Four The surface of the blog is crystalline and unmoving. Not a wind or breeze breaks the undisturbed, mirror-like level of the disconcertingly white Blogger template. For over a month the quiet has reigned, icy and deathlike. From behind you, you think you hear a sound. But it is nothing. You eat a cheese puff. And suddenly, without notice, without notifying you in writing two to four weeks beforehand and asking you to please send an RSVP and maybe bring that nice ambrosia you always make, with the colored marshmallows that all the kids like so much, and that was held in evidence once on suspicion of having killed a man, though it was later acquitted when it turned out that the guy was not in the best shape, certainly not in any shape to be eating ambrosia anyway, and maybe had kind of a deathwish when you really think about it, I mean really, suddenly it is !My Life as an American Gladiator's Fourth Birthday Spectacular! Perhaps, I hear you say, kind of snottily if you don't mind my saying so, it's a little less spectacular when Mr. Gladiator Blog Writer Guy hasn't been exactly blazing away on the updates for the last year. Well, OK. You have a point. But, undaunted, I press on, continuing the fine tradition of listing my favorite posts of the year. Since there were only about seven posts all year, this should be cake. So, without further ado, the painfully self-aware favorite posts list for our birthday: Bees in the walls! (incidentally, here is an update on the bees in the walls situation: They came back. I heard from my tenants that they were being bothered by thousands of bees pouring out of the walls. Having experienced that myself, I can tell you that it is a little worrisome. It turned out the little darlings had indeed come back and had built a four foot beehive in the wall. Yay for fun!) Expert-ese The Squeegee Incident 

Updates

I just thought I'd drop by and let you know about some important things that have transpired of late.

a. The Taco of Gold
I was unprepared for the discovery one morning of the Taco of Gold. I was in the midst of my daily commute, not suspecting that the proof of the existence of this legendary comestible was mere yards ahead of me. And then, as I entered the 101 onramp, there it was!

Men had given their lives for but a glimpse of its precious lettuce, cheddar cheese, and lard-cooked beef. It had been the subject of song and legend since time immemorial, and now here before my eyes...a roach coach emblazoned proudly with the words El Taco Del Oro!

I should have been tipped off by the proximity of Cortez, dancing across the slow lane, with his galleons and guns.

b. The Band - Not Really All That Great
There's an amazing record shop called The Record Man in Redwood City. The store is in a guy's house, and the walls are lined, ceiling to floor, with records. I like to go in there and gawk, and pay rather exorbitant prices for Roxy Music and John Cale bootlegs.

A couple of weeks ago, The Record Man had a sidewalk sale, where they put out boxes and boxes of their overstock. I showed up at ten in the morning and spent a few hours rummaging through the piles of vinyl. Records were a dollar each. Double albums two dollars. Box sets, three dollars.

I ended up, it must be said, buying stuff I would normally never have paid more than a dollar for. About twenty albums, including an old Bill Cosby comedy record, an Animals live album, some Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan, that sort of thing. I also went a little crazy and picked up a Band album. Or is it a The Band album? I don't know.

Anyway, I reasoned that I like Bob Dylan, and The Band had played with him quite a bit. I looked at the track listing, and recognized only one song: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. For a buck I figured, what the hell.

My wifely friend was less than pleased with that selection. I would even go so far as to say she mocked me. But I was steadfast. "The Band," I assured her, " Was a very important, you know, band."

She sighed and gave me a look that managed to convey the sentiment that she feared her husband would soon be having his own Lynyrd Skynyrd/Creedence/The Band rockblock, and maybe begin drinking rye.

Well, I waited until I had some "me time", and cued up my The Band album. I struggled through the somewhat twangy harmonies and clearly very emotional ballads. This was not going well. I wanted to achieve some sort of oneness with seventies Americana, but all I was getting was a feeling that I should be driving a Ford pickup, and considering a gun rack.

Then, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down came on". I don't know if it's just me but songs about the glory of the South don't do that much for me. At least I think that's what it was about. But I don't think I ever actually needed to hear it again.

And then I realized with full clarity: I don't like The Band. If you're interested, one very used The Band album. Only 99 cents.

c. Dental and Auto Hyjinx
I had my first dentist visit in many years last week, occasioned by a spectaular molar-breaking incident. I was eating red licorice and somehow chipped one of my molars. I assumed some deviant had put a piece of gravel in my Red Vines, unwilling to admit it was because I had a gaping cavity in the tooth roughly the size of the Moaning Cavern.

