Up betimes, for what is prognosticated to be the last warm day of the year, having latte'd at the Rocket Bakery, sitting serenely but alertly now before my monitor, smoking the last of the Widow's mighty Mite: Le calme rentre dans mon coeur. My monthly money having arrived, I'm thinking how, for little or none of it, I might buy a foam rubber sleeping-pad for Friday, maybe giving him my room key before I leave with Annie to play pinochle with Ham and Gloria tonight, so that he can let himself in. You'd think just a foam rubber pad would be easy to find, and reasonably cheap; but I bet it's not.

I note that, with the Bush-approved "Detainee Bill" just passed by the Senate, the ruling junta has institutionalized fucking torture as the Law of the Land and of the World. It's time to go. Or do some damned thing. It's tough being a one-eyed man: Nobody gets it but me, and precious, marginal few others. The most I can say for my fellow citizens is that their inability to believe what's happening to them does credit to their essentially decent moral character. That won't, of course, prevent their being pillaged, tortured and murdered by the very authorities they so unquestioningly resign themselves to. Remember, Anatole, Cassandra had a fraternal twin (quadruplet?) brother, who evidently, wisely, put out for Apollo, as she unwisely didn't, and so was granted the gift of prophecy without having to be disbelieved, or sold into slavery and murdered to satisfy the envious hatred of an alien Queen. Remember, and take heart.