Buckatunna Chicken Mat

Life took us once again through Buckatunna, where we stopped at the same gas station, only this time there was a chicken guarding it. The chicken did not stray from what I suppose we should call the welcome mat outside the gas station. I contemplated the chicken. I thought about how, when we have recorded for you here the stories of various chickens hanging around various commercial buildings, the chickens have always congregated in groups. I felt bad for the presumably lonesome chicken. Maybe that's my problem, not the chicken's! Our journey continued to Grand Bay, Alabama, where I noticed a restaurant called New York Pizza. I took a photo of it and sent it to Bill Boyle, who is from New York and very particular about pizza. He replied in astonishment that the lunch special appeared to be 18.99 for two slices and a drink! That was also how I had read the sign, which was blurry due to my lack of skills of all kinds. Later that night, my mom and I vowed to get to the bottom of it! We raced to our precious enhanced telephones, which were replete with information and modern capabilities. Mom said the special was 8.99 for two slices and a drink. I blew up the photo, like David Hemmings in BLOW-UP, and conceded that what Bill and I had taken for a 1 could well have been a dollar sign instead. I relayed the information to Bill. He said it was still too much. Anyway, glancing over the menu of Grand Bay, Alabama's New York Pizza, I observed that they offer a "pickle slice." That is to say, a slice of pizza with pickles on it. Here's the thing! Get ready! Just the night before, my brother had been sitting at the kitchen table, saying, out of nowhere, quote, "I can imagine a slice of pizza with pickles on it." Later, I checked my email and saw that McNeil had written to inform me that in 2007 I misspelled the title of the movie BUONA SERA, MRS. CAMPBELL. It has been corrected!

Grits in Zurich

Last time I checked, the grits had made it as far as Zurich.

Shaft Punctuation

Well, now that the Million Dollar Book Club has finished its most recent selection - which, as Megan and I were discussing, is mostly a list of people having sex in piles of rotting garbage for art - I have returned to the final volume of OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH, in which our army of former bandits has come up against a military formation called... wait! Remember when McNeil was trying to get me to worship "The Monad"? So, they come up against a formation called "The Great Monad." Can this be a coincidence? Or does everybody just have monad fever? Anyway, these guys are completely flummoxed by the Great Monad! And nothing gets to these guys. The last time they were this upset was back when they were still bandits, about 400 pages ago, and they ran into their greatest adversary... a guy who is good at throwing rocks! I'm not kidding. Individually and as a group, these guys have triumphed over impossible odds again and again, but all of a sudden they're saying "Ow! Ow!" and falling off their horses because they met - seemingly for the first time in their lives - someone who can throw rocks. Don't worry, they eventually get the rock thrower - whose nickname is the Featherless Arrow - to come over to their side, so they can use his rock throwing powers for their own purposes. And yet not even this guy who is good at throwing rocks will be much use against the Great Monad! I'll keep you posted. So, the other night it was Dr. Theresa's birthday and we were driving around singing the theme from SHAFT. One thing we saw was a bunch of golden glinting orbs in a thicket, and then a baby raccoon emerged, and the golden glinting orbs were the eyes of its many brothers and sisters. But the point is we were driving around before that, singing the theme from SHAFT, and to my surprise, when we got to "no one understands him but his woman," Dr. Theresa belted out, with great confidence, "Joan Shaft!" And I said WHAT! Well, it turns out that for her whole life, Dr. Theresa has heard, I suppose, a comma after the phrase "no one understands him but his woman," a comma leading to a syntactically very logical end to that sentence, which would be giving the name of the woman to whom Isaac Hayes is referring, one "Joan Shaft." Dr. Theresa's theory was further bolstered by the fact that prior to the supposed introduction of "Joan Shaft," the protagonist Shaft is referred to by his surname alone. I had to burst her bubble on her birthday and inform her that there is no Joan Shaft. The backup singers are, of course, supplying us with Shaft's full name, John Shaft. Then, as a refreshing break from my mansplaining, the baby raccoon came out of the thicket. It was just like that Walt Whitman poem about the astronomer.

Grits to Sweden

Yesterday I mailed some grits to Sweden. In return, I expect to receive some canned fish meatballs. "They taste like nothing," Hanna assured me.