So I made an appointment with a dentist recommended by my boss. I had a moment of misgiving about going to the same dentist as the person who writes my performance evaluations.

"Your work is good, but frankly, your teeth give me the creeps. Clean out your desk, Shane MacGowan."

But I needed help to prevent myself from sinking further into dentropy, so I made the appointment. I also had a coolant leak in my VW, so I figured I would kill two birds with one stone and visit my mechanic after the appointment. The dentist is in downtown San Francisco, and the mechanic is over by the ballpark. This seems unrelated, but stay with me.

The dentist, it must be said, was very forgiving, as I confessed the many years that had passed since my last dental genuflection. And then the drilling began. I ended up with three fillings, and the promise that this was but the beginning of a truly impressive series of dental spelunking excursions.

Then, I headed off for my mechanic, my mouth still anesthetized.

I don't know much about cars, but I know this: having your clutch snap at 4pm on 6th and Bryant sucks. That's what happened. I was at that intersection, and when I went to put the car in first, the clutch just snapped, and the pedal sagged to the floor, dead. I began all my tried and true tricks to resuscitate the car. These include swearing a lot, making witch doctor noises, crying out "you're only supposed to have a coolant leak, you stupid car!" and gesturing futilely to the angry woman in the Lexus behind me that I was not going anywhere.

I got out of the car, which was lifeless in the inside lane of three. Heavy traffic zoomed all around me. I knew I had to push the car off to the side of the road, but clearly, no-one was going to stop to let me do that. I looked to the sidewalk, and there just happened to be one of those guys who absolutely live for car-pushing. He was probably forty, and had two younger guys with him. He had a hoodie sweatshirt on and looked kind of like MacGyver. "Hey!" he shouted across the cars. "You need help pushing that?"

Honestly, I think if I had said no, he would have been crushed. Instead, I gratefully said "Yes!" which came out more as "Eeears!" from my novocained mouth.

He and his two friends charged across the oncoming traffic. "You!" he addressed one of the other guys. "You stop these cars. You, get behind the car. Let's do this!"

I think his hair may have rippled in the breeze, even.

I am eternally grateful that they helped me push the car to the right lane. There is no shoulder at all at that intersection, so my poor VW was blocking a lot of people who wanted to get on the freeway. If you happened to be driving that particular way, that was me, sanding a fair distance away from his Golf, in the hopes that the angry masses would not disembowel me for inconveniencing them.

I soon realized that I had wisely forgotten to bring either my AAA card or my cell phone with me, but I found a CHP who called a tow truck for me, and a mere 45 minutes later, one arrived and towed me to my destination for an insane amount of money. My mechanic called me today to let me know he'd be relieving me of another insane amount of money, putting me that much farther from my goal of being wealthy enough to hunt other humans for sport.

But at least my tooth is fixed.

Full Disclosure

I really feel like I should like The Stranglers. Every few years, I get "Always the Sun" stuck in my head, or I suddenly think of "Golden Brown" and can't remember how it goes. So I dredge up a Stranglers Greatest Hits album and play it. And you know what? My Stranglers Greatest Hits album would contain exactly two songs. The rest? Kind of crappy.

update: Actually, "Always the Sun" isn't that great either. "All Roads Lead to Rome"?

The Answer to Any Trivia Question Worth Knowing is "Chuck Norris"

I went to Trader Joe's, as is my wont when I am in need of some substandard cereal and Slovak beer, and a remarkable thing happened: a little Chuck Norris moment.

I took my purchases to the register, and got carded for my exciting Slovak beer purchase. The clerk looked at my driver's license, and immediately got a far off look in his eye. I thought maybe he was impressed at my youthful appearance, or perhaps the organ donor sticker made him covetous of my spleen or liver, which, it must be said, are also quite suprisingly youthful. But no!

My driver's license still has my old address from southern California, you see. This prompted the following inspirational Chuck Norris moment:

"I have a trivia question for you." the clerk said, somewhat conspiratorially.

"Um," I said.

"What...martial artist...lives in your town?"

I wracked my brain. Sure, I knew my southern California abode was a hotbed of Tae Kwan Do, Jujitsu, Judo, really all forms of martial arts. But who could it be? Jet Li, who lives down by the Circle K? Jackie Chan? The shy and private Jeff Speakman perhaps?

"I have no idea."

