Monday Drive By.

St. Jude - Patron Saint of lost causes.

It is blisteringly hot in Fallbrook. I escaped the searing heat yesterday by jumping into a swimming pool of some friends who had driven to Los Angeles.  Even the pool water was too warm so I left semi miserable.

I was all set to go jump in the ocean today but realized that I didn't have enough energy to try to drive to the coast and back and I wanted to spend more quality time with my dog. I went to the library and checked out the movie Giant and a collection of Updike short stories called Licks of Love. Short stories are safe and noncommittal, if one is terrible you can just move forward to the next.

I am plopped down on the couch right now with the a.c. blasting. Dog isn't too interested in our relationship at the moment either.

Vern says that his wife Jaz thought my comments about the suicide in the Grand Canyon were insensitive, mean spirited and lacked basic civility. All true. She wondered why his friends were all so nasty...

Vern also sent something along that showed that the astronauts were now drinking their own recycled urine.  Thanks, I'll stick with the Tang. But cheers.

A full 6% of the American population think that the moon landings were staged and never occurred.  Possibly created at a big movie set in Utah. Who are these people and would it be appropriate to ask them to wear some small identifying pin on their lapels?

Speaking of Utah, a Federal Board rules today that oil and gas drilling could go on in some of my favorite pristine areas bordering national monuments including Golden Spike. An area filled with rich archaeological ruins and artifacts. Damn.

The bank that gave me the loan on my building several years ago was taken over by the FDIC the other day.  This is painful to me and to many of my friends who lost a lot of money on their stock. I went to pay my mortgage today at the old Temecula Valley Bank and the FDIC was there as were people removing the signs and taking pictures of everything in the branch for inventory purposes.  It took a while to even figure out who to write the check to.  Bank employees managed to keep a stiff upper lip.  I appreciate everything they did for me on my loan, the one good one in the portfolio, perhaps. Thank you, TVB!

Of course if business continues to suck and all of this economic heartache we are mired in merely the precursor to the coming huge seismic event, I am planning to get a broom stick and pack my belongings in a red bandana and run off to join the circus. Wave at me on the road and mutter about how you knew me when.

Good article by the brilliant L. Gordon Crovitz in the Journal today about how the internet has made it open season on stealing other's intellectual property.  I catch my own copywrited photography flittering around the globe a lot these days thanks to Google and have been an occasional thief myself.


Read an article today that an engineer's texting might have been the culprit in the rail crash the other day in NYC and was definitely involved in two other fatal mishaps. Also read a warning about texting while driving, something I have shamefully done but have tried to curtail.  These infernal crackberries and other communication devices are insidious. I find myself constantly checking the red light on the device to see if I have an incoming email. There will definitely be a strong urge to unplug soon.  No television for 19 years, I can forgo instant communication. I am also getting into the habit of doing my own spell check correction instead of relying on a word processor so my spelling skills don't go the way of my late mathematical computation ability.

I had a very famous and successful novelist in the store last week who shall go nameless. I respect her very much even though I don't really read her.  We had a nice little conversation about the books of our youth and the finer points of Thornton Wilder and Salinger.  I made the mistake of telling her that I used to write for a couple magazines but that I now blogged. "I don't do blogs!" she commented when I suggested she have a look. I shrunk down into my pre adolescent three foot trunk and started sucking my thumb while nervous beads of sweat pooled across my forehead. I don't blame her. 

My friend  Donald from Brooklyn paid an ultimate compliment the other day and said he was surprised that people weren't blogging about my blog. I have had a few national hits but there is so much stuff out there and people don't really have time to read anymore, except my hard core base. That's why I am going to the mattress rooms to recharge and regroup. If I had game I would be writing for Harper's, Atlantic or the New Yorker and would know what sesquipedalian meant. Or be the embodiment of same.

But I don't send the blog out nearly as much as I used to.  If you like it, bookmark it and check it out at your convenience. But I feel like an invasive pest. A mean spirited one at that. So if you want to read it, it's there.  For the time being.