I've been thinking about the continuum from literature to journalism through blogging recently, and the idea of Journalism < Literature has been haunting me.

As Cyril Connollly once supposedly said, "Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once."

Cute but wrong.

I'm thinking the key is that literature is just a superset of journalism. Good journalism is certainly literature.

Here's the idea: Journalism can be defined as the written word concerning events fixed to a temporal context. Furthermore, journalism has an inherent bias of assuming objectivity, generally unlike literature.

Journalism is about presenting the near here and now as it supposedly is. Stray from that and you lose the journalism label.

Anyways, here's a tidbit that sort of reflects how I feel about blogging.

I'm off to bed. It has been a long tiresome day only punctuated briefly by Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk, some Travis, and croissants.

Oh yeah, and this:

src="http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2003/01/os_quiz/amiga.jpg" width="300" height="90"
border="0" alt="You are Amiga OS. Ahead of your time. You keep a lot of balls in the air. If only your parents had given you more opportunities to suceed.">
Which OS are You?

About one year ago I referred to the Pea Coat Mafia here in the city.

So there's this really nice black knee length pea coat that I saw at Banana Republic this weekend.

I haven't bought it.

yet

In some dream: [the light] it burns me precious, sniff sniff.

Is it weird to dream that you're hung over, and then wake up not?

Dave's birthday partay was fantastic. A ridiculous number of people up and down from as far as DC & New Haven. And poor Allen feeling the brunt of the need to handle emergency stage management. Awww.

There were tentative plans for Dim Sum today, but the Packers/Giants game starts at 1 (Jeanne wants to see that) and the Jets/Miami game is on at 4:15 (Cy wants to see that.)

Dog gone it. I want real food.

Allen's Tony has taken it upon himself to be my externalized conscience. He was playing the parens patriae game with my jacket, gave me family advice, and mentioned last night "You know... Everything I learned in college I learned after I realized I was going to pass all of my classes my last semester."

It is a cool and sunny morning. Allergy med time.

I just realized that I've never spoken the word Bulwark, nor heard it pronounced.

How do you pronounce it?

I was coming off of the B this morning at 42nd street and heard the announcer say that you could transfer to the IRT 7 upstairs. Most people have no idea what the announcer is talking about when they hear IRT, or BMT, or IND from a train conductor, because those are the old names of the lines from before the City took them over. But it is still nice to hear the announcers using the old monikers.

It is reminiscent of the cobblestones that occasionally peek up from fading pavement, reminding us of the past that often does still coexist here with the present. Not the past for the sake of the past, in the historic districts, not new for the sake of the new, in parts of midtown, but somewhere comfortably in between.

I just finished Sandman 6, and I do have to say that it is taking a definite turn back towards addictive.

-=-

The Debate is over, and I am relieved. Kerry came off far better than I thought he would. I think this speaks less to Kerry's strength than to the abilities of the Bush campaign to spread Fear uncertainty and doubt about Kerry. Clearly, the more the better.

Cy is coming in late at night, and likely heading home. Bec is coming in late as well. I've got reservations for 5 at Milk & Honey tomorrow (or is that tonight now?)


Also, Bethany's purse called me out of the blue. My phone returned the call, to everybody's surprise. Her phone relays a "Hi" to yall. B was too busy driving a city Prius.

Prius needs to have the word King in front of it.

This post is through ranchero software's marsedit (from the same guys that have made the indispensable NetNewsWire 2.0 - If you've got a mac try it... My most used program next to Firefox.) It uses the old blogger API, so no headline support until ATOM API support comes in post 1.0. Consider the headline to be:

Hello Fall

And besides, it feels Autumnal this week.

Also, I love Dumbo (the area of downtown Brooklyn next to the Brooklyn & Manhattan Bridges. Washington St, just between the bridges and on down to the East River is amazing. It feels like a spanking new office building area, and yet is in between these massive old bridges, and cobblestones peek through the pavement. A starbucks is opening up (any coffee shop will do) and the area is blocks away from the best Pizza in the City (Grimaldi's - formerly Patsy's) and the A,C and F trains, which all cut underground to Manhattan, far faster than the trains (BDQMNR) that go over the Manhattan bridge. Of course, I can't afford it yet.

