When I woke up this morning, the sentence streaming over and over again through my brain was this:

‘Fraid to put your meanie and crockett in the snogg???

It sounds like spam, doesn’t it? Now even my brain is registered to receive junk mail. Here’s what else I woke up thinking:

On a street across campus from here, a teenage girl stops walking to look at herself in a dark window. She thinks she looks okay. Three steps later she stumbles and knows that God is punishing her for vanity. A seven year old boy is sitting in Circle at the YMCA summer camp, waiting to hear what the day’s activities will be. He rubs his index finger against his thumb over and over. He knows the perspiration he creates is magical and if he rubs his fingers together often enough he won’t have to play kickball today. In a house in North Berkeley a toddler screams every time his mother leaves the room. Every time she steps out of his sight she is dead forever and he’ll have to get used to the new mother They send in. He finds the endless adjustments exhausting.

Don’t be afraid. Put in your meanie. Crockett too. There’s plenty of room here in the snogg, plenty of room for everything.

“Good morning,” says the professor in a heavy French accent.

“Good morning,” I say, in just my plain old voice.

“You see,” he says, “people are so rude.” And he reads me a note one of his students has written him. I agree that it is rude. “But language comes from the body, you know?”

“Mmm,” I say, wanting desperately to say something intelligent, sensing this could be the best conversation I’ll have all day, but having at the same time no idea what he means.

“Well we are all so disconnected, “he says.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s the new self-sufficiency.”

“The illusion of self-sufficiency,” he says.

“Yes, because we’re connected through the phone and the computer. People feel they have a license to be ruder when speaking online.”

“And this becomes the new standard of conduct in face to face transactions. We are more connected and therefore less.”

“And that’s what reality TV is,” I say, and he says “A new, cruder mode of connection between people, because we’ve lost that delicate structure.”

Pause. Thoughtful nodding. He has lovely feet in his loafers. He looks around. “You have a lot of space here,” he says. “You could hold dances. A different troop every week.”

I am reduced to “Mmm” again.

“Of course, that’s what’s needed. More dancing. People become tighter and tighter here, their bodies. The terrible illusion of the mind.”

Ohhhh. Language comes from the body. I get it.

I know, it’s not profound. But it sounds profound when you hear it in a French accent. And it really made my morning. Plus, how often does a Faculty Emeritus look at me like I’m a person with a brain, rather than a retard who is occasionally allowed to work the copier? But only never. So I share this, my triumph, with you, my apparently poorly connected readers.

cel-i-bate n.

One who abstains from sexual intercourse, especially by reason of religious vows.

One who is unmarried.

Usage Note: Historically, celibate means only "unmarried." Its use to mean "abstaining from sexual intercourse" is a 20th-century development. But the new sense of the word seems to have displaced the old, and the use of celibate to mean "unmarried" is now almost sure to invite misinterpretation in other than narrowly ecclesiastical contexts. Sixty-eight percent of the Usage Panel rejected the older use in the sentence He remained celibate [unmarried], although he engaged in sexual intercourse.

Trying to work through my listlessness enough to respond to Jacob’s wicked cool fiction. Why so listless, though? The weather is also listless, and Maggie tells me I am more influenced by the weather than anyone she knows. I like having this distinction – any superlative is better than nothing. All I strive to be is extremely something.

After I read The Lad’s account of his triumph over adversity by the use of his wits and street savvy, I too triumphed in my own way this weekend. In short:

1. Camping in Big Sur, alone for the nonce.

2. Broken tent pole.

3. Leeringly interested sci-fi-loving doughnut-eating neighbor-campers.

4. Used relative sex appeal and tbsp. of charm to convince neighbors to go buy me duct tape in the neighboring town.

5. Campers buy my tape, then fix my tent.

Intrepid? Nope. But at least I am the sleaziest.

Nobody goes to links and I understand that. But if you are my friend and cool, you should go here because I really think we should try this game sometime soon.

Now here’s a nice quote from a random site which relates to Devil Bunny Wants a Ham, which I believe (without ever having played or seen it) to be the best game ever:

Alfred brought Devil Bunny Needs a Ham last week, but it didn’t get played until this time. It is good fun! You’ve got to love a game where each player is a group of chefs trying to climb to the top of a skyscraper, while the Devil Bunny, who wants a ham and mistakenly believes that keeping the chefs from reaching the top will get him a ham, is knocking the chefs off the side of the building. The world needs more such games.

Interestingly, if you do a Google search on “Devil Bunny Wants a Ham,” I am the third hit.

Zaaaang.

Yesterday I saw a pregnant woman walking across campus. I looked at the small, quiet bulge of her stomach and thought about the tiny little fetus floating around in there who was examining her insides with bulging frog eyes and then I thought PARASITE! PARASITE! Eugh.

So I guess that fantasy is over with. Now I’m back to wanting to be the Millers.

I was thinking about changing my site’s tagline from Mangio Quello Che Uccido to One Whore’s Journey. But as soon as I started thinking that, I stopped dating anyone. I don’t miss them but I don’t regret them either. Frank played flamenco guitar for me and Manmeat had a very poetic moment where he tried to explain why construction equipment smells good. I’ve gotten something interesting from everyone I’ve dated; not always good, but interesting. For example, Melissa gave me one of her paintings, whereas Robert gave me my first yeast infection.

“Hi,” said Frank this morning. “Your hair is dirty.”

“Hi,” I said, “yes. Thank you.”

KA-POW! Shrapnel.

“I’ll put it up then,” I said. “You’ve made me nervous about it now.”

“Don’t be so nervous all the time,” he said, “it’s fucking annoying.” As if I were some squirrelly creature he was constantly having to tame. Though not a Berkeley squirrel, since they are bold as brass.

On Saturday I went to the lovable Millers’ house and ogled their animal print hand towels. I had a weird discussion with some people about blogging, but to write about it in detail in my blog would be way too meta.

MATT HOLOHAN, sorry you had to read all of this twice.

And if you are the boy with the fascinating pants from the party, you know, works with Ian? Go here for your props.