IT'S ALL ABOUT timing. George Carlin- rest his gnarly little soul- knew about timing, knew the art of The Ba-DUM-bum-bum. Barack gets it; he's the master of the timed news item, the Grand Poobah of Apropos Announcements. And who is it again who says timing is everything? Oh, that's right: everyone.

On July 17th a grand confluence of gaming companies comes together in Los Angeles for the E3, where every game company worth a crap or two will announce the upcoming and in-progress electronic games for this year. I wish I were going to be there; not even huffing paint would give you that kind of contact high. Amy Winehouse was taken to the hospital for fainting and while there it was discovered that (shock!) her years of crack smoking had given her emphysema. Had it gone a month later and she would've been hooked up to an oxygen machine like a little old lady (she already has the wig, house slippers, and criminal insanity for it). Good timing for them both.

I spent last night playing Magic and watching Battlestar Galactica. It was fun. It was entertaining. But as my thirtieth birthday comes around on the calendar, I have to ask myself if the time is really right to be spending it in such a way?

Answer: Hell, yes.

LEONARD'S HOME LAY in terrible disarray. His easy chair rested on one side, the stuffing spilling out of a slash in the fabric. His neat rows of books had tumbled to the floor in wild profusion, pages lying torn and fluttering. The kettle was missing. With a cry he sprang to his feet. The fire burned brightly, and Leonard seized the fire tongs to pull out a smoldering book. The remains of his hearth rug lay in the corner, shredded to bits.

With a strangled gasp Leonard ran back to his bed and threw back the covers. No MacGuffin! He tore the bedclothes from the pallet, scrambled behind the headboard, ripped the pillowcases off: still no MacGuffin. Leonard climbed onto the bed, hid his face under a pillow and... best if we draw a veil over the events of the next quarter of an hour.

Some time later, a dry-eyed and only faintly tear-streaked troll face hovered over a rough burlap sack to which two straps had been neatly stitched. Leonard stood in his ruined kitchen, stacking in the sack dried lizard tails (full of protein), extra bottles of rat blood, and several containers of Garp (a mixture of his own invention made of crunchy salted bird feet, chewy sundried snake livers, and sweet chocolatey mouse droppings in a candy shell). His claws moved to pick up a stack of fallen dishes. He hovered indecisively a moment, then left them lying on the ground.

Leonard moved through the ruin of his home placing essentials in his sack. A sparkle on the floor caught his eye. He reached down and picked up a tiny black shoe button. "MacGuffin!" he whispered, and placed the stuffed bunny's eye reverentially at the bottom of the pack, wrapped carefully in a hankie, before closing it tightly. Brushing away a tear, Leonard walked slowly to the arched entry to his bridge home. He shouldered the pack as he turned and took in the devastation with a deep sigh.

Reaching out, Leonard clawed the support beam directly above him and swung his way to the ground.

LEONARD SHUFFLED OVER to the kettle and poured the hot water into his favorite mug (the one with a chip taken out of the rim). He slid the mouse out of the fire and put it on a plate, placed a napkin under it, and carefully placed mug and plate on the battered little table next to his easy chair.

As he settled himself, sucking out the eyeballs of the mouse before delicately patting his mouth, Leonard couldn't help but look over his shoulder. The sound of crunching mouse bones was deadened by the snow, but nothing else could be seen.

After clearing up, Leonard sat on his haunches on the edge of his truss and thought. Why was he so certain something watched him back from beyond the blustery whiteness? He was, perhaps, a little lonely. After all Leonard had no friends and no relations. No one would come and see him, which is why (here he nodded to himself) he simply imagined someone wandering around in the snow around his bridge. He much preferred it that way, of course. Leonard nodded again and reached out to take his stuffed bunny from his chair. He gave MacGuffin a little kiss on the head and cuddled it as he dangled his legs over the truss edge.

The day passed. Leonard sat on the balustrade with the wind in his face. He ate six cockroaches for afternoon tea. He read his book- Humans: A Compleat Guide To Meat Preparation- in bed and drifted off to sleep with it open on his face, MacGuffin carefully tucked in beside him.

