agony!

I hate you, amazon.com, for making me believe--for one shining moment!--that there was a new Neal Stephenson book coming out on February 28!! You're making me use exclamation points in a thoroughly untoward and brazenly bad-rhetoric fashion! At last, I thought, there's something due any day, I will know right away, soon as it shows...

Instead, argh!, it's the paperback release of (half of) the book I've already read. Nothing to gleefully anticipate except more weeks of tragic penury and fruitless job-searching. A future of eternal winter gloom, E.L. Doctorow and Ursula le Guin, oatmeal, the stupid Cheney shooting accident "news" (though it is funny how rabidly the press corps now hates the Bushies--they are going to effing town on this one), belated valentines, cold hearts, stretch marks, and Newsweek. Makes a gal want some bourbon.

Neal, can we be a little more insanely prolific please? Give us something to read, something to hope for!

On another note: I saw Brokeback Mountain tonight. Like everyone, loved it. It actually fits squarely into the Lecoqian melodrama genre/structure--unspooling out over time, spare, binding the noose around its own neck plotwise, unavoidably and reflexively tragic. Decent plotting demands enormous respect.

Spent the last couple days wrapping flowers for VD (ha ha) delivery. Ended up with some good dough and some chocolate. Angela and I melted the latter and dipped the entire contents of her fridge in it--apples, pickles, french fries. The former I need, desperately. However, the weather was stunning today, which makes up for a lot in the penury department.

Hot damn, folks, today I'm 23 1/2. I am not at this point able to comprehend 24. The number after that is the age that Dave was when I was with him. It means something. 24 means mid-twenties, and getting-together of life, doesn't it? O dear.