It's Friday. There is no unifying theme.

I. I can't believe this still exists.

II. Robin's been complaining (here's my impression of Robin: gripe gripe gripe, whine whine whine, nag nag nag�pretty good, eh?) that I never mention her in this little enclave of triviata, even though I already have, so she should quit her bitchin' or get out of the kitchen. Even so, Robin is such a good friend that I feel she deserves more in the way of a paean (a paean is a rare nut found in the Brazilian rainforest, considered a delicacy by most). So here it is, a bit of spontaneous prose dedicated to my good friend Robin:

Under a cold umbrella of naked light bulbs are gathered a crowd of Army personnel, American sailors, NAAFI girls, ROBIN DANEK, and German fr�uleins. Fraternizing, every last one of them, shamefully, amid noise which comes, as Muggage and Spontoon and ROBIN DANEK reach the edge of the gathering, a song, at whose center, with a good snootful, each arm circling a smiling and disheveled young tootsie, ruddy face under the lights gone an apopleptic mauve, and leading the glee, is the same General Wivern they last saw in ROBIN DANEK'S office back at Twelgth House. From a tank car whose contents, ethanol, 75% solution, are announced in stark white stenciling along the side, spigots protrude here and there, under which an incredible number of mess cups, china mugs, coffeepots, wastebaskets, and ROBIN DANEK are being advanced and withdrawn.

I am counting on the majority of my readership to be unfamiliar with page 593 of Gravity's Rainbow. I mean, really. Anyone who says they've finished the damn thing is lying.

III(a). Right now I am reading The Picture Of Dorian Gray & Other Stories by Oscar Wilde.

III(b). Pithy Aphorisms Which May Have Been Uttered By Oscar Wilde, But Were Not:

� "I never wear an ascot when so many other people are wearing positively wretched ascots."

� "My writings are but a drop of ambrosia in a sea of urine."

� "Nothing I've learned in a book has taught me nearly as much as a good strong drink of fine brandy."

� "Why be a born leader, when you can be an unborn follower? Ahem."

� "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy! WHOOOOO! PHI DELTS IN '03!!!"

� "Ideas are like horses: beautiful, gallant, well-bred, and only fools stand behind them."

� "The millionaire who parlays a farthing into a grand estate is no more shrewd than an alchemist who conjures lead into some metal other than gold, such as ... I don't know. Copper? Yes, copper will do. Did you get all that?"

� "I enjoy drinking."

� "And men. I like buggering the men."

IV. October 2001: watching football on television.

ANNOUNCER: And that's�for them, that defensive formation is a real aberrition.
JP: Did he just say aberrition?
MARK: I think he said anomalistic.
JP: I think he said enigmaticon.

V. I've never much cared for the phrase "shoot the shit." It puts an image in my mind of a room full of people launching feces at each other.

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