Kristof wrote a good piece in the nyt about gender equality becoming the battle of this century. I don't agree with him. I think Genetic Modification of animals and humans will become a far larger issue. I am inclined to wonder if the future ubermensch will also have gender equality issues.

The article talks about Pakistani judicial rape victim Mukhtaran Bibi who's trying to make an impact, despite the death threats of neighbors. You can send money here. The money will actually go to something better than first worlders careening around the third world in NGO SUVs.

The debates start tonight. I'm bracing myself to be very very depressed.

Also, who is coming this weekend? Brendan & Miriam? Caitlin & Cy yes I think. I'm going to make reservations for Milk & Honey tonight for sometime late tomorrow evening.

I'm on Book 5 of Sandman. Is it just me or does the dare I say novelty start wearing off about this point? (Back off... Gaiman is still Amazing...)

So there are strong economic arguments for privatizing social security. But those aren't the republican goals, as described below. I'm going to say this one last time (not likely): Republicans, conservative Democrats, and fellow travelers - Stop Ruining My Country.

Thank you. Bitches.

Are There Reasons to Be in Favor of Social Security Privatization?: "

Duncan Black writes:

Eschaton: The Case for "Privatizing" Part of Social Security: Actually, I don't think there is one. What would be the point? If you think reducing payroll taxes and/or guaranteed benefits in a way which adds up is a good idea then go ahead and advocate that policy. But, what possible good argument is there for a policy roughly like the ones which are floated by the Bushies (without details of course), which would cut payroll taxes by 2 percentage points, cut guaranteed future benefits, and then mandate that you save/invest that 2 percentage points of income. What's with the mandatory savings? If you want to cut benefits, fine. If you want to having all kinds of tax free savings instruments, which we already do, fine. But why force people to save? The only point of doing so is to ensure that people have a reasonable income base when they're of retirement age, but once you take the "insurance" part out of retirement insurance, then a mandatory saving/investment program doesn't achieve that.

I disagree. There are five reasons to be in favor of Social Security privatization. They are:

1. There are large-scale financial market failures which cause the equity premium to be *way* too high: the stock market does a lousy job at mobilizing society's risk-bearing capacity as applied to investment. Privatizing Social Security and mandating that such accounts be invested in stocks rather than holding the public Social Security Trust Fund in Treasury bonds is a powerful way to try to repair this market failure by boosting demand for equities
   
   
2. Too many households are myopic: they do not save enough. Households resist increases in Social Security taxes--they see no link between the taxes and their future benefits. But if Social Security were privatized so that households saw their Social Security contributions as their own, in the future there would be much less objection to upping the contribution rate--and so creating a real and more effective forced saving program to raise the national savings rate.
3. Prefunding Social Security is moral: it is unfair to make tomorrow's young bear the entire burden of financing the retirement of the baby-boom generation. But prefunding requires raising Social Security contributions and building up huge assets in the Social Security Trust Fund--enough assets to give the Managing Trustee of the Trust Fund effective voting control over corporate America. The Managing Trustee is the Secretary of the Treasury. Do we want the Secretary of the Treasury casting the deciding votes in every election for corporate boards of directors? No. Hence privatization is a necessary first step to create the possibility of doing the moral thing--making the boomers build up the assets needed so that they can shoulder a greater share of the burden of financing their own retirement.
   
   
4. We need to raise our national savings rate. But if we just raise Social Security taxes, Congress will treat these taxes as general revenue and spend them. Only by funneling Social Security contributions into some vehicle that Congressional representatives cannot interpret as a resource available to fund current spending can we raise the national savings rate. And private accounts are the best vehicle we can find to (a) accumulate contributions without (b) allowing Congressional representatives to seize them as resources available to fund current federal spending.
5. At present, your Social Security benefits are yours only by grace of Congress: Congress could cut them if it wished. But if your privatized Social Security account were *yours*, then it would be yours not by grace of Congress but by right of property: courts would stand ready to defend it against any casual attempt to cut or confiscate it.

The problem is that I cannot see any of these as a reason for George W. Bush to be in favor of Social Security privatization. (It does seem likely to me that (1) and (3) are Marty Feldstein's and Andrew Samwick's reasons for being strong advocates of privatization, and that (4) is Kent Smetters's reason for being a strong advocate of privatization. But their reasons aren't the administration's reasons, and hence whatever plan a second Bush administration might ultimately propose would be unlikely to be crafted to achieve goals (1), (3), or (4).

