09.27.01 a chaque son gout


two dollars for each of the washing machines. a dollar in my pocket, a quarter i flushed from hiding at the bottom of my bag. one more quarter purge: wotapalava! $1.25. the lion sleeps tonight.


joe and i pick three states apiece before we use the change machine. the more successful quarter design predictor gets to order the loser about. this game fails because 1) we always forget what we've chosen and 2) i'm bossy either way. georgia had the strong showing this time. i'm alone, though. into the dryer, everybody.


monday: dinner with pop in laguna beach, every store window a busby berkeley production of american flag bikinis. oh you beach people! we used to frequent a coffeehouse along the same block - fahrenheit 451. it burned down and was rebuilt years ago, then it closed the boring way. one bathing suit place nearby had a chain mail theme going on a few years back. "that's the one i've got," says dad as he gestures toward some aluminum cones. shocking, as dad usually addresses things scatologically. you can't polish a turd. if you wrestle with a turd, you're gonna get dirty. true. and true.


the tragedy of this dinner was that joe and i had eaten dinner at sango sushi not two hours ago. i hadn't had lunch, and i did not have the strength of character to ignore tempura or an avocado roll or miso soup or well fuck. i thought about purging - forget body image, we're talking about room - but no character there either. dad and i went to javier's, which geez, and i was in acute physical pain by the time i got home again. trips to the OC ghetto: not time constraints, food constraints.


bacchus (wine bar) lives next door to the missing sock (laundromat). wine bar people steal plastic lawn furniture from the laundromat so they can smoke outside, the dirty looters.

09.23.01 jenny sais quoi


terminal case of road trip butt. o, i am slain.


feedback: who knew it was this easy?

Who loves Lauren? I do! I do!
What religion is foreign? Shinto! Shinto!
And Hatch comma Orrin? Utah! Utah!
Fuck you, Martin Amis!
Fuck you, Martin Amis!


(paul built my hot rod)

wee dan oster sez:

I thought about it and I guess the last time I saw you, you were saving the butts of your clove cigarettes so you could blend them up into a smoothie later or something depraved like that.


(...)


I guess I always felt that a cousin was someone who would give you refuge when you're being hunted by the police or vampires or something. So if the ninjas are looking for you, don't hesitate to phone me up.

now i want a...pony!

09.22.01 saturday, wait


i came across a feral cat who was being euthanized as i did the hospital report tonight. held him and scratched his cheeks and waited for his ribs to stop falling. when i left, his head was still cocked for my hand. realized on the way home that no one's sure about FELV/FIV contamination - he had those, he was emaciated - and my cats clobber me as soon as i open the door, so i stripped on my stoop and yelled angry things so they'd back up. pointless, probably, but naked and mad made sense in my head.


now a brief road trip by myself. not really, but i've never done this alone, so it counts. i made mix tapes and packed joe some jelly beans from one of the cat ladies at the office. seven hours means each tape plays twice if i don't skip the bjork dancer in the dark stuff. i will, though. dancer in the dark is, predictably, shit driving music.


stewart makes lipmusic. stewart posts the noseless lauren of samothrace. i smolder in person, please believe, though i will probably never manage to look like lukas. who will, really?

09.21.01 you had eaten a baddie


i'm in the pharmacy all day. many frantic surgeons at 9 am, as we ran out of ketamine and valium and i don't have the combination to the controlled substances back safe. i don't care - i'm not a registered vet tech and i understand the liabilities - but if they ran out of tranquilizers mid-procedure upstairs? this is how it is. we can't have food in the hospital - attracts pests, and we're not allowed to use insecticide or traps - so we write snacks up as patients and keep them in cages. admin doesn't seem to care.


making lists. i'm driving to southern california sunday morning, so clothes should be cleaned / packed for cleaning / coordinated to impress my folks. joe needs pants for DC, his tax return, maybe his golf clubs. books for my mom, cell phone charger, so on. not much to do between filling prescriptions, and i make lists when i'm looking forward to going away.


for DC in the gauzy future: going to take an EMT certification course. got a nifty red raincoat on my lunch break yesterday. thinking about how cool it would be to fence.


jake apologized to me last night, both impressing me and ballooning my judaism database by like 200%. if he ever starts posting on his own, you know, i'm screwed.


hitting blockbuster like a ton of bricks. wednesday was you can count on me (2000), tonight is warhol's flesh for frankenstein (1974; ehh) or the lost boys (1987; hey!). plodding through libra yes still, re-reading ted hughes. his biographer is clacketyclacking a block up the street: maybe the only prof who got excited about my stuff, and i'm still too shy to ask her to coffee.

