Portrait of the Author as a Somewhat Younger Man

In what was probably the least valuable way I could conceivably have spent the last hour and a half - including playing Wii Table Tennis or simply eating honey-roasted peanuts until they start to back up my esophagus (oh wait, I actually did that last thing...) - I collected the postings from my old blog and re-posted them here, back-dated to their original date of creation.

Mostly this was something I did to feel better about canceling the hosting account that supports that site. I mean, hey, in this day and age, $17.50 a month is worth saving, isn't it?

Reading back over it all as I copied-and-pasted, some of it I still find kinda funny. And man, how badly do I wish the kiddos at O.C. Chopper actually had made a "Pope Benedict Chopper..."

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about integrity. For most people, the word means some combination of ethics, trustworthiness, and dependability, with maybe some morality thrown in depending upon how you feel about such things. Basically, when someone thinks of a "person of integrity," they envision someone who says what they do, does what they say, and can be depended upon to act in the best interests of a particular context - professional, personal, etc. This is how I have always concieved of the quality of integrity, and is how I believe most people do. In fact, the first definition listed for "integrity" in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition. 2000) is "Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code."

Lately, though, I've been considering the actual word "integrity," and it's led me to a somewhat different interpretation. The Etymology (a linguistic term meaning "where a word comes from") of the word "integrity" is described thus in the aforementioned AHD:

Middle English integrite, from Old French, from Latin integrits, soundness, from integer, whole, complete.

I can't help but think that almost nobody would disagree with the idea that integrity is a good thing to exhibit. It is infact often used as the most basic qualification for jobs, relationships, leadership roles or positions, and anything else involving judgement and responsibility. HAving no integrity is very nearly synonymous with being undeserving of any confidence or trust whatsoever. A percieved or stated lack of integrity is almost a guarantee of losing one's position in any of the aforementioned contexts, as well as many others.

The interesting part, on which I have been re-thinking my understanding of the whole concept, revolves around the phrase "within a particular context." In many conversations that I have had, often with people I deeply respect, when the subject of integrity comes up, it is always isolated to a particular context.

For example, consider "professional integrity," in which the term is used to describe the quality of putting the needs and goals of one's employer or organization first, and putting all personal concerns thereafter. By personal, I don't just mean selfish - personal concern for a co-worker or customer is included. Both are only considered valuable inasmuch as they align with the needs and goals of the business. Another parallel example which has been given a lot of attention recently (for obvious reasons) is "political integrity," which has been colloquially defined as an ability to separate one's personal goals and beliefs from one's decisions and actions in a governmental capacity. The most brightly-flashing neon display here reads "separation of church and state."

Don't get excited - this is not an essay on the separation of church and state. Personally, I believe that one can be resolved by it's corollary, the separation of church and FAITH, but that's for another entry.

What I'm really getting at is that I have begun to harbor the belief that people's general definition of integrity, as embodied in the aforementioned examples, is in direct conflict with integrity itself. Let's look at the third definition from the same lexical source cited throughout this writing for the word "integrity:"

"The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness."

The two examples I've given for Professional and Political Integrity both exhibit a trait which absolutely contradicts this definition - each requires the supression of one set of values, held by an individual, in favor of another, held by an institution, either temporarily or permanently. In effect, in order to meet the definition of integrity for either of these models, one needs to be not only of two minds, but of two selves, the direct antithesis of being undivided.

When we look for integrity in our leaders and in ourselves, how do we measure it? Do we expect people to be "the same person they are on Saturday night that they are on Sunday morning," or are we looking for someone to play a role, to be an embodiment for an institution rather than a consistent human being? If the former, we should not expect politicians to keep their faith out of their politics, nor should we expect our managers to draw a distinction between personal and "just business." If on the other hand we DO expect our leaders to take on the persona of an institution, in effect to become a stand-in for another entity, then we should really not be surprised if they themselves exhibit a lack of personal integrity - such a lack would actually become not a disqualification, but a requirement.

Personally, I can't quite buy into the latter position. I would rather have my definition of integrity, well, show a little more integrity itself.