"Star of Fists of Fury?"

"Nope."

"Played a Texas lawman on TV?"

"Ah! Chuck Norris!"

"Yes, yes," said the clerk, with a tone usually reserved or speaking to the very dim. "I've just finished his autobiography, you know."

I began to worry. The transaction was over, and this guy was sill talking to me.

"He's had quite a life, Mr. Norris."

"Oh. Yes?"

"Yes. One day they should make a movie of his life. It hasn't all been good, but Mr. Norris is the first to say that in his book."

I wanted to tell him that I would be the one. I would take it upon myself, make it my life's work, to film the almost Messiah-like story of Mr. Norris's life, how he rose from the ranks of a disturbingly hairy Bruce Lee foe to star in a syndicated television program loved by the elderly this country over.

Instead, with a tear in my eye, I collected my Slovak beer and eight-pound bag of frozen prawns and wandered out of the store, my life forever changed.

And I Didn't Even Get to Do That

About an hour and a half into clearing our front garden of the ten foot by ten foot pile of rocks, shovelful by shovelful, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, it hit me:

This is the same thing I'd be doing if I killed a guy in Mississppi in the late sixties.

The Grocery Store
A Play in Two Acts

Act I
Doth thy carte offend thee?

I just returned from the grocery store, which for brevity I shall simply call The Really Overpriced Grocery Store That's On The Way Home. On the way inside, I stopped to grab a cart (because I'm a thinker, see?), when something strange caught my eye.

This store has a dispenser of sanitary cart handle wipes.

Ha! I thought. These pathetic snobs can't even touch a shoppping cart that someone before them has handled? What kind of hyper-sensitive society are we living in, anyway? I mean, sure, the last shopper may have had some fingernail fungus or other similar fingernail life-forms going on, but is it really necessary to sanitize the cart handle?

What's the worst that could be breeding on there? Well. Hepatitis C, maybe?

I looked around the store entrance furtively. These shoppers looked clean, but who can really tell? They might be infested with sores, or maybe the scurvy. Honestly, there's some class-A whack-jobs out here. It's like a damn Fellini film.

I grabbed a wipe and wiped that cart for all it was worth. I didn't stop at the handle, either. I sanitized the crap out of that cart, even lubing up the little squeaky cart-tires for good measure. The pina-colada cart-freshener I threw in at no extra charge.

Intermission —Snacks and frozen treats in the lobby
A complex man!

Why is it that the idea of Domino's Cheeseburger pizza fills me with revulsion and cynicism for the future of mankind, and yet I love with a deep and abiding passion the tiny grill-marked burgers of Chunky Sirloin Burger Soup?

Act II
The Manne of Meate Is Surlye

It's my turn. Yes, it's my turn. I know there's an old lady here, but I was here before her. I'm not making some sort of judgment call that I am better then her, although it is important to note that she will probably not be around as long as I will and shouldn't really be eating meat at her advanced age anyway. It's not like I'm taking her seat on the bus. I was here a good 70-80 seconds before she was.

So, the red snapper, please.

Thank you.

But wait, there is more meat that I want from you. Please, do not look at me exasperatedly, as if you had far better things you could be doing. You're either getting me two one-pound packages of ground turkey —the dark meat if you please (I care about my health but only in a token sort of way)— or you're going to be slinging meat for someone else. Maybe breaking a crab's knees with that silver hammer thing, which I will grant you looks kind of fun. The choice here is not "get Kaf his meat or gaily skip through a field barefoot". Okay?

Did you just roll your eyes at me?

Look, I told you I wanted the Rocky Junior chicken. Not Rocky Senior! I don't know what the difference is, either, but I'm already coughing up some serious dough for this chicken because someone thoughtfully slapped a Free Range sticker on it, so I think I should get the choice. Frankly, I'm reluctant to eat a Senior range chicken with this elderly woman standing next to me and eyeing me as if to say "Why, why must you order so much meat, young man?"

Yes, that's all. Thank you for being so surly, Meat Man. You really made my day.

exeunt all

Cingularly Unfunctional

You know what? I'm getting a great deal on my nationwide calling plan! For the ten minutes of each day that my phone actually has a connection, it's great!

But I must say that I'm paying a mere 60 dollars a month for two phones! 60 dollars! That's such a great deal that I don't mind the fact that the phone works neither at my office nor my home. And it has a really cute picture of a smiling panda on the display. And that's worth thirty dollars a month right there. I'm not sure why it has a panda, or how to get rid of it, but I must say that Cingular Wireless gave me a really great deal on this phone.

