The Coalition of the Swilling

He got promoted to Gulag Commandant. He has no time for bleating.

Yeah, the whole main site's down. That's a whole lot of wonderful stuff missing in addition to the Bleat.

Whiney baby that you are. And WTF is a GUALG? Some kind of Russian mouthwash?

He'd been talking about rolling out a new version of the site, so hopefully that's it. In the meantime:

Didn't want to get up this morning. Longish project at work, requiring an earlier start; but skulking quietly around my own home and sneaking off into the gloaming made me feel like a thief. I almost stuffed the good china into a plastic bag to take with me. And oh joy: cold, damp weather, a sodden sheen of mist that even depressed and silenced the birds. Wet-newspaper climate. Thank you, May!

All I have to do is make it through the old spotted chocolate of the day to the sweet nougat of tonight's noir. Amazon dropped off the latest batch of obscure 30's movies that aren't remotely metaphors for their times. And that's what makes them so refreshing, while "My Dinner With Andre" was dated from the moment Wallace Shawn hit the red carpet on premier night.

[...child anecdote #23...]

Later. Oy. Four columns. Three of them, you can't see until the presses roll. The fourth, you are reading now. (I mentioned joy before, right? Yup. You get to share!) I overworked the one and got stuck with too much on the second. Invariably that means that the best four inches of the piece - the kernel that gave rise to the entire concept - are snipped out and left to wither. The third column? A Metaphor For Our Times, I'm afraid. At least Mr. Shawn will enjoy it.

Eh. I'm still the happiest guy alive, unless I'm not.

And WTF is a GUALG?

It's something that lives in Moria, I think.

Another wizard eating monster of the mines. Wonderful.