is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Q: What kind of chickens are they? A: Ten, but only six are chickens.
Q: What kind of chickens are they?
A: Ten, but only six are chickens.
That is perhaps the best of the many funny semi-conversations I overheard Paul and Heidi have last night at the Tunnel Bar. Over some tumblers of fine bourbon, Heidi was talking about the great chicken mess that occurred when a basement in Duchess County, New York, flooded, necessitating the move of ten chickens (but four are roosters, which is what the whole �but only six are chickens� ridiculousness ends up meaning) from the basement to the barn, but not before a plumber found himself wading through water and chicken shit. Anyway, Paul, in a lull in the description of the Great Chicken Mess, asked �What kind of chickens are they?� Heidi answered, �Ten, but only six are chickens.� So I laughed really hard for like five minutes straight. She, of course, thought he had asked how many. But the answer rates really high on my natural absurdometer, and so it is currently A Favorite.
The thing about the Tunnel Bar is that it�s a tunnel. Which means that its ceiling is curved, and the curve of the ceiling is tiled with glazed tiles like you find in subways and railway passageways (indeed that is what the tunnel used to be). That renders the acoustics of the space a bit odd. So there will be moments in the evening when all of a sudden you can hear someone fifteen feet away from you perfectly but the person sitting two feet from you is difficult to hear. It�s a funny thing that I and my absurdometer also enjoy.
Here�s another thing I heard last night courtesy of Paul and Heidi:
Heidi: Oh. So now you�re into GIRAFFES.
Paul: Giraffes are great. (stated in all seriousness and with the force of conviction.)
By the way, did you know that giraffes, when they sleep, bend their necks back and rest their heads on their rump-lestiltskins? Also, that they can run 50 MPH, and that when they do so they run with their necks parallel to the ground in an impressive charging stance?
It did not escape my steel trap mind that this means that a giraffe would totally win if it raced with a bear, a wild turkey and Shaquille O�Neal.
This also happened, but earlier in the evening, at my house:
Heidi: Hey, say something philosophical.
Jill: The being of beings is not a being.
Heidi: That makes a pretty scarf!
Heidi�s current �productive procrastination� project is to make a code of the alphabet in thread colors so that she can knit for people garments into which are woven sentences. In code. I�d link you to the url where she keeps the design template but it�s not ready yet. �Jill� doesn�t make such a great scarf, but �me voici pour les autres� is kinda nice. Last night she was wearing the scarf that says �Heidi�s Neck� (but in code, mind you). If you think this is weird, allow me to remind you of the time she decided to assign Goedel numbers to all her books and file them that way, with all white spines so that you couldn�t find the book unless you knew its Goedel number.
Right now Paul and I are sitting here typing on our separate computers, making use of the World Wide Web (which I hear is going to be HUGE) by means of my lovely little airport express base station. We are waiting for Heidi to arrive. She slept at Viveca�s last night, and then went to the famous Northampton yarn store this morning to stock up for some projects. I just paused in my typing and asked Paul: What complaint or mishap will Heidi dramatically describe when she gets here?
Paul said: She will realize she bought way too much yarn.
I added: Even if she realizes she bought way too much yarn, she will still be annoyed that something she really needed wasn�t in stock.
Paul added: In addition she might come to the conclusion that she didn�t get enough yarn, in that there is some very important purchase she forgot to make, such that she has to go back to the yarn store.
Then I concluded: And she may just find that someone at the yarn store does things in the wrong way.
Now I�m all atwitter with anticipation. Also, I�m hungry, and we can�t go get brunch at Lone Wolf until Heidi arrives with her yarn yarns.
11:32 a.m. - February 18, 2005
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