FOLKS, FRIENDS , members of the board ... I just got brainwashed and I highly recommend it. Beats the crap out of a chiropractic adjustment, or pedicure. Foot massage. Back massage. Best thing I can't compare it to, because I've never tried one, is a lobotomy. Only instead of feeling dumb or dampened, you feel, yeah, dumb, but entirely un-dampened. Like a big ball of wax bopping out of your ear, or getting new glasses. Like shaving your head and standing under a hot shower with the bathroom window open.

How'd I do it?

I don't know! But as soon as I figure it out, I'll start a cult and recruit you. Or write a book, I don't know. That's the beauty of it: not knowing a single goddamn thing. It's all there, all the memories, ideas, and recipes. Kafka. The Cleveland Indians. Breakfast. It's still there, but it can't touch you, see, because it's over. Unless it isn't. In which case it's mere speculation. For example: dinner.

If you subtract the past and the future from reality, what you're left with is not so much the present moment as a point of view, or, for our purposes, lunch. That's what I'm going to call my cult: the Clean Palate Club. Every day for lunch we eat chicken and waffles, and every day we taste it for the first time ever. Give me time. I'll iron out the details.

For now, that I know of, there are three places in the Bay Area where one could conceivably partake of the potion; it's a virtual chicken and waffles renaissance! In Oakland. I'm assuming Lois the Pie Queen still serves the dynamic duo. A couple weeks ago I told you about the return of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles (a.k.a. House of Chicken and Waffles) to Jack London Square.

And now this: the Merritt Diner. It's a bakery too, with a big, boothy restaurant full of American flags and flower arrangements, plus an impressive, impressionistic painting of Lake Merritt on the menu. I should have eaten there years ago, and might have, for all I know. The occasion yesterday was a rare alignment of stars, planets, and time zones that allowed me to sit down in a big booth with Iowan Scotty "the House" Houston, New Englanders GC3-PO and Pam, and Oakland's own Phenomenon and Deevee.

I went first and ordered loud and proud, from the back side of the menu: chicken and waffles. Two thighs ($8.25). The three out-of-towners are all vegetarians, so they all got stuff like veggie burgers ($9.50), a veggie omelette ($8.50), a mixed green salad ($4.25). Deevee got a BLT ($8.25). Only Phenomenon, my brother, opted for enlightenment ($8.25). He always did look up to me.

"I'll have what he's having," he said. Meaning me, meaning chicken and waffles!

Or, I should say, waffle and chickens, even though it doesn't sound quite right, because the only choice they give you is between chicken pieces. No Renaldi's Request, no Lord B.J. No two waffles, and if you want to tack one on, I think it was like four bucks.

The thing is that the waffles are Belgian-shaped, if not -styled. They taste the same, but they're about twice as thick as Roscoe's. But that's no excuse, come to think of it, because the squares are twice as empty. I don't know – does a regular waffle take as much space out of the world as a Belgian one?

There's only one way to find out: Take a Belgian waffle to a plastics plant and have a mold made out of it, then take the mold to a steel mill and fill it with molten – wait, it will melt. Take the plastic mold back to the plastics plant and tell them you want your Belgian waffle back. If they don't have it, then fill the plastic mold with cement mix, allow to dry, and break away the plastic. Drop your cement waffle into a full pan of water placed inside a bigger pan without any water in it. Pour the displaced water into a glass, careful not to spill any.

Now do the same thing, minus the steel mill, with a regular waffle, and pour its displaced water into a second glass. With a pencil or piece of tape, mark the level of the water in the first glass, drink it, and then pour the second glass of water into the now-emptied first glass. Compare the level of the water with the pencil mark or piece of tape. And let me know what you come up with.

All I can say is I ate one waffle and two big, juicy chicken thighs, and I was perfectly satisfied. Which isn't very scientific, I know, but does say something.

Merritt Diner. 203 E. 18th St., Oakl. (510) 444-6955. Sun.-Thurs., 6 a.m.-1 a.m.; Fri.-Sat., 6 a.m.-2 a.m. Takeout available. No alcohol. American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.

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Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).