All is quiet here on the surface of Mars.

Sometimes I forget how much people love me, and then out of the blue I am reminded in a huge way how much they do.

I'm a shapeshifter. That's always been my superpower.

Been out of the loop and away from the newsfeed for the last 3 days. My biggest surprise since reconnecting to the internet? That Ozzy's dead.

If you go on a journey and all you lose is your cellphone charger, then you're in pretty good shape.

Grant me vision, grant me speed.

The fact that Thomas Pynchon is publishing a new novel in the fall fills me with a kind of dread.

I never used to sit around and think about William Blake in my free time but now I do.

My prediction for the future of pricing is that nothing will cost more than 99 cents per installment, with said installments falling due every 6 hours or so for 20 years.

I'm just a few pages from finishing Stephen Graham Jones's _The Buffalo Hunter Hunter_, and it's epic is every way. What an incredible novel.

I've been living fairly fearlessly lately, and a big part of that is not losing my nerve and getting stuck on little things.

I haven't had vampire nightmares in 15 years. Now that I've started reading Stephen Graham Jones's _The Buffalo Hunter Hunter_ I've having them again.

I've managed to climb out of the well that I threw myself into yesterday. Things are looking up.

No news here: congress is corrupt; the government is corrupt; the courts are corrupt; large corporations will screw every penny they can out of you; the system is rotten to the core.

This random run of observations was brought to you by Honey Bunches of Oats.

A 5 pound dog is a better investment than a thousand pound gorilla. Plus, you can't be a canine underbite for cuteness!

Frankenstein doesn't end with a car chase, but it ends with a sled chase, which is much, much better.

Catnip isn't just good for cats, kiddies!

No, I haven't watched Sling Blade and now, at this point in time, I probably never will.

In other news, hydrangeas are drooping their colorful, melted-looking orbs to the ground all over town. I always imagine that they're just so-o-o sleepy and can't keep awake any longer. It's hard work being that beautiful, I guess.

The book that was supposed to arrive yesterday didn't so that means that today I'll be writing this morning. Fortunately, I've got a nub of something to work on at present.

What's good for the soul? A children's theater performance. Creative kid energy restores my faith in humanity, which is at a low ebb these days.

Maybe your company isn't finding the right employees because your human resources online interface is glitchy and shite!

My weekly New Yorker always seems to arrive in that interstitial space when I'm pausing, briefly, between reading novels.

If I'm sitting at a table of more than 4 people, I've typically checked out mentally by the 10 minute mark.

Some days you feel like you're living in the world of Tom Waits's "Cemetery Polka."

Gee, I seem to have temporarily misplaced my crystal ball. It's boxed up around here somewhere.

I'm making my way through my summer horror reading list a lot faster than expected. I will have to add a few new titles.

Maybe a pest of some sort? I say that because the damage seems to be localized to one plant, so far. I.e., whatever it is hasn't spread yet. I don't know about bush beans, but I walked tons of soybean fields as a farm kid and those plants are pretty heat resistant.

I grew up on the prairie where the weather is pretty charismatic in the early summer months! You see those clouds a-coming and you know there's going to be a thrashing.