Yes, the local Janus Museum of Reversible Art has just hired a new Director, a Mr. Barak 'H' Kandinsky (no relation) Born in Guam, his family moved to Poland for a term, where, to quote him "I learned to do things backwards and forwards."
So far I wish him all the best, even though I'm torn between my real affection for my friend Traci's inspired oddball 'tropic art, and my hope that Edna, who's worked there under several administrations, will keep her job.
Edna tells me that 'BHK' started out running, in both directions, on Day One. I suppose it's to
be expected that he hang that minimalist Suleman, both of them having ties to Egypt.
Anyway, one of his first requests, I hear, was:
"We need more of that 'LACONIC  ART w/ TARRIF SULEMAN', EDNA, OH... 'CAN' YON 'TROPIC ART: TRACI PORTNOY: NACHO AND ENAMEL/US: 'FIR-RAT W/TRACI, NO-CAL'.
"La'Allah, What was Bushinsky thinking!?" he added, to himself.
Edna had no choice, and Traci was dutifully canned. So it goes in a democracy.

     Well, I probably shouldn't have taught my cat to swim. At least not in the big old claw-foot tub. She looks at those  cast-iron legs and who knows, goes all primal inside.
But actually she was doing pretty good. Back float, doggie-paddle, the standard beginner's routines.
    It's just that when she gets soap in her eyes she goes nuts. Goes all 'earth-moving mode' on me. You've probably seen something like it, when a cat is digging. All four paws flailing, chucking ground in reverse. But in the tub this trick just makes waves. Awful waves, scary even. Tidal waves. And then I get soap in my eyes. What to do?
As usual I lift mine eyes unto the Net, from whence cometh my help. Specifically, the forums on 'Help 4 Tabby' (h-tab.com) Moderated by the ever-supportive 'Yugoguy', whoever he is in real life.
I posted my question discretely, hoping to downplay the mental health issue in all of this. Just asked whether he'd heard of cats making tidal waves in bathtubs, and what to mebbe do about it.
The Reply, titled as is this post, was a breath of calm over troubled waters. The Vet actually congratulated me on my achievement(!) "Super, just super." he wrote. "That's not something just anybody could...(or would) do, but all I can say is 'You go, guy! Naturally the problem you seem to be having is not one we see here daily, and yes, frankly, one or more loose screws in the cranium may need a bit of attention, but overall, I do thank you for your query. Try to see the tub as half-empty instead of half full (or more). Perhaps this will help. As always, Yugoguy."

So there you have it. I wrote my new mantra on the mirror in the bath, just so I don't ever forget:
IMA NUTS, BUT H-TAB SAYS 'SUPER!'

---

Wu: 'One or more loose screws'? He's a half a box too kind.
Me: 'More' could include 'all of them'. I know?
Wu: Meanwhile, serious Xangans are posting on the elections, life on Mars, the disease called 'Iran', uploading pictures of homecomings, smiling kids from sea to shining sea, and you're drowning cats?
Me: No, Wu, I'm teaching 'em valuable skills which could save their 9 lives some day. Plus the bath-tub's full around the clock these days, ready for the War with Achmi-blow-job, however long it lasts, depending on who's elected in the States, plus-minus help from Martians, should they exist, or Beth's army of Precious-Ones. So I'm very much on-topic, smarty-pants.
Wu: Hold still, JS, while I try this screwdriver. And check the spelling of 'NUTS' while you're at it.

