August 10 - August 16
1.  Is that snake skin? It's creepy.
2.  I believe it's all an illusion of the circumstances.
3.  Did you know that Caesars Palace doesn't have an apostrophe?
4.  Do you think butterflies ever get to where they want to go?
5.  Is this really cheese?
6.  I finally got a handle on Derrida. But now I lost it.
7.  Russian soldiers! Shit. Great. Makes me feel like a kid again.
8.  Take God out of the equation and it won't balance out.
9.  I'm painting the insides of key holes.
10. Did you ever hear the expression "a full Detroit"?
11. When I think about it, really, the only thing that drives me is hubris.

August 3 - August 9
1.  Art is whatever you say is art, good is whatever you say is good.
2.  It's just my little way of saying China is so wrong.
3.  That way I can find myself if I ever get lost in Omaha.
4.  You shouldn't have to put into your name what your yard's supposed to look like.
5.  I brake the way I've always broked.
6.  Folk singers today have such thin, flutey voices.
7.  I thought shit! what's that on my head? and it was my sunglasses.
8.  You want my honest opinion, it was a beautiful disaster.
9.  Poetry is broadly inconsequential.
10. When I went through the metal detector they saw the bullets Grandpa gave me.
11. My FedEx man always wants to talk about trees.

July 27 - August 2
1.  She's really, really pretty, but she has hemorrhoids.
2.  What are you wearing? Is that a dress? You're wearing a dress?
3.  He was making funny hand movements & said sssist, waaast after reading a hymn, so we took off.
4.  If it were called Ralph, would you say it as often?
5.  He wanted information on why he never called you back.
6.  I'm always pleased when she has a big energy display.
7.  I says, you know, Lance, I says, what the hell's going on with this pipe?
8.  I can not understand you! Talk like a big girl!
9.  I know everybody in Schuyler, but only the ones over 70. The rest are punks anyway.
10. She was named after a woman in an old Hank Williams song.
11. Am I sitting up? I feel so tilted.

July 20 - July 26 (Overheard in Crete, Nebraska)
1.  And they have these short dresses and colored rubber boots. I like that.
2.  The back door? The north door? The screen door?
3.  Now I just jabber and take blood pressure pills.
4.  I don't give my students A's, my students earn A's.
5.  George Bush was so cute in that flight suit! Cute!
6.  She's squeezed out of the lunch line, so she turns into this radical punk.
7.  I wish I knew where she was buried so I could go there and sob.
8.  You're born, you die. In between; maintenance.
9.  Now, don't take this the wrong way, but you're like an idiot savant.
10. Oh, I napped and napped and napped and napped that week.
11. Do you have any cream soda?

July 13 - July 19
1.  You've got to have apathy and sympathy for your patients.
2.  St. Petersburg was like a fairy tale. But, you know, fairy tales have wickedness in them.
3.  I grew up in Noodleburg, Alaska. I grew up in Noodleburg, Spain. But mostly Korea.
4.  If I have a sinus infection, I don't say I have a mental illness.
5.  Because we really are, all of us, just guys.
6.  Accolades don't buy a bagel.
7.  Oh, Trevor sees instruments of containment everywhere.
8.  A philosophy ought to be able to be pretty universally applied, right?
9.  He's a typical liberal. Full of shoulds and should-nots, but laughs at the 10 Commandments.
10. I can't play Solitaire with you looking over my shoulder!
11. Sand is sneaky.

July 6 - July 12
1.  Cool weather makes me feel zesty. Warm weather makes me feel spacious.
2.  Oh man, I saw some guy's cell phone floating in the Port-O-Potty. Should we call him?
3.  I'm her designated food-fluffer.
4.  Selling missiles. To people in Indiana.
5.  He actually talks to you. He releases oxygen and produces words!
6.  I buy hundreds of these and resell them to gang members. You can literally make a 300% profit.
7.  Eat what is necessary to survive. Drink lots of coffee.
8.  Tim Rissit. Russit. Tim Risset. Oh, he was wonderful!
9.  It just had the boom factor, but not the ooooo factor.
10. There's two...well, there were 2 big fir trees there on Friday. I don't know what's there now.
11. White, you may know, is also considered a color. Clouds, marshmallows; white.

June 8 - July 5 (Overheard in South Lake Tahoe, California)
1.  She's a healer. She's a telephone healer and she also does real estate.
2.  Rocks. It smells like rocks.
3.  Yeah, I've got scabs on some of my knees.
4.  I got a respiratory infection in the Temple of Phila.
5.  She taught African dance in Italy. And for elderly people.
6.  He does shovel art?
7.  No, but, see it's a satire on the Che shirt.
8.  They're so hard to feed! It all has to be organic and raw and then everything it can't be!
9.  That was the trip of a lifetime, India. I was sick the whole time.
10. Any native Omahan will tell you that Omaha is groovy.
11. That's all there is in the world of stolen music.