Why are other groups inside a second Bush administration likely to be in favor of Social Security privatization? What's in it for them? I can see three possibilities:

• Enormous fees for the mutual fund industry...
  
  
• Huge capital gains for current investors as stock prices rise in anticipation of the enormous flow of stock purchases by private accounts...
  
  
• Over time as the contribution rate to private accounts is upped and the resources to pay for the still public system fall, the finances of the public system get worse and worse as the relatively young place less and less reliance on it and more and more on their private accounts. Eventually the balance of political support tips--and the public system's benefits can be slashed and then the public system itself shut down.

I don't think the Bush administration itself knows why it is in favor of Social Security privatization. It only knows that it is.

Nevertheless, I accept Duncan Black's big point: most of the good arguments for privatization are simply not accessible to people on the right: they are inconsistent with their view of the world.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

My g-d its full of stars.

Brendan & Miriam may be stopping in next weekend. Miriam's supposed to be giving a talk at a conference in Istanbul the week after, so we'll see what happens. I for one hope that they come in and we have a grand old time.

Friday night we got the kids off to a bang for Yom Kippur through communal gorging at Outback. Dave had this funny notion that if you aren't going to eat for 25 hours, you should eat lots of carbs before you start fasting.

Ummm, no.

Allen, Dave, Yulia Jeanne & I made good use of the meat provided. Afterwards, we introduced Allen to play Dr. Mario, and warmed ourselves by the glow of Heathers.

Saturday, a pleasant albeit fruitless walk many blocks down Flatbush in search of an even moderately reputable looking establishment to find breakfast. After capitulation and return to the apartment, we succumbed to an afternoon of football and some movie with a blonde beardless Chuck Norris playing a zen trucker. We sat for a while wondering of it was actually Norris, and eventually saw a signature fight scene. But folks, Truckers vs Hillbillies? Need I say Rock!

All in all a well spent day, culminating in a search for a bar to hold Dave's birthday party (observed) next weekend. Which is actually pretty tough in the village. You find a bar that's too popular, and there's a line to get in, and expensive drinks (even worse, you may find an establishment so cocksure the bartender doesn't know how to make any drinks). You find a bar too ratty, and you end up with lots of old people and or frat boys.

We think that we found a possible sweet spot in the East Village. Reasonably priced drinks. A pool table. A dart board. Bathrooms cleaner than at Peculier (you ask about our standards...) And as Jeanne points out "a waitress/bartender with a skirt that's ... short."

Cue to the events of today. Plenty of time to catch a game or two on TV.

I'd like to point out for the record that Cy's Jets went yet a third week undefeated.
(Bye week or not)

It was Jeanne's turn on the dinner rotation tonight, and the bar was rose yet again.

A leg of lamb (there are pictures of Allen gnawing at the bone at the end of the night), squash, polenta, strawberry shortcake, and well, really the leg should be listed twice. Yup, that big. Eight people big.

The poor cat, frightened by the prospect of the apartment population rising from 3 to 8, huddled on a chair under a table. Ok, not just because of the dinner party, because you see earlier today Jeanne & Yulia went to

Target (hereafter to be also known as the Robot Pound). She picked up a Roomba [paid for it] and brought it home. And wow. wow.

The little robot spun around the rug and mindlessly cleaned it...and the room... eventually. It was quite strange to see a resurrection of the slave - overseer relationship in the room. Jeanne picking up the roomba, and putting it down in a different place to make sure it cleaned in a region it kept constantly missing. It took about 4 times as long to clean the room as it would have taken a person with a vacuum. Though brownie points to Yulia for calling the vacuum "Sweetie" when it kept running into her in the kitchen.

I do have to say this about the Roomba. It (He? She? And don't you dare say automaton - there was very little ato about it) helped me discover the 4th law of robotics today.

4th law: Thou shalt stare in awe at a machine doing a person's job, even if the machine does the job poorly.

fare well. Next weekend: birthdays & portuguese cooking, but is it kosher?

How to end an Occupation during a war

Join the other side.

