Rather than posting this to the comments section, and since I have obviously tipped a sacred cow, I thought I would spend a moment and clarify my relationship with Comic Books:

I have never read comic books. Not a single one. Well, except an amazing "Smurfs" graphic novel that was one of my favorite books as a 5th grader. Oh, and "Maus" back when I used to work with Holocaust related materials. ("Maus" was stunning.)

I had a comic book selling business in 7th grade. I fronted the money, collected mad cash, and got busted by the principal all in a span of three weeks. After that, I discovered girls.

In 10th grade I bought a friend's comic collection out of pity, but it sat under my bed, uninteresting and unread. (It was mostly "Avenger" and other lame purple guys with masks and capes.)

As to Frank Miller's remake of "Batman", I can't speak, other than to suggest that "anti-heroes" are still heroes, they're just more prone to self-recrimination and temper tantrums. They always win in the end by maintaining their integrity in a corrupt world. Nothing wrong with that: its admirable and more realistic than Captain America draped in the flag. Anti-heroes that don't win wind up like Mickey Sabbath in Phillip Roth's "Sabbath's Theater" (incoherent, unloved, raving). True anti-heroes are things to be feared, not emulated.

Some very reliable and trustworthy folks keep promising to explose me good graphic novels, but so far it hasn't happened.

My problem with comic adaptations on the silver screen fall more in the fact that they cut too many corners, but then again, that's Hollywood in a nutshell.

Rant Errata

In my previous revelation of an unpopular mathmatical proof regarding the poor state of Super Hero flicks, I forgot to make an exception for the one Shining Example of Amazing, Stupendous, and Wholeheartedly Awesome Super Hero flicks

A film which was at once UNpredictable, UNsappy, and UNder populated by flimsy stock characters.

The one.

The *only.*

"Unbreakable."

If I'm lying when I say I'm lying, am I lying?

Just curious.

We Interrupt this Post to Bring You the Following Announcement:

Batman is stupid.

(Disclaimer: this Opinion is not necessarily shared by Blogger, the Readers of this Blog, the Internet, or Anyone Else in the Entire World. It is rendered solely for the enlightenment of any and all who may be under a different impression.)

Ye Mathmatickal Proofe Outlining This Forthright Postulation:

1. Ever since Batman's early 90's "update" (erasing the classic comic book camp of the 70s TV show and other travesties), Batman movies have been filled with: poor acting, predictable drama, unironic appeals to some edgy 'dark' side untapped in suburban middle class teenage boys, and far too much industry hype.

2. Bats are not scary.

3. Men in tights are not scary.

4. Men in capes are not scary.

5. Utility belts are no substitute for *real* super abilities (i.e. ones bestowed by radiation accidents, streaking meteors, or errant lab experimentation)

6. No matter how badass Batman may be, adopting a sidekick with a name as inoffensive and gay as "Robin" shows an almost Camusian disregard for the Universe.

7. Hollywood has NEVER (since Darkman)(and I stick by this) produced a good movie adapted from a comic book: X-men, X2, the Supermans, Dick Tracy, Spiderman, Incredible Hulk, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Captain America, Avenger, etc. Blech. Ick. Go away. Quit punishing my eyes. Slick ad campaigns cannot repair chop-shop adaptations. Time to ship Baby Boomer heroes back to the rest home.

All of this leads to one conclusion:

Batman = stupid

Omygod. Its 9:26 Monday morning and I'm out of junk food.

This is a calamity.

I still have tiny, jellied Twizzler fragments in my teeth, but the two remaining pieces (hardened by Time to the tensile strength of T-rex tendons) simply did not satisfy. As for those fragments: if I lie on my back in the courtyard outside, will little birds hop into my mouth and pick my teeth? More importantly: would such a Spectacle be grounds for my Dismissal? (Thirdly: would I care?) (Oops. Who said that?)