June 1 - June 7
1.  My knee feels chilly.
2.  Everything's so wet, it's all just sog.
3.  I'm so disgusted with men. Really. It's almost painful.
4.  Did you hear that?  That.  There!  No?
5.  Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. That's what history shows us. Sometimes.
6.  I'd put my Mashed Potato footwork up against anybody's.
7.  I understand the metaphor, but life is not a metaphor.
8.  Yeah, they got hit with some kind of goddamn church steeple.
9.  She wants to do better in the next life? You mean like a cat or something?
10. Oh, shoot! They forgot to put on the air-intake-thingy-caps.
11. I heard humidity is what makes the corn grow.

May 25 - May 31
1.  My dad! April 26th is my dad, too!
2.  He's making a killing in shoe boxes and I don't mean, like, body parts.
3.  He was ten at the millennium.
4.  Seven o'clock is the elegant hour.
5.  Hiring an attorney has turned out to be an essential, not a nice-to-have.
6.  I'm fresh back from Chicago.
7.  I'd rather just do it than read a bunch of shit about how to do it.
8.  You're just gonna wanna be super exceedingly careful.
9.  On your lip.  No, up.  Nope.  Got it.
10. My, what a little prince he is. No, prince he is.
11. Really, there's nothing like dirt to make you calm.

May 18 - May 24
1.  I need some shadelight in here.
2.  You have to just learn things from other people's shoes.
3.  I think pianist is a funny word.
4.  Birds kinda creep me out at first glance. Those calcium deposits on their faces.
5.  It's gonna be sunny, 60, gusty.
6.  You know I'm a fan of big dark objects.
7.  He looks like a magnet. An ugly magnet.
8.  I talk to my plant stakes.
9.  First thing is to get rid of all shiny gold objects.
10. Oh, the peacocks just love those blue berries.
11. He keeps producing fluffy brown mustaches from the dead grass. Back and forth, back and forth.

May 11 - May 17
1.  Nobody dies there between May and November.
2.  I don't know, I'm bird-feeding and squirrel-luring.
3.  No, no, that's really powerful stuff, especially here in the American midwest.
4.  Because I write checks! That's all I do!
5.  Your metaphors get richer with age. Or maybe just more mixed.
6.  I'm making snail cakes. I'm making green snail cakes.
7.  She agrees with everything. It's like talking to your dog.
8.  I have to drive a smelly little Chevy until June.
9.  They sponsored this contest between children and so-called adults.
10. I'm going to go Groucho here in a few minutes.
11. Day to day is easy, week to week is hard.

May 4 - May 10
1.  I didn't know Somalis were Lutheran.
2.  We have one old fresh apple.
3.  He looks exactly like you'd think a small-town gay guy looks. Polka-dots and, you know, blonde.
4.  The Wall Street Towers copy. I know. It's like my Aunt Tinky's idea of cool.
5.  Money talks. But talk makes money, too.
6.  Well, it's Nebraska. What do we know from fish?
7.  Don't challenge me. I'll hurt you. I'm serious.
8.  Your ring tone defines you.
9.  There's some yucker stuff right here, if you didn't notice.
10. Did you see that bald lady and that poor guy with no arm?
11. Hey, nothin' to it. Easy stuff.

April 27 - May 3
1.  First it's the wrong funeral home, then it's the virus. You still want to send Harry flowers?
2.  If I dropped a bowling ball on it, it would be insured.
3.  No! Chocolate and Pop Rocks? No!
4.  Tony is one of those radical bureaucrats.
5.  Your mom's face is going to be wild.
6.  You can't compare America with Nazi Germany! That's relativism.
7.  Isn't it a beautiful day? Isn't it a beautiful day?
8.  The toilet is here. The door hits the sink.
9.  I want to watch them blow up the ship, then I'll be in.
10. As long as the wind's not cold, that's cool.
11. You look really, really good.

April 20 - April 26
1.  The Visigoth's demands included vats of peppercorns.
2.  My kitten has a soft curiosity.
3.  OK, I'm succumbing to pressure.
4.  What's downtown? Buildings are downtown.
5.  I wouldn't be caught dead without a Super Sticky Post-It.
6.  Parkinson's disease is bad even in staplers.
7.  I need a serious bookend.
8.  That's the world's tiniest painting, isn't it?
9.  We need pickles, figs and granola.
10. Your correspondence must be very colorful.
11. In 38 years, I never heard of anybody doing anything.

