I mean this in all sincerity. I am as sincere as can be. Hot little whiteheads of sincerity are popping out all over my forehead. I fall to my knees. I beseech. My hair stands on end. My eyes expand. I run off the cliff, legs pumping. My sincerity keeps me airborne. Elsewhere, a large can of pumpkin pie filling sits in the darkness. I think, now that's sincerity. Down I go.

The waiting is everything, of course. When it arrives, it's always disappointing. That's not to say it's not traumatic or devastating, it's just not what you imagined. Which is probably just as well.

I would like to use questionable tactics, but I can't think of any. When I go through a period of being good, it's only through a lack of imagination. Systems are failing me right and left. My hopes of being vindicated are fading. My numbers are down. I'm watching the clock.

I've found that giving a picture an enigmatic name can make it seem more profound than it actually is, which is usually not at all. I hope y'all guys aren't offended that I'm implying that I can manipulate you so easily. But see, that's the Art Game, and nobody said it was pretty. If you can't make your mark via sheer quality (and who can?) you use whatever strategies are available to you. And by that means you can parlay a modest amount of talent into "mad coin", as the hipsters say. Or if not mad coin, enough to pay the rent. That's my hope, at least.

Live free or die hard. I love it.

Plangent, there's a nice word. For anyone into lamentation. Not necessary keening lamentation, no one's a fan of keening lamentation. That'll clear the dance floor in a heartbeat. But plangent beats venerous all to hell, that's for sure. At least you can look it up. Tumbling down the cliff, looking for a lucky break, clipping the rocks, that's when the word plangent presents itself for your inspection. Cast it a gimlet eye. Feel the tingle. Is that a screw-worm embedded in your brain, its handle toward your hand? Or am I just glad to see you? Maybe it's time to tweak those meds...

Ten things I vow to do tomorrow:

1. Peel off the breathe-right strips from the bathroom wall.
2. Eat only whole Tostitos, and not the broken ones.
3. Find the damn earpiece to my glasses.
4. Offer Steve $10 to kiss a security guard.
5. Sing along to my iPod on the bus.
6. Not confuse the toothpaste and the heel balm.
7. Call everybody I meet "champ".
8. Think of a new slang word for crystal meth.
9. Pretend my name is Francis Edward Bartlett
10. Draw.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I wished I had a nickel. I would take those nickels and toss them into a galvanized metal pail. That would be a cool sound.

I believe it speaks for itself.

People are reporting that my Flickr account has become inaccessible to them. Don't know why, don't know what's going on, but I put in a help request with Flickr.

What I'm all about:

1. If I find a wallet on the sidewalk, I will open it and laugh at the driver's license picture.

2. I will cross the street to avoid a pirate.

3. If I'm at a restaurant, I won't order any menu item that uses the word "zesty" to describe the dish.

4. I treat left-handed people just like you or I, for the most part.

5. Life, for me, is a bowl of Golden Grahams, but I'm out of milk.

I know that as soon as I turn away, people cross their eyes and stick out their tongues. Don't think I don't know this. I've always known it. And yet, I persevere. Some day, somewhere down the line, I will be rewarded for my perseverance. This I believe.

I ektually had a quasi-Buddhist essay on desire all planned, but I just found out that our friend Terry the Canuck is a published author! Check out Faces On Places: A Grotesque Tour of Toronto here. All about gargoyles 'n shit. I can't think of any gargoyles in this area...maybe the Wells Theater has a few. Anybody local know of any? Norfolk has done a pretty good job of eradicating buildings that look at all interesting. The few that remain on Granby Street look like rotten teeth in the new "smile" that Norfolk is cosmetically engineering. Faux-Georgian condos are the big thing right now. And try looking for a gargoyle in Chesapeake or Virginia Beach. The non-breathing kind, that is. Every so often in one of these blighted wastelands you'll see something quaint, like a brick sidewalk, and then upon inspection you'll see that it's some kind of inch-thick brick veneer glued onto a mesh and flopped down like a rug. That's what these suburban enclaves, these giant gated communities behind which cower Republicans and evangelicals and golfers, are all about. A thin veneer of quaint cuteness selected by some fascist urban designer plastered over an ugly heap of cigarette- and paper-cup-studded dirt. I know, I'm getting all het up again and turning this into a rant against a gaggle of seemingly decent law-abiding folks, but I must remind you once again that the only reason Virginia Beach and Chesapeake even exist as cities is because they barricaded themselves against pending integration with Norfolk and Portsmouth's blacks in the sixties, thereby robbing Norfolk of a chance to become a major metropolitan center and making Portsmouth a dumping ground for welfare cases.So... maybe I'll feel a little more Buddhist tomorrow.

