, we have hired on a kid who says he has a lot of experience handling complaints, he doesn’t have credentials but nobody here does, anyway, please address all your complaints to the care of The Kid in the Complaint Department at Paulie Gee’s Realtime Diary Corporation Inc., he will receive all your texts, emails, letters, and packages containing the funny smelling cookies and brownies, thank you…

Diary entry: Hey everybody, Paulie here with a question, “What has happened to our women”, these women today have really changed, they lived the free drugs, free sex, and free music lifestyle of the sixties, they did things back then I can’t say, but now the drugs they take would scare an insane man bent on suicide, they hum the tunes from pharmaceutical commercials, and after dinner at Cracker Barrel they usually end up saying”Take me home right now”, “I never want to see you again”, after last night’s noodle dinner at Cracker Barrel when the shank of the evening was about to get gnawed on, Paulie’s date said “Take me back to CVS, my diarrhea medication isn’t working”, “Then take me home, I never want to see you again”, the dating scene is whack man, if I have to eat one more noodle dinner at Cracker Barrel, I’m gonna freak out… well, night came upon the land many hours ago, sleepiness has come over Paulie, the dogs are snoring by the fire, Goober my cat didn’t go out this evening because of the cold snap, Paulie is gonna check in to Dreamland Hotel but before he does, he wants to wish those he loves good thoughts, good wishes, good night, and shalom, to the rest of you, I don’t really have to say it because you know the words by now, go to hell…

Diary entry: It’s true, today Paulie has many words, but there were words little Paulie spoke on the day he was born, little new-born Paulie gurgled “I don’t want to die”, those were little Paulie’s first words before anyone could understand him, and before little Paulie could draw his first breath, the world slapped him across the face and the world has been slapping him ever since, Paulie often wonders, is his past really past or is it waiting up ahead in the future… Diary entry: A loud deafening crack, the night lit up, thunder rolled over the land, rolled like a fat woman rolls over her skinny husband in bed during the night, was this some kind of omen, some devious long ago planned scenario that was meant to devour us all, or was it simply something else, rain began hitting the roof like drunken broken down destitute men hit on the bartender for one more drink before closing time, the rain came down, descending down like the wife’s relatives from up north come down for our fall festival, it was as if the entire night was in open rebellion to all that was good, decent, or serene, yes, this could be the very night in which our paradigm would invert, turn upside down, turn ugly, please excuse Paulie as he goes to fix a hot cup of cocoa to sooth his frazzled nerves, Paulie apologizes for truncating this “Diary” entry…

Diary entry: Paulie was working security for the head of a large politically connected firm, Paulie had a close working relationship with the head of all intermediate security offices underneath this one, Paulie carried out and did his job to the best of his ability, Paulie was head honcho of the corporate security department, unfortunately, Paulie was given a mini disk, ordered to destroy it and any copies that may exist, as there was incriminating evidence on it that could bring an entire city to it’s knees, well, Paulie accepted his assignment with the usual confidence and swagger that he was known for, anyway, it seems Paulie had a hole in his pocket and he lost the disk somewhere between the CEO’s desk and the cafeteria, Paulie lost his cushy security job and is now unhirable, well, whattaya gonna do… Diary entry: Oh good gooey gizzard gravy anyway, Jehovah’s Witness ladies sure can swear, Paulie simply wants to love and be loved… Diary entry: Long ago, Paulie worked closely with the lieutenant, a kid who lived down at the end of the block, the lieutenant carried official credentials and he would show them to people, we never got a good look at his credentials as he showed them so quickly, but we all knew we needed the lieutenant, we looked up to him and respected him, we were all so lost in the world that we would follow anyone back then who claimed to be anything, anyway, the lieutenant did all our investigations, stuff like mysterious cat deaths, lost baseballs, all the usual stuff, anyway, Paulie remembers the lieutenant and he takes this moment to say “Thank you”… Diary entry: Panda Express, the squid was raw, cold, slimy on the plate, just as this investigation had become, Paulie would need another Saki to wash down the slime of what he had just discovered… Diary entry: Yeah, the lieutenant, the kid who lived down at the end of the block, he was never too busy to drop everything and work on our cases, he always said he was in the middle of a homicide case that was eating him up but because we were all friends, he would drop the case he was on and focus on our needs, our concerns, our fears, our very well beings, we all loved the lieutenant and we trusted him and we followed all his advice, he didn’t ever solve many cases but there was a certain security just knowing that the lieutenant was right down the block if we ever needed him… Diary entry: Now don’t be confused, the lieutenant was nothing like the cops of today who will slap the cuffs on you for simply throwing an empty beer can at a bus, no, investigators in our day were men, we were men, we were all men, we were united by the same rebel spirit, yeah, the lieutenant knew where the clown’s bones were buried, underneath the abandoned trestle down the railroad track, he had dug most of the hole and we all pee’d in that hole, all of us, in unison, yeah, we were men back then, we were unified in a rebel spirit that has since been destroyed, but to this day, that clown’s bones have not been dug up…

