"The tiger can't change his spots. No, wait, he did! Good for him!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I am undercover. I exist as a waitress and only a waitress. I have disguised my true nature so thoroughly that there is considerable discussion amongst my coworkers as to whether I am intelligent. My boss believes me to be a "ding-dong." He also believes that God burns down the houses of unbelievers, and that interracial relationships cause...hurricanes? This was unclear, but it may be related to his other belief that non-white people "smell bad in summer." Obviously he is a charmer in the extreme. Last night he informed me that I resembled a nanny goat. "That is...not a compliment, in America," I responded. "But nanny goats are so cute," he cooed. "Keep those feelings in Greece, where they belong!" I shrieked. Another waitress believes that my "elevator may not go all the way to the top." "Not only does my elevator go all the way to the top," I answered, "but Einstein and Marie Curie are banging each other in it." She stared at me for a long while. "That's impossible," she informed me gently, and stopped just short of twirling a slow, pitying finger at her temple.

He Will Look This Way in Heaven

Words cannot express how much I love this Chris Ware panel from last week's New Yorker:
















It is a Kermit! It is a perfected Kermit.

Not to Mention the Rat-Bite Who Calls Himself Franz Wright

I had forgotten how much I love waitressing! What is better than being called a "sweetie-baby" by a rude male ginger, or having a customer ask you to call him Dad, or being told by a co-worker that you are "very good-looking all over"? How can the pleasures of poetry compare? Is poetry very good-looking all over? I think not, there is the hammertoe that is Billy Collins, there is the astigmatism that is John Ashbery, there are the thousand split ends of Jorie Graham, there is the rheumatiz' of William Logan, there are the twin sad balls of the Dickman boys.

A Flash...of NEWS

Last Monday I woke up so crony because I had turned 27 during the night! 27 on the 27th, it is called a golden birthday. I went to Disneyworld to celebrate, after first praying piously to St. Rebecca to protect me from the murderousness of theme parks. It almost did not work: the Carousel of Progress was out of order and the disappointment nearly ended me. ANYWAY, I did not have time to post about it because that was my last day of freedom. The next day I became a waitress, because of Economy, and I labor there still, getting air-licked by cooks and forgetting your potato.

WHAT DID I DO, Indeed

Oh my God, have you read Larry Rivers' autobiography? That man had sex with everything, including velvet chairs! He got Jean Garrigue pregnant and William Carlos Williams gave her a free abortion! What? WHAT? How did I not know this? Representative quote:

"Am I saying that if five women sat on my cock or masturbated in front of me, they'd have a perfect right to categorize me as retarded?"

Riddle me that, puritans! It is a question for the ages.