And then his pants fell down. Cascaded right down to his knees.

Up until that point, you might think that his day had been quite lucky. When you leave your keys in your car and don't lock the door, and it's still there when you get back, the stars were arrayed in your favor. But any day your pants fall down in public is not a lucky day.

There is something deeply wrong with a Pentium that cannot display anything above VGA. I have a new computer at my desk, a brisk Compaq with a suitably huge NEC monitor. All this money and power and I can't get more than 16 colors on the screen.

Time today to put the finishing touches on the prototype copy and crank out some more, based on last night's storm. It was a good gullywasher - the creek flooded, and rose an astonishing five feet in about as many minutes; I had to move the car because the water was over the curb and threatened to sweep the Defiant away. In short, a rain storm. But the local weatherfolk had to act as though it was a portent of the end times. They broke into the regular broadcasting to give breathless accounts of the storm's progress, complete with lurid radar images, crackly phone conversations from the outer provinces, and - my favorite - a phone call from someone circling in a jetliner overhead, telling us that the plane was having to circle for a while until the weather calmed down. "So if there's anyone who's headed out to pick someone up at the airport tonight, they're going to have to expect a delay."

What level of idiocy do you have to possess to fail to grasp that when the trees outside your house are bent parallel to the ground by the wind, the planes will probably be delayed? Here's a hint: when the civil defense sirens wail all over town, the sky goes dark an hour ahead of schedule and the rain and wind obliterate the view from your window, maybe the planes will be a bit late.

Meteorologists are in danger of being professional wolf-criers. The threshold seems to get lower and lower; often the mere threat of a storm leads the news. For Chrissakes, this is Minnesota, this is the Midwest, the land where you can see if coming for an hour before it gets here. Somehow we managed to build an entire civilization in the middle of nowhere without Doppler Radar.

The tie lasted exactly six days. I'm now in jeans and a peach shirt. No tie. No pinching dress shoes. I will return to the tie on occasion; when I walk through the skyways I feel more like part of downtown if I'm wearing the uniform. But if I really wanted to look like someone in management or the financial services, I should have gone into those professions. It was different in Washington; you simply Did Not go casual. Even the most underpaid drone-wonk laboring in some sunless cell in the depths of an old wartime office building wore a suit. Usually blue. (At first I thought everyone had dandruff, and then I realized it was asbestos.)

Last night I wanted to stay up and play "The Last Express," a game that takes place on the Orient Express. It opens promisingly enough - I go to my sleeping car and find a dead body on the floor. The cursor changed to a hand when I passed it over the body, meaning I could perhaps rifle his pockets or steal his watch. When I clicked on the dead body, however, I picked it up. For the next few minutes I looked around the cabin but could not manipulate any objects - couldn't open the window, couldn't open the suitcases. I looked at my inventory and realized I'd been staggering around the small compartment holding a dead body. If the game had been truly realistic, it would have allowed me to utilize the commode using just my feet; any man who's had to use a decrepit public restroom know that maneuver.

But I didn't play the game last night. I listened to Art Bell, so help me God, and prowled web pages on the Mars Face. Art had a live broadcast with a batch of genial nutcases in a Phoenix auditorium, and I listened while peering at their faces on Art's webcam page. The lead speaker, Mr. Hoagland, looked perfectly reasonable, but I think he's deeply, immensely nuts. He has his own domain name - but he uses it to sell sea salt, not promote his theory that (take a deep breath) the Mars Pathfinder mission is proof of deep Masonic penetration of NASA, proof that ancient sects that arose from a rebirth of a multi-planet civilization are shaping and directing our space program, as well as preparing for a seminal event over Phoenix by July 26th. That's the gist, I think. Although I just signed on to the Arizona Republic web page, and their story says many attendees had as many questions when they left as when they arrived. I'm not surprised.

It's sad, I suppose. I looked at the maps of Cydonia, the city on Mars with its Sphinx-like face, the Fortress with its square walls, the huge Pyramid, the other formations; I read a brain-bustingly dull account of erosion and other geological factors, and at the end of it all I got was this sympathy for those who are desperate for this to be true, and unlikely to get their proof. We could drop a Pathfinder in the city itself and they wouldn't be satisfied.

On the other hand, would it hurt to drop one there? As someone once said: either we are alone in the universe or we're not, and either conclusion has its own flavor of astonishment. It's not implausible that spacefaring races came to Mars and built a city out of rock; it would be like taking a plane to Tahiti and making your shelter from bamboo and palm fronds. But why build a pyramid, for God's sake? I know, I know: it's a power plant. Or so the web pages say; they insist there's no evidence that the pyramids are burial chambers, and are actually power plants. Nothing is what it seems. The Egyptians, who are in this up to the tips of Anubis' pointy ears, were actually highly advanced and knew these secrets. I suppose that's why they drove horses everywhere. Probably ROBOT horses.

