"DO YOU KNOW SQUISHY?"

Best line we heard on our Seattle-Vancouver-Victoria trip was "Do you know squishy?" in a pub in Victoria. It made us do a double-take, until we realized that someone was talking to a Japanese man whose English was incomplete and he wanted to know if the man knew what the word squishy meant.

Here are photos. But not of the man saying "Do you know squishy?"

And the photo that will probably replace the Evil Magician photo here on my blog. It was kind of funny--showing up for a fancy tea (we hadn't planned it) dressed in a Mexican day-of-the-dead t-shirt and old jeans...



Thanks to Clare and my sister for posting blog entries. I feel utterly roasted by my sister, although, in my defense, the reason I hate flying cockroaches is that in Fiji, as a child, they would burrow into your ears. And I believe I only ran down two flights of stairs before realizing my mistake at the Don Cesar. At least I had more of a sense of self-preservation. :) Anyhoo, thanks to both of them for posting.

I'm now back and will be posting a few things soon. Steve Aylett has answered the five questions, for example. And I want to talk about his amazing, hilarious, brilliant new book, Lint. Also, L. Timmel Duchamp's new novel, and much else besides.

In the meantime, let me just say that in another life, I'd like to be one of Neko Case's Boyfriends. Me 'n' Neko at Coney Island, me winning her a teddy bear from a corner stall in a game of darts...Me 'n' Neko getting manicures in Soho...Me 'n' Neko doing a duet in the East Village...feeding the elephants at the zoo...skydiving from the top of the Empire State Building...

I discovered her CD The Tigers Have Spoken recently and the title track and "If You Knew," in particular, have been on my iPOD's play-replay for weeks and weeks. I don't get tired of it.

More soon.


Jeff