Nine dollars I paid for this phone! Can you believe it? This phone, that doesn't seem to have a volume control, is awkward, unwieldy, and uncomfortable to use, and whose battery leaps from its protective sheath like a lemming from a cliff every time the phone is more than softly placed on a pile of papers. It is very, very good at holding down papers, by the way, as it displays the comforting message "Network Search" for 23 out of the day's 24 hours.

In fact, this wonderful phone that I am paying only 60 dollars a month for only functions while I am driving to and from work. As we all know, that is the best and safest time for any important and potentially distracting conversations that will take your mind off less pleasant things like, I don't know, brake lights.

I hate talking on the phone while I'm driving. I have enough trouble avoiding the fleet of white minivans going sixty in the fast lane and Johnny Acura Integra going eight thousand miles an hour in the slow lane without worrying about the phone. In fact, I don't even like having a cellphone. I don't want to be reachable, and I also don't want to have to worry about my cellphone popularity.

Everyone else seems to be talking on their phone all the time. They must know a lot of people. And those people must be really interested in everything the phone people are doing. I only got my cellphone so I could call my wife, or she could call me. In case there's some sort of invasion and we can't be near each other. Then we can call each other and spend those last few hours crying into the phone, waiting for our painful deaths.

But, of course, all I really use the phone for is this sort of thing:

"Honey? It's me. What kind of pickles do we buy again?"

So, in the interest of furthering the pickle discourse and to avoid the potentially disastrous mis-purchase of any and all condiments, I called Cingular Wireless. If you've never called them, I highly recommend it. The best thing about calling them is that you have to navigate through a button pressing menu so esoteric and torturously labyrinthine that you have to trick them into talking to you. The only way I managed to get an actual sentient (and I use the term in its broadest sense) human on the line was to press the button for "report a lost or stolen phone". I mentioned this to the being on the other end of the line, complimenting him on his company's dedication to customer service and he said "Oh. Yeah. You have to do that."

"Well, I was wondering if there's a reason I don't get any reception at work, or at home, unless I am in one particular area of the kitchen, hanging out the window where my soft flesh is exposed to nature and may, in all likelihood, be nibbled by ambitious raccoons."

"Where do you live?" he asked speculatively, and I told him.

"Oh. That's a really bad coverage area. Have you tried climbing on the roof, or holding a lightning rod in your teeth?"

Encouraged, I asked him if their merger with AT&T would help my reception in any way.

I think he may have giggled at that. "I, um, I don't think so. Have you considered moving?"

"It hadn't, honestly, occurred to me."

"Well, you do have the panda, right?"

I had to agree that the panda really made it all OK. I should really be glad they aren't charging me more for that little scamp.

"Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

No, Cingular, I guess not.

What?

What's that? Am I still here?

Yes, I'm still here. I was not here for a while. I was even in Hawaii for a while there. But now, resolutely and steadfastly, I am here.

And what knowledge do I bring you from Hawaii? Not much, really. But I brought you chocolate covered macadamia nuts. Everyone brings chocolate covered macadamia nuts. I think you can probably buy them here. But in Hawaii, or in Maui anyway, which is where I was for a while of the while I was not here, they sure have a lot of them. The nuts. With the chocolate. It's a little known fact that you are legally required to buy at least three (3) boxes during your stay on the islands. If you don't, then you anger The God of The Volcano. And then there's trouble.

The God of The Volcano has some sort of royalty deal going with Hawaiian Host, maybe.

Where did we go, exactly? To Hana, which is the best place you can go, if you are going. It's only accessible by driving a menacingly small road that clings to the edge of cliffs and features locals driving very fast over one-lane bridges. But it's nice and mellow and relatively untouristy, after the day-tripper types have returned to Lahaina for the evening. There is only one hotel in town, the Hana-Maui, which is crazy, crazy expensive, so we didn't stay there. We did, however, partake of their extremely good Mai Tais and Pina Coladas. Highly recommended.

As is the Heavenly Hana Inn, a Japanese style bed and breakfast where we spent a couple of nights.

