For Sunday brunch, David and I decided to try a new place that opened up in our neck of the woods called Crepe Escape. We were hoping for a sit-down restaurant with waiters and water bringers and such, but no, it wasn’t that kind of place.

In fact, it was Crepeville dressed up with a new name and fresh splatter paint instead. I’m not a fan of Crepeville, having had numerous bad-food experiences there to make me realize there are much better places to have crepes, but this wasn’t Crepeville, it was Crepe Escape. See the difference?

Anyway - artistically and aesthetically, the place gets high marks. The texturing on the walls is a pleasing burnt auburn colour, and they have intricate tree art that comes up the wall, out of the wall into a 3 dimensional tree then back into the wall as 2D art. Very slick and you can tell it took a while.

And that’s where the enjoyment ended. For months they worked on this place - we watched them building the facade, the outdoor patio, doing the paint texturizing, etc…and wouldn’t you know it I guess they couldn’t find the time to get a simple credit card machine. That’s right…a hand written sign was taped to the front of the cash register that said:

Cash or checks only. Sorry.

You’re having the same reaction I am right now, right? Checks? Um…CHECKS? Who in their right mind writes checks any more? And who in their right mind stands in line while fifty people in front of them are all writing checks because the place won’t take plastic? Not me, that’s for sure.

Anyway…We had about 5 people in front of us and all of them wrote checks. Absurd. Thankfully I had a $20 in my wallet and we moved ahead. Two crepes, two large house coffees. We sat down at a corner table and waited for our food.

The first problem is that the coffee mugs had no size variation. Whether you ordered large or small - same size cup. When we asked why we paid more, we were told we got free refills. Ok then how do they know who got small which doesn’t get refills and large which does? They don’t. I know this because we never got any refills - and neither did anyone else around us.

Next up, the food. The homestyle potatoes were fine, the crepe was not. David’s was too salty to eat and tasted like it had just been microwaved. Mine was tolerable, but it needed sour cream, so I asked for a side. It never showed up. I waited, and waited, and no sour cream.

We ate half our food then got up to leave. I stopped the manager on our way out and told him we would not be back. I provided specific examples of our food being yucky, no coffee refills, never got the sour cream, and they don’t take plastic. We walked out the door never to return.

If you’re in Sacramento and you want good crepes, don’t go anywhere but Danielle’s at Fair Oaks Blvd. and Watt Ave. You’ll never be disappointed.

*Crepe imagery from Wikimedia Commons

On this date in 1439, a kissing prohibition was legislated by the English Parliament as a means of controlling the plague. (reference: Forgotten English, Jeffrey Kacirk)

Keep your tongues to yourselves people.

* Image from Wikimedia Commons

Lasher is the nuttiest of our three cats when it comes to sleeping. He will basically drape himself over anything and everything that is available to him, even if it’s something completely uncomfortable.

For example, I discovered him one day, draped over two 10lb weights that were laying on the floor. I didn’t get a picture of it, but it was certainly a shocker.

Here we see him lounging on my old couch - arms akimbo and enjoying a little snooze, at least until the flash went off. Notice how he hugs from the left.

This is one of my personal favourites - he looks like he would fit in on the banks of the Nile River, overlooking his kingdom.

A couple days ago, I didn’t even notice that he had completely stretched himself out right next to me on the chaise. I looked to my right and started laughing. David ran for the camera and thankfully Lasher maintained the pose long enough for a few shots.

But this is my personal favourite of the bunch. Lasher decided to use ME as the draping object……he’s a nut. A complete nut.

If you haven’t heard of Lively, check it out. It’s a new offering from Google.

Once you’ve installed it (takes about 45 seconds), you can join me in the Pidgeon Crest Lounge for a chat!

Once you’ve got it, the embed below will show up.

Is it appropriate for me to talk about having a bowel movement that happened so quickly that it created a vacuum in my intestinal tract?

What if I mention the yellow pus that squirted out from my second toe because of an ingrown toenail?

Is there a boundary of appropriate content for ones personal blog? Perhaps…perhaps not. These are conversations that I am able to have with my partner and close friends…one topic is normal biological function, one is only gross in that the pus is a nasty yellow colour - but again a normal bodily function to heal an infection.

And admit it - that first one either made you gasp or burst out laughing…and gasping increases oxygen flow and laughing is heart healthy, so that makes this blog medically sound.

But seriously…I CAN talk about whatever I want, but SHOULD I. Do you really want to hear about bodily functions/infections? The answer is likely, no.

About a year ago I wrote a post called You Can’t Do That On Blogs.  In that post I talked about slander, copyright, libel, and using unreferenced images or those not in the public domain.

But even with those “restrictions”, you can still pretty much blog about any topic that you want. You can talk about technology, fashion, business, pets, religion, hobbies, politics, movies, moral issues, whatever - because it’s your personal public blog - and a lot of what you talk about is covered under your Freedom of Speech.

So while I have the freedom to do it, again, it might not be in my best interest to do so. I might lose readers that I so cherish because they don’t want to hear about the latest secretion from my toe. On the flip side, I might gain readers who like to hear about medical oddities. Do I want both kinds of readers, sure, but which do I want more?

