Today on my walk home from a temp job at a trade show for Oregon nurseries and plant growers, I passed the following businesses: an unmarked bar that serves beer and cheese fondue, a hippo-themed hardware store full of old timey doorknobs, an art supply store, a museum of velvet paintings, the best music venue in town, a Greek deli, the offices of a guy with an aircrane business, a drum shoppe, and a local restaurant which purportedly has the best buffalo wings in town. While I was at the trade show, I spoke to a man who works for a company that manufactures waterproof notebooks which (if you use a pencil or a spacepen) you can write on (it?) underwater. I considered making notes in my sample waterproof notebook about the places I passed, but it actually wasn’t raining so I was afraid it would be a little pompous. There was a man riding a bicycle while wearing a sort of fedora who kept stopping at telephone poles to staple band adverts to them, and his ride-and-stop programme meant that he and I were going almost exactly the same speed down the sidewalk. It was like being followed by a feline and when you look back to see if she is still behind you, she looks away as though she doesn’t want to get caught in the act. My other souvenir from the trade show was a directory which lists the Latin names of plants and who in the area has them up for sale. It tells me, for example, that if I would like to procure a specimen of Aesculus hippocastanum var. “Baumannii,” then I will need to pay a visit to the J. Frank Schmidt & Son Company of Boring, Oregon. Yes, there is a town in Oregon called Boring. It may be the only place in it that is. I am pretty sure I made the registration badges for Mr. Schmidt and his son, and maybe his son’s sons. The nursery business is a family business, and that makes me happy. In general I think that capitalism sucks ass bigtime, but there is something very comforting about families called Miller or Cooper or Smith who make flour or barrels or horseshoes.