April 13 - April 19
1.  My computer broke, but my toothbrush still works.
2.  I do like lima beans.
3.  One that is open, one that is closed. Not the same door.
4.  Did you scare the muttering nuthatch?
5.  I looked good as a redhead, but it just felt like a false self, you know what I mean?
6.  Writing a poem is like facing death.
7.  An atheist doesn't have to be snarky, he just usually is, is all.
8.  I wonder if Hillary feels that way about skirts.
9.  Facts are not interpretable, they are applicable.
10. First he said he'd buy it, then he said not, then he said why not? So I don't know.
11. I saw this orange Lamborghini on Pacific. It just looked so embarrassed.

April 6 - April 12
1.  Would you rather have people think of you as ordinary or peculiar?
2.  You're ignorance of history is almost cute.
3.  All she needs is a glass of whiskey and a loaded revolver.
4.  From reading Augustine to dinner with Mary Dimmity? God! My head would cave in.
5.  Did you see all the floppy gulls this morning?
6.  But then, you know, you get some crabby dickless prickheads, too.
7.  War is wicked necessary.
8.  All I do is quibble and obsess.
9.  I hate to go grocery shopping. I'd rather take a beating.
10. I don't know, like, is he working, dating, married, dying?
11. I'd like to hear a little Crystal Blue Persuasion right now.

March 30 - April 5
1.  Life just isn't fair, is it Barnaby?
2.  I'm from the South where people are real hospibal. That's a word, right?
3.  They're tall, but they're low, too.
4.  It's a real modern sprinkler system. It's computerized.
5.  You mean you're not going to blow it up?
6.  After about 30, you keep learning the same lessons over and over again.
7.  It doesn't have first-paragraph tentacles, you know what I mean?
8.  Oh! You've got to be allergic to something.
9.  He said there are wonderful possibilities to make really, really deep, deep sounds.
10. Get out some baby pictures.
11. What in the world does a non-practicing atheist do?

March 23 - March 29
1.  Happiness is small and bright.
2.  I like him because he uses words like peripatetic, but I don't like his music.
3.  My parents visited a dead volcano last summer.
4.  It's Princess Poc-Poc and Princess Skittles.
5.  We need a town called Audacious.
6.  He was this wispy, little gnat of a thing. And I'm a big guy.
7.  Chuck Hagel was there. The place was packed. I sneered at him.
8.  The whole point is how to communicate with somebody without actually having to talk to them.
9.  He said: what is that? a string of dead puppies?
10. You adored it last time. You loved it. I remember it was the first time you didn't complain.
11. I don't believe in prayer, I believe in wishing.

March 16 - March 22
1.  I enjoy reading my own letters.
2.  He's had such an exotic sex life.
3.  Why should I be the only beneficiary of your sagacity?
4.  When you get ads with dancing cell phones, you know they aren't awesome anymore.
5.  There's a skinhead in the kitchen drinking Starbucks.
6.  I didn't know it was Friday! I mean, I knew it was Friday, but not exactly.
7.  She has a Giacometti that I would not only die for, but that I would kill for.
8.  It's his 51st birthday. What kind of more boring birthday can you have?
9.  He asked Yeats if he could recommend a reliable witch.
10. He's basically a slacker with money and breeding.
11. It was incomprehensible! Except to a trained lawyer. In his prime.

March 9 - March 15
1.  It was about how to sleep more in less time.
2.  People in the 1950s actually had a vocabulary.
3.  He was a giant with pussycat toes.
4.  It's pronounced "It's a lawn chair" but you have to slur it.
5.  She had that business for more than almost 50 years.
6.  Anger blinds you to the simple, necessary step.
7.  I got a twingle of nostalgia.
8.  Well, you know, God I hate the expression you know.
9.  I love you with an EPA-approved affection.
10. All of those guys were stupid on purpose.
11. So, can Nebraska be considered an N-word?

March 2 - March 8
1.  I thought you meant ontologically delicate.
2.  Oh! An arrowhead. And a marble.
3.  I doubt any Jews have sons named Adolf.
4.  Cats sure don't have any kind of sense of humor, do they.
5.  We're criticizing World War II.
6.  You just see crap, crap, crap, crap, crap and then suddenly there's Kent Bellows.
7.  Who the fuck's going to do the bulletin board?
8.  Science deals with usefulness. Science doesn't deal with ultimate truths.
9.  I can't remember what the Jesus spider said to me. Something awe-inspiring.
10. It doesn't just, like, this happens and everything's voilà.
11. I gave up nachos for Lent. Nachos and complaining.

