So far, things are deteriorating rapidly. Last night, I had beef jerky for dinner. I’ve also decided that growing a goatee is a good idea, even though my face lacks the proper follicles to support manly hair growth. I’ve even looked into the mirror, rubbed my budding peach-fuzz goatee with two fingers and mused, “Mustache . . . ?” Uh-oh.

A week may seem fast to have descended into the depths of mustache-musing, but remember: I work at home. I may not see another living thing for days, outside of a particularly sharp-toothed cat.

There was an unfortunate mustache-growing incident a few years back . This was the only known instance in history where growing a mustache made someone look younger; I transformed myself, through the magic of facial hair, into a scruffy 14-year old.

My friends and fellow apostrophes Duodecad and dbay made no mention of the budding goatee Saturday night. Either they were used to the more robust, Hemingway-esque style of beard that Duodecad seems to so easily sport, and didn’t actually notice my “beard,” or else they realized that, in polite society, it’s best to pretend that nothing had happened.

I’ve resolved not to go down the dark path of my friend Ian, whose wife Anika has been gone for several weeks, teaching kids at a summer camp. Ian, he confessed, recently slept on the couch with all his clothes on. Why? Why not, he said.

Crazy. But the more I think about it, why not, indeed? The bed is rather large nowadays, and who needs the hassle of undressing, and then dressing again in the morning? The couch, clothes on . . . I like it!

Some updates, for the Facebook and Twitter Nation; 12apostrophes was absent from the triple-w for approx. a few days, give or take many hours. For some of those days, I was in Vegas, so I didn’t care.

But, in the good news column, 12apos received four (count ‘em, four) e-mails about the outage, along the lines of “Where is 12apostrophes?” and received zero e-mails of the “Good riddance!” variety.

This proves two things irrefutably:

1. 12apostrophes has at least four readers, not the before-thought of “two” or “a couple of” readers.
2. 100% of 12apostrophes readers respond favorably to the blog.

The site downage was caused by a roving band of crack Internet hackers trying to strike terror by crashing the world economic infrastructure and obscure blogs. Or else the hosting company “switched the name server” and then “forgot to switch it back,” should “propagate” in a “couple of hours,” but really “took a week.”

Meanwhile, back at the Vegas wedding, Pulao and I survived helicopter travel, although I had had my doubts. In fact, besides just avoiding the firey crash, the rides and views were a bit on the super-awesome side. Here’s what a small part of it looked like:

Vegas, for me, was unstoppable forces vs. immovable objects: freezing casinos v. scorching sun, Disney World v. Bourbon street on Fat Tuesday night, hooker calling cards on the sidewalk v. a beautiful wedding. Nice strangers v. mean strangers. Swift ‘copters v. sluggish busses.

The highlights of the trip were the wedding ceremony at the Chapel of the Flowers, a classy oasis tucked away on a un-classy street, the Grand Canyon (from the air and the ground), friends and more friends, and craps at the Golden Nugget.

Another way to look at Sin City; friend and sometime-12apos commenter Crash Damag said that Vegas had moved way beyond capitalism, capitalism used to be you gave your money and got something, a good or service, and in Vegas you just give the money away, without that other part, where you get something.

When I say “opportunity” I mean “Oh my God is that safe?” I’m just starting to fly — in airplanes — with a relaxed white-knuckle grip on the tray table in front of me. But helicopters? Like in ‘Nam?

I decided to do some Interweb searchings to still my beating heart. Surely, helicopters are extremely safe contraptions to routinely defy the laws of physics like they do. I tried googling “helicopter safety.”

Don’t try this at home. I landed at www.helicoptersafety.org, and this is the Web banner that greeted me:

There are a few problems with this Web banner. Perhaps you can spot them, “Where’s Waldo” like.

First and foremost in my mind, was that the helicopter pictured is not in the air. And it is not safe on a landing pad, either. It appears to be “resting” on the surface of a lake, which is not the optimal end result of my preferred landing procedure.

