The Daily News

1  Okay so THIS is a lotta fun.

2  I told y'all that I'm suddenly enrolled in college, which is chill.

3  Haha, welcome to 2009.

4  "That's chill."

5  Whuh-evvvvuh.

6  Last night I went online to see what sorta hoops I was supposed to jump through so that no child would be left behind.

7  Whoever the professor is decided that any normal human being would be able to spend seven hours a day on his boushit.

8  College.

9  I had forgotten.

10  So by next week I'm supposed to have grades all done AND I'm supposed to have read about six hundred books and to have commented on around twelve questions requiring around six thousand words each.

11  This will see to it that no child gets left behind.

12  Last night I almost went over when I saw what this moron wanted from everybody.

13  I instantly re-grouped and decided that as always, college is nothing more than a time-management test.

14  If you want the degree, you have to jump through everybody's hoops. I'm unsure of why a person with a life credential has suddenly to a spend ungodly hours away from the classroom reading a buncha boushit that they probably already know about, but that's life in education for the past ten years.

15  ALL of us have to do this; I'm just late at getting it done, which should come as no mystery.

16  So last night I almost had a heart attack at all the stuff I suddenly need to read and write about by Saturday. I did what any normal human being would do at eight at night: I ranted and raved and got nothing done.

17  I got home from preparing classes, doing grades, and boushitting with custodians at around 7:30 last night, having eaten nothing all day. By eight I was able to check my online class, and that's what I ran into.

18  This guy has like two books read by Sunday and four different writings, as well as the creation of some sort of virtual website in the same period of time, all of which corresponds perfectly with the calculating of my own students' grades, a feat that is a constant nag for anyone who tries taking teaching seriously.

19  I shot a couple of e-mails and discussion threads to the "class" and then backed off so I could re-group and plan strategies for how to time-manage something that is clearly not possible.

20  College people, take heed. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

21  So evidently colleges in 2009 want you to spend around eighty hours a week per class.

22  If I learned anything last night, I learned this: you have to figure out how to beat the system.

23  So that's my plan, yo.

24  Fortunately, I've been working my tail off for the past three weeks and keeping up on stuffs. I knew this was coming but I didn't think the first teacher was going to be a Nazi. He's clearly one of those guys who thinks everybody should concentrate on his class only and real life be damned.

25  No prob dude.

26  This clearly will impact the DN.  I LOVE writing the DN because it's fun and a great way for all of us to laugh about all the boushit that goes on in our lives on a daily basis.

27  But if I need to spend around five or six more hours a day for ONE professor, then something is going to have to give.

28  I'm afraid that I'll have to cut back considerably on the DN for the next few weeks, all apologies.

29  Last night I wrote half a DN and then conked out. I awoke in the middle of the night to nagging dogs and cats screaming and whining, thinking it was time to get up and eat.

30  I pushed some button on the DN and everything I wrote disappeared.

31  So here we are.

32  I promise to keep y'all alert and laughing, but it might mean fewer pictures and packaging.

33  But something is going to have to give, and sadly it might be the DN, at least for a while.

34  So these will be quicker and easier for the next month-and-a half. I also have lots of evening supervison obligations that will pull me away in another direction.

35  Such is life in 2009. As I said, all teachers have to go through this boushit, and most already have.

36  It's no coincidence that nearly everybody in my "class" is a coach, or a person who is running a ton of things at their schools. My class consists of coaches, principals, multi-taskers, and people who already work longer hours than most. I was astounded to see that, and it was pretty telling.

37  All people in education work their asses off, but a select few are the nutsos: the people who coach, direct marching bands, stay every night until six or seven, manage from the top, or are the deadiest of all, activities directors.

38  I've not directed a marching band, although I did manage at one point to keep the band marching when some kook came in to replace the immortal Ponch.

39  But I've done all the rest, and watched as my esteemed colleagues had to struggle through this boushit.

40  So it all finally caught up with me, and my number's up.

41  Somehow all those guys were able to get it done. They're the winners, and now it's my turn to try my hand.

42  I'm not so sure I could do it, but anyone who knows me knows I'll die tryin'.

43  So the DN will cheapen a bit in the coming weeks.

44  I'll still try to hit all the deadlines, because I'm cool like that.

45  But I just wanted to send out a flare.

46  I'm Joe College.

47  At least for now.

48  See you tomorrow; they'll certainly be more.

49  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

 The Daily News

SAFE!!!!

