Tomorrow, I head to the criminal courthouse. Part of me would like to invent a bevy of excuses to get out. Another part of me feels ashamed that I am trying to evade my duties and responsibilities as a citizen. Either way, I go through the jury selection process tomorrow and postings will be light until my return. But I will probably report my jury duty experience. Happy holidays.

Slither slither slither went the mind. But the unborn son was what he had to forget about as he threw her into the otorhinolaryngological depths of the San Francisco Bay. The cement anchors! The cement anchors! Oh God, would his mind trapise outside and his head collide against her mon pubis? Bumping mon pubis with mon pubis as he tried to throw this corpse ::::::STATIC:::::: into the San Francisco Bay, the cold waters! Cold corpse into cold waters! Humiliation!

Scott remembered the good stoic words of Zeno, remembering that he was a Master of the Universe! And so, like a very good boy, a good solid man, Scott, he of the last name Peterson, looked away from her pectoral morsels that he had buried his face into just a few nights ago, watching his wife — the corpse! — ::::::STATIC::::::

And then came the distant cry of his father back in Atlanta:

“SON! IF YOU DON’T STOP VACILLATING BETWEEN THROWING HER INTO THE BAY AND SITTING THERE WITH YOUR TAILS BETWEEN YOUR LEGS, THEN YOU JUST AIN’T GOT THE GUTS. YOU’RE A MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE!”

Scott had to be a man, for to be otherwise (humiliation!) was not an option. And so her body plopped in, all her deltoids and her rotary cuffs and her solar plexus and then, eventually, her mon pubis — the last part to touch the waters.

• GalleyCat has one-upped Rex, crossing his tees by collating several major top ten lists, but referring (and rebirching and even ‘oking again) to each title by number of citations and moving violations. The Plot Against America is, predictably enough, in the tops for proper gravedigging.
• Sean Connery’s ghostwriter needs to watch 65 films and die in the act of writing as part of his work. And, yes, that includes The Presidio and Highlander 2, which means dismarkharmony and shitheads all around.
• Local boy done good well done medium rare Daniel Handler talks with the Chronicle about the Lemony Snicket movie, snickering a bit over a few ades on what it’s like to hand over the reins, dear enough for the holiday season.
• Stephen Ambrose? Doris Kearns Goodwin? You’re just scratching the surface and applying the iodine when the skin breaks, sweetheart. The Chronicle of Higher Education has four more plagiarists. Which is a little late because the presidential election was last month.
• The Detroit Free Press sees recipes everywhere. Better than dead people, I suppose. Of course, any steady spatula user knows that they can be found most frequently in the kitchen, often sinking beneath Khartoum.
• The position for the California poet laureate is now open. Qualified candidates must bench-press 250 pounds and pump you up.
• Bob Bernie spends a weekend with Cynthia Ozick.

Ursula K. Le Guin: “When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way. So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I ever intend to make a statement, about ‘the union of two belief systems.’ There’s nothing at all about the ‘duality of spirituality and paganism,’ whatever that means, either.” (via Neil Gaiman.)