I guess you could say Dan is lucky, in the sense that he wasn't killed when his wife crashed the car with him inside it last weekend, plus their two twin babies and dog were ok. When you consider that the car was totalled and they more or less walked away, you have to say they were pretty lucky. Only his wife, Amy got a broken sternum out of the deal, which, apparently causes a lot of pain which she takes Tylenol for, because she is still breast feeding and can't take any serious pain killers for it. But that still is better than being dead. And I guess you could also say that Saul is lucky, in that he got a sponsor for his giant urinal project, and that sponsor agreed to give him 300 freeze dried indian food meal packets, though another way of looking at it is that he has to eat freeze dried indian food for a month, which is no great bargain. Plus another sponsor gave him some vessels for holding water. So you got to hand it to him for having met his most basic needs.

But, you might say, enough about them. I don't have that many developments to report, as it has been a relatively quiet week around here. I did miss a day, when I was in LA, and spent an evening watching About Shmidt, which I tell about, but at this point I'm probably the last person to see. I did like it though. Apart from Jack Nicholson grimacing and looking off into the near distance with a distracting strabismus, it's a good movie, especially good if you like unhappy lives depicted in deadpan, slow detail. Not really a feel good movie, but no one said every movie has to have a happy ending.

I had a thought the other day about food, particularly how the visceral, sensory experience of eating has been mediated by a kind of class schism, whereby the preparation of food, and the separation of the completed food from its component ingredients has taken on an exaggerated importance. Anyhow, I could expand on this thought, but the point is, I was feeling pretty smart, having hatched this idea, then I picked up one of the local free papers, which is written by a bunch of people who aren't very smart or good writers. And in there was an article that essentially made the same point I was trying to make, only he sounded really stupid saying it. Granted, he said it in a stupid way, making an analogy about food and music, but the point is, it really takes the wind out of your sails when you find someone else has your idea, and that that person is stupid, as it causes you to rethink whether or not you are stupid.And history has shown us, you probably are.