This will no doubt require much work on my part.

So today, just for kicks, I decided to do a search on Google for Horizontigo.

This website was not only the first result returned, but the first TWO results.

Granted, "Horizontigo" is not exactly a premium key word (like "Auctions" or "Nude Girls," for instance), and the total results returned only fill 2 pages. Still, getting popped to the top of a Google search, an oft-coveted holy grail of website marketing, gave me pause.

For one thing, the "word" (which it isn't, in case you were wondering) is beginning to pop up in disparate conversations on subjects ranging from travel (http://boar.com/days/usa_02/return.html) to media studies (http://www.v-2.org/displayArticle.php?article_num=34).

Now, I'm no linguist, but as I understand it, this is essentially how words are born - once usage is common enough to indicate a grammatical or semantic niche, a non-word achieves status as a "real" word. It's sort of like the process of speciation in nature (I actually wrote a paper on this in the one linguistics course I did take in college - I believe the response from the professor started with "If you had bothered to do the homework...").

If in fact "Horizontigo" is destined for lexical cannonization, might I infact be in a position to influence it's ultimate definition? More to the point, am I responsible somehow by virture of the fact that I have locked up a piece of the increasingly-important vocabulary real estate of domain name land? Would it be at all cromulent of me to assume such a position?

Well, anyway, based upon the newly-increased threat of people actually visiting my site (Did you mean: Horizontal), I have made some resolutions.

• I will upgrade the site, add some stuff, and make it more like Target, and less like K-Mart.


• I will not allow several months to go by without adding new content.


• I will not start new entries with overlong, gratuitious appologies for allowing several months to go by without adding new content.


• I will endeavor to always uphold the nascent meaning of the word "Horizontigo," whatever that meaning may turn out to be.

Thank you for visiting.

Here's something about which I don't quite know how to feel...

Now, to start with, I never, NEVER dream about famous people. Ever. Actors, musicians, politicians, medical curiosities...oh, wait, when I was in my pre-adolescence, the Elephant Man showed up recurrently in some disturbing ways...I think that's the only exception, though. It certainly hasn't happened in my adult life.

During the night following Tuesday, March 18th, I had this dream.

I, Lee, and our son were waiting to meet someone, I can't remember whom, at the airport, and we found out that President George W. Bush was going to land there in a few minutes. In the dream as in my waking life, I was not a big Bush fan, but I thought "this'll be something [our son] can tell his kids about some day. We should try and meet him." So we went over to the gate where his plane was supposed to land.

Oddly, there were only about a dozen people, mostly reporters, waiting for his arrival, and we got right up to the front. When Pres. Bush arrived, he walked off the plane waiving (like you'd imagine), but then came straight over to us. He picked our son up, and held him in his arms. He said a bunch of things I can't remember to us, and to him - I remember he seemed to think our little boy was very important for some reason. He kept smiling, and holding our son up near his face for pictures. Somehow it seemed like more than just typical political baby-kissing and photo-op'ing - the fact that it was our son was somehow significant.

When it was time for him to go, for some reason we were being escorted along with him - the President was carrying our son, and we were following just behind. At one point, I turned back to get something of our son's - toys, or something like that - that he'd forgotten. When I turned back around to follow them again, my son was running towards me, and I heard the secret service guys shouting "The President is down! The President is down! He was trying to pick up his own hat!!"

When I looked, they were loading Bush onto a gurney. His head was wrapped in bandages. I remember thinking he must've fallen and hit his head during the risky hat-retrieval maneuver. As they loaded him into the ambulance, he waived at us and smiled. The ambulance sped away, and I woke up.

The next evening, U.S. forces launched the first strike against "targets of opportunity" just outside Baghdad.

I have not told Lee about this dream, becaus I had forgotten about it until just now. She would probably be disturbed to learn that I had let George W. Bush hold our child. I myself am a little disturbed by it.

He had seemed nice enough in the dream, though.

