John Cleese: NOT Dead

Got a plaintive letter from Max yesterday that began, "I heard John Cleese died. That's so sad…"

Now. While it's true that my responsibilities as a small business owner, circus marketeer and parent of a truculent prepubescent male have seriously cut into my tabloid reading, I think I would have heard if John Cleese had died. I mean – wouldn't I? He hasn't, right? He's still alive. This brings up the terrible possibility that I've given birth to someone who doesn't know the difference between John Cleese and Don Knotts. (Or Darren McGavin. Or Octavia Butler.)

So anyway I went over to the Flicker Toys website and made Max this postcard which I'll print out and mail today. No one should live in ignorance of John Cleese's enduring state, certainly not someone whom I used to breastfeed while watching The Meaning of Life.

In other news, I came down with the Killer Cold this weekend. All those vitamins I take have made my nails as hard as steel but they don't do shit for my immune system. I was pretty miserable yesterday, particularly since my printer decided to break down at the exact same time that I was drowning in my own natural secretions, which confluence made me start believing in God again – a God who hates me, a God whose sole celestial agenda is one of puttin' me down.

Bad weekend for the store – I have noticed that the first weekends of the month are almost always bad, and I propose to do a scientific investigation of this phenomenon just as soon as I win my McArthur Foundation Genius Fellowship. Also, this is the two-day stretch into which 6 weeks of scientific research & preparation for Robin's Science Fair project must be compressed; thus in between sneezing fits and my Dame aux Camélias imitations I had to sit screaming next to Robin at the computer, explaining the intricacies of Excel spreadsheets and how to make graphs. It's a tough life, but somebody's got to do it.