124 years ago today - 1/29/1886 - Karl Benz invented the automobile. For no real or discernible reason this flew into my brain as I sat alone sipping tea and reading a porn story FOURTH DATE, FIRST FUCK by Dion Farquhar. That might be wrong. I might have been reading A NEW THEORY OF BEAUTY by Guy Sircello (he died of AIDS (I like obscure philosophy books like that (I am the only person you know who has ever paid $90 for a worn copy of UNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDING by Paul Ziff))). Then again, it might have been a porn story by Carol Queen or Svetlana Boym. We all have our agendas. Our weaknesses. One of my glaring weaknesses has been revealed to be collecting pixels of the Russian double-headed eagle symbol (because I read an article about it by Kruschcev's daughter). It's like that. You told me you could simultaneously read articles by Matthew Hoey in the BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS and finger your pee hole, but I knew you couldn't. How did I know? Your wife told me.

Thomas Merton informs us that his father painted like Cezanne. Oh really? Like how? Like THE BLACK CLOCK?