And here is a duck confit with cherry tomatoes, black olives and croutons in a seabuckthorn gastrique.

I’m not going to tell you that I sat down for lunch today in my suit and pretended to enjoy the duck but secretly craved a can of Didi’s Young Coconut Juice (with coconut bits). Because that duck was awesome. The ingredients made no sense together but worked anyway. The gastrique was sweet, sharp and unfamiliar (seabuckthorn?). And the duck meat slid off that frenched bone like a cocktail dress at 3 a.m.

As for the juice, it was a choice between coconut bits and coconut jelly. I suspect the bits are there so you won’t question it when small solid lumps suddenly hit your tongue when you take a swig. But man, was it good. There’s even a faintly disgusting pleasure when one of those pieces of coconut end up in your mouth.

These are the kinds of experiences that complicate restaurant reviews (which is a thing I do). Forget about sorting through the overwhelming bits of information that make up a judgment on a restaurant - it can be hard to come down one way or another on a single dish.

I have plenty of friends who are harsh judges of restaurants. They walk in with a set of criteria that pretty much guarantees them a lousy experience. This baffles me a bit. Bars are noisy, movie theatres are godawful - why rob yourself of one of the few urban pleasures that doesn’t involve underground fight clubs or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings?

The best way I’ve found is to meet the restaurant on its own terms. This does not mean abandoning expectations of good service and decent food. Nor does it mean that you’re there to praise or damn an establishment (unless it’s in dire need of one or the other). It’s about getting a sense of what each place is trying to do, and the care and attentiveness they take between getting boxes of food in the back and turning all that frozen, fresh and processed stuff into something that looks half decent on your plate.

I’d say that a happy kitchen makes great food, but I’ve eaten at places where the kitchen manager and the chef and everyone there are engaged in lovingly turning out the worst crap I’ve ever eaten. And then there are miserable places that still produce a great burger. Maybe it’s just what my tongue tells me each time. I’ll work it out at some point.

What is in your mind is an image of a cat licking a bag of noodles. But is it a bag of noodles that you imagine you are seeing? Or a cat? Do you even know where you are right now?

I hope you do. It would be really strange if you found yourself lost, unable to name your own location, and decided to read my weblog and entertain my questions. Get help, weirdo.

This is the best argument for faith that I can muster. If the visible world is a scrim separating us a greater metaphysical theatre, then its residents probably regard us as we regard cats: lively, amusing, beautiful, occasionally irritating - but inherently crippled by walnut-sized brains designed for chasing mice and covering poop.

This isn’t really an argument for faith. I’m just hoping that the gods keep pets.

[Early evening. The quiet caesura between Community and 30 Rock. Palinode is brutalizing lemons on the coffee table. Schmutzie sits, dreaming of eventual lemon curd.]

Palinode: 3/4 cup of lemon juice. The recipe said that four lemons would produce one cup of lemon juice. 

Palinode: This recipe lied to us.

Schmutzie: Maybe the writer has really big lemons.

Palinode: Maybe the writer’s an asshole.

Schmutzie: Maybe the writer is an asshole with really big lemons.

Palinode: Big-lemoned assholes are ruining the nation’s desserts.

The Human Millipede

An entire town in Slovenia decide to go for a nice spa one day but end up sewing themselves to each other on a dare. They win several swimming competitions during a vacation to the Black Sea.

The Human Spider (“The Spider-Man”)

A highschool student with an aptitude for science kidnaps people and grafts their limbs to his body. He then lets a radioactive spider bite him, which causes him to gain the ability to be super toothless and dead.

The Human Baby (“The Baby-Man”)

A scientist undergoes surgery to expand his cranium to a startling size. He finds that the operation doesn’t give him psychic powers or extreme intelligence. Fortunately, he lands the role of “Ice Dancing Baby” in “Lawyers on Ice,” an Ally McBeal skating exhibition. Stars Steve Guttenberg, Anna Farris.

The Human Porn Star

A young woman from a strict midwestern family leaves home and ends up in California having sex on camera. A baby gets run over in the street.

The Human Tapeworm

This one is not very cinematic.

The Human Q-Tip

This spec plot summary has been flagged by the universe for review.

There are a few cultural forces that have pushed this idea to the fore, from the emergence of a post ’90s world of economic uncertainty to a malformed metaphor transplanted from Karl Popper’s notion of empirical falsifiability. But the counter-intuitive nature of necessary failure never appealed to me on a basic, emotional level. I never knew it in my gut, as it were. In other words, failure had failed for me.

Until a couple of days ago, when a corollary dropped into my brain from whatever matrix gestates corollaries: In order to get something right, you must be unafraid to get it wrong. Perhaps repeatedly. You must get something wrong again and again until you get it right. The right answer is the last answer, and unless you’re a faultless genius, you’re not going to get to the right answer immediately. Not every time.

This has stopped me from accomplishing so, so much. If I can’t be right - indeed, if I can’t be authoritative off the bat - then I withdraw and keep my contribution to myself. I have refused to risk exposure. It’s kept me warm and relatively unblemished, but the price of that glossy surface is a slack set of emotional and intellectual muscles.

For a period of years, I had incorporated the notion of being wrong into my personality as a slightly dark joke, a constant check on my ego. The online alter ego I had chosen for myself, palinode, said it all: the word means ‘retraction.’ It’s a formal apology for getting it wrong. I had taken the thing I most feared and made it my namesake.

Anyway, here’s to being disastrously, foolishly wrong. It’s the only way to get things right.

I do miss how cool they looked, though. Of course, it helps to be young, stylish and Cantonese.

Look at that guy - he’s wearing a knit cardigan with lapels. Where can I get a cardigan with lapels? I took this photo in 2007 and these two still look as if they’re five years ahead of the game.

Except for the cigarettes, though. Already they seem old-fashioned.

Take this one. An illuminated child on a train car full of damp, indifferent adults. Except for the conductor. I can’t fathom that guy’s expression. He looks a bit startled.

Therefore there must be someone who looks on this chayote squash with fondness, someone who wants to take it home and maybe share a bottle of Riesling with it.

But I am not that someone.

I think I like the desolation of early Spring best of all. Autumn is mellow and full of ripening things. Autumn has rows of Mason jars on its shelves. Spring feels like a corpse with still-fresh marks of brutalization on its skin.

In a week or two these hills and fields and cuts will turn intolerably green, and the air will buzz like a transformer. But in the meantime, we have these places to imagine.