Smartass programmer: if you do a product search at Staples.com, one of the fields shown in the resulting URL is called "cromulent." This word means "fine, acceptable"--having lost habitual OED access I can't tell you any more. The Chambers Dictionary is silent on the subject. Unfortunately the field never seems to have any value.

DJ Pasty Pete reports that a neighborhood grocery store is advertising a sale on Philadelphia Cream Juice.

Lately I have thrown myself at FINDing things with renewed enthusiasm. For a while I picked up just about every piece of paper I saw. Dave of FOUND magazine says that on average 1 out of 5 objects you pick up will be interesting. When I encountered a far lower ratio I got a bit frustrated. I seemed to be finding a large number of extremely mundane pieces with directions or phone numbers written on them. There were also totally blank pieces of looseleaf paper, that material being by far the most promising, and things thoroughly ripped up for no apparent reason, like a printed out email advertising a sale at a clothing store. I grew to hate napkins that from a standing position didn't look like napkins. Finally I did start to find some interesting things, although still many of them were only barely interesting, only if you stretched your curiosity about the mundanity of strangers' lives, or reached for interpretations of small details. Nothing at all heartbreaking or hilarious, like the things I've gotten so used to seeing in FOUND. I've started thinking that the magazine spoiled me by showing me only the best of the best from everywhere. But I was inspired by a co-worker's find, after relatively little effort, of pieces of several versions of a hysterically hostile note written to someone's sister. It was easily of the level of something in the magazine. Since then I've tried to take it easier, and have been much more pleased when I find something good, having a lot more of the feelings I have when reading the magazine. I will try to find a good way to share some of these; if nothing else they're probably more interesting than anything I have to say. Check out this thing I've been talking about here and hop on the bandwagon: FOUND

Lately I've been keeping a notebook by my bedside and trying to write down my interesting dreams right when I wake up. Everyone knows this is a fun thing to do. When you do it right after waking, you still partly believe in the dream's logic, so what you write sounds much more dreamlike than accounts written later on. And of course my subconscious is far more imaginative than my conscious mind, so many good ideas are surely lurking there. But whether it's trying to wake up early, study, or write down dreams, my mind always has a way to defeat itself--in this case, several ways. Sometimes I start to wake up and think about writing down a dream, then I fall back asleep and dream that I'm writing down my dream. Should I then wake up and include that dream in my writeup? Other times I think about whether or not the dream was interesting enough to record, or whether I can remember it well enough, and I keep going back and forth on it until I can't even remember what the dream was really about. Or I start thinking too much about the best way to write it, and then I know that the writeup isn't going to be good in the dreamy way it should be, because I've already overthought it. I have won out a few times though and gotten some prize writeups, and some ideas that could make good lyrics or Michel Gondry videos. One time I woke up not with a whole dream but just with several 'ideas:'

want to map the make chain
(it's no secret that I)
spiderman sequels in term of
a nationwide directive
K-Maths

The second line applied to the first one, the 'make chain' being a term I had in mind for the creative process. K-Maths is like K-Mart, only with maths! No idea what the other lines meant, I don't think they were supposed to be connected.