Of note, Kolkata's (formerly Calcutta you imperialist ninnies) Airport is named after Subash Chandra Bose.

iCat meets iSat

Kitty has taken a liking to the pretty white cord that extends from the satmac to the wall outlet.

I'm tempted to take her to an apple store and watch her go apeshit.


I'm trying out Verizon's Broadband Access wireless service on my mac. EVDO is supposedly arriving in NYC, and I can get 400k/100k speeds when I'm connected to the EVDO towers. I'm doing a hunt and peck around town to see where I can get service.

The advantages:

If I am in the vicinity of a EVDO equipped tower, I can connect at DSLish speeds to the internet. Which potentially may be a far wider area than that of random hotspots I may be around. (If I'm not around such a hotspot, I can always connect at 1XRTT speeds, which connects at about 40k/30k - not fast, but sufficient to use google, ichat, and a couple of browser windows, arguably faster than at some clients' sites.)

The cons:

It is EXPENSIVE, clocking in at $80/month (the same service in Japan, using the same technology is only $40/month). There's also no clear coverage map. Brooklyn (meaning flatbush between atllantic and ocean) for one appears not to have EVDO coverage yet. The card also seems to be fairly finicky with the computer. I can be connected using EVDO, and then suddenly drop to 1XRTT, go back and forth as time goes on. And the signal strength bar seems to widely fluctuate between several bars and no bars. Some of this can be attributed (using my cargo cult knowledge of mobile phone protocols) to the ability of CDMA (the wireless technology used by everybody these days for high speed mobile phone network internet, and regular mobile phone service from Sprint & Verizon) to "breathe" to deal with network congestion. As more people get on the network, the coverage area shrinks.


But come on man. I was sitting a block from Grand Central, on 42nd st.

I have 15 days to decide if I want to keep the service. So we'll see.

Also, Mr. Handler of Lemony Snickett fame has a new indie movie out, directed by the person who did American Psycho. It opens today, and plays at the Angelika. Anybody game?

Anybody game to find me an affordable 2 bedroom apartment in manhattan in a safe neighborhood?

Anybody?

Beuller? Bueller?

One Month

to me having a place with Avigail in the city, or Brooklyn within 30 minutes of Midtown, if we can find one. Affordable 2 bedroom suggestions are now being seriously considered.

Last night was the beginning of the weekly Sunday Dinner rotation. Dave got us on a nearly unmatchable start, cooking mushrooms, pelmeni, potatoes, making several salads and laying out a dazzling array of herring cheese and caviar.

Tonight Jeanne made Bacon soaked collard greens and peach cobbler with home made whipped cream. (Yes Bacon deserves to be capitalized.)

Did I mention that I'm eating well?

Tom appears to be jettisoning SNRE for Kzoo. Mike is taking over his old job, and there is a vacancy. And Maya's growing bigger.

Yulia & I have begun the process of devouring the Sandman series. It is my first foray into graphic novels, aside from that brief dalliance with Transmetropolitan. Yulia's on Book I, I just started book II, and Jeanne just bought book VI. It is... ridiculously good. And I love the intellectual integration into Gaiman's other works. I'm almost tempted to (likely errantly) belt out the word leitmotif.

Also, Randall from my freshman year pulled me aside on the street this weekend. After seven years, I find that he's looking for a law school and in an Urban Planning program at NYU. He's promised me an evite (isn't that word going the way of xerox) to a party on Yom Kippur.

This blows a big hole in my previously cynical theory that friends tend to drift apart as they grow older. Ha.

In SciFiLand, Ghost in the Shell 2 is finally in theatres, after a wait of 8 years.

And. Star Wars Episodes 4-6 come out on DVD tonight. We were planning on having a marathon on Friday night, after we found a big screen tv somewhere. The only big screen tv we know of resides in somebody's house who likely will be doing religious stuff friday night, and Yulia insists that we respect the one day out of the year she does anything religious. We're likely to acquiesce, especially considering that it is to be she that buys the discs tomorrow. She works across from a Best Buy.

Speaking of religion, this is great, if you get it.

Jeanne & Yulia still don't have a cable modem or dsl.

Internet through my phone sucks. God bless internet through my phone.

I miss Boggle, porches and sleeping in terribly.

Says the person who wakes up when everybody else leaves.