Later: I'll regale you with the Inside Scoop of my weekend trip to Indiana. Here's a teaser:

I left with one extremely funky, hideous piece of headgear (a hopelessly exaggerated Stetson cowboy hat comprised of straw) and returned with TWO, courtesy of my 68 year old Second Cousin John (formerly known as Leroy), who gave me his straw farmer-hat for No Apparent Reason yesterday afternoon.


Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Here's a funny prank I just thought of. I'm sure I'm not the first one to have done so. I intend to try it someday but you try it first, k?

Break into your buddies computer.

In Excel or MS-Word go to the "auto correct" options and at the bottom where it says "replace", type your buddy's name.

Then, in the "replace with" section choose a word that more aptly describes your buddy.

I suggest: Fartface, Jerkoff, Your-Worst-Nightmare or somesuch.

Save the changes.

Make your escape.

Then: when your buddy is typing his/her own name (probably in the salutation part of a letter), your new (more apt) moniker will appear instead.

Fun, no?

For a *really* good time, I suggest you leave your buddy's name alone and type in your buddy's boss's name, replacing it with a more authentic descriptor (e.g. Fartface etc. -- see above for full list)

Then when your buddy is typing an email to his/her boss, the letter will automatically begin with: Boss Fartface, (etc. etc.)

If you like it, try it out.

Report back.

Heard video of the latest beheading victim pleading for his life. Without a doubt, it ranks among the most wrenching, pitiable things I have ever heard. "I don't want to die," the guy kept sobbing over and over.

In the Washington Post Express they showed a picture of the guy's puffy-eyed dad. Again: wrenching.

I don't know his name and don't want to know it. He's gone now, so what's the point?

All the bombings and assassinations, the beheadings, the conspiracies about Jews, the blaming of Americans for the failures of despots and dynasties of the Middle East -- its reaching a crecendo of absurdity that drowns out even the patented rediculousness of the Bush Administration (with its own misplaced priorities, scapegoating, fearmongering, bloodshed, and braggodocio).

I didn't support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I didn't believe it would be an effective check against terrorism. I don't believe the U.S. has conducted itself effectively since the first few successful weeks. I forsee a terrible civil war emerging between the triad of Kurd/Shiite/Sunni in a destabilized power vacuum surrounded by hostile and manipulative neighbors, with mujahedeen (homegrown and foreign) pouring in.

I was almost even at the point of saying America should just throw up its hands, say "we fucked up, sorry" and leave.

But upon hearing that poor Korean guy begging for his life it strikes me that it is irrelevant the irony that Bush's fears of terrorism in Iraq were fulfilled by the very invasion he sent to prevent it. Bush made a mistake but it's not important now. What is important is that Iraq must not be left to defend itself against barbary of the kind we've been seeing lately.

I guess.

Tiny Little Baseballs from Heaven

I'm sure you all recall my rant about "hail inflation" from a few weeks ago, so there is no need to repeat it here.

In case you've forgotten, it has to do with wildly exaggerated accounts (mostly from braggarts in Texas) that "hail the size of baseballs" and "grapefruits" fall occasionally. Such accounts are often picked up by the media and spread, even though the photographic evidence belies this, even though hail the size of baseballs would land about as softly as a billion cannonballs falling from the sky.

If you were present for such a storm you'd have heard expressions from the locals like:

"Ma, the dog's broke open agin'!"

and

"Gosh gee, I cain't never remember seein' a Studabaker that's one inch tall before."

Imagine my surprise this morning when, upon opening up this CNN
article, I read an article and look of a picture about more "baseball" sized hail.

I was surprised, not at the baseball sized-ness of the hail, but at the obvious evidence that something as American as baseball must come a bit smaller in Texas than elsewhere.

Baseball sized hail, indeed.

One wonders if Texans all got smaller balls.

Whiners. (*sniff* "Hail crushed my holster.")

Wusses.

Ah. Bright summer rain. Words cannot describe. I'm going to sit here a minute and ignore you and watch the silverfall.

Ok. Very nice. Back to what I came here for. (You.)