1  In 2009, you actually have to hold your breath and pray that Rickey Henderson makes it into the Hall of Fame. I figured the immortal Henderson was a shoe-in, and I'm guessing he felt the same way.

2  Clearly one of the greatest players in baseball history, and a guy who grew up in Oakland.

3  Good to see.

4  Rickey always had a bit of a mouth on him, but his skills in the greatest sport ever invented are beyond reproach.

5  I caught a little trivia about Rickey yesterday. He was named Rickey Nelson Henley after the great 50's crooner Rickey Nelson, purportedly on Christmas day in the back of a '57 Chevy on the way to the hospital.

6  Ya gotta love it. Famed baseball statistician Bill James once said, "If you split Rickey Henderson in two, you'd have two Hall-of-Famers."

7  I couldn't agree more.

8  Congrats, Rickey. Nine teams. That's a lot of fans.

9  Moving on: Yesterday morning Bush was on a roll. I was his swan song interview, and he let loose with everything he had. I was fascinated hearing a President talking about the job in very human terms.

10  He finally got his Wall Street line honed to perfection. In the midst of his speech, he blurted, "Wall Street got drunk, and we got the hangover!"

11  This was a variation on his summer quote that went, "Wall Street got drunk and got a hangover!"  I prefer the new version.

12  As much as this guy drove me crazy, I found myself listening to a guy who had lived through what must be the most insane job on the planet. The essence of his words were, "YOU try it."

13  Thanks for the memories Dubya.

14  You'll finally have a little time to finish My Pet Goat.

15  Moving on, Part the Second:  Last night Jimmy Kimmel threw this one out there:

"As a baby I was left in a restaurant in the Bronx and raised by meatballs."

16  Jimmy rocks.

17  He's having some chef from Vegas coming on to tell all of us how to make the best meatball in the world, which prompted him to say that.

18  Unfortunately it was on late, and even though I've got the DVR thing goin' on, I wasn't sure if someone was recording stuff, so I may never know the best recipe for meatballs.

19  Sounds like a fun thing to try when the weather gets cold: make different kinds of meatballs.

20  When it's freezing out, there's almost nothing better than a super-hot meatball to make your eyes roll.

21  Which reminds me that I need to start my kajillionth diet at some time in the next twelve years.

22  The large-clothes diet is going out the window the second I see this goombah throw out his recipe.

23  I KNOW, I KNOW!

24  I absolutely HAVE to get some sleep.

25  But I absolutely HAVE to see the meatball recipe too.

26  It's all too much.

27  Ah, I'd better hit the hay.

28  Too much to do this week.

29  Well, enjoy your day. I'll search for good meatball recipes and if I remember, I'll try posting one on the DN.

30  Meanwhile, enjoy your day. The weather is like beach weather. My, oh my we DO need rain, but yesterday it was all I could do not to hit the coast, lemme tellya.

31  Aight then, I'm packing it in.

32  WAIT!

33  The guy is on there. This guy is totally bald, Italian dumb guy, tattoos and bling, a total goombah, just as I thought.

34  I'm gonna watch. Here it is from this musclehead goombah:

Veal, beef an' pawk put inna bowl. Mix in bowl. gahlic powduh. pahmuzhan cheeze. kosher sawlt, crack two eggs. ground peppuh. Day old crusty bread. Soak it with wawter. squeeze all the wawter outta it. Mix it up wid duh meat. Fry it in vegtubble oil. Make big bawls. Put it in da gravy. Meat gravy made from the veal, beef an' pawk.

That's almost word for word. You cook them in duh meat sawce. That's duh secret. Make it wid a salad wid a little wine.

35  If that made any sense at all, yer eatin' tonight.

36  Meanwhile have a great day.

37  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1  So...Bob Wilkins walks into a bar...

