Two Dorks that Pass in the Mid-Morning

I was on my way in to work this morning, stuck in rather heavy traffic, when a guy in a Range Rover pulled up alongside me and shouted something. I didn't hear him, because I was being extra-dorky by listening to Sisters of Mercy* at high volume.

I turned down the tunes and looked at him. "I went to Miskatonic University too!" he cried.

Aha! A fellow dork had spotted the dork-signal "Cthulhu Saves" sticker on the back of my Golf! This has only happened once before in the seven years or so that I've had that sticker. And that time, it was an alarmingly hairy and lonely-looking guy at an Orange County Chevron station who attempted to involve me in a conversation that seemed destined to involve twenty-sided dice, fishpeople, and a scene-by-scene deconstruction of Re-Animator.

Impressed, I flashed him a thumbs-up and a smile, and we drove off, each a little dorkier for the experience.

I'd like to add, parenthetically, that these chance drive-by encounters can leave one a little discomfited if one pulls up at the next stoplight immediately next to the person who has just conversed with you. Is the burden now upon you to continue the car-to-car communication, referencing something on the other person's car? Like a Jack-in-the-Box antennahead? "I see you've got a Jack-in-the-Box Antennahead!" you could yell, for instance. Or do you just smile? Do you have to wave? Would rolling up the window seem rude?

These things worry me.


*"This Corrosion", if you must know. There, now you've got an earworm**. Sisters of Mercy are perhaps the dorkiest Goth music available, with their twelve minute remixes for no good reason, and what was with those cop sunglasses? The singer was like the Goth Ponch, for God's sake. Sisters of Mercy are, in this humble non-reviewer's opinion, roughly analagous to KMFDM in dorkiness.
**Typing this word too quickly may result in the tragic if somewhat amusing typo "rearworm"***.
***Rejected title for the porno version of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Things that Are Really Not Very Good At All When Warm

#87: Ranch Dressing

Quick!

1 Go look at pictures of baby sloths!

Blatantly stolen from the pleasing greengabbro.net.

2 The streak may be over. Something stung me this morning while I was jogging. Thirty three years without a bee sting and it all comes crashing to a halt beside a lake in San Bruno. Oh the humanity!

I can't prove it was a bee. It could have been anyone of a small and stingy nature, I guess. Jogging, sadly, is not a sport that features instant replay, so we can't go to the replay booth for a slo-mo review. All we can do is watch my right ear get more swollen as the day goes on.

Big laughs.

Dead Can Dance Post..Now Dead

I just spent twenty minutes writing a post about going to the Dead Can Dance show in Oakland on Thursday, but Blogger barfed and now my post is lost in the aether, much like a diaphonous goth blouse. So, here are the abbreviated highlights.

The show was great, and we agreed that it was a great old person show. The doors opened at 8, and the band was on by 8:20. I'm sure there were lots of upset goths (if that's not redundant) who got there at 9 and essentially missed half the show. They played for two hours, and we were home by eleven. We agreed this was the best of all possible worlds.

Two guys sat behind us and would not shut up. There were beautiful, hymnlike songs, with Lisa Gerrard singing solo. The entire theatre of hundreds of people were utterly silent except these guys who, every song, would crow "Oh man! I can't believe I'm hearing this song! Tears, man! I have tears!"

They would gush about how much they loved every song, making it very clear, very loudly, that their feelings were terribly important.

And "Hey man, after the show! Let's get some beers! And some weed! You can put your bike in my car! And..."

SHUT UP!

I finally had to tell them to be quiet. I know I'm easily annoyed at conerts and movies, but without fail I'm sitting by the loudest people in the theatre, in some horrible karmic punishment. But really, I paid sixty dollars each for these tickets, and I don't want to hear about your feelings or your post-concert plans.

And, I have to say, they were generally quiet after that, and nobly refrained from kicking my chair or wiping boogers on me.

And we were home by eleven! Sad, really.

Essssss... No! Wait! I Mean Arrrrrrr!

Indeed , mateys, 'tis Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Why not mix it up a little this year and try talking like a pirate who is fact a duck disguised as a pirate?

For Your Rodent Pleasure

Something is in the ground at the Kafkaesque homestead.

EXHIBIT A was the mounds of earth multiplying in the back yard. EXHIBIT B was the odd and somewhat disconcerting behavior of the neighborhood cat gang (note: I am not specifically speaking here of Cat Town, which I enjoy linking to whenever possible, because it contains pictures of cats wearing headwear, and that's important for America). What was happening was this: one representative of the neighborhood cat gang (usually a rather dapper little grey and white number) would trespass into our back yard and then sit and stare at the ground for hours at a time. Of course, having lots of first-hand experience with cats laying around and generally not doing anything, we were not too alarmed by this impressive display of inertia. But this cat was alertly staring into the corner of the lawn area (I call it the lawn area, because I think one day I may put a lawn there, and not because there is an actual lawn item there at present. There are rocks, dirt, and weeds, not necessarily in that order.) like a cat version of the Blair Witch Project.