You know how they hold contests to write the best first line of a book? People win $50 for scratching out sentences like:

"Briskly, Ms. Trinkly set the chamomile seeds aside, if only to startle the dreaming cat."

-- and --

"Bugs, ruffians, and scofflaws, there was nothing to recommend Skull Island in those years except for its delicious mead laced with tears of the Nine Waiting Virgins, silent upon the shore (never to regard their sea-sent menfolk again)."

Those contests are cool. I don't think I'd be very good at them. So here's a better contest:

Write the *last* line of a book. The killer. The Big D devastator, like Graham Green setting a 50 amp fuse against your grief and dissolving into shadow before it blows. Like Terry Pratchett leaving your Main Squeeze bungee jumping into another world far far below the tortoise upon which they currently reside. Etc.

A last line that makes the whole book worth it.

such as:

"As you can imagine, I secretly hoped another girl with a shabby name like Rita happened upon me from the fog."

Damn. That would be a good read.

Or this one:

"The only thing the Princess Xarlon could do in her sudden sub-atomic state was float among the debutants and de-ionize their sparkling water ninja-style."

You try it.

Here's the thing, see.

Your ass.

No, I'm not being disgusting. Its just that I have been thinking about your ass lately. And everyone elses.

At least everyone else who shares a public bathroom with me.

Hmm. This post is not off to a good start. Let me start over.

[rewind]

There are 6 stalls in the bathroom I use at work.

Routinely three of the 6 are unusuable due to the presence of any or all of the following things: spilt toilet paper rolls, short dark hairs, and multi-hued fluids of various viscosity left by folks who "missed", etc. You know the scene.

Whenever I find a suitably clean stall in which to accomplish my business, I am struck by a bolt of fear:

*what if the toilet seat is so clean-looking because its been sat on by so many guys in the past 1/2 hour that its been scoured clean."

Its very cleanliness might be a sign that it is *full* of invisible, gut-ripping germs waiting for their moment to crawl into my belly and have a long, happy life-cycle giving me crabs and diahrhea.

What if, in fact, the seat covered by some gorilla-CEO's ass grime is the cleaner of the two?

Absent formal testing, how can I know?

My question is this: is it more hygenic to sit on a toilet that many people have sat on before you (i.e. their asses and crotch bristles have "scrubbed off" the bad stuff) or is it better to take your chances with one that has not been rendered similarly hygenic by this process?

I'm worried. For all of us.

Me: at work in my new, colorful birthday shirt (not to be confused with my birthday suit which, though colorful (and not in a good way), has little place in the modern day workplace. In the old days people used to work in the nude -- cavemen and such. I guess porn stars still do. Ah... Dream jobs, both.

Cave-manning is tough work and you probably go hungry a lot, but the sheer joy of being able to eat without silverware (or to eat silverware, if you prefer) is beyond compare. Also, cave-men get to lounge around sunny swimming holes (a.k.a. "hunting") while their womenfolk collect berries, raise kids, get water, sharpen axes and such. So what if the occasional enraged mammoth must be slewn with a sharp stick or poisoned dart.

Porn-starring is just a damn good gig, too. Yeah, I know its not PC to say so, and overwealming jealousy compells me to knock it by thinking about all the STDs, the emptiness and desperation of casual love, the pressure to perform, the all-night coke parties with slutty starlets. Plus the mere mention of porn sends my uptight liberal feminist friends into apoplexy (and equally offends my uptight conservative friends). But after all the injured feelings have been been factored in, you figure that as a porn star your *worst* day on the job is better than anyone elses best day because, damn, you just got paid to...well...you know...do it. Face it: bad sex is better than photocopying your ass and gorging on flatcake at an annoying obligatory company party (i.e. my idea of a "best day" on the job).

