How think I drunk I am: not as think as YOU drunk I am!

It will be easier on both of us this time around if I organize my points. (a) Last night, when I ran out of sheep to count, I tried to think of words that contain the letters “thm” — in that order. Here’s what I came up with: rhythm, logarithm, asthma, bathmat, birthmark, and isthmus. Also fourthmost, etc., if those are words. And Pathmark, if we’re doing that. Do you know any others? Don’t say rhythmic or bathmats. This isn’t Boggle. P.S. Fuck Boggle. And fuck proximity mines while we’re at it. (b) I didn’t fall asleep until 5:00 am. (c) Falling asleep has always been a problem for me. My father is usually asleep two minutes after his head hits the pillow, but one night when he was young, he told me, he spent a sleepless hour in bed calculating how many seconds there are in a century. 3,155,673,600. You’ve got to account for leap years; you’ve also got to account for every hundredth year not being a leap year. (d) My favorite cheese these days, Chris, is Sauvagine. Think Brie, but feistier. (e) I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but in certain cultures, they spell favorite with a bonus u. They also spell center “centre”. I bring it up because I’m writing “centre” a lot these days — in an attempt to assimilate. The blowback: I recently spelled winter “wintre”. Really. Everyone survived. (f) Do vegetarians eat caviaren’t? (g) And where were you when you were first stung by a bee? Bite into that madeleine. (h) I know you hate hearing about science; nevertheless, I just want to mention that many of the problems in modern physics (might! possibly!) arise from the fact that classical theories don’t treat spacetime as a dynamical entity. What do I mean by that? I mean that you typically think of space as a background against which you do whatever you do. But what if space were a seething creation just as you are a seething creation? I see you seething over there. Enough! I can’t go on. (i) Are you into your own handwriting? Take a page of scrap paper right now, this moment! right now! too late!, and fill it up with your thoughts. It can be an index card if you’re not feeling too thoughtful. (j) Do you know how simple cooking is? Pretty much every food you enjoy can be thrown into a pot with every other food you enjoy. The dish that results will taste good. Salt it liberally if it doesn’t. Just watch out for swampy pairings, e.g. tomato + cauliflower. (k) New York actually does have the best pizza (in North America). I was riding the snobby backlash for a while; I thought saying New York had good pizza was like saying “shuddupayouface”. No more. Give me real pizza. (l) Also, give me a real burrito. (m) m is the 13th letter of the alphabet. If we were on an elevator, right?

[Intermission]

(n) No offense to people who use the word “aforementioned”, but I think that word is employed, on average, rather poorly and tends to be an indicator of low self-esteem. (o) A little bit of offense. (p) The best offense is a — (q) How is that Keir Dullea played a respectable adult in 1968, at the age of 32, and then played a manic college student in 1974? (r) Anything is possible. My earliest nightmare involved Cookie Monster running into my room and eating me alive. I’m still surprised that Sesame Street’s creators didn’t realize what a potentially frightening creature CM was. (s) Finally, we get to s. (t) Should I have been a pair of ragged claws? I don’t think so. I submit that we are all doing precisely what we should be doing; that those of us who cannot yet claim to be doing what s/he should be doing is in the process of moving on to doing what s/he should be doing and is therefore, in some sense, I submit, doing what s/he should be doing; that this brand of occasionalism has weight and is not just a new age, “follow your bliss” philosophy. Maybe I’m just an optimist. Remember that scene in “Dumb & Dumber” when Harry and Lloyd are in Aspen crying along to the TV commercials? (u) Yes, yes!, damn it, I dare to pull over on the side of the county road in Georgia and eat that peach. (w) I’m really going to let it fly in x, y, and z. (x) What makes me sad: I know a lot of wonderful people — in fact, I’ve taken pains to make sure that I know only wonderful people — and it distresses me to think that any one of them might end up doing something that displeases them. Yet this is a possible outcome. For most of my friends are venturing down an unmarked path, and there is little to no guarantee (we HATE the phrase “little to no guarantee”) that they’ll end up in a good place. I think, if any of us is to keep living, we must cultivate a shrewder mindset and not be afraid to see how our peculiar talents benefit Joe T. Citizen-Katz-Plumber. Do our talents benefit anyone, really? If not, can we tweak them so that they do? Do we want to? If we don’t, what’s left? We do sincerely want to reach people; that’s my underlying hope/belief. We will reach them. We are good, talented, honest, sincere people. (y) Can somebody invent a rhyme involving beer and wine so that I can know how sick I’ll feel if I drink beer and then wine, or wine and then beer? Can somebody invent a rhyme that precisely correlates yams with chimneys, or falling corn color with rising cheek color, or bee stings with youth, or smiles from across the room with roller discos, or wood paneled libraries with inherited sweaters, or potato leek soup with lonely winter walks, or a glancing thought with years long gone, or a sleigh ride through the tundra with a dismal commute in the predawn hours? If all the nations’ leaders can get together and forge a series of misbegotten policies, can’t we all get together, just a few of us, nobody special, and just for a few hours, can’t we get together and see how our collective, misbegotten ideas we have of each other intertwine? The point wouldn’t be to knock down misconceptions. We would, rather, be encouraging each other to build up these senseless skywalks. Skywalks leading merely to the next buildings. (z) Thmthmthmthmthm. This evening, when I run out of thm’s to thm, I will think of all thm thm. I didn’t knock it out of the park, but neither did you, thm thm. I hope you forgive me, just as I forgive you.