The next morning, Leonard awoke to silence.

He lifted the book off his face. A scene of horror met his eyes.

"DUTCH MAN INJURES posterior in mooning incident". I think, on the whole, that the news is getting better every day. Ever since Barbara Walters outed herself as the lover of a Republican senator, it's been wonderful! Dutch media goes on to say that he is recovering since the accident, during which something went "horribly wrong".

Of course it went horribly wrong! You can't have a "mooning incident" without following with the phrase "horribly wrong". They go together like toast and butter.

I'm sorry to say this young man pressed his hiney up against the plate glass window of a restaurant, and the inevitable occurred. Should you be concerned about the small businessman, you'll be happy to know the man paid for the broken window.

Baby... got... back.

LITTLE PEOPLE SHOWED up on film yesterday deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle. When I say 'little', I mean, of course, those civilization-impaired humans, not midgets. (Is 'midgets' still P.C.? For that matter, was 'midgets' ever P.C.? A people defined by their penchant for circus work, exotica porn production, and pointing at jaundiced brick paving deserve a name that strikes fear into the hearts of men, just to make up for it. I'm thinking 'Piledrivers'. 'Shitkickers'. 'Devilbunnies'. But I digress).

The existence of this tribe utterly fascinates me. I've spent more time than I care to admit squinting at the fuzzy pictures of men painted with red clay pointing their tiny bows at the devil machine in the sky, while a lone female figure painted black dances crazy-dance behind them. What are they doing? Why are they painted red and black? Why is the lone woman out there? Is she a priestess dancing herself into a frenzy to bring the spirits of arrow accuracy down upon the red men? Where is everyone else? Is this just a scouting mission of three people?

You can imagine that from the moment that helicopter appeared (and rapidly disappeared) onwards, that has been the sole topic of conversation in the Amazonian huts.
"I think it was a sign from God!"
"The Gods are pleased! They did not kill us!"
"No, the Gods are angry! They left us here in the mud!"
"Larry, you think everything is a sign from God."
"Nuh-uh!"
"Yuh-huh! Just last week you said that when you woke up with bird poop on your face, it was a sign from God!"
"Well, it was!
"Idiot, it built a nest above your bed!"
[Silence]
"I hate you, Steve."

The Amazon really is trackless. Imagine: this isn't the only tribe of civilization-less people out there, it's, like, one of several that we know about! And scientists predict there might be many, many more. Think of all the other things that could be lost in the rainforest besides tribes of little people. Car keys. Mateless socks. A-Ha.

Kind of makes you think about humanity, doesn't it? Man's inhumanity to man, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, marking distinctions is the first step towards destruction, that sort of thing? What must it be like to be those painted people? How must it feel to see that big ol' copter, and what could we see that would be to us as the copter is to them?

Discuss.

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND became a full-frontal vacation with the addition of a day off on Friday. Jason's friend Billy came into town, and- in addition to eating ourselves senseless- we saw as much of Memphis as it is possible to see and still sleep nights.

For me, the best part was finding out that Earnestine & Hazel's has Sunday night jazz (during which the entire audience- made up of thirty people carrying horns- got up, moved by an internal clock, and just started to play in front of the house band. Then they sat down. Then they drank. Then they went up again, sometimes cutting out the middle man by standing at their tables and playing right there). We were the only people there not fondling a brass instrument, and the only people there who didn't know everyone else. It was great!

Sushi, pulled pork at the Barbeque Shop (twice), losing money on roulette at the casinos, breakfast with a senator down on the river, tours of Memphis architecture, Redbirds baseball game: it was all quite exhausting.

We finally made it to the pool for an afternoon of unwinding on Sunday, only to find that Sparky (the mechanical pool cleaner) had gotten hung up during the weekend of thunderstorms. An hour later, after skiffing the pool with the long net (and cursing the lazy boyfriend who was sitting in the air conditioning, drinking a beer, and chatting happily with friends as I cleaned and sweated), relaxation kicked in.

