(This seems like an improbably long time, but here's the math: two to the thirty-sixth is 68,719,476,736, which, divided by seventy-two times a second, sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty-four hours a day comes to over thirty years. Did I miss something?)

(This is also available in the PDF format, there's more about that in the dreaded technical notes.)

I offered to help with the libretto, but he hasn't replied. Not knowing anything about masses, I fear I may have made a faux pas: do masses have all the words preordained (so to speak)? Maybe he could do a blasphemous mass; that would certainly get noticed.

"I don't want to look attractive; I've got to tell Chad we're not renewing his contract. It's going to be depressing."

"When I said you looked attractive, I meant attractive in a depressing sort of way," I lied.

It wasn't a very good lie, but I'm not a very good liar, especially when it comes to improvising. You have to be smart, or at least have a good memory, to be a good liar.

The Spring Flower of Delight was a cheap battery-powered orgasm-inducing gadget that, when attached to the ankles, provided immediate sexual climaxes. Li Chin and his fellow villagers discovered that electronic orgasms on demand meant fewer of the more complex, more time consuming and wetter orgasms that humans have enjoyed over the millennia. So they killed him and burned down his small factory.

If you ever come across a secondhand Spring Flower of Delight, buy it: they're rare and thus valuable. Whether or not you use it is another question entirely.

What I thought was brilliant, though, was that each prisoner had pressed his hands against his chest, palms down. What a great idea! Yet another idea to plagiarize, and so little time.

Gotta go!

I thought the story sounded improbable: "What would a claustrophobic man be doing inside a vagina?" Fearghas opined that the man may have been somewhat schizophrenic, with his mind claustrophobic and some of his other bits agoraphobic.

That sounded reasonable to me.

Never eat cookies with people who are more sophisticated that you are. Never ever.

Wow!

That's exactly how life should be. When I was younger, much younger, I used to try to impress women by showing them my art work. After all, "come up and see my etchings" is a pickup line that's worked for centuries. I believe Orson Welles' postulate that displays of cleverness are the source of contemporary civilization, such as it is: "If there hadn't been women, we'd still be squatting in our cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization to impress our girlfriends." I think Orson was mistaken--or perhaps just misquoted--in making a gender specific observation; I've had the pleasure of being awed by some brilliant women much more often than I've impressed anyone.

And so it was a pleasant surprise to hear from a stranger who thinks I'm clever; it was an overdue pat on the ego as well as a confirmation of the teenage theories that have always served me well.

I used to create work for an audience of thirteen people, now I have fourteen people who see my work. That's a 7.7 percent increase.

That sounds like a rare case of confectionery justice. I doubt Wolfgang A. would have wanted his best spherical namesakes to come from Germany. Thanks Reggie!

My new dentist said "I see you've had your wisdom teeth out."

That confused me; I thought wisdom teeth were invisible. I asked him how he could tell.

"Well, you're not very smart, are you?"

He said that the only part of the job that's interesting is the stress test, which involves turning off the engines and going into a freefall. He can tiptoe down the aisle, almost weightless.

What a great job! It's not even close to being as fun as the life of the worthless artist, but floating weightless down the aisle of a huge jet miles above Earth has a certain charm. (I know this is true because I've done it, albeit only with the help of lots of whiskey.)

It happens all the time.

Titanic Ambition! Perfect! That says it all!

(Since contemporary cinematic criticism is apparently impossible without mentioning the budget, I feel obliged to note that the film cost some U.S.$200 million.)

I was surprised to find a copy of Popular Photography in a friend's bathroom. Since there was nothing better on offer, I read a few pages, and was even more surprised to discover that not only is Herbert Keppler still alive, he's still writing twaddle about photography. And what mindnumbingly stupid twaddle!

Reading a multipage, no-holds-barred, gloriously illustrated brochure for a new SLR [camera] sometimes seems almost as satisfying as owning the camera itself. The display pictures exploring the seemingly infinite possibilities the camera offers bring tears of joy, a quickening of breath and, admittedly, a yen to own, cherish, and adore the camera like a fine jewel, even though you may never use half its documented features or shoot pictures one-tenth as good as those shown in the brochure.

No SLR pamphlet worth its salt is ever complete without an exhaustive listing of every camera specification you could possibility want to know.

Admittedly, I never tire of flipping through my own vast collection of such literature, new and old, always marveling at the brilliance of the photographs, the near poetry of the text, and the splendid designs of the brochures.

A revolution that involves no loss of life (but perhaps some inevitable property damage) sounds like my kind of revolution. Nevertheless, I still had herring steaks for dinner. We live in complicated times.

Still, it's enough to drive a person to drink. But I think I'll walk.

Rita chopping onions exclaimed "I love sharp objects when I've had too much to drink!"

I told her I quite agreed: "Quite right; I'd never think of getting drunk if there weren't any sharp knives around!"

Mistake.

