Over the weekend I learned or relearned at least 3 things:



1. Fort Worth is a strange, windy, and not undelightful place.

2. Commercial airplanes are uncomfortable shitbuckets.

3. 36 x 38 Wrangler regular fit cowboy cut jeans are the best-fitting and best-looking pants I'll ever wear.



According to Wrangler's website, they're available in sizes up to 40" long. And they're the official jean of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, so, uh....



When I started flying, planes were universally frigid. That fact, and the sensation of being cooped up as if in a megatight cocoon sleeping bag, encouraged me early on to develop narcoleptic sleeping skills as a coping mechanism. Once I'm allowed to recline my seat, a little padding under my neck and a jacket draped over my torso allows me to while away the hours in blissless slumber. That it was pretty warm on the plane surprised me. I had had coffee so I could stay up to read. The plane was overbooked, so we couldn't get seats in an exit row, as we did on the way to Fort Worth. Even with leg room, though, I could hardly stand the rigid immobility imposed by the narrowly placed arm rests. In regular seats, as on the return trip, I must, in order to avoid broken kneecaps when the seat in front of me reclines, cross my lower legs so that my soles face the sides of the plane. This lowers my knees to seat level, where the clearance between rows is greater. It makes my ankles stiff. Yes, it is horrible, but I suppose I'm used to it. Meh. It was only a four-hour trip. At least I wasn't seated next to a dude who alternated hours of loud snoring with minutes of obnoxious conversation with the flight attendant he went to college with across two seats filled with passengers intently reading the same sentence repeatedly. That was little_rakaia's enviable pleasure. What made it that much better for her were the lingering effects of sleep deprivation and a head cold.



The hours slipped by pretty quickly. I read all about how Thomas Jefferson and Emerson anticipated with their philosophies the discovery of Thomas's gospel. My favorite parable? "Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Do you not know that he who made the inside also made the outside?" What Jesus means here is that getting it on is not a sin. Or that either way, it doesn't matter. He was one righteous dude. The one about the Kingdom of Heaven being in our midst is pretty good, too.



Postscript: Pop doesn't bother with computers. He finds the research capabilities of the Web inadequate. Well versed in Asian cultural geography, his test is a search on Karelians. I think his inexperience probably hinders his search skills. Another thing about Pop is that he'll drive a hundred miles for a pennies-per-gallon break on gas. I just discovered the website that would persuade him not just to log on at the library, but to buy a laptop with broadband or WiFi for the road: Gas Buddy. Pretty cool.

The bad news is that I lost my phone. Boo! Just before stepping off the bus and allowing the door to close, I realized it wasn't no more in my pocket, but probably on the seat where I sat. Coulda backed up and gotten it, stranding my sweet fine woman at a particularly seedy Williamsburg intersection, but I wasn't fast enough. And that's the good news: I stepped out after her and had a glass of Mead at my friend Krista Madsen's fantastic young bar, Stain. The bad news is that a screening of the Wallace & Gromit series was promised, but not delivered. The good news is that even so it was a groovy place to hang and have a drink, and also that I got a new phone the next day. It takes pictures. Maybe one day when I figure out how to upload pictures here without first uploading them to some other Web page, I'll say, "Here are they, some of them." Some of them are from Thursday, when I went hiking with my honey in the Hudson Highlands, and toured them in a boat that moors at West Point. Since I don't pay for this account, I can't use the Scrapbook. I wonder whether I can use a client. Can't download it to my work 'pewter, so y'all will have to wait.



"Y'all". Har. There's one of you. That's what's so funny. That's what's so funny to me.



So how do you do it?



Dang. Forgot to mail the rebate form for the phone. Also, I put it in the pocket of my rain jacket, which I eschewed, after the T-storm passed and the rain let up. It's ahangin' on my closet door. I hope I remember the envelope.



Ooh. Gum. Cinnamony. Mmm.

It's all the rage. My first try, I got Albert Einstein: detached intellectual whose ideas save/destroy the world. This one seems more apt:







Going to take it several more times, as prescribed, to get a consensus, if that makes sense.

I'm bargaining for a big blazing pagan pyre when I'm done with this mean temple. Scattered to the winds, preferably o'er six continents, in order to prevent the reconstitution of my ashes into their original unholy undead blood-sucking form. It's too bad, then, that I've discovered the words I would have etched on my gravestone:



"Shake and shake the catsup bottle. None comes out, and then a lot'll." -- Richard Armour



I'm not sure, actually, whether Armour wrote this. It is incorrectly attributed by many to my favorite poet, Ogden Nash. I once read that its author was undetermined, or, as some like to say, anonymous. Thanks to Google, I found Armour. Whoever that loser is. Oh, also, every time I see this poem (easy, there), it's written, "...None will come, and then...." But I'm sure, and by that I mean I most likely dreamed it, that the first time I saw it, it was written, "...None comes out, and then...." Either way, since I like the latter better.



Fragment schmagment.



Look! A rollerskating clown!

2005 is golden so far. My blood brother, Dave, has had no luck but hard for the most part, for many years. A self-proclaimed autodidactic polymath, he is one of the funniest, smartest people I've ever met. Highlights of the past 10 years or so have included poverty-level income for him, and, since '99, his wife and two cats, earned as a puppeteer for Bennington Marionettes in Troy, NY, a pizza delivery man, and, most recently, an exemplary, yet fired, retail clerk at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT.



Just over two weeks ago, they moved into a modest dream house of sorts, with dream landlords, with adjoining vast wilderness included free of charge. He has been encouraged to use as much of the limitless spring water as possible, since it will end up in the same place whether he uses it or not. Heating it costs him nothing and his landlords very little. There is fresh chicken meat available, and, I would assume, eggs, and there may soon be sheep, as part of a profitable but mysterious "sheep operation". There is an admittedly ugly beat-up Jaguar which might end up donated to him for restoring, about the prospect of which his new dream employers at Hemmings Motor News are duly excited.



A couple weeks ago, Dave and his wife, and my long-time dear friend, Beth, decided that they'd discontinue their medical insurance. Beth had tested it with a knee calamity. Seemingly, it covered nothing and had a ridiculously high deductible. She was able to avoid frequent and expensive physical therapy sessions by getting instruction on how to apply it herself at home. Now? Thanks to Hemmings, medical coverage is comprehensive and a bargain, and copayments are peanuts. Hallelujah.



What's more, Hemmings rocks! Employees rave about it. Cars are cool! Dave gets to travel to shows, swap meets, and auctions, and photograph them, as well as write extensively about them. If I were you, I'd get a subscription to one of their soon-to-be four titles.



For my part, I've had the enormous dumb luck of finding a sweet fine woman who likes solitary mythical arboreal primates. Life is good.



My sister has rarely, if ever, made me laugh, either directly or indirectly. But she did recently send me a wonderful publication called Steve, Don't Eat It!. Actually, according to her email address, there's a 50% chance it could be from my brother-in-law. [shrug] It's a wicked pisser.

My name is Lehho. It means "surface follows power meat hub".



When it's not too rainy or foggy, and I'm not on vacation, I watch the sun rise twice every weekend. That's because I work the night shift. Holidays, too. Easy gig; only 30 hours. I'm on the 33rd floor of a Midtown East building at a desk abutting a ventilation unit abutting a huge south-facing window. The room is defined on the south and the east by these windows. Great views of the Queensboro Bridge and East River, and, across from the U.N. headquarters, the black monolithic Trump World Tower, the tallest all-residential building in the world. I knock off at 9:00, when my weekend begins. Anybody for a few drinks this fine Monday morning? What's open?