'People' nor 'Us Weekly' have ever crossed my threshold. Never. Nor any of the others of their ilk. I refuse.

I don't surreptiously peruse them while waiting in line at Albertson's nor scan through the tattered 3 year old copies at the optometrist's office (which are in his wife's name and for which I suspect he takes a particularly shabby tax deduction - and all those old AMEX up-scale shopping-as-porn ones, too.).

But there's simply no escape from this tripe.

It's infiltrated our progressively hollowed out culture more insiduously, more ubiquitously, than the pesticide residues which contaminate our water supply. It's even more toxic, if anyone wants my opinion on the subject.

It's the junk food of a junk culture. It's a pathological virus.

I'd be ashamed to admit to having been a purveyor of it, Jancee, but our culture no longer recognizes shame except as it can be turned to the service of a quick buck. And now you're grasping for your own little slice of celebrity with a book I wouldn't stoop to use as kindling.

Ugh.

"with their literary antecedents being, most notably, Hunter S. Thompson, Evelyn Waugh and Katherine Anne Porter."

To include Hunter S. Thompson (dubious and more appropriate if this were a review of P.J. O'Rouke) and leave out the master, Graham Greene? Or George Orwell? Or even Somerset Maugham?

And the godfather of all them: Joseph Conrad?

Geez.

'Artificial recovery, real job losses'

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=27414&mode=&order=0

'It is unclear how much longer the world will trade Americans real goods for pieces of paper that the US economy cannot redeem with tradable goods and services.'

'In the US today, government employs 7.7 million more people than does manufacturing. Little wonder we have an $800 billion annual trade deficit when the government sector is larger than the manufacturing sector.

American economists are yet to face up to the fact that offshoring high productivity, high value-added jobs that pay well and replacing them with waitresses and bartenders is a knife in the heart of the US economy. Charles W. McMillion of MBG Information Services reports that compensation is falling behind price rises and that the US economy has been kept afloat by consumers overspending their disposable incomes by drawing down their accumulated assets and going deeper into debt.

McMillion reports that according the Bureau of Economic Affairs, households outspent their disposable incomes by 1.5% in the second quarter of this year, a rate of dissaving equaled only by the depression year of 1933.

McMillion also reports that recent BLS data indicates that 25 states have lost manufacturing jobs year over year and that 25 states have lost jobs in the information sector.

Little wonder that permits for new private housing are down 20.5% year over year and that new housing starts are down 13.3% year over year. What will we do with the millions of illegal Mexicans when construction jobs dry up?

Wage data covering 82% of all private sector jobs show that the purchasing power of weekly wages today is less than it was when the economic recovery began in November 2001.

What kind of economic recovery is it when the purchasing power of wages falls instead of rises?

In my opinion, the recovery was artificial. It was based on extremely low interest rates orchestrated by the Federal Reserve. The low interest rates discouraged saving, but the low rates reduced the mortgage cost of real estate, inflated home prices and encouraged consumers to refinance their homes and to spend the equity.'

Paul Craig Roberts

Well. Yes, frankly. People do tend in drift in, drawn by the laughter.

Though, thankfully, the chances of our attending the same party are diminishingly slight.

I'm working on 'Sharing Velveeta with Dolly Parton'. I predict great things for it.

My last big hit was "How to Tell How Much Your Doctor Will Overcharge You Based on His Wife's Social and Consumptional Aspirations as Betrayed by Her Subscriptions in His Waiting Room."

My humor tends to be of the subversive variety. I owe a deep and acknowledged debt to James Thuber, Robert Benchley, Kingsley Amis and my greatest hero, Sam L. his own self, in this regard.

Doubt you'd get it. One of those 'too smart for the room' issues no doubt.

Allen, I'd probably have no issue whatsoever with reading you.

Where are you published?

I'm still recovering from wandering around a CVS the other day and discovering (insert 'don't get out much' joke of choice here) that there are apparently people in our society who can not be seen in piblic without fake press-on toenails.

Toenails?

As for the 'heart shaped' thing. I may have been a trifle put off at the time but I distinctly remember my Swiss (hair dresser - totally straight) 'other' at the time talking about trimming pubic hair into hearts being a fad in Chicago - this was 1974.

is of Chinese origin.

Brilliant.

is of Chinese origin.

Brilliant.

ugh.

Never watched the series. Do not feel I've missed anything of value.

Indeed.

And so is the 'editors choice' (Jancee, is that you?) selections.

I know dozens of wonderful stories.

My grandfather and his cousin setting out to go to California in a model 'T' in 1927. Roping chickens of people's yards as they passed. Better still, I have the hand colored post cards they collected. The photos they took.

I know about my great-great-grandmother Martha Rutherford coming by raft down the Mississippi from Tennessee in 1827 with 5 surviving slaves and her 3 kids and how she endured after her husband, Ralph, died of the same yellow fever they were attempting to flee.

My great-great-great-great Uncle Andre Bayeaux standing with his squirrel rifle with Colonel Jackson down at Chalmette in 1814.

My crazy Texas never-met-a-bad-idea-they-didn't-like-a-lot ancestors at San Jacinto or following Sam Bell Hood, Hood's Battery, all the way to goddamned Gettysburg.

It is sad that you think that attempting to cash in on basking in the dubious glory of Velveeta with Dolly Parton means anything whatsoever.