    Lots of quiet questions arose when my best friend breathlessly showed me two innocent pictures he took of the stairway I built, (to show to his aging father), and they turned out to have a visage of a white ghost-dancer superimposed on the image. I was in shock, asked him for these copies, then thought long and hard.
It took ten minutes to discover that cell-phone apps are available which add ghosts to pix, but a search of Google images didn't find 'my' ghost-ess. I also read up extensively on hoax-detection methods, enlarged the photos to discover that the main photo pixellates long before the ghost, and pretty much decided that he was simply playing a trick.
I called him up and said 'Nice app, Danny'. He insisted that he had no idea what I meant. Further in the conversation he swore on any sacred book worth reading that the pix were absolutely un-retouched. I let it go at that.
And so I turn to the sleuths here at Xanga, as usual, for salvation.
Yes, the pictures were taken on the very calender date when a dear girl taken away. And yes, I fell while working on the ceiling right above those stairs, and almost died myself. Are
these factoids relevant?
I tend to believe that if ghosts and after-life wanderings were real, we'd all kinda know and accept it, as there would have been concrete indisputable evidence built up in 10,000 years of humans. Just like we don't doubt that fruit flies exist.
All in all, I do want to believe in this girl. She's got a beautiful style, great taste in apparel, and seems to have had a message for me. Am I too skeptically dense to accept it?

       Hi all !  I'd have oodles to say on all kinds of pressing world affairs issues if I weren't so upset over this movie thing.
       I screen tested, and got the nod for a pulp film called Stars and Stripes Going At It. I'd only read enough of the screen-play to figure out what to accentuate for the audition. Seemed like a character I could do, kinda Johnny Weismuller meets Jack Nicholson. Something about a middle aged couple having a fling in East Africa. And my love-interest played by a hot Latin beauty, a real-life successful Central American fashion designer turned actress. I met her at the studio with the director and it felt like chemistry from the first beaker. A real Bunsen Burner, that girl.
     So flash forward to yesterday morning, with emails already discussing on-location logistics... and me finally discovering the scene on Page 393(!)
Now you gotta understand that I really needed this job. Feels like I been out of work since Gone with the freaking Wind.
And add to that my RL experiences with animals, animal husbandry, stuff like that there. A perfect fit... if it were a perfect film.
But it's not, and I'm out.
Sad, but it's probably for the best. I emailed the Director with the bad news. He replied within minutes; One word: "WHY?"
So I had to tell him:
"Page 393, duh! Please tell my CO-STAR I CAN'T RAPE ZEBRAS wearing her COSTA-RICAN TRAPEZE BRAS."
Haven't heard anything since. They'll find somebody else, I'm sure. But it's just a matter of time until that sucker puts the letters together. Whew, at least my reputation is intact.

---

---

Flash news!
In real, non-fictional life, I just an hour ago found a diamond/gold ring in a burglar's cast-off tool kit out in my woods. Complete with fingerprint-less black silk gloves, flashlights, batteries, lock-picking tools, a half a pack of year-old Marlboros, and a wad of Hong Kong dollars.
   This explains my night in Hell last New Year's Eve with two helicopters and a dozen cops traipsing all over my property and me crouching under the bed or peering through the key-hole in the dark.
I feel a sort of closure, since that terrifying five hours seemed to have started a string of bad luck till this very day.
We shall see what the ring is worth. Enough for a trapeze-bra, mebbe. Not for me, for a zebra friend of mine...

