Got my birthday present from my friend Lisa Jonte of Arcanum Visual yesterday: Write it and Sell It, by Allen Marple.

It's tremendously telling, I think that this book is 38 years old, and EVEN THEN, assholes were taking people's money to be their agents and read their scripts, and Marple takes a refreshingly dim view of this. "To my knowledge, one school advertised that its courses were approved under the GI Bill. But then the government seemed to put faith in such ads as: They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano.

Of course, the typewriter is easier to play than the piano, but still I wonder."

TomSmith, mentioned Thursday 3.07 in this space, has a website at TomSmithOnline.com.

Speaking of piano men, I was practicing mine today. I have no ambitions of becoming a concert pianist, I just want to be the person at the party who can play the standards for everyone to sing along to.


Today I made a Crap Box. I took a box, closed it so it couldn't be easily re-opened again, cut a slit in the top, and started shoving in slips of paper with things and people that distress me. Sort of like a Bank of Bad. It's fixed so the crap can't ooze back out, and I throw it forcefully behind my desk when I add something to it. There was a lot in the Crap Box this morning.

Yikes, a cop just drove up the street, close to and right in front of my house, sent me right out of my chair. I forgot he lives across the street. We live in a small town, the chances were good a cop would be across the street. Sort of motivates one to keep the vehicles in registration, and the dogs in the yard.

And in other important to me news, I found my CD player remote. You think remotes are for weenies, until you have to walk the whole way across the room to skip a track that is jerking because there's a divot in the disc. Right now, I am listening to mix CDs I made for myself. Later, I'll play Dance Dance Revolution. I am aggressively adequate with isolated moments of stylin' at it, but it's still fun.