I’m very impressed with Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing. He is concerned with virtue in wholly unanticipated ways. Whereas, I want to beat the hell out of Tom Wolfe’s cartoonish depiction of humanity in I Am Charlotte Simmons. I’ll have more to say on the latter, probably at January. But for the moment, I ask what’s worse? Deluding yourself into Balazc/Zola realism or coming to terms with your own intellectual limitations and taking a few risks. For my money, Richard Powers kicks Tom Wolfe’s ass any day of the week.

[UPDATE: Chance Morrison is also participating. Woo!]

It occurs to me that I should probably be drunker. I should point out that, despite several screwdrivers, whiskeys and Pilsners, I am still unfortunately coherent. I’m doing the best that I can. But there is this thing called an evening in which one must endure.

Even so, I suspect that National Drunken Writer Night, to most people, involves keeping on the safe ‘n sane. The question here is whether you want endurance or the immediate cum shot. If desirable, please advise in the comments as to how you’d like me to proceed with drink.

[Note: I should point out that typing is becoming harder. So perhaps I’ve fulfilled some of the dicta behind this exercise. B will know for sure. But if there are any independent judges, please fire away. Also check out Gwenda, who is doing a more remarkable job than I am at this. She, alas, has an understanding husband, whereas I have the remarkable savior of Kazaa Lite-downloaded pornography. The porn, I should point out, is disappointing and hardly as valuable as, oh say, a significant other. I doubt my capacity to go into the world on the prowl, but stranger things have happened. You want interactive? This is it, baby!]

How many Gordon Comstock’s are there out amongst us? I speak, of course, of the protagonist in Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Comstock was an ad man who willingly ostracized himself from his heinous profession with the idea of being a poet pursuing truth, as opposed to sticking as an ad man. Circumstances eventually brought Comstock back into the advertising fold. But I evoke Comstock because, as I was shamefully trying to light up a cigarette (a habit that, regrettably, comes with drink), I was recently recognized on the streets by a neighbor. The neighbor introduced me to a friend of his and then proceeded to roundly mock me for producing a “highly literate play” called Something an Alligator written by a guy that’s “read too much.”

The neighbor, I should point out, had criticized me for daring to make the next play “more accessible.” I replied at the time, What’s wrong with this? I was a guy who dared to challenge an audience and learned from the results. Bombard the audience with too much and they will draw blood. Thus, behavior should be crystal-clear. Hence, my current research efforts to make the next play right.

So this neighbor, who collects books and moonlights as a sedentary book collector, hopes to draw my blood. But he makes me think of Comstock because, like Comstock, I’ve remained idealistic, but, unlike Comstock, I’ve learned from my results. And I’m determined to presevere just to spite the bastards.

How you like them apples?

In San Francisco (at least), there is sympathy for the parallel parker. Even when the vehicle appears to have been owned for some time, San Franciscans will dutifully instruct a parallel parker who just doesn’t have the shit to get his/her vehicle thoroughly ensconced in one of our rare parking spaces. I just got back from talking with folks outside of a neighborhood dive. The empathy was commensurate with, perhaps, a child unable to find the proper sexual configurations within a Barbie Dream House. We were all there, encouraging the driver to make a hard left and a hard right, and get her remarkably sized vehicle into a spot that was, I’m sad to say, capacious enough for two vehicles.

But she did it. With our guidance. She was able to squeeze her SUV into her spot because we challenged her to apply extra drive. Perhaps there is a chapter in the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, which covers this. Needless to say, the aforementioned SUV was still far from the curb — but not as far as the small vehicle inhabiting the space in front of it.

This is what community is all about.

[In other news, Gwenda’s got a mean piece about clowns. Bless our loyal originator. But where the hell is Sarvas?]

6:46 PM: The truth is I didn’t expect to be smashed so early. Something about vodka does this to a man. I feel as if I should be wearing a babushka or at the very least dancing a Russian jig. The sky is dark and this, of course, creates the illusion that it is somehow night when it is, in fact, barely early evening. So it goes.

I should perhaps put in some words of wisdom about how the male perceives women after the end of a relationship (no stranger here, given that it went down recently for me). The truth is that males are despicably obvious when it comes to fawning over the almighty female anatomy (which is quite sublime, I assure you). And this affliction only worsens as one gets older. Speaking for myself at least, I find that I am more of a perverted bastard at 30 than I ever was at 25. I love women in all of their manifold forms, and I would, of course, be happy to bang and love each and every one of them. It is not equal opportunity that motivates these interests, but a je ne sais quo obsession for women in all of their manifold and beautiful forms. They are all good, really, if men would only give them the chance. (And I certainly do.) Or at least take stock in the human heart.

Men, of course, won’t confess this. Because, for whatever reason, they consider it a matter of pride over who they lust after. Never mind that their fantasies are completely incompatible with reality and that, in the end, they would sooner fuck a hairless pig than cop to an unsuccessful Saturday night. In this way, men remain barbarians and it is truly a tragic affair. But, in fact, reality offers some considerable surprises when one rides on impulse.