So, there you sit, on the far side of that screen of yours again while I sit here once more in front of mine, running my fingers up and down my keyboard in hopes something interesting will eventually come shooting out.
     Do you often enjoy watching a grown man trying to stimulate his own brain?  Or is this your very first time?
     Don't be shy.  You can tell me.  
     It can't be any worse than what I imagine, you know.
     It probably isn't even as bad as what these confession box walls of mine have already heard many times.
     Is it homework you are neglecting in favor of these words or a spouse who doesn't need you half as badly as my journal does in order to feel alive?
     Have I successfully lured you away from your unfulfilling job?  Is some major corporation unknowingly paying you to suck up these mundane musings?
     Or are you merely a patient or an inmate somewhere, perhaps one who set off in high hopes of finding jester pictures or the actual diary of a cat, only to be unwittingly snagged by my site and now not quite able to look away before finding out exactly where all this is headed?

     Forever trapped on this side of my screen, I can only wonder - can only fantasize the best possible possibilities as my fingers go about their dirty work and my mind meanders towards the briefest of pops....

     Yes - it really is another one of those terribly self-conscious entries the profs in Journal Writing 101 tried so hard to warn you about.
     Sorry.
     But if you can't be conscious of your self, I always say, exactly what can you be conscious of?

     Ok, I know.
     Let's try to be conscious of you.
     You with the refrigerator that's a color I have yet to learn the name of (unless, of course, it's beautiful ivory).
     You with the made or unmade bed.  (How I wonder if you ever leave your home with its sheets still in a wantonly rumpled state.)
     You with the checkbook that's either balanced to the penny every month - or (*dirty little smile*) not.
     You who either has or hasn't worn sweatpants to the grocery in the last 6 weeks and a day.

     There was some evening news show on recently... some Dateline NBC kind of thing where they asked people how long beyond the date stamped on the carton they'd be willing to use a jug of milk.
     Some of the answers shocked me.  Shocked me!
     Would yours??
     And if I asked softly enough...
     If I even got down on my knees and begged...
     Would you...
     Could you...
     Shock me again?
     And then again?

     But this is not the entry I planned on writing today.  
     This is not the satisfying spew I had hoped as a little boy in Toledo to be experiencing at this precise stage of my life.
     For one thing, there are intimate descriptions of neither clowns nor dancing girls to be found anywhere in it yet.  (I know that for a fact, having just taken the time to desperately re-read it.)    
     For another thing, were I to now engage in a little intimate describing of either clowns or dancing girls, it would seem forced and mechanical rather than spontaneous and magical.
     Which leaves this rather clueless almost-jester rather forlornly clinging to the thought of sweet Charzetta.

     I have no idea who Charzetta is.  She had a baby recently - that's really all I can say.  That's why her name appeared in my newspaper.  For all I know, it was a false pregnancy and she's taken to passing off a five pound sack of sugar wrapped up in swaddling clothes as her new-born son to gullible newspaper reporters.  It doesn't matter, for what I love about Charzetta is her name.
     Any world with people in it who'd actually name their kid Charzetta simply has depths of imagination unhinted at by my TV.
     My friends, let us breathe a deep sigh of relief!

     Maybe someday I really will be able to find a carpenter willing to install shiny brass portholes between all the rooms of my house.
     Maybe someday your PC really will come complete with a periscope on top that will allow me to peer into your heart.
     Would you dive and hide in the unexplored depths under your desk?
     Hmmm, perhaps we could dive and hide together...?

     Excuse me.  I'm not normally like this.  I just had too much wine last night and not enough sleep.
     Or maybe too much sleep and not enough wine.

     But to cut to the chase -
     To get to the point -
     To ask you what I've been dying to ask you from the start -

     Does this vocabulary make me look fat?