highindustrial.

Speaking of The Simpsons, have you seen those television spots for The Tuxedo? You know: "Alone, Jackie Chan is unstoppable. But with JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT AND A TWO-BILLION-DOLLAR TUX, he's unbelievable." The sapient juxtapositional idiocy of that pitch recalls the time Ron Howard ripped off Homer's movie idea involving the "killer-robot driving instructor that travels back in time" and has a "heartbreaking decision to make about whether his best friend lives ... or dies." And, oh yeah: "his best friend's a talking pie!" Crap imitates cartoons once again. Jennifer Love Hewitt's the talking pie. (Give the tux some credit.) + 5

I now have to watch Seinfeld weak-nights at seven-thirty because the other syndie-smorgasbord/netlet-affiliate has displaced The Simpsons with a two-episode ~~block~~ ordeal of Will & Grace. Observing Jerry Stiller as Jason Alexander's father is like being hypno-toaded into misremembrance of one's own parents: he's Leah Remini's daddy now. Which is good to know in case you ever run into Leah Remini and find yourself overcome with the urge to ejaculate [pregnant pause] Who's your daddy?

See, I just saved you some embarrassment. Such are the windmills of my mind. + 6

I've recently relapsed into my childhood habit of thinking out loud. Not in the presence of others, mind you: I haven't yet accidentally called anyone fat or drawn attention to the bird on their head; but my private thoughts have been bobbing along the meniscus of vocalization with a certain notable consistency. Occasionally I'll find myself in front of a mirror, or the television, or nothing in particular, giving redundant voice to thoughts only I can hear. The sudden speechifying has leant an aura of formality to otherwise unremarkable moments, as though I've been rehearsing for the very life I seem to lead by improvisation. + 4

I'm pretty sure I went to bed last night with my pajama bottoms on, but when I woke up this afternoon (oops, morning ... yeah, morning), they were gone. I didn't notice their absence at first, on account of the large bird on my head, but as I padded around in my boxers, I realized, in fact, that I was padding around in my boxers. A quick investigation and some reasonable deduction later revealed my pants to have been flung clear across the room in some throe of unconscious athleticism. Not to get all Encyclopedia Brown on you.

At least I'm not this poor slob. + 7

I'll reach a point of exhaustion where my vision begins to strobe, but sleep's a little further off than that.

People tend to repeat themselves. The impulse is ticktock, but the content of the repetition may change over time. The transition can be gentle, an evolving concert of memes and phonemes, a lullaby; or it can be abrupt, an old thought knotted up with a no-longer discernible beginning middle end, dispatched and superseded with soldierly efficiency.

It really doesn't matter what bears repeating, but it's always something—a jest, a caper, a hope: interleaved, interjected, insisted upon throughout our daily collisions with ourselves and others, unconsciously and self-consciously. We're musical like that. + 2

"Like children, we adored the plane that abandoned us. We sat on the beach for a long time, waiting, cultivating our separate vivid images of the plane. We loved the plane even more after it left us, as if that might bring it back." (p.83)

"Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh." (p.292)

"Then, with the saddest expressions I have ever seen, they looked into one another's eyes, held tight, and leaned into the wind. For a terrible moment we watched them fall, until they disappeared from view. May God forgive me if this is no more than an illusion that I myself have created, but they did not tumble or become entangled, they fell with what appeared to be increasing slowness. They fell as if they knew how to take to the air. They fell in smooth dampened curves that promised flight....

"After the others were gone, I found myself in no condition to move. For an hour or so I remained above the lake, not daring to look down but instead trying to summon in my memory as best I could the image of those two young people. Every death that truly touches you hastens your own, and when it is the death of someone so young—well, for an old man like me, it is almost unbearable.

"I confess that in those moments I thought of joining them, and I suspect that following them would not have been difficult. As I contemplated this, standing near the edge, I heard a whistling in the air, like that of powerful wings. The upwelling of the wind had brought the sound to me early. I dared not to look, and I did not have to, for the sound was rising.

"I faulted myself for wishful thinking, and I told myself that even were I not imagining this sound, its significance would lie only in what I wished rather than in what was. There are certain great and beautiful things that to all appearances find defeat in this world. All proof, all reason, show them to have fallen, and as often as not our hope is merely our punishment. But in this world there are as well wrenching and great surprises that take us beyond what we can reason and what we can prove.

"I have merely my hope, but I have it still. I have not abandoned it, and will not. The sound was the sound of wings. They rose, and their whistling and beating on the wind grew so loud that it deafened me. I shuddered before they cleared the edge. They came on with great speed. They did clear the edge, and they filled the sky—two swans, wings extended , riding on the air and powering themselves ahead. They went right over me at great speed and disappeared beyond the trees as if they had a most specific and compelling destination. And I was left with nothing but the sound of wings echoing in my ears." (pp.77-80) + 2

When I lose my voice, I don't feel its absence audibly, because that's not the voice I'm talking about: but chemically, like a snapped nap or too much sugar. The regular marzipan ~~nonentities~~ niceties we erect idly about our social selves begin to strain against my monotonous desire to be solitary until I sleep it off or it burns through me, so that when I tell you everythingsfine, or haveaniceday, there's something phoned-in about the exercise, like Alex Bell informing his assistant that he "wanted" him during their storied first full-duplex exchange, then distancing himself from the statement because it registered a touch unseemly in retroprint. In its own way, haveaniceday can feel approximately four letters wrong.

Or maybe it's just something I ate. + 7

Some late-at-nights I hear sirens. Their distant howls carry, acoustic-kicking along graded concrete like salmon struggling upstream, spawning anxiety. If only fires, heart attacks and other paperback intrigues would keep sane hours. I wonder about the world, forever waking beyond my walls, spit-roasting under moonbeams and hazard lights, sizzling in the dark. Safety is knowing and not knowing. + 12