09.19.01 les and ray


today's new york times, E3:

clear channel communications, the texas-based company that owns about 1,170 radio stations nationwide, has circulated a list of 150 songs and asked its stations to avoid playing them because of the attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon.

mentioned:


you dropped a bomb on me - the gap band
blow up the outside world - soundgarden
ticket to ride - the beatles
america - neil diamond
what a wonderful world - louis armstrong
bridge over troubled water - simon and garfunkel
peace train - cat stevens
american pie - don mclean

in 1942 the united states government issued a list of suggested wartime practices for radio broadcasting. in the interest of national safety, it advised radio programmers to ban weather forecasts, which could help the enemy plan a bombing attack, and to avoid man-on-the-street interviews and listener music requests in case the interviewee or caller was a spy conveying a coded message to the enemy in words or song.
the new list is clearly different. instead of promoting national safety, its intended aim is to ensure national mental health, though first amendment supporters may point to it as the first shadowy blacklist in what president bush says will be a war against terrorism.
(...)
in an odd anomaly on the list, a specific song or songs are mentioned for each artist except for one: the politically minded rap-rock group rage against the machine. for this band, the list simply considers "all rage against the machine songs" questionable.

on aesthetic acts, for paul:

nine years old and climbing out the house
thru a song played on piano by my neighbors les and ray.
i put my head up against the wall to be closer to the music that they played.


you were my oxygen, the thing that made me think i could escape.
this is a thank you song for les and ray.


you were my batteries, the thing that made me think i could escape
here's a song for les and ray, here's a song for les and ray


(le tigre)

09.18.01 children of the night


on home improvement: my mother is a machine. she arrived at 1:30 and gave me a crockpot, took me to lunch, installed a wall lamp above my bed, took me to dinner, trimmed charlie's nails, gave me vegetarian cooking tips and left me with a consoling los angeles times article ("Unwed Partners Up 72% in U.S."). it's 9:30. i'm moving home.


on origins: dinner at the original trader vic's, birthplace of the mai tai. i planned to order one, but some other drink came in a souvenir ceramic coconut: who can argue with that? mom supplied an account of my brief career as a catholic (baptized as such, raised/lapsed presbyterian, this pesky cross tattoo an' nothing to be done about it). the priest asked my godfather what the holy water symbolizes:

1:

jesus? (snickers)

2:

a good answer, but no. blah blah blah. and what does the _____ symbolize?

all:

jesus.

2:

also a good answer, but...

(rinse and repeat)

on the classics: arguable high school goth phase or no, i've never seen the bela lugosi dracula (1931). sat down to watch my $5.99 amoeba copy today, and lo! it's a total vamp mythology goulash. i could hang with the garbled story line - he owns the role and all - but then there's this interior shot of the castle where two armadillos wander out from behind some cobwebby furniture. a stretch, but honestly? they owned their roles as well.

09.17.01 your southern can is mine

shame on me for gawking at valerie when she said she plunged her drain for work friends. my mum's rolling into town later this evening and i'm frantically cleaning the stove. never mind that i'm using a sleeping bag for a comforter and hanging my bath towel on the vacuum: i have a plan. after work i'm lint rolling my car.

i want a superfan. jen posted about headless mister bear and some random guy sent her a song about him: hey! i had a stalker when i wrote a column for the daily in college, but he mostly asked me out and compared us to peanut butter cups. no love, no love.

on the possibility of a recession: jake reports that someone scored $10 for eating a brick of havarti at saturday's gossip / aislers set show. he didn't look so well, but there are niches, is what i'm saying.

slant slant rhyme: the line of truth

tofu > soul food
bordetella < elvis costello
martinelli's > carson daly
scream, blacula, scream! (1973) > christina aguilera
orange county > shantih shantih shantih

09.16.01 the many hats of casablanca


fight: trying, o but i'm trying, to read libra. it seemed a viable point of entry for delillo: sure, i know the warren report, let's go from there. this worked with salman rushdie (who scared me shitless): the ground beneath her feet, pop music, right on, i loved it. so libra, i know what i'm working with.