Diary entry: Some people have criticized Paulie for his hateful stance against television and television shows, people say “What’s wrong with a little filth if the shows are cute or exciting”, “What is a bit of dirt in something that is otherwise enjoyable”, allow Paulie to explain, there may be a blueberry in a bucket of shit but you don’t pluck it out and eat it, this is a bit of wisdom that you probably won’t understand, but know this, Paulie can only ruffle your feathers, he cannot make you fly… Diary entry: Speaking of TV shows, there’s this one daytime show where this guy had his brain stolen and planted inside another guy’s head, they don’t know what happened to the recipient guy’s brain, it got lost somewhere, anyway, they are arguing over who this one guy is because he has one guy’s body but another guys brain, this brings up quite the dilemma, it’s the same as if a guy gets his head separated from his body, who do you go with, the body or the head, I would suppose if you liked going water skiing or dancing with the guy, you’d go with the body, if you like just sitting on the couch talking or arguing, you’d have to go with the head, well, Paulie’s head is beginning to ache from thinking too much, this is Paulie, out…

Diary entry: Paulie is trying to make amends for all his past mistakes and bad behavior, Paulie is repentant and apologetic to all whom he has wronged, please allow Paulie to apologize to anyone who was innocently walking by the old Grand Hotel downtown on a rainy day in mid 1959 and the rain smelled like pee, it was because young Paulie was up on the roof, we never pee’d off the hotel’s roof on dry days because people always looked up… Diary entry: Panda Express, late lunch, won ton and Saki, there were loud words coming from the far corner of the restaurant, it was the man with the fur hat, he was arguing with the opium addicted busboy, heated words were being exchanged, a form of Chinese I didn’t recognize, possibly a northern mountain dialect, Eastern Mongolia perhaps, anyway, the only word I recognized was “squid”, I thought back to when I was told I had been using the wrong Chinese word for “squid”, when the pretty dark haired soft spoken Chinese waitress gave me the word for “squid”, I had looked up the word she gave me in my Chinese-English dictionary, and let me say, she had given me one rude ugly word, anyway, this “Murder At The Panda Express” inquiry into murder is taking a wild turn, a new face has entered the picture, a man from China who is a distant cousin of Mr. Kim, yes, Mr. Kim, the most powerful man in Shing Dong Prefecture, there was only one man in the world that Mr. Kim feared, and that was his distant cousin, his cousin had only one ear, he had probably lost one of his ears in some hideous altercation, anyway, the One Eared Man, had he been brought to this Panda Express from far away China by a dark fate of some kind, had we all become inexplicably entwined on the precipice of a deep swirling vortex of God knows what, all of us to be swept down together into an out of control vacuum from which escape would be impossible, had our collective fates been written down long ago in some book somewhere, if so, we were certainly narrowing in on the last pages, stay close by the “Diary” everybody, as a most feared and most dangerous one eared man is about to make his presence known…

