2002-04-08 | 6:53 p.m.

corduroy licorice got a new lease on life. he figured he should refi while the rates were still low.

***

once upon a time, there was a girl named nictate. with the help of her friend torrez, she moved into a new neighborhood in the city of diaryland.

being new to the area, nictate felt a bit shy about her strange surroundings. she would check her mailbox and gas meter every day to see if anyone new had stopped by. and sometimes they had. a few nice people, like kuinileti and outbox, welcomed her with sausage links and a hearty pat on the back in the very first weeks. that made nictate's day.

one sweet girl named twiggle even offered to help nictate paint her new house in a lovely shade of lavender with window blinds that winked! (not that the orange stripey template paint job that the mayor of diaryland had first provided was lacking at all.)

as time went by, nictate got to know lots of wonderful peeps, like mr. sunshine on wheels esol, his ain't-no-nicer roomies, r-hand fem and the kenny, the hip-hop-happenin' proven, cookie-baker extraordinaire rhetoric, the sweet-as-honey maganda, the nuttified gnoll and livin' large palooka. she was soooo happy she had moved into diaryland. it had really changed her life, but not in a cheesy tony robbin's kind of way.

her circle also grew as she met friends of friends, like outbox's soul sistah, the delightful, d'lovely malice and the witty bo diddley pablo.

then one day, a sedan hurtling south from san francisco deposited bo-diddy himself, pablissimo, in the city of angels--a suburb of diaryland where nictate like to hang tinsel and sip sparkling grape juice with forest nymphs.

so glad to meet the bloke she had read so much about, nictate rolled out the red carpet for her british ambassador. they toured the sierra nevadas in a motorcycle and sidecar contraption. they swam upstream through a crowd of tiny-tee'd, lip-glossed 13-year-olds. she and he sat poolside by the light of the moon with sleek hollywoodites in the chill of the evening. they noshed their way from one strata of south of the border cuisine to the next. it was a like a seven-layer dip of dining. umbrella drinks were had. he breathed smoke with her buddies curbside. she and he even spouted kids in the hall references to and fro under the watchful eyes of humphrey bogart and ingrid bergman. it was a blast, i tell you. a blast defined, my dears. the boy is dashing, hi-lar-i-ous and sweet. not to mention, he said those four little words every girl loves to hear:

"you're a wack job."

to borrow a phrase from bogie himself:

pablo, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

<----������� ---->