Last night I was berated by my embittered legal counsel who repeatedly advised me to stop heading into a path of beurocracy and middlingness in D.C. when I could be unemployed and bereft of family in go-go California (the self-loving "Bay" that seems so hot when you're there, but vanishes into inconsequentially when you're anywhere else in the country). For me, there is no imbetween: I either content myself to making the best out of what I've got (which is considerable) or I move to a nearby cave and eat with my hands until syrrhosis claims me (my wife would not approve of option #2, the whole me-going-to-the-office-each-morning-to-screw-wanton-damsels thing). Workaday life sucks, true, but its the same suckiness no matter where you choose to shed your dreams.

This discussion naturally led to the fact that I had been neglecting my blog (and therefore his entertainment) lately as a result of having actual work to do, and of being subsumed in the hellishly complex intricacies of house-purchasing.

I resolve to resolve this situation immediately. Might just have done so, I don't know.

Bloggers unite:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040621-650732,00.html?cnn=yes

The post I just wrote was unceremoniously blown away for sheer stupidity and dullness. The gyst of the message went something like this:

My wife and I (think we) are buying a house. It will take a few weeks to determine if the deal will go through or not. We hope it does.

Therefore, I will spend a lot of time on this blog bitching about paint. And drywall. And contractors. And mortgage rates.

And I will therefore be extremely dull.

And if I don't start acting square I'll get fired. Then I'll lose my newfangled house and will be fun again.

And Southern "sweet tea" sucks. In fact, Southern food in general sucks. Never buy a Southern cookbook. I'll give you the only recipie you'll ever need to have to cook Southern-style:

1. Take some really boring food (collard greens, okra or corn mush)

2. Mix it with ungodly amounts of oil. Deep fry it.

3. Brag about it.

There you have it.

That's all I have to say.

The New Deli-Mans Dream

I'm eating a sandwich.
A big, italian thing with 'California' sourdough on it.
Not sure if the Italians ever eat sourdough.
(Not caring much.)

Its fucking yum.

Got pepperoni, ham, fresh basil, mozerella, tomato, broiled and eaten by:

yours truly.

For a moment there, after the first four or five delicious bites, I started regretting that I didn't have anything spicy in the sandwich.

I try to be a good buddhist.

I try not to desire anything, try to be satisfied with everything I'm given (or take, or make, or ignore).

But I suck at it.

Quite badly.

I love spice. Hot stuff. Peppers, horseraddish, hot sauce, chili oil, mustard, etc.

You name it, if its spicy, I'll eat it (except habanero or Dave's Insanity sauce). My tolerance is high, but I have no need to equate it with machismo and prove myself with it. Instead, I sprinkle, splash and toss fiery stuff into/onto pizza, soup, veggies, mashed potatoes, french fries, meat, chicken, rice, etc. etc.

So you'll be surprised to find that the sandwhich I have lately been describing (see above) was actually spicy to me. My tongue burned.

I sorted through the ingredients in my mind, and could not for the life of me discover the source of this burning sensation until...

Until I realized it was the onion.

Yeah, the onion.

Sorry I didn't mention it before. I forgot about it, see?

Just a lowly onion.

Burning my seasoned tongue.

Then I remembered the words a Persian wise man once said to me over meat a match the Orient princes of eld would lose with all their myhrr and franken sense

"In Persian cooking, raw onions are used as spice."

Years have passed and I have often thought of that, for it perplexed me at the time. How could an onion be spicy when a Scotch Bonnet packs 59990 capsaisin on the Scoville metric? How could an onion be spicy when it is battered in crushed grass, fried in crushed corn, and eaten by large women in Oswego (without trepidation, superstition, or accursements at God)? And then I realized the larger truth of the situation:

Onions occupy the coveted Middle.

Sometimes they are hidden in food, as when the Germans steam them to mush and eat them with boiled potatos. Sometimes they set the mouth ablast. Sometimes they impart flavor to sauce, or provide texture, or spice. Onions are the Universal, the Constant, the Mean, they are flamboyantly at the Center, yet hidden in plain brown husks.