We also stayed in a treehouse for a couple of nights, which was slightly less deluxe and more oh-man-I'm-in-the-middle-of-rainforest. It had exciting features like giant spiders and mosquito netting with holes in it over the bed. The giant spiders didn't seem to be doing that great of a job of combatting the eight million mosquitos, but they assured me they were trying their best. The treehouse also featured an outdoor toilet and shower which made us feel very adventurous and tough, so that was nice. The tree that the treehouse was built in was a guava tree so we'd be sleeping fitfully, dreaming of ungodly predators nibbling our soft underbellies, when we'd be woken by a giant crash as a guava, filled with ennui, finally leapt to its death on the jungle floor below.

All in all, a good trip.



I promise to be slightly less silent in the coming months.

By the way, if anyone has emailed me in the last, say, three months, at the nachtopus.net address, I won't have gotten it. Address any concerns or frippery to kafkascampi AT gmail DOT com. See how I did that there, with the capital letters and all? Smart like a whip.

No Longer at Large

Dave Allen passed away last night at age 68. I grew up watching his very old-school one-man show "Dave Allen at Large" late at night on PBS. When my parents would let me stay up late enough, that is.

Good night, thank you, and may your God go with you.

Some collected Dave Allen quotes

Music to Start a Cult To

You should be downloading Gram Rabbit mp3s.

Cool, kooky, hypnotic music from a little Joshua Tree band.

Also, bunny ears.

Physical Fits

Once again, we have begun to plunge healthward in the Kafkaesque household. Roughly every other day, we wake up at five thirty in the morning (or even earlier, depending on who we are trying to impress with the story) and go for a half-hour jog.

And we are not even being chased by bears or anything.

I've discovered something fantastic about jogging, and I think it's probably why most joggers jog: you can complain about it whenever you want. And any time is the right time to complain about jogging, I assure you. Any lull in the conversation is ideal to issue a low groan and say pathetically (yet impressively) "Ohhh. I woke up at five-thirty this morning to go jogging." [obviously, you may embellish with any time up to 3 am. Earlier than three may stretch plausibility.]

On the days we don't go jogging, I do exercises in the morning. These exercises consist entirely of pushups and crunches, ensuring a minimum of actual results. I call them "crunches" because it sounds really important and rough and tumble. "Situps" doesn't sound anywhere near impressive enough.

I do fifty of each in our guest room, choosing to perform the mighty crunches with my toes hooked under one of our Ikea Billy bookcases with really heavy glass doors. A couple of factors make this placement enjoyable:

1. Each time I struggle to a near-sitting position, I am eye-level with the philosophy and religion shelf, so my thought process is kind of like this: "Aaaaaaagh - oh, the Baghavad Gita As It Is - Aaaaaaagh - I should really finish Violence and the Sacred - Aaaaaaagh - I bet Joseph Campbell can't do fifty crunches - Aaaaaaagh - If he were alive I mean - Aaaaaaagh!" and so on.

2. Every crunch exerts a little more upward force on the heavy bookshelf, and makes me wonder if I correctly installed the little safety strap to the wall. By about crunch #43, I secretly wish for the sweet release of death, crushed under a weighty pile of New German Cinema texts and travel guides for places we haven't been yet.

All of this madcap exercising is occasioned by our desire to be slightly less flabby when we go to Maui next month. I feel confident I won't be much less flabby but at least, when I am gazing at the sunrise from Haleakala, I can groan and say "Ohhhh man. I was up at three am jogging," and put all the other tourists to shame.

The Squeegee Incident

This weekend we drove down to Orange County for reasons which I assure you were perfectly valid, and I just wanted to share a small magical moment that occurred in a 76 gas station in the town of Grapevine: an elderly gentleman cringed before me.

Now I should begin by saying that I am not a particularly threatening looking kind of guy. Goofy and somewhat slow-witted, yes. Threatening, no.

While I was gassing up the car, I looked for a squeegee to shift some of the truly impressive weight of bug parts from my windshield. In the fine tradition of Interstate 5 gas stations, there was but one squeegee to be had, and it was not at my pump. So I grabbed the squeegee from the next row of pumps.

As I toted my squeegee carwards, an elderly gentleman and his wife pulled in to that row of pumps. I washed my windshield. Then, when the tank was full, I glanced over at the elderly guy, who was looking futilely for the squeegee.

Being the helpful sort that I am, I walked towards him, holding out the squeegee for him to use.

Now I don't know what this guy thought I was going to do with the squeegee, but he flinched and took a couple of steps back. In his mind, perhaps, he saw me standing over him, raining sanitary blows upon him, as his blood slowly mixed with Windex, running off into the drain. Perhaps he thought I would restrain him and squeegee his glasses against his will. I don't know.

