This is what it's like inside my melon

Time for a blog where I just open up the sluice gates and let the stream of consciousness flow over the banks and onto the page. There are certain things I think about all the time, such as why books and bookstores smell so nice and paper factories stink up entire towns. But, the water that flows makes the trees grow, and then carries the trees to a paper mill. Someone needs to write a book about why paper mills are so shtinky. They'll need a lot of paper to print it.

Here are a few thoughts: the first is totally spurious, and the others merely whimsical. I think I'll have a whimsicle right now!

...Ennui-rich British popster Phil Collins is largely responsible for ending a crime spree in the greater Brattleboro (VT) area. Bemused cops report that persons arrested on suspicion of having committed crimes were locked in a small interview room and forced to listen to an endless loop tape of Collins "classics."

" 'Against All Odds', " quipped Brattleboro PD spokesperson Gene Sis, "we improved our crime clearance rate by 36% by forcing miscreants to listen to 'Sussudio,' 'You Can't Hurry Love,' and the real heavy weapon that we only trotted out against the most recalcitrant suspects, the deadly 'In The Air Tonight.' "

...In many jurisdictions, the police sell off used squad cars to two main buyers: cop wannabes, and taxi companies. Is it not possible that someone could be arrested, taken in by the police in a certain Ford sedan, be sentenced to jail, and emerge from jail some months later, only to hail a cab to get home. And is it not possible that the cab could be the same vehicle that took him off to the hoosegow? Driven by a cop wannabe?

...Since the beginning of time, there has been only a certain, albeit high, amount of water on the earth. They just aren't making hydrogen and oxygen molecules any more; it's too hard to get help. Therefore, it follows that the next time you guzzle some water from the water cooler at work, or sip a mocha frappuccino, or take a shower after a long day on the job when the guy in the next cube was playing Phil Collins CD's for so long that you went down to the boss and confessed to ripping off wite-out just to get away from the din, you might be in contact with some of the same molecules that once bore Noah's Ark on its voyage. Then again, you may not. Who's to say?

...In 1978, the movie "Animal House" came out (and I'm still laffin'!) The movie centered on college hi-jinx at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis of November, 1962. So the movie was about stuff that happened 16 years earlier. Well, it's 30 years since the movie came out. Would you care to see a movie about the funny stuff going on at Faber College in 1992? I can see it now...the students are all moping around, listening to Nirvana's Nevermind on tape cassettes, lining up to see The Silence of the Lambs and cheering the lifting of US trade sanctions with China. Let's face it: recent history is nowhere near as much fun as it used to be.

...I worked at a grocery store in high school and college, so my food choices when it came to lunch time (and it always did!) were fairly broad. I loved the A & P and being surrounded by an endless vista of ginger ale, Fig Newtons and Vienna sausage. But what if you work at a restaurant, and more to the point, what if that restaurant is limited to one cuisine? Even if it's the best burger, ice cream sundae or falafel in town that you're frying/scooping/whatever the hell one does to serve falafel, you're going to be sick of eating it really soon. I'm sure there are thousands of former McEmployees who can't think of eating a Big Mac or former fish house cooks who can't look a catfish in the eye. I think the Labor Department ought to look into this.

...We've all been here: you're in the mall, or on the street, or running with the bulls at Pamplona. Out of the corner of your eye you see a dude that you kinda know, but you're in a hurry, or you just don't feel like hearing 30 minutes about the cutting edge of software technology, or where the stock market is heading, or why the Orioles don't have a chance to win anything this year or anytime before the next century begins. You sidle away, like a defensive back getting ready to make an interception, and when you see a path, off you go! into the clear and you get that exhilarated feeling because you know with every step You! Could! Go! All! The! Way.

I admit to the escape-and-evade several months ago, and as I darted away, my nonchalance giving way to what was certainly red-faced sweaty guilt until I must have looked like James Cagney in "White Heat," I got to thinking - how many times has someone seen ME and done the same thing? Now, that's what I call neurotic!

Good night! Top of the world!