2   Wilkins hosted one of the best little shows on television years ago. It was a low-budget show called Creature Features, wherein the wonderfully wry and witty Wilkins would tell us about how absolutely vile the film he was about to show truly was.

3  He was quite dry, often kicking it in a chair and smoking a fat cigar as he would tell people to change the channel, or to find something better to do.

4  The show was a precursor to Mystery Science Theatre, and had that fun sort of feel to it. Of COURSE we'd keep watching; it was Bob Wilkins.

6  My old friend and confidant Goof found the item about Wilkins' passing and e-mailed me immediately. I appreciate that, because it sent me to this site:

                                http://www.bobwilkins.net/

7  Even if you've no idea who Bob Wilkins is, just watching the YouTube is worth the effort. If you take a look at some of his old shows, you might end up spending the rest of your life watching them.

8  He's one of a kind, I tellya.

9  He'll be missed.

10  Moving on:  Going to college online right when grades are coming up is quite a hat trick. I have a stiff neck from having spent all day and all night on Saturday reading papers and entering grades, just about the boringest job in the world.

11  Not easy, but what is? <thud>

12  Moving on, Part II: It looks like there are all sorts of great movies out there this week. I really wanna see a whole bunch of them.

13  Why is it that all these cool movies come by right when I have no time to see them? Does somebody PLAN this?

14  Ah, vell...

15  Tough trying to get the DN out these days. Been REALLY bizzy lately.

16  Oy. I know! I actually talked with a guy the other day whose January diet consists of buying larger sizes.

17  I thought that I had invented  that, but I guess not.

18  The entire premise was this:  Why diet and drive yourself crazy in January? Everybody and his brother over eats in December, so billions of people  begin shelling out a ton money in desperate attempts at dropping weight.

19  This diet works because it works on the premise that most people are all about themselves, and their own bouts with the extra pounds. So basically, nobody is even looking at you.

20  So you buy bigger, nicer clothes, one's that fit.  The should be HELLA nice.

21  Great diet. No starving. No craving. You just look good because you're dressed nicely, and it buys you time to actually eat less and exercise, which is what most diets try to get you to do in the first place.

22  Anyway it was refreshing meeting a guy who does that. 

23  He wore a tent, but I didn't ask where he got it cleaned. It was a Coleman.

24  He had bells and whistles hanging off his rain slicker.

25  The guy was slick as a whistle.

26  He also shared a drink, and filled me in on the Wee People.

27  The fellow made sense to me.

28  Nah, just boushittin'.

29  I didn't wanna worry any of y'all.

30  I do promise to fill you in on the Wee People somewhere aroond Sin Pahtricks Deh, which is right aroond the cahner, don'tcha know.

31  Meanwhile, enjoy your morning; have a cuppa and savor it, and then enjoy your Monday. Wet your whistle with something warm and soothing.

32  Mondays aren't so bad, really. This one should work nicely for you.

33  Look to the sun and smile this fine day.

34  And as always, fly low. And can't wait to see you again Bob. You were the best.

35  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

 The Daily News

1  I wrote this wonderful DN yesterday morning, fully fresh and ready to deliver slices of cantaluope, watermelon, and purple grapes.

2  Sadly, that DN somehow found an escape valve, and scurried away to the dismay of us all.

3   So it goes.

4   Honestly, it was brief, stupid, and filled with non-essentials, and therefore, pretty awesome.

5   So strange. Like I wrote it in the morning and it magically had almost thirty items.

6   I thought I was the COOLEST yesterday morning, because I had written this G-R-R-R-R-E-A-T DN first thing in the morning, so all I had to do yesterday was to write a few new things and then conk out on the couch.

7  Wrong.

8  When I got home yesterday I popped online only to find that everything I had written had disappeared!

9  Horrors!

10  Nah, not really, but it was pretty annoying that it had simply vanished, especially since I knew all day that it was a fun piece.

11  And honestly, if you held a gun to my head I would not be able to tell you what the heck it was about.

12  Ah vell!

13  Like most people in 2009, I got home and conked out pretty quickly. We're going through the end of the first semester, which generally translates to grading papers, looking over records, and wishing we were anywhere but where we are.

