Current situation: a week behind on the main account, apparently three years behind on the Yahoo account. And I plan to answer all of it. This is probably quite ridiculous, but I am a reformed man. Or so I like to think. If your email was unanswered, it shall be answered.

And, no, I don’t suffer from OCD.

or

This is a bit like a schlocky version of Michael Apted’s Up movies. (For earlier clip, see this.)

KING 5: “Someone with cruel intentions placed a fake ad on Craigslist, inviting people to take whatever they wanted for free from a Tacoma home. Homeowner Laurie Raye says there’s little left now of the house. The outside of the home is trashed, the inside is nearly gutted and covered in graffiti. Raye says she is devastated. ‘I was attached to this home because it used to be my mom’s,’ says Raye.”

The logo and the image of the logo caught in the storefront glass twisted and righted and played feral games with my mind when I entered the Starbucks and again when I shut the door. Her hands thrown in the air and her wavy ringlets of hair caught in a circular haze screaming Cormac. Inside the Starbucks it was dark and green and brown and seemed too sunny for this corner of the world. The sun sat blood red under the dying dusk of this hour and the hot breaths of customers fogging windows like time and the passing of time and the need to stay awake shared and exchanged and encouraged by paper cups and low chants and that damned green logo and the image of the damned green logo a nightmare clutching my soul.

Cold it wasnt and I tapped three times on my skull and I became miserable. Not a time to laugh but a time to cry and a a time to order a latte.

The barista said, What size?

I said, large.

The barista said, You mean venti.

I turned and I looked for the horses and I hoped I could find a sign of what made men who they are and what this argot might mean. What others called large in that Starbucks had been carried across a chasm. The chasm real men knew. Twenty years ago I had walked into this selfsame cafe and there was no logo nor image of logo. Only a smiling girl long since gone who called it large and who hurt me many years ago when she gave me too much cream.

The barista called me sir. She took my order and told the other barista it was a venti. She told him to make the latte, venti large or just latte.

I watched them and said good afternoon.

They didnt answer.

The line was cold and clear and getting longer. Cold faces standing behind me and the whirs of percolating pain from behind the counter and the logo and the face on the logo. The Starbucks was cold and getting darker as the red sun started to set. I put my hand on the counter to see if it was a counter and a paper cup came and the pain of ordering tumbled my heart.

I set down my change and I picked up the paper cup. I stood sipping it and told a boy standing behind me that there was no longer any hope for the future. And then I realized I read Faulkner too much because I want to be like Faulkner. But Oprah said I was good so its okay.

I’ve discovered Starship Sofa, a fantastic podcast that has two Brits named Tony C. Smith and Ciaran O’Carroll chatting about science fiction authors. I’m not usually a fan of podcasts featuring two guys just sitting around shooting the shit, in large part because I’ve heard too many podcasts along these lines that blow. But these two guys are good, because they are well-read, and they have a good deal of unexpected trivia and interesting thoughts about authors.