"I'm not drunk," Rita corrected, "I've just had too much to drink, that's all."

I asked who was playing; the host said U2. Of course!

I've always disliked U2, and not just because of their snivelly adolescent popness. A few years ago the group sued a far superior ensemble--Negativland--for publishing a parody recording. (It was actually one group's record company suing the other, but the result was the same.) After listening to U2, though, I have some sympathy for the musical hucksters. Negativland probably shouldn't have done a parody of U2; U2 is a parody of U2.

Wow!

Only now it's the two of us. I just learned that David Wheeler "drank himself to death" last year. Drank himself to death? How do you drink yourself to death? I drink more than is perhaps prudent, but I can't imagine how I could drink myself to death.

And so now it's down to Dr. Wiles and me. I tip my whisky glass to Dr. Wheeler. That's probably an inappropriate remembrance, but I'm sure he would have appreciated the poor taste.

(To put this threat in context, a number of famous people have recently died--been killed?--in downhill skiing "accidents.")

What a clever marketing strategy! It's not one for me, though. Who wants to appeal to popular lack of taste? I prefer to target an unpopular lack of taste.

I have three contenders for the meaning(s) of life. First, there's Marcel Duchamp's observation: "There is no solution because there is no problem."

And then there's The Scheme of Things, from an Allen Wheelis novel of the same name:

"The scheme of things is a system of order. Beginning as our view of the world, it finally becomes our world. We live within the space defined by its coordinates. It is self-evidently true, is accepted so naturally and automatically that one is not aware of an act of acceptance having taken place. It comes with one's mother's milk, is chanted in school, proclaimed from the White House, insinuated by television, validated at Harvard. Like the air we breathe, the scheme of things disappears, becomes simple reality, the way things are. It is the lie necessary to life. The world as it is exists beyond that scheme becomes vague, irrelevant, largely unperceived, finally nonexistent."

I recently discovered he's hired teams of private investigators to follow me everywhere I go. On my last flight every passenger and every member of the plane's crew was employed by Intel. They even had a spy with oxygen tanks in the cargo hold to study my baggage during the flight.

But now Andy's gone too far. He's programmed his chips to read my mind and steal my ideas before I even consciously think them. (Even though none of my computers use Intel chips, they're everywhere; I can't get away from them.)

Everything here is bugged and everyone's watching me and I can't even think aloud but I'm not worried. I'm a survivor.

1. The hero is an expert.
    
2. The villain is an expert.
    
3. You must watch all the villainy over the shoulder of the villain.
    
4. The hero has a team of experts in various fields behind him.
    
5. Two or more on the team must fall in love.
    
6. Two or more on the team must die.
    
7. The villain must turn his attention from his original goal to the team.
    
8. The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel.
    
9. All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group: i.e., never say that the bomb exploded and 15,000 people were killed. Start with "Jamie and Suzy were walking in the park with their grandmother when the earth opened up."
    
10. If you get bogged down, just kill somebody.

I might be formulaic if someone paid me a million dollars. I'm glad no one has; I expect my luck to hold.

My honky contemporaries always decry the marketing campaigns that mislead poor kids--OK, poor ghetto kids--to think that a brief career in professional foot-base-basket-tennis-ball will deliver them from grinding poverty to the promised land of fast and hot women, fast and hot cars and fast and hot food. Yeah, right. Yeah sure. Don't these kids know the odds against them getting big sports money are a bazillion quadrazillion to one?

And then I had my brilliant revelation. Are you ready? Here it is:

Artists are as stupid as ghetto kids. Artists are stupider than ghetto kids. But wait, there's more: artists are ghetto kids. We artists think we're going to beat the bazillion quadrazillion to one adds against "success" in the art world and end up drinking champagne from Jodie Foster's pumps. That's not going to happen! Ever!!!

We're in our ghetto forever.

I abandoned the piece after six days and dozens of entries; the project turned into more of a cataloguing project than I'd imagined. It was too much work for too little art.

Everyone walked by it, even though it was on a clean dry bit of pavement. I didn't pass it up because I didn't see it as a pile of change, I saw it as free coffee.

I later found that a downtown Boston cup of coffee cost $1.45. So it goes.

Portrait of the Artist as a Focus Group
Too often these days, the creative types have only the courage of their audience's convictions.

It was such a good headline and subhead that the article itself was redundant.

The next piece of Mr. The Scary Guy's fleshy canvas to get an image is his neck, which will soon be sporting a ring of fire. Unlike his other tattoos, the latest art doesn't represent anything. Yet.

I like Mr. The Scary Guy's aesthetic approach: "Maybe I'll get in touch with the symbolism later." Act first, rationalize later: that's the ticket.

I later learned that government customs police addict dogs to various illicit drugs, then force them to find their next fix in passengers' handbags and luggage. The beagle who bit me just went crazy after going without methamphetamine for too long, that's all.