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A new mantra. I will say, "My mouth is a moist environment" when extremely angry. I tried it yesterday for twenty minutes after getting in a fight with a pissy neighbor/neighborhood vermin. (A carbon-based life form who will eventually, and spectucularly, get his comeuppance, to the pleasure of all misfortunate enough to have met him. More on this when that day happens, though such pedestrian heartaches as middle-management politicking exposed and unattended funerals are so minimally covered that one may never hear news about this so-called man.) Though it dried my mouth, it deflated my temper.

Also, a new ambition, to supplement previously existing ambitions (early retirement to an administrative post in a small but well-funded college; cult stardom in twenty square blocks of Williamsburg and Echo Park). Now I'm planning a triptych. It's going to be a thinly-veiled autobiography in three parts, called "M.O.I.", unfolding as a (1) reminiscence of heady, greasy-faced teenaged passions; (2) a murder mystery about a book plate; (3) a long distance romance between a disappointed hausfrau and the New Yorker essayist who, unbeknownst to him, has written everything he's ever written for her; a volcano keeps them apart. I will not disclose all the titles I have in mind, since I don't yet know how to secure patents for my intellectual property, except to say that #2 will be entitled "Ex Libris" and that embossed, Haettenschweiler-studded covers for it will be printed by the ton. I am only half-joking about this.