Get out those metaphorical paints and look at what surrounds you and how the light informs it and how the warmth simultaneously sharpens and softens it and paint it on your brain. Then clean up after yourself and go inside and pet the cat.

When I got home from work today, I found one of my socks in the litter box. So I guess I know for sure that she doesn't lie around doing absolutely nothing all day.

Yep, this is where it all happens. Well, no, it doesn't all happen here. Not much of anything happens here. My part of here, that is. No telling what's going on in the other quarters. But enough about me. Have you all seen the DVDs they're hawking on TV these days? The entire first season of Becker? The 6th season of Wings? I'm shocked to learn that Wings even had 6 seasons, let alone that someone would want to watch it over and over again. Maybe to see if they can detect the seeds of Thomas Hayden Church's career's renaissance? Granted, my life is a reeking morass of regret and despair, but at least I'm not sitting at home watching the 6th season of Wings! I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere, no dime sane?

Sometimes I forget. No: only rarely do I remember. Usually I'm lost in a clotted sea of forgetfulness. I spend whole months careening in a pachinko hell of teeming delusion without once opening my eyes. And it's not really forgetting, most of the time. It's not believing. A loss of faith. It's not okay, I'm not okay. How can it be? Just look around. Even now, when I've been granted a short timeout, I have no way of telling which is real life and which is the dream. I dream that I wake up.

Anyway, this is one of my touchpoints: a table at Doumar's. The magical glow of the ordinary. Of course, if I continue to eat at Doumar's, I'll die sooner. God has such a shallow sense of humor.

Spring is nature's puberty: the budding, bursting, aromatic fulsomeness of it. The rich furriness of it. The barely controlled frenzy under the surface of it. Good thing I'm immune to all that stuff.

Not exactly ball-shaped, is it? Well, she's just a beginner. I'm sure that as she gains experience, they'll become more pleasingly rounded. And while I'm no expert, my guess is that she'll lose points for the piece of string. Except I'm not too keen on the string finding another point of egress. If you get my drift. Okay, here's another joke I heard from the same source as the one I passed on yesterday: Doctor says, "Mr. Jones, you're going to have to stop masturbating." The guy says "Why"? Doc says, "because I'm trying to examine you!" History Channel. Swear to God.

Instead of wasting my Friday night on idle foolishness, I decided to do something really meaningful and constructive. But that plan fell through, so I went on the sketchcrawl. I could hardly not do it, since it began right across the street from my apartment, at Cogan's, and also since one of the ringleaders was holding my graphics pen as ransom. That's him with the goatee in the above photo, and that's some of his artwork on the wall behind him, thoughtfully blown up by yours truly. I'll get around to posting some of my sketches as soon as I find my scanner--how do you lose a scanner? I swear, if it weren't attached, I'd lose my--- hey!

Oh, I forgot. It's Valentine's Day. I should be putting up pictures of adorable fluffy bunnies or whatnot. Well, I'm clean out of fluffy bunnies. Ate the last one yesterday. By the way, yrs truly gave a seminar on Painter at the Apple Store last night. They wouldn't let me belly up to the Genius Bar for some reason, but it was an interesting experience nevertheless. I ended up inadvertently demonstrating all the things that can go wrong in Painter, which had to be helpful. While I was packing up, a couple of iPhones and a MacBook Air fell into my briefcase. I'm sharing this with you guys on the internet, but I'd rather it didn't get out.

Yeah, I know, the Gods don't eat lunch, but if they did, they'd be parking their derrieres at Doumar's, right here in Norfolk, Va. And if they had any smarts (which, as I have pointed out on numerous occasions, we can't just assume, what with their, shall we say, spotty track record), they would call Dottie or Flo over and order them up a Taylor Pork Roll sandwich with a order of fries (if you say an order of fries, they'll think you're putting on airs) and a limeaid. Which is pretty much what I did. Dave got two barbecues (he's a bit under the weather) and the two of us had us a lunch.

This is just the kind of activity that would appeal to my friend Jack: stick a beer can up a chicken's butt, put it on a grill, and see what happens. It's a strain of intellectual curiosity that only males share, the one that causes us to wonder what would happen if you dropped a watermelon from the top of a five-story building or put a tv remote in the microwave (don't bother trying that one; it just causes a small fire.)

Epilogue: the chickens didn't blow up, but as a consolation, they tasted real good.

This is the thumbnail view of my "365" project on Flickr. Surprised to see the grass getting greener as we slide into winter. Unless it's some damn smartass kid with a can of green spray paint fucking with me. Wouldn't be the first time.

There's reason to believe that one of them is not quite clear on the concept, but it still counts, is my position.

She showed up a few days ago and immediately began ordering me around.In honor of Wardell, who has gone south since the weather got cold--and I'm afraid I mean that not in the geographical sense, but the way you would say the economy has gone south--I've named her Bernice, and we'll have to see if it takes.

Sometimes I'll look at something and suddenly realize that it means more than it does. Know what I mean? Every so often reality will shift, like a prism, and everything will seem perfect and resonant and radiant with meaning, a kind of meaning I can't verbalize and wouldn't want to, anyway. I used to associate this kind of revelation with the ingestion of a snootful of certain under-the-counter products, but nowadays it seems to have natural causes. And they say there's no upside to the onset of Alzheimer's. Does anyone die of 'natural causes' any more? It seemed so civilized, compared to the unpleasant descriptions they use these days. As if anything but eternal life were unnatural. Hey, I just remembered a joke by Mitch Hedberg that I recounted here before, but it makes me laugh every time I hear it. He says: 'I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too." That's my favorite kind of humor, the kind that gives you the same feeling you get when you stumble on a crack in the sidewalk but catch yourself in time. Confused, but exhilarated. You probably think that I'm rambling unnaturally. See now, that is the drugs.

Last night we experienced the greatest snowstorm of the season. This morning we're girding our loins and digging out. Well, not digging out precisely, since the snow pretty much melted on impact. But still, we were prepared, our loins were girded. Last night I stocked up on Hardees' Double Bacon Cheeseburgers, which, I have discovered, taste exactly the same after three days as they do when first tossed your way, making them ideal siege provisions.

If you can't beat em, join em.

What a trip! It's true, people look like ants from up there. The black, shiny, segmented bodies, the large abdomens, the long, stick-like legs, the waving antennae, the way they cluster around a rotting animal carcass... I wonder if people on the ground look up and say, "from down here, skydivers look like little tiny spiders, dislodged from a sac hanging from the giant mother spider and raining down upon us." Probably they don't, because from up here I would see them scattering and screaming like frightened ants, and I don't see that. In fact, I don't see any people at all. From up here, Big Sur bears an uncanny resemblance to the base of the tree next to my bus stop. How weird!

This about says it all, don't it? "Hey, I bet I can take a leak behind here and nobody would see me--and if they do, so what?" Guys love to pee on things. If you own a dog, you know this. Plus guys are convinced that women are consumed with the desire to get a glimpse of their wobbly bits, and no amount of reasoning will disabuse them of this notion. This is a cornerstone of manhood, and without it we would all be cringing little worms, frightened of our own shadows, instead of powerful muscle-bound behemoths striding toward the horizon, cursing and spitting, gazing into a future of monumental clashes, of wine-dark seas and weapons of mass destruction.