     My next-door neighbor, gruff as usual, wet-blanketed my excitement with a spiritless "No, and you don't have to say it three times, I heard you."
He'd left his garage door up, in a moment of reckless abandon, and was dicking with what I'd always assumed was a chest freezer. A quick glance inside revealed a mini-world far from the frozen steaks I'd thought of; a floor of snow, mazes, ferris wheels, little faux-alpine houses.
And mice....
"They're Nepalese Snow-blinds. if you have to know." Ian decided to share some small secret, for whatever reason.
    With the lid propped open just a tad, a cast-off sandal, Ian was smoothing the snow on the floor of the freezer. The three shaggy White Nepalese looked for all the world like miniature yaks, and I had to supress a yuk, but what quickly caught my eye was the other mice, some a yellow-buff colour, and some, standard 'mousey' grey, huddling lethargically in one corner.
"This is your job, right?" 
I'd known that Ian worked for some Institute.
"A job's something they pay you to do, no?" Ian muttered distractedly. "Ok, maybe after I publish the paper they'll give me a couple 'Atta-Boys'."
I'd had time meanwhile to get a better grasp of the project; first of all:  three whites, albeit with a grey stripe on the side of their heads, which made them look like they were holding their noses aloft.
"Them are the Nepalese, right?" I asked Ian.
"Yeah, Snow-blinds." he told me, warming up a bit.
"Funny, I always thought it was 'snob-lined'." I admitted. (Hey, who died and made me a mouse-expert?)
"And the others?"
"Well, in addition, there are, as you can see, three 'blonde' mice. They do OK in the cold, oddly enough."
"And the other three dead-beats there in the corner?" I asked Ian, but I kinda knew the answer.
"Three bland mice, to put it nicely." he said.
My next question was...
"Your next question is probably, you know, WTF are you working on?" Ian sounded like he was ready to tell all.
"OK, WTF?"
"Well, I'm doing the maze twice a day, time-trials, blind vs. blonde vs. bland. Recording data. That's what we do."
"Doesn't a peer-reviewed study require double-blind?" I asked him, maybe still a bit miffed about his initial attitude.
"You have any idea how hard it is to find blind vet-techs these days? I mean twenty years ago they were lined up to the end of the block. Stories of candidates who actually blinded themselves to get a job. Nowadays you're lucky to find someone remotely qualified who even wears glasses."
"I'll just have to fudge the article a little, I guess." Ian revealed, looking out the door carefully. The exigencies of publish-or-perish.
"Better close the lid, the snow might melt." I told him, feeling helpful.
"No problem, I got more, back there in the other freezer. Saved it from last winter, you remember that storm?"
"Well, you could always buy more.. from somewhere?" I suggested, thinking of, you know, year-round ski-slopes.
"Are you kidding? My snow-mice know my snow!" Ian sounded almost fatherly.
"And now who's repeating himself?" I laughed. "I heard you the first time. And good luck with your vowels... I mean, your mice."

      No, not for 'J-S'; 'JOS' puts me in the middle of fighting inNigeria, and 'JUS', not much better- a faux French restaurant.
No, this purchase was necessitated by the relative 'nada-less-ness' of this week's Box-O-Letterz.

Every Sunday I go to the Post Office to pick up my 'catch-of-the-week'. $19.95 on the credit card for a six month deal.
And it started out fine: Always four(4) letters, and always a vowel or even two.
Like S-T-A-R, my first package. I was so excited. Spent the week watching rasta rats star in
various tars. Serves 'em right for the bubonic plague, you know.
    But this week something happened. Who knows, mebbe even the credit card's fault, but the box rattled, and inside were just two (2) measely scrabble-piece squares, a 'C' and a 'D'.
Putting the best face on it, I loaded the car with my guitar, some cassettes of old song ideas,
and of course a bit of Columbia (MD) Marching Powder, and headed south on I-83, thence (I planned) to I-95 and the studio I'd use to record CDs in DC. Hell, what else could I do, in the situation?
Well, maybe remember to fill the gas tank. I was barely over the Mason-Dixson line before I had to admit that ignoring the red 'tank empty' light was bravado in principle but stupido in practice.
I weighed my options like anyone with a net worth in the low four figures ($23.87). Ten bucks
would get me back home, with god's help. That was one choice. The other was to blow the whole bankroll on gas and cruise on to D.C, in neutral I figured. It sure looks like downhill on a map anyway. But the little store behind the Gas 'N Go caught my eye... and the rest will shortly be history.
'T&L the Lettermen', the sign had once read, I'll assume. But it looked like the place was in
business, so I cautiously opened the screeching door.
"Hi there, I'm Louise, what can I do you for?" said a perky woman behind the counter, with enough of a Maryland accent to let you feel that rush of 'South of the Border'.
"Um, I'd like to buy a vowel, I guess." I ventured, not really knowing what a joint like this
actually sold.
"That'd be Thelma in Aisle Nine, honey." she replied sweetly. I was kinda busy parsing her
cleavage and more mysteriously, pondering how a 400 square-foot store could possible have nine(9) aisles.
"Yup, vowels, back here in 'Facetious'." Thelma called out. "Got 'em all. In alphabetic order!" she added proudly. I had the strong feeling like I might just have been her first customer for the week... or year, and vowed to make it worthwhile.
"OMG, seriously?!" I fairly shouted, doing my kid in a candy-store thing, and why not?
"Yup, seriously. Even got that new AE combo on sale. Probably heard about it. You know, Aesop's Fables, the aether, stuff like that there."
Thelma's exuberance broke my heart. Hell, I would have bought a Mix 'N Match 'XQYZ' Valu-Pak from her, just to see her smile.
"An 'O', I think, that's all I need today, for now, this time." I said, careful to imply repeat
customer-ness.
"Just an 'O'?" she asked, luckily without the plaintive tone which would have started me crying in public.
"Yeah, I got a 'C' and a 'D' this morning." I explained, or tried to.
"Shoulda studied harder, boy." Thelma kidded me, "What grade you in?"
"Well, I'm 63, so I guess that'd be 57th Grade. No, I get the letters in a box each week. Signed up for it on-line."
"Yes we heard about that. They're blowing us out of the water on consonants," Thelma confided, "but now vowels; we're competitive. Sure you don't want the Five-Pak?"