The other day, I was talking to my Dad about the absurdity of "business-speak," the acronym-studded, jargon-laden, nonsensical babble that you hear in conference rooms these days. Sure, we've all heard the jokes about TLA's (Three-Letter-Acronyms), we've listened to opaque and seemingly-interchangeable technical terms that seem to serve no purpose other than to inflate the speech balloon over the speaker's head to bursting, some of us have even been lucky enough to hear people with C's in their titles tell us we need to "Grok the opportunity that [this or that endeavor] represents."

I've heard this said. No kidding.

Yes, these are sad and frightening trends, but what I've been noticing is more sinister trend towards blurring the line between the two most fundamental linguistic elements, Nouns and Verbs.

Now, nouns and verbs and their dichotomous interplay form the very basis of our language. The fundamental rythm of subject-verb, subject-verb, with the occasional coda-like addition of a direct object conducts the dance of ideas from mind to mind. The rythm is almost as natural as breathing in and out. Noun, Verb. In, and out. Dominant, tonic. Like waves on the shore. Pause, and step. Pause, and step.

But there's now a move underway in the business world to squash this semantic ballet by creating a new form of word that is neither noun nor verb, but a blurry smear of both - the "Nerb".

Consider the bastard creation, "decisioning," as in "that issue is currently going through the decisioning process," or "our company delivers decisioning software to Fortune 500 companies." How about "actionable?" There's a fun one - trying to masquerade as an adjective by hiding behind that "-able" suffix. Don't be fooled. It's a nerb at heart.

These are words that should not be. Their parentage is not only questionable, it is discernably monstrous. These are the linguistic Cat-Dogs that are being bred in the secret chambers of our lexicon. And this is not happening in the gutters and asylums, my friends, oh no, it's being done in the cathedrals of power - the boardrooms, the conference tables, the executive toilets. Like the Royals in England, these combinatory mistakes are destined not only to exist, but to rule.

Apart from just sounding absurd, these words actually do something potentially harmful, and I suspect that this is the competative advantage that has allowed these mutants to survive, even thrive, in a business environment. Like the passive voice, they remove responsibility from action.

Here's how. Consider the sentence "That issue is in the decisioning process." Compare it with "We are deciding that issue," or even "That issue is being decided." Even the latter, which is in the passive voice, seems more direct. "Decisioning processes" (or the previously-cited "decisioning software") actually place the responsibility for deciding on an external, often inanimate thing; a process or a program. "Wait," you might ask, "Isn't it the words "process" or "software" that actually obscure the responsibility by replacing the human actor?" In a way, this is correct - the word "decisioning" is just a modifier; it is actually the thing modified (a noun) that picks up the responsibility of the subject or actor. However, the blurriness of the word "decisioning" makes it easier to take as a modifier for poor scapegoats like process and software - somehow "deciding software" or even "deciding process" sound more awkward, are more difficult to swallow.

By the same token, the phrase "I decisioned that" doesn't work either. The use of the Nerb seems to force the use of the passive voice. Since there is already a more appropriate transitive verb ("to decide"), the brain doesn't accept the use of the Nerb ("decisioning") in this same role. The introduction of the Nerb into the sentence is made palatable only by the use of the passive voice. Perhaps the fact that it is part Noun allows the Nerb to assume some of that responsibility itself, thus removing it from any subject whatsoever.

They're wiley, these bird-fish.

Like most business-speak, the goal is to soften, to obscure, and to beguile; to shift the responsibility for action or inaction away from the human beings involved, and to artifically place it on abstractions, systems, processes, and the like.

Who knows. Perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future, we are bound to try to determine if our date is "wifeable" or "husbandable". Our Salami and Swiss will be "put through the sandwiching process," and we will read about the "deathing" of convicted felons in the paper.

Actually, more likely, that kind of news will be Televisioned.

So I was talking to this guy I know the other day (we'll call him "Mike," because that's his name) who had just visited the SF MOMA for the first time. "Wow, What'd you think?" I asked, "Isn't it fantastic?"

