And that's whk todak's notes are safe but mostlk illegible. I think this alpha25-to-k compliance malarkek is just that. Tomorrow, I go back to living foolishlk, a polick that's alwaks served me verk well.

Unfortunately, I've run into a couple of daunting technical problems. First, the standard forty-three kilogram cannonball makes a huge crater every time it lands. It's no fun playing a game where every shot is a hole in one. And then there's putting. I've tried a number of different designs, but developing a cannon that's accurate at a distance from three meters is proving to be a formidable engineering problem.

I keep asking myself what Berthold Schwarz, the German monk credited with inventing the cannon in the fourteenth century, would do if faced with these challenges. "Drink more beer" is the only plausible answer.

Prosit!

And then David Sedaris explained everything in a single sentence. "That's the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent."

A Dutch court overruled the ban, and de Nijs is again airborne. Birds have to sing; pilots have to fly. Or maybe the reverse.

Whew!

"Sounds like a waste of money to me," I opined.

"I don't think so," said Fran. "We listened to some crap music when we were young, too. With any luck he'll learn a bit about marketing. You've got to admit parricide and teenage angst is a great combination."

I dreamt I was in a Miami apartment visiting Beethoven and an old woman. Beethoven looked pretty good; he was trim, tanned, and surprisingly handsome in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and plastic sandals.

"Herr Beethoven," I said, "Every time I play one of your symphonies I feel like I'm riding a mammoth at full gallop down a steep mountain. The mammoth is drunk, but it never stumbles."

I waited for a reply, but Beethoven didn't say anything. I couldn't tell if he was amused, confused, bemused, or all three.

"Herr Rinehart," said the old woman in a thick German accent, "Herr Beethoven is--how do you say?--deaf as a door mat."

"People usually say 'deaf as a doorknob,' but I understand what you're saying," I replied.

"Mit schlag!" exclaimed Beethoven, laughing.

I don't know what all the hubbub's about. I've gone far longer than a week without doing anything.

I've taken full advantage of my artistic license to describe photographs of a sleeping infant, an invisible person in a sleeping bag, a kitten, and two statues, as "portraits." Although the liberal terms of my artistic license allow me to claim I've kept my resolution, I know I'm cheating.

My failure was particularly obvious today, the last day of the eleventh interval. To fulfill my self-assignment, I photographed a statue in the park with a telephoto lens. I don't even know name of the stone person in the photograph; the park was closed and fenced for "refurbishment." Maybe I'll find out later, maybe I won't.

The only thing I know with any certainly tonight is that my problems with portraiture seem to be increasing.