And so it was that I thought I'd track down an old friend from high school. The Internet makes such a task much easier than it would have been a decade ago, although it's still difficult when someone has a common surname, and more difficult still when I can't remember whether that surname ended with "-en" or "-on."

I hadn't talked to this distant friend in at least a decade. That makes contacting someone all the more fun; I can begin the conversation by saying, "This is someone you haven't heard from since the '80s."

Anyway, I was looking forward to talking to my old friend; she's had a difficult life. In addition to the usual travails of trying to remain an artist, her father committed suicide many Thanksgivings ago.

I wondered how she was doing.

After trying a few wrong numbers, I finally reached an answering machine message that sounded promising. "Hello," it began; "you've reached ..." She gave her name, the right name in the right voice.

And then it all went wrong. She went on to give the name of her business, "Herbs and Energy Work."

What's the only thing that rhymes with sewage? New age.

Now I'm not one to disparage personal beliefs as long as they don't hurt anyone. At the same time, though, I'd rather not listen to an impassioned pitch about crystals and herbs and pyramidal energy. Or whatever.

I think I'll wait a few more years before I call her again.

And it still isn't.

It turns out that this alleged Kirin is, in fact, "BREWED UNDER THE STRICT SUPERVISION OF KIRIN'S BREWMASTER BY ANHEUSER-BUSCH, INC., LOS ANGELES, CA."

What a crock of sushi!

Kirin's brewmaster doesn't waste his time at a Los Angeles Budweiser factory. The only Kirin employees that visit that wretched plant are those who are being punished before they're fired. These miserable incompetents spend their LA days in a jet-lagged drunken stupor; their "strict supervision" consists mostly of trying to avoid vomiting in the vats of foul swill.

I really liked the line when I first heard it, but then I had second thoughts. The person who penned the quip was obviously an American.

And then I had third thoughts. Americans never voice a desire to be moral; that's an a priori assumption.

Surf, California Girl, surf, surf, surf!

Faster, faster, faster!

Go! Go! Go!

But wait ... California Girl knows exactly what she's doing! She aims the pointed tip of her surfboard right at the mammoth fish's snout and kills him instantly!

Splat! Pow! Curtains!

California Girl then sells the fresh fish to a canner; that's the first stop on his long trip to my bowl of rice. Yum yum yum!

Yum yum yum! I love you, California Girl!

After thinking about it for a few seconds, I told him that I couldn't imagine a useful tool that wasn't a feel-good tool. And, of course, vice-versa.

I feel good. Usually.

Here's what he does. Whenever anyone says anything--anything at all, he assumes a thoughtful expression, and then says, "Intriguing."

"I think I'll make some pasta for dinner."

"Intriguing."

"I heard a rumor that the Rainier brewery may be sold."

"Intriguing."

"Looks like it's going to rain."

"Intriguing."

"I asked mom to look into having a postnatal abortion. On you."

"Intriguing."

That's my brother: intriguing.

I bought some cheap pears. The low price suggested they weren't organic, a theory that seemed all the more probable when I noticed that one of the pears was rotting, curiously. The pear just grew bacteria, nothing else. Unlike organic fruit of my acquaintance, the miserable pear didn't erupt in a fountain of fruit flies. All I got for my pennies was a pleasing explosion of some sort of bacteria.

You don't always get what you pay for, but you always pay for what you get. Nevertheless, the part of the pear that wasn't rotten was quite tasty.