Mike was not as enthusiastic as I had thought he might be. "Well, I liked some of it, but a lot of it was just stupid. Like there was this one painting, it was just this huge gray canvas, with like one little tiny squiggle of white paint at the bottom. I mean, what the hell is that?"

This is not an uncommon response to modern art, particularly the more abstract stuff. When my Dad got a membership to the SF MOMA, he only went once, maybe twice, and expressed much the same opinion - that there were some things that were interesting, but a lot that just didn't seem like art to him. "Where's the talent that goes into putting a bunch of rocks in a circle?" he once asked me, "Why does that get put in a museum?"

Now I'm no art connoisseur - I mean, I can identify Van Gogh's Sunflowers when I see it hanging in the Dentist's office, and I can even sometimes be counted on to differentiate between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, but for the most part, I'm pretty ignorant, particularly when it comes to making value judgements. I can't say I totally get what makes "Piss Christ" a valid work, nor can I really support either side of the argument as to whether or not Andy Warhol does, indeed, suck a big one. Despite my ignorance, however, I have developed certain opinions about modern art, particularly the stuff that "looks like my neighbor's three-year-old mentally-retarded kid could paint it."

Modern art asks us to appreciate not the talent, but the message. The statement it makes is not so much "Look what I can do" as "Look what I have done." Where more traditional, representational forms come to us with an answer in the form of a picture, modern art comes often with a question in the form of an image. Modern art doesn't ask for admiration (the artists generally do - but that's a whole separate issue). It asks for a reaction, a response, a willingness to go down the path that the image directs us towards, even if that path is covered in leaves and brambles that make it difficult to see, much less traverse. In a sense, "Why would anybody call that ART?" is exactly the appropriate question. Rather than make the answer obvious by way of depiction ("Here's a Lion. He's pretty scary."), modern art goes in for more subliminal, subconscious suggestions that may lead you to any number of further questions ("Here's some yellow. How do you feel about ducks? What does butter make you think of? What are you so afraid of?").

It doesn't help that so many people who DO profess to know a great deal about art are so deliberately obfuscatory and intellectually territorial. The fact that the general public, with the hearty support of popular culture and the media, considers modern artists shysters and ninnies is probably the most natural response to being told that that big white ball in the center of the room surrounded by magenta pilotfish with flaming batons in their mouths is representative of the artist's anger at the repression of women in central Zamibia. I've heard tour guides say this kind of stuff countless times to their tour groups. They always seem surprised when eyes begin to glaze over, and smirks begin to appear. People don't like to be made to feel stupid, so in defense to having their intelligence insulted, they just reject the whole thing as artsy-fartsy hogwash.

The truth is that it's not that the meaning of the work is inaccessible, it's that it isn't intrinsic - each person experiencing the work brings a critical part of the meaning with them. By trying to prove the value of the work through elaborate pontification and parroted criticism, the percieved expert actually destroys the effect of the piece by bringing the audience to a particular destination without undertaking the journey. It's like going to Disneyland, waiting in line for the rides, and then being shown to the exit right before you get on. "So, what'd you think of Disneyland, kids?" "It SUCKED, Dad!!"

No duh.

So, next time you're in a modern art museum and find yourself confronted with what looks suspiciously like, and may actually be, a piece of moldy Keilbasa with a cockroach pinned to it under a display case, rather than discounting the thing out of hand, try going down the path. Take the journey. Go along for the ride. Don't rent the audio-headset-tour-with sister what's-her-face. Ignore the guys in berets and goatees who walk around smelling like cloves and sneering at everybody. For God's sake, don't talk to the docents. Just go with it. It's a dialogue between you and the work. It goes something like this:

You: "Why the hell would anybody take a picture of a naked dead guy with flowers coming out of his head?"

Art: "Exactly."

You: "What's the point of hanging a Urinal in a gallery?"

Art: "Yes."

You: "I can't believe anyone would smear elephant crap on the Virgin Mary!"

Art: "Well, there you go."

You: "What makes this pile of dog kibble with a flag in it significant?"

Art: "I don't know, let's figure it out together, you and me. What do you say?"