After bidding Billy a fond farewell on Monday afternoon- not before stuffing ourselves with BBQ once again- Dad called and required a car battery jump start from, of all places, the parking lot of Taco Bell. It took three minutes for Jason to start his car and twelve to harangue Dad about not eating fast food (and Taco Bell! The lowest of the low!). He was properly ashamed of being caught in such a compromising position and attempted to throw us off the scent by serving us wine and cheese on the porch during a real summer thunderstorm.

Even with all the craziness, Jason and I were able to sneak in lots of together time (which was great, and well overdue) and even a couple of movies. The house got cleaned, the laundry got done, the garden got tended. The only thing that we didn't do was go to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, and I plan to rectify that this weekend. Go, veggies!

I'D LIKE TO riff on the subject of stubbornness this morning, if you'll bear with me while I indulge myself. Most people, I find, describe themselves of stubborn. I think that's an American thing, "Oh, I'm so stubborn, tee hee! Isn't that awful?" with the kind of tongue-in-cheek pseudo-shame that typifies those things of which we are most proud. What is it that makes us pride ourselves on being intractable?

I'm not the most stubborn person I know; that honor belongs to a good friend of mine to whom I haven't spoken in ages after a particularly nasty fight. "I'll never speak to you again!" he said, and by golly, he hasn't. I'm only a pathetic stubborn compared to this; I send notes of apology and mea culpa with depressing regularity which are met with awesome silence. Compared to this, I'm an amateur.

My own version of stubborn is more a knee-jerk reaction. Jason will ask me something- anything- and I'll immediately refuse, then start shouting, then lapse into angry silence. It doesn't matter what it is. It's so stupid, so childish, so perfectly the way to start an argument with no resolution. There's no way to end it except owning up to my own idiocy and apologizing (not an attractive option). Man, it damn near kills me to apologize. It takes the most profound feeling of love to do it.

Studies keep showing us that the thing that keeps marriages and friendships together for the long haul isn't our spontaneous attraction- however phenomenal that may be- our shared interests, or even the things we do together. Rather, it's this willingness to set aside our too-human stubbornness for a few moments every day, to apologize and unbend. Just the willingness to stop and say, "Hey, you know what? I don't have all the answers, and I can be a stupid jerk. I'm sorry I wasn't listening to you; try again, and I'll really try, too."

Now if I could just do it.

REASON #3,428 THAT Alec Baldwin is the single finest celebrity on the face of the planet: He recently went on '60 Minutes' and described Kim Basinger's lawyer, Judy Bogen, as "a 300 pound homunculus with a face like a clinched fist". He then immediately recanted, saying that description was "too kind".

Who says 'homunculous' on prime-time television? Alec Baldwin, that's who!

ONCE UPON A time, there lived a young green troll. He made his home under a stone bridge which he had caulked carefully in order to make it draft-proof. In the autumn he collected provisions for the coming winter- sheep's eyeballs, goat ears, cow intestines and the like- and secreted them away in the well-organized pantry he had carefully carved into an abutment of the bridge. He liked nothing better than to claw his way to the top of the bridge during a winter snowstorm and hunch down on the balustrade, snow blowing in his eyes, and crack open a decayed pigeon from his stores for teatime.

Leonard- for that was his name- loved the quiet peace of these times. That wasn't to say he didn't enjoy leaping out at a hapless traveler, claws akimbo and fangs bared, to feast on their skin, but all that joggling around sometimes upset his stomach. He had always had a delicate constitution. His mother had warned him time and again to avoid too much physical activity during and after meals.

One particular Tuesday morning, Leonard woke up to a blinding snowstorm. He watched the swirling whiteness from his bedroom girder for a while, then yawned and swung down onto his wide living room truss. The little troll lit a fire in the grate, scratched his bottom with one claw and, yawning, put the kettle on. He rummaged for a moment in his live mouse box, picked out a plump wriggling specimen, and impaled it neatly on a sharp skewer. The mouse twitched a moment longer, then went still. Leonard turned to place his breakfast mouse in the glowing embers of the fire, but as he did so caught the faintest glimpse of grey beyond the sheeting curtain of white.

