I think helicopters that circle the sky, circling back and forth, back and forth should be shot out of the sky. It is one of the most horrible, nerve wracking noises and perhaps in some past life, I was in Vietnam, but the hum of helicopters puts me on edge. That mechanic hum, that industrial throttle is a close cousin to the noises motorcycles make, which really make me lose my mind. It really sounds like they are right over my roof and they have been at it for over the last hour. The only reason I can imagine for this is the news that the leader of the Hasids died tonight and according to news accounts, there are people gathered in the street not too far from my house mourning him.

I get put on edge by noise so easily, and yeah, how do I live in New York? I have seriously at night, restless, kept awake by barking dogs, daydreamed about how amazing it would be if someone shot them. A child of America and its movies for sure, all these cowboy fantasies about shooting things. Instead, I shout occasionally when I can take it no more for them to shut their dogs up. The dogs normally heed my crazy shouting but I feel like a crazy person yelling out my window. I am going to find out this man with the dogs' address and call noise complaints nonstop. As I just started to write this, the dogs, as if to taunt me, have started barking. Dogs and helicopters and I am approaching something close to the delirium of fever. It was brought on by watching Werner Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, an amazing nightmare of a movie that makes me think everyone who travelled to the New World was batshit insane. How could they not be? Either they were gold hungry people who from their cracked minds, imagined cities of gold, or religious nutcases who imagined settling cities of God. It's totally fascinating to lose yourself imagining this past time and the lives of these people and what a terrifying place the jungles of South America must have been to these crazies. The lead actor, Klaus Kinski, is amazing. This is the film, which he threatened to leave in the middle of, and to make him stay, Herzog threatened to shoot him.

Also during shooting the film, Kinski, much like me, easily enraged by noises at night, but much not like me, doesn't just daydream of violence, actually enacts it. Into a cabin of extras who were being rowdy when he was trying to sleep, he shot a rifle three times, luckily killing no one, but shooting the finger of one actor. Herzog had to confiscate his gun.

The helicopter still roars and I imagine myself on a raft, floating downstream toward madness.