Forty-One Forty-One’s was the name of a bar in the Garden District that I had learned about from an article covering the top pickup spots in the country. It was in the July, 1985 issue of Playboy Magazine, but if you have that issue, the article is now for novelty purposes only, as most of the hot spots have moved or closed. The author rated two bars in each of twenty cities based on the ease of opportunity for short-term romantic liaisons. It also included useful information about the respective dress codes, specialty drinks, peak hours, et cetera.

Please steal a moment from your soul-deadening “careers,” random sex hook-ups, and abject self-loathing to join me in wishing our publisher, VirusWithShoes, a tremendously happy birthday. Besides providing us this space where we can meet, greet, and occasionally create things of value, Virus has been a good friend to so many of us.

Never expected, always welcome, Virus wanders amongst us like a spectral presence who leaves crumbs in the bed so you know he’s around.

For a fortnight I’ve been anticipating this glorious day.  It has been hardly a year since I was let go from Mr. Shoes’ employ.  Imagine my surprise, my heart beating like the wings of an excited, yet gentle bird.  Mr. Shoes has penned a missive to me and on this day, his birthday, he will arrive for a late tea.

All day I have been dusting the knick-knacks and polishing the wood.  I shook the rugs mid-m0rning and baked a nice sheet cake that I frosted with flourish.  I’ve finished my toilette and must admit, I am shining like a copper penny newly minted. 

This is to let you know that our next book is Netherland by Joseph O’ Neill.

Chillbear asked me to cover the Wordsmoker Saturday Night martial arts seminar for him this week. I reminded him that my martial arts training was limited and long ago.  Moreover, I told him I wasn’t aware of any such Wordsmoker seminar. But he rather forcefully pointed out that I hadn’t been pulling my weight around here lately and said I should just suck it up. Or words to that effect. So, there you have it.

Tonight we’ll work on form with the help of the following instructional video, which has over 3,000,000 hits on YouTube.  My goal is to double that number by tomorrow.  My Zapruderesque analysis follows, but feel free to skip right to the cheerful mayhem and clinical self-delusion.

Although the knowledge that suppurating sore on the face of humanity Paris Hilton has been arrested and held in Vegas overnight may provide some schadenfreude-infused joy to your weekend, don’t hold out much hope for justice. She’s very rich and comes from a rich family and these people have the best lawyers that money can rent, so it’s obvious already that she was just carrying the cocaine for a friend or something and nothing – absolutely fucking nothing – will come of this, and in a few weeks time she’ll be getting paid to flash her STD-riddled crotch at a bunch of gormless patrons in some fucking hellhole of a nightclub for money and life will just continue for her as if nothing happened, whereas everyone else’s life will continue to fucking suck, the end.

I ran to the mall at noon to buy some socks.  I was standing behind an old lady buying a scarf, waiting to check out, and here’s what I heard transpire between the old lady customer and the old lady salesclerk ringing up her purchase.

(The scene begins with Youthful Co-Worker stopping by to tell Old Lady Salesclerk (OLS) that she’s given her two weeks’ notice and is moving to Florida to be with her fiancé.  OLS fawns over her for a bit and then Youthful Co-Worker moves on and leaves OLS with Old Lady Customer (OLC), who is waiting to purchase a scarf.)

After seventeen days of uncertainty, thirty-three miners trapped nearly fifty thousand miles below the Chilean surface were reported to be alive and well. Although it could take up to four months for the miners to be freed through a proposed 68 cm hole, they will be able to receive food, water and medicine via some sort of bucket and rope system, I’d imagine. With typical surface-dweller arrogance, tons of rescue equipment from around the world was rushed to the site. This being done with the assumption that the miners would want to be brought back to the surface of a world that once tried to bury them.

While miners make it possible to shod a horse or throw a Chinese star, ungrateful surface-dwellers pay them very little attention unless they are dead or dying—although in fairness to the surface-dwellers, the miners don’t exactly make it easy to come and see them because they’re hiding underground and whatnot.

Please Read: When I began writing this story, there was a report that the gunman claimed that two hostages had been shot, but there was no confirmation from the police, or information on the severity of the injuries. I wrote this after making a decision that I wouldn’t post it if any hostage was killed. When I hit the publish button, the police were reporting that the gunman had been killed, but had not mentioned any hostage deaths. I incorrectly surmised that the omission meant that all of the hostages were alive. When I checked back after an hour or so, the report that I read said that one hostage was in critical condition.

Because nothing is more important in my universe than making the Smokies better and more interesting, I’ve been playing around with the idea of commissioning a pianist to co-write and perform a Smokies theme song. My vision is for a video crew to record the performer singing the song, and post it every week as an opening to the Smokies.

A few years ago I tried to get my kids to watch Star Wars and Superman. I thought sharing these films with them would be a wonderful experience. But movies have changed since I was young. My children couldn’t make it through the first 30 minutes of either film in which the characters are grounded in their worlds. It was grueling.

It’s ten o’clock at night and I’m sitting in a lounge chair by the indoor pool at the Hampton Inn at Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee.  I have one more hour before some kid shuts down the lights.  I’m a little drunk and I’m waiting for my former lover, ChillbearLatrigue, to meet me here.

I’m a little nervous about seeing Chillbear; it’s been ten years and I prefer a little elastic around my waistband now.  Sometime between then and now I discovered the all-you-can-eat buffet with dessert bar.  Oh, Christ, here he comes.

After seven bloody years, with the loss of 4,415 of the finest individuals that this country could produce, the last combat soldiers leave Iraq. However, 35,000 to 50, 000 non-combat troops will remain.

Is this the end of the war? A regime toppled. A rebellion crushed. Is the peace sustainable? Was it all for naught? What does the future hold for this fledgling nation? Your thoughts here.

Have you ever given anyone the finger? I bet you have. You seem the sort to do that kind of thing. I bet you feel ambivalent towards the mollusk too. Yeah, I’ve seen your drunken postings in the forums at conchologistsofamerica.org, you dirty bastard. How dare you say that about gastropods, especially with your apartment in the state it’s in. PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES SHOULDN’T THROW SNAILS, IS ALL I’LL SAY. Where was I? Yeah – giving the finger.

I have decided that I am going to write a gimmick book. I was thinking about those books in which someone eats only local for a year, or uses no electricity, or buys only used goods, or they do all those things and maybe more, AND they get a book deal out of it.