Well, it's been one of those weekends. Cards swept the Pirates which is always nice, but other than that, well, let me just say this:
Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2

Yeah. I deserve your pity.

That and thanks to a certain freight carrier (*cough* DHL *cough*) who lied to me and screwed my entire day thanks to a non-existent package pick-up, my weekend has been totally thrown for a loop. So, no work done on any new tracks (although still have a couple in early stages and a couple more bouncing around in the old noodle...) and nothing on writing (although I'm starting to postulate another Parson Wheeler story... how terrible is that?) I think the first part of Softer, Shallow will probably be done this week and hopefully be on-line a week or so after that.

Let me just say that going through your own early work can be a deeply humbling experience. I never realized A) how mind-numbingly horrible my grasp of grammar was and B) what a total candy-ass my protagonist was. Needless to say I'm doing a lot of head-shaking and rewriting sentences as well as bulking her up a little bit so she's not just some noodling bimbo. But it's good. I still think it's an interesting enough idea to pursue (and if not, well, I guess you all will have to suffer along with me...) and hopefully this time around it'll be more fully rounded.

As for the next Feature, wish I knew what to tell you. I got the go-ahead a while back, sent the questions in and then... nothing. Don't know if/when I'm getting them back, but here's hoping--it should be a good time. We'll see later tonight what, if anything, gets done. I'm getting more and more tempted to do that Wheeler story as time goes by. It's always a little fun to let your inner horrible little old man run free a bit.

And in the news... or for what passes for news:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0827041_Paris_Hilton_1.html
I quote in part:

[W]e've now unfortunately learned that this dopey Paris Hilton not only is
seeking to trademark her name (so she can slap it on everything from footwear
and kitchen utensils to shot glasses and essential oils), but the 23-year-old
heirhead actually has her own logo.

Ok, let's look past the fact that the brilliant, funny, insightful and life changing book All Things Right and Beautiful has yet to find a publisher, while Paris' "memoirs" are set to be released sometime in the near future, a logo? A freaking logo? I guess if her, ahem, "video career" has shown anything it's that like most businesses, if you've got money she's, um, open. But this was stupid when Prince did it and the fact it's being done by an anorexic rich white girl whose resume, to date, solely includes her ability to barely land a GED and get fired from Fox Network sponsored jobs on her little television show takes it off the stupid chart and firmly into Michael Jackson loonball land.

Now, it gets better. Said logo is a little tiara with a "P" on it. Now I'm no reactionary, but if she can do that, I say we can bring back the guillotine in case she should happen to utter the phrase "let them eat cake." And then that brings us to the whole trademarking of the name. Maybe I don't travel in the right circles, but if I had even a roll of toilet paper with the "Paris Hilton" trademark on it I'd feel compelled to burn it on sheer principle. This is the same girl who "lost" her dog by having relatives dogsit the little beast and then forgot what she had done with it. We should skip all this trademark nonsense and seriously be concerned about Paris ever having children. "Ohmigosh, where's little Billy? Call the FBI! Little Billy is gone!" "Um, Paris, Billy is at summer camp this week." "Call the FBI! Billy's been kidnapped to summer camp!"

Yeah. I don't know why we all wouldn't want to sport stuff with "Paris Hilton" written on it. You see, stuff like this is why other countries hate us. When arguably is she chose to run (and certain constitutional difficulties were circumvented) she'd be the most viable third party candidate for president of this country. If you were French, would you feel better about us?

-Joe