14  I had such a stressful day that I left everything in the TOOOOONDRA and hit the couch early.

15  Felt great except that I awakened at 11:30 p.m.

16  I went online to retrieve that DN that was so fun, and it never saved, so all apologies.

17  Ah, what the heck.

18  Such is life in 2009.

19  So this guy somehow got there for you, and for that I am forever grateful.

20  Hopefully it will all come back. I'm quite certain that you can trust me on that one.

21  Meanwhile, just humor the old guy.

22  We do get wiser, trust me.

23  But we also get stupider.

24  To the point of...um...was there a point?

25  Yes.

26  And you could put a hat on it.

27  Live life, guys, I'm tellin' ya.

28  Oh.

29  And love life.

30  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1  So...the other day I bought a gallon of Fat Free Organic Milk, because I'm a natural and sensitive kinda guy.

2  Actually, I THOUGHT I bought a gallon of NORMAL milk, you know, the kind that includes poisons, pesticides, chemicals, etc. But my daughter Nicole took a git off the milk and almost did a spit-take. "Who bought THIS?" she inquired.

3  I had no idea what she was talking about. I had thrown down a two-second glass earlier in the day and noticed very little.

4  But it's my nature to eat and drink fast. It's a terrible habit, but I've always been in jobs that have severe deadlines, so quite often my meals have to be quick so I can move on to the next big thing.

5  When I was younger, people would have called that a "death wish".

6  It made sense, I imagine. What are you speeding along for? If you're constantly on the go, then isn't that your ultimate destination?

7  And I was young when some guy told me that. I sat up for about two nights worrying about my mental state.

8  Didn't help.

9  I'm still a mess.

10  But I digress.

11  After Nicole drank the milk, she looked at the bottle and said it was organic milk.

12  I said, "Organic? Lemme see that!"

13  Sure enough, it said, "Organic" on it.

14  I took a swig, right out the bottle, you know how you do.

15  It tasted a lot more like powdered Imodium than it did milk, I must say.

16  What exactly constitutes "organic" anyway?

17  Isn't everything essentially "organic" since it' comes somewhere out of the Earth?

18  Or are the cows eating grass that has no pesticides?

19  Is there anything in 2009 that doesn't have some hint of pollutions and poisons?

20  I have to go back to Vonnegut's idea that we really do need a Secretary of the Future.

21  Anyway it really didn't taste THAT bad. I'm just not used to it.

22  Somewhere grazing in the hills there are green cows.

23  Moving on:  Now that Obama has chosen a non-CIA guy to head the CIA, I'm outraged. How can we possibly rule the world if we can't invade places arbitrarily, waterboard, stretch people taller, and replace whole countries with the people we want? And how can we feel safe if we can't listen in on peoples' phone calls? 

24  Color me worried. Ah, I pine for the good ol' days of the Cold War.

25  Moving on, Part the Second: As always, I'm about a three days late and a dollar short on everything, so I finally have enrolled in some new college classes at the very prestigious University of Phoenix.

26  I was supposed to have done this about four years ago but I've always been too busy. So I'm playing desperate catch-up. I'm shooting for twelve units by the end of summer, and fifteen by next year.

27  I decided to go the online route. So my first day of class was yesterday.

28  I literally went online and entered this monolith of links and instructions, and instantly scrambled all over the place trying to figure out where to go, what do do, which things to download, which orientation videos to watch and all the rest.

29  I was actually pretty chill about it, figuring that billions of other people do this every day, so I went along with it. I had already been preparing for around a week, but still, when they finally opened the virtual gates, I was pulled all over the online campus.

30  And it costs a small fortune.

31  Sounds like real college. I thought about trying out for the basketball team but they don't have one.

32  I'm sorta thinking of pumping up my own and starting one.

33  It's pretty stunning returning to being a student after having taught for a billion years. Last night at about eleven p.m. I finally found my classroom.

34  The teacher was packing up her stuff when I burst in.

35  "Am I late? Did I miss anything important? Don'tcha know me?"

36  Ha cha cha cha cha!

The late, great Jimmy Durante wid a little ha-cha cha!

