In FOREIGN AFFAIRS this month Niall Ferguson is trying to link Spengler, Toynbee, and Paul Kennedy to paintings by Thomas Cole. Will it go?

Right wing columnist Tony Blankley keeps writing about the idea of mandatory national service for all Americans. Would it ever, ever fly?

"What's your favorite book?"

If I say THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis do I get to have a diabetic cookie?

What's your position on Creech Air Force Base?

On the blues - Francis Davis or Robert Palmer?

Listen to me - what do you know about J.D. Salinger and Peter Burling's toy bus stop? Never saw that coming huh?

I'd really like to meet somebody who owns one of Piero Manzoni's cans of shit. Wouldn't you?

The correct answer to the quiz question is Doyle Dane Bernbach.

I wish I had the fortitude to review a novel like ECHO HOUSE by Ward Just the way I used to review books for Patsy Moore's zine - bit I just don't have it any longer. Ironically in some ways I'm enjoying fiction more.

Anne Conway, 1631-1679

There is no picture of Anne Conway. A detail from a Dutch interior painting is often presented as showing her; but the owners of the painting, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, report that recent scholarship has shown that it’s certainly not her.

What do you think about the death of Eugene Izzi??

A woman said, "Your indiscriminate use of the word 'cunt' is offensive." Was she talking to me? This was in a most pleasant garden environment. I was sipping a sugar free vanilla latte. We were all strangers, all tan and looking summertime good. There were unspoken quodlibets in the air about propagation. I held up a copy of the book FORGIVENESS: BREAKING THE CHAIN OF HATE by Michael Henderson in front of my face. I understand - you don't think such a book could give off a progenitive vibe. You're wrong. And I was going to go with Jampolski at first - not sexy!

Then a scut in a daffodil dress was asking about Avis Bohlen, Nina Tannenwald and Freeman Dyson. This was an intellectual cafe even if all anybody can think about is grinding the G spot into ecru paroxsym. You think he's let pre-cum seep out? You think she's moist behind that Mac laptop? Have you ever thought you might like to order just a plain old cup o' mud?

A bee approached. A hag lunged at it with a copy of GOLF FOR DUMMIES, swatting. She had hands like a grease monkey - what's that about? Spoliate and plunder.

The waitress of last summer is the hostess now. Cheek to cheek with the proprietor, even. It never ends. Interviewing applicants. Barking commands.

Somewhere a television is repeating Graham Allison's hypotheses about loose Russina nukes. Where is it? In your mind? Your anus? Your partner? No, it's there, behnd the coffee bar. We want, we want, we want!