My bed was too comfortable today. I didn’t want to leave. I had found one of the five good spots on my futon. There was interesting stuff on the radio. And now I am contending with overpaid boors who throw temper tantrums over picayune crap.

Like Jimmy Beck (though sans hangover), the Cruel Overlords of Life are preventing me from posting witty ramblings, or even going into nice reminiscences about grandmothers. Factor in chronic insomnia and you get the sluggish portrait in full. It’s going to be light today and tomorrow because of assholes. We apologize, but we’re chipper. The bastards haven’t gotten us down and we’re pro-active.

PEN/Faulkner nominees: Jerome Charyn’s The Green Lantern, Edwidge Dandicat’s The Dew Breaker, Ha Jin’s War Trash, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and Steve Yarbrough’s Prisoners of War.

Despite last month’s successful efforts to remove all copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code from bookstores, the book continues to sell. Da Vinci Code readers have been exiting bookstores with one or two copies in their bags, even when their credit card receipts show that they’ve purchased three or four copies. Industry experts are at a loss to explain the book’s sustained popularity, but Saks Fifth Avenue has reported that “Dan Brown books are a handy accessory” and are “thicker and more convincing than a coffee-table book.”

Umberto Eco is still awaiting his cut from the book’s obscene profits.

The new covers for the next Harry Potter book were revealed yesterday. The British cover features Harry and Dumbledore with fire sticks in their hands, surrounded by flames. The U.S. cover has Harry and Dumbledore standing over a basin giving off a green light. And the cover Al Qaeda version has Harry and Dumbledore burning an American flag, with Evil Bert laughing in the distance.