Mallory's Camera

Plans changed—and this was actually a relief.

I was gonna go down to the City early this morning to hang out with C, but it turns out that C was just told he has to have chemotherapy for what he is describing as "precancerous crustaceans." (He means keratoses! 😀) It's a more efficient option than sanding each lesion off individually.

But anyway, he thought he'd be a distracted host, and I quickly agreed.

Now I can spend a leisurely day packing and doing all those last-minute trip preparation things that, otherwise, I would forget to do.

Plus, the heat dome is back, so this would not have been a good day to tromp around Central Park.

###

I have been crazy busy and in a snappish mood.

A pal called for advice (you know who you are!), and I bit her head off: "You need to develop boundaries!!!"

I made two trips up to the Catskills to collect all of Brian's books and make sure they go to good homes, and that was a lot of driving.

The "low air in tires" light kept flashing on in my car. Slow leak. One tire in particular was the culprit, so finally I did a close inspection of the tire—and whaddiya know, I found a nail. And instead of realizing that this was actually a gift from God—because returning from my trip and getting to my car only to find I had a flat tire would have been a fuckin' nightmare—I was filled with resentment that I had to buy a new tire.

Ichabod was having air travel problems. (He and RTT are doing GrassRoots together over the next week, and he'd decided to fly into Buffalo, drive to Ithaca from there.) His flights kept getting canceled or postponed, and we were texting each other, and it was like I was in the airport right along with him, gnashing my teeth over every delay. Unbearable. That's the worst thing about being a parent—that your children will feel pain or frustration, and there's not a damn thing you can do to prevent that.

Other stuff too, but fortunately, I've developed protective amnesia.

###

I'd like to have some fun.

Shouldn't have bothered to water the garden yesterday, since in the evening, a massive line of thunderstorms dropped close to an inch of rain and took down so many trees and power lines that half the roads in this rural area are now closed.

But maybe watering the garden is what caused the rain? Rule inviolate: If you water your garden or wash your car, the rain will come; if you light a cigarette while standing at a bus stop, the bus will come.

Harvested! My first harvest of the season (not counting those mutant bell peppers a few weeks back.)

The torrential storms seem to have broken the heat wave. Today is warm, but this is summer in the Hudson Valley after all: You have to expect it to hit the high eighties in the afternoon.

The garden is once again overgrown with weeds—except in that one bed where I laid down grass clippings, so shortly I will toddle forth to weed and lay down more prophylactic grass clippings.



At home, I played with the cats and Black Chicken (not at the same time), futzed around with the German brothers scene in the Work in Progress, and went phone-vox with various people.

I complained about my unemployment woes to Ichabod: "I mean, I'm the victim here! Shouldn't they be trying to help me?"

Ichabod laughed. "Mom, you're poor in America. They don't value you in the slightest."

He hastily added, "I value you," but by then the damage had already been done: I felt like shit.

I mean, if this is what the rest of my life is going to be like—spending interminable amounts of time waiting for what's rightfully mine to be processed by a dull, uncaring bureaucracy—maybe I should start checking out assisted suicide programs in friendly states. No amount of Netflix pablum makes this palatable.

Or maybe I should just drive up to Albany and set myself on fire in front of the New York Department of Labor.

Nah. The fuckers wouldn't even notice.

R & J have the type of kids one is immediately inspired to write a children's book about.

You know—the types of stories where the children find some sort of magic creature in the green hollow behind the pool that must be kept secret from the grownups and that grants Wishes That Come True With a Twist (Five Children & It, Half Magic). R & J's kids are just the most winsome, brilliant, beautiful children ever.

They were definitely the high point of an action-packed Memorial Day weekend during which I also hung out with real-life Flavia in the Catskills and Ichabod in Cold Springs.

Real-life Flavia told me our mutual pal Betsy has had a recurrence of her Lyme disease, necessitating a medical leave from her job. And I felt like such an awful friend because Betsy has reached out to me a few times in the last four months, and I just ignored her. Why? Because Betsy requires effort. And I like Betsy, but I just didn't have the energy, the Schlock job drained me so completely & left me feeling so...extinguished... as though there was nothing remarkable or special about me at all: I was just a colorless cog in an awful machine.

I was actually pretty lonely during that time. But I couldn't deal with anybody else's problems, and Betsy always has problems. I was lonely for someone who would be solicitous about my problems.

