Taking a Break in the Culture Wars

There is nothing more emblematic of the current American culture than those commercials on "overactive bladder syndrome," where adult women reveal that they occasionally dribble before they can get to the bathroom. As REM once noted:

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine..."

Well, I do feel fine, even as I readily acknowledge that our culture is basically acting like a Grand Slam breakfast sliding off a table in an earthquake. Every morning I watch the overactive bladder commercial, and my initial thought is, what do those actresses put on their resume? "Expert portrayal of urine dribbler..." Inquiring minds want to know.

I've also found myself hypnotized by Anna Nalick's hypnotic song Breathe (2 a.m.):

There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout
'Cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out
These mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again
If you only try turning around.

I can't get the thing out of my mind. It's as bad as...well...the afore-quoted REM's Losing My Religion, some sort of hypnocryptic mental meth inadvertantly burned into the ole organic RAM. "Download me," Ms. Nalick whispers in my ear. "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII...tunes......"

I did, however, finish my book proposal for BULLET POINTS: POSTCARDS FROM THE HEART OF THE GUN CULTURE. My agent at Wm. Morris had me go through seven iterations of the proposal, which runs to, like, 25 pages. It started circulating in NYC yesterday...now I need to breathe, just breathe, for the next 4 months or so while various and sundry editors masticate it. Assuming it sells, somewhere along the line I have to write the thing, which should actually be fun. I haven't written a book-length manuscript since my ill-fated work with a professional speaker a couple of years ago. I was willing to ghost his book for a few bucks; what we wanted me to do was actually refine his thinking...what do I mean when I say this? I'm perfectly willing to do that as well, but it costs, say, 5X what a straight-forward ghost job might cost. I wrote him a book; I don't even know whether he published it or not. I do know he still owes me money, but there you are...

So breathe. Just breathe...