Ayiee. I seem to have landed in a rough patch of ramble.

clap clap.
I'm off.

Senator, have you no decency?

I am not of the party of Zell Miller, Senator from Georgia.

Transcript of his speech.

Andrew Sullivan's analysis.

Westphalian Statehood for All!

Quick bits:

Chomsky & Cooperation

Campus Crusade for Cthulhu

I moved the michminnies blog out to michhouse.blogspot.com, since michminnies.icc.coop seems to no longer be holding a web server. All of the old posts are now there. Sosumi.

The NYT reports today that Hurricane Frances may do enough damage at Cape Canaveral that the existing orbiters may be damaged to the point of killing the shuttle program.

1) Hooray for the end of the shuttle program & the end of the space station! More money for basic science!

2) Hooray for locating spaceports in places far away from Hurricanes, like Arizona! Inland, like Heinlein said they should have been.

I flew to Madison last night. Let me mention for the record that the web of quasi-governmental monstrosities that are the reason that we pay such ridiculous taxes in New York really piss me off. In theory, a free market is supposed to be abhor too much government interference. Sure the rationale for public utlities is that there are public goods that just can't be provided by the private sector very easily, due the the inordinate amount of risk. You weigh this against the possible ineffiency of the utilities, or in New York's case, the obvious inefficiencies of inter-agency turf battles.

Most people agree that New York has a quality of life far superior to many other municipalities, narrowly construed in services provided, and perhaps more broadly as well, in attractiveness to potential immigrants and tourists.

Does the inefficiency of these utilities and the vast quantities of money that they inject into the local economy (arguable) or perhaps the redistribution of funds (unjust?) from the nether regions of the state to the city, contribute in some large part to the success of the city?

Would the Reagan Republican's version of this City on a Hill be dramatically different from the Bush Republican/ Johnson Democrat's current version of the city? I think it may.

There was a man from the Continent on the NJ Transit train who was bitterly complaining of the (signifcant) amount he was being charged to go from Penn Station NY to the Newark airport, noting that he could get a round trip air ticket within Europe for under a Hundred Bucks.

The relatively new Airtrain was having problems, with the door not opening to the passenger lounge at the NJ Transit station, and the big map of regional airports and transportation on the wall conveniently ignored the existance of LaGaurdia Airport, to which no Airtrain goes (unlike JFK or Newark).

Petty petty petty.

So Madison's been fun so far. We got swedish pancakes, during my first ever trip to a pancake house. Yumm.

Jeanne's mother pointed out to me that her husband married her while he was in law school. She then asked Jeanne, "When do I get grandchildren?"

Ummm, yeah.

So the Mets...

tidbit

Click above. That's what happened on the trip.

Pics when I get them.

TeeHee

God's Juicy Brains

Hungary approaches like the shore in death dreams, quickly, peacefully, and with a rush of expectation. Without the death part.

I've decided that there are some books that shouldn't be finished on the subway. I'm thinking that books like this should be bundled away until you find that perfect place to sit annd experience the pleasure of the ending in all of its elegance.

Inevitably, these books are finished on the subway after all. Because you can't wait.

Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake was one of these books. She and the book rock. Strongly, obviously reminiscent of Wouk's Inside, Outside, albeit taken one satisfying critical step farther from Wouk's pretty whitewash ending. She has a reading at Barnard on Oct. 16th. I'm seriously tempted to go, but of course I will probably never actually get around to it. And it does seema bit silly, considering that she also lives in New York City.

Speaking of which, my lease expires on the 25th, and I leave the country five days previous. But yes, I am thinking of moving to the city proper.

Because, after all, Manhattan:Brooklyn::New York::New Jersey.

No disrespect to NJ intended. I think.

And yes the rumors are true. There has been an intervention, and I'm in the middle of doing research on getting back into school. Dave, the Bro, & Jeannne are to thank for that. Or is it the constant nagging. You guys rock.

I'm thinking that we should all have a meetup somewhere, in the dead center of the country, American Gods style.

In the cold of winter.


Also, I've started a translation of the Turkish bestseller My Name is Red, after finishing a rather mediocre book, Vernon God Little.

I still have to go see Harold & Kumar go to white castle, and I've got an itch to go see Garden State again.

And for the record, who the hell is enough of an idiot to foul Mia Hamm in the penalty box?