"Thelma, between what I want and what I can afford is a significant ellipsis." I told her, moving a bit closer to her literary charms.
"Ok then, next time, hon." Again with the 'hon'. I ♥ Maryland.
"A shame you got a D&C. guy. Can't even use it. Course with this 'O' here you can go to a DOC... for, you know, men's problems." Thelma's banter was  oddly tiltilating.
"No problems I know of, other than an out-sized appetite." I told her, somewhere along the line.
"Well then, make COD. Fried is nice, I heard."
"Right you are, Thelma, and that's the main reason I need the 'O'. So, first the 'COD', then off to the DOC." I laughed at my own cooking prowess.
"Or the Doctor first?"
"Nope, it's gotta be alphabetical. In the right order. Otherwise I kinda flip out."
"Yeah, OCD, I heard of that."
Thelma was growing on me rapidly. But I had miles to travel:
"So yeah, an 'O'. Only ten bucks?" I asked her.
"Seven fifty with my discount." she whispered as we walked up to Louise at checkout, who gave her some indecipherable private look. Apparently girls talk. When they're not busy selling vowels. I thanked them both, got into my old T-bird and placed the 'O' lovingly in the letter-box with the 'C' and 'D'. An oddly compelling smell of fish and rubbing alcohol exuded from the box within seconds, and mixed with the smell of the gas pumps before I drove back to the interstate, wondering what gaps, real or imagined I might receive in next week's letter package. Hell, even if they sent me the whole damn alphabet, Thelma wouldn't need to know, right?

