Thanks again to everyone that purchases items through my Amazon links, buys my Antiques Made Fresh Daily, and those that purchase and look at the cover of my collection of flash fiction, The Devil’s In The Cows.I love you all more than indoor plumbing, which, coincidentally, we’re thinking of installing in our home soon.

Thanks to everyone that reads, of course, and those hardy souls that leave comments here. I try not to throw sharp elbows, and I think I’ve been rewarded in turn with hundreds of Interfriends of uncommon affability. I would like to respond to comments more often, and faster, but I am banished to the workbench for most of the day and cannot. Talk among yourselves. Or read The Rumford Meteor to catch up on what’s burning to the ground or freezing over within driving distance of my hovel here in Maine.

I finally realized who commenter BGC was, very much later than his message. Bruce! He recommended I read Chariot of Reaction’s take on “Low Church Libertarians.” He intimated that it might have reminded him of me, which I find flattering. I found it a fascinating short disquisition about a kind of person I know well. Unfortunately, I can’t self-identify with persons like that. They’re too… hmm… reliable for me to claim brotherhood with them. They’re the sort of people whose respect I’ve always hungered for, and you should too. I would have an IQ of 130, though — if you hit me on the back of the head with a shovel, and then put a number two pencil in my quivering clutch and gave me the test. I’d probably be better off for the blow to the head, too. A zig-zag streak of lightning in the brain is a curse. But I’m not a math guy, and never was. And I stopped going to school in any sort of reliable manner when I was 16, so I ain’t educated enough to be simultaneously looked up to and down upon by the gentry in this manner.

Reader and commenter Derek Alexander mentioned he’s writing flash fiction and partly blames me for his inspiration. That’s not fair, really. I deserve most of the blame for my own writing, but that’s as far as I’ll go. He’s got his own book to sell, Death at the Downs (A Cathy Vega Mystery), and it’s free, of all things, if you have Amazon Prime, and only a buck if you don’t. I really should convert my book to Kindle but I’m too busy hitting my thumb with a hammer all day. That’s the good thing about a Kindle. You only have to hit it once with a hammer. A thumb you have to hit over and over to get the desired effect.

My friends at Maggie’s Farm are having their annual pledge drive. They’re all stinking rich, and blissfully don’t want any money, so they’re befuddled about what to ask you to pledge. They settled on asking you to read them regularly, instead of the more usual PBS method of asking you for money to ensure that you can turn them off with impunity. Of course the only way Maggie’s can ask you to keep reading them is if you’re reading them in the first place. They’re like a bank offering toasters to people who already have savings accounts with them. That won’t fly. Go over there and read them in the first place. They’re raging Republicans, but it doesn’t seem to have hurt them none, and they like Bob Dylan more than you do, but other than that, they’re sound.

Glynn Young, who occasionally mistakes me for a competent writer and identifies me as such on his blog, has a book: Dancing Priest. Glynn is as pleasant as the third week in June so I imagine his book is, too. I never have the heart to tell bloggers that no sane person will read a blog that has white text on a black background, but I wish someone else would tell Glynn that.

Gagdad Bob, who drops by here from time to time from One Cosmos, produces text like a mill with eccentric gears, has all sorts of books, including this one: One Cosmos under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit. Bob has made my life miserable by not only using big words, but inventing about half of them to boot. He is the appendix of the Intertunnel’s spellchecker, where interesting things collect.

A frequent visitor here, Casey Klahn, is an interesting man and a great artist. He’s in my decrepit and untended blogroll as The Colorist. I consider him my friend though I’ve never met him. Lord knows what he considers me. You can see some of his work for sale here, and buy it if you have any sense and some money, which are infrequently seen at the same place at the same time, I’m told. How would I know? I’m fresh out of both.

Hey, I think Target already has Christmas decorations up, or maybe they’ve already moved on to Valentine’s Day 2013. I have no way of knowing. The only store in Rumford is an Aubuchon Hardware and they don’t sell Christmas ornaments any time of the year, just things to repair things that make heat, and fire extinguishers to put out the fire you caused with those things they sold you last week. At any rate, you should buy your Christmas ornaments from 32 Degrees North, who show up here to show me up by being pleasant all the time under the soubriquet Daughter Of The Golden West. 

Gerard at American Digest claims to be my friend and I don’t deny it. I wish he wrote all the time because I’d read it. He’s of the editor tribe, though, and when he comes to the pool it’s generally to drag it for bodies, not pee in it, so to speak. He’s always been generous with his praise of my writing and I’m grateful for it.

I have a batch of furniture ready to offer that’s ready to ship, and I’m busy folding, spindling, and mutilating pixels and getting my illegible javaprescriptions filled, and generally acting all hyper about my text on my furniture webpage just now. I have to do it all myself, and everyone keeps breaking the Internet when I’m not looking, and I have to learn new programming languages instead of learning to swear in French as I’d prefer. If you want to be notified of the appearance of heavily discounted furniture when it first appears on my stand by the side of the Intertunnel, go here and type your email address in the box atop the page, and the Mail Chimp will verify you’re not a can of Spam and you’re good to go.

The results of the Amazon Checkout/ Google Wallet preference survey I subjected you to earlier were 95 percent Amazon, 5 percent Google. I’m dull, but I can take a hint. I’ll make it so.