So Halloween went by without much notice in our house this year. Halloween is usually one of our favorite holidays - Lee's window paintings of skeletons and stuff, the carving of mutant pumpkins, the trips to Home Depot for costume materials, etc. Then we usually have some kind of barbecue or party of some kind. We were even especially looking forward to this halloween, because it would be Jasper's first - we were going to dress him up like a squid, which would undoubtedly be more fun for us than for him.

Instead, we blew it off. With my current lack of gainful employment, even the expense of costume materials and sugary snacks for the local urchins and miscreants was deemed excessive, never mind barbecue and party stuff. We've become exceedingly cheap over the past few months.

Turned out, we weren't the only ones who skipped the festivities this year. Trick or Treaters were conspicuously absent from our street.

It was wierd.

Last year, Lee bought a TON of empty calories delivery vehicles to hand out to the roving gangs of costumed extortionists, and even made up like 50 little goody bags so they'd get something cool, not just another undifferentiated drop of sweetness into the candy oceans contained in the various pillowcases and plastic Jack-o'-lanterns. By the time I got home from work that night at 7:00, the goody bags were gone, and the reserves of snack sized Sugar Wads, Choco-Cruds, and Dento-Destructo Bombs were nearing zero. We had to shut down distribution a little after 8, and there were still tons of the little buggers running around the street for hours after that. It was a masacre. We didn't stand a chance.

This year, the street looked like World War II London with the air raid sirens wailing. Not just the porchlights, but the windows of every house on the block were black, as if they'd been painted out. Not a breathing soul walked the street, which is unusual even on a regular night.

Were people scared to take their kids out this year? Were they afraid that, this Halloween, the Tricks would all be excessively violent and destructive and the Treats would necessitate agressive courses of antibiotic treatment? I heard that other neighborhoods had an average crop of trick-or-treaters; even a few blocks away, I'm told, they were out in force. Not on my street though. It was completely deserted.

All in all, it was the creepiest Halloween I'd ever experienced, due to its conspicuous absence.

My son never has bad breath.

He's 6 1/2 months old, and he's never had bad breath. Not once. Not when he first wakes up, not when he's been crying for hours, not right after he eats...never.

For an adult, 6 and a half months without a single episode of halitosis would be a feat worthy of television coverage, or at least an interview in a local paper...maybe in the "would you believe" section. For babies, though, it seems like the rule rather than the exception. Granted, their diet is somewhat limited; no garlic, onions, or other known dietary/olfactory offenders. Still, my kid eats squash, and peas, and carrots, and other stuff that kind of stinks just in and of itself, with nary a zephyr of fetidness to be detected in his diminutive respirations.

I'll bet if you think about the various breaths you've smelled, you'll find that the majority of them have been bad. In fact, it seems to me that I only ever really remember somebody's breath when it reeks (case in point: my high school physics teacher, who seemed to exist solely on coffee and cigarettes. A classmate of mine aptly described his breath as "smell[ing] like he ate a 10-foot asshole for breakfast"). That octagenarian Sunday School teacher who was always whispering far too closely into your face to "be quiiiiiet during the seeeeermon,"...that girl whose mouth you were so ravenously devouring last night, much to your distaste and disbelief this morning (cigarettes are sexy...)...the merit-smoking, braunschwagger-munching aunt who always wanted a kiss...look at how smelling their breath influenced not only how you felt about them at that moment, but you view of them in general. Think of how you feel about yourself on those mornings when it feels like a baby bear used your mouth for a toilet. The eyes may be the windows of the soul, but the breath, like that smell of pent-up dog in the otherwise impeccable living room, is what first hits you when you walk inside.

It's primal. An evolutionary echo to our pre-hominid existance. Smell was vital to our survival, be it in evaluating a meal (or mate), finding our way home, or detecting a threat. Though the areas of our brains that process smells have atrophied considerably over the eons, there is still hefty evidence that smell is strongly tied to the unconscious. It has been shown to trigger memory and influence emotion. Studies have purportedly shown that students taking tests do better when in the presence of certain smells (particularly if they were present when they were studying), and that sexual attractiveness may be significantly affected by odor, and I'm not talking Chanel No. 5. Smell seems to be one of those direct mainlines to the unconscious - slipping in, often unnoticed, past the gates of the conscious mind to install code right on the hardware.