     Mebbe it was  the lawn chairs I set out for passers-by to use while waiting their turn to see the stupendous event which caught his eye. I was set up with the binoculars there on a grassy knoll near the street. Six AM, waiting for 'Here Comes the Sun' in order to see in person an astronomical event which even my grand-kids' kids will be lucky to live to witness. Anyway, the minute I saw him I knew I was in for a treat.
We'd met one night, on a family camping trip to the Vineyard; I snuck out of the tent and hiked the couple miles to the compound at Hyanisport. Him and Bobby and Shriver on the lawn. Even let me get my hands on the ball once or twice. Out of mercy, but who's counting.
So Jack just had to ask "You don't miss historic moments, do you Johnny?"
"Not if I still have a pulse." I adjusted the makeshift observation system on the stepladder.
'It's a rare conjunction."
"Yeah, like mine in Dallas. You remember where you were that day?"
"Of course, Jack. The bus driver turned on the radio. Then later it was on TV. I felt so helpless. All I could do was watch."
"Don't feel bad guy. It meant a lot to me just knowing you were a witness. And isn't that kinda like today, with Venus? I mean, they're partying down there. Midnight, Venus time, the Earth hanging directly overhead in the sky, turning slowly. And every sentient being with a truly human heart focused on Earth's twin, at least once a century."
"A nice way to look at it, Mr President. I had wondered a bit what the hell the transit oughta do for me, I mean, it's just six hours of a spot crossing the sun.."
"Ask not: what can the Transit do for you..." he started, that Boston accent giving me the same chill as it did 50 years ago.
"So, what can we say to the revelers on Venus?" I asked, lining up the binoculars for a photo-op.
"Oh, I dunno, mebbe 'Ich bin ein Venetian!" Jack quipped, and eased over toward the Bosch & Lomb eyepieces. I tackled him at the last minute.
"Jeezuz, you'll kill your eyes if you look at it directly, you'll be a Venetian Blind, you dumbie! No, we project the image onto this white card, and take a picture. Here, the camera's ready."
"That's a camera?" He didn't like the looks of my antique Pentax.
"Yeah, it's a dinosaur, but it works, and so..
"Personally, I like the Zapruder XJ-99." Jack opined. I'd never heard of it.
     So anyway, we did get this shot. Definitely not NASA standards. But at least it was first-person, no on-line intermediary. Momentos, I guess I should call 'em.
"Nowadays anything can be faked. Who's that guy, did that movie about you?" I asked him.
"Forget it, he's not worth a crater on Venus." Jack looked at his Rolex and shook my hand.
"It's been fun, Sol, and glad to see you're still with us."

"The same to you, Prez"

       Yeah, what they won't think of. I've been toying with the thing for 12 hours here, and thought to file a first-impressions Xanga report. Enjoy.

---

Bottom-line: A worthy novelty-market offering, I suppose.

---

Ok, having put the bottom line at the top, I have no further duty to respect format, and so I'll just discuss Pluses and Minuses as I see fit, and sue me.
     I had the Unit delivered last night. I was already in bed, but I do remember hearing engine noises, probably the crane. I'd asked 'Bruno', the fellow I bought it from on E-Bay, to put it somewhere near the house, like on the lawn, but this morning I saw the thing, all shiny, out there on the side of the street. Damn. It must weigh a ton. Literally, 2200 pounds. Oh well. One of the pictures in the Korean-language manual (the back half of it, which is all Bruno still had) shows a guy with his out in the middle of a street(!). I tried to push mine, to no avail. It does come with wheels for maneuverability, I'm guessing, but the lever in the Listening Booth, when you slide it to 'P' (obviously stands for 'Push' or 'Pull') kinda locks the wheels. So put 'Lack of Portability' in the Deficit column.
On the plus side, the sound is superb, state of the art for a 45 watt system with 4 speakers. The listening compartment is quiet and well padded, with two seats front and 2 more rear, I guess for parties. Says it has 'Air Bags', whatever that is. I guess if you get short of breath from the high-fidelity tunes. There's even a big wheel in the front of the cabin, but so far it doesn't seem to pan the audio at all. I may have to use Google translate.
Veracity: I must admit the likeness to a motor vehicle is un-canny. All they left out, obviously, is the un-necessary (?) clutch pedal and a gear-shift lever. In its place is the aforementioned slider. It's labeled with letters, 'N', 'R', and '1-2-3', whatever they mean. My current theory is 'Nothing',  like with the Chinese sweat-shirts we see here with gibberish printed in English on the front.
Battery- life: No problem there, although it did take me a while to figure how to get to the compartment. Turns out there's a lever up in the front, duh. I pulled it finally and the front hatch opened. Lots of guts in there, in addition to a rugged 12 Volt 'battery to die-hard for'. Rated at like 100 Amps. What the rest of the stuff does is maybe in the book, although I suspect some of it is proprietary.

