is a palette cleanser; I can grind through one of his novels in about 5 hours, it’s light on the mind, and doesn’t require much deep thought. It occasionally elicits a comfortable chuckle and doesn’t leave any sort of controversial aftertaste.

His work is the literary equivalent of a light flan or sorbet served between courses: it’s not the point of any meal it’s a part of but it’s not an uncomfortable course you have to wade through either.

Circa 2003

I’ve got neighbors. And my neighbors have trouble communicating like adults. Who don’t hate each other. And know how to construct sentences both below 70db and without using the word “fuck” or some subtle conjugation thereof… And that means that I’ve got neighbor trouble.

While I could get into fairly extreme detail about everything that happens upstairs, as they broadcast it loudly to everyone within earshot, please allow me to instead explain through a letter I wrote to my landlord after tonight’s unscheduled grudge match. Items in curly brackets are of course substitutions for data I don’t feel like sharing.

Read the rest of this entry »

I sort of wind up handling goof-ball technical issues for Jon at Adam Riff™. We butt heads a lot but he means well, in this really warped West Coast way.

Jon is on vacation this week, and he “creatively massaged” some of a conversation we once had regarding his trip and how to obtain wireless access while away. I did what any upstanding administrator would do… I made myself a login for his site and corrected him.

It was that or building an entire joke site and uploading it in place of his existing one. If it was six hours earlier, that’s the way I would have gone.