Mallory's Camera

You've gotta luv this scam!

It costs something to join, but don't try to find out how much. Out of curiosity, I did and my computer was immediately invaded by pop-up screens promising instant cash at usorious interest rates.

True confession time: I came across that website after idling typing, "Help me -- I need money" into Google. Hey! It's worth a shot, right? Maybe Bill Gates has a Secret, Private website designed to provide business assistance to struggling hot sauce entrepreneurs that uses those key words as its open sesame.

Just before my web search, I talked to ___ for an hour on the phone. I figured talking to him would calm me down. It didn't. Sounds like he's not doing very well at all. Still struggling with that second book proposal. The first book came out four years ago so it's not exactly like he's riding the momentum. Picking up a stray magazine piece or two, but mostly living off the sale of his house. Plus the woman at whose house he's been crashing since he sold his (two and a half years ago) finally confronted him the other night and said, "I'd like to live alone."

Of course, who am I to judge...

"Here's the thing," ___ said towards the end of our conversation. "A lot of my emotional reactions have changed since I hit middle age. I don't feel the way I used to feel. But one emotion has intensified: dread."

Phone calls like that don't leave me with a pleasant afterglow...

See, I take genuine pleasure in other people's happiness. It pleases me when things are going well for people I know. I'm happier if I can view my own life as an aberration. It's me, it's not humanity as a whole! There's lots of hope for humanity as a whole!

On the plus side I have been avoiding my own life by scribbling like a little demon and am now forty-seven pages into the store memoir. Here's the first paragraph:

[Tapping microphone.] Ahem! Is this thing on?

Oh, sure, there are plenty of things that evoke a deeper sense of shame than seeing yourself as an utter and complete financial failure. Say you're a child molester and the police just busted down your door and found you entertaining the entire population of Little Rainbow Daycare making shadow puppets with your dick. Or maybe your father is at home dying an extremely slow and painful death from a lethal variety of cancer and you steal his morphine. I imagine you'd be very ashamed of yourself! When you finally came down.

Augustin Burroughs, watch yr back.