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Cat Food: The Next Level

Customers Are Taking too Many Free Napkins

e coli. 157 Bacteria Colonizes Undercooked Patties

Elderly Employees Easier to Bully

Everybody Fears Clowns

Fishwich . . . Real Word . . . Yes or No?

Focus Grouping Deems Lamb-burgers Unpopular

Garish Color Schemes Discourage Loitering

Gift Certificates Make Shitty Presents

Hairnets

Hard to Envision Ronald McDonald Dating

More Orange Drink Machines at Birthday Parties

Muzak Discourages Loitering Teen Thugs

Pictures Instead of Words on Cash Register Buttons

Pseudo-randomly Shaped Beef Patties

Shamrock Burgers Unlikely

Swan Nuggets Tempt Yuppies

28 Dead in Random Sniping Bloodbath

Unhappy Meals - And That's Okay

Uniforms Must Affirm Asexuality

Younger Staff Exhibiting Insolence

FRIDAY

Susan and Emmett have made up, but Karla says that it’s going to be tempestuous between them. Susan likes bullying, and Emmett likes to be bullied. They were down in the parking lot earlier on filling up partially rotted green bell peppers with red marine alkyd enamel paint which they will then hurl at sexually exploitative billboards later tonight. Emmett wears the same expression on his face that Misty wears whenever Dusty twirls her around like a Maypole. He's just frighteningly in love. I mean, I love Karla, but Emmett seems, what is the word . . . enslaved.

*UH OH*.

But then, Susan's the obsessive type, too. So they're a pair.

* * *

Mom and I took Misty for a morning walk today and Mom was chattier than usual. Her work at the seniors home has her thinking quite a bit, it seems. Between the seniors home, swimming, the library, and Dad, she's so busy nowadays.

In order to keep up with "us kids," Mom's been reading (and clipping) yet more articles about this @$&*%!! Information Superhighway. The enormity of her clipping enthusiasm seems to have made the issue penetrate her consciousness. She was asking me about brains and memories.

I wasn't about to go into Karla's theories of the body and memory storage because discussing my body with my mother is something I'm simply unable to do. But I did say, "There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything. Being able to find things is what's important."

"What about if you don't use a memory often enough, then. If a memory isn't used enough, does it become irretrievable?"

"Well - aside from proton decay and cosmic rays eliminating connections, I think memories are always there. They just get . . . unfindable. Think of memory loss as a forest fire. It's natural. You shouldn't really be afraid. Think of the flowers that grow where the land had just been

destroyed."

"Your grandfather had Alzheimer's. Did you know that? Maybe I

shouldn't be telling you this."

"I already knew. Dad told me about it years ago. Was it fast?"

"Worse - slow."

Misty became instant friends with a passing jogger who had been taking

her pulse. Dogs have it so easy.

Mom said, "I've been wondering if maybe our time here on earth has been protracted out for too long - by science - and wondering if maybe it's not a bad thing to expire before our government-waranteed 71.5 years have elapsed."

"Mom, this isn't one of those 'I-have-cancer' talks, is it?"

"God, no. It's just that seeing all those old people at work, so lonely and forgetful and all - it makes me have some dark thoughts. That's all. Oh listen to me natter. How selfish."

Mom was always taught that other people's problems were more important than her own.

"Anything else . . . ?" I asked.

"And now I'm wondering. That's all."

"Wondering what?"

"I seem to feel myself losing . . . myself. This sounds so bored-housewife. But I'm not bored. But I have problems, too." I asked her what they were, but she said that problems were best not spoken of, and this is, perhaps, my family's main problem. "I'm joining a metaphysical discussion group."

"That's it?"

"You don't think I'm nutty?" (I have never heard anybody use the word "nutty" unironically before, and there was a satellite-link pause before I could say, "God no!" Karla and I have a metaphysical discussion group between ourselves almost every night.)

"Of course not."

* * *

Spent the latter part of the day set on "WANDER," cruising this glorious Bay with Karla. The freeways - they're so gorgeous - the 280 cresting the big hill going north, past all the Pacifica and Daly City exits; the Highway 92 cloverleaf to Hayward and Half Moon Bay off the 101. So sensual, so infinite, so full of promise.

Walking through the paddocks - we did the running-across-the-field-in-slow-motion-toward-each-other thing; we toyed with the bioanimatronic singing vegetable booth at Molly Stone's on California Street. Then we looked for an Italian restaurant so we could reenact the classic Lady and the Tramp spaghetti noodle/kiss scene.

* * *