And tonight amidst my sandwich -- a Deli-mans dream dripping of ichor and salty fat, tomatos flopping from lost actions against gravity onto diving boards of pure pepperoni (or the Deli-mans New dream, the inevitable rib-eye meateor streaking menacingly toward Earth, heading straight for his watering mouth...))

it became clear,

amid all that spice:

I needed no Buddhists for clarity.

Back in the office.

Yup.

Up at Archives yesterday, digging through old WWII era maps. Strange place names no longer in voguge. "Asiatic Theater", "Siam", "Annam", "Cochin", "French Indochina", "French West Africa".

Fun.

Go to 'Pataphysical Grafitti
and check out a 12 year old rock band picture featuring yours truly (with the guitar), Sex McGinty (far right), Asaf (looks like young Judd Nelson) and Chaleptimos (with the crucified Jesus look).

What a weekend.

Had a great birthday. Folks came over to play board games in what would ordinarily have been a parody of the "Still Wild At 30" party decoration theme. Fortunately, cosmic irony never prepared to address the strangely chaotic free-for-all card game known as "Pit", in which a crowd of full grown adults are frequently reduced to a state of frenzied, high-volume haggling over such choice commodities as flax, corn and rye. And even Bandu, Munchkin and Cranium can be "edgy" given a proper combination of snack food, company, and unsettling vibrations eminating from a cursed Stetson I purchased from a trinket dealer in Tennessee last week. (For an indication of what it looks like, see Bill Madsen's hat
in Kill Bill, except mine's straw.)

Topped it off with an episode or 6 of "The Office" (newly arrived at our house courtesy of my wife), a belly full of red meat from a fancy French restaurant Thursday, Indian food Friday, and an overpriced but scrumptuous Vietnamese cake proffered and eaten (by myself) in my honor, plus beer, wine, crackers, cookies, carrots, stir fry, bacon and eggs, and one lowly water biscuit, and I have truly begun my fourth decade in classic style. Note I did not say "classy" I said "classic". "Classy" involves less gluttony and less fun.

Oh and I got a massage, too. That was pretty nice but, in truth, was a bit, well, lets just say I wasn't quite prepared for what I got at 9:00 Saturday morning. See, I've always been a bit apprehensive about getting a "full body" massage from a stranger. There are two things about it that always caused me unease.

One thing that is strange is that the masseuse might be a man.

Getting a massage from a guy would be kind of wierd. Especially if it was a big hairy guy with ham-breath, whose meaty knuckles dug into my side would probably make me laugh/cry.

I don't have anything against men, per se, but I don't want some guy pawing me for cash. Guys are fine as long as they keep their rodent stink and hamhooks well away from me.

The other thing that is wierd about getting a massage is that it might be given by a woman.

I know that sounds odd and maybe crazy to some, but a massage is a highly intimate physical act. People in other societies are acculturated from birth to ignore such types of non (directly) sexualized stimulus, but we aren't. Or I wasn't. Or something. Point is: with all due respect to my wife, if an even halfway suitable member of the opposite sex so much as *brushes* against me by accident (though her mouth be sloppy with ham-juice, her hair suppurating grubs, with spilt pencil shavings on her blouse and a bearded mole the size of a hot dog protruding from her swollen thyroid) I find it extremely difficult to maintain my ordinarily parallel disposition from going perpendicular. I am subject to ordinary but frequent biological fancies involing everything from large electrical sockets, to small mammals (not really, just kiddin'. Kinda. Its almost that bad.)

And then there's the type of female masseuse who inspires no such feelings but just the opposite. I call such types "my landlord", because that selfsame lady happense to be a "massage therapist". Ever see the nurse Charlotte Diesel from Mel Brook's "High Anxiety"? Well, that's my landlord, bless her lovely, gentle heart, should she be peering into this blog. She is nice but built like a tank, with all of the grace of a combine. She has arms like pneumatic hammers and hair in a frenzied black mushroom upon her scalp. Frankly, I'm glad I'm on good but distant terms with her: she scares me.

