PIZZA!
I got a nice surprise yesterday. I grumpily got up to check my email expecting the usual (nuttin' honey) and there was an invite to lunch from a lady friend. I'm not sure what word or phrase to use there, the relationship has been a bit ambiguous from the beginning. "Just friends" of course, but she is a girl. She ordered for us. Last time I was late getting there and time was short so I told her she could have ordered for me. "You always do..." which is pretty much true, so this time she went straight for it. This is a hasty diagram of the pizza. Green peppers, shrooms, and tomatoes I think it was. She ordered a medium (enough for a small family) so I have several slices in my fridge. Delicious snack last night. Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing her.

Toons
There's some cartoons on broadcast TV that I like. Teen Titans, The Batman, and Xiaolin Showdown are good animation-wise. Pokémon used to be completely mysterious to me, but now I get it, at least as far as an American adult probably can (I'm sort of like an adult - I'm old enough anyway). The animation isn't that great, but there is a bizarre sort of charm to the whole thing. Pokémon and Xiaolin Showdown both create a universe that is focused on a fanciful convention (the Pokémon creatures or the Shen Gong Wu), and that's all anyone cares about. Also, the villians are like other kids who just cause trouble, and sometimes they even team up with the good guys and they all play together for a while. It's a long way from Wally Gator, I can tell you. (OK, I know what you're thinking -- sheesh, get a life dude!) I will. Next commercial, I promise.

Also Sprach David Byrne
From REI MOMO:

We wanna live in a dirty old town -

building it up, tearing us down.
With our head in the clouds,

and our feet on the ground.
We wanna live - dirty old town

****
Don't work for the city, I don't work for the state.
It's none of your business - I'm doin' all right.
Marching through the wilderness. Crying out for tenderness.
They call me Mr. Pitiful, but everything is wonderful!
I'm workin' real steady, I'm workin' real hard.
I'm building a monster in my backyard...

So there.

Which Describes How You're Feeling All The Time
I felt like a gargoyle all weekend, gazing wistfully at the world through eyes of stone. Out of sync, out of step, out of bounds, out of it, I dunno. I feel fine now, and once again publicly talking to myself on a blog. On Saturday I read a book about the life of the amazing German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). It always gets me that all of these top-notch artistic geniuses were hanging around at the same time -- Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, even Hieronymus Bosch and Titian. It was as though the cosmos spewed all of that incredible artistry right around 1500. The bottom line for me though: if anyone knows how to talk to a gargoyle, it's Dürer.

Offsprings
I got something cool in the mail this week. It was from Pete, who's wife is with child. He put together a CD with a collection of songs having to do with the subject of babies for the sake of the little tike. We used to be in a weirdo band or two together, and he asked me to record "Born In Time" by Bob Dylan on the guitar so that he could sing over it. It came out pretty well, and I felt really honored to be on the project along with some other musically inclined friends of his. I also happen to have been writing a story about a baby over the last couple of days. See how it all fits? Do ya, huh, well do ya?

Small World
So yesterday I decide to go to the Gin Mill and have a beer and scratch out story ideas. While I was in there Larry showed up and we shot the breeze a bit. Then he said that Donnis should be showing up. "I know Donnis..." I said. See, the funny thing is that I've known both of these folks for a couple of years, but I didn't know they knew each other. I had airbrushed this mailbox for her (pictured - a gift for her folks). We had talked a lot here and there, and I would tell her about my adventures, including taking care of some trucker's dog while he was on the road. That was Larry I was talking about. Long story short, it turns out they're good friends, but we didn't realize we all knew each other, so it was funny when we put it all together. They've both been independently threatening to take me to play golf (I'm not a golfer). My fate is probably sealed now though (you'll want to play through, I reckon).

