Mandarin Design has obtained a pre-release issue of Time magazine, which breaks the incredible story of how a small-town sociopath bootstrapped himself out of poverty and opprobrium to win a sizable chunk of the fortune bequeathed to the ne'er-do-well heirs of the man who invented dynamite. Explosive revelations! Don't miss it.

This is the outline of the book I'm working on. It's rough still. It will change. But this gives you a general idea where I'm headed...

You meet the most remarkable people here, wherever "here" is. The number above is the name of her blog. A telephone number? A Swiss bank account? Whatever the case may be, do have a look. Searching around for more background on Leslie, I found an article from a French magazine, which includes a much scarier picture than the one below. As I can't read French, I passed it off to a translation engine, except I think I must have checked Martian as the target language. One thing I was able to determine from this, however, is that she was once personal assistant to William Burroughs. The article mentioned many more amazing details of her life, but these are only discernable by reading between the lines, and in some cases, between the words and letters of the words. I've tried to clean it up, but despite my best efforts it remains obscure, as you can see below. The album cover links to Amazon, but Leslie tells me that if enough people express an interest, the tracks might just appear on her site in another form. The Amazon France page offers samples. I am quite confident that the direction we're heading in is going to lead to exactly the outcome that we all want to see. A strange virus...

in the company of time the skin yields under the backstage beautiful at first glance medical chaos difficult for this world concessions overcome side of the devil so vigilant and catwalks resound the medium reassuring naked ice this moment the hand of insolence sharpened as books on the blows of the cars walk in wood live this paleness you negotiate and they will be your paradise there to look upon the precision of releasing you from terror cross the place of junkies like a hired absurdity with splendid and conscious thundering laughter the insane phantoms returned the woman in time to blood in a similar mouth engenders wavering heart you are the harmony of children five forgotten poets wonder and decency wild with the macabre

Thanks to some fast footwork by Ev (or was it Evan?) Plato is back online! Ann Craig gives us an update on how she's doing, along with some very strange medical testing she's being subjected to. No wonder people are turning away from Western Medicine in droves! Ann (a.k.a. Plato) is seen at the right gazing appreciatively at Ev for making it possible for her to blog again. This is all pretty confusing, I know. But then, what isn't in these days of shameless postmodern pastiche? It reminds me of one of my favorite blues that goes...

if the river was whiskey
and I was a divin' duck
yeah if the river was whiskey
and I was a divin' duck
you know I'd dive down to the bottom
mama and I'd never come up.

Ah yes, those were the days. Sadly, I did have to come up. Just couldn't hold my breath for more than 20 years. And that was 20 years ago. But what has this got to do with Plato? Nothing, really. I'm just working on my typing skills over here. Free dissociating, as Jeneane likes to say. Speaking of whom, I just remembered that she asked me to tell you that she loves you, Annie. So see, it all comes back around, it all comes together in ways we could never have imagined. And the whole of our lives is always more than the sum of our partings. You can quote me.

So, Plato, let us reason together...

Or not. It is all one. Which somehow led me to search google for another appropriate grafik for this post. Here's what I found. Two things, actually...

Repo Barbie Comes with Malibu Dream Car, aliens in trunk, plate-o-shrimp, and Christmas tree air freshener. Have your worst enemies look in the trunk. And she is intense. Repo Barbie is always intense. But she never goes running to the man. Repo Barbie goes it alone.