This tipped us off that something was up, ground-wise.

At first I thought we had moles. And moles are great. They wear little plaid vests and charming Victorian eyeglasses. In the morning, they peek their heads out of their little holes, carrying a candle and wearing a jaunty nightcap. They also bring to mind the psychedelic Spiderman foe, The Molemen. Just to be thorough, I should also mention that Molemen are also featured in the not as charming, but you'd have to say interesting, series of Residents albums. Sure, moles still destroy your plants, but they're weird enough that you can almost forgive them.

Then, I described the symptoms to variety of people well versed in the rodent arts, and they assured me what I was facing was a gopher.

Gophers are single-minded about destroying your garden. They don't wear plaid vests or squint in the sun. They don't go for wild rides with Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, or gambol down rivers with their friend the weasel. They have giant fangs and, as if that's not bad enough, as soon as you tell someone you have gophers, chances are pretty good that person will launch into stirring rendition of one of three, or possibly all three, scenes from the movie Caddyshack.

Frightening.

Still, I wasn't that worried about our back yard, since as I have mentioned, it's a barren wasteland suitable only for filming 1950s Mars movies. Then, we spent many back-breaking hours redoing our front garden, freeing it from the shackles of junipers and ugly white rocks, and ushering in a new age of feather grass, Mugo pines, and a particularly nice flowering cherry tree. The mounds started appearing in the front yard soon after, and one day one of our grasses was pulled into the earth, cartoon-like.

Clearly, the time had come for action.

I went to a local nursery and asked for one of those gopher deterrent devices that you bury in your yard. You put batteries in the device, and every 30 seconds or so, it whirrs into life, emitting sonic vibrations that send your gopher nemesis into apoplexy, so determined are they to get away from the shaking menace. Maybe the device plays Guns n Roses too. I don't know. It sure worked for the ATF that time in the Koresh compound.

So I went to the counter and said, in so many words, that I am less than a completely formed man because I want to gently dissuade my rodent squatters, instead of, variously, sucking them out of their warm burrows with a tremendous vaccuum cleaner, driving stakes into their trembling gopherbodies, gassing them, or blowing them up. "I don't want any, you know, trouble," I said to the nursery lady.

After all, I'd hate to get to the afterlife, and find of bunch of pissed off grub-munching vermin are running the show, and none too happy about the whole genocide thing.

So I wanted the humane alternative, the sonic sound wave emitting super-robot machine from the future that would drive my little gopher chums to the very brink of madness and possibly over that brink. Maybe they'd run out into the street and get run over. Hey, not my fault. I didn't gas you, gopher buddy. Or drive a giant stake into your head.

But no, she informed me. They didn't have any happy friendly gopher-driver-insaners at the nursery. "Just," she said with something of a twinkle in her eye, "Poison, gas, traps. You know." I was disheartened, but told her that I would look through the selection of medieval torture devices anyway. Maybe there would be a pleasant and quick death device. Like a gopher version of Soylent Green, where the gophers get to view pastoral scenes and listen to soothing music in their final hours, before being processed into Ritz crackers. On the shelf there were the spike traps, indeed, and poison and gas. But there, in the corner of the display, was the prize...the GopherIt.

The GopherIt is an 18 inch, 4 battery-havin', buzzin', beepin' gopher sanity remover the likes of which I have never seen.

So I grabbed it and strode boldly to the counter and crowed to the woman who had denied the device's existence: "You do! You do have a gopher vibrator!"

And then there was a little pause, during which I thought (as I end up thinking quite a bit) "Maybe I didn't really say that out loud."

But, of course, I did. And I have to say she was unrattled.

It does make me think, though. For one thing, I paid $39.95 for the GopherIt. I don't shop for a lot of vibrators, but I'm guessing you could get a non-name-brand knock-off vibrator for somewhere around $20. Also, if I planted vibrators in the yard, maybe I could grow a vibrator tree and start a lucrative new career as an organic vibrator farmer.

So I've got that going for me.

Sell the Ranch

A great idea for Hurricane relief.

Animal Crackers

I think one of my animal crackers has a goiter. And what is that? My god, is it an udder? A monkey with an udder?

I can only conclude that some hideous experimentation has been taking place. That the jar of animal crackers in the break room has become some sort of nightmarish Island of Dr. Moreau, where beaks grow from the crotches of innocent bison, yawning bubos infest the backs of polar bears, and the number of appendages afforded God's creatures cannot even be reckoned in sensical integers.

If I can but find the tasty scientist-shaped cookie responsible for this genetic manipulation, this hubris-damned tampering in the domain of the lord, I promise vengeance to you, my monstrous, deformed cracker friends. Freedom is at hand!

(I am unused to sugar.)

I Believe That Would Be a Plapple

The best thing I heard at the Farmer's Market this morning was when a young woman cried excitedly to her boyfriend "Honey! Try this. It's a pluot. Half plum and half apple."

