That’s not true.

I never liked you, and always will.

“How did they come up with that?” I asked.

“Stoned rats ate more than usual, and in unfamiliar settings,” Roger replied.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Are you telling me that marijuana serves as an appetite stimulant?”

“That’s what the scientists say,” agreed Roger.

“That’s amazing,” I exclaimed, “one small leap for science, one giant step for potheads.”

“I knew it all along,” Roger said. “I’m always finding myself gorging in weird little restaurants after smoking marijuana.”

More proof, as if any was needed, that marijuana makes you smarter.

I was walking down Stockton Street when I saw an irritating display in the window of Apple’s retail store. Apple displayed their current line of portable computers on an illuminated shelf with an arrogant boast silkscreened on it, “The only books you’ll need.” To emphasize the point, the computers were displayed between photographs of hundreds of obsolete books. In Apple’s brave new world, PowerBooks are the only three-dimensional books.

This pompous pronouncement irked me for two reasons. First, there’s the obvious irritation when some computer peddlers declare centuries of books to be archaic. What really maddened me, though, was the fact that I spend an average of six or eight hours a day using my PowerBook, and haven’t read an entire book in years.

I suppose I’m just another contemporary cretin like the Apple hucksters.

I know minimal brick sculptures are almost a hackneyed cliché, but I always did have a soft spot in my head for clichés.

In theory, the cans of sophisticated adult beverage in the sink were the same temperature as if I’d stored them in the refrigerator. In practice, however, drinking icy Rainier Ale from the bathroom sink proved to be even more efficacious than usual. And so it was that I found myself composing a seventeen-syllable dispatch to Dr. Collier.

Ale and ice in sink
Thinking warmly of Richard
This ain't a haiku

I know I’ll be embarrassed by my lack of judgment when I read this later, but good judgment is wildly overrated.

I first became aware of just how callous the weasel from Texas was when I worked with a human rights group a few years ago and discovered that DeLay had his fat greasy fingers in the human trafficking business. His clandestine arrangement with the traffickers was too complicated to go into here, but suffice it to say I wouldn’t contradict anyone who called DeLay a slaver.

At least I’ll give him credit for taking pride in his chicanery; I may never see another mug shot with the grin of a successful criminal. Although he’ll probably bribe, bully, and buy himself out of the latest charge as he has with the myriad ones before it, I can still dream of seeing him sentenced to hard labor on the Marianas, working beside all the people he helped traffic there.

“Doesn’t sound healthy,” I said.

“You don’t know anything about love, do you?” Raphael asked.

“I’m familiar with incarceration, beer, and love,” I replied, “it’s just that I think we enjoy different perspectives on all three.”

“Whatever,” Raphael mumbled, “time for another pint?”

“Yes, please,” I confirmed. “And by the way, forget what I said about having different perspectives on beer.”

We went on to have a generally agreeable evening.