"I love it when a plan comes together…"

10:31 PM - When I searched for "Get Smart" on Amazon to see when or if they were going to start releasing the seasons, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why did this turn up in the results? Just as a semi-warning, the link is probably work-safe, but you'll have a damn hard time explaining to your co-workers why that was on your screen.

2:43 AM - Going back to a topic from a previous post, there was a time when I did have a career path laid out in front of me like, well, a path.

It started in fourth grade when the class had a creative writing assignment that everyone had to read out loud. Teachers and students alike told said, "You should be a writer." A writer? You mean I can be rich and famous just by sitting around all day making shit up? I love making shit up! Also, I had a crippling fear back then of working in an office environment, with suits and ties, and cubicles, and asshole bosses, and office politics, and 9-5 five days a week, and commuting, and watercooler conversations, and other people, so much so that I vowed I would never sit in a cube (if there's one thing my time as an English major prepared me for, it's irony).

I should also mention that I went to school in Mechanicsville (jr. high: Stonewall Jackson, sr. high: Lee-Davis), and standards of writing there are little lower than they are for, say, a Shoney's Menu, or Christian X-Files fan fiction, or the latest Ann Coulter screed.

The point is, and should have been much sooner, that that particular dream died a slow death from a terminal, wasting disease, and was laid to rest in a pauper's grave without even a clergyman in attendance.

But tonight, I found that someone had exhumed the coffin just to hammer one last nail in the lid. I was at my local Barnes and Noble when I came across this: Sex in the Hood 2, by White Chocolate. Yes, this is a novel. Yes, it's a sequel - see the 2? And yes, it was filed by author under C for Chocolate. How can I compete with that?