Sigh...

I will call Betsy sometime this week.



Watching R & J's enchanting children made me ponder the nature of childhood memory. The baby is the baby; her hippocampus still hasn't laid down neural connections with most of her other cortical structures. She doesn't even have enough neural connections for a personality yet, although she does have a temperament—remarkably serene, observant, easily delighted.

The two older children (ages 4 and 2½) are old enough to have personalities. Princess Star is independent, smart, choosy about the objects of her affection, with more than a touch of fire. Prince Fire Engine is a total charmer, extroverted, and possesses the largest vocabulary (words and syntax) I have ever observed in a 2½-year-old. They are lively, interactive children whose lives are filled with adventures—but in all likelihood, they won't remember a single one of them when they are older.



I saw this with my own children, too, of course.

When Ichabod was 2½, I threw a cup at his father. I missed! I'm a lousy thrower. But Ichabod, sitting on his father's lap, understandably got very, very upset.

His father & I got divorced about a year later, and in my defense, Mrs. Hare 2.0 subsequently threw an answering machine. Bill really was that infuriating! But the cup got mythologized, and the answering machine did not. Maybe because there were no kids present when the answering machine was hurled? I dunno.

All throughout his childhood, for years, whenever Ichabod & I fought over anything, there would alway come a moment on the downside of the argument when Ichabod would sigh dramatically and stage a pensive look, which would prompt me to ask, "What's up, Boo?" And he would tell me, "I am remembering the cup."

This naturally made me feel awash with guilt.

Last Thanksgiving, I asked him: "Do you still remember the cup?"

"Huh?" he asked.

And when I explained, he said, "Oh, that. I think I can remember remembering it. If that makes sense. But the actual event itself?" He squinched up his face.

Yesterday, since I'd just spent time around the remarkable H________ children and was curious about memory, I asked him again.

This time, he said, of course, he remembered it.

"But you didn't last time we talked about it!"

"Yes, I did!" he replied indignantly.

No, he did not.

But I let it slide. Because what would be the point of arguing?



Of course, it was fabulous spending time with Ichabod. It's always fabulous spending time with Ichabod. Ichabod & RTT are my two favorite people on the planet.

But Dia Beacon turned out to be closed.

And Cold Spring turned out to be very different than I had remembered it. I hadn't been there since before the pandemic. Back then it was filled with the most fabulous antique shops—there must have been a dozen of them on Main Street—including the wonderful Doll Hospital where I would stand for hours and watch the proprietor do restoration on vintage dolls.

But there was maybe one antique store open on Main Street yesterday.

And Ichabod was out of it because he hadn't gotten enough sleep, and I was out of it because my knee was really throbbing, and I'd rather stupidly parked my car at the top of a steep hill, hiked down to meet him at the Metro North Station, and thus faced the prospect of hiking back up the hill. (Of course, he volunteered to get the car and come back for me, but I said, No, because I am either (a) macho, (b) a masochist, (c) dumb, (d) all of the above.)

We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in the non-quaint-and-charming village outside Cold Spring where all the real people live, and then drove up to the Chuang Yen Monastery—which was not the same as I remembered it, either. The Largest Sitting Buddha in the Western Hemisphere was behind locked doors, and we spent a long time searching for the pond with the carnivorous goldfish, and when we finally found it, there weren't any goldfish, just a few brownish-green carp, and they no longer stormed the little landing when people gathered to look at them.

I could tell Ichabod felt bad that he was not "fully present" as his therapist would have put it.

This morning, he texted me apologizing again: I haven't been sleeping well.

And then he told me he had ordered a whole bunch of gnomes and pink flamingos for my garden—I think because he kept asking me yesterday what he could buy me, and I kept saying, Nothing. The only things I want are garden ornaments.

###

I had been thinking about gardening today, but I think instead I'm gonna stay sedentary & ice my knee.

Twenty-five hundred words into Chapter 6.

Fifteen hundred to go.

I have no idea whether it's any good or not. Fictioneering like this is uncharted territory for me. But writing is definitely engrossing, so if nothing else, the Work In Progress will have gotten me through a brutal winter, relatively psychologically unscathed. Which is a good thing.

###

Ichabod asked me point-blank if I wanted him to start giving me a set monthly amount toward living expenses.

