And so it was that I came up with an interpretive sign to encourage museum visitors to interact with the poor museum administraitors trapped in their windowless cubicles. Here’s the text:

Can you spot the mistakes?

Seven of the Works of Art in this gallery contain at least one mistake.

Identify them to the museum director, then claim your free prize!

And should anyone reading this claim their free prize, please don’t mention my name. As a generous philanthropist, I need no laurels. Just putting a smile on a beleaguered museum director’s face is more than enough remuneration for me.

It turns out that Lauren’s one of the nineteen people who read this notebook, and so she knows about almost everything of interest I’ve done or imagined in the last few months. Since I had nothing to say, I was able to enjoy the pleasures of listening attentively.

We enjoyed a quiet evening.

At the moment, I’m inspired by Ernest Rutherford, the scientist who rallied his colleagues with the famous observation, “We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think.” That was the inspiration to cover the characters “Smo” on all the English “No Smoking” signs in order to change them to “No king” signs.

Pretty clever, eh?

It seemed like a great idea, but my field lieutenants report that there aren’t any “No Smoking” signs in England. I guess my opponent Chuck is willing to sentence a sizable percentage of the electorate to death by cancer in order to win what promises to be a very ugly election.

And that’s how I happened to hear a music critic’s analysis of the Dead Boys’ recording, Young, Loud, and Snotty. I failed to note the critic’s name, but I do remember that he mentioned that a liter of mucous a day slides down the back of a human throat. I suppose slimy people have even more, but still that’s an amazing statistic.

A liter a day works out to around ten milliliters—the average volume a human male ejaculates—every fifteen minutes.

I’m going to put away my computer and calculator now; too much musing on bodily fluids can’t be beneficial.

The host cheerfully explained the setup. One aluminum envelope contained chunks of sea salt; the other foil wrapper was full of peppercorns. The host told the other guests and me to put the salt on the mirror and chop it up into a fine powder with the razor blade. He also instructed us to grind the peppercorns with the mortar and pestle.

I thought the drug schtick was pretty stupid, especially since the cooks oversalted the food in the kitchen. Although it’s been argued that Eric Clapton never sounded better than when he had a bottle in his mouth and a needle in his arm, I still think junkie chic is more pointless and insidious than most fashions.

It’s like A.D. Coleman said: “Marx was off by one count in his famous formulation. History repeats itself not twice but thrice: first as tragedy, second as farce, lastly as fashion.”

“Nigel, you’re walking really weird,” I noted. “Why’s that?”

“Piles,” Nigel replied tersely.

“What are piles?” I asked naïvely.

“They’re bloody hemorrhoids, aren’t they?” Nigel answered.

“Why are hemorrhoids called piles?” I responded with genuine ignorance.

“Because no one can spell bloody haemorrhoids, can they?” Nigel shot back.

Londoners certainly are a cheerless lot.