37  Almost all true. I am doing six units by April, truly. So it's exciting going back to school.

38  Two days late and a dollar short, but I'm finally there.

39  Have a great Wednesday, willya?

40  Go green

41  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily

News

1  I KNOW, I KNOW. If you read yesterday's DN, you'll know I incorrectly but innocently mentioned that the root "vis" means "life". Imbecile. It's "viv" that means "life". "Vis" means "view". I re-read the DN and spotted that. No excuses, just me unable to think during night terrors.

2  Moving on: Maybe it's the CIA in me, but I love naming things. You know how the CIA loves to call everything "Operation Something"? Like if a coupla spies decided to go to the Great Mall they might call it "Operation Hot-Dog-on-a Stick", or if they go to the movies they might call it "Operation Bubblegum".

2  I think the CIA guys get a kick out of naming things "Operations".

3  We USED to call wars by their names: "The Civil War", "The Spanish-American War", "The War against Fat", etc. It's no coincidence that they now call them "Operations". The CIA is all up in our shit.

4  Pretty gangsta. "Up in our shit". That's colloquial now, don'tcha know. I'm not technically saying anything bad there. That's just straight gangsta.

5  But I digress.  So I like naming things. Hey, that's who I am. My most recent dubbing was on my classroom, which shall be called "The Cathedral" evermore.

6  Sooo...Sunday I had to pop the lock on a storage place I got right after having been hired at the Chill. It's a Public Storage, looks like that from the street, and when I put my things in there, I essentially ripped the walls off my YB life and put huge chunks in this storage unit. I stuffed entire bookcases into the room.

7  They looked like archeological artifacts when I visited, exactly as they were in the Peace 61. Things from the office all landed in a box. Pictures, programs, poetry, old scripts, rehearsal notes, designs all landed in different areas. I even came upon the famous Conspiracy Box containing all my books and resources.

8  The Consipracy Box was clearly identifiable by the fact that it was a box with a sort of cowhide wrapping all around it. I could have been called the Cow Box, but I named it the Conspiracy Box, just because.

9   The unit had tons of other things, all unrelated, a complete array of disorganization the likes of which the world hasn't seen since Bill Connolly moved his mountains of dusty boxes out of YB a few years ago.

10  For the record, I loved that guy, still do. Former OSS fellow. Total respect.

11  Look it up.

12  ANYWAY it was funny because I've probably been in that storage place twice since I moved, so it's pretty much a cold room stuck in time. Fresh prom pictures from '05 are still shiny and lovely. A fog machine we bought years ago sits on the cold concrete, still unused, but poised and ready for a show.

13  I had to go to Home Depot to get a bolt cutter in order to get into the place, and once in, I felt instantly like Indiana Jones, moving through all the lost artifacts of my sudden departure from YB. Walking around with a bolt cutter, by the way, esta MUY macho. I walked tall through the store, out the door and into the storage place.

14  It was cold in there, but the pictures taking me through virtually everything I had ever done in education warmed my soul. Nothing related to anything else, it was clear that in my life I never HAD a plan, just the beginnings of ideas, half-written plays, notes to actors, doodles, and on and on.

15  One box that was particularly awesome was a box I thought I had left on the stage, and that had gotten swept off the Earth. It was a box containing VHS copies of some old plays.

16  So I thought I had lost our 1990 version of Godspell, but there it was! I also found Guys and Dolls, and Little Shop, Moon Dreams, and Miracle Worker, among others. I even found a notebook folder to the Titanic script that played such a huge part in the Heidi Chronz.

17  I ALSO found a box of yearbooks. I remember now that I had gone into one of the storage rooms attached to the Theatre and found boxloads of old yearbooks. Nobody had a CLUE they were there among the dirt, dust and spider webs. I had grabbed one from every year I could, and there were still hundreds. Another vault, another time...

18  The best box was one containing hundreds of pictures from over the years, all mixed together. I found pictures dating back to at least 1986, and I'm sure some are even older. They were mixed in with pictures from then all the way up to 2005, faces, names and memories jumping back and forth across decades, slipping and sliding through the box as fast as I would look and launch.

19  I had pictures that made me stop and sigh. Always the same Theatre, the same smiles, just different faces, different shows, my entire life at YB all in this one room, coming alive all around me.