If you see, at the end of this sentence, a small box with an arrow sticking out of it, flee! run like the wind! it's too late for me, but you can save yourself.

Today I realized that it's been years since I last whooped it up. I used to whoop it up all the time. My friends and I would whoop it up regularly. So much so that "me and my friends" is the more appropriate locution. Are the days of whooping it up over for me? I don't need to whoop it up every week or anything, but once in a while it would be fun.

So yesterday morning I left the half sub I had saved for lunch on the chair in my apartment. Knowing I wouldn't be back until that evening, I polled various people about the safety of eating the sub for supper. Males all said sure, go for it, what the hell. Might have the shits for a couple of days, but so what? Females all said absolutely not! and quizzed me about exact contents of the sandwich. One even went so far as to explain to me how the vinegar in the mayonnaise broke down the eggs into various deadly poisons. Carefully weighing the competing arguments, I went home after work and ate the sub. Obviously I'm still here, so I wasn't poisoned, and actually I felt good all day. So there. Unless you suspect someone else is writing this, a henchman perhaps, while I recuperate in a secluded private nursing home, and every day it's touch and go as I try to regain control of my bodily functions. Or maybe you think that, anticipating my imminent demise, I wrote out a couple of days' worth of entries in advance and right now my body is decomposing on the bathroom floor. Well, I guess it wouldn't be decomposing yet. But here's proof that I'm really here in real time: on the bus home tonight I overheard a conversation about some trial or other. One person says: "You hear what they did on the teevee? They awarded Anna Nicole to the baby!" Other person: "Do what now?" First person: "The baby! They awarded Anna Nicole to the baby!" So however you want to translate that, it's obviously something that happened today, and I could not possibly have predicted it from my deathbed yesterday, you'll have to admit.

Signed,
Stumpy

Wait, that's not his name. Spanky? Spunky? Shit!

No, not about the picture. Screw the picture. For over there in the right-hand column, you'll notice a new category: Wally Muzik. Click on that sucker and you'll find two songs all ready to download, created by yours truly. You'll find it hard to believe. You'll marvel at the rich creamy sonic goodness as it oozes into your ears. No, no, don't thank me. Just doing my job as an all-around blogger and renaissance boy. And if you like those, I'll upload more. Oh yes, I have more. Dozens more. Including a killer cover of Tangela Tricoli's Stinky Poodle , the playing of which once got me thrown out of my office. You're probably asking yourself right now, "Is there anything this guy can't do?" Well, go ahead and answer yourself thusly: "Yes, he can't tune an engine, build a table (Jacko is building a table from scratch even as we speak), or live a responsible adult life. But he can make music that brings tears to my eyes." That's sufficiently ambiguous.

The title is about this down here, not that up there. My love affair with Harris Teeter has rekindled, after a severe rough patch. See, I found them free cookies everybody's been talking about. And they were good. So all is forgiven, H. Teet. The woogedy shopping carts, the long lines at the sub-making window, the no bay leaves. No bay leaves! What kind of a grocery store doesn't carry bay leaves, for crying out--oops, let it get away from me a little there. Okay, I'm fine. It's all good, as those damn punk kids down the street say.

What if I've been hypnotized and I'm just imagining all this? That would explain:
1. Why nothing seems to make sense.
2. Why I'm almost 50, yet do not own a Lexus.
3. Why tomatoes don't taste like they used to.
4. Why I keep losing my cell phone.
5. Why I crow like a rooster at odd times.