Real life is just so mundane and boring after this stuff; the real patterns, the real secrets, the real wonders are commonplace.

I'll be listening to Art tonight, but if probably from the corridor of the Orient Express, carrying a dead body.

That's my definition of commonplace.

A caller to last night's show had an excellent point: when Andrew Cunnanin was named to the Ten Most Wanted list, who did he knock off? On the list, I mean. It's possible there's some fellow out there who's peeved that this young upstart gets all the publicity. Maybe it's some guy who's been in the serial killer biz for years, and resents the brash newcomer. Perhaps a comeback is in order just to show the world he's still got it.

Ahhh, it's good to be back in the cynical waters of a newspaper office again.

One of the reporters - I don't want to say an old guy, because he's not, but he's of the previous generation before journalism became a profession overrun with tender sensibilities; call him Reporter Classic - has been taking a poll to see if anyone had heard of Gianni Versace prior to his execution. It's running below thirty percent, which is not surprising. Younger fops, like me, have heard of him - I recall his garish macaque-ass colors and hideous designs in the ads of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. But older reporters grunt and snort HELL NO with pride. It's bad enough that a man is a fashion designer, let along that other men should expect to know about it.

I was outside enjoying the sun a few minutes ago - it's 81 at ten-fifteen AM, sure proof that today's walk around the lake will be a marrow-draining experience - and a man was tottering down the street sticking fliers under windshields. He handed me one, explaining that he was running for the park board. His main plank: the need for a legal clothing optional beach. I would have agreed, except that his physical appearance presented the best possible argument for a clothing optional beach. He was very large and very white, and his arms had a spattering of zits of varying size and degree of healing. If his arms, which I assume have been in short sleeves for months, look this way, then I can only imagine what -

Well, I prefer not to imagine, let alone see. It's the old rule of thumb: those who advocate the most strenuously for nudism are those who ought not to be naked in public.

I am getting this up-and-out morning ritual down cold. It now takes 35 minutes to get everything done, including a contemplative cup of coffee (also known as "a gulp") a brief scan of the paper (now that I work for a paper, I no longer have time to read one) and a brisk tour of the creek with Jasper. Then it's off up the highway in the Defiant. On a brilliant blue morn like this one, it's an inspiring sight coming up 35W: two lanes split off the freeway to empty into downtown, and that gorgeous skyline is right there, practically on top of you, the Emerald City at the end of your gluey stagger through the poppy fields. (Also known as morning.)

You snooze, you gain. Last night I went to bed in the usual stew of overamped exhaustion, post-show adrenalin and soupy humidity. It had started to rain a few minutes before, and I contented myself with the thought that nothing beat falling asleep to the gentle roar of a summer shower. Like the surf, except it moved in one direction only. I fell asleep and dozed for a good solid four or five minutes. BANG. The storm turned up the volume to 11, and became one of those angry authority figures that grabs you by the lapel and harangues you as long as it likes. BANG! High wind, creaking trees. Well, I figure, I'm exhausted. I can sleep through this. Really, I can. At this point I can sleep through anything.

And then the sirens started. Again with the damn sirens. Sara woke up and wondered if we should go to the basement, and I replied I would go to the basement if there was a bed down there. Otherwise, I'm not moving. I no longer believe that the sirens mean anything other than rain and wind, and until I see the bedroom wall disintegrate and cows fly through the room I will not move.

Quite a storm, though. When I went down to the creek this morning it was speedy and swollen, and impromptu lakes filled all the low spots. Only the path was dry, an asphalt bridge over the new canals. This was of much distress to Jasper, who simply will not stand in water to pee: not part of dog programming.

I have spent the morning researching how long it would take at current rainforest depletion levels to destroy the Rain Forest Cafe in the Mall of America. (About eight sixtieths of a second. I'm having trouble expressing that figure correctly; I'm dragging up elementary school math, and it's brought back primal memories of second grade: It's about 1:21 in the afternoon; the day seems interminable, the room smells of pencil shavings. Back then, I was good at math. But back then there wasn't much math to be good at.)

Argh! Goddammit! I just discovered that the anecdote on which I wanted to hang the rain forest fact involves the Olive Garden Restaurant, not the Rain Forest Cafe. Can I still work it into the piece?

The day is still young, and I am determined.