I said, No: "Not right now. We both know the financial burden of my support is going to fall on you at some point in the future because my fixed income from social security & pensions is not enough to support me. But I'd like to delay that moment as long as possible. You work hard for your money, and you deserve to enjoy it. I can work the Rube Goldberg side-hustle gigs for a while longer. I'll know when I can't."

Jeanna asked if I wanted her BF to fly me out to New Mexico some time this summer. I said, Sure. Though it's inconceivable to me that this winter is ever going to end: The landscape is buried beneath seven inches of snow, and the sky is unrelentingly grey & overcast. Temps this week are gonna flirt with 40° but drop again next week. I honestly do not know how humans managed to survive these kinds of living conditions back when they relied on wood-burning stoves for heat and horses for transportation.

When Ichabod called, I had this strong impulse not to answer the phone.

Because if I stop answering the phone when Ichabod calls, then I can pretend that nothing that happened to me last week when Ichabod was around actually happened!

I can reinvent myself as someone to whom embarrassing, humiliating things do not happen simply by cutting off every single person in my life who was around when the Embarrassing, Humiliating Thing did happen.

Easy peasy!

A simple & elegant solution!

Alas, I am not quite that crazy.

###

Honestly, I could not ask for a better son. I could not ask for two better sons. I should be on my knees thanking the Universe that my kids are so supportive and patient and protective.

But instead, I am filled with gall because the things that I like about myself are not the things my kids like about me, and thus, they will never know me as I want to be known. They will never see me as an artist. They will never see my life as a hero's adventure.

They will never see me.

So it goes.

###

Before Ichabod called, I forced myself to write 500 words on the Work in Progress. I hated every fucking word I wrote—Well. Not altogether true. The indefinite articles were okay—but that's all right because first draft, first draft, first draft, and the important things are momentum and consistency.

After Ichabod called, I hied over to New Paltz and spent a happy hour or so wafting from unspeakably adorable boutiquey shop to unspeakably adorable boutiquey shop, gift harvesting. It was a sunny afternoon, and I have acclimatized sufficiently to the colder temperatures to find 37° quite balmy.

###

Last night, I watched Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague, a film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

When I was 14, I lied my way into a job as a candy girl at the Thalia movie house, and it was here I got my basic education in foreign films. Truffaut, Godard, Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, the Brit kitchen sink auteurs, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger—I loved them all passionately.

I wouldn't say Nouvelle Vague is a particularly entertaining movie, but it did make me nostalgic. Once upon a time, people were more passionate about creating art than they were about enhancing their brand.

In the post-Warhol world, of course, there is no such thing as art—only marketing categories and money-laundering schemes. (When a Van Gogh painting sells for millions & millions of dollars, that's a form of money-laundering.)

I've seen Breathless at least a dozen times, but it's not my favorite Godard film by a long shot. My favorite is Bande à part for purely egoistical reasons: As an 18-year-old, I bore a striking resemblance to Anna Karena:

Shortly, I must toddle off to wildest, wooliest Walker Valley because twice a year, the Shawangunk Dems volunteer to pick up garbage along Highway 52.

I am not looking forward to it: Evidently, I wore the wrong shoes tromping yesterday because I woke up in the middle of the night with shin splints and am insufficiently rested this morning.

Beyond that, naught much to report.

I Remunerated (though, of course, never enough.)

I started reading The Great Believers, an epic novel about the AIDS pandemic. The novel is excellent and, moreover, written in a style that is so outside my personal stylebook, I won't find myself unconsciously plagiarizing from it. (That is an issue for me. Even in my dotage, I have an excellent memory for words, and quite often, I can't remember whether I wrote a sentence, or somebody else did.)

In the evening, I went vox with Ichabod who is getting a promotion in the PD universe which will allow him to defend people facing life sentences. The promotion comes with a hefty raise!

And for once, the kiskas are getting along and acting adorable.

Dreamed I was in magic school, taking an exam.

The first question on the exam was absolutely incomprehensible: You were supposed to figure out the nature of a quality floating around a girl from the absence of other qualities floating around her sister. A very strange mathematical equation with odd coefficients floating in space, & I could not solve it!

Go on to the next question, I told myself. Forget the math! Do the language problems! You'll get all the language problems right!

But I would not let that first question go! I kept trying & trying to solve it!

Two girls who were also taking the test began talking & laughing in loud voices.

Stop talking! I yelled at them. You're breaking my concentration!

