A few months ago, on a random weekday, I was alone at the bus stop, waiting to commute to work. I started the day working from home because of some really early meetings, but had to go to the office nonetheless; by the time I left, it was around 10AM or so. Nothing particularly unusual—until I see a man in the distance walking towards the stop.

He must’ve been somewhere in his 50s: white head of hair, thin as a sheet of paper. He was wearing shorts, flip-flops and a completely unbuttoned shirt, exposing his chest. You know, once I’m knighted into old age, I’m going to dress like that every day.
Anyways, where I live, there’s either a liquor store, bar, or both every 300 meters; over time, you start to build a sense of who’s a barfly or not, and this guy fit the bill – not necessarily for how he was dressed, but how he walked: his balance was off – and I could now tell from the distance we were in that his general direction was more aligned with me than the part of the sidewalk that was free to pass by me… my Wii Bowling instinct.

(Just as a sidenote, there’s a distinction between being a barfly and a drunkard. Barflies are old guys that spend all of their time hanging out in bars and drinking. Drunkards are always drunk, even though you never see them drinking, and they’re always at those chessboard tables in parks, even though they never play chess. You’d think they’d play dominoes, but no, that’s also a barfly thing.)

After a few seconds of wondering if he was really headed towards me or not, he finally wound down his step, stopping right in front of me. At less than an arm’s length, he began mumbling something I didn’t quite catch, and then started asking me questions. He did smell faintly of alcohol, after all.

He first asked me, for some reason in English: “what’s your name?”. I answered my name to him (João), to which he replied “no, in English!”. A beat passed. Before I could figure out how I was supposed to answer, he declared: “… MISTER JOHN!!”.
He then asked me more questions, now in portuguese: “how old are you?”; “are you a rocker?”… I had long hair at the time.

This is a bit of a tangent, but another time at the bus stop, at around 5AM, two guys passed by on a motorcycle, seemingly on a joyride, yelling something at me. I thought I misheard them at first, that it had nothing to do with me, and so I ignored it – until they came back a few minutes later and screamed it again: “JESUS!”.

I wasn’t sure if they were just pointing out a resemblance, or simply aghast by my appearance; not only did I have long hair at the time, but I had a beard too. Well, you could interpret it either way, but I was hoping it was the first option.

I’ll tell you this much, long hair is not worth the hassle. There’s so much maintenance! I’ve heard throughout my entire life that girls “love it” too, which I’m not exactly in a position to confirm – I just want to clarify – pretty sure they love the hair! If you’re going to do it for the ladies, at least make sure you’re charming beforehand. I’m just lazy. I get like a haircut per year…

Anyways, back to the main story.

As I kept backing off from the guy to maintain a regular distance, he kept drifting forward like a jellyfish. I don’t think I’ve ever in my entire life been that close to anyone’s face before, though at this point, I was more amused as to where this conversation was going than anything else. The guy didn’t seem malicious, anyhow.
He asked me if I was in college, and if so, doing what, so I said I was in college studying computers (which somehow still made it sound smarter than it actually was). He then asked me:

“Do you know why we will never go to Mars, John?”

I was a bit taken aback, but shook my head.
He paused for a second, and then went on with a statement: “there’s nothing to do on Mars… there’s just rocks over there. We can’t even travel at lightspeed. The Americans went to the moon, and they found nothing there either! So” – speaking with finality, he raised his index finger and wagged it for every word spoken – “there’s no reason to leave planet…” – to which he tilted his head upwards and raised the inflection in his voice – a beat passed before I answered: “Earth”. He then cheered, yanked my head towards him with both hands, squarely kissed my forehead and walked away.

…and then my bus arrived.

I’m writing this post a whole week before the 31st. I’ve unsheathed my ghastly, stiff hands from my pockets like spaghetti out the packaging, and now I’m communicating with you.
This month wasn’t action-packed, for the most part. A good chunk of it was just me sitting with my friend at the park, lamenting that we’re broke. I’ve been burrowing through all of my savings to be able to do some cool stuff.

How have you been this past month, anyways? Did you really think I wasn’t going to ask you that this time?!

( ￣▽￣)旦 旦(≧▽≦ )

I woke up real early today. Nothing beats a pleasant weather, does it? I love seeing the shade under the trees and listening to the rufous-bellied thrushes sing ．．．once I fix my camera’s charger, I’m going to start taking more pictures.

I just remembered that I saw The Aristocrats live this past week with my friends. I’ve never listened to them much beforehand, but I had a great time. It’s always impressive seeing people playing their instruments so perfectly! Most of the audience were musicians trying to figure out the time signature to nod their heads to.
Obviously Guthrie and Bryan Beller are amazing, but I had so much fun watching Marco Minnemann play. He did a drum solo mid-show that made me smile from ear to ear – I just love watching people play the drums. You can tell those guys love Zappa too.

In zona.plankton news, I took a hit in the middle of the month and I’m just now getting my mojo back, though it didn’t slow me down too much. I’ve noticed that I have posted more art in 2025 than in 2024, 2023, and 2022 by now, which is pretty cool!

Also, I did an interview this month! Keep an eye out for it, it will come out pretty soon. I wouldn’t normally recommend anyone to willingly read anything I have to say, unless threatened by firing squad or something, but I made sure to mention enough artists and books for you to take something of value out of it. I might edit a link here when it’s out, but I’ll mention it in next month’s post otherwise.

Thank you very much, as usual. I hope your year has been good so far; if it hasn’t, there’s still a lot of room for table-turns. Have a nice day, and a nice September :-9

Signed, with love,
noo.dll__〆(￣ー￣ )
see ya!