February 24 - March 1
1.  He relies on me for trivial information.
2.  It's a little bit tasty to my face, thanks.
3.  Anybody who spends 2 hours reading People magazine is never going to be your best friend.
4.  Tomatoes, peas, strawberries, pansies and rosemary.
5.  I'm not supposed to show any more Protestant moral outrage.
6.  It has more heaviosity than a Harlequin romance.
7.  A lot of salty language is required to complete this project.
8.  It's lumpy rain.
9.  Figs and spinach. Too exotic.
10. He's good, but he's not T.S. Eliot good.
11. I didn't notice. I was looking at the sad balloons.

February 3 - February 23 (Overheard in Todos Santos, Mexico)
1.  I hated the bad translations until there were no translations.
2.  Did you see the baby crawling through the wall in the bathroom?
3.  There's not one decent T-shirt in this town.
4.  I was in Iowa and they'd never heard of Nebraska.
5.  I must leave my shy and speak.
6.  She's the one with all the glitter and daggers sticking out.
7.  I heard this was the hotel in the song and then I heard it wasn't.
8.  The horses have cow bells.
8.  They've got six copies of Ezra Pound's Cantos in Spanish. I was so impressed.
9.  I want to find a really good-looking sea lion.
10. Yes, she plays general musical instruments and has manual skills.
11. I'm not a professional cook. I'm an attorney.

January 27 - February 2
1.  I got such good credit I can buy my own version of the truth.
2.  Don't you just hate nut dust?
3.  He never has a headache, he always has a screaming headache.
4.  And in my dream you were leading everyone toward a more refined fashion sense.
5.  Group is funny. Group group group group group group, see?
6.  I never thought I'd have such a traditional life.
7.  She's the Teflon of all my ideals.
8.  Do you have anything like this in Bangladesh?
9.  I can't see through the fog without seeing the fog, you know.
10. What happened to you? You used to be normal.
11. OK, then, so I'm off to mingle with the Christians.

January 20 - January 26
1.  Everything crunches.
2.  Can I have a name for your cup?
3.  There must be all these troops of little ant-like people sending DVDs from Anchorage.
4.  We all look equally stupid in a snowdrift.
5.  That's like saying a trip to the tool shed would alter your biorhythms.
6.  He's more of a biblical scholar so he's more of an asshole.
7.  We have make-up and refrigerators.
8.  The Yardbirds, the Youngbloods, the Zombies.
9.  Well, a lot of people find me intimidating.
10. You're supposed to question everything, except your prejudices of course.
11. When you don't know what you're doing, it's really baffling. When you do, it's really boring.

January 13 - January 19
1.  That's the first time I've ever been booed in church.
2.  It's totally totally totally totally full.
3.  There ought to be some benefits besides green blood and code words.
4.  I suppose you would call them polite familiar essays, but they're kind of impolite.
5.  It was rapturous. She was rapturous.
6.  So, what, it's easier to catch depressed fish because they just want to get it over with anyway?
7.  The best way to not think about money is to not spend any.
8.  My God these men used to scribble!
9.  Maybe that's all there is, is ghost ants.
10. He met a fellow horn player from Hong Kong.
11. I need a one-syllable word for freedom.

January 6 - January 12
1.  It's a rather complicated mantra, but I guess it's Scandinavian enough.
2.  Why not a headlight?
3.  No, no, you're confusing agnosticism with intelligence.
4.  If life's a joke then timing is everything.
5.  I wrote really bad poetry en français.
6.  Did you notice you're not wearing a sweater?
7.  These gray days are so gray, I think I'm getting rickets. Rickets or suicidal.
8.  I kinda like the guy with the rectangular face.
9.  Their new house is like an entire bathroom.
10. You have snoopability.
11. Oh! I should be at work! Oh, well.

January 1 - January 5
1.  What I fear are little essays by imbeciles.
2.  I think that wiggly hair and make-up just doesn't go with that.
3.  Oops! Don't want to run you over with the diapers.
4.  So pretentious, yet so refreshing!
5.  I mainly bail people out. I'm the designated bailer.
6.  No, see, that will confuse her.
7.  I just want to hunker down and stay home and eat root vegetables.
8.  Two milks and a water. Two milks and a water.
9.  She's obviously not bimbo. It's so, like, uber-fucking-obvious.
10. He's limping so it looks like he's nodding hello to people.
11. Twelve just seemed rounder.

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