The other sign, at least, read both ’signore,’ and ‘men,’ so after standing in the hallway for a few baffled moments, I opted for door number one: Uomini. Phew! Not a urinal in sight. It was the ladies room, all right.

On the way out, I asked one of the wait staff about the sign. She just shrugged and said that, ‘It was painted by Mexicans. They kinda guessed at the words.’

‘Well, they guessed wrong,’ I told her.

‘Yeah, but it looks real good,’ was her response, to which, I confiess, I had no snappy reply.

I love our neighborhood Chinese buffet. The food’s yummy, the staff is friendly and they do a brisk business. This being Texas, there’s a definite regional influence to the line-up: steak, frog legs, stir-fried chicken with jalapeno – even sushi rolls with ham and cream cheese.

Their fortune cookies suck, though. Rather than predict anything fun, they merely give advice, and the advice is so obvious even your grandmother would roll her eyes, stuff like, ‘If you are kind to others, you will go far.’ I did get one the other day that was more creative than usual; it read, ‘Ask not what your fortune cookie can do for you, but what you can do for your fortune cookie.’

I get a kick out of their dry erase board, too. Looks like Chinese and Korean down below. I should have had them translate it. Actually, I should have had them translate the shirt I was wearing, ‘cuz it had some Chinese writing on it. I once worked with a Japanese woman, and one of our customers walked in wearing a T-shirt with a big Japanese character on it. My co-worker nudged me and whispered, ‘I wonder if she knows her shirt says, I am diseased,?’ Ever since that incident, I’m a bit self-conscious when wearing what – to me – seems like a cool shirt with foreign writing on it unless I’ve had it translated first!

If you’ve read my blog much, you’ve probably noticed that I like to take pix of some of amusing billboards and post them here.

So far, I’ve blogged about the mysterious Hardcore Training Facility, the fact that in Ft. Worth Big Grandma is Watching You, and whether or not you’ve Got Gun?. I even lamented about the ‘ones that got away’ in my Bubbly Clouds post.

I’ve seen these donut ads for a while now, but have been holding out because there is a particular one I wanted a photo of. It shows this donut ad side by side with an ad for the human body exhibit, you know, the one where they have real cadavers on display? Talk about an appetizing juxtaposition!

This billboard reminds me of a conversation Tex and I had a while ago. To kill time while waiting for an order of chicken fried steak with chicken fried grits over at Ginger Brown’s, we drew up a Texan Food Pyramid on a napkin. As I recall, the pyramid’s many layers included chicken fried stuff, steak, bbq, things smothered in gravy, and queso. Oh yeah, I think we had bacon on there – twice – kinda sandwiched in between Ro Tel tomatoes and okra. Makes me feel bloated just writing about it all!

Back to the billboard, though, whatever happened to the “4 Basic Food Groups”? What’s the 5th one, soda? I do notice a lot more donut shops here in Texas. In fact, there are nearly as many donut shops as their are churches. Maybe folks need a good refined sugar buzz to carry them through lengthy sermons.

When I was a kid up in eastern Washington, I often carried pebbles in my pocket to toss ahead of me before stepping into tall grass. Sometimes I’d hear a rattler slithering out of the way afterwards. My little dog was good, too. She’d run ahead and keep the trail cleared of any snakes. I didn’t realize people ever shot snakes; so when I saw this ad for a snake gun proudly displayed in a shop window, it caught my eye.

The ad amuses me because the guy they drew looks a bit like Hunter S. Thompson. I can just envision a graphic novel penned in Hunter-esque prose about a macho Texan snake hunter. This main character would have a basement armory featuring weapons for all sorts of specialized nuisances, everything from mime attacks to bomb-laden armadillos.

At some point in the wacked out story, the protagonist would be so full of fear and loathing that he’d blurt out some of Thompson’s famous lines, stuff like: “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me,” and “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Tex and I ventured into the shop, which was full of interesting knick-knacks, antiques, and post-Christmas deals. The whole time we wandered around, the man behind the counter was on the phone with various people. Every conversation was about guns.

The man behind the counter was still on the phone, blabbing on about firearms as he rang up my purchase, which was not a gun. At one point, however, he set a pistol on the countertop. The barrel pointed right at Tex’s belly. We exchanged nervous glances, before Tex gingerly turned the weapon around.

After he hung up the phone, the man behind the counter apologized, then took a moment to admire the string of beads I’d purchased. “Well, aren’t these just darling?” he remarked, while tucking them into a little bag.

I wanted to ask if he’d ever shot a snake, but I chickened out. Maybe next time.