I was sorting through the e-mail program this last weekend, and I opened up my “sent mail folder.”
A little over 9,000 messages sent. That works out to about 25 replies in a single day. Considering that I wasn’t available some weekends, that number suggests the average is off. Lots of work there.
Then I got to cleaning out the spam, and what I found, after clearing away a lot of the strictly junk mail? I still averaged close 3,000 inbound messages in a 30 day period. That’s roughly a 100 messages per day. Weekends are light, and the new spam measures are working a little bit better, I’m down from an all time high of almost 6,000 messages in a 30-day period.
That suggests almost half of the stuff I get is crap.
If you’ve ever sent me a message I haven’t responded, might have gotten caught in the anti-spam stuff.
There’s nothing like a long, hot walk along the banks of the river to free my mind from the constraints of sitting at a computer, answering mail. Which is what I did, take a nice, long stroll. For almost two hours, I was lost in a magical land, stuck someplace between childhood and reality, and the cell phone didn’t chirp once.
I’ve been playing with a design idea, and it’s not in place yet, might never be, but for now, the link works. Perhaps it’s just a bit a whimsy, or maybe it’s an idea for a new splash.
Fluke
Fluke by Christopher Moore.
A reader I’ve always respected, even though he can be a pain in the butt sometimes, suggested Moore’s Practical Demonkeeping several years ago. I carried that title around, and when I finally stumbled upon a copy of the book in a used bookstore, I snatched it up. The artowrk was a little lurid for my tastes and I didn’t get around to actually reading the book until later. At which point, as soon as set that book down, I rushed right out and purchased everything I could find by Christopher Moore.
Funny stuff. My personal favorite thus far, still has to be Lamb. Just a brilliant bit of satire, farce, and maybe an element of truth.
Fluke is about whales, has a lot of whale biology stuff, and the book should carry some kind “save the whales” sticker. Which is does. What makes this a little different from previous Moore books is that there’s a message written into the plot, all about whales. But it’s so much fun, and the message is transparently conveyed, and the story is basically a ripping good yarn, why worry?
In fact, it’s not until the author’s after words, that the message becomes clear.
Like the previous novels, there’s magic, supernatural, the sublime, characters with very human foibles, and humor. Not to give it away, but they do live happily ever after.
And on top of all that, there’s some pretty interesting stuff about whales. Real whale science. Cool.
It’s pretty hard to write a message into a work of fiction and not irritate the bejeebers out of me. Fluke didn’t suck. It was fun.