I got part of the idea from a story about a scientist who studied insects in the centers of large cities. When the researcher started talking about the sounds of insects, the reporter asked how she could hear insects in the middle of a noisy urban center. The entomologist replied by saying "it's all a matter of what you listen for; watch this." She then dropped a penny and everyone within earshot turned and looked.

One of my father's bar stories provided the other half of the idea. He told me that a bar owner had permanently soldered a half dollar to the middle of the floor of the bar. My father and the other regulars would watch the clever contortions a first-time visitor would go through to try to surreptitiously pick up the coin: dropping a napkin, bending over to tie a shoe, et cetera. The result was always the same: everyone in the bar laughed when the stranger failed to quickly grab the coin, which of course never left the floor. I suppose it was the Ohio version of Excalibur.

Found Pound Sound is available in the PDF format.

Nature is sometimes mysterious, sometimes quite straightforward.

Al's Thespian duties aren't technically demanding. His role-playing (he favors the Stanislavsky method) involves eating several slices of North Beach Pizza's garlic-anchovy-Limburger special washed down with a couple glasses of red wine, then taking a taxi to the dental clinic. If the recently-hired worker cleans Al's teeth cheerfully--or at least professionally--then it's unlikely that the rest of the clinic's clientele will be nearly as objectionable.

Al likes the pizza, the wine, the acting challenge, and the pay (not to mention the dental hygiene). The only problem is the traditional actor's lament: lack of recognition. The Richards Dental Clinic managers never allow him to tell his audience of one that he's been acting; he never gets to take a bow before an appreciative audience.

"That's always a sign of grave health," I explained. "If you ever look in the mirror and see the numbers over your head that correspond to the year of your birth followed by the current year, it means you're probably dead."

Everyone knows that the late princess was bulimic; she was caring and sharing enough to tell us all about it in international broadcasts. (She was just that kind of gal.) She had dinner at the Ritz just before she died; I imagine she was counting her calories. What a waste! She could have had the richest greasiest sweetest most fattening food on the menu washed down by six pints of ale and it wouldn't have had any adverse long-term effects. (Judging by the photographs of the smashed car I saw in all the newspapers, I'm putting my money on a closed casket funeral.)

Her life was not in vain. Today I'm not going to worry about my weight; I'm going to eat goat cheese, pasta in a rich cream sauce and drink way too much just in case my demise is imminent.

The airwaves are full of saccharine tributes to the dead princess's wisdom, insight and compassion, in marked contrast to a couple days ago when a columnist for the Observer talked about "the witterings of a woman, who, if her IQ were [sic] five points lower, would have to be watered daily." One phrase I have yet to hear among the platitudes is "common sense." The shrewd but not very sensible princess might still be alive today if, like the only survivor of the crash, she'd been wearing a seat belt.

With so many vermin feeding off of each other, it's hard to figure out who's the host and who's the parasite. Clearly the members of Britain's royal family are the most successful leeches. With breathtaking hypocrisy, they've gone from disowning Princess Die to embracing her back into the royal fold now that they're assured she won't speak ill of them again. Princess Die's casket has provided a rare bit of common ground between the monarchists and royalists: it seems like these days everyone agrees that the best royal is a dead royal.

Any way you slice 'em those royals are weird.

What I really liked, though, was the presentation. Sieff wrote a few words about each photograph on the bottom of every page. I was glad he wasn't too traditional to include words as well as images; I thought the captions added an interesting dimension. For example, there was a photograph of a strikingly beautiful young woman who looks like she's just awoke in the morning light. I presume she's spent the night with the photographer, but I'm not sure if that's because that's what I'm supposed to think or just because the way my mind works. Underneath he's written that the woman's son recently visited the studio to get a print; he told him that his mother was dead.

Few of the captions were that dramatic, but many of them captured the same feeling: looking at old photographs hurts; it's like seeing ghosts.