One of the girls began to cry. She was kind of an amalgamation of the two girls who represent careless youth at its prettiest to me right now, A________ & H_____ (though A________ must be close to 40 these days, come to think of it.)

I finished the exam an hour early, sniffed the crying girl. And it's unfair to just make me sit here doing nothing—

Fine, I said. Don't.

And slammed my exam book shut. Hurled it at the proctor.

I'm not doing this shit anymore, I announced.

And began to stalk off.

Knowing full well the proctor would come after me!

Because everyone thought I was so immensely talented.

###

In other news, did 1,500 words of Remuneration and 2,000 words on the Work in Progress (when it flows, it flows), and somehow managed to fuck up my left knee. Who knows how? I did tromp—in between rain storms—and tromping was effortless. But my left knee and my left soleus are sore today—

This is the worst thing about being old. Things hurt without proximal cause!

###

Also, Ichabod texted me just after I went to bed. Venting! he said. We'd talked on the phone earlier in the day as he was driving up to San Francisco on the way to judge some local law schools' Battle of the Mock Court.

So, I locked my keys in my car!

Triple A had had to open his car for him.

I was seized with anxiety: When you're in the type of mood where you lock your keys in your car, you're also in the mood when you get into an automobile accident, and I kept picturing Ichabod lying in a ditch somewhere near Morgan Hill.

Maternity!

Not for the faint of heart.

Back from Ithaca.

I liked Justine, Nelson, Joannah, & Caitlyn—the residents of the co-op house.

And they liked me!

In fact, the three women and I had a pretty remarkable conversation, sitting out on the back porch overlooking the beautiful flower garden (wild flowers, echinacea and black-eyed Susans), sipping lemon water. We talked about conflict resolution and it evolved into a discussion of a highly toxic situation Joannah has been involved with at her chiropractic school where a horrible instructor had taken an extreme dislike to her and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it except stay calm & resolute & stay the course.

Of the three women, I liked Justine, the Cornell professor, best because she, too, has the Bread & Puppets Why Cheap Art Manifesto hanging in her bedroom:



But Joannah has this absolutely seraphic quality that I can't recall ever coming across before. If there are angels who occasionally have business dealings on earth, honestly, they'd manifest like Joannah.

She also has a rare blood cancer that requires monthly interferon infusions on a monthly basis. She walks with death. Literally. Maybe that accounts for her otherworldliness.

"I have a hard time with conflicts," I said. And explained that usually I let conflicts build until they reach some kind of critical mass & I can explode in anger.

"But I'm working on it," I added.

They were all very bemused by this. Why? they wanted to know. Was it because I was afraid people would stop liking me? Was it because I thought what was upsetting me was too ridiculous?

No, I said. It was because I thought the people who were upsetting me wouldn't care that they were upsetting me, that either they would laugh at me, or I would be invisible. Anger gave me the ballistic force to make sure I'd be taken seriously and that I'd be seen.

"Ah, childhood traumas," Joannah said gravely & gently.

###

At the end of the conversation—it went on for an hour and a half—Joannah said, "It's sort of like the future me is looking at the four of us and saying, Yes, we belong together."

And we embraced.

BUT there is a sticking point, and this is it: Nelson is somewhat allergic to cats.

I told him there is an anti-allergenic cat food that is quite successful. RTT, who is allergic to cats, uses it with the kitten he adopted a month ago and reports he is now completely asymptomatic:



And if that didn't work, I'd rehome the kiskas.

"I'll think about it," Nelson told me with a sweet smile.

And I believe he will.

###

Molly & Mabel, though, would actually be very difficult to rehome.

They are such mistrustful kiskas! They hiss at strangers! Not because they are aggressive, but because they scare so easily.

It's obvious they love me in their idiocyncratic kiska way, but occasionally, they will still hiss at me. They must have been abused or otherwise traumatized as young cats.

I'm fond of them.

I certainly don't love them the way I loved Sybyl or Rutger.

But I feel very strongly that the Universe assigned me to be their Protector, and it's a covenant I can't voluntarily break.

So!

What will be will be.

("But you did say you would rehome them if it doesn't work," said Joannah frowning slightly. I think she will advocate on my behalf.)

###

There's a lot more to write about, including the immensely beautiful Airbnb I stayed in and the absolute panic attack I worked my way into on the drive up to Ithaca.

