(from Sept 8 )
so i was up early this morning and in the neighborhood of Kuhl’s (O st between 10th and 11th) so I decided to stop in for their $4.50 steak/eggs/hash browns/toast breakfast special to read the last two days of the paper and get some cartoon ideas for today.

i hadn’t eaten breakfast there in a Long time, and not regularly since about 2000, but i had forgotten what a freak factory that joint is.

i was seated along the wall of booth next to an elderly woman who mumbled to herself and a man who instantly said something along the lines of “How about those Huskers? They sure played great on Saturday!”

He said this not with the tone of voice of a man who wanted to talk football, but with the tone of a crazy man who wanted to say things loudly that seem – on the surface – like conversation openers. I somehow mistook this for Tone #1, however, so I responded that they need to work on those special teams and the turnovers.

At this point it was apparent that he was not actually prepared to have a conversation, so he fell dead silent. I felt bad, so I said something like “Did you watch the game this Saturday?” and as I said it, I turned to look at him and realized that he had the faded wandering eyes of a blind man. So I felt bad for asking a potentially blind man if he watched anything.

Then he told me that he thought they were going to go all the way. I responded, banking on my previous experience in this conversation that he would have nothing to say after that, and then I could get back to my paper.

Flashback to 2000: there was this old man, 80 or so, who wore a giant sombrero. now this is a white man – looking to be of northern european descent. not the typical sombero-wearer. he would have a stuffed animal duct-taped onto the front of his sombrero with a child’s plastic bib hanging off the back like a cape. he would wear curly-toed elf shoes and occasionally go into the bathroom only to come out with cigarette papers stuck to his face.

Well that was 2000, and much to my delight, he still eats at Kuhl’s in 2004. he walked in (sadly without stuffed animal, bib or elf shoes) with his giant sombrero, walked up to me and introduced himself as “Robert Mitchum, circa 1956.”

I said hello, wondering if I would ever get to my paper. He went and sat down, the old lady and blind man both paid their bills, and I was left in peace. But good god, Kuhl’s is better than a zoo.

(from Sept 7)

i know this will seem a little strange, but this weekend, the toes on my right foot smelled like blueberries.

sara first noticed this when, for some reason, she smelled my toes on Saturday and noticed they smelled like blueberries. upon closer sniffing inspection, we discovered that my nail polish (an immediate suspect) just smells like nail polish, and the rest of my foot just smells like foot. her sister Kelly confirmed the blueberry smell.

my left toes smell vaguely of blueberries, but not nearly as strong as my right toes. all weekend, dogs were attracted to my right foot. i have not, to my knowledge, stepped on or kicked any blueberries. and after a shower and a day’s worth of walking around and croquet playing, my right toes still smelled of blueberries.

today, i’ve been wearing my sandals all day, so they smell a little more of stinky feet than they do blueberries, but it’s still there.

I designed the website for the music festival my friend Jeremy organized. It’s my first attempt at designing a flash site…if you’re on dialup, it might take a little while to load.

www.lincolncalling.com

(a delayed post from Aug 11)

I was just at Runza and this kid, probably 2 years old at the absolute oldest, was knocking over one of those signs they put up after they’ve mopped the floor. His mother, a cranky woman in her mid-20s, kept saying “Oh, thank you for that!” in a tone dripping with enough sarcasm to be effective for the adults in the room. But what she apparently did not realize is that 2 YEAR OLDS DO NOT UNDERSTAND SARCASM.

So her young son, who was probably old enough to understand “Thank you,” thought he was being thanked for knocking down the sign. So he kept doing it, and she kept sarcastically thanking him. With a mind like that, I’m actually a little surprised that she understands sarcasm, lowest form of humor or not.

so i had these three books checked out that were due in January, and i just kept forgetting to take them back.

I received a letter in the mail informing me that my three books were insanely overdue, and that i now owed somewhere in the realm of $280.

that letter came to me in march, and i still hadn’t taken them back.

until today.

fearing that my bill would now be something like $1700, i was hoping that someone i knew would be at the desk, someone like Jake Gillespie perhaps.

but no. i knew no one. and i knew if i didn’t return the books now, i’d put them back in my bag, take them back to my apartment, and forget about them for another 8 months.

so i bit the bullet, walked up to the desk, and said “I have some books to turn in that are a bit overdue…”

the young lady calmly scanned the books, made a nice little symmetrical stack, and said, “Yes, as they were quite a bit overdue, you’ve got a pretty large fine.”

I gulped. She continued.

“Thirty dollars.”

You know, normally I’d consider trying to weasel my way out of a library fine. Or maybe I’d try to figure out the depreciative math involved, but I was just so happy, I’m looking forward to paying that thirty dollars and clearing my record at the Love Library.

well, when talking to my editor today, he informed me that the mayor’s office called to complain about my debut cartoon in the Lincoln Journal-Star from Sunday.

they didn’t get it.

the backstory: I didn’t get a lot of sleep Saturday night, then we went canoeing Sunday, then I worked overnight Sunday, then I worked all day today. So I had gone for quite a while with not much sleep.

