Another week, another fresh round of apologies to my dear friends. LuthorCorp has been particularly adventurous this week. In addition to the regular stray nonsenses that comprise my day, my dear friend Ellen, with whom I share a cube wall, is taking a week’s well-deserved r&r in Vegas with her sweetie, and I am spending the week discovering just how thankless her job is (answer: very, very, very). I spend my days in a fog of nonbiodegradable packaging and phone conversations with the angry people who buy this stuff.
At lunchtime I read the paper, only to discover things like this two-part article in the New York Times, all about the insane housing frontier that is Monroe County, Pennsylvania, where I was born. Because houses are more affordable in Monroe County than they are in the immediate NYC metropolitan area, working-class New Yorkers have been flocking to the area, only to discover that the costs are greater than they realized, both in time and in money, and that the much-promised rail line to New York City is not being built any time soon. It is hard to ascertain who is unluckier, those who lose their homes or those who are only just able to keep them. (Since this is the Times, you do have to register, but the articles are worth the registration.)
At night I come home, the prospect of a good night’s egg research ahead of me. Say, let’s check my stats and referrers! Oh, foolish, rash Bakerina. You wrote a rant about the anonymous sick bastard who turned the Paris Lane video into an internet phenomenon. So many Google hits! Dear googlers, pay close attention: You will not find the Paris Lane suicide video at this page. To those of you who arrived here via googling “Paris Lane suicide video,” I do not have what you are looking for. I wrote about being absolutely appalled that this video, a piece of evidence in the police investigation of a suicide, somehow managed to be uploaded, e-mailed and spread across the ‘net like wildfire. If you are looking for information on the investigation into the release of the video, I don’t have it, but NY1 might. If you are looking for the actual video itself, if you really want to watch the last minutes of a young man in pain, then you definitely will not find what you are looking for here.
Dear friends, I will be back, and in less gronky, pill-like form. But since I don’t want to leave a sour taste behind—not even a good sour taste, like tamarind—I will share two little slices of happiness with you. One is this splendid meditation on love, longing and insomnia, courtesy of Owen at broccoli and bechamel. Owen is a dream of a writer, and I’m not just saying that because he chose PTMYB as this week’s Aortal Link on his page. (I am suddenly overwhelmed with an urge to read the “Logrolling In Our Time” column in Spy magazine, though.)
The other little slice comes from the goddess that is Spanglemonkey, a/k/a Joshua Abraham Norton. Yes, the Historical Lunatic quiz is back. I must say, I am tickled by my results.
Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
Postscript: Not so much a slice of happiness as an astute observation (which is its own happiness, I guess):
INTERIOR, living room, rainy night. LLOYD and BAKERINA are watching Angel on WB. An ad for Kill Bill Volume II comes on, the one where Uma Thurman drives through the desert, vowing to kill Bill, enunciating like Jack Palance.
LLOYD: You know, Racquel Welch already made this movie.
B’RINA: Are you talking about Hannie Caulder?
LLOYD: Yup. (pause) Mind you, it *was* the ‘70’s, when it was still considered a good idea not to become a killer.