---

So there ya go. Oh price?
I paid about $2000 bucks for the thing, delivered. Yeah, you may be saying 'that's a lot for a lousy CD-Player', but Bruno assured me that I can always sell it for about that, if I find the right victim. And as long as I don't put too many miles on it. No problem there, I can't push it even ten feet, unless he means miles on the rotating CD Drive. Lots of stuff I don't know yet. Like even the name. The Hebrew Proof-of Purchase card says like 'Die Wu: New Birah'. When ya sound it out. Or 'Nu... Birah!' which is what you say here to a bartender who forgot to pour your Goldstar draft, so busy gawking at your girlfriend.
Speaking of romance, I do need to spill the news of this purchase to my Significant Digit; I can already hear her bitching: 'You paid too much, as usual, you sucker!'. So that's kinna why I decided to lay out  the situation in a Review. And on the whole, yeah, it's a nifty enough gadget for the money. Just wish it were a little closer to the house. JS/ Tel Aviv

     I grew up in the shadow of a THREAT. Thirty-foot high letters, built out of cypress 5 X 12's and bone-white like 'HOLLYWOOD', 'THREAT' was the only word left standing after the Sale. Put there supposedly for keeps, the thing dominated the landscape, up there at the treeline above the upper pasture. Some half-nuts millionaire in the early 50s had bought the strip of land and paid for the thing. No one could bitch about it...in public. The complete 'installation' said: 'STOP THE RED THREAT'. I remember sounding it out as soon as I'd mastered 'See Dick Run'.. my letters had colors already way back then, and the 'green'ish 'E' in the word 'RED' just felt so...well... dum.

---

But this was A-bomb Times. H-bombs, whatever it took. The other side had 'em too. Which explained the Civil Defense tests, the practice-hiding under the little wood desks in the one-room school, heads between our legs. Debbie Levitz was sure she could thereby survive an A-bomb or two, but the 'H'?

---

A screaming comes across the sky. No not a missile, just a flash-forward in the story. Sorry.
     Ok, a bunch of just-plain folks sworn to secrecy developed a plan to deal with it. No, not the Bomb, the Big Sign. They hadn't learned to stop worrying and love the pesky Thunder of Armageddon, no, they just didn't want to have to think about it nineteen times a day. So one wise guy who my Dad knew found a 'fellow-traveler' who owned a Bar & Grille called The Red Spot up in Campbeltown somewhere, and convinced him, with quiet contributions from us all, to buy the sign, and give it new life re-arranged as 'THE RED SPOT'. Nifty, huh?
Ross MacArthur, the wing-nut who'd put the sign up, had a sudden conversion upon seeing the greenbacks, and agreed! All was well.
Well, except for the 'THREAT'. Sure, the tavern-guy coulda made 'EAT' out of it but then he'd need an AT, right? For 'EAT AT...' And try making 'em from a 'THR'.
So anyway, the 'THREAT' stayed. We all got used to it I guess. Could be anything; alfalfa weevil, a downpour just after you'd raked the hay, gas buildup in the silo. Stuff happens, we were used to that. Least it wasn't radioactive.