20  I was alone during all this.

21  At moments it was almost unbearable.

22  I almost got hit by some piece of wood, and I began thinking about how horrid it would be if I died and people came in there trying to make any sense out of any of it. Absolutely nothing was organized, so it was like watching all the shows and laughs and tears flash past me in this strange, disorganized, darkened vault.

23  I was originally tearing the place apart looking for a DVD of The Odyssey, but never found it. What I found was SO much more.

24  I missed YB. I missed everybody I ever worked with, laughed with, talked with, or just chilled with on the stage.

25  Perhaps the grandest find was a box I came across containing literally reams of DN's dating back to 1997. I kept tons of them over the years, so I have hard copies of old DN's, and if I get time, I'll try to pull up some vintage ones and see if I could re-create the color of paper and the fonts and all.

26  They were of shorter length back then, but certainly I could find some fun ones, I'm quite sure. I believe they go up to 2002, and when I began putting some archives on ybdrama.com.

27  It's more material than I could ever HOPE to organize, but it's nice to know it's around. I thought of putting it on another Xanga entirely. I have three already I think.

28  Anyway, there stood some interestingly fun, and sometimes dark things, but much of my career, for what it's worth, rests silently in that Vault.

29  Which is exactly what I'll call the place. Up 'til now it's been a storage place I never visit. Suddenly it's an archaeological discovery, at least to me. To a layman, it's a mess.

30  To me, it's become The Vault.

31  Some day I'd like to go in there and arrange everything so that my life doesn't look as ridiculous as all that.

32  But in many ways, I loved the bookcase that was pulled right off my wall in Peace 61 and placed in there with the books exactly as they were when I left.

33  I also like how one box has everybody I ever worked with mixing it up, like some dream I've always had of all the talented kids who went through there meeting one day and planning a great show. I imagine a lot of coaches dream of Hall-of-Fame teams playing together like some massive Strat-o-Matic game.

34  I found the video of The Show, incidentally, a show whose premise was that we never really put on different shows. From the moment the Drama Workshop burst on the scene with Silents, it had been one long Show.

35  I stood alone looking at those bright, beautiful pictures amid dusty, fading scripts, and yellow highlighters. There was a complete Indiana Jones feel to the entire place, and all the treasures and secrets it kept.

36  It is now The Vault, and shall remain forevermore.

37  Which could be as early as next week.

38  Nah...not quite yet. I'll be going back when I have a little more time.

36  Meanwhile, stay safe, and enjoy the good times.

37  Be seein' ya later.

38  Peace.

~H~ 

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1  I always assume that in my previous life I was a dog, and that one day when I get back from all this, I will assume that role, finally reaching the karmic state for which I was clearly intended.

2  Then again, I have times that clearly insist that I was once a cartoon cat, a sort of Jerry to the world's Tom, constantly jetting away right before life moves in.

3  Welcome back.

4  The other night I was comfortably back in school, doing everything I was supposed to, knowing full well that I had made it to lunch without some form of forgotten catastrophe jumping all over me.

5  A walkie crackled. "Where IS he???"

6  My good friend Margaret's voice reassured the caller, "He's somewhere, I'm sure. Just relax!"

7  I felt as though I stood in a dark alley, listening as lights and sounds flashed all around me. I was an alley cat caught in a cartoon. And I was on lunch, to boot, meaning that I was to answer to no one.

8  It suddenly hit me that we were on a special schedule and that I was supposed to be teaching my last class.

9  Something in me jolted me into the air. I somehow hit a frying pan and flattened, sliding back down the side of it onto an enormous plate.

10  I awoke trembling.

11  It was 5 a.m. and I was safely on my couch, my eyes glowing loudly in the dark, any frosty sense of the chill hitting only the middle of my chest and my third toe in.

12  I looked around, noticing how many things had LCD lights. They trailed in and out of the kitchen area, walked along my east wall, and danced directly in front of my new laptop, a contraption that has literally thousands blinking on and off at various times throughout the night.

13  I touched the motherboard and the thing lit up with the passion of a winter sunrise.

14  It was time.

15  Harper cries. S-h-h-h-h.

16  "...'tis time."