except oh yeah, my u.s. history teacher lost interest in everything after the beginning of world war two, as he started in on casablanca and never really recovered. he's been building and pimping a board game on the movie for like the last twenty years - if eccentrics divert you, he'll really blow your hair back.


but so, libra. no touchpoints. style, ehh. i want to flee, but i turn back to my shelf and gravity's rainbow mocks me in this nasal punk voice with how i never make it past the banana pancakes. so i'm drawing the line, mister underworld-white-noise-golly-i'm-gifted. your ass is mine.


flight: twee albums don't do it for me, but twee sites i want to put in my pocket an' carry always. loobylu's fault, as is my love affair with lush products (brutal postage, magical tub stuff). bath ballistics, tea, and things that happened in second grade: it's sunday.

09.15.01 examination at the womb-door


on art and my friends: lauren = i create this. paul = i create this. jen = i create this.

Who owns these scrawny little feet? Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
All this messy blood? Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.
This wicked little tongue? Death.
This occasional wakefulness? Death.



Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.



Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.



Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than the will? Death.
Stronger than love? Death.
Stronger than life? Death.

But who is stronger than death?

Me, evidently.

Pass, Crow.



(ted hughes, 1970)

still here.

09.14.01 e unibus pluram


david foster wallace:

so what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? that it's impossible to mean what you say? that maybe it's too bad it's impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? most likely, i think, today's irony ends up saying: "how totally banal of you to ask what i really mean." anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. and herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. it is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.

i abandoned an IR major a few years back because it's easier to be flip than it is to be useful. i am an instant gratification machine, all anger, and will shred things twelve times before pulling them apart to make something good. i'm trying to leave current events alone.


when my sister and i were small, my father read the lord of the rings aloud to us. when i don't know what to do, i think of that.

09.13.01 poe78 owned process doing -bs

breaking up with me is the secret of success. no, really: as stanford magazine reports this month, "NR is working at the International Crisis Center in N.Y.C. and playing tennis with supermodels." bad paul (not paul paul) is on his way to a law degree, and The Man With 42 Blue Coats landed a contract with astralwerks weeks after our ships passed in the night. kenton's chasing high school key club girls in denver, but i was the dumper that time. i kind of like this role, actually - i proposed to shana at work today so that she can break my heart tomorrow, leave the spca and find something other than cocktail work. one does what one can with what one has, i say. fly, my cygnets, fly!

i'd like stanford to tell my peers that i've become a gravedigger, but lying is bad. last year i told the alumni site that my 'highlight since stanford' was the birth of my son, and my answering machine jammed up with confused support and promises of stuffed animals. and there was the henry james thing. fun, but no. bad.

living alone, it's alright for now. i devastated the checkout magazine display, snagged a meatless (shut up) salisbury steak TV dinner, and have settled in for an evening with my inner honky. bad, but no. fun.

09.12.01 go little vampire girl


i think i'm eating lunch in a brothel. i emerged from urban outfitters maybe fifteen minutes ago and stumbled into a hitherto-nonexistent rasputin music store. or is it? no sign of the jonathan richman (thankee jake) stuff i was looking for - kind of predictable - but they didn't have any stones, either. rasputin isn't as nifty as amoeba, mind you, but it's supposed to be fair-to-middling. fifty copies of fashion nugget in the new alternative section? what gives?


so i gave up and came back downstairs. wrong turn again, and now i'm in a restaurant in the basement of the same building. or is it? there are four waitresses and a hostess for about six tables, and these waitresses are all tall, teutonic, and heartbreakingly lovely. confused, i ordered a sandwich, and they didn't understand me. but they keep looking at me and smiling. and there are bouncers. maybe money laundering? i hope they let me out. bouncer 2 doesn't seem to like the fact that i'm writing.


i neglected to mention that jonathan richman opened for belle & sebastian the other night. get on the horn - he's the greatest thing since aerosol cheese. he's clearly made some arrangement with satan, as he looks my age and was indie before i was born. he actually played requests from the audience (an easy group to placate, as roughly twelve people knew who he was) and, as salon predicted, kept setting his guitar down to dance gaily for us. if i make it out of the basement, i'm off to throw some cash his way.

she gonna - she's gonna respect me.
look, sometimes we bound to argue, sometimes we bound to fight.
i don't want her tryin' to agree with me when i know she must still think she's right.
i don't like that.
she can't lean on me, she's gotta think for herself.
well, if leavin' me's better, that's good, if she thinks that'll help.
i want her to grow up, you know.
and this way she's gonna - she's gonna - she's gonna respect me.
and that's what i want.

