gallop raze you don't use this word a whole lot in casual conversation, do you? i don't think i'd ever said it before, until a few nights ago. i was at a friend's apartment when the word came into my head and fell out of my mouth like a snickers bar slipping out of a cigarette vending machine. my friend bleeds good intentions. he's one of the nicest, most genuine people i know. his roommate is his ex-girlfriend. or maybe they're back together and not just friends now, living together because it's convenient. it's hard to tell with some people, and it's hard to tell with them. she was mad at him for going somewhere without her earlier in the day after she'd told him she was busy and to go ahead on his own. she brought over one of her friends without telling him, when she'd known i was coming over for a week. the way some people try to get back at one another over slights so microscopic an ant would piss all over itself laughing at them never fails to amuse me. i stayed out of all that. i sat on the couch and ate my pizza and watched my movie. the maybe/maybe-not girlfriend was nice enough to me. she and her friend thought i looked like john lennon. they said so. i tried on my best lennon impression, but his isn't an easy voice to imitate. the pizza had pepperoni and green pepper and onion on it. my old go-to toppings from the pot-smoking, band-having, just out of high school days, though i hadn't weighed in on what should be on our pizza this night. it just worked out that way, pizza and old memories knocking shins by coincidence and saying hey how do you do long time no see let's get together sometime. the movie i was watching was "dark city". i've been meaning to see that one for years. i can see how much "the matrix" borrowed and recycled. i think "dark city" did it all a little better. the special effects might not be in the same league, but the atmosphere is a lot thicker and easier to lose yourself in. and i'm big on atmosphere. atmosphere can make your mouth believe merely good pizza is something sublime. when it was time for me to go, that forgotten word came out. i was reaching for something else, but "gallop" was what was there, so i took it. i was going to gallop away into the night, i said. "aw," said the maybe/maybe-not girlfriend. "you're a cute little pony." and i thought, sure. if i'm going to be an animal, a pony isn't bad. a pony's just fine. a pony i will be. i'll gallop with the best of them. but there was no elevator in the place. the stairs were steep and not to be trusted, spongy old lumber hidden by dark carpet. so my leaving gait was more of a slow trot, and the enthusiastic sex sounds of some couple behind some other door sang me a goodnight song as i went. the intent to gallop was there, anyway. 131021 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Can I ask you a weird question? Do you call pizza with both pepperoni and vegetables (say, peppers and mushrooms) "all-dressed" pizza? I remember mentioning all-dressed pizza to my Ontario classmates, only to confuse/amuse them. I asked the people I lived with whether you said "all-dressed" pizza in Ontario or just Quebec (they used to live in Montreal) but they'd never thought about it. One of my friends used to canter like a horse. She would make a larger leap with one foot than the other. She rode horses and I was afraid people would make fun of her. In college, when I saw her again, she had red and blue streaks in her hair and she read Ulysses before I did. 131022 ... raze weird questions are some of the best questions, i think. i'd never heard of all-dressed pizza before. the internet tells me its clothing is comprised of mushroom, pepperoni, and green pepper, but the internet sometimes lies. i think some research is in order. i must discern what clothes pizza wears when it is as dressed as it can be, and what music it listens to when and if it ever dances in its bedroom while naked. 131022 ... e_o_i That would be it. Plus olives sometimes. I wonder if it's an American expression too or solely a regional thing? It would be funny if it was American AND Quebec and not Ontarian. Naked pizza probably dances to music I've never heard of. It'd do that. 131022 ... raze naked pizza is a hipster! a hipster, i say! 131022 what's it to you? who go blather from