9 April 2002 - 10:55 p.m.

Today I procured ingredients for several very exciting Indian meals at the whacked out Indian grocery store on Craig St.

In all fairness, what is whacked out about the Indian store is not the groceries so much as the walls and walls of Indian videos, which I presume are there to rent. But I can't be sure. I wish the proprietor would just change the name of the store to Balibuster Video and be done with it. Then there would be no mystery about the whole business.

The really exciting part of all this is that I will now be able to prepare tandoori chicken, chickpea masala, and my favorite, biriyani, several times over for little more than the dinner Gus and I had tonight at Union Grill. Or is it Grille? Either way, cheap food whups a mules ass with a belt.

Bus advertising is so... what's the word I'm looking for? Droll. It does not seem that an ad can be designed for the side of a bus without a heavy dose of drollery. Like the ads for one of the local papers with words like CINEMA and RESTAURANT printed very large, and made to look as if they were cropped, so as to read "CINEM" and "RESTAURAN." Now, how is this clever? How is this cleverness over and above misspelling, or at least incomplete spelling? And if these words are meant to look haphazard, why do it in such a consistent way? If one reads CINEM, maybe the other should read ESTAURANTS, or the other way around: INEMA to the next bus' RESTAURAN. Am I wrong here?

I hate criticizing matters of design because, you know, who am I? But these ads fall so far from the cool mark that I kind of feel bad for the buses that have to wear them. And when your heart starts going out to Port Authority Transit vehicles, there is probably lame design involved.

What I'm wearing:

What I'm reading:

What I'm doing after this: