Hope in dark times

Just when things couldn’t get any worse, they did. But it turned out they didn’t really, and Sara’s right, I worry too much.

I’ve just come back into my office, and I heard this horrible rasping from the left wing of my iMac. My mind is going, “It’s the fan, right? It can’t be the hard drive, it can’t be the hard drive, aiyeeeee.”

Careful investigation has revealed the real problem. I had an online jazz station playing, way down … Read more

Sky gravid with precipitate disaster II: The haiku

In the interests of conciseness, a fundamental rule of good writing style, and seeing how much Jack likes my turns of phrase, I’ve converted much of my lengthy “Licking doorknobs” post of 19 June — a tribute to investors and  financial analysts everywhere — into a haiku:

Dark skies gravid with

Precipitate disaster.

Bears sail arks of gold.

Hey, it’s got 17 syllables. What more do you expect? Maybe Jack or his “nameless scrivener” can tell me if Read more

Financial analysts & policymakers & frozen-doorknob lickers

Chicken Little epidemic

Our streets appear increasingly aswarm with Chicken Little financial savants.

All around the world, it seems, a hard rain is about to fall. The sky is gravid with precipitate disaster, and quite a few people are reviewing plans to build financial arks, many of these latter-day Noahs figuring they’ll build their boats of gold.

And good luck to them. One advantage of being a starving writer in a state of perennial penury—blessed with a principled resistance to Read more