When you have a dog you get used to sights that would have scared the bejeezus out of someone in primitive times. A prehistoric man who had not made peace with the wolf at the perimeter of the flickering campfire would have been startled to see the beast in a dark cave, eyes lit up. But since I have a dog, and know that Jasper does what he wishes and doesn’t always keep close when bored, I was not surprised to see his shadowy form in the laundry room at night when I made a final check of the house before bed. He looked up; his eyes glinted, then he went back to licking the floor.

Why he was licking the floor I had no idea, but I figured he had his reasons.

This morning I asked (G)Nat if she wanted a bagel; she had declined one the previous day, noting that the cream cheese tasted, well, kinda weird. I chalked it up to the quickly-shifting tastes of a child, but then I noted that Mom had used the auxiliary reserve cream cheese, and it wasn’t the usual Philadelphia Whipped. It was a local brand. She knows her salami, this one; I went to three different grocery stores to replicate the salami that had earned such great favor a few weeks ago, and she knows her cream cheese. But I wanted a bagel. The fridge had no bagels. Well, downstairs to the freezer, then.

I went down to the laundry room. Suddenly all was clear. (G)Nat had a popsicle for dessert the previous night. That was about 6 PM. Jasper was licking the floor around 1 AM. Seven hours was sufficient time for the good stuff in the fridge to melt and leak, because the door was open, and had been open all night.

I swear: every time I put something in the fridge for storage, I think: I’ll throw this out before I eat it, because the power will fail or the door will get left open. At least most of the stuff was the Emergency stuff, various types of animal flesh compacted into nodules or patties or links or spheres. But my ice cream: gone. My Geno’s East frozen pizza: gone. Much shopping to do this weekend, it seems.

You’d be surprised how much I haven’t felt like working this week, and I couldn’t tell you why.  A passing phase, no doubt. I’ve just been too busy, or too drugged, for long-form typing. There was the earlier blather in the week, of course – which reminds me. I’d meant to append this to the bit about Ayers, and the constant romanticization of the 60s and the endless number of movies about the horrors visited on Noble If Misguided Souls, That Latter Attribute Still Being Up for Debate, in the 50s re: commies. I had my fill of McCarthyite drama with Woody Allen’s “The Front,” which concerned the peculiar persecutions visited upon talented men for no discernible reason except an irrational fear of the color red; since then, I’ve declined to enjoy subsequent returns to the story. I may have no choice:

Entertainment Weekly reported that one of the elements of the upcoming Indiana Jones movie – set in the 50s – is “anticommunism.” Now. If someone notes that they want to get the Crystal Skull before the Russians do, that’s fine, but if the officials who are opposed to the Ultimate Power falling into the hands of the Soviets are white bald fat blustery idiots who might as well be raving about fluoride, or a Gen. Jack D. Ripper-types screwing a yard-long cigar into his mouth while his forehead combusts from white-hot insanity  -

Well, every scriptwriter must make a choice, I suppose.  As an aged knight said: Choose Wisely.

There's a new Diner. The iTunes site is here; the plain vanilla (and twice as big) MP3 version is here. Enjoy, and thanks for listening. And yes, I know, the Diner site at lileks.com is suddenly fubared. Worked for me. Well. That will give me something to do this weekend. Again.

Speaking of which: have a fine one! See you at buzz.mn for the rest of the day.