I just strung together two words that I have never used in tandem before: Jablonski jump. (I'm working out the layout for an upcoming magazine, and that's the page to which a column written by a guy named Jablonski will jump.)


But doesn't "Jablonski Jump" sound like a new dance? Performed to the strains of irritating polka music, most likely.

Sometime Monday night, while I was taking a not particularly vigorous bath, I did something terrible to my back.


When I tried to stand up, I got shooting pains in the lower left side. They have persisted all week. It's making me crazy.


I finally went to the doctor, who prescribed a painkiller to take at night so I could sleep, and some muscle relaxers. All the muscle relaxers succeed in doing is making me dizzy; the pain reliever, rather than helping me sleep, causes me to lie awake with my eyes wide open, staring into the middle distance.


Kip suggests that maybe someone somewhere is sticking pins into a voodoo-doll likeness of me. It's either that, or I pulled something while I was shaving my legs.


Whatever the cause, it sucks.

My sister Jennifer, who really should start her own blog, has come up with another purely 21st century phrase: "Google it."


And who hasn't googled the names of old boyfriends and girlfriends? Yeah, I'm talking to you. You know you have.

My topics today seem to be hovering just a few inches above the gutter. Sorry about that.


Kip read the quote from Mike Nelson, about the horror of male genitalia, and thanked me for not posting pictures.


In other genital-related news: My mother has a cousin who persists in sending her mass-distribution jokes and stories via e-mail. She seems to specialize in stories that turn out to be urban legends. Today she sent one about some moronic disc jockey in California who made up a story about a guy who's suing the president and Tom Ridge because he duct-taped his privates to protect them from terrorism. (The fictitious litigious guy's the one who duct-taped his privates, not the president or Tom Ridge. At least not as far as I know. Or want to know.)


I highly recommend this site to debunk urban legends. But whatever you do, don't read the "Sex" category within three hours of eating lunch. You've been warned.

Oh, and ...


Jennifer says she frequently encounters the phrase "private parties" in the documents on which she works. Except sometimes it comes out as "private panties."


Some things should be private.

My sister Jennifer works in a ... let's just say a business. Today she found this phrase in a document: "primate rate." That is, she explains, the rate that they charge monkeys.


Or else it's the cost of lime-green monkey china. I'm not sure which.


Trust me. You had to be there for that one.

I'm still inching my way through Mike Nelson's book. I came across a sentence this morning while once again, inadvisedly, reading the book on the bus, and I feel that I must disseminate it:


"Now clearly, the male genitalia even in their proper context are a horror beyond human understanding."


I can add no more.

Did you see that news item yesterday about the U.S. military sending the lowest-ranking enlisted men into Saddam's palace to sleep in the beds?


While I completely understand the theory -- and applaud it -- I personally would find it impossible to sleep in a bed in Saddam's palace. Talk about bad karma. Talk about nightmares. Talk about smelly sheets.


Um, no, but thanks. I'll just sleep here on this comfortable sand, if it's all the same to you.