So Sorry, My Friend Lowell Says

It's a common name, and my nom de vivre starts with a J. and there's no "T" in there anywhere, but still....

Vain Bastard

Of course, I know better than to open attachments from someone you don't know, but the following seems designed to hook preening profs. But it looks as if my virus protection saved me. Because I did try to unzip.

Close one.


Hello,

We have been thinking of including you in the new campus magazine in an article headed "Campus Life". Can you approve the photo and article for us before we go to printing please.

If any details are wrong then we can amend before printing on Friday the 28th of October so please get back to us as soon as possible.

Many Thanks & Best Regards,
J Chuang
Editor

*******************************************************************************
Please respond before Wednesday to ensure we have time to edit!
********************************************************************
***********

Postscript:

But the damn message resent a second time, so without trying to unzip the attachment, I replied: "Touch up photo to make me look younger," a comment that would be apt in any context, whether treacherous or sincere.

And back the answer came:


A message (from ) was received at 13 Oct 2005 18:37:56 +0000.
The following addresses had delivery problems:

Permanent Failure: 550_:_Recipient_address_rejected:_No_such_user
\
Now break my heart.

It's Like the Golden Rule: Do Under Others in the Spirit of the Degree to Which They Are Interested in Doing You

It's a sudden brilliant insight. I have always treated gay women and straight women just the same because I have always assumed that neither group wants to have sex with me.

One exception, of course, but it's always the exception that proves the rule, in'it?

I'm Assuming the Shoemaker's Elves Have All Gotten Associate Degrees at DeVry

It's magical thinking, but it's my magical thinking and I clasp it to my bosom as one might an ugly child.

I have no doubt that our burglar alarm system has glitches designed into it; that is, every year or so something is designed to go wrong so that technicians must be summoned. In the case of our system, it's installing new batteries in the motion detector. It screws up the wireless transmitter. On the phone I joust for awhile with the inhouse tech who works for the company that both installed and monitors our system . I punch in codes, remove alarms covers, reinstall batteries. Nothing works. The poor tech IS OH SO PUZZLED. And there is nothing to do but summon the $65 an hour crew to figure it out on site.

But not today. My wife is exasperated at my delay. I'll make the appointment on Monday because the alarm gnomes deserve the chance to climb down the silver staircase in the dark of night and make the bad electrons play nice.

We are have our gods. Mine are small, highly specialized and ineffectual.

In that last particular very like yours, I wager, and I don't have to tithe.

Got a Poetry Salon Coming Up...

.... and I love the emails I write trying to stir up interest in these things. I write one of these things and I think, "Jesus is satisfied with me."

Salonistas

Harder is gearing up by winding down. He’s getting this creative tension going. His mojo is working but only to shop rules. No overtime. Pressman comes out of Esalen on Sunday tanned, fit and rested, tanned indeed over rather a greater expanse of his body than seems decent in these times, but that’s neither here nor there. Actually, it’s here. It was there, but now it’s here.

Remember: *George Bush is the most brilliant man Harriet Miers has ever known.* It’s like her brain was under permanent house arrest.

I have arranged for Mr. Dr. John Higgins to give us a quick tutorial on digital storytelling and I don’t mean using your fingers to make shadows against the wall. I have got one of my yada yada tales of domestic horror. Wieder says the gloves are coming off. What was he doing. Building a snowman? So far everyone else is keeping their hands close to their vests, and their vests are being moved from one undisclosed location to another, never sleeping in the same place for two nights in a row. I think Matt and Lyle will do the spaghetti eating scene from Lady and the Tramp if they can obtain the rights. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. I don’t know what Harder is going to do. Velcro poems? Not as precise but nuthin gets pinched? I don’t know: He said.

The rest of you: Tell me now or tell me later. What’s going to be up?

Hate the Stupidity But Love the Stupids

Went out to dinner tonight with the very great Michael Tola at a hole-in-the-wall Berkeley restaurant called Olivia's, which Tola said was named after the owner's dog.

Splendid food. Just another Bay Area wonder chef who has found a hillock on which to plant his flag. And you ask why we dare the earthquakes? It turns out Tola is having an occasional din-din with a friend of ours -- she's great: a woman his own age with a bank account; the world should be standing in line -- but he has not dined with her at Olivia's because "it's too romantic."

Some things just break your heart. Like this Bush nomination of a nice Catholic girl who turned into an Evangelical Christian, which means she wants to get the news hot and direct from God but then joins a church where some preacher with a comb-over tells her what she should think.

Miss Edith and I spent our teenage years dealing with the fact that Evangelical Christianity m akes no sense and is at best an exercise in mystery: You must posit the ultimate reconciliation of bits of nonsense into a sublime hole. That sense of mystery should make one modest and oh so very hesitant to be certain, to reduce life to a set of cruel and simple rules. The creed is mysterious to the point of incoherence. And then we dare to be certain about the minutiae of human conduct.

Poor us. The Evangelicals are right. Miss Harriet checked her higher brain functions at the door, and the damage is about to begin.