Abe:

Wise hermit cast adrift on asteroid for thousands of years; has developed odd code languages for everyday actions; lonely but not bitter; his heart is cryogenically frozen, and he must search the universe pursuing the Thawer.

Went to the gym for the first time today and my body feels like an East German Trabant car running on linseed oil crashing into a stack of burning televisions. The pain!

Susan's going psycho over an asthmatic Detroit car artist named Emmett who Michael brought in to do drawings and storyboards. ("We run a very disciplined little software shop," says Ethan. "Detroit really knows how to crack the whip!")

I think it would be a very scary thing at this point in Susan's sexual radicalization to be the subject of her infatuation. Good luck, Emmett.

Oh-Emmett's last name is- Couch-isn't that a hoot! And his big personal beef is Japanese animation. He says that SEGA and Nintendo are responsible for the "subtle but massive Hello-Kittification of North American animation. You can kiss our Hanna-Barbera heritage good-bye." How can anybody take this so seriously?

Emmett has 4,000 manga comics from Japan. They're so violent and dirty! The characters all look as if they're saying unbelievably important things-talking to God and the Wizard of the Universe-but when you translate them, all they're really doing is making belching noises. Susan has discovered in these manga a rich source of fashion ideas.

The more we realize our Lenin jokes rankle Todd, the more the Lenin jokes grow out of control. Even Mom got into the act and made "Lenin's Face" cookies, dropping them into the office on her way to work. We told Todd to close his eyes and touch them and describe their texture-"kind of leathery-kind of dry-kind of... chewy-kind of like . . ." (opens his eyes). Ethan: "An embalmed syphilitic tyrant?"

"YOU assholes! Oh, sorry, Mrs. Underwood "

I learned a new expression today: "protein window." Todd told it to me.

Apparently, after you bodybuild, you have a two-hour time window in which your body can suck up amino acids. This is your protein window. I was talking to him and he said, "Man, I'd like to talk some more, but my protein window is closing," and he ran off to the kitchen and ate a chicken. What a decade this is.

I forgot to eat while my protein window was open. Maybe that's why I'm in pain.

Abe mail:

In the future all planets will have roman numerals after their names and have one or two sylable names that sound like Dupont carpet material from 1966. . . Norlon IV ... Erthrea IK ... Gil II

Bug has joined a "Lego Bobsledding Team" and has plummeted to a new nadir of Nerddom. It's over in Berkeley-they use Mattel Hot Wheels tracks, bet with Monopoly money, have megaphones and everything. Lego trophies, too.

Todd called me "decadent" today-this, after he discussed protein windows! I couldn't believe it. He said I was decadent because I was eating Lucky Charms. He said they were "symptomatic of a culture in decline- sucrose hysteria, you know."

I said, "But Todd, Lucky Charms were invented during the Johnson Administration. Society couldn't have been more anti-decline than it was then. Guns and butter ... I can't believe I'm even talking to you seriously about this. This is silly beyond belief."

Anyway, that was the seed notion. Karla and I wrote a big list of "decadent cereals" on the office dry-erase wall:

CAP'N CRUNCH:

Reason this cereal is decadent:

a) Colonialist exploiter pursues naive Crunchberry cultures to plunder, b) Drunkenness, torture, and debauchery implicit in long ocean cruises.

SUGAR FROSTED FLAKES: Reason this cereal is decadent:

Silky throated military-industrial complex spokestoad "Tony the Tiger" exploits the need of the underedu-cated underclass for a paternalistic, Reagan-like figure. A cautionary tale of the perils of not indoctrinating at the crèche level.

TRIX:

Reason this cereal is decadent:

Well-meaning rabbit, "Trix," kept in continual state of malnutrition/subservience by dominant children of the parasitic bourgeoisie. "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids" can only be construed as a call to class warfare.

LUCKY CHARMS;

Reason this cereal is decadent:

Man with no known adult friends lures children into forest for purpose of nutritional (ideological) seduction. Sprightly twinkle motif on packaging (putatively an allusion to "flavor") are, in fact, metaphors for soul-deadening sucrose.

RICE KRISPIES:

Reason this cereal is decadent:

Snap, Krackle, and Pop thinly veiled emblems for the Trilateral Commission.

COCOA PUFFS:

Reason this cereal is decadent:

"I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," the demented cackle of Sonny the Cocoa Puffs bird/spokesmuppet, is resonant with the insanity inherent in the needless enslavement 'of the proletariat.

COUNT CHOCULA-FRANKENBERRY; Reason this cereal is not decadent:

Gay relationship offers an excellent role model for this new era of diversity. Witty vampire motif plays on never-ending struggle of the oppressed to topple the ruling classes.

On the same theme, from Abe:

I have settled up on the calorie delivery system of choice: Stouffer's home sytle fish fillet with macaroni and chees. Microvaves in six minutes; 430 caloreis. Eat two of them and you don't have to think of food for 5 hours. Beverage: Tang-Do you like the Airbus R300?

TUESDAY

Dad got the Delta job! "My boss is 32 and a little prick if you ask me, but I'm in the real world now." He starts next week. We offered to take him out to dinner, but he and Mom took a taxi down to II Fornaio in Palo Alto. They wanted to get pissed. My parents!

We had this competition inside the office to come up with alternative solutions as to what to do with what is (to the Russians) the increasingly embarrassing and willfully nondecomposing body of Vladimir I. Lenin. The suggestions:

SUSAN:

"Put Lenin in a tuxedo and use him as a seat filler at the Academy Awards. At the Oscar ceremonies they have this big holding pen full of attractive people in gowns and tuxes and whenever the Academy gives away the awards for achievement in sound and everyone flees into the lobby, seat fillers are zoomed in so that the cameras scanning the audience won't register any vacant seats. When Daniel Day-Lewis has to go to the bathroom, the cameras could zoom in and see a picture of Sigourney Weaver sitting next to ... Lenin!"

DUSTY:

"The Reagans would, like, probably rilly enjoy having Lenin in their billiard room in Santa Barbara. They could put him inside a fake suit of armor (which they no doubt already own) and then when Henry Kissinger came over, Nancy could say, "Ooh, Henry-who do you think we have here tonight with us," and she could skreeeek open the little faceplate and there would be-Lenin!-and they could all giggle."

BUG:

"The Lenster's dead, but that doesn't mean he can't endorse products, does it? At the very least, Benetton could fit him into one of their sweaters. That's a two-page magazine spread right there. Revlon? Len Babe must look like hell after all these years. Maybe Clinique has some nice, youthful goo they could slap onto his face-a makeover! Makeovers are the official art form of the 1990s, you know."

Dusty tried to get us to do aerobics in mid-afternoon, but all she got were six insolent stares. She, like, jogs to Oakland during her lunch hour or something. People in the Bay Area are so extreme.

Ethan is getting involved in an Antarctic banking scheme: "No regulation! " I bet if the Chicago futures market started selling plutonium futures, Ethan would be in like spit.

Look and Feel and the gerbil babies make a real racket now. The way they race around the office . . . it's as if the walls are alive.

It turns out that three of us visited the Gap independently of each other today, and when we found out, we got spooked, and we analyzed the Gap, trying to make ourselves feel better about our vague mood of consumer victimization.