Pool Table is available in the PDF format.

I asked her if she had any anxiety about what to wear, she said she did not. She then insisted I write down this poem; how could refuse?

You said "That looks a bit funny."

All I could see was smiling blue cerulean skies. Another vodka, barman!

Nirvana is never easy to each.

(I'd never heard the word "cerulean" and had to use my dictionary to discover it meant "sky-blue." This confused me; I always thought poets used "azure" as the preferred synonym for "blue.")

That's all she wrote, so I'll stop now too.

The man with the mammoth jowls looked secure in his bulk. Instead of having his head delicately tethered to his body, his noggin was floating on a soft fleshy bouncing pillow as he walked. Bouncy bouncy bouncy down the street.

Marcy frowned.

"No one knows. Actually, that's not true: millions of people know, but they're all infants. By the time they develop the ability to speak they've forgotten the seven secrets ... which is why they're still secret."

I asked the next obvious question: "so how does anyone know there are seven secrets, and, not, say, three or seventy-one?"

"Some Harvard professor did some experiments on his four kids back in the late 1950s. They all later went into business, so Harvard and most other universities subsequently banned research on live children."

This seems like quite a shame: doing experiments on children seems like one of the few reasons to bother with procreation.

I'm tempted to call him, or, more accurately, dial his old number. Although I'm sure the phone company has given the number to someone else, there's an infinitely small chance he might answer. He always liked to play practical jokes.

I was struck by the phrase "practical jokes." I wonder if there are impractical jokes? I suppose my proofreading may fall into that category.

And so it is that I can't resist the perverse urge to send out xmas cards on the eve of a day I loath. At least it's relatively quick and painless via email. And here's the card:

Lines for a Christmas Card

May all my enemies go to hell,
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

- Hilaire Belloc

I don't have any enemies, but I like it anyway. Thanks Hilaire!

First, don't go to a doctor: s/he'll just advise staying in bed and drinking lots of fluids. Second, stay in bed and drink lots of fluids.

Unfortunately, I can't take my own advice. Due to incompetent helliday planning, I'm out of beer, wine, whisky and whiskey ... every beverage that contains the essential germ-killing alcohol. And if I go out to hunt down medicinal drinks, I'll probably be out of bed for some time looking--probably in vain--for a liquor store that's open on xmas.

Bah fucking humbug.

He seemed rather upset, which I thought was strange: if the kid had his way he live on nothing but meat and sugar. I tried to cheer him up by telling him the biggest honor was saved for Rudolph: not only did Saint and Ms. Nicholas eat him personally, but the reindeer's nose sat atop an elaborate cake.

That only seemed to make things worse; he turned a disconcerting shade of crimson and ran to his mother. She later told me I could expect radioactive cinders in my stocking next year. So it goes; this isn't called the helliday season for nothing.

"It's been my experience that period instruments means periodically out of tune" I said skeptically.

"No, they really were good" rejoined Ian, "and I wasn't even stoned or drunk or anything."

I had to admit that was a petty good review.

I'm rather pleased with my notebook(s), "rather pleased" being the next step down from "complacently satisfied" on my emotional scale of personal aesthetic reward. So far so good.

The problem I have with this ongoing notebook project is its formulaic nature. And the problem I have with the problem of the "making art on a schedule" formula is that I probably wouldn't have done a third of what I've done had it not been for my self-imposed schedule. I would have spent even more time lost in more immediately rewarding forms of indolence and debauchery.

Despite the drawbacks of this project, I want to do another notebook next year, but what flavor? I suppose the ideal would be a freeform notebook, one that didn't follow a tight formula. For example, I might have one of the entries be an image without words, something I've yet to do. On the other hand (why is there always another hand?), if I don't give myself a fairly ambitious quota I doubt I'll exhibit very much ambition. ("Exhibiting Ambition"--that's a good name for a show.)

I seem to be going around in circles with all this (lack of) logic. I suppose I'll do what I do best and procrastinate and not worry about what to do the day after tomorrow until next year.