I've been corralled into the task of bringing meat to brooklyn, and not the stuff that Jeanne refers to as "pale white meat" from Brighton Beach either, but fresh stuff from the supermarket.

And if any of you happen to be in town mine that is tomorrow evening, we have one empty space in our reservation to Peter Lugers. Cyrus & Caitlin, I'm looking at you guys.

There is a point, walking east on any block in the East Village, where the gentrification ends. That is, in all my wandering these last two weeks, I never discovered a street where the yuppies had made it all the way to Avenue D. On some blocks, they had come close- five or ten buildings were all that remained of the old Alphabet City. Still- I found a certain grim satisfaction in charting the high water mark- "that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." Most likely, five years from now, the projects will be filled with Columbia graduates, and all the bodegas will be selling fresh sushi. But not now. [Related: all the pictures from the East Village series in higher resolution.] [Bluejake]

beautiful.

That's politics folks

I've spent far too much of this evening shirking work and indulging my history fetish by watching old convention acceptance speeches on CSPAN2.

If you get a chance, do check it out this week - they're playing them every night.

The end of Reagan's speech is brilliant:

I have thought of something that's not a part of my speech and worried over whether I should do it. Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe free? Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain; the boat people of Southeast Asia, Cuba, and of Haiti; the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.

I'll confess that I've been a little afraid to suggest what I'm going to suggest. I'm more afraid not to. Can we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer?

10 seconds of complete silence through the convention hall, with the cameras panning over the entire hall, ending with a closeup of Reagan breaking the silence with:

God bless America.

Transformers Movie?

You heard it on TF first: Tomorrow Paramount & Dreamworks will announce plans to release a TRANSFORMERS movie Summer 2006, with Steven "4 act" Spielberg producing. Link goes nowhere but there'll be plenty of them tomorrow..

Well, I think diepunyhumans posted first, but still, Damn.

Remember when Transformers and GI Joe came on weekly afternoons back to back?

The big question of course is who plays Optimus Prime?

Remember that Vin Diesel has already had a robot role...

Hasselhoff Heaven

The ultimate David Hasselhoff video is just one click away.


from [AndrewSullivan]

sillly hasselhoff.

Apollo 11 +35

Tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon.

Check out this QTVR created from pictures that Amstrong took.

In the year surrounding this anniversary, we will have had both privately funded human spaceflight, the first landing on another moon (Titan), and Ray Bradbury testifying about the future of human spaceflight before a congressional committee.

.-.
The evening so far:
Work,meet Yulia,train,cheap eats @ Gray's papaya,Airport Express (less cheap),train,picking up work stuff left at Yulia & Jeanne's + feeding treats to/playing with cat,train,train,Jerry Maguire (+ work. honest)

Adventures in Harvard Square

Day two of the Great Boston Adventure continued unabated today.

Breakfast at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, searching for half price tix to shows at Bostix, back to Harvard Square to find canoes to travel the Charles River, dinner in Harvard Square, a show in Harvard Square, a (fruitful!) search for ice cream in Harvard Square at 11pm, a halting trip back to the hotel (my fault), to receive an email from Mr. Dobosz, saying hey nice to see you're in town, I am too. Let's do lunch tomorrow, btw, Jill lives down the street, and have you been to Harvard Square?

Mebbe. A bit.

The canoing might more appropriately be called canoodling on my part. I'm pretty pitiful waterborne. I think my only talent was consistently getting Yulia drenched by the misapplication of my paddle, despite constant threats of forcible defenestration through the earliest window of opportunity into the river.

Oh, and Leonia bought Jeanne a mango after she started demanding sliced mango - the consumption of which seemingly consumed a good portion of the morning. Leonia - you dog you.

;)

Not to be outdone by the spectacle of three people watching Jeanne eat a mango, the day threw a modern adaptation of Moliere's Miser at us, liked by some, despised by some. Then there were the others who were just amused that the lead bore a striking resemblance to Gene Wilder in his Willy Wonka days.

Also, there's nothing wrong with ordering Dominos at 1 in the morning, to the hotel room, so that one can eat and enjoy Six Feet Under on a full stomach.

I must off to bed. Brunch tomorrow with Leonia Jeanne & Chris. Maybe.