Diary entry: Paulie has been riding the crests of the sea waves a bit too high and he has become quite seasick, so Paulie is sticking his face under the water for a moment, don’t go away, Paulie hopes to resurface soon… Diary entry: Paulie’s experiences with the criminally insane were not pleasant ones but Paulie needed a job and he was willing to do the work, but it seemed that the work might devour Paulie, to wit, a particularly lovely, no, an exquisitely lovely little widow lady who said she was totally innocent of bludgeoning her late husband with his leaf blower, she had a magic aura about her and a young Paulie was intrigued, was this to be one of Paulie’s downfalls, we will be returning to this much too long chapter in Paulie’s life at a later date… Diary entry: Working in an insane asylum has it’s perks, there is plenty of decaf coffee and crafts, if you’re into that sort of thing, anyway, where was I, oh yeah, getting too close to the patients can backfire on you, when they offer to get the cigarettes out of your car, you shouldn’t give them your keys, Paulie has lost a few patients and he lost a car… Diary entry: Two AM, a dark night in the city, the sound of a rock crashing through the bedroom window, or Paulie rolling over his martini glass, we will investigate in the morning… Diary entry: Return to “Murder At The Panda Express”, it seems the victims body has disappeared and no one is talking, Paulie suspects a corrupt Oriental morgue attendant, probably addicted to opium, yes, a forlorn Oriental opium addicted morgue worker , easily manipulated by powerful and ugly men, offered either money or opium to move the body, hang on, Paulie wants to tell you about where he has been getting his hair cut and styled, it’s a new “cutting” edge establishment run by two guys, Bob and Lou, they are right next door to a chili and bean burrito shop where they eat lunch every day, the name of their barber shop is “We Cut More Than Hair”, Paulie usually has a tip for his barber but he’s afraid to say it… Diary entry: There is this idea that a person living as a dumb ass today will still be a dumb ass tomorrow, well, Paulie rejects that idea, Paulie thinks that a dumb ass can change, he believes that, he has to…

Diary entry: It seems religious war is in the air, I can feel it, it’s almost palpable, a recent “Diary” entry concerning dunking Jesus’s head in hot cocoa and eating it has brought forth crusaders for justice, we have had to expand our mail room to accommodate an overflow of letters and iffy-looking packages, many of which contain funny smelling Jesus cookies and brownies, anyway, most of the texts, emails and letters suggest that we here at the “Diary” are being blasphemous in eating Jesus cookies without the proper respect, well, you guys are drinking his blood and eating his meat, geez, you are covered in blood like coyotes inside a dead deer carcass, isn’t there a scripture that says those with an issue of blood must be removed from the camp, just sayin’ man… Diary entry: A bit of wisdom heard long ago from an old freight train rider, “When the freight train begins to speed up, you better either get off or hold on tight”, well, we here at the “Diary” aren’t quite sure of what we are doing but one thing is certain, we are scared to jump…

Diary entry: Hey everybody, Paulie here, Paulie wants to share with you the reason he hates church and all things religious, when Paulie was a very young boy, he was happy, content, and ready to take on the world as if it were Grandma’s Sunday chicken dinner and little Paulie was the starving farmhands called in from the field, little Paulie was the proverbial “monkey on a peanut”, well, it was the late fifties, early sixties, little Paulie’s mother would give him a nickle or a dime every Friday or Saturday and she would say “This is for the church collection plate on Sunday”, “Don’t spend it”, well, little Paulie was an avid collector in those days and every week he would take his church offering and buy baseball cards, anyway, they would pass the collection plate, and having no money, little Paulie, put in baseball cards, and one Sunday right after the service, the big guy in charge, he was big, ugly, and he wore this dress thing that looked like the smock Grandma wore when she dusted, he bent over little Paulie and said “You are stealing from God”, “God doesn’t like little bastards who steal from him”, well, I must say that the guilt was deep and long lasting, little Paulie had his first sense of impending doom thrust upon him, the guilt over spending God’s money on baseball cards was bad enough but what made matters so much worse was the fact that Paulie gave God the crappy players… You know, I could never figure out how that big guy in the dress got all the money to God, and why God would need it anyway, if God needed money, why wouldn’t he just print up a bunch of it, well, no one in church ever asked, so I didn’t either, this is Paulie, asking the hard questions after a life lived in fear, shalom… I sometimes wonder if that big guy didn’t take some of the money himself and buy more dresses, well I guess that’s a question for the ages, again, shalom…