Leonard stared.

Nothing. The white snow puffed and played around the bridge. He shook his head, jowls jiggling a bit and drips of slime falling to the floor, and placed the mouse in the fire. He mounded the embers carefully over the skewer, turning once or twice to look over his shoulder. The silent snowstorm looked back.

The whistling kettle startled Leonard out of his reverie.

THIS IS TOO good to be true. This is so good, it must be fattening. It's so good, you're going to puke on yourself.

Barbara Walters had an affair with a U.S. Senator.

Barbara Walters! U.S. Senator!! Ahh, I'm in heaven!!

From now on, Babs' new nickname is 'Jack Donaghy'. For those of you who are foolish/busy enough not to watch '30 Rock', Jack is the fictional uber-conservative head of NBC who dallies in an illicit relationship with an uber-liberal Democratic senator from Illinois.

Democrat journalist Barbara Walters was screwing around with a married, Republican, black senator from Massachusetts!!!! Are you dying? I'm dying!!! He's not even dead, or anything like it. He's divorced and remarried and living in obscurity somewhere in Boca. Or rather... WAS living in obscurity in until Jack's book came out yesterday! Welcome back to the spotlight, Edward Brooke!

You know what they say... once you go Republican, you never go back.

Or something like that!

THIS MORNING, JASON asked that I write about Barack Obama and the Wright Controversy (sounds like the title of a children's story, doesn't it? 'Barack Obama and the Land of the Teddy Bears'). I was deeply flattered that he would want my point of view, until I realized that in reality he simply doesn't have the patience to read CNN.com and wanted the Cliffs Notes version of the controversy. When I said this, he enthusiastically agreed that this was indeed the case.

Bastard.

But I'm a sucker for guys who runs on the treadmill in boxer shorts, so to keep the peace, encourage him to keep doing that, and hopefully secure a free dinner, here's the haps:

Wright was Barack-o's church pastor for many years. Wright was a bit of a father figure to Barack since B's own dad was pretty much out of the picture. Wright was Barack's pastor up until about a year ago when B.O. went heavy on the campaign trail. Lately, the Wright Reverend's sermons got on YouTube. He said some things that could be either him being (1) a shoot-from-the-hip straight-talker or (2) totally racist (just as an aside, that makes him the black identical twin of Donald Rumsfeld). Among his possible assertions were that the U.S. brought the Twin Towers attacks upon themselves and that Hilary Clinton had an advantage in the election because she's white.

I know, I know. That's just crazy talk!!

Unfortunately, he then went to the National Press Club this past week and said those things all over again, then suggested- among other things- that the government had manufactured and released AIDS as a way to control and kill the black population, and that the US government is a terrorist organization. Oh, and by the by, he's still a super-duper good friend of Barack and B.O. listens to everything he says; the two of them are like twinned souls.

Because it's really, really easy to scare the crackers by saying that stupidity, brutality, and utter lack of political skill are inherent in black people and that Barack personally will rape your wife while stealing your silver if elected, Republicans are taking that ball and running with it as fast and far and hard as they can. Vote for Johnny Mac, because otherwise THEY'll be in your home, up to their elbows in government-grade AIDS!

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to suspect that the government manufactured and released Reverend Wright as a way to control and kill the black candidate. Poor Barack.

WHERE'S THE SUBTLETY? Where's the originality? Where, in short, is the beef? It saddens me deeply to tell you that for reasons best left to television executives, HRH Britney Spears shall be returning to 'How I Met Your Mother'. This, of course, is because she appeared on the program earlier and gave them a big ratings boost. Everyone watched.