Anyway, in the end I just kicked him in the shins and took his wallet, so he wouldn't feel he cringed for nothing.

That's all I have to say about that. I would like to close by saying "squeegee" a few more times.

Squeegee squeegee squeegee






squeegee

Things Have Happened

So many dramatic things. I now have an actual job where I have to do actual work. And actually commute. So as a result I've been a little busy.

Gone are the halcyon days of Purgatory Inc, where I labored for so many years. I know I will always miss the excitement of working with people who sold Avon on the side and had Tupperware parties. And will I ever see Captain Porno again?

Maybe not.

Or the guy who liked to shove a handkerchief way, way into his nose while he was talking to you? So deep that you wondered if it would result in an exit wound? That guy? Ah well, things move on.

We've moved away from Orange County and are now up here on the San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula. It's coming home in a way, since the wifely friend and I are both from the Bay Area. Actually, we're from the South Bay, which looks a lot like Orange County these days anyway, but has maybe three less Jamba Juices per square mile. Now we live on a hill by the airport, and are surrounded by varying degrees of weirdness.

Some happy weirdness I can report is that we live a few blocks away from a Samurai. No, really.

Every time we drive to the grocery store, we pass a house whose front yard is just immaculate. Every last little blade of grass is clipped, just so. The house itself is painted a soothing grey, the trim just setting off the main color of the house. And there is nothing in this yard besides grass and a couple of perfectly shaped hedges.

I have a particular liking for complete absence of clutter, so I feel good every time I see this house. It stands out all the more in our neighborhood of relative weirdness, where some houses seem to be vomiting stuff like old sofas and small dogs into the street via their porches or garage doors. The house has a neat and tidy, very Japanese look about it, so pleasing and austere.

Then, one day recently, we were on the way to the grocery store, and we saw a Samurai on the corner, right by the house. He was sort of a middle-aged, balding, portly Samurai, smoking a cigarette, but other than that, he sure looked the part. He had a kimono on, and sported the requisite ponytail so popular in Kurosawa movies. I could almost picture him with a little flag on his back, sweeping down the plain to meet his almost certain death on the color-coded battlefield.

I wondered if this was what happened to Ronin when they don't commit seppuku. They come hang out on the peninsula, smoking cigarettes and looking down the hill to see if the neighbors' garage sale has anything they might be interested in, like maybe a breadmaker.

The wifely friend and I looked at each other in awe.

"He must live in that perfect house!" I said.

"Yeah," said the wifely friend "Or the house with tinfoil all over the windows."

Maybe it's better not to know.

Decorations of Doom

In years past, I was your average Christmas decoration kind of guy. I had a few strands of your garden variety yellow, red, blue, green lights with which humans have adorned their houses since man first began walking erect. Some of my lights looked a little the worse for wear, with the color beginning to scrape off in spots. I'd string them on the eaves of my house and revel in their somewhat kitschy charm. I employed a philosophy of elegant restraint.

I eschewed the blinking bulbs. I spurned the fad of those "icicle" lights which look really terrible when the sun is out.

Then, I moved to the community in which I now reside, and I was faced with some rather serious pressure in the Christmas-decoration arena. My neighbors have mechanical reindeer. There are Nativity scenes being acted out by plastic penguins. They have inflatable Santas and neon presents. Giant candy canes. The whole place looks like a seedy car lot.

That's when I decided to take the law into my own hands and vanquish this tawdry assemblage of cheer.

My robotic death-elves are, as we speak, massing in my yard, and will soon sweep over the yards and chimneys of San Bruno, bringing tears and valuable lessons to the Lowe's shoppers of the community. Lasers. There will be lasers.

Merry Christmas, and I will be on hiatus for a while.

Christmas Carding

I am in charge of the majority of the Christmas card duties here at Team Kafka HQ. I know you may not call them Christmas cards. You may call them Holiday cards, or Solstice Missives or Death of Nature Fliers. I don't know. Anyway, some thoughts:

- The decay of enthusiasm
I always start out the Christmas cards with a great attitude. I compile the list of worthy recipients and go somewhere like Cost Plus and pick out the right cards for the wifely friend and I. We need cards that will adequately express our caring and artful sensibilities, and inspire the recipient to new levels of gratitude and potential guilt, if they haven't remembered us this year.