I texted the BoyZ: House interview is tomorrow morning & I am having an anxiety attack a la “I’m such a loser, so who would want to live with ME?” Hopefully my self-esteem returns by tomorrow—

—and the two BoyZ offered reassurance in typically characteristic ways:

Ichabod: Don’t worry about being a loser. I think if this person was going to think you were a loser, they would already and you wouldn’t be going to visit. Also if she thinks you’re a loser it’s not where you want to live anyway so better get that out of the way.

RTT: Don’t be a pussy mom. You got this big dawg. You’re gonna come in there and impress her so much she questions whether SHE belongs there

But I have a huge amount to accomplish today and have already wasted too much time writing.

Mother's Day!

I'm a hater. Hallmark Holiday, I sneer.

Though I do understand every holiday is the result of some sort of marketing campaign. It's not as though when God made the Universe, He equipped it with sparkly plastic slots for Christmas & Thanksgiving.

And, of course, if my own offspring fail to acknowledge Mother's Day, I cycle into the most terrible snit—which must be why Ichabod called me at six o'clock this morning California time to acknowledge my superiority to every single mammal that has ever given birth.

Way to go, Ichabod!

"And something from me & RTT should be delivered later today," he added.

Ohhhhhh! A large floral arrangement.

I ❤️LUV❤️ me some large floral arrangements.

The kids & I are getting on extraordinarily well these days. I must say, I am a lucky person indeed to have such fabulous offspring.



When I got up this morning, I went searching for a photo to illustrate my annual "My Poor Tragic Deluded Mother" essay.

Is my Apple photo archive magic? 'Cause I swear the photos in it metamorphose & change on a daily basis. Like this morning, the only photograph of my mother I could find was the one above, which I don't ever remember seeing before.

The nicest thing Rik ever said to me was, You are nothing like your mother.

Except in this photograph, my mother looks disturbingly like me. (Yes, I know, in truth I look like her, but precedents get very garbled when you're looking at old photographs.) The same exact face shape. It's... defining.

Giving full vent to her narcissism, my mother is staring poutily into a small compact mirror and raising one hand to caress her carefully premeditated flip coif. The photo is carefully posed, and she is pretending it's not posed.

Happy Mother's Day, Lynn, wherever you now may be! From the bottom of my heart, I hope you are having more fun in your present lifetime than you had in the lifetime before.



In other news, I actually ended up having the Big Fun herding children through the bounce house yesterday. Go figure.

A lot of that was because the high school senior volunteer who was assigned to assist me turned out to be lovely, intelligent & poised, and we actually had a real conversation about her life, her hopes, & her dreams, which restored my faith in teenagers—they're not all like the Icky Spawn!

Sadly, the actual Duck Derby event itself had to be canceled because the river was up too high:









Still, amazingly beautiful, no? Extremely pleasant way to loll away an afternoon.

###

Afterwards, I traipsed off to the monthly meeting of the Shawangunk Dems. I have volunteered to take over administering their website—which hasn't been updated in two years and needs a complete redesign.

"Democrat" is a dirty word in this part of Trumplandia, right up there with "cunt" and "Hilary Clinton."

So, I told the group that if they wanted maximum return on our Internet presence, we really need to deemphasize the Dem part of Shawangunk Dems. (And we'll need to do other social media outreach too, because down the line, if we want younger members—and we do: Nobody in our group is younger than 60—they care about Instagram & TikTok, not websites.)

The Shawangunk Dems run an outreach initiative called Neighbor to Neighbor, which consists of knocking on people's doors & giving them home-baked chocolate chip cookies as well as a newsletter chock full of curated local news & sponsored activities—Bingo! Board game nights! Drama classes! Art classes!

"Neighbor to Neighbor is a much stronger pitch than Shawangunk Dems," I argued. "It gives the illusion of non-partisanship. Win their hearts & minds, and then you'll win their votes!"

"But we're the Shawangunk Dems," one of the greybeards gasped, appalled.

"Sure, that's the umbrella organization," I argued cheerfully. "Think of the business analogy. Does Kraft Foods advertise itself? No! It advertises Jell-O and Heinz Ketchup and Kool-Aid!"

Alas, I got voted down.

And sadly—even though I know I'm right—I believe in majority rule when it comes to stuff like this.

These people know nothing about marketing!

Life has been boring placid, so there isn't really very much to talk about with my kids on the phone except television.