09.11.01 boise

jen and i left for the greyhound station at nine after her mum woke us up with the airport news. she came in from boise yesterday and needs to be back tomorrow to tech her show at the idaho shakespeare festival. big iron grating across the bus ticket counters, little old ladies screaming at attendants about closed depots in reno and sacramento. the doomsday guys on market street were ecstatic, big fresh signs. jen's dad hooked her up with a stranded co-worker who found a rental car, so i left her to the road trip at the st. francis hotel and came back here. i'm not sorry that she'll make it back for forever plaid, but i was looking forward to negotiating things and scrounging for food with someone else. like when the power would go out in our dorms.

09.08.01 mobile slot machine torture van


everybody's got to have an angle. sex and shakespeare, erstwhile local favorites, are having at the recession arm in arm. the strip club on my commute home advertises AMATEUR NIGHT WITH ALICIA THE CANNIBAL. bat boy, mutant weekly world news hero a few years back, has been in a car accident. when his pointy head bandages come off, poor bastard, he's off to a summit with the evil dubya clone who's seized control of the white house (i'm not touching it).


i'm all for this culture gumbo stuff. i won't have to wrinkle my brow with amazon-wifey-mom-techmistress anywhich, i'll just be a human swiss army knife. i can already play "greensleeves" on the ocarina and do a disturbing young wayne newton impression: bring it on.


belle and sebastian are equally prepared for the times ahead: stuart rode a motorcycle onstage as isobel & co sang "leader of the pack" at the warfield tonight. jake and i expected this, as the sound board and the set list were directly in front of us, but no matter. the audience-participation version of the smiths' "the boy with the thorn in his side" was a surprise, as was sly and the family stone's "everyday people" toward the end of the show:

B&S:

we're now going to do a song by one of the best san francisco bands of all time.

us:

GREENDAY?!

B&S:

no, not greenday, god! you know, respect to greenday...those guys are pretty tough.

B&S:

but there are more of us.

09.07.01 slow dog


the mission district is sneaky. one minute i'm walking past burning garbage cans and people selling blankets out of vans and - poof! - the next minute i'm in a gargantuan old theater that's exploded from the back of a furniture storage room. i watch the morning fog roll over the hills from the ocean, then i walk down the street to work and everyone's trying not to retch because some bullet tore a dog's intestines apart.


we have this big street fair every year, and it's this weekend. the adoptions people run the doggie drag show, the PR people talk to the guys from KRON-4, and we do this fund-raising stuffed animal clinic where we suture and splint teddy bears. i was asked to volunteer, but i said no: it's too similar to what we do the rest of the time. your average joe talks about his animal's injury like little susie talks about barbie's head popping off: "ha ha, so i sat on my chihuahua and broke his jaw. can you wrap it or something? i have to get to work." the teddy thing is cute in the abstract.


bronson's a blood donor tonight, or i'm donating his blood, or something. i got back to the hospital after the first half of this post and looky, here's a cat hemorrhaging like crazy. does anyone have a healthy young cat who can be here in the next half hour? sure, i do, and i made it most of the way home before i started to feel presumptuous. got him anyway, and fancy that! their blood types match and charlie has ten zillion red blood cells to spare. he has to go under full anaesthesia for the pull, but i'd want someone to do this for him, right? no big risk, oh sure, not when he's so young, despite the fact that the cat who needs the transfusion was a botched surgery. i crawled in his cage and sat with him for an hour. i'm an ass.