And breath, ahh, breath. It was how God placed life in our clay forms, and how we first check for its presence when we suspect otherwise. Breath infuses all we do. The Latin root spirare, meaning breath, is the etymological root not only of respire, but inspire, perspire, expire, and spirit. Breathing not only sustains us, it defines us. So many of the things that pollute our whole selves also leave their stain on the air that enters and leaves our bodies - tobacco smoke, alcohol, coffee - vices that all exact a tax on the body and mind as they leave their trace on the breath. Ultimately, breath binds us all together. We all breathe the same atmosphere, each breath like the proverbial drop of water that becomes the sea as we inhale and exhale all from this same ocean of air. Breath is life. Breath is soul. Breath is essence. The breathing of another's breath is like receiving, for a time, their being into our own - the most intimate of connections. The breath of another is a fleeting experience of their very soul. We need it, we share it, and cats are said to steal it. Breath is essence. Breath is soul. Breath is life.

The breath of my son smells to me like innocence.

So yesterday was the 4th of July, the day on which America celebrates the birth of our nation by blowing up a small piece of it (that's a stolen quote; I stole it from Lee, but I think she stole it from somebody else first; I don't know to whom it is originally attributed). As for me and my family, we sort of eschewed the whole fireworks thing...it was cloudy, sort of cold, and we were all full of barbecued meat and vegetables. We watched a movie instead.

Does that make us less patriotic? I don't know, but...

The most memorable fireworks display I recall experiencing was on July 4, 1994. I was celebrating the birth of my nation by leaving it: "Happy Birthday, America, sorry I couldn't stay for cake and presents and stuff, but I gotta get outta here for awhile. You understand."

At 6:30pm, I was boarding a plane for Prague, in the Czech Republic, where I would spend the next 6 weeks. I was going over to teach English to a bunch of Czech high-schoolers, presumably so that they would be more able to participate in the "Global Economy," which was and is pretty much dominated by American rules, ideals, and cash. I was reasonably sure that my friend Jeff would be there to meet me when my plane landed; I hadn't actually spoken to him about it, but I'd sent him my travel plans, and his parents had assured me that they had spoken to him and he knew I was coming.

I really had no contingecy plan if he wasn't there. I had never been outside the US, except for Tijuana, which doesn't count. I was on the plane, it was in the air, and I was going to be on Czech soil in 22 hours (with an 8 hour layover in London).

As the plane flew eastward and the sky darkened, I saw the first of the fireworks. They were relatively small, seen from 37,000 feet, but they were still strangely engrossing. Gradually, more and more fireworks began to appear. From our airborne vantage point, we could see several displays at once - at least a dozen were visible at one point - all these little concentrated displays of enthusiastic nationalism and love of country. It was strange, seeing all of this from above. It was unifying, in that you could see that the whole country was celebrating the same thing at once, but at the same time, the displays were so small from our viewpoint, and so localized, each seeming to have nothing more than coincidence to connect them.

In 1990, the Berlin Wall had come down. In 1994, I was on my way to Central Europe, where nations were simultaneously trying to join "The Global Economy" and reclaim their individual national identities. The effort continues to this day with the endeavor to create the European Union. Even in the U.S.A., people still argue and fight about Federal vs. States rights. As someone who has grown up in California and then travelled to other states, it has often seemed to me that we're no more unified than the separate nations of Europe. Culture evolves in pockets and eddies, be it within a single nation or distributed among many. Common language, common currency, a certain measure of common law, and still we're pretty divided.

So, what? "The more things change, the more they stay the same," or "variety is the spice of life," or "vive la differance," or "diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks?" What am I getting at here? Am I getting at anything at all?