I Had the Hairpiece Dream Again

It is the simple questions that can drive one to the very brink of madness. Such a question haunts me in the quietness of the night, when the clacking percussion of the clock's march offers no respite, and sleeplessness is the only spectre haunting the halls of my consciousness:

What kind of world are we living in that T.J. Hooker is available on DVD?

French Pop Day

I declare, in an admittedly unofficial sense, today to be French Pop Day. Please, take to the streets playing Stereolab and Air. Be aloof. Be confused about exactly what you should be wearing or listening to. Try a hat. When people ask you why you are wearing a hat, and perhaps even demand that you remove said hat, especially if you are wearing it indoors, which can be construed as rude in some circles, you must act aggrieved and seethe "Eet ees French Pop Day, mon ami." Or, if you feel more rambunctious "C'est le jour de Pop Francais, imbecile!"

Please, no craziness with the baguettes.

More than Full Disclosure

I'd like to broach kind of a tender subject here.

I don't know anything about women. I know that's shocking to hear, coming from a guy who is not only married, but has an near-encyclopedic familiarity with horror movies and D&D.

This fact was brought home to me the other night, a night like any other. The wifely friend (who I am at pains to mention is a woman, and therefore a person I really don't understand in even the most basic way) and I were on the sofa, watching television. I know it's also kind of shocking that an exciting guy like me was sitting around watching television, but I assure you it was something educational, like Australian Rules Football or America's Funniest Police Shootings. Anyway, this was laundry day.

We have a special trade-off that happens on laundry day: she does the sorting, the pre-soaking, the loading, the washing, the removing of tender and fragile items for line-drying, the painstaking removal of lint from the screen, and the transfer to the dryer. I do the folding*. This is not because I have convinced her that folding the laundry is dangerous in any way, like maybe there is a choking hazard involved in vee neck undershirts, or that she may become disoriented by the nineteen black socks that are in some indiscernible way different from each other, and go running off into the night, screaming. For some unknown reason, she finds folding the clothes tedious and annoying, and won't do it.

So that works out.

I was gamely folding my way through the vast Matterhorn of dingey whites and slowly fading blacks*** when it struck me that I should put some underwear on my head. So I did. Now, I know you do this when you're folding laundry too, so don't try to deny it. Sometimes I'll even mix it up a little and hang one of the wifely friend's bras off my ears. And then I'll sit there, as I was at this particular moment, grinning at my wife, waiting for her to notice that I am doing something that is so desperately hilarious that she'll remember why she is so proud to be married to me, her undie-headed king.

I had selected a pair of the briefs that I recently picked up for jogging. Any of you joggers (I should say male type joggers) can testify that jogging in boxer shorts is not that pleasant.

She looked at me, with my briefs all chapeau-style, and said "Well, they're better than boxers anyway."

I was stunned. The briefs slid from my head, obviously as troubled as I was.

"You mean you like tighty-whiteys?" I asked her.

"Well, yeah."

Now, there was a time when I was all about the tighty-whiteys. Up until I was twenty-three or so, I was a tighty-whitey man. I was gripped, cupped, and supported. My junk was warm and safe, like a little baby bird--no, I mean like a particularly large kookaburra--in the cottony softness my Fruit of the Looms provided.

And then, a girlfriend told me one day, as if this was a self-evident truth, "You should wear boxers."

So, like any sane man would do, I destroyed every last pair of tighty-whiteys. I cleansed with a holy fire. I committed underwear genocide of the highest order. And I bought a whole range of boxer shorts. For about ten years now, I've been all boxers. I'll wear them until the elastic is such a half-remembered whisper that my pants are the only thing keeping them on. I have exotic and exciting patterns, like dachshunds in repose, footballs, and a variety of plaids that would boggle the mind of those of you who are easily boggled.

Boxer shorts are better for admiring your physique in the mirror, too. You feel tough wearing the boxers. Like you should be enjoying a cup of really bad coffee on the porch of a log cabin somewhere, maybe lighting a match on your inner thigh to light your cheroot. You want to be striding through the woods boldly, alive as only a man who has no sort of testicular support of any kind can really be.

And now here was my own wifely friend telling me after what is soon to be five years of marriage that she like the whiteys.

And the question that keeps recurring to me, before I go ahead and rout the forces of boxerdom from my drawers drawer, is this:

I wonder how they'll look on my head?*****







*Everything, that is, except the fitted sheet. No man knows how to fold a fitted sheet. It's like trying to fold a lettuce leaf.**

**I'm sorry but I'm fresh out of logical similes, apparently.

***Incidentally, "dingey whites and slowly fading blacks" was the rejected first title of the timeless anthem Ebony & Ivory. Cooler heads eventually prevailed and added the stark contrast so beloved by the entire world.****

****Though, strangely, hated by Jupiter.

*****Incidentally, my wifely friend just read this and denied that she likes the tighties for anything but purely lecherous reasons. So, never mind.

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.