Fortunately the masseuse did not resemble my landlord at all. In fact, she was a bombshell -- a muscular, slim, confident african american lady with a hiephenated name on her therapist license. But I wasn't looking! Honest. Not at anything. I had my eyes squeezed tightly shut from the moment I walked in the room till the moment I left. Didn't notice the faint candles glowing in the corners, or the soft shadows they conjured. Didn't notice diffuse light from the faraway ceiling. Or the steaming ceramic jar full of burning white towels she would lay one by one across my naked skin...

I had my nose squeezed shut, too, so I wouldn't smell the faint hint of oranges and lilac in the aromatics, or her hair, or her clothes as she stepped up to the table...

I had to keep my ass flap closed, too, because the lentils I sucked down at dinner the night before had started to exert strange pressures and gurgling cries from the recesses of my loins.

But back to the masseuse with her shoulderless blouse and glistening, muscular arms (which I didn't notice).

The first thing she said to me was:

"Many guys are apprehesnive about their first time."

I said: *gulp* [in squeaky voice] "I guess I fall under that catagory."

"Why would that be?" she purred.

"Um." I said.

"*I* know why," she said, laughing. "Because they think getting a massage is *sexual*"

I almost burst a gut laughing. Or I would have, if I wasn't concentrating so hard on not getting a boner. The feeling of helplessness reminded me of being a kid, which was a good feeling on my 30th birthday.

Instead of laughing I managed a single, nonchalant: "Yeah?"

"Mmm-hmmm," she said, working warm oil into my thigh.

"I guess it takes some getting used to," I managed, as she moved up very near the danger zone of my glutius maximus, which was still clenched like a fist, holding valiently against the lentil's.

"You're tense," she remarked.

(You don't know the half of it, lady.)

She did my arms, and my hands. She kneeded my legs like dough, punched my kidneys, ran her knuckles up the curve of my spine, pressed my temples, stretched my ankles, rubbed my horny feet. A few times she would hit a spot that would either cause me intense (ordinary) agony or intense, ticklish pain. Naturally, any sound or utterance I made at that point (any grunt, accidental flatulence, or sniff) would cause her to "work through" the kink over and over again until white globes of light popped and spattered against the backside of my eyes.

This strange, expensive torture lasted for some 60+ minutes. When it was over, I, leaning against the wall, weak with the effort of attempting to maintain a semblance of self-control and olfactory neutrality, nodded when she asked if I would like a glass of ice water.

"Yes, please," I should have said. "Make it a double. On my head."

This is a very important topic I'm about to discuss, so sit down and prepare yourself properly and think...

Hailstones.

Yes, folks, those ballistic icewads that occasionally crash down on a neighborhood near you. Usually they fall at unusual times, like when its 107 degrees outside and there's only one tiny cloud in the sky.

I'll leave you to conjure an image of your favorite encounter with these stinging skybourne menaces.

Now picture this:

Hailstones the size of tennis balls.

For those of you who live in countries where tennis balls are illegal, let me try to illustrate just how large a tennis ball is. Take your hand and hold it up to your face, make a "C" shape with it. Take your other hand (if you have one) and make a backwards C shape. Join the two before your amazed eyes and behold an "O" shape roughly the size of a tennis ball. (Note: if you are Captain Natty then you are looking at a small melon not a tennis ball).

Now, without separating your hands, pull your tennis-ball shape down as far as it will go and forcibly smash it into your face as hard as you can.

That's partly just for the hell of it, because you probably deserve it, but its also to illustrate how un-satisfying it is to get clobbered by something as large as a tennis ball.

Not fun is it.

Now imagine that instead of two bony hands hitting your face, it is an 8 pound ball of ice hurtling out of the sky from 50,000 feet. A mini-cannonball if you will.

That's the size of hail the news is claiming just fell on Texans and I say (cupping cojoined hands around my bruised mouth, imitating a megaphone, I say: B U L L S H I T)

Ever notice how the news exaggerates the size of hail? Little ice nuggets that sting your tongue are suddenly quarter-sized meteorites. "Golf ball" sized hail falls all over a city but, miraculously, no one gets killed.

