"Speculation is a round game; the players see little or nothing of their cards at first starting; gains may be great--and so may losses. The run of luck went against Mr Nickleby. A mania prevailed, a bubble burst, four stock-brokers took villa residences at Florence, four hundred nobodies were ruined, and among them Mr Nickleby."
- still from Nicholas Nickleby, still 1838
This is just to say
I will not be moving
the plums
that are in
my icebox downtown
to an icebox on Capitol Hill
It’s just too inconvenient
and I think my apartment
will feel more spacious
after I’ve cleaned it
and put three hundred old issues
of The New Yorker
in the recycling bin
"In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all those minute and intricate calculations of odd days, which nobody who as ever worked sums in simple-interest can fail to have found most embarrassing, by establishing the one general rule that all sums of principal and interest should be paid on pocket-money day, that is to say, on Saturday; and that whether a loan were contracted on the Monday or on the Friday, the amount of interest should be in both cases the same. Indeed, he argued, and with great show of reason, that it ought to be rather more for one day than for five, inasmuch as the borrower might in the former case be very fairly presumed to be in great extremity, otherwise he would not borrow at all with such odds against him."
- from Nicholas Nickleby, 1838
There’s a small pack of businessmen out on the street, gray suits huddled under black umbrella mushrooms (or are those mushroom umbrellas?).
Except one - the umbrella is a bright pink and green and yellow and blue Impressionist (I really should go get contacts) blur. On closer inspection it's printed with blown roses on a blue background.
(I love March.)
At the spa with K.
K: Did you notice the guy at the reception desk?ME: Uh huh. He’s not really my type, though.
K: But he’s a type.
ME: Oh yes, he’s definitely somebody’s type.
The release of Spartan reminds me of a phone interview I had once upon a time with a guy who wanted me to direct his play:
ME: So which playwrights do you like?HIM: Oh, I really like David Mamay.
ME: You mean David Mamet?
HIM: No, I think it’s Mamay.
ME: What’s your favorite play of his?
HIM: Oleanna.
ME: Uh huh.
Dude, at least pick Glengarry Glen Ross.
Excuse me, but where is the basking? There's no basking here - no basking in the sun, no basking in glory, no basking in a glow of any kind.
I was told there would be basking, dammit.
Via E, via skippy dot net, the Kerry campaign blog and the Bush campaign blog, side by side. Pretty damn slick.
- Excuse me, ma’am, do you have a knife in your purse?
- Oh, yeah...but it’s just a little one.
It’s actually a two-inch folding pen knife, which I acquired when it came inside a Christmas cracker, of all things. I just dropped it into my bag back then, and I must have taken it on five airplanes by now - I forgot I even had it, and no one at the TSA ever reminded me. But apparently I will not be taking it into the cute little post office in the Federal Building in downtown Seattle, no sirree.
On Saturday KR hosted another of her fabulous Junk Poker Nights. The theory of Junk Poker is simple - you bring a big pile of junk, ante up, and play to lose. In practice, there’s always some odd little thing in the pot that you want to take home, even at the risk of winning more garbage. The key is to win early, and then spend the rest of the night breaking up pairs and preventing flushes and straights until somebody else is stuck with all your rejected winnings.
I arrived with around two dozen items, among them:
At various points in the evening I had in my possession:
In the end I left with:
And it all fit in one bag: Junk Poker victory.
I’m supposed to meet S at the Wildrose, and when I can’t find her after a circuit I start checking the empty seats, since I just talked to her on the phone and I know she’s on the premises. I spot a chair with a denim jacket hanging on it, and on the back of the jacket I see this image. I've never seen it on S before, but I have a hunch so I ask the woman across from the empty chair if S was sitting there recently.
S has a damn fine jacket.
Granted I have the music turned up a little high, but it still seems strange that I can’t tell if that sound is a regular siren, a hand-cranked air raid siren, a baying hound, or if it’s just how ringing in my ears manifests itself these days.
Cough. Sniffle.
It's obvious that the masseuse is angling for a more generous tip when the first thing she says to me is, "I just have to ask – your form says you’re 32, but you made that up, right? You look 22."
Oh, honey, please. I don't look 22, and I don't look like a sucker.
I look 28.6, unless my prematurely gray roots have grown out, in which case I look 37.2.