LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat

After lunch I remembered that I was out of licorice. I always have a piece after lunch. It is the order of things. There is a specific brand I buy. No, it’s not Nibs, Bog help us all. Wiley Wallaby. Well, let us go buy some at the Walgreen’s. Set watch for “outdoor walk,” and off we go.

They did not have any. In fact they had no licorice at all, except Twizzlers, which aren’t. There is no such thing as red licorice. Those are Red Vines, thank you. There was some candy that purported to have a licorice aspect behind its crunchy carapace of pastel-hued sugar, but again, that doesn’t count. Well, let’s go to Target, because I’ve seen the Wiley brand there in the checkout in the burbs.

They did not have any. They were also completely deficient in anything that could be construed as licorice. I thought I might try a convenience store, but then you’re paying $8 for a bag. I tried one anyway. No licorice.

None to be had in the entire downtown core.

Sigh. Back to the office to the emergency licorice, which was not as good and had the consistency of pencil erasers. Since I opened the bag long ago, they were now hard as stone, so no. That meant I’d have to resort of Wiley Wallaby Lemonade Licorice, WHICH IS NOT LICORICE AT ALL. It is merely a sugar-delivery system for something that has the consistency of their proper licorice, but this consistency is not confined to licorice at all. Angers me that a firm that makes such good licorice should squander the term on something that has no connection at all.

The walk concluded, my watch informed me that I had burned 82 calories. The lemonade things contained 50 calories, so I was up 32 - or rather down. You know what I mean. All in all, a bootless errand.

And a rather insignificant tale. But. After this week, a reminder that most of your day is taken up with some form of “searching for licorice,” and whether you realize that the relative ease of your life is determined by the definition of “licorice” and how much time you are willing to devote to finding it. Please buy my book. “Who Failed to Restock my Licorice.” It will change your life.

Today I filed a column and watched with pleasure as my last architecture piece did some nice traffic. It’s odd to check my Google News page and see . . .


		This is a close second to googling something to get an answer and finding this website as the first suggested link.

Worked out and read Twitter about the various encampments and library trashings. Or was it but one? There was the despoilation of a UCLA landmark building, defaced with righteous scrawls and heaped with trash. There is something about these remnants and examples of Western Civ that infuriates the vandals.

I did read that some of the Occupiers of a Portland library stole old comic books, which tracks.

And now to work on the book. Still on track for a July 4 release. The more I produce, the more I think I should hold it to 120 images, the best of the best of, and then I run the AI prompt again and something spectacularly surreal appears.

So maybe 150.

Jet Lag dreams. I prized them because they were proof I’d slept. One concerned taunting an old friend because he hadn’t admitted that a particular 1980s movie set in the noir era was, for all its singing and dancing, actually pretty good. This seemed to be a portal dream, because the first time I had it, the people in the room turned into mobsters from “Goodfellas,” and someone came in and gave them money with which they could gamble. They left the room with great solemnity.

(Prompt: 80s movie musical about singing gangsters)

The second time I willed myself to revisit the scene, it also opened up into the street, but I was still laughing the friend who declined to admit the movie was good, and in fact was known for ignoring facts and making things up, leading to a catch-phrase among his friends: “Steve-free.” As in fact-free, but that didn’t quite work because it equated his name with facts.