"If goodness is assured an ultimate victory over evil, we are in a comedy, and I must say it is an ugly farce...

...considering how we suffer in the course of the contest."

Norman Mailer is interviewed by Michael Lennon in New York Magazine regarding their new book, On God:

http://nymag.com/news/features/38961/

Insightful comments my father made recently that touch, in part, on smoking

1) "Being a writer is like being a smoker. Deep down, you either are or you're not. And either way, you know it."

2) "I like that people in this neighborhood [Capitol Hill, where I recently moved] are unapologetic about smoking. You don't see them crouched and sheepish about it."

[Note: Dad quit smoking in 1974. Safe bet, however, that his version of an afterlife includes Kents.]

I wonder who the dead woman was and why no one claimed her:

From Reuters via Yahoo!:

Notorious Dr. Crippen wrongly hanged, scientists say

Excerpt:

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - It was sensational stuff that riveted a nation: A mild-mannered American doctor poisons then dismembers his unfaithful wife, flees England in disguise with his mistress -- and is caught, tried and hanged.

The problem is that the poisoned corpse that sent Dr Hawley Crippen to the gallows in London in 1910 was not that of his wife, according to new evidence found by U.S. researchers.

A team led by John Trestrail, head of the regional poison centre in Grand Rapids, Michigan, took mitochondrial DNA -- genetic material passed on through the mother -- from a tissue sample from the corpse kept in a London museum.

They then compared it with samples from three of Cora Crippen's female descendants, found after a 7-year search.

"That body was not Cora Crippen's," said David Foran, a forensic biologist at Michigan State University. "We don't know who that body was or how it got there."

More:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071016/sc_nm/science_crippen_dc

"Do you mind changing it? I don't think the Seattle Channel is jizz-friendly"--a producer with A Guide to Visitors

The producers of the Seattle-based story-telling salon, A Guide to Visitors, are among the smartest and funniest individuals I've worked with in the arts. So when they asked me to resurrect a story I'd told onstage last year at the Rendezvous, only this time for the Seattle Channel, I said, "Yea!" even though I was still living out of boxes and had scant few clean shirts.

The show has aired a few times (Channel 21, if you're local) and it's archived online now:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/AGuideToVisitors/

Or if you are jizz-friendly, you can read the original version I wrote for the Black Table three years ago:

http://blacktable.com/waxing041111.htm

Yes, basically:

I had coffee with a new friend this morning and as we were leaving Top Pot, I noticed she was carrying a Believer tote.

"I've written for The Believer," I said.

She replied, "Yeah, I subscribed awhile ago and they sent this bag, but not the actual magazine. I hear they're like that."

"The inside-the-Beltway problem is a type of tunnel vision and a sense of narrow possibilities. It's also a fear of ..."

"...not being Serious with a capital S...In other words, it's much harder to damage your career by consistently supporting war and cruelty than by consistently supporting peace and love. The default position is 'bombs away.' The problem with the outside-the-Beltway mentality is an ignorance of what the actual human pressures and incentives are inside the Beltway, why politicians and pundits behave the way they do, and why that is not necessarily entirely attributable to their moral depravity."

Radar has a new interview with one of my very favorite writers, the ceaselessly compelling Hendrik Hertzberg:

http://radaronline.com/features/2007/10/hendrik_hertzberg_the_new_yorker_charles_kaiser_1.php

And to everyone who has a ball sack:

This appears self-evident, but in case it's not:

Your testes and/or penis will not become disabled if you apologize without someone first drawing you a schematic illustrating why, perchance, an apology might be in order.

[The vaginal cabal does fucked up stuff, too. So not the point right now.]

I'm doing outdoors stuff! (Sort of):

Very much looking forward to ReAct's staged reading of one of my favorite plays, the climbing-based drama, K2, tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. at Elliot Bay Book Company.

Details:

http://www.elliottbaybook.com/events/sep07/react1.jsp

I was born at 10:47 p.m.:

"I came into the world at ten o'clock at night, and I've often thought that was the reason I turned into such a nocturnal creature. When the sun sets, honey, I feel more, oh, alert. More alive. By midnight, I feel fantastic. Even when I was a little girl, my father would shake his head and say, 'Let's just hope you get a job where you work nights.' Little did he know what was in store for me. It takes talent to live at night."--Ava Gardner, from Ava: My Story

Disconcerting:

When you're reading Heather Lewis' Notice--in many ways is a direct descendant of The Story of O in that it induces arousal and nausea in equal measure--and you can't get Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey" out of your head.

We're turning in early tonight.

Dear news directors:

I understand that news is a business and that you report to someone who eventually has to report to shareholders, but have you considered the possibility that a significant portion of the viewing public does not give a shit about O.J. Simpson's "latest mess"?

Quandary:

When you groove on almost everything about someone but must contend with the fact he does not like Bob Dylan.

Hey, guy sitting next to me at Top Pot:

While I'm known for them almost as much as anything, it'd be a bit more genteel if you stared less obviously.

Thanks so much,
L

Probably because, thus far, I have neither Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon nor George W. Bush on speed dial:

If you live in Seattle and yearn to be inside even though it's 80 degrees and startlingly beautiful out, come by the Rendezvous tonight at 7 pm for the latest installment of the awesomely awesome A Guide to Visitors storytelling series. It's being filmed for the Seattle Channel and will be televised subsequently and then archived online. So if I curse accidentally, which, as most of you know, I do frequently but on purpose, I will get bleeped and it will be preserved from now until the apocalypse.

Though if Bono can get away with it, why can't I?

More on the Seattle Channel:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/

But that's the beauty of this neighborhood:

There's been a dog barking outside my bedroom window for the last five minutes.

And a guy has been barking right back.

Today has been one of those days where...

...individuals who I thought could hold their shit together have, in fact, been unable to hold their shit together.

So it is with a heart full of gratitude that I thank the barrista who gave me the pink vanilla iced cake donut for free an hour ago.

Carnage has been averted.

Discuss:

I had a dream last night wherein Patton Oswalt and I were eating turkey hoagies.

[Sidenote: Kitchen unpacked and cleaned. Woo hoo!]

Dear "Family Values" Closet Cases:

If you could come out at the same so that all of us might get on with things, that would be swell.

Signed,

Everybody Else

Excerpt:

"When the police interviewed him later, the senator said that 'he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom' and that was why his foot may have touched the officer's, the report said."

More:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/28/craig.arrest/index.html

In a much more serious vein:

Our family in Greece is deeply rattled, but unscathed.

Thanks, all, who have asked as to their well-being.

More:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/08/27/greece.fires.ap/index.html

Notes from the move:

The new place is completely painted.

Everything in the bathroom is unpacked, the counters cleaned and the tub scrubbed.

I've put deck chairs on the balcony, so I can overlook the Space Needle and partake in outdoor mochas.

____ is pretty fucking great at ____.

Shelf paper has made me its bitch.