Some guy

Buy prints at www.cafepress.com/kellas. If there's a picture here that you'd like and that's not included there, please let me know.

Getting off on the wrong foot

"Hey everyone, this is Kellas," said N., as I handed her a bottle of wine. "She's my only other free-market friend."

"I'm not for free markets," said one girl with long braids. "I can't stand how everything is becoming Americanized."

She said Americanized the same way a newscaster would say: "Our homegrown honey-bees are becoming Africanized. Will they be killing you next?"

"Look how the divorce rates are going up in India. It's only happened since they became Americanized."

"Yeah," I said, "but their immolation rates are going down."

She stared at me, then shook her head, lips pursed. I decided to change the subject: "Oh yeah, I heard a really funny story."

N. obliged: "Tell us!"

"There was a raja in India."

"Raja?" asked the braided girl.

"Yeah. I think it means prince. Anyway, this raja was the first person in India to own an automobile."

"Wow, what a cool bottle-opener!" braided girl exclaimed. She and N. discussed the bottle-opener's origin and merits, until N. remembered my story: "So the raja was the first guy in India to own an automobile?"

"That's not the story. He ran over a small, beggar child and killed it."

"It? You called a child an it?" Braids looked at me, disgusted.

"Well, I don't know the gender. My dad never specified. It's his story." I tried to offload my callousness. "And anyway, it happened a hundred years ago."

"So what happened?"

"He ran it...him...over and killed...him. He felt so guilty, he gave the child's family a huge fortune. After that, he was never able to drive his car again."

"Because they took away his license?" asked N.

"No, because everyone kept throwing their children and old relatives in the way of his car."

My dad and I had laughed uproariously, but here, everyone just stared at me. "Let me see that bottle-opener," I said. "I think I'll have a glass of wine."

Dahmer and Seacrest: separated at birth?

My mom once put the kabosh on a relationship when she said how much my then-boyfriend looked like Jeffrey Dahmer. She tried to amend things by insisting, "But Dahmer isn't that bad looking, if you can get past the cannibalism."

Now that I'm watching American Idol finally, I've realized, the guy who looks most like Jeffrey Dahmer is Ryan Seacrest.

I'll leave the googling to you.

Drawing of Charlie

This is my cat, Charlie. I drew this with a reed pen my artist friend, Arnold Smith, sent me. They're wonderful to use.

Drawing of a sleeping Maggie

From Drawings

Overheard conversation at a play

I went to a play last Saturday. While waiting for it to start, the women behind me gabbed...or rather, one gabbed, and the other made sympathetic noises. The loud woman somehow managed to include her job title in every sentence ("As a professor at Cal State Northridge, I know all about..."). She complained about how stupid her students were...especially an old man of 66 who'd decided to go back to college.

"I can't imagine why. I can't flunk him. College professors can't flunk anyone nowadays. Especially an old man. So, you know what I do instead...I give him the exact same grade every time: adequate." She snickered. "When you consistently mark someone adequate, believe me, college professors know just what that means."

Her friend repeated, "Adequate! He's merely adequate!" as if it were an especially funny punchline.

Just then, a man representing the theater came onto the stage (which was actually the floor). "We invite you all to join our mailing list, or even better, our email list. We're using email much more than snail mail nowadays."

The woman behind me stage-whispered, "Because it's cheaper." She seemed miffed that this man had interrupted her and wanted to put him in his place.