Next is the “Y” in “Helicopter Safety.” The “Y” has fallen off the word “Safety,” and is cracked in half. Helicopters, apparently, do not put the “Y” in “Safety.”

And lastly, but certainly not least, is the banner’s tagline: “Let’s Stay Alive!” Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the sentiment. In fact, this is a rousing affirmation of just the thing I want to do on my helicopter journey. But I’d rather staying alive be more of a given, and not so much a lofty goal.

I foolishly proceeded past the banner to the rest of the site, which consists almost entirely of botched helicopter landing videos, YouTube style. Botched helicopter landing videos are immensely captivating to someone afraid of botched helicopter landings (OK, we could crash this way. . . or like that . . . interesting . . .), but have sort of the opposite effect of what I was looking for.

After watching the videos, the Web banner makes total sense to me.

When Kris and I were in college, our friend Jatt Mohnson (that’s not his real name, so don’t try and google him) and some other folk came up with the idea of the literary cafe. Another friend Shlevi Shwilliams was back then an aspring chef, and we thought we should open a restaurant, where, get this, all the names would be literary references! The recent comments on this blog mentioned, for instance, “Williams Carlos Waffles” and “Sound and the Curry.”

 It’s me, so you know what’s coming up… Yep, exactly right, a contribution competition! Name a dish, and, if you’d like, append an explanation. My example, stealing one we thought up all those years ago:

Ezra Pound Cake (there’s already a food blog by that name, by the way): A pound cake with ingredients balanced so precisely, you want to call it fascist, a slice of the Ezra, more than just tasting fantastic, evokes the image of a perfect pound cake. Home made and decorated, we make only one cake a month. $25 a slice, reserved for friends only.

“Ha!” I say. We at 12apostrophes currently have 262 comments in a holding pattern (or “spam box”), waiting to be unleashed upon the blog-reading public.

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The other day, the cashier said “Thanks so much!” and I turned around from the door and gave her a hearty “Thank you!” back, thinking, boy, she really appreciates a customer, even if it’s just a small cappuccino, only to see that she was, obviously, in conversation with someone she knew, about something else entirely.

The other other day, on a plane, I totally went the other way. I was at the window and in the center and aisle seats were two women, relatives or good friends, who went through each other’s bags and chatted easily.

Airplanes are getting smaller, I think, in tandem with my own bodily expansion, and the center-seat lady and I shared the armrest, arriving at an amount of arm-touching that we could live with. I turned to my magazine and later, as she went through her purse, I heard her quietly say, “I’m sorry.”

Was she apologizing to me? Had the arm touching increased to apology-necessitating levels as she jostled her purse? I hadn’t noticed, my mind having been occupied by my magazine and the improbable nature of jet flight.

She kept her gaze steadily into her purse, apologizing, it seemed, to her bag. What if I missed a conversation between her and her relative? What if her relative said, “My shoulder hurts,” and Mrs. Center Seat said, “I’m sorry?” and I only caught the last part?

In that half-second it took me to look up from my magazine, I raced through the above what-ifs, and as I turned to her, I hadn’t made up my mind yet as to what was going on. So what came out of my mouth was, “Hmmmm.”

Not, “Hmmmm?” like “Pardon me?” just the straight up declarative: “Hmmmm.” Like “Hmmmm, you’re odd.” Or “Hmmmm, I’m a dick.”

But by God I didn’t talk out of turn . . .

I’m sure he’s on the edge of his seat, waiting for my call, but I’ve got nothing to tell him yet. Ken Rudin at NPR discusses the pros and cons of Mrs. Clinton, and a short-list of other possibilities, including Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, and Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, among others.

Who do you think it’s gonna be? Who do you think it should be?

The pertinent Clinton question is, will her supporters vote for Obama because they’re Democrats even if she’s not on the ticket? And the question’s corollary: could the vitriol against Clinton get-out-the-vote for the GOP when faced with their own lackluster (to some) candidate?

