Hungry I was so when I walked into the cafe/diner/bar/bookstore, a burger looked good. The large menu near the kitchen featured only one item:
The Brash Burger
Beef Patty $20
Bun $7
Cheese $5
Pickles-lettuce-onion $5
Sauces $6
My eye caught the $20 price tag while my brain said new normal hamburger. The smaller print faded back but would get my attention later, after I got the $63 tab for a burger and a beer.
In the kitchen was a familiar face but he was out of context. Wearing an apron and a paper soda jerk hat, both pristine clean white. Like a high school theater production of Al’s Diner, just this side of the uncanny valley as if applied to back-of-the-house restaurant staff. This guy was from the high-end bike world. Custom one-off titanium bike like. You might know him. You more than likely know of him. All that made me smile and wonder what he was doing in the kitchen and if this was his place. And what was this place? How did I get there? Where was I? Where am I?
As I placed my order I noticed a line of fine print on the menu. “inspired by Mark Pilder GED Advertising Marketing PR” Not sure what that was about. Could’ve been a PhD, MBA, DDS, MFA, BFD or a WTF?
And there were two other menus barely visible behind the Brash Burger. But I could not see all the details. This place does one thing at a time. Tomorrow they’ll flip the BRASH menu and reveal another adjective and higher high prices.
For a moment I turned over brash in my head. A word I never use. A word I’ve never written down until now. A word with a few definitional variations. Down on the third tier, maybe it’s a stretch for a Pilder credit.
A moment later I thought the NY Times marketing department was reaching me telepathically in this dream state. So I planned to toss out BRASH as my first wordle guess on the January day that was yet to come yesterday.
BRASH was not the wordle word, but it did get me an R, which I eventually eeked out in the correct word ROWER. Can’t say I’ve ever used the word rower either, but it reminds me of Sievert Rohwer, UW professor emeritus, ornithologist and all around badass. But there are no 5 letter words there and there are no proper nouns in wordle. Maybe I wandered into Sievert’s Bookstore Cafe Bar on an island somewhere between here and Canada.
The brain makes connections where there are none. Creating a connect-the-dot drawing from details that don’t know each other, they’ve never met and there’s a language barrier. But none of that matters to the brain waving its sharpie around connecting dots.
patterns emerge from the static
irreverent audacity
it’s 3:33
I’m not hungry
I’m thirsty
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