Sweet Caroline

Neil Diamond is the Jewish Elvis, but he's also a mean mother of a neighbor. That's right, don't even THINK about adding 13 feet to the height of your edifice if you live next to the Solitary Man. After all, he's Neil Diamond, and he's earned his right to some privacy.

I'm totally siding with Neil on this one. A demigod has to feel free to expose his hairy chest to the elements on occasion, and you can't expect a superstar of Neil Diamond's calibur to do so in the shadow of a "large-copper clad structure and steel beams." It's unseemly.

Season of loneliness

I am about to embark on a season of loneliness that may only be rivaled by that experienced by my brother Boyd, lo, some years ago. Bereft of human companionship, he wasted away in my parents sprawling rambler during a cold and bitter winter. No one and nothing, it seemed, could console him in his isolation.

It was a hard thing to watch (or at least hear about after the fact since I was, at the time, completely unaware of his solitary situation).

But as I said, I will soon face the same grim fate. My wife and child will journey to a golden land of mirth and revelry, while I languish in a brackish pool of my own self-pity. True, they will only be gone for 10 days, but what long, trying days they will be without the gentle touch of my woman's hand and the heartening warmth of my baby's smile.

Must...blog...now...

I don't know why, but I was suddenly overtaken by an incredible urge to blog. The weird thing is, I don't really have anything different, interesting or funny to say. Not that that's a reason not to blog. Because what would the blogosphere be without mindless, numbing stupidity?

And speaking of stupidity, isn't the word "blog" innately stupid? I mean, it sounds like something that boiled up from the depths of an upset stomach. Couldn't the inventor of the word "blog" have come up with something less guttural sounding? Prettier?

A blog is a "web log," right? What if instead we called them web letters - "bletters?" Because that's kind of what a blog is, right? An open letter to the world. And "bletter" kind of sounds like "better." And isn't that what blogging should really be all about? Making the world a "bletter" place?