One has to be careful not to alienate people who actively help carry on the conversation, because that’s really what blogs are about - creating conversation, sharing ideas, adding value to readers. And I, like all writers, often have trouble coming up with a topic to write about. There are many times when I vacillate on whether I want to keep blogging, and then a new topic pops into my mind during a conversation and voila, you get another post.

As long as you all keep coming back and keep commenting, I’ll keep coming up with volumes of wit and sarcasm to keep you entertained.

And no more posts about BM’s or pus. I promise. For now.

A coworker just pointed me to Wordle, a very cool site that creates an artistic frequency cloud for any text you enter, or even a blog feed.

Here’s what it pulled from the Homo sarcasmus feed…pretty cool. Apparently I talked about Pothos quite a bit lately :-).

What follows is a short diddley-doo that I wrote a few years ago in honour of the American Independence Day. It’s quite a load of rubbish so enjoy.

Philodendron. Common name, Pothos. Derived from the Latin Vulgate meaning that which grows and spreads like wildfire yet can grow even in dark closets. This “devil’s ivy” has sprung up in every restaurant, every airport, every hospital, everywhere!

The obvious benefits of such a plant is well…obvious! They add a sparkle of green and yellow to the decor; they easily spread to cover a large area, and can be used to accent not only table tops, but also counters, shelves, bookcases, and in ancient times they even put them on either side of the portcullis of a castle.

But what we’re really concerned with today are the health benefits of the Pothos. As with any chlorophyll rich foliage, the Pothos is responsible for contributing to our ability to live and breathe on this planet.

Without the Pothos, oxygen would in fact be considered a rare commodity. So much so, that within years it would be so rare that it could only be found on the black market: bottled, canned, spritzed, and vacuum sealed. There would be different quality offerings of the precious O2. For those on a diet, there might be Diet-O2, but what if you want all the flavour of O2 but not all the gassy aftertaste, maybe they would offer O1.

At some point, they’ll start with the marketing gimmicks to get you to buy more at higher prices. New-O2, CherryO2, Diet CarbonFreeO2, Diet Black Cherry Vanilla O2. It will never end. All of this tragedy of events could happen were it not for the glorious Pothos.

Obviously we can’t do without this precious plant. Unfortunately they are so abundant that their relative value and cost is next to nothing. Any resident of our planet with $5 can go to their neighborhood Target/Wal-Mart/Kmart and pick up a Pothos. But imagine with me once again: if we suddenly had only a finite supply of them left, or if they only grew in one remote sector of the world, they’d become as valuable as diamonds.

You could only buy them at DeBeers Exotic Pothos Emporium, but you would have to get on a wait list and the only way to get on the wait list would be to call a special phone number at a special time and hope to not get a busy signal (sort of like voting on American Idol). Assuming you got through on the phone, and then assuming you got on the wait list you would still have to pass a rigorous Pothos Ownership Operating Process (POOP) Exam. Not only is there a written exam, but an oral exam, home inspection, and a requirement to sign a waiver allowing DeBeers to reclaim the plant in the case of neglect and allowing for periodic home re-evaluations. You’ll notice I have switched to the present perfect tense because this could actually become reality sooner than you think!

There are probably those of you out there who think “I’m safe. I already have several Pothos at my house so I don’t ever have to worry.” Unfortunately, the president, and I think we all know who that is, just passed a law allowing the military to enter any personal property and seize any live Pothos on the premises.

The law is actually so all encompassing that they can seize dead Pothos as well, or force you to search your garbage for any you may have thrown away. So as you can see, no one will be safe from the threat of Pothos extinction.

Well, except for the very very rich. Anyone making over $500,000 a year would be exempt from the new law of course. Heaven forbid we deprive the rich from their double half-caf, half-decaf O2 with a twist of lime. Besides, the middle class should just learn to be happy with the Novadollar’s O2-AuLait right? For those of you who aren’t bilingual, Au Lait means with milk. That’s French. Which means that if you traveled to France and wanted to have some O2 with Milk, you’d have to say “Au Lait” instead of “with milk” otherwise they wouldn’t understand you, because no one in France is bilingual. Be careful about using this term in other countries, such as Mexico or Spain, or they might send a bull charging after you, because Au Lait is surprisingly similar in sound to O’le!

Unfortunately, there are no Pothos in France, so I don’t know why anyone would go there anyway. Except maybe to see La Toure Eiffel, that means Eiffel Tower. But you can see pictures of it anywhere, so again I ask, what’s the point? I’d much rather go somewhere and see something that no one has ever seen or taken a picture of.

Maybe some remote cave in the middle of a vast line of underground caverns that maybe hasn’t even been discovered, and maybe contains a vast cache of Pothos growing wildly and abundantly creating so much O2 that if it ever escaped from the cave would throw off the balance of the entire global O2 market, sending O2 stocks crashing down and ensuring quality breathing air for anyone on our planet, turning billionaires and other rich folks into ordinary middle class within minutes. (reminds me of the Great Chopsticks Incident of 2004)

It could happen…

*This commentary is based on the Award Winning Best Selling Novel by the same author, and in no way supports or defames the holiday of Independence Day, because it has absolutely no content related to aforementioned holiday.