The World Cup is over and my feet are in bad shape. My insistence on traversing that last few weeks in a full flip flop fashion has left me nursing a couple bad sores dealt from the makers of cheap plastics. That, and the mosquitoes are on the attack. I can battle most of them but I’m at a horrible disadvantage at six foot four to get to the ones that take their meals on that one hallowed out indent right under the heel bone. Adding insult to injury, I have learned that my immune system isn’t all that I thought it was; i have trouble moving the toxins out of my body, the results of which are too gruesome for these pages but lets just say that when the Mosquitoe giveth and taketh the scratch remains for at least a full agonizing week. So, to the ever expanding drug cabinet, I have now added a healthy supply of Flax Seed Oil. I guess it speeds things up, mellows out the lymphatic system, and, taken with the right amount of Duke Ellington on a hot hummer day, jump starts my pores into acting responsibly and more importantly empathetically.

The condition reminds me of Belize during the rainy season, when my feet collected a colony of sores that didn’t heal for weeks. This was mostly due to the fact that you can’t get anything to dry in the rainforest. My feet didn’t even have a sporting chance at recovery until I was safely across the border and into the low-lands of a tepid Guatemala. In the tropics everything just rots and falls apart. Good times.

Belize was hot but not like this heat. Minnesota is the dramatic switch hitter of the National Weather League. I’ve spent all my money on high powered fans and beer. Window fans. Shotgun fans. Dual exhaust fans. I got ’em all and they are all strategically placed around me right now to produce what one Holmes model calls a “Blizzard”. We spend Eight chilled months wishing for summer and the remainder praying for its demise. Huh? To make matters worse, my beer of choice for these impossible afternoons – Premium Lager, is now going to be discontinued as the Pigs Eye/Grain Belt plant is shutting its doors and closing down its taps. So now all I got is these damn fans and ehhh…errr…wine? Yeah well o.k. so my new favorite wine was discovered at Big Top Liquors the other day. The title of the wine is everything I’ve ever wanted to be but didn’t have the guts or the talent to pull off. It’s called Fat Bastard. It’s a Shiraz from France and goes down smooth and with frankness, especially when served with pasta, salmon or with the good air you breath on a Sunday afternoon. I guess the title is a British term for a damn fine wine, a fact I will now wield mercilessly at all private and public engagements that offer silky elixirs with warm conversations, “Wow Sally. You’ve got yourself one hellava Fat Bastard there. What this country needs is a good medium-priced Fat Bastard, wouldn’t you agree Donald?”

So we pass the time drinking wine, thinking about biking or skateboarding, Miles and Marley, reading the books we hustled from the Library. I love the library. But damn the library is getting to be a wicked place. I think Kelly’s about had it with the Library. I’m always off on some wild goose chase to find a book that was checked out in 1977 and never returned or I find out that the book I want has 147 holds on it, which means it might be available sometime in the year 2007 if every one of those 147 people returns their copy. When I catch back up to Kelly she’s in Fiction. She begins pointing out, a) the guy with the black beret who keeps following her from stack to stack saying, “oh, isn’t it a coincidence that we keep winding up in the same section”. No. It’s no fucking coincidence. Back the fuck up you pervert. Go back to Florida, And, b) the guy who keeps agreeing ceaselessly with the voices in his head, “hhmm – yes, oh yes, hhmm, mmmhhmm, excuse me do you know where the best places to work in Oregon are? I’m really looking to work for the best place in Oregon…uh huh, oh-yes, mmmhhmm.” And lets not forget about the middle aged men locked behind the doors of the “quiet room” talking on two cell phones at one time. Just what the hells going on in there? They are clearly not reading. I’m determined to ask next time.

I read Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report after being won over by the theatrical rendition last weekend. It’s good stuff. I like Philip K. Dick because he’s a science fiction writer that doesn’t write science fiction and he doesn’t write about the future. It all feels present.

I also enjoyed reading this interview with Chris Locke (I have his book on hold at the library). It put together a few of the missing pieces of a little puzzle I’ve been trying to put together now for the last Three years. Now if I can only find the others pieces.