Try dumping a hundred thousand planeloads of marbles on a city and see what its like, cuz that's what hail that big would be like.

It is rediculous. First there's oil price inflation. Then there's grade inflation. Then there's waiste-line creep. Now we have to contend with hail inflation, too. Its obscene.

Media is becoming just another lapdog of the precipitation industry.

All I can do is shake my head.

Check out this scoop from a reputable news source (CNN):

Two days before the couple [Laci and Scott Peterson] was to host Christmas dinner, Laci Peterson spent nearly $100 at a Trader Joe's grocery store, buying 24 items, including salmon, eggs, shrimp and soup, according to a store employee.

What kind of news is that? Is there something about that that is supposed to inspire me to care? Should my heartstrings be playing sad music right now?

I concede that if she purchased mangos, avocados, and ice cream well THEN I'd be interested, but salmon? Eggs? SOUP?

Who cares about friggin SOUP. She might as well have bought napkins, too.

(For those of you who don't know, Laci Peterson dissappeared some year or other ago. She washed up a mile or two away from my attorney's place in the north part of San Francisco Bay. I suspect him but everybody else seems to think Laci's husband did it. People are tittilated by the Peterson murder because Laci was pregnant and cute and white. She had a "perfect" life (i.e. yuppie), a "perfect" husband (handsome, employed), and had a beautiful white baby on the way. If she'd been black, toothless and shopping at the ghetto liquor store the day she died, you wouln't have heard a single thing about her.)

This isn't what I'm posting about, today, by the way. I can't possibly waste even a moment of your, er, precious time complaining about the state of the news. Can I?

Tilted at the cube, dreaming of coffee. Too few zzz's for midmorning ease.

Last night stared at the wall till it rolled into a tube. Crawled in to listen to the apartment creak. Barely escaped on a raft of pointy paper boats. Got up, wrote a song called "The Summer of 1925" Back in bed by 1:30. Yanked the clock at 2:00. Slid onto the couch at 3:00. Inexplicably tangled in pullies and gears by 4:00. Up late with the sun at 7:00.

Chewed through a head-sized cup of coffee. Drank a banana.

Sped 95. "Yo La Tango" reminded me of Neil Young, Papas Fritas and Jesus & Mary Chain. Kind of like saying ice cream reminds one of shoehorns, croutons and indestructable pinatats.

In general today: plans afloat, thoughts ascatter. Afterwork meeting Captain Natty downtown to suck bottles. Here's my bar joke for the day:

A guy walks into a.

You like?

Made me laugh.

Not really. My laugh took a number and sat down next to a deep sigh. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.

Right after I read the following CNN headline "Soap Key in Preventing Diahrrhea". What havoc such a device would reap. Prisoners everywhere would rejoice.

Soap key, indeed. Whatever it is.

[We interrupt this post to interrupt this post. Clay Sails will be out of his mind for the rest of the day. If you would like to leave a message, please do so below or press star D.]

Alas, blog, I have too little time for you at the end of the day. Perhaps tomorrow I will squeeze in a few minutes to fill you full of this weekend's wild adventures in the Tennessee mountains, where we found ourselves in a mountaintop airie the likes of which Adolf Hitler (a man famous for owning a magnificent retreat at Berchtesgaden) would be jealous, where we blazed muddy pathways across fragile ecosystems atop smoke-belching ATVs, where we witnessed a surreal convocation of cowboys and christians at the "East Coast World Bull Riding Championship", where my two youngest nephews raised continuous clamoring hue & cry for every manner of goods & services (primarily among them: affection from their uncle, followed shortly thereafter by an unquenchable desire to throw rocks, "ride" a bright red tractor, and eat cookies), and where much food & Spirits were Consumed in the interest of bodily Health.

Perhaps I will get to these things in good time. Until then, however, I have a train to catch and feet to prop up.