I watch a lot of television because these days, I'm too braindead to read in that hour or so before I fall asleep.

"So, White Lotus," I said to Ichabod on the phone. "I'm watching Season 2. Because Sicily."

"Do you like it?"

"I neither like it nor dislike it," I said. "It's like the fondant of the streaming video world. Very sugary. Slightly chewy. High production values. Ultimately bland. There was this one scene, though—"

Four of the protagonists visit the village where The Godfather was filmed. It's a tourist spot now, the car explosion that killed Apollonia—in my youth, I was constantly being told, You look like her!—on perpetual, grainy, cheap-VCR loop. The display is very brown.

The young female protagonist grimaces. "So violent!"

The 80-year-old protagonist says, "It's the greatest film ever made! Have you seen it?"

The young female protagonist says she's seen part of it.

Then there's an argument about whether the reason The Godfather is so beloved is because it so perfectly encapsulates the fantasy life of the patriarchy.

But this doesn't interest me.

No, what interests me is the fact that apparently there are people on the planet who haven't seen The Godfather!!!!

"I mean, do Millennials really think The Godfather is about the patriarchy? Do you really not love The Godfather?"

Ichabod snorted. "Of course, we don't. Why would we?"

###

Ah, the evanescence of cultural touchstones.

I remember about five years ago, I was driving a delightful young woman called Adrienne somewhere. Adrienne was around Ichabod's age. White Rabbit came on the radio.

Doing favors is a quid pro quo process. Adrienne gets to be delivered to a place she'd otherwise have difficulty getting to since she doesn't have a car; I get a captive audience for my insightful ramblings about the cultural significance of White Rabbit.

"Wait. What's White Rabbit?" Adrienne asked.

"This song. You've never heard of it before?"

"No-o-oo-o—"

How could Adrienne never have heard of White Rabbit before? It was practically the anthem of my entire generation!

I'd answered my own question, I realized.

###

"You know the first time I heard White Rabbit?" Ichabod asked. "It was part of the soundtrack for Jim Carrey movie called The Cable Guy. About this really sleazy, pathetic Boomer guy."

I sighed. "Yeah. I know these cultural touchstones are a kind of horizontal glue. They have no vertical reach. They're a kind of glitter on the present tense. A delusion of significance. Maya. Still. They seem to cast such a long shadow that when you find out they don't, you're left wondering: Does anything cast a long shadow?"

Ichabod was 3,200 miles away, driving from Monterey back to Santa Cruz—we generally speak on the phone when he is driving—so I had to imagine his shrug. "Define 'long.' Define 'shadow. Everything casts a long shadow. Or conversely, nothing does. You get to decide for yourself."

"You know what's crazy?" I asked. "When I was a kid, the 1920s seemed like the ancient past to me, an inconceivably long-ago time. But it was only really less than 25 years before I was born. The 1990s are longer ago to me now than the 1920s were then."

"That's really trippy when you start thinking about it," said Ichabod. "We're all such imperfect time travelers."

###

In other news: It rained heavily all day yesterday and I remained incredibly pissed off at myself that I can't just dash off 8,000 words in a single sitting but am forced to stretch the task over six days because I—Well. Just can't.

"Seems like there should be some drug I could take," I told Ichabod. "That's really what's wrong with the world today. There are no more good drugs!"

It was the day the Vision-of-Wallkill hamlet-wide yard sale was supposed to take place, but naturally the weather put a crimp in those plans.

I went out to the Lions Club pavillion by the river anyway because the Women's Club had set up a bunch of tables under the leaky rafters.

Mucho creepy stuff for sale:



I guess yard sales will be the new Dollar Tree now that we have always been at war with Eastasia.

In the parking lot, I saw this disturbing vehicle drive up:



It disgorged a male with long, straggling white hair and menacing mien and what I assume was his old lady, weatherbeaten but better preserved than he was.

Gotta say, I was a bit flabbergasted by the truck. I mean, really, you hate Biden enough to get (presumably) costly detailing on your ride? 'Cause you sure don't look like you got much spare bank! Plus, there's still some small part of me that still uses the complex signaling system of my youth when long hair meant "my side."

But signals ultimately are all just random noise.

And White Rabbit is just another version of Glen Miller's Stardust.

I keep thinking there must be something real, but it's hard to get a fix on exactly what that something could be.