---

Another flash cuts the sky: Forward to fourth grade. Me 'n Debby going steady, as it were, played after school up there by the letters. Hide and seek. Skinny as a string of spit, I'd be found standing behind the 'T', mostly, and she, on her turns, usually lying flat (supine?) behind the foot of the 'E' in the brush. Hell there weren't a lot of choices. And maybe it was the supine, but one day I told her, all Bogart-at-nine-and-a-half,
"Someday, honey, we gonna get the 'H' outta heah."
"You mean the Farmall 'H'?" she asked, dodging the innuendo.
I looked skyward ominously. Seemed like a thing guys did in the movies. Debbie was a quick learn:
"Oh, that 'H', the bomb." she offered.
But I couldn't just let her win.
"No, the damn Letter, duh. You dense or what?"
She couldn't just let me win.
"Sure, that's what I thought you meant, kid. Then it'd be 'T-REAT', right?"
I drew a blank. (no air-quotes in those days). I did get it though, but not before a certain look of pity crossed her face.
"Yeah, a treat, Debby, nobody be watching us from across the fields...", I steered back to my original course, "cuz we'll be in Utah or somewhere. married, even..."
    We sat on the flat rock, the one that MacArthur had bulldozed up there back in the day, to add permanence to the sign. Debbie looked stunning in the late-afternoon sun. I felt, I don't know, 'inert'. She must've sensed something:
"So, what's the deal with noble gasses? I need names." she asked me, just like that, no intro. We were learning the Elements in our primitive school. I hoped that was what triggered it.
"Um, helium?" I suggested, lamely, to another dismissive look.
"Boring." she shot back, "just like your dumb Utah. No... higher:" she motioned upwards with her hand.
"Crypt-on?"
"It's K r y p t o n, and no!" Debbie, again with the hand signals, this time downward. I was tiring of feeling dumb. but with her, you get used to it.
"Argon!" Somehow I thought of that one.
"Bingo. And that makes it TEAT."
I quickly looked over her head, to down there in the valley, to make sure no one had overheard.
"How's that make teat?" I asked cautiously.
"Simple: 'R' gone, silly." Debbie laughed at her own wit... or at me. Hard to tell. I was just glad we'd gotten onto another subject worth pursuing; TREAT to TEAT.
"We could lose a 'T' then." she was back to moving letters, the slick chick, but I was ready:
"Left or right?" I asked, all grade-school lascivious, lowering my gaze till she caught on and blushed.
"Depends on if you wanna EAT or just drink TEA?" Debbie kinda spit over her shoulder on the word 'tea'.
Folks like us didn't drink tea, you need to unnerstand. I'd only ever done it once, when my Mom was in the hospital for my younger brother, and my Dad took us to an actual restaurant and, I don't know, probably wanted to show off. Tasted horrible. People in England drank tea. That's why they talk funny and look that way.
"So 'EAT', it's a deal." Debbie put her hands in her jacket pockets, probably like some businessman she'd seen on TV once.
"How about 'AT'?" I re-opened the negotiations, and she shrugged.
"A proposition? That's a lot of tear-down work for a proposition."
I didn't even consider correcting her. Mainly, I didn't even know she was wrong, but even if...
"Just 'A' then?" And that's my final offer."
"Oof, we're back to bombs, dummy-head. Ain't that why we killed the 'H'?"
"Good point." I told her, meaning it, "Yeah, let's just get the 'H' out of here, and be done with it." This time it wuz me with the hands-in-the-pockets.
"Yeah right... to Utah. 'Morons' live there." She scoffed; a final pitying look, but with a coy smile this time.

I like Debby. Always did. She's great fun.

---

WU: True story?
ME: Sure. 'Cept for the sign... and some of the the dialogue...
WU: What's that leave?
ME: The THREAT. Look, Wuzie, she turned 63 this weekend; I'm a week behind her. You try dealing wid dat someday...
WU: Got ya.

Ah, I knew thee well, Brother. Your head-bobbing was the pride of the neighborhood. I'll overlook the hours you spent trying fruitlessly to climb up a newly-stuccoed wall, failing more embarrassingly with each repetition, and still convinced it could be done, for hours upon hours.
Cause of Death will likely remain a mystery for the ages.
 Any living creature, in a Universe which makes self-replicating Life immensely difficult to achieve, deserves a Requiem when it returns to the great Unknown.

"And so today, we are all lizards, I suppose." I said at the little ceremony in the gardens. Went on to quote Leo Szilard, mentioned in that famous note to FDR, which after a bit of work in Manhattan somewhere, brought a kind of peace to a weary world. For a couple years. But that's a full lifetime for a lizard, I reminded the crowd of flying ants and poppies.
Xanga Question, of course:
Is lying in state always on your back? Cause no one had ever really seen this guy on his back much, 'cept the day he fell off the wall a hundred times. I laid him out on his belly, which seemed right, although it'd look silly on, like, Lenin, just saying.
And I do have both poses on file, for tomorrow's papers; one is guaranteed to be kosher that way.

RIP. U were a contenda.