Month: April 2003

Something I just noticed, Lincoln Towing has a little Starfleet logo hidden in their sign. Odd.

Revisiting an old theme.

So many of the trees around town are growing out of the ground at odd angles. It’s like they have someplace to go.

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On Wednesday I joined Manuel and Tom for a photologger meetup. We met at Ancient Grounds, a really neat cafe that also serves as a Native American crafts gallery. It was pretty interesting.

An acquaintance scribbles the time and address of a party onto the last page of my notebook. “Bring a bunch of people with you,” she tells me, “Most of my friends are guys, so I’m worried that the mix will be a little out of balance. If any of your friends are girls, bring them.” Underneath the address, she writes, “Bring alcohol/girls!”, which sounds like it was written in a different spirit than I think she intended.

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I finish reading a book and get up out of my chair. A little slip of paper with the words “Inspected by 42” printed on it falls out of my lap, and I can’t really figure out what it’s from.

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A cartoonist who I recognize is shuffling past. His attention is completely consumed by the new issue of the Stranger. He’s flipping furiously through the pages, trying to find his illustration.

I shift the heavy bag from one arm to the other on the way home from the grocery store. There’s a late night barbecue spilling out into the sidewalk up ahead. It’s a quiet scene as it turns out. The full-size grill is on the sidewalk right in front of the path. Someone is turning a cut of meat over with a spatula. There are three or four people relaxing on the steps leading up to the most graffitied house on the block. I nod hello to nobody as I trespass through the barbecue, where the chilled spring air is mixed with charcoal smoke.

When I’d seen them up ahead, I had prepared myself for something less sedate – maybe a broken beer bottle on the sidewalk or a jeering comment thrown in my direction. But last night was a perfect evening for a tentative first barbecue of the year. They were doing the most sensible thing – sitting outside in their dark side street, setting up the barbecue on the most convenient plot of level ground, pointing at the sky and pointing out the Big Dipper as “The Great Dipper“.

A man walks by with a pair of overly-groomed dogs of identical pedigrees. They stumble ahead with their leashes stretched out behind them. The dog on the right – the one closest to the street – falls behind to investigate a bush. Two girls, sitting several feet away, stop chattering to giggle. The other dog continues ahead and stops to look back at his owner, who is now looking back at the first dog trailing behind him. That dog turns around – either because he wants to face away from his owner or because he favors peeing to the left. The man is left out in the middle of the sidewalk with his arms stretched out in opposite directions, with each dog waiting a leash’s length away. The dog lowers his leg and turns around. But he gets confused on the way back. He runs up to his owner’s left – the wrong side – his companion dog’s side. The man quickly swaps one leash for the other, untangling the leashes and they move on.

• Attractive women would prefer receiving more speeding tickets.
• Protestants are more suceptible to altitude sickness than Catholics, and Catholics are more suceptible to motion sickness than Protestants.
• Chefs on the east coast will only serve asparagus that’s been quartered lengthwise.
• A pimple in between the eyebrows is a sign of wisdom.
• Left-handed people are childish.
• Politicians read the comics first.
• Cat owners drink chocolate milk.
• Middle children finish their dinner more quickly than their older and younger siblings.
• Insomniacs are good at locating misplaced items.
• Doctors read to their children more than lawyers do.
• Sitcom writers prefer Pepsi to Coke.
• Smokers enjoy the company of celebrities.
• Men with uneven sideburns are untrustworthy.