Standards, Pumpkins, and Cabins

I thought about deleting yesterday’s post. It’s clearly not up to my “standards” of timely, witty, biting, and relevant-to-everyone writing. I just rambled on in sentence fragments about my uninteresting day. Who’d want to read that?

But I don’t want to censor myself. So, I’ll leave it all out there. If I don’t censor other people’s comments in which anonymous people in my posts are outed, why would I censor myself when I write of men with Cheeto fingers touching my workspace?

It’s interesting. There are people out there who would recommend changing the “So” that began the preceding paragraph’s second sentence with a “Thus.” I’m not one of these people. “So” works just fine. But then again, I don’t have orange fingers.

Yesterday, I went to the soon-to-be-imploded main Santa Monica Public Library. They’re moving to a new location down the street and around the corner. Until then, it’s cramped and musty and messy. But I’m not complaining. In the New Books section, I discovered that William T. Vollmann (one of my 3 or 4 favorite authors) has a new novel out – Europe Central. In all my wayward distracted reading of literary/book websites/blogs, I had heard nothing about this book. Considering that it’s 800+ pages and weighs more than a fair pumpkin, I imagine he’s been working on it for some time. Either the smallish press publicity machine has completely missed me or William likes to keep secrets. Anyway, it was with great excitement that I grabbed and later checked out the behemoth of a book about the wartime governments of early 20th century Soviet Union and Germany. It’s like a surprise Christmas present on December 27th. Or a “lost” Seinfeld episode finding the light of day. Because it’s a new release, I have to give it back after two weeks if someone else requests it, which, I’ve discovered with this crazy town of Santa Monica, is not an unlikely event. I hope I can finish it in two weeks. Considering that it took me three years to get through Vollmann’s last novel about the Queen of the Whores, The Royal Family, this is unlikely. Also, I’ve read about six pages and I have to ask - William, what the hell are you talking about?

And to address the one recent event that all of you want my opinion of... I'm glad that the Timberwolves signed Damien Wilkins. He's Dominique's son, so he's got to know something about the game. And the team needs to get younger. Plus, Fred Hoiberg isn't about to walk through that door any time soon. He's up at his northern Minnesota lake cabin healing his heart, so some big guard/small forward depth is warranted. Does it scare you that I actually located and linked to a story of an obscure NBA player's presence at his lake cabin?