I needed to take a little nap, so I asked Sara to wake me up after a half hour so that I didn’t just sleep all evening and then not be able to sleep tonight.

Now as a sidenote, I sometimes talk in my sleep if I am being addressed while I’m in a dream, and my sleep-talking tends to make NO SENSE AT ALL.

The following is a transcript Sara took down when she realized it was going to be entertaining.

Sara gets up from the bed where Neal is taking a nap.

NEAL: What are you doing?

SARA: I’m going to read while you sleep.

NEAL: Why?

SARA: Because I don’t want to sleep.

NEAL: Is it because of my power blankets?

An hour and a half later, Sara realizes she needs to wake Neal.

SARA: Neal, wake up.

NEAL: Why?

SARA: Because it’s 6:20.

NEAL: Are you serious?!

SARA: Yeah, why?

NEAL: You mean to tell me, at the age of – how old am I now?

SARA: 26.

NEAL: You mean to tell me that at the age of 26, you’re accusing me of wrecking into the van?

SARA: What?!?

NEAL: The van is in the garage, and it’s wrecked!

Five minutes later…

NEAL: It’s KCi and JoJo.

Five minutes later…

NEAL: It’s diverting traffic.

Five minutes later…

SARA: Neal, it’s time to get up…you’re scaring me.

NEAL: You’re the micro-fridge.

A few minutes later, Sara shakes Neal.

NEAL: Freedom.

SARA: What?! Wake up!

NEAL: FREEDOM!!

A few minutes later.

NEAL: What is that, by the river?

SARA: You’re crazy. Wake up. (she sits Neal up in bed)

NEAL: (pauses) This isn’t where I thought we were at all.

SARA: Where did you think we were?

NEAL: By the river.

SARA: What river?

NEAL: I don’t know – the river.

SARA: Seriously, Neal. You need to get up, sleepy.

NEAL: Stop calling me names.

SARA: Neal!

NEAL: You should call me names like Harold…or Gator.

i went canoeing today for the first time ever. sara and i were in one boat and sara’s sister kelly and her boyfriend billy were in the other.

we were racing for a while a few miles in, and in the heat of the action, billy broke his paddle, so for the rest of the seven-mile trip we took turns being the boat with one paddle.

there was one part that got kind of rough with some rapids, and sara and i got caught in the current and were driven straight into the bank. then, because we were stopped, the strong water tipped our boat over and threw us out. sara held onto the boat and was dragged along, and i tried to catch our things. we had taken our shoes off, so i grabbed for those and the paddle.

the tough part was that the bottom of the river was made up of sharp rocks at this point, and the current was very strong. so it was really difficult to stand up. we kept getting knocked and pulled down and slammed into the bottom of the river, so it was pretty scary for a while. sara let go of the boat, and kelly and billy stopped it downstream where they were, past the rapids.

we both got pretty banged up from that experience, but at least we learned to keep our shoes on.

now i’m reading all my spam! am i like the last one to figure this out? these things are brilliant! here’s another one I got today:

for bodice ripper derive perverse satisfaction from ruffian of.Where we can hardly recognize our tomato.But they need to remember how ostensibly over judge returns home.Still throw at her from near photon, trade baseball cards with her toward stovepipe with around bodice ripper.

marquess melancholy prod coexistent ricochet

I’m sure that by reprinting these, i’m triggering some bomb or virus or something.

i don’t know why these fascinate me so, but here are two more spam subject lines from today that just struck me as fun:

lover 4794 bubbles

starlet 3 toothaches

actually that “starlet 3 toothaches” one was from Benjamin Barber, so out of curiosity, I went ahead and opened it. these emails are brilliant!

Benjamin Barber wrote:

fairy beyond mourn cleavage beyond alchemist, but briar patch around tea party share a shower with around tea party.Still find subtle faults with her from bubble about ballerina, know her looking glass from with traffic light over hand.Georgina, although somewhat soothed by of apartment building and dissident related to.Georgina, the friend of Georgina and earns frequent flier miles with starlet toward.If toward debutante mourn spider for bonbon, then related to graduated cylinder hides.

boatload contrast catbird hamburger innumerable reynolds spit halloween

So then I went back and read Emery Stanford’s e-mail entitled “Lover 4794 bubbles”:

CEO beyond turkey negotiate a prenuptial agreement with graduated cylinder beyond scythe, because tenor near sell to behind gonad.When you see from reactor, it means that dolphin defined by tea party sweeps the floor.For example, toward piroshki indicates that over vacuum cleaner brainwash near trombone.

abrasion rondo barge ethnography

I think this is poetry.