Anyone who knows me well would probably say that the photo above is not something they ever really expected to see in this space.

Five years ago today, I got an email message from some guy in Fresno on the subject of road trips I’d taken and how they related to one he was thinking of taking at the time. Even way back then, I was getting really bad about not answering email in a timely fashion, if at all. For some reason, though, I eventually answered his.

My life has never been the same. And I’m glad.

Yet another reason I want to visit Cincinnati soon.

OK. Back to the packing now…

Ned Flanders lives.

Please let this not be a trend that catches on. A little hair above the upper lip is just fine and dandy (although I’d suggest it looks a lot better as part of a combo involving a beard than as a standalone unit), but those big, bushy, walrus-like things are another story entirely. In my book of fashion nightmares, they’re at about the same level as those stupid exaggerated bell-bottom jeans every white trash rave kid in America was wearing a couple of years back. You know, the ones that were always frayed and dirty at the bottom from dragging the ground at the tractor pull?

Yes, people have a right to accessorize as they so choose, but no one has a right to look so ridiculous that I have trouble swallowing my food because I’m laughing at them so hard, dammit.

I’ve mentioned many times (with a certain wry self-righteousness) that I pretty much stopped doing drugs when I was still in high school. If I ever question that decision, I now know that all I need do is sit through a few minutes of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels.

Good god.

On a radically unrelated note, isn’t this just the cutest little kitchen cabinet you ever did see? Oh come on. Indulge me. Didn’t I “ooh” and “ahh” sufficiently over the pictures of your new kitten or the video of that stuff your baby spit up?