Of course they watched! They wanted to see if she'd shave her head or birth a baby right in the middle of the taping, or stand up and let her paunch dribble out of the sides of her pleather lace-up mini. And now it has been declared that she will return, since clearly what people want to see is more Britney Spears. If I were an exec, I might question whether people actually like the poor girl or whether they're just waiting to see what heinous breech of common decency she perpetrates next. I mean, that's why I'm watching! If she returns and again does nothing Louisianan, well- what's the point? They'll piss off the regular fans in exchange for thirty minutes of slightly higher ratings which will drop back to nothing when Brit-Brit (1) crawls back under the rock from whence she came, or (2) fails to deliver the crazy. Poor Doogie Howser. He's the Cassandra of his generation.

No, if you want originality you'll have to turn to the headlines, where you'll find that charming Austrian gentleman who imprisoned his daughter in the basement of his house for twenty-odd years and forced her to have his children (seven in all).

!!!!!

?!?!?!?!?

!!!! ??? !!!!

The part that really rocks you back on your heels is the information that he was in fact married to someone and had children with her... and that they all lived in the house!

?!?!??!

"Excuse me, Klaus, but you're standing in the way of the basement."
"I, um... You don't need to go down there."
"Yes, Klaus, I need some pickles. Move it."
"You can't. I... uh... I just farted down there. Sorry. I'll go get your pickles."

How does one keep that up for twenty years? Additionally, why do German-speakers turn out to be so insane? Is it the language? The weather? The genes?

At least you know you can trust Governor Shwarzenegger. Sure, he uses his basement to re-animate skeletons with the help of an Igor and some lightening bolts, but at least he's kind enough about it to take them into the daylight and call them his wife.

IT'S THE BIG day! You're excited, I'm excited- hey, who isn't getting their panties in a bunch today? Oh, you know what I'm talking about: watching the results of the Pennsylvania democratic primaries roll in! Can you stand it?!

The deal, or so I understand it, is that Hilary either wins this one or walks away a loser. Even if she wins, she has to win by more than fifty delegate votes just to stay in the game in a real way; tough, when she's polling lower every day. I was a Hilary fan before I was an Obama fan. I hate to see her like this. At the same time, Obama just seems... well, like he could win. That means a lot to me right about now.

I'm not in any way dismissing the Ron Paul enthusiasts. In fact, bless their little cotton socks. I like his spray-painted signs and presidential hair. I like libertarians. In general, they tend to be sexier than most people. But I don't see Ron Paul walking away with this one, I really don't. John McCain is not clever and a Republican (redundant). Hilary is unlikeable. Obama rhymes with Osama. Everyone's got their problems.

I ride my bike to work (and everywhere else, since my car battery died at work and my Honda is now gracefully reposing there in ghetto splendor), open the windows instead of using heat and air, and try to grow my own food in a small, one-zucchini-a-week kind of way. I don't care about gas prices and have given it up as a bad job. This is my professional opinion as a geologist/economist, you understand, not just navel-gazing; total oil supply slowly going down, demand remaining high or rising, prices will simply go up (along with profits, since it's not that much more expensive to get it out of the ground) until there's no more oil, which I give ten to twenty years. I'd draw you a graph, but... yeah. You don't care.

At any rate, I'd like to see gay people living in as much official misery every other married couple. I don't want 16-year-old girls to go to back alley coat hanger services because they can't get legal abortions. I'd like someone to, oh- I don't know- raise funding for schools. Maybe teach a little sex ed so that the question of coat hangers can be avoided entirely. Good bike paths. Health care for all kids. And that's it.

And even though I said I wouldn't, too bad:

WHEN YOU REGISTER to vote, there's a little box at the bottom of the page that says 'Sign or Make Your Mark Here'. Sign... or make your mark. Now, my first thought was that this is for people like Opie down in Packing & Shipping; Opie who can't be trusted to hold a safety pencil the right way up without nibbling on it, and who needs someone else to guide his hand for his caveman-like, scrawled 'X' (or possibly straggling squiggle). I can just hear Opie's high-pitched squeal of delight as the pencil makes a mark down the page. Pleased, he does it again and again until a new form must be retrieved to replace Opie's enthusiastic damage.

And then Opie gets to go vote.

