The Teeter Balances the Totter.

Plotnik and Ducknik are in Stiletto City.

The truck jackknifed across the Ventura Freeway at 4PM, closing it in both directions. So, the Great Plotnik and family (Mummy Plotnik, Schmeckl Plotnik, The Great Ducknik, Little Bearnik and The Great Punkydunky) were faced with a dilemma: How to get from Here to There (50 miles West) without using the Ventura Freeway. Cousin Fred has a freeway scanner, and he was reporting that speeds were averaging four mph on all sections of the Ventura Freeway, even 50 miles away.

That's what living in Stiletto City is like. Everywhere you go, you drive. Everywhere you drive, there are another thousand people going there. Of those thousand people driving, five hundred are talking on their phones, fifty are shaving, forty are putting on eye makeup and thirty five are trying to close real estate deals. One or two always crash into each other. Or into that truck, now jackknifed.

Whichever freeway they are on, closes. All the other cars on that freeway pour onto the city streets. The city streets become filled with molasses and you're barefoot. You have terrible dreams, dreams where you can't turn off the gas and blue flames are pouring down the line and you can't move to get out of the way.

The Great Plotnik should point out, though, that it's not raining. The sun is hot and hypnotic. The clivias are exploding with color. The Internet Cafe is open 24 hours. Lunch yesterday was a mess o' amazing tamales, where the choice was Salvadoran tamales, Honduran tamales, Guatemalan tamales, Peruvian tamales or Mexican tamales. Did he mention it is not raining?

The rain is doing Plotnik in this year. He is already thinking about the foggy summer to come.

BUT HE DOESN'T HAVE TO DRIVE ANYWHERE IN SAINT PLOTNIKO. This is the Great Balancer, and the teeter is still balancing the totter. But those blue flames.