09.06.01 the angels have stolen my red shoes


i'd like to slow this crowd down for a moment. lower the mirror ball - that's right. now, i had moments of uncertainty on the road to getting off my ass and starting a blog. i have a lot of issues with personal sites, and really, the web in general. i considered starting a 'zine instead - you know, going at the techies with a xerox machine and stickers (somehow, working at a veterinary hospital has led me to the possession of superlative stickers). i considered just sitting around and criticizing other blogs, because i like that. as the clown in paul's russian joke eventually realized, though, none of that was the point. the point was/is finding those blogs and getting those blogs. righting the wrongs i find online.


today's wrong is a grievous wrong. it is the lack of jacob mishook. i don't have a link for him - see what i'm talking about?


jacob is a courageous music nut. sure, he checks stuff out on the all music guide like the rest of us, but he also writes personal messages to love-starved indie artists and gets into desperately independent albums that i wouldn't touch with a ten-foot britney spears (ooh, ten-foot britney spears). he got me into elvis costello. and johnny cash. and the wedding present and nick drake and jonathan richman and - see, this could take awhile. he's well read. he's well-dressed. he sleeps on my couch without complaint and tells me what i need to apologize to people for saying the night before. he drives up here from palo alto all the time and doesn't care when all i want to do is sit around.


find this man and shake his hand. buy him a drink. buy him a velvet elvis costello. tell him lauren sent you.

09.05.01 seventeen dreams for you

made it to twin peaks w/stewart tonight after an hour of ill-guided volkswagen madness. yeah yeah, i've been in the city for a year and i lived in sight of the bloody hill for two months and i've actually been there several times, but it was hard. i might have shaved off twenty minutes of travel time if i'd bought a map from the confused guys at walgreens, but by then i'd reached a triumph-of-the-human-spirit mindset. 's what i get for watching lost while stewart made spaghetti. me, i'd have known they were in mongolia in no time. i can say like three things in russian, and only two of them are about food preparation.

he's a good one for appreciating hills, that stewart. a good one for appreciating getting lost approaching hills, even; unfortunate, as i've been trying to get sick of him before he goes back to boston on sunday. he tried to oblige by pouring beer on me at zeitgeist on saturday, but i asked him to do it. these nice people, they should sod off and be nice somewhere else. no, they should stay here with me.

the consensus at work: ride your twenties out, bite your lip, give 'em hell. wait for your saturn return, honey. conversely, my dad had no issues with turning fifty last year, nor with turning forty way back when; the shock for him was in turning thirty. don't trust anyone over the age of thirty. i can't find fault with that, really. i'm from orange county: the return of saturn is a no doubt album, alright?

call me at four in the morning, for christ's sake. if i'm not up, i'll get up. i'll sell some plasma and have a duffel bag together in half an hour. this is what i want to be when i grow up, and i want all of you there with me. half an hour.

09.02.01 i want to believe


poked around for a still from the 1966 batman movie; i wanted the octopus mural from the villains' hideout for a splash page. no luck, but i did find an excellent bunch of tribute pages for the series. i watched that show religiously for quite some time, and yet i'm only realizing now that it was actually all about - food.

Lisa:

Would you like to come in for some milk and cookies?

BW:

I'm afraid it's rather late. Why, it's 10:30!

BW:

Milk and cookies, did you say?

Lisa:

I made the cookies myself.

BW:

Man cannot live by crime-fighting alone.

B:

We've come a long way from the Prime Minister's exploding cake. Or have we?

B:

Let that be a lesson. In future, be more careful from whom you accept free lemonade.

Tut:

Nefertiti, you abandoned wench. How many times do I have to tell you queens consume nectar and ambrosia, not hot dogs?

BG:

Would any of you care for a soft drink?

B:

No thank you, Miss Gordon. We might find it too relaxing.

RH:

Want a piece of cheese?

KB:

Not without a good vintage port, you lackey.

B:

Smells like soup.

R:

Darn good soup.

apologies for the abbreviations: as i'm a tool with html, i can't yet convince blogger that compact definitions should appear on the same lines as their terms. BW = bruce wayne, B = batman, BG = barbara gordon, RH = riddler's henchman, KB = king boris, R = robin. fneh.


i'd like to believe that marilyn manson was paul on the wonder years. i'd love to believe that billy corgan was jamie on small wonder. i'd give my right eye, though, to learn that al gore was batman. scratch that: who's seen adam west lately? prove me wrong, america.


along those lines, robert loggia sure did appear in a spot for minute maid with calcium. the link's discussion is fairly dim, as i'm betting no one lost sleep over eight-year-olds' potential recognition of a wiseguy character actor, but i do like the screen shot.

