Rest assured, there will never be a low-carb version of this website.

Doesn't that public service announcement give all you ardent little fans an ardent little thrill of ... oh, I don't know, relief? Normalcy? Nutrition, perhaps? I don't know about you, ardent fans, but if I turn around one more time and see an Atkins-compatible dish being advertised at an obviously non-Atkins compatible restaurant, I am going to scream. I will scream the scream of countless civilizations that have come before me, the scream that goes something like, "HEY! WE HAPPEN TO LIKE THIS BREAD STUFF! IT'S BEEN AROUND FOR AWHILE, AND IT'S PRETTY DANG TASTY!" Instead of screaming, though -- why waste such valuable chords, after all -- I might just run out and commence gnawing on a very large dish of pasta. I'll consider it my rebellious duty. So come on, comrades! Join me! Get out of that bleak Atkins jive! Eat some bread! Eat lots of bread! Be a bread-eating rebel!

Personally, I'm considering the formation of the Anti-Atkins diet. All bread, all the time. Sweet ever-lovin' balance, here I come.

Did you ever play the losing-senses game? You remember that, right? Random bunches of children would lie in the grass -- before it got itchy, you know -- and after discussing favorite colours, Easy Bake Ovens, water balloon commandos, the existence of faeries, and the penultimate uselessness of fractions, eventually someone would ask, "If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would you lose?" (An unusually articulate child, I guess.) Most children refused to give up their sight, because if they lost that, they wouldn't be able to see such things as their favorite colour purple or water balloons thrown at them from miniature commandos. Some of the more anxious to answer ones wantonly gave up sound, with the reasoning that one could always write what one needed to hear on a chalkboard hanging around one's neck. Not many gave up taste, because then they couldn't enjoy anything good, like yellow cakes from Easy Bake Ovens and pizza and candy and ... oh, I don't know: Coco Puffs, perhaps. (I never really liked evil sugary cereal. I was used to Rice Krispies and such.) Smell was the biggest hit, or so I recall. I imagine that kids probably still find it very convenient to miss out on the wide wide world of unpleasant smells.

As for me, I usually picked the loss of touch. All I could see from such a choice at first was the possibility of having no more pain -- no more skin-grafting falls from roller skates, no more needle-scraping splinters in my thumbs, no more earaches during the dead of morning. That seemed like a pretty picture. I was never very good with pain. Where others had a relatively high threshold, I had no threshold. Later on in life, though, I realized that losing touch also opened up the possibility of leaving one's hand in, say, the fire, without realizing it. Also, there would be no hugs. No kisses. No feeling. So of course, my choice was no good at all. A pity, really. So what sense would I choose to lose today? The sixth one, I think. Because it almost never really pans out anyway. Premonitions, schmemonitions. I vote for living life in a kind of educated, artistic, choice-making now. That makes sense to me.

Friends, Romans, countrypersons: I come not to plant the radish, but to praise it ... Although my grocery forays are rare these days, during those trips up and down the fluorescent and can-laden lanes, occasionally a vegetable catches my eye. That's right, a vegetable. There may very well be a law against getting a craving for vegetables, and yet sometimes there I am, breaking said law with flippant grocerylike ease. Yesterday it was a bunch of tiny radishes that caught my eye. The label read "Breakfast Radish," and visions of miniature French dervishes in crisp red suits with turned-up white collars immediately danced in my head. So perhaps it is not so much the craving for vegetables that hits me, but the craving for an overactive imagination. Then again, there may be something poetic about having radishes sprinkled with a little coarse salt for breakfast.

Poetic and weird, maybe. Methinks food cravings might be better left to the more-traveled realms of sweets. After all, I'm eccentric enough without the aid of colourful dervishes.

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers!"
           - Blanche DuBois, A Streetcare Named Desire
"You're going to the mental institution!"
           - annoying little kid, The Wedding Singer

A jovial-looking fellow working the sandwich drive-through window today exclaimed over my gorgeousness several times and asked me to come back tomorrow, thereby continuing my life's current running theme of complete strangers offering up randomly absurd compliments, while people I actually know hardly ever say a word. I'm not sure what that means. Maybe one's compliment levels fade, depending upon the length of one's acquaintance. Maybe complete strangers are just impressed by my red hat, which I happen to be wearing this very minute in order to guise my hair which needs some serious straightening. Of course, being the great sunshiney eternal optimist that I am, I'm most inclined to believe that complete strangers just aren't looking too hard.

Haven't scribbled in awhile. Still seeking to absolve this faux pas; it seems that inspiration is in short supply of late. It's probably mea culpa, though, because lately I feel a great need to carpe diem ...