It was a very depressing thought. 'Sign or Make Your Mark' pretty much has to be for the feral among us; even worse, the voting feral. But then I remembered Prince (The Artist Formerly Known As). If Prince is foolish enough to change his name to an unpronounceable glyph, surely many other Americans must be as well. It made me feel immediately better. 'Sign or Make Your Mark' is for people with symbol names, not Opie!

Not Opie.

To register to vote, or just to sign or make your own mark, go to Rock the Vote and fill in forms old school.

YOU CAN RELAX. Bush is gonna pick the Pope up at the airport today. Thank God. I know you so didn't want to go get him yourself.

I can just hear George now: "Laura! What's the flight number? No, I'm looking for my shoes- just Google it for me, will ya? Dammit, where the hell are my- Northwest!! Jesus, woman, just look it up, he's gonna be here any minute! Where the fuck are my shoes?!"

Tee hee!

LEGOS DOMINATED MY childhood. I was a collector of Legos, as much as any third child can be of any toy that costs more per square inch than hair plugs. My real breakthrough came one day when the boyfriend of an older sister decided to toss off his childish things in the pursuit of manhood, I believe at the ripe old age of sixteen. His loss was my gain, as he came to the house one day bearing an enormous tub of assorted Legos which he then gave to me.

My memory is fuzzy, but I may have peed myself.

What I do remember with remarkable clarity is sitting down with the tub and carefully sorting them out by size and color. My stepfather, an architect and- I like to think- more sympathetic to my desire to sort Legos than anyone else, had taken me to the hardware store for several plastic storage containers. Each had a multitude of tiny clear drawers intended for the separation of different kinds of nails and screws, but mine were full of perfectly sorted Legos.

When it was done, I liked to take a few days just to admire things, and this was my downfall: invariably, another sibling would steal the cases and build something enormous, using up everything in the drawers and often leaving a small trail of one-bumps leading back to the offender's bedroom. Their defense was always that it was so easy to play Legos when they were so nicely sorted, to which I invariably yelled back that I knew that, that's why I had done it.

I'd re-sort and find a better hiding place. And I did actually play with them, instead of just sorting them like a loony. I remember one Father's Day in particular, when I must have had less than nothing to do, creating a Lego card for my stepdad. It used the largest flat board I had, and from the side looked like just a Lego village. Seen from the top, though, the little trees and bushes read 'HAPPY' and the buildings made up the word 'FATHER'S'. The 'DAY' was spelled out by tiny Lego people, all of them raising a teensy plastic goblet in salute.

With four children in the house and busy, professional parents, we were almost always left to entertain ourselves. We only got an original Nintendo (that's right, the NES) one Christmas when I was almost eighteen, and we'd never had electronic toys, with the exception of a hand-crank printing press one of my sisters had gotten for a birthday (there's one episode of the Simpsons where Bart gets his hands on such a device and prints a newspaper with the headline 'Todd Smells'; that typified our level of journalism). Anyway, we were much more resourceful about our entertainment as a result. One sister and I built elaborate clay houses in the backyard mud which we populated by stick people with families and complex, Days Of Our Lives-style dramas; we biked around the neighborhood from sunrise to sunset; we roller-skated through the living room.

In hindsight, it probably all drove my mother crazy. It probably would have been heaven to her to have us to sit quietly in front of the TV blowing up aliens-- although, thinking back now, she never let us watch more than an hour of TV at one time. It's a shame that video games today are so great. When you think of all the funny, silly, dangerous, and above all imaginative things we could be doing instead of sitting in front of a computer screen... well, it's enough to make you want to stop reading blogs and go run through a sprinkler.

MY FRIEND OMAR began a McMuffin/McGriddle (sorry, McGriddles!) controversy in the comments which now has progressed into full-blown posting, if only because as I was researching the McGriddles phenomenon I came across some truly fascinating bits of information. Basically, he questioned if Dr. McMuffin loved the McGriddles as an homage to his original genius, or would he have shunned it like a red-headed stepchild?

Naturally I had to find out more about the McGriddles (I've never actually eaten one), and became instantly exposed to the deep, bizarre world of breakfast sandwiches.

In direct competition with McDonalds' original McMuffin is the Burger King Croissanwich- however, the technical spelling is actually "Croissan'Wich". I find this immensely pleasing, as they have followed to the letter (no pun intended) the rules of grammar which are so often abused in your fast-food chains. You put an apostrophe wherever you remove a letter when creating a contraction (the way "I'm" replaces "I am", and the much-maligned "they are" becomes "they're"- not "their", as so many people would have you believe). As BK is removing the '-d' from "sandwich" and the '-t' from "croissant" simultaneously, they've actually stuck in a very neat and correct apostophe. I salute you, King of Burgers.

But I digress. The Croissan'Wich has many variations, like the McMomo and the McGriddlesss. The plain-jane Croissan'Wich is a trifling 32 grams of fat- just a bit over your daily recommended intake, so you might need to bulk it up with the double Croissan'Wich. The double Croissan'Wich, with ham and bacon or double sausage, your choice, has a staggering 51 grams of fat. The only higher-fat things on the menu are the BK Triple Stacker and Quad Stacker (54 and 68 grams of fat, respectively), and the Triple Whopper with Cheese (84 grams of fat. 84! 84!! 84!!! Christ in a bucket!!). I'm certain that's what the creepy King eats, though possibly his is people-flavored. I'm a big fan of the creepy King. The McGriddles is only 21 grams of fat, so you should really eat about forty of them in a sitting. Starbucks is actually slowly and quietly rolling out their own version of the McMuffin throughout the country, though I'm hoping their momos will at least be whole-wheat. Their normal breakfast selection leaves more than a little to be desired.

This kind of fatola is mind-boggling. It's not as though most of what's in those patties is meat, after all. Instead, much of the meat-like substitutes in those burgers and bacons and sausages are actually carrageenan, which is a red seaweed extract. Lest you go thinking this miracle gift from the sea is somehow as healthy for you as a sushi seaweed wrap, consider that carrageenans are also used in fire-fighting foam, shoe polish, and as a sexual lubricant that could very possibly inhibit the transfer of certain STDs between partners. Mmmmm. McHerpalicious.

Lastly- to get the imagined taste of carrageenen-filled muck out of my mind- as I was reading my big red gardening book on the porch yesterday (and admiring my fine container garden handiwork, which is now complete- including two blackberry bushes- the excitement!), I came across the most entertaining bit of information I've heard in a long time. I thought it was hysterical; Jason was less amused. You be the judge: Apparently the word 'avocado' comes from a Native American word, ahuacatl, meaning 'droopy testicle'.

I now dare you to ever eat an avocado again without thinking of that.

STEVE IRWIN CONTINUES to work miracles from beyond the grave. His father, Bob, has come out publically to praise his son for stopping him from commiting suicide: once, after his wife died in a car accident- Steve called his cell phone at a pivotal moment-- not to pick holes, but wouldn't you turn your cell phone off if you were really making away with yourself?-- and once after Steve's own death. Apparently, Irwin junior has been sending out healing vibes from beyond the grave. Funnily enough, the actor's many superhuman abilities were revealed only after his tragic demise (any conclusions drawn from this are slanderous, unsubstantiated, and completely correct).

Ciara is currently listening to Yeah Yeah Yeah by the Flaming Lips

LAST NIGHT, I dreamed about Barack Obama. I'm certain I'm not the only one out there doing this (including Mrs. Obama, Democrat nerds, and Barry himself). He and I were discussing campaign strategy just before his big speech in a high school gymnasium. I was helping by handing out small plastic pom-poms to the crowd (yellow for McCain supporters, green for Obama supporters, and none for Hilary; I had a very funny joke to tell people when they asked about this, but can't remember now what it was) and reminding him that John McCain probably wasn't going to show. Sadly, Obama had just missed an excellent women's ice hockey game played in the gym before his speech; luckily for us, the players fell through the ice and the ice then vanished, so there was little to do in the way of cleanup.