TV:

Perhaps all of our prayers are best summed up by my small son Harold, just eight years old. Kneeling beside his little bed, hands clasped reverently before him, he said, 'God bless Mommy. God bless Daddy. God bless my dog Spot. And please, Batman, whoever you are behind that mask of yours, please save us.

09.01.01 it can't be all that pretty


stuff of san francisco's that, when i am elsewhere, will be missed by me:


the fillmore. impressive pedigree and purty chandeliers. i go for the tub of free apples (at the head of the staircase) and the party favors (they commission a poster for every sold out show). plus, paul sang "daydream believer" outside for me when i freaked out during a monkees show and they wouldn't let us back in.


zeitgeist ("warm beer, cold women"). outstanding jukebox, beer garden full of sunflowers and motorcycles, $11 pitchers of guinness before eight. one can even park nearby, sorta.


solar light books. cranky bookstore cat, crankier bookstore owner. when SF weather beat the crap out of me, amanda gave me a sweater. when i bought henry miller's tropic of cancer, she called me a dipshit. when i left to work at the hospital, she was thrilled for the crippled kittens. she got me into the pogues. i kinda worship her.


and that's about the size of it. had i a copy of dave eggers' heartbreaking work handy, i'd post the bit about his wanting to dance with locals in the street and/or run them over with his car. fun fact: he was in the haight when he felt that way, or so he said at kepler's a few months ago.

DE:

the haight, i think. no one's ever asked me that before.

LO:

that struck an answering "asshole" chord with me. not, um, that you're an asshole.

DE:

uh.

he lives in marin now. maybe it's nicer there.

08.31.01 while everyone sleeps


excepting the old man who cornered me in the pharmacy in protest of the sale of ukranian children on the price is right, it has been a mild friday at the spca. no caller, today, demanding that we see to the swarm of bees circling overhead. no muni driver, today, surrendering a live hen that materialized beneath his brake pedal on the 22 fillmore.


in san francisco, male pit bulls are meanie verbs ('krusha', 'ripper', 'mister kill whitey'). females, on the other hand, are pie components ('cinnamon', 'suga', 'peaches'). cats' owners have unidentifiable issues ('car alarm', 'little baby jesus', 'black ass'). my own cats are charles bronson and jude the obscure: joe named bronson, and jude has three legs and no tail. i can't really defend myself.


those guys, my bundles of joy, are straight out of low budget biohorror. chuck went from fetching toys and walking on his hind legs (to reach my hand for a scritch) to depositing my jewelry in the toilet with his teeth and battering down every door in the apartment. when he doesn't fancy a full assault on a room he's denied, he flattens himself so that the light reflected in his eyes makes twin beams, all nazgul-like, on the floor. jude's started out slowly: he drinks my beer when my back is turned and gnaws at my eyebrow bar as i'm falling asleep.


i'm quite proud of them, really.

08.30.01 the scenery circling the mall


i am in pinole, a lovingly paved blip on the I-80 to sacramento. i am here for this; i will wear this (in desert indigo) for love of sarajean, who will be married in january. a thoughtful and organized bride, she mapquested me here and asked only that i pass along the winning dress size. turns out i'm just short of a compromise between amy, who grants wishes and hides pots of gold (6), and heather, who expects her second child sometime this winter (20). i could smuggle arms for the rebels under the waist of this thing, mind you, but i could also deflect enemy fire somewhere upstairs. aren't you glad you came to my website? ta-dow.


just finished amanda's wedding (jenny colgan), a novel that was shrink-wrapped with august's british cosmo. it was wondrous, as at any given moment i can taste how desperately i want to live in england; any work that ropes in topshop and adam ant's highwayman phase gets my full support. if you want to taste the magic, it's under my bed.


said cosmo had a splashy article on some chick who'd been a bridesmaid eight times. she apparently retired from service because the perpetual wedding stuff was making her boyfriend nervous. it didn't occur to him that he was home free as long as she kept it up? she concluded, i think, with a spiel about how she's on a new campaign to catch everyone's bouquet. you made that bed yourself, guy: have fun in it. i'll check on you two a few issues from now to see if you're kidnapped by extremists on your honeymoon ("It Happened to Me!").


rodin sez: nothing spells 'forever' like getting hitched on a monday at the gates of hell.


i myself am headed for washington dc.