It's important to have a card that stands out, too, so you can act wounded if you visit the recipient's home and see that your card is in the B-team display, over behind one of the potted plants.

I start out with our overseas cards, and I'm writing letters in each card. I'm telling relatives things they probably don't need or want to know about trivial details of our personal lives. About our cat. About the newts I find in our back yard from time to time.

But inevitably, after this outpouring of card-filling, I am spent. The domestic cards cannot help but suffer, and end up getting only terse little Merry Christmas!es. After writing fifty Merry Christmas!es and Hope to see you soon!s I end up speaking that way for days.

"Going to store! Hope lunch good! Have run over pedestrian! Have malaria!"

- The baby card
Lately people we know have been reproducing at an alarming rate, so we've been getting those "here's a picture of us with the babies pretending we're not really annoyed and tired every single moment" cards. That is, of course, just fine. They're actually handy, in that I can't tell the difference between the gaggle of babies that are being produced, so the cards function as little flashcards, preventing awkwardness at social gatherings.

"Hello friends who have reproduced!"
"Hello, Kaf! Here is our baby!"
"Ah yes! Your baby! Whose name is...umm...give me a minute here"

And then I quickly rifle through my stack of baby-cards until I find the right one, and I am the champion of baby-name-remembering. It's small things like this that ensure a place in people's wills.

- The love question
I have a hard time saying I love you. Not to the wifely friend of course. I say that to her all the time, especially if I suspect she has become peeved with me in some small way.

I have a problem with the Christmas card love. I mean, do I put "love, kaf and wifely friend" on every card? I mean I like my friends plenty, but love may frankly be a little strong. I don't want to feel like I'm subjecting people to some sort of emotional blackmail with my signature. I don't want anyone thinking I'm going to want to spend the weekend at a hippie drum circle retreat with them or anything.

Maybe I should try Sociopathologically Yours?

Fishing 101

Every year, I forget to buy a fishing license until about September. Then, all of a sudden, I feel a deep and abiding inner need to sit by a lake not catching any fish, so I spring into action. I race to the nearest sporting goods store, drop 40 dollars on a license, and buy a variety of shiny, smelly or otherwise disturbing items that will help ensure the safety of the fish in my chosen body of water.

It's not as though I've never caught a fish. I should make that clear. There was even a time my friend Chimichanga and I went pier-fishing and caught 30 or so mackerel. That doesn't really count, though. Those fish were suicidal. We would drop a baited hook into the drink, and they would be falling all over for the chance to get killed. What really transpired was that we happened to be right in the middle of a passing school. This was evident when every single other fisherman descended on our location when they spied us bringing up four mackerel at once. In the ensuing frenzy of hooks, reminiscent of a cross between Bassmasters and Hellraiser, five men lost eyes.

So I have in fact caught fish in the past. But usually, I sit there by the side of a lake, contemplating the fact that I got 3 hours of sleep and have consumed too much coffee, and do a really inspiring job of not catching any fish. This time, I decided things would be different. My friends set up a trip to the delta ("the delta" in case you are wondering, is the Sacramento River delta) to not catch some impressive prey: Striped Bass or "stripers". Clearly this is the big time. This is the fish to not catch, if you want to not catch a really impressive fish.

Stripers of thirty pounds or more are caught every season in the delta. I have been told that, at least. On our fishing trip, only one of the six of us who went actually caught a fish, and I have no photographic evidence that even happened. Routinely, in the days leading up to a fishing trip, my friends and I will banter back and forth, firing email salvos proclaiming our illusory fishing prowess.

"Thirty pound striper, huh? I guess that'd be ok."

"Maybe I'll go for sturgeon."

"I am planning on catching an eight foot striped bass and riding him like a dolphin around the delta, waving at you poor saps on the shore."

In reality, I'd be at a loss what to do if I ever reeled a thirty pound striper in. I am confident this will never happen, though.

As I said, I assembled a truly astonishing array of lures for this trip. I had shads. I had Rebel Runners. I had Spinners With Vibrax Action, Rapalas, Hula Poppers, ridiculously large spoon lures, even a tiny rubber diplodocus I picked up in case anything Paleozoic was lurking in the deeps. I should mention that I stopped short of buying a bait that advertised "sex scent". Frankly, I don't want to encourage that sort of thing and wouldn't want to not catch the kind of fish that would respond to such perversion.

