“Travel Pussy: Die Kunstliche Vagina” (the packaging on…well, I’m sure you can guess).
“The cake is a lie.” (graffiti)

The puzzler: Are there any countries that have both good beer and good pastry?

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1.) Nothing opens until 10 a.m.  What is this, San Pedro Sula?  Even Miami gets up earlier.  Hell, even Atlanta gets up earlier.

2.) The only place open for breakfast (excepting Starbucks, which doesn’t count.  I mean, they have Starbucks in fucking Pocatello at this point) was the Reading Terminal.  There I ordered a sage turkey-sausage  pretzel dog sold to me by a towheaded lass in an Amish snoodie.  A pretzel-dog that would have given me food poisoning had I not spat out the last two nauseous bites and then went to dry-heave in a toilet of the nastiest men’s room (truck stops included) this side of Cuzco, where they shit out in the open and don’t provide TP.  This, approximately 12 hours before boarding a transatlantic flight, when spending the duration doubled-over with stomach cramps (or worse, driving the tin-plate bus) is the kind of event that usually ends with an emergency landing in Gander, NF.  Fuck that noise.

3.) I was fraudulently sold a day-old New York Times at a Starbucks on South Street.  Yes, yes, buyer beware blah blah blah.  Stocking day-old newspapers does no-one any favors.

4.) Could find no copies anywhere of any work by Philly’s own E. Dibgy Baltzell.  Worse, when I asked at the independent bookstore where they stocked sociology, I was pointed toward political science.  When I repeated my request, I was referred to economics and philosophy.  I considered for precisely three seconds the possibility that the clerk was making an elaborate joke at my expense about the original disciplinary training of the three greats — Marx (economics), Weber (political economy) and Durkheim (philosophy) — then decided I had spent 2.9 seconds too long considering the question, and that the most likely explanation was that I was being served by an idiot.

5.) For a “foodie” town, the hot new “Peruvian/Chinese” place was, in fact, Ecuadorean and Vietnamese.  Which promised intriguing fusion, but actually delivered mediocre banh mi (pork belly and mayonaisse is simply too much, I’m sorry.  And how do you get cilantro to have no flavor whatsoever?).  To be fair, the soy-bean and mzithra salad was excellent, but it bore a more direct releationship to tossed fresh favas and feta than to anything produced in either South America or Southeast Asia.  There very well may have been awesome ceviche, but I was in no mood to tempt fate (see item #1).

6.) Finally, when you install a new exhibition at your art museum, try spackling the holes left in the wall from the last collection shown in that room.  For crying out loud, people.  At least make an effort.

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I have long been of the opinion that political letters are sort of like putting the toilet seat up when you’re taking a piss.  It doesn’t really make that much of a difference if you do it or not, but if no-one ever did it the whole place would become a cesspit in no time.

Wow.  That metaphor got out of hand quickly.  Let me try a different one:

Political letters are like the candles people light in the side-chapels of Catholic churches.  It pays for a small part of the upkeep of the edifice, puts out a little bit of illumination, and provides a fair bit of comfort for the faithful.  But only the sexton ever reads the prayer-cards, and the messages laid there never end up in the sermons except on the rarest of occasions.

Better, and mostly accurate, but pretty smarmy.  And probably kinda of patronizing as regards the personal power of prayer.

Me, I like to think of my political letters as kind of like the personals ads at the back of my alumni magazine: read, if at all, by a select few and only for their amusement value.  Certainly written on the assumption that the only people reading it are jaded beyond measure at the presumptively naive pose of the entire genre.

Recently I’ve taken to pushing the boundaries of what’s normally included in political letters by judiciously quoting scripture.   Or injudiciously, if you ask Da Partner.  This practice was not unusual in Texas, though giving a liberal spin to (say) the incident of the Samaritan woman at the well, or (say) a queer reading of the dialogue with the rich young ruler…those were probably not things the good US Senators from the Lone Star State were used to hearing.  Which lent a frisson of epater les Farisees, or somesuch, to the exercise.

But doing something like that here in California?  That’s…if anything a little edgier, a little crazier.  It’s not so much “ironic” as it is “out of context” and therefore probably shades into “kinda weird.”

Still and all, the reference to the prophet Daniel seemed entirely apposite to the particular situation in question.

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Conversation #1 (somewhere in the free state of Jefferson):
8-year old: Mommy, who’s that strange teenager?
Mommy: Oh, you’ve met RBL before, honey. It was last 4th of July, don’t you remember?

Conversation #2 (at the Clunie Pool):
10 year-old: Mister? Are you the swim teacher?
RBL: No, child. But you’ve just made an old man’s day.

See, now if this were sandwich-brigade girls saying these things, it’d be one thing. But out of the mouths of babes? I’m gonna go with I’ve probably hit my fighting weight.

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