Faces
I like to make doodles of faces when I want to avoid work. Here are a couple of examples. I just did the one of the kid yesterday afternoon. I'm writing stories in order to keep Food Product on the table, and I wanted to give my brain a break. Drawing programs (in this case Freehand) are great for that. The other is from one of my sketchbooks. On the computer I usually start with a pair of eyes and let it go from there. With a pen or pencil it's usually the shadow of the nose, and then I like to see what character emerges. That's why there are all of these weird faces on this blog.

Language People, Language!
Does everyone's family mangle the English language? Mine does. One of my dad's favorite words was "equitisity." I'm not sure that's how it's spelled, because the word doesn't exist. Every time he wanted to sound high-brow he would throw out that word. I was never able to determine if he knew it wasn't a real word or not. My mom still comes up with some good ones. She once referred to the famous critics as "Sizzle and Eggbert", a pun worthy of Mad Magazine in my opinion. She also had a tough time with Regis Philbin. She was able to combine the four syllables in any configuration except the right one (Philbis Regin, for example). She also mentioned "James Earl Jones, the guy who shot Martin Luther." I fondly remember one from my sister, describing a toucan, "You know, the Fruit of the Loop bird."

Type-O
Here's something you can type into your computer -- the honorable Sumo. I came up with this a while back, experimenting with the keyboard. I used to do lettering by hand, using rapidographs, ellipse templates and french curves. It was critical that the shapes of the letters be exactly right, and the work was very detailed and precise. Now there's no reason to letter anything by hand, not with one of these new-fangled computers. It's just as well, I can't see as well as I used to. I often have to use those stupid drugstore reading glasses anyway. I also have a pair of regular prescription glasses that don't help me see anything anymore. They do serve to make me look like Harry S Truman or someone, or that's what I think when I catch my reflection someplace. Life goes on.

Food Product
To celebrate my stunning financial successes as of late, I began to do as much shopping as possible at the Dollar store. Everything for a dollar, can't beat that. It's great for everyday items; toilet paper, dental floss, even the coffee is OK (it tastes just a bit weird, but drinkable). They even sell food, as long as it doesn't need refrigeration. I was delighted to find edibles in there, and stocked up on a few things. I found that there is a very malleable substance available in a variety of configurations. One assumes that it is meat, but it actually bills itself as "FOOD PRODUCT" which I suppose means that it won't kill you if you put it in your pie-hole. Otherwise the makers are free to mold it into little weenie shapes or squish it into a block or grind some up and put it in little cans, but it's all the same thing (I think). Sardines are another culinary delight. This claims to be sardines in mustard (sounds good), but I soon came to think of it as "fish guts in baby poop." Yum.

It's The Little Things That Count
I saw myself in the library yesterday. I was doing a little research and typed in "circus" in the computer catalog thingy. For some reason it brought up a book about the 300th Anniversary of Albuquerque. The book has nothing to do with the circus as far as I can tell, but I happen to be in it as a featured artist with a half-page write up and a picture. I found the book and opened it to my page and there I was looking at my own smiling mug in the public library. It's a small honor, about on the level of getting your picture in the school newspaper for some scholastic or athletic achievement, but we take what we can get.

As If I Don't Have Enough To Think About!
Now I'm joining the Blogosphere. I might as well offer a few miscellaneous musings. Blogging is new to me. I had heard about the phenom here and there of course. It begged the question, "Why the heck would anyone want to read what I've got to say on a more or less daily basis?"

I found the answer as I cruised through Blog after Blog, and often I did indeed want to read (some of) these things from the far-flung inhabitants of our planet. Sometimes I'm actually interested in these people.

If you're old enough you recall the revolutions: Computers were big mythological beasts with giant tape spools for eyes and punchcards for food, then keyboards and small monitors with dark murky screens to display arcane characters, and then they could do ugly pixelated artwork and on it went into the future. Then you could send an email message, then chat, and suddenly the computer was an indispensible window to the world. We were all made to sit in front of one of these all of the time, but we had a ready conduit to others who were similarly tethered.

The Blogosphere looks like the latest refinement to me - the newest set of techno-challenges to distract and amuse ourselves. I vow henceforth to do my part.