Later - just spent the usual lunch hour back in the photo archives. It's my favorite part of the job so far - looking through hundreds of old pictures of the city, its pageants, streets, long-gone buildings, long-forgotten stores. Nearly all the street scenes from the 40s and 50s look far more urban and cosmopolitan than the same scene today. Lots of guys with hats. Lots of big solid cars with fins and chrome. More stores for the average shopper, with everyone present from the roll-call of forgotten retail names: W.T. Grant, Gamble's, Woolworth, Kresge. The signage was huge, playful, with big words in big script, or clock faces that covered two stories. It's fascinating stuff, and it all makes me sad. As much as I love downtown, there are blocks were the old scale of the city has been obliterated, utterly erased, and replaced with structures that owe nothing to their neighbors. Less a collection of buildings than a convention of solipsists.

I was poking through the Dinkytown archive, looking at old views of my former home by the U of M. The only time Dinkytown penetrated the newspaper's consciousness was in the early 70s, when students occupied some ramshackle buildings to protest their demolition. A fast-food chain called "The Red Barn" was going to build on the land, and the students rebelled. I can see their point - Red Barn, or Dead Barn as we called it, was a gustatory and aesthetic nightmare. (Interestingly enough, one of the condemned buildings was an old White Tower, itself a homogeonized chain from the 20s.) The protest turned into the usual self-righteous 60s-style dust-up, with protesters screaming at the police, locking arms and chanting to keep out The Man, all in the name of The People. The Red Barn owner said to hell with it, and built elsewhere. The buildings were razed; the property owner suffered a loss and the city lost property $ sales tax revenue, but hey, at least no one in Dinkytown had to look at a Red Barn. (Burger King and McDonald's later went into Dinkytown with nary a peep raised against them; somehow, the community survived.)

One picture showed a few Yippies confronting the Red Barn owner outside of another cafe. A yellowing scrap of paper was glued to the back, the standard form for identifying people in the picture. Typed with an old manual typewriter, the ID slip said:

"Four Yippies holding a shit-in outside the Red Barn. From left to right, Shit, Shit, Shit, and Shit."

Love that media bias.

Fridays I generally hit the wall, and hit it hard; this one is no exception. Presently I have all the mental firepower of a wet-nap, and although the words come out of my mouth and flow right out of my fingers I am, in fact, asleep. And hungry: haven't eaten anything beside a bowl of cereal and a banana in 18 hours. And I wonder why my head feels like a balloon on a long twine tether.

Just did the H&J for my column, which means Height and Justify. I think. Life would be better if we had a Justify button, like my keyboard. All selfishness and foolish decisions instantly made right and reasonable. The column is 13 inches so far, which gives me seven more to fabricate between now and then. I have about 100 inches of column material, but it has to be boiled and flensed; if I do this right, I can sail into August with two solid weeks of columns in the bag. Until then I will work this thing to the point where I detest every single line.

But the graphic for the column is quite nice. I'm leaning on a picket fence that does not exist - added via the magic of Photoshop. For some reason I look as though I have a five o'clock shadow, even though we took the picture at 10 AM. Perhaps it's the printer. Perhaps the razor was dull that morning. I feared using a new one, because sometimes a razor can just plain turn mean on you right out of the box; its predecessor may have been pliant and docile, but this one is mean, and it bites. Takes a chunk out of your cheek where the jawline takes that right turn; shaves off a hunk of chin; nicks the philtrum. And then you bleed all morning long, your wounds unstanchable. A cut on my hand or leg will clot at the usual pace, but a nick near the nose will bleed most of the day. These things can be taken out in Photoshop, but I'm new here, and I don't want to aggravate the graphics staff by making them spend an entire afternoon squinting at bloody pixels.

I woke this morning with a big smile, convinced I had gotten more than enough sleep. In other words, I dreamed that I slept longer than I actually had. And of course I hadn't. Last night's show was particularly exhausting - for some reason I was addled and distracted the first part, not in the saddle or the groove at all, and for a moment I had the awful certainty that I was going to go blank, and spend two hours stammering over a triphammer heart rate. Which of course didn't happen, but it gave me a spurt of adrenalin that made me something of a monster for the rest of the show. I mean, I just went off on everybody and everything. Not in a mean way: God forbid. But something was clicking - the lines were jammed the entire evening, and it all began with a call about TOMATOES, for heaven's sake. And it all ended up with a discussion of Archie comics. I between, the usual: movies, sociopath sightings, German meals, the Rapture preceding the Apocalypse, etc. I was exhausted at the end, but jazzed; in no mood to wander through the civilized corridors of the Orient Express, I booted up Duke Nukem and killed mutant pigs.

Just got a call from a friend who said he briefly heard the show when setting his clock radio alarm. He heard one sentence: "And why didn't they ever take Scooby-Doo to a speech pathologist?" So I asked last night.

And dammit, I still don't know why.