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I liked SCB’s suggestion in the comments that I get an HBO special entitled “Uncorked.” I’m thinking I could carve out a niche as “the guy who complains about his small town with specifics no one outside of that town can understand.”
“What is the deal with all those ‘no left turn’ signs on Park? Anybody else find themselves driving in circles trying to get over to C’era Una Volta for some of their delicious housemade Pasta alla Boscaiola? Come on now!”
“I’m thinking the ice cream at Tucker’s is like crystal meth, if crystal meth came in Rocky Road and Orange Sherbert. Am I right? Am I right? Am I right? Am I right? I’m right about that, aren’t I?”
“Boy, all those stacks of books over at Kevin Patricks Books on Encinal are wild, don’t you think? Who would stack books like that in an earthquake zone? It’s an unusual choice, I say. Good books though, at reasonable prices.”

I flipped someone the bird today. I haven’t done that for a lot of years. It didn’t feel that great, but now that I’ve done it, I can’t seem to stop.
We live in a pretty small town. Slowing down to look for a parking spot, I put my left hand out the window and waved this guy in a VW around me. And the cranky son of a gun honked at me.
Now I hate honking in a small town. I just hate it. Save your honking noises for the big city, I always say, with its fancy ways and complex speech patterns, and its honking. Around here, no honking. Please.
So he honks at me and I can’t help it — I give him the finger. It’s like my finger lifted itself, smooth and swift, like a helium balloon. My hand was already out the window, right? And my middle finger just uncorked. And he honks again! Short, snippy. And I honk back! Then I park my car and go get a small pot of darjeeling. Deeeelicious.
And there it is. Some 10, or 11, or possibly even 12 years of no-bird-flipping. Gone. Just whisked away. Like a burp in a sandstorm.
I gave three or four more people the finger on the way home. I flipped off a poodle. I was out of control. And then when my seven-year-old forgot to say “please” when he asked me for a pony, you guessed it. The bird.
He said, “Pop — what’s that? What’s that strange gesture mean? Does it hurt?” And then, “Hey, I’m doing it too!” And I started to cry in a way that looked like I was laughing at something really really sad.
I can’t live this way. I’m going to try to cork it again tomorrow. I hope it doesn’t hurt.

I’m borderline religious about To Do Lists. For example, when I go to bed, I often remind myself that while it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven, it’s easier for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for most individuals to complete three projects with overlapping deadlines on time, unless they have a To Do List to help them prioritize.
So I got to thinking about To Do Lists, and religions, and how some Mormons used to baptize people after they’d passed on. And I thought I could perform a similar service by creating To Do Lists for the dead.
Here’s what I have so far:
Richard Burton

• Use EVP to star as lovable robot king in upcoming Pixar film.
• Possess body of small dog and make it sing songs from Camelot.
• Stop haunting Elizabeth Taylor’s underwear.

Richard Nixon

• Get Facebook account.
• Fill Teddy Kennedy’s shoes with ectoplasm.
• Stop haunting Henry Kissinger’s underwear.

Got any you’d like to add?
update: a pal just pointed out that Dr. Katz had the exact same idea 7 years ago. Dang you Dr. Katz! Why are you always 7 years ahead of me with everything?!

I’ve been trying a little witnessed consciousness of late, hoping to get a better handle on that age-old question, “Daddy, where do jokes come from?”
What I discovered surprised me. This isn’t true every time, but a lot of the time, right before I make a joke, it turns out that there’s this moment when I realize a joke’s hanging out there, ready to be made before I actually know what the joke is. Someone will say something, or I’ll read something, or a cat will jump on something, and my “shtick sense” will start tingling. “Potential comedy, now in vicinity.”
So I’Il start poking around to see if I can find it — it’s like I’m trying to locate a chair in a dark room. Sometimes the chair’s small and the room’s large. Other times the chair’s large and the room’s small.
I’d never picked up on this before in part because the whole process tends to move pretty fast, and in part because I think I’m just generally too dang giddy with, “Hey! A joke!” to stop and take notes.
But it’s a little odd, isn’t it?
I’m going to make a leap and assume this isn’t just a quirk of me, but it’s the way shtick is sometimes formed. If that’s true, what does it mean? What does it mean that our nether-brains can sense the presence of a joke before our conscious minds know what’s so funny? And that those same nether-brains don’t bother to share the joke with our conscious minds, but instead just give a nod to say, “Hey — pally — joke opportunity here”…?
Does it mean that our subconscious mind likes to tell jokes to itself in nether-brain-ese, and is sort of a jerk?

“The Sun Also Ebbs”

we were supposed
to need less sleep
when we got older.

I thought I was completely burned out on the whole Talk Like a Pirate Day thing, and then I bumped into this lovely gem, which is worth playing just for the music: