Come, silly familiar boy, and we'll be off
to the land of Indian food and exotic movies
(at least for tonight). We'll tell revisions
of stories told before; your workplace,
my writing, the cats, weekend plans.

Then you'll drive me across town, in a truck
which is gathering years in the same way
that we're collecting grey hairs. We'll park
in the back, to avoid the gauche teenagers,

and duck inside for our secret rendezvous
with a Kevin Spacey movie. Do you remember
our first movie? I don't; I liked moviegoing
with you better once we settled out which

Jeff and I take some halfhearted malicious fun from watching the Miss America pageant every year. We never mean to watch it, and we never realize when it's about to air. But each year, somehow, we manage to channel-surf right before the pageant begins airing and one of us says, "Oh, hell, we'll get a laugh or two out of this, grab dinner and bring it in here!"

Jeff and I have a great amount of fun carping at stupid commercials. One of our favorites to harangue is a Rogaine commercial that says, "Does she want you to use Rogaine? Better ask!"

I sometimes wonder if we were dumb consumers to begin with, or if years and years of idiotic commercials like this have—well—brainwashed us into believing that this kind of thinking is all that we're capable of as adults. My year of doing marketing and PR work led me to believe the latter.

Design ads so that the company's message is conveyed even if the reader only sees it for a second or two. What a self-referential surprise that is! The MTV generation has been inundated with ads practically since birth (after all, no name-brand product was ever too good for baby!), and any advertising that is going to catch their collectively jaded eyes has to be subtly different. Most companies choose to go for flashier—faster, louder, harder, more colorful.

In attempts to imitate my walk and talk, there are two proper facial-expressions to assume while shopping: the absent-minded-professor look, and the kamikaze-shopping-trip look. I tend to favor the former; it requires less effort, and people don't glare at an absent-minded professor as a twentysomething power-shopping for groceries in fifteen minutes or less.

I really wasn't kidding when I said that I had a backlog of pictures. This should just about catch me up, except for the goofy vacation pictures.

Just this morning, I finally found out where Jess has been stashing the pictures she's been taking with her digital camera. I've been promising to provide some pictures from recent events for quite some time, but it was rather difficult to provide pictures I didn't yet have.

However, this little problem's been solved. This is the first of what will probably be a few picture-related posts on cat.net…