Just for the record, folks, I think I'd rather watch one of my testicles being removed than go to the movies and sit through She's All That.

Just so you know...

It's been a noteworthy week, food-wise. Tuesday night Sonya whipped up a Southern feast, complete with fried chicken and gravy and mashed taters. It was really, really good. Thursday I went to a luncheon at work where we had this stuff...I think it was called chicken florentine. Anyway, they stuffed this chicken full of spinach and it was very good. Thursday night I made a meat loaf all by myself, which was extremely tasty. And tonight, at Wal Mart, we found microwavable frozen Krystal's, which caused Sonya and I both to shriek like little girls and snatch up a box of those tasty little burgers.

(For all my yankee readers...Krystal's are the Southern equivalent of White Castle - you know, little square burgers that make far more sense after you've been drinking. Everyone up to speed? Good.)

I was driving to West Memphis this afternoon (Sonya was dropping off her car with a mechanic there that she trusts - a rare and valuable thing, you'll agree) and listening to WEVL, our local community-supported radio station. WEVL is excellent. Friday afternoons feature New Orleans music. I heard the first notes of Go To the Mardi Gras and I thought I was gonna jump out of that truck, I was so excited.

I am so psyched about the trip this weekend. If you've never been to Mardi Gras it's like your birthday, Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled in to one. I can't recommend it highly enough. If you have the means you must go.

Remember, I'll be taking notes and jotting observations while I'm gone...y'all will get a full update when I return. I'm hoping for guests appearances, surprising confessions and ass-grabbing galore.

I said I went to Wal Mart, right? It's so sad. Going to Wal Mart in your hometown lets you see just how much nothing has changed. I saw two people I went to school with at some point and one of my high school teachers. I didn't speak to any of them. What could I say?

"Hey! Great to see you! I bet you and I don't have one fuckin' thing to say to each other!"

The girl who checked us out was about fifteen, I guess, and just a notch or two up from catastrophically retarded. The woman who came to take her place after she was through with us was about sixty, weighed around three-hundred pounds and had hair so big it actually eclipsed the hanging sodium lights that illuminate Mr. Sam's retail cathedral.

I worked at Wal Mart once. For a few months. After Sonya and I graduated from college we had a wonderful six-week period of joblessness. I tell you, unemployment's not too bad if you got some cash to cover it. We stayed up late, slept late, did as we wished...then all the graduation money ran out and the jobs we'd thought would magically be attached to our new diplomas failed to materialize. Sonya got a job at Hasting's, a book/music/video store that was the Studio 54 of Conway, Arkansas. As far as shitty part-time jobs go it was pretty cool. Plus, it lets Sonya sympathize with Randal in Clerks, which I think is totally cool.

Me, I managed to parlay one three hour course in photography and a gig as my school's photographer's assistant into a job at the one-hour photo lab in Wal Mart. I worked with a weird mix of retirees, right-wing radicals, white trash, theater people, college students and fundies. We did get to look through all the confiscated dirty pictures people tried to get us to develop, though. That was always fun. One time we got a picture of a guy with his asshole spread so wide you could have driven a fucking Pathfinder in there. We all wondered who took the picture, or how he managed to take it himself since both his hands were otherwise occupied.

Perhaps he used a timer.

Anyway, this particular Wal Mart was one of the older ones. Lots of the employees had been there for years and would happily tell stories (whether you wanted to hear them or not) about "Mr. Sam" and his love of watermelons. (True Story!) The creepy things was "Mr. Sam" (Walton, the founder of the company, for those of you not familiar with bargain-price apocrypha) was well and truly dead by this time...and they talked like he was still alive!

Oh yeah...I worked with this one girl who was so amazingly fat and short that it was like working with a Volkswagen Beetle. Her husband was a student at Central Baptist College (the red-headed stepchild of the Conway Trinity of Higher Education). He had a wonderful voice, she always told me, and he had sung with Dino before.

"Dino?" I was puzzled. I pictured this guy singing with the yapping purple pet from The Flintstones.

Now, though, I watch a lot more late-night TV, especially on the weekend. Dino is the TV singer/preacher who apparently tries to convert teenagers using awkward, poorly filmed videos.

I don't know if I'd go around bragging about my spouse singing with him, though. Not too cool, that Dino.

Speaking of success stories out of central Arkansas: how 'bout my boy Bill? He got away with it! I like the guy a lot; hell, I'd vote for him again. But even I, who sang that hideous Fleetwood Mac song in front of the Old State House on that bitterly cold night in November of 1992, know that Bill has been a bad, bad boy. And nothing is going to happen to him. That was the Republican's big gun; short of hiring an assassin they are out of ammunition to use on the man from Hope.

Congratulations, Bill. If you can live with yourself I can live with you, too.

So I'll be incommunicado for the next few days. It's about one o'clock on Saturday morning as I write this. I'm going to finish this beer, catch a few hours sleep and then spend all day tomorrow running like hell as our ETD gets closer and closer. Right now that's scheduled for some time before five on Sunday morning. I think that's a bit optimistic on Sonya's part (she's set the schedule) but she can be a hell of a motivator when she wants to be; we'll see how that goes.

I'll be catchin' beads if you need me. Look for me on Thursday or Friday.

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