17  Is 5 a.m. considered early or late?

18  I knew instinctively to begin writing this morning's DN; that much I DID know.

19  As I waited for Xanga to pop up, I noticed that the cursor or whatever you call that little thing that dashes crazily all over the screen had suddenly begun darting off to each corner, hiding as I drew circles everywhere in a demented attempt at finding it before my ideas ran out.

20  The little imp hid on me, suddenly jumping across the screen and popping off just as swiftly. I heard the dog awaken with a nervous shake. It wouldn't be long before she would come to my ear and bark with a tenor that would shatter all the windows on the Temple of Jupiter. I logged into Trend, the Internet police and put it to work in the background. I understand that the Trojan Horse has been seen lurking in our parts, and that threats have been made on a bi-daily basis. I instructed Trend on the situation, and it fell into hiding.

21  Just then it occurred to me that I had NO idea what the word "viscerous" meant, and instinctively went to "Dictionary.com" to find out.

22  It became a race. I had to find that out before I did anything else. I assume it's because like most people, I know deep inside that I'm a complete sham, that some day the entire world will KNOW, for gawdsakes, and that my cover will be blown.

23  This is why you shouldn't take a shot of Ny-Quil just before you retire for the evening, especially when you're at the tail end of a Christmas vacation,  and you KNOW that re-entry will occur in 048 hours. Instinctively, the cursor knew this and began cooperating. Thank goodness for that.

24  I came up empty on the word, and began talking in tongues: "Vis" means "live or life" and Ceres was the god of...

25  Oh what the HELL was Ceres the god of...? Was he a dog? Or was he a she?

26  I KNEW that one but went again to "Dictionary.com" which instantly reminded me that Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture, akin to the Greek Demeter. So "viscerous" must have been something having to do with a farmer who was full of life, a lively farmer. Not bloody likely, but I liked it.

27  Demeter. I jumped back to the DN. The pronunciation rang in my head: "dem' uh ter". At least that's how MY teacher taught it to me.

28  Dem' uh ter. I didn't know how to make a schwah, or upside-down "e", so I just wrote "uh", which I know to be the same pronunciation.

29  A high voice, presumably of my sister Gayle, popped up in my left ear. "Duh-MEET-ur" it said, not with a whisper, but with a bang.  I stood corrected once again, all in the darkness of the morning. I heard a loud, high-pitched "BOWT!!!"

30  Dog. Pee. Freezing morning. Sliding door. Blast of frost. Skittish dog paws. Waggy tail. Fear of prowler. Darkness. LCD lights. Frost.

31  The dog scurried into the yard at alarming speed, presumably to chase the prowler, and I hurried back to the computer to look up the pronunciation of the word "Demeter". Six different dictionaries had it at "Di MEET ir", Gayle's pronunciation, even though Gayle had nothing to do with any of this. I was wrong, wrong, wrong!

32  Mute rolling of thunder, followed by shrieking "BOWT!"

33  Dog ran into sliding door, or at least it sounded like it. I get back up. Dog is okay. Open door. Blast of frost. Close door almost on dog's icy nose. She slips past and bounds down hall. Close door. Back to computer. Go to the blue light. Make swift tense shift.

34  As the frost wore off it occurred to me that the word I was looking for was "visceral", which in medical terms has to do with intestines and bowels ("viscera") but to normal people simply means "acting by instinct rather than reason".

35  Perfect.

36  It's 6:52 a.m. Still dark. Still freezing. I can't wait to finish up so I could put down the screen and watch the LCD lights come out bright as stars.

37  Trend Micro, the Internet police, pops up to tell me that all security threats have been removed.

38  "Visceral". Means "instinctive".

39  I knew it.

40  I stopped worrying. I wasn't a flattened cartoon cat. I wasn't a guy who didn't know the word "visceral". I wasn't a sham.

41  It's still.

42  All is calm. All is bright. The cat just awoke. He'll bother me until I get up and turn the water on in the bathroom sink. He refuses to drink out of a bowl, or even the toilet. He's a fountain cat. He's a cool cat. His name is Todd.

43  Welcome back.

44  Peace.

~H~

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