I was pulling into the parking lot by the A&P last night thinking about emphemerality. Well not actually the A&P, but that A&P "annex" store where they sell medicine and suntan oil & stuff next to the Midnight Farm, the furniture store which Carly Simon used to own in the building where Shirley's hardware store used to be until they moved up to State Road near where Louis's restaurant used to be until it closed after 20 years.

When I say "A&P" of course I mean "Stop & Shop". The two grocery stores on our little island changed hands 5 years ago, but us locals still use the old name. I was going to buy some benedryl for my dog Rosa, who may be dying.

I went to the FCC hearing on why Comcast sucks yesterday. Report here.

Cannot tell you more about it here, lest Hulver hunt me down and kill me for cross-posting!

But it would be OK, I think, if you read my most excellent report and we discussed it here.

A few months ago, Cortez the Killer, explorer, conquistador, poet, bookseller, teacher of Spanish as a second language, bricklayer, songmaker, ship's wright, cartographer, philatelicist, public relations and media strategy consultant, dogsbody, rag merchant and wine taster was laid off ("made redundant") from his most recent mercantile job, viz, House Imperialist for Fitzcaraldo, inc. It is generally understood but not ever publicly acknowledged that his job entailed working as an upcountry guide & translator for a tiny subcontractor to the "Cultural Outreach" arm of Blackwater, Inc, primary contractors on a Pentagon contract said to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to, quote, "steam that paddlewheeller as far as you can upriver until the Amazon shall turn into a mudpuddle and find and civilize whatever pre-Columbians as you shall there encounter," unquote. Cortez, a proud man of Latin persuasion was not happy to sign up for the dole, viewing it as an insult to his manliness. But, ever the pragmatist, he came round to the point of view that "you do what you gotta do". After all, he was broke.

I voted today in the Massachusetts primary.

I voted for Chris Dodd.

That'll show 'em!

admit it.

But also I'm generous, maybe?

Comments welcome, but be kind, OK? I may not be a true power geek, but remember, we're not that other site. Are we?

Went to Arisia last weekend.  Sat on a few panels, in exchange for which I got free admission to the con & a ticket to the free food in the Green Room (which is a suite on the third floor where all the exalted panelists & guests get to hang out. It's generally pretty messy and filled with people I don't know who all know each other.) The con was pretty interesting and fun. By some definition of "pretty" and "interesting" and "fun." Otherwise it was "meh", but not in a bad way. I did spend time with a writer whose work I like, so that was a plus.

Micro report inside.

As Kellnerin and
Cheeseburger will be happy yet very skeptical to hear, I have a book coming out sometime in the recent future. Plus, I'm always trying to pimp my old ones. Plus, I'm always trying to pimp my site.

So, I've been considering whether to get more involved in these newfangled things all the young kids have today, like facebook, myspace, second life, and the boring boring boring linkedin.

Only, I think they all suck, I don't understand them; their privacy policies scare me & plus I'm paranoid about everybody on earth disclosing their social networks, making it that much easier for NSA/Skynet to take over the world.

That's how older daughter used to say "happy new year" about 25 years ago.

Today I would like to make a lot of new year's revolutions and also figure out a way to make a living this year and also maybe watch a football game. And also there is a party to which Dear Wife Betty tells me I must go in mid-afternoon.

Astute readers of this precious blog know that I got laid off a few weeks ago.  Today I put a bunch of books that I don't need no more on the freebie bookswap shelf at the library. Nothing too exotic here--in the first place, I don't do much exotic stuff, and in the second place, I only put out books that I thought likely to interest buyers at $.25/copy. It would be rude to "donate" recherche books that nobody's likely to want anyway. (That just means that somebody else would have to dispose of them eventually)

LM's confessional diary has inspired me to relate this tale of of truly embarrassing behavior. I offer it in the spirit of self-debasement, so that you can heap scorn upon me, or turn away in silent pity, as you choose.

One night, nearly thirty years ago, while drunk, I wrote a letter to the writers of a quasi-popular, quasi-cult comic book. Their response, two months later, immortalizes me in bathrooms all over North America (and for all I know, all over the world).