BREAKING NEWS

March 22nd: first outdoor bug spotted (housefly). Went to mineral spa in Moose Jaw with Lotus and friends. First inappropriate swimwear spotted (guy in Speedo).

March 23rd: Sorry, but I'm only able to remember one day of the weekend at a time. Yesterday I was perfectly able to tell you what I did Sunday but drew a blank on Saturday. Wait! Oscars party! Already wrote about it.

Last night: went to O'Hanlon's with Lotus to relieve tremendous mental stress of sitting at home. Sat with three friends and spent nearly twenty minutes before realizing how breathtakingly drunk friends were. Jumpy sober cameraman friend (I call him Mamiya) showed up and unscrewed the light bulb above the table, despite fact cameraman friend sitting at different table altogether. Strange. Others showed up, looked confused and purposeless. Walked home with Lotus in high spirits. Lotus slipped off to sleep like blissful snowflake melting into sweet water. Stayed up til two o' clock watching first season episodes of Buffy, partly in hopes of understanding appeal of Buffy. Thinks: small-town horror is the fable of settlers in the wilderness. Thinks: Sarah Michelle Gellar looked way better with actual fat on her body. Says to pet finch Elliot: go to sleep.

TODAY'S ROBINOPTICON

There's a new employee at the Robin's. He seems nice enough, but his teeth are separated and end in points. He wears thick glasses but his eyes seem unable to focus properly, and you get the sense that his friendly smile serves as a lid on a deep well of horror. My guess is that the franchisee, a small man with a little moustache and a swift walk, has got the poor guy's mother in the basement. Or maybe his original edition Pong, still in the package, with little slabs of styrofoam cushioning the paddles and brittle rubber bands holding it all together. Whichever it is, I bet they're chained to the wall and gathering mildew down there.

Someday I should sit down and make a concerted effort to write something coherent and integrated for this site. As it stands, I write a few sentences here and there over the course of the work day, accreting an entry. And usually, by the time I get to my third or fourth paragraph, it's been too long a gap between jottings, and my mind has mentally crumpled up the preceding paragraphs and thrown them into a mental trash bin. The mental crumpling is especially satisfying, because I use heavy vellum sketch paper for my mental writing, and there's kind of a thrill in wasting something that costs so much. For a while I did all my mental crumpling on parchment scrolls, but the rolls were too bulky and storage was a bitch. This paragraph will be mentally crumpled on 1" square sticky notes.

THE FRUITS OF MY SURFING

Even if you don't know about Jacques Tati and his immersive films, you should go to the gorgeous tativille.com. You'll say: Why Palinode, what am I looking at here? And I'll say: That's not my real name.

If I've provided this link before I must apologize, but I discovered uroulette back in '93 or '94, way back in the early days of the web, and I've recently rediscovered it. Click on the roulette wheel and get spat out to a random place on the web. In 1993 you mostly ended up at university sites, but occasionally you'd find something downright strange. I recall landing on what may have been one of the web's first ever pay porn sites, called something like the Isle of Joy.

It's a stove.

UPDATE

There's a new item on the Humpty's menu. From the promotional literature:

You too can now enjoy a delicious bite of Humpty's Cajun Salmon Caesar. Fresh Romaine lettuce, creamy Caesar dressing, croutons, parmesan cheese and bacon bits, all mixed together in a delicious taco bowl. The best part is it's topped with a mouth watering Salmon fillet and warmth of a little Cajun spice..."

Okay, the first thing you need to know is that Humpty's taco bowls are not delicious. They taste like they've been left on the back step for weeks. If your soul is grotesque enough to order this dish, don't try the taco bowl. Now that that's out of the way, let's try to address THE UNHOLY MESS OF CAESAR SALAD, SALMON STEAK AND BACON BITS THAT SOMEHOW BECAME A SINGLE MEAL. I want to order this thing and report back, I really do, but I'm just not a wartime journalist. I have a feeling that Humpty's did some market research that and discovered that their customers were confused and frightened by multiple items on one plate. Judging from what I've seen, I'm also thinking that many of the Humpty's clientele have trouble distinguishing between the edible and inedible portions of their meal, so this dish takes care of the problem by making the whole thing inedible.

parode - exode