In my travels, I always carry a small notebook or, more recently, a PDA to record images and snippets I can later incorporate into my books.. These are a few of my notes.

Paris 1999
Les Halles, mid October, early morning. The prelude of winter is upon us, it’s cold. A sharp blow adds zest to the steps of pedestrians; they huddle in crumpled coats, hurriedly rescued from their summer slumber. The wind carries a whiff of mothballs mixed with Chanel 5 or Rive Gauche. A pretty, young lady–white socks, plaited skirt and a ponytail–counts bills under a lamplight by a street corner, she looks tired and her eyes are red-rimmed, perhaps she has a cold. A gentleman draws level with her, a firm grip on her hand. He looks angry. She nods and hands him the money. I catch a glimpse of a white collar over a gray shirt. It must be my imagination.
The bar interior is warm and a little stuffy. There’s a certain morbid pleasure gained from sipping a piping hot noisette, smoking a cigarette and watching the early-morning world go by.
Outside, on the terrace, two men have just arrived. They look brutish; spiteful eyes, broken noses and hands with the telltale matted pads of callused skin. Each hauls a carrier bag, perhaps full of drugs or brass knuckles or the piece and ski masks. They look around. They could be casing the joint; perhaps they’re on the run from the heat or rival gangs. They sit down, backs to the wall, they shift, something is not quite right.
Unexpectedly, they stand up and change tables, perhaps looking for a more strategic point, a position easier to defend. I look under the awning and reconsider; maybe they’re seeking the warmth of the overhead butane heaters.
The garçon takes their order and frowns; he’s also noticed something funny, I’m sure.
After a couple of minutes he delivers two au lait, eyeing the two men with suspicion. He glances at the bags, collects the coins and dashes inside without a word. I’m tempted to leave my half-finished coffee and break into a run.
The strangers exchange glances and I tense, perhaps it’s a signal because both bend over and rummage inside the bags. I hold my breath, faint with foreboding. I sense that something momentous is about to happen. Here am I, unprotected, a scant couple of meters from the bandits. I expect their hands to reappear with guns. I look around. There are no banks nearby and I doubt that the bar’s till will hold much; after all, they’ve only been open for an hour.
I’ll be damned! They have produced plastic boxes and now that the waiter is not looking, they draw croissants–much cheaper if bought from the next-door boulangerie–and dunk them in their coffees.
I feel stupid, ashamed, but the worse is yet to come.
A sparrow lands on the table; it must be ravenous because the shy birds seldom beg at close quarters. The presumed criminals busy themselves over the next five minutes crafting small balls with the soft inner dough and patiently feed the bird.
I finish the noissette as I consider that life–and the passage of time–is most unfair. Things have changed and nothing remains true to form. Criminals, hookers, and even priests don’t act as expected anymore.

To keep my brain occupied I often ponder intractable problems, the kind that have baffled our species since the dawn of time. Over the years I’ve collected some of the thoughts listed below specially to be addressed when consuming intoxicants, both legal and misdemeanor.

Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?

What disease did cured ham actually have?

If money doesn’t grow on trees then why do banks have branches?

Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?

How come the older I get the smarter my parents were?

Why is it that by the time you find greener pastures, you can’t climb the fence?

If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?

Why is there always one more idiot than you counted on?

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?

What hair color do they put on the driver’s licenses of bald men?

If a stealth bomber crashes down, will it make a sound?

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren’t people from Holland called Holes?

If someone with multiple-personality disorder threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

I can picture readers reaching to scratch their heads. What kind of a question is that? You feed it poison, or set up traps, or club it with a bat, or shoot it with a sawn-off shotgun, or….
Yes, I gathered that much. Problem is sometimes things are not so clear cut.
Take my neighbors, two young women rushing around all day trying to balance studies with full-time work and a modicum of social life.
After discovering telltale evidence of a rodent visitation to their kitchen, they marched into the nearest hardware store and purchased a mean-looking trap. They discussed logistics at length, plotting the fiend’s most probable route of ingress, to place the contraption and agonized over the most suitable bait. Cheese? Bacon? Tuna fish? Surely rats don’t eat tuna fish. What about cereal?
Anyway, they loaded the trap and went to bed after barring bedroom doors and wedging chairs under the handles. You never know with rodents.
In the morning: success, congratulations and a jig in pajamas. The trap had caught the beast. But their merriment was short-lived. The rodent was mauled, but very much alive. A hurried council followed and with the help of a plastic pan and broom,  rat and trap were removed outside the house. One of them tried to end the animal’s misery hitting it with a dislodged tree branch. Perhaps the blows were half-hearted or missed their mark, but the rat resisted the onslaught.
Rushing to get ready to work, they decided the rodent might extricate itself from the trap and return with some of its pals. So before jumping into the respective cars, they placed a large bowl over animal and the trap.
In the evening, when they got back from work, the rat appeared as healthy as ever, and hungry by the looks of it.
This was too much. My neighbors decided to apply extreme measures to deal with the pest: they removed the cover, pushed trap and rodent onto the middle of the drive and ran their car over the thing several times forward and backward.
Or so they thought.
When they finished their macabre endeavor they discovered a punctured tire, a wrecked trap and a missing rat.
Anyone know of a brave cat?