I don't know what the hell was up with the hockey- other than the fact that I've missed the entire NHL season this year, much to my dismay- but Obama is going to be here in Memphis today, potentially, at the Mason Temple. Today, you see, is April 3rd, 2008, forty years to the day after Martin Luther King's final speech in Memphis at the Temple ('I have been to the mountaintop!'), the day before he was assassinated not five blocks from where I now sit. McCain and Hilary are going to be here; they've already announced it, their people are downtown securing all kinds of perimeters. Obama, though, hasn't said anything at all. No confirmations. No denials. I suspect he is going to be here with bells on, not sitting in the audience like his plastic-fantastic competition, but up at the podium in the Mason Temple, giving a speech which almost certainly will contain the phrase, 'I have been to the mountaintop!'

Last night I had a long dinner with charming company, one of whom was my former stepmother. She highly recommended Obama's biography (written in 1995 and containing references to smoking dope, doing blow, and bangin' pussy) and outlined it in fascinating detail. The more I learned, the more I liked him, and I do hope he's downtown this evening getting Memphis voters all riled up about voting for him. It's a tough road; here in Tennessee, there's only the small Democratic pocket of Memphis versus The Rest Of The State. However, a large voter turnout in Memphis can- and has, notably during the Clinton elections- sway the whole pointy state away from the Republicans and into the loving embrace of democracy. We can only hope. Hope, and play ice hockey.

BECAUSE IT JUST would not stop raining this weekend, it was the right time to garden. Spring is in the air, and even getting my house hit by lightning wasn't going to slow me down from getting seedlings in dirt (it filled the bedroom with red light and fried the toaster- the lightning strike, that is, not the dirt).

Key to the planting extravaganza was the purchase of three windowboxes and one hanging planter, with more to follow next weekend. I invariably go for the moss windowboxes. These are living boxes made entirely out of moss and evergreen branches wound around a wire frame (not inserts like the ubiquitous brown coconut mats, which are themselves not bad but unlovely). They retain water very nicely, particularly if you keep the plastic shipping liner that comes with them and just poke drainage holes all through it. You can't see the plastic once it's all filled with dirt and drying out becomes much less severe. MiracleGro- not known for its planet-friendliness- now makes a decent organic potting compound at Home Depot, and as Home Depot resides in my backyard, I went with that instead of a make-your-own peat/sphagnum/blood-and-bone-meal blend. Normally I mix my own with those ingredients, but as that's a very messy proposition and the balcony is quite small I resisted. The moss boxes have an excellent color of soft green and pale brown which does much to recommend it to high-visibility locations. My hanging baskets are of the simple black frame and coconut insert variety, but at $4 a pop they have the inestimable bonus of being really, really cheap while looking quite charming.

My holy trinity of herbs was first to be planted: sage, basil, and thyme. A few lavender plants for the smell, and then a tentative foray into vegetables. Heirloom Kentucky Runner climbing beans went in with one zucchini, and one squash. All three are very prolific, budding and fruiting continually throughout the year, and all are climbers, which I thought would look nice as they start to spill over the balcony railing. With such limited space, high productivity with any veg is a must. Two or three small harvests a year is all I think they'll manage, but it's better than none.

Still to come are four more hanging baskets (one of strawberries, one of oregano, and two of part-shade rotating flowers), and two more windowboxes (one of herbs that can stand part shade- chives, parsley, and dill- and another of creepers or flowering vines). I'm deeply tempted to plant blackberries in the final windowbox on the short end of the balcony. These start out as pathetic, dry little bundles of sticks but shoot skyward with gratifying speed in April, fanning out to cover any trellised area. A string trellis on the short side of the balcony, facing the neighbors, would quickly become an excellent screen during the spring/summer/fall months if blackberries were planted beneath. Either way, there needs to be a climbing plant there to either frame or screen the opposing balcony entirely.

As you contemplate your own gardens, I can only caution you not to be deterred by the torrential spring rains. Getting wet isn't the least a problem, and if you fail to get your shoots in the ground this weekend or next, you will be, as the Brits say, for it.