2003.09.28
Ant Arena is a challenging little game. It's based on the way kids would stage little ant gladatorial battles by putting a few in a plastic dish. In the game, you have to steer your blank ant so it hits the sides or backs of increasing numbers of red ants. Fun!
Passage of the Moment
It was good, making love two nights in a row. Doggone it, maybe we men are right about sex not being the answer; sex is the question, yes is the answer, and it blows away a ream of troubles, especially when it's your old beloved. Oh, miracle of miracles. Authentic rapturous passion between two old pros. You lie in bed afterward in a warm daze, tired, rapturized, like a salmon who made it back to the headwaters, like an old stallion who has fulfilled his destiny one more time, and life begins anew. In the dark, the judges are holding up their scorecards--8.1, 9.0, 9.0, 8.9--but that doesn't matter so much, what matters is that the war is over, the roads are open again, the ice is gone, spring is here, and you have discovered, for the 863rd time, the great beauty and simplicity of your life as an animal here on earth. You rise naked from the bed and go down to the creek for a drink of water and far off in the distance other males sound their cries of manly joy and you reply with a deep, chesty roar and the forest is quiet. You drink your water and return to the warm nest of percale and eiderdown and fit your naked self into the dozy curve of Madame's body where she lies swooned on her side and you smell her dew and roses and absorb a simple thought about marriage: this woman is all women, and when you chose her, you became Jay Gatsby and Robert Jordan and Prince Andre and Raskolinov and Ishmael and embarked on a life of imagination, which adultery cruelly violates, and breaks up the music in your head, and also it's a hell of a lot of work to scout up something inferior to what you and she can create at home. You have roamed the Western world in search of a the perfect tuna sandwich; your wife makes a good tuna sandwich; your powers of imagination are what make it perfect.
Trivia Quote of the Moment
"One day he pulled up his shirt to show me his belly button, which he didn't have. He'd had an operation and when they sewed him up they took it away. His belly button was gone!"
--Karen Black on Alfred Hitchcock. So that's why Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a bellybutton.
Headline of the Moment
CNN had the headline Colombia explosion kills 10. I have to admit, my first thought was "Again? Why isn't the headline higher up?" And then it was "Isn't that old news? And shouldn't it be kills 7?" Then I read the article.