Although I think Clinton’s bad rap is mostly undeserved, folks do love to hate her, so I would make her the Health Care Czar and move on — betting that Dems love to hate Bush more, and that the chance to put a Democrat in the white house after eight years will get out the Clinton vote, while a less well-known Veep could help keep disaffected conservatives home.

Sebelius and Napolitano are excellent politicians (each was named by Time in 2005 as one of the five best governors in the U.S.), but I worry that the news story would be, in this race, that Obama picked a woman for a running mate that wasn’t Clinton (although Sebelius, along with Obama’s Kansas roots, might get the Dems those six electoral votes).

Jim Webb, the conservative-ish Senator from Virginia, is an interesting choice. He makes sense geographically, as Presidential candidates often try for a Veep from a different region of the country, and VA’s got thirteen electoral votes up for grabs — at a dead heat in the latest polling. Plus, he’s a decorated Vietnam veteran, which might bolster the ticket’s national security ethos against McCain, who is, of course, the more well-known veteran.

But, on the other hand, Webb’s conservative. (Ish.) Anti war but pro gun. Hard on corporations, but hard on immigration, too. It’s refreshing to see a politician from either side have a complex take on the issues, but, for me, I like it better when politicians take my side.

Webb brings up a good question; how important is the Vice’s politics anyway, considering, as VP John Adams, once said, that his or her job is “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived?” If somebody helps electoral math, do their stances have to add up?

(A final word on Webb: although he’s pro gun and was Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, this does warm my heart — when Bush asked him, about his son serving in Iraq, “How’s your boy?” Webb said, “That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President.” Plus Phillip Thompson, the aide who was arrested for carrying Webb’s loaded gun, in a briefcase, into the Senate Office Building in March? A high school friend of my brother’s.)

I started hearing it last year some time, and I knew “it is what it is” had really made it when it appeared on the American version of the office (B. J. Novak, as Ryan, throws it in a rant filled with other business platitudes).

Soon after, I heard my actual boss say it on a conference call. Then, a client at work. Now, as of last week, my therapist, from whom I expected more (Me: “Why are the flying monkeys talking to me?” Her: “It is what is is.”)

Could any phrase, in the history of language, signify less? A is equal to what A is equal to. “It is what it is” could be summarized thusly: “it.”

My friend Ian pointed out another recent offender: “Going forward.” This is used, very, very often in my experience, at work to propose an action, for example: “Going forward, let’s make money instead of losing it.”

You don’t need the “Going forward” part. We’re certainly not going to do things previously. Proposing or mandating action is rarely effective when applied to the past. “Looking backward, let’s sell more ads yesterday.” Actually, I wouldn’t put that past the rank and file of managers I’ve met, but, you know, “time travel is impossible as time travel is impossible.”

“It is what it is” reminds me of our neighbor Patrick in Mississippi who would say “for obvious reasons.” But he never left well enough alone, and was compelled to then spell out his reasons, no matter how obvious. The one Pulao and I remember the most was when he got his pet rabbit, Floppy, whom he had named “for obvious reasons,” which were (obviously) that the rabbit grew up in a flophouse.

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Pulao and I listened to a podcast of This American Life from three weeks ago, an episode called “Mistakes Were Made.” In it, among other things, are a few riffs on “This Is Just to Say” — which is, according to This American Life, one of the most spoofed poems around.

I want to do that, I said. I bet you do, too.

They key to spoofing “This Is Just to Say,” This American Life pointed out, is to not be sorry.

Come up with one and post it in the comments. I’ll go first:

I’m Just Saying . . .
by Kris

If you didn’t
want me
to eat all
the cupcakes

why would
you leave them in the fridge?
Don’t tell me
you were
saving them for breakfast.

Nobody
would eat cupcakes for breakfast –
too sweet
and I ate them already.