We made it out to the delta pretty early in the morning. Early for me, anyway: around seven o'clock. (Of course no matter what time you start fishing, it will be marginally "too late". After the first forty-five minutes or so with no-one so much as tugging your Spinner with Vibrax Action, you will probably get the idea that you should have been there at 5 am. Realistically, if you had gotten there at 5am, you'd just be colder and grumpier, but it is nice to comfort yourself with this sort of self-loathing.)

To summarize the results of the trip, I managed to not catch some really frighteningly large fish. Not that they were ever on my line, you understand. My fishing tactics included casting out a fair distance, and then reeling in my lure with the nagging feeling that I should probably switch to something else. Something more expensive. Then, about ten yards from shore, the lure would get caught on some hazard beneath the surface. Rocks, weeds, logs, dumped bodies. I don't know what. Then I would spend the next five minutes tugging pathetically at the line, trying to free it.

I managed to lose about five lures that day.

The most spectacular lure loss of the day came as we were getting ready to leave. I had decided that what I really needed to do was make a leap of faith. So I reached into my tackle box and pulled out a lure I'd had sitting in there for a good ten years: The Krokodile. The Krokodile is a ridiculously large lure that is advertised as good for stripers. I don't know why I bought the lure in the first place, but it's been with me so long, it's like an old friend. I'd be fishing at some lake, not catching some small trout or blue gill, and I'd see the Krokodile there in the box, and be reminded that one day I'd go for the big game.

I joked to my friend Bindlestick Billy as I tied the lure on my line that I'd probably cast it out and instantly get it snagged.

So, I don't have my Krokodile anymore.

Oh well, maybe I should have used the Sex Scent.



epilogue: The day was not a complete loss, as we stopped at Foster's Big Horn on the way home. Foster's Big Horn has a huge collection of slowly decaying game heads on the walls. The sight of a mounted Dik-Dik really makes you hungry for a patty melt was apparently the owner's business philosophy. So, we may not have caught fish, but we sure ate lunch in a place that had dead animals all over the walls. That's showing those stripers.

Mess Update

Yes, I deleted the links. But they will be back again one day, kind of like Frosty the Snowman. What the hell was the idea there? Look, kids, snowmen melt. It's unrealistic to expect them to stick around forever, and no way can they procreate. I know that's harsh, but I'm all about the tough love.

Anyway, the links will one day return, so don't despair.

Also, I got a kind of bad haircut today, which was made worse by an old guy sitting next to me while we were waiting, who was watching a Viking movie with Lloyd Bridges and Anthony Quinn on the teevee. Now, normally, I am all in favor of weirdness, especially technicolor weirdness that features flabby actors covered in fake tan, but this guy had THE VOLUME TURNED WAY UP! Way, way up. And the guy gave me this look when I walked in that said either "You got a problem with my incredibly loud Viking movie?!" or "You cannot possibly appreciate the subtleties of this film and I will not deign to educate you." Either way, not good, old guy.

Also also, I stopped by the Golden Gate National Cemetery to take some pictures today and had an internal fight with myself about whether I was trying to Make a Statement by taking pictures of a military cemetery. I am not sure who won.

God Bless This Mess

As you can see, the sixth seal has been broken. The lion is laying down with the lamb, the guinea pig is consorting with the hermit crab unabashedly, and I have changed the layout of this site. My efforts so far involve randomly deleting things and seeing what happens, so you'll just have to bear with me. This may lead to an extremely minimalist look. So minimalist, in fact, that this site may just disappear. Wink out like Roy Batty turning four.

If so, tell my wife I love her very much.

World AIDS Day

What Part Is This Again?

This is the part where I get all contrite about the not-posting-to-the-blog for days and days. Please. I am on my knees here. I beg and beseech. Sometimes at the same time. Let's not pretend this isn't going to happen again. Because we know that it will. Weeks will go by with no sign of me, and then suddenly, here I am again, back in your life and expecting a nutritious, though not too filling, breakfast.

Well, the hell with me.

This time, you should break it off. Tell me that you can't handle this sort of neglect anymore. You should get on your 1982 Puch moped and putt your butt right on out of here. You will have to ask me for a push though.

And that's all it will take.

I will gaze into your eyes and promise you I will never again leave you gazing at the back door as I travel the country, following my dream of eating pie in all of the contiguous states. And Guam. And you will take me back, like you always do, thinking that this time, just maybe, it'll be different.

It's all lies, baby. Lies.