I don't know. I just know that usually when looking at the earth from great altitudes, I am struck by how contiguous it all is, how the lines disappear, and all that. But this one time, when the Sun was down and the bombs were bursting in air, I saw the opposite, and began to wonder at what it means to be one of the largest nations, and arguably THE most powerful, on the globe. I wonder sometimes if it's real. Just who is the U.S.? Is it really us?

Okay, It's about 20 to 1, and I just got back with my lunch, a Turkey and Ham with Cheese (#26) from Togo's. I go there fairly regularly; it's nearby, it's cheap, and the people who make the sandwiches wear rubber gloves, which makes me feel a little bit better (I'm sort of a Howard Hughes when it comes to food. As a result, I almost always get "the hair", or "the toenail", or "the squirrel head", or whatever...but I digress).

Anyway, Here's the point. I really don't like mayonaise. I had a bad childhood experience with it. I do, however, like mustard. I like it a lot. It's one of nature's greatest gifts.

Apparently, this makes me some kind of freak.

Whenever I order a sandwich with no Mayo, and no further explanation, I have about a 50/50 chance of not getting any mustard either. I don't know if there's some statistical correlation between liking mayo and liking mustard or what, but I always have to spend at least 3-4 extra sentences explaining that I DO want mustard but DO NOT want mayo. It doesn't matter where I go, or how strong a grasp of the English language the sandwich maker appears to have. This is a nearly universal problem. I decided I needed to find an easy phrase with which to make my sandwich needs known, one that would be clear, universally understood, and would roll off the tongue as easily as "small-26-on-white".

I used to always say "no mayo", which as mentioned above was often insufficient. I then started saying "no mayo, but with mustard," which I thought would surely do the trick. Nope. Tried "without mayo, with mustard." People still screwed it up, or looked at me quizzically, and asked "no mustard?".

"!!!!"

After extensive experimentation, I have found one phrase which seems to work almost all the time, "no mayo, yes mustard." Of course, this makes me sound like some kind of linguistically impaired pinhead, but people seem to get it.

So now I order my lunches from Togo's thus:
"Small 26 on white with provolone no mayo yes mustard."

Realizing that I have now written 2 entries in a row about lunchtime dramas, I resolve to write about something else tomorrow.

Maybe something about prairie dogs?

No, probably not.

So my wife, who is far more brilliant than I, came up with the perfect name for this contraption. "Work on Machine". That's what I'm going to call this thing. Here's the back-story:

Once upon a time in San Bruno, Lee, Dave, myself, and Dave's friend Nate were at a very fine flea market. Among the many mysterious treasures, lying on a table that held mostly unfilled bullet shells, slugs, wadding, and empty black powder containers, we found an old datebook, circa 1965 by the look of it. It had been well-used by the previous owner; almost all the pages had been filled up. Here's the wierd part. Every day, EVERY, SINGLE, DAY, had the same appointment - "Work on machine." Really. I'm not making this up. Every day said "Work on machine." No mention of what the machine was, or what work was to be performed, just that single, automaton-like imperative, "Work on machine."

As we continued to page through this remarkable masterpiece of autistic savantism, we found that after a few months, the guy had switched to just putting ditto marks on each day. There was never any mention of "Finish machine," or "Test machine," or "Unlease machine on unsuspecting populace," or any indication that this endeavor ever bore any fruit. Maybe that's a good thing; given the other artifacts on display at that particular table, I can only shudder at what the nature of this all-encompassing project might have been.

Every time I think of this artifact, I slap myself in the head, hard. Because, no, I did not purchase it. I don't know why I didn't - I thought it was beautiful when I found it, and I think it was like 75 cents or something. Maybe I was just overloaded by the detritus of human lives that surrounded me, like the broken Felix the Cat clock and the Penthouse Swizzle Sticks that turned into naked ladies when you put them in your drink. For whatever reason, I passed up a golden opportunity, and I will forever regret that.

So here it is. Welcome to "Work on Machine." I hope you enjoy it, for as long as it lasts. Don't get too attached. I'll most likely delete it in the morning.