I had blood taken today, and at the lab they had a large sign up on the office wall that said UNIVERSAL PRECAUTIONS OBSERVED.

I left in a haze of philosophical introspection.

I love ad banners sometimes.

No More Wire Hangers!

Someday when I’m all grown up I want to pull something like this.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, here.

The pork people have problems. I sympathize, somehow. You have to sell fatty meat that many religions call impure and that doctors tell people not to eat. It’s a hard sell. So far, over the years they have tried:

1) “The other white meat.” This resulted in fodder for bad comedians for years.

2) “America’s Cut”. No one got this.

3) “Where there’s Pork, there’s Fire”. Hello?

I wonder if some postmodern grad student types had taken over by #3. Anyway, now they’ve snapped completely. Allow me to present the Post 9/11 Pork Banner:

PORKRIOTISM is the LAST REFUGE of a MARKETER! YOW!!

Hey kids! hack your fish today!

Wonderful was the contrast between the steamer and that villa on the Mahmudiyah canal! Startling the sudden change from presto to adagio life! In thirteen days we had passed from the clammy grey fog, that atmosphere of industry which kept us at anchor off the Isle of Wight, through the loveliest air of the Inland Sea, whose sparkling blue and purple haze spread charms even on N. Africa’s beldame features, and now we are sitting silent and still, listening to the monotonous melody of the East — the soft night-breeze wandering through starlit skies and tufted trees, with a voice of melancholy meaning.

And this is the Arab’s Kayf. The savouring of animal existence; the passive enjoyment of mere sense; the pleasant languor; the dreamy tranquillity, the airy castle-building, which in Asia stand in lieu of the vigorous, intensive, passionate life of Europe. It is the result of a lively, impressible, excitable nature, and exquisite sensibility of nerve; it argues a facility for voluptuousness unknown to northern regions, where happiness is placed in the exertion of mental and physical powers; where Ernst ist das Leben; where niggard earth commands ceaseless sweat of face, and damp chill air demands perpetual excitement, exercise, or change, or adventure, or dissipation, for want of something better. In the East, man wants but rest and shade: upon the banks of a bubbling stream, or under the cool shelter of a perfumed tree, he is perfectly happy, smoking a pipe, or sipping a cup of coffee, or drinking a glass of sherbet, but above all things deranging body and mind as little as possible; the trouble of conversations, the displeasures of memory, and the vanity of thought being the most unpleasant interruptions to his Kayf. No wonder that “Kayf” is a word untranslatable in our mother-tongue!

— Sir Richard F. Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah.

I awaken at 9 and head to the car repair place by 10:30 in order to obtain the 45,000 mile regular maintenance on my import sports luxury coupe-type car. This will take two hours and cost $176, they say.

I walk over to the soulless mall, buy a couple of magazines at Tower, and read them and drink coffee. The auto man calls to inform me that I need three new tires at $200 apiece plus alignment. I smoke.

I go to a chain restaurant italian place and eat a reasonably good fettucine with pesto plus caesar salad. I smoke more.

I return to the place of cars and give them $900.

I go to the Black Hole Coffee Shop. There, I meet up with reggiT and odradak, and another acquaintance of ours. She relates her birthday party of the night before which apparently consisted of lots of hoochie coochie with several fafoochies and a zoochie all in the back of a noochie outside the kerbloochie, TEE HEE!!!!1! with lots of cute tossing of the hair and outuendos. I smoke. The highlight of the day is watching an assortment of cute teenage girls flap in annoyance at the smoke drifting towards them from my stinky cigarillllllllllos.

reggiT is in current mood: BOUNCY! and odradak is staring through me at the blank vista of 17th street and the car wash across the street.

I return home to make lentil soup and consider the Situation of Humankind.

FUCK YOU, WORLD!

On my commute today, I was cruising along a bit of the 405 by the airport when I saw a cloud of brownish debris and bits of things flying, and cars swerving madly.

With no time to think, I was soon in the thick of it. It proved to be a huge piece of plate glass which had just fallen off a truck and exploded into a deadly cloud of knives, through which I zoomed at 70 mph.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be under my bed whimpering.

If this wasn’t enough, now we have this.

Bring on the Eschaton. I embrace you, happy Death.