How do you sleep at night?

No, really, I’m actually sort of curious. 

I ask in part because your latest e-mail — sent not to me but to my funder, because you apparently really are  that bent on my destruction — was dated 12:15 a.m. 

Second question: when did you decide this was how you wanted to spend your retirement?  Was it something you contemplated while you were still employed, and so you’ve had years to dream up these schemes? Or was it something that came to you more recently, and so you’ve given up on other, presumably less diverting pursuits?

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In the Joel Chandler Harris piece “The Wonderful Tar Baby Story,” the character normally regarded as the hero (Brer Rabbit) gets his comeuppance through a piece of arrogance.  It is the only story, in fact, where Brer Rabbit gets caught. 

And why does this happen?  Because he picks a fight.  Unprompted, uncaused, for no possible reason other than an entirely imagined affront to his honor consisting of not being saluted and hallooed of a warm afternoon.  Because, in other words, he is an arrogant buffoon who believes that everyone should always defer to him.

For which pains he ends up covered in tar and turpentine, as he richly deserves.

The original version leaves it hanging as to whether the fox eats the rabbit for dinner.  I would leave our little discursis with a different, but equally postmodern twist, which is to ask the question: who is the enemy here?  And what does one possibly gain by picking a fight with me?

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I had to make do with generous dollop of ice cream and apricot crisp, plus an hour and a half of Meryl Streep warbling her way through the ABBA playbook in “Mamma Mia”; the combination was effective as a narcotic, but only for 90 minutes.

After which my poor head returned to the mad hamster in his madly spinning wheel.  Four things I will try to remember:

a.) As a co-worker once told me: It’s not your baby, so it doesn’t matter if it dies. 

b.) As Joel Chandler Harris has told generations of young people: Don’t punch the baby.  You’ll just end up covered in goo.

c.) As someone (perhaps George Moscone) once told my mother: Never wrestle with a pig.  The pig loves it, and you’ll just end up covered in shit.

d.) And as Rob Breszny told me when I opened up the News and Review this morning to read my astrology: when the shit starts flying, take cover.

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“I have my community service at 4 o’clock that morning, so I can’t make it.”

“I have literally run out of every conceivable password. I will have to google a good one.”

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I have it on good authority that Sacramento is a “great place” because of the adventitious proximity of tattoo parlors, skateboarding accessory outlets, and gamer stores in Howe ’bout Arden.

And that what the cool kids are now doing is karaoke at the frozen yogurt shop.

So much, and yet so little, has changed about this town in the past 20 years.

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So these antibiotics apparently have antidepressant properties. This will likely mean I will be extra chatty over the coming months. I apologize in advance.

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“Bill, you are a capable and mature young man, and your father and I have raised you to make good decisions. I am sure that we will be happy to welcome into our home any woman you decide to introduce to the family. It won’t matter to us if she’s colored, as long as she’s not Catholic.”

For South Carolina in 1962, this was radical liberalism.

The only change I would make is substituting “Mormon” for “Catholic.”

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Branwell Bronte and I now have something in common.

Here’s to a nine-month course of antibiotics. Which, among other things probably means I’ll lose another 10 pounds (since taking the meds with booze is contraindicated).

Oh, and to finally getting around to reading Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

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