Yes, I forgot to upload the redirect page, but canny Bleatniks always know to check the URL above, adding the current date. So there’s a big Yesterday waiting if you didn’t. Sorry!

Got a call yesterday from a windshield glass repair company. Wanted to know if I had any windshield glass in need of repair. I said no, and I was on a no-call list, thank you, good bye.

Because people have a big crack in their windshield and think “I wish someone would call and offer to fix this for me. I just don’t know who to turn to.”

Later in the day I got a call from a home remodeling company. Wanted to know if I had any major projects I wanted done. I asked: are you cold-calling for jobs? He admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that he was. “One of those no-job-too-small’ outfits?” I asked, and he said sure, whereupon I outlined something I might need done.

He said no, that was too small.

So beggars can be choosers. Tonight the wall-phone rings - never a good sign, really - and a lady asks if my wife is around. I say yes, and what is this in reference to? Whereupon she goes into a cheerful spiel: this is a survey and a petition, if you don’t mind, and would you agree with the following statement, blah blahceter a yadda blah blahda. I said “Of course.” She went on to the next statement, and I listened to the torrent of boilerplate, after which I said “Yes,” and while she said she did not want to prejudice my opinion based on that last response, would you agree ON AND ON AND ON, until she asked me to press nine to sign a petition. I said that first of all, she didn’t have my wife on the phone, and I wasn’t going to speak for her. The lady launched into another spiel, and I said

“Ma’am.”

She kept talking.

“Ma’am.”

She kept talking.

“MA’AM,” I said.

And I realized I had been talking to a recording. All the time. It was because she - sorry, it - began by asking for my wife by name.

It’s been that kind of a week. That kind of a year, really. As I said before: 2013 is askew. Nothing meshes quite right. If I was a superstitious man I’d say Zalgo is on the way, but it’s not that level of world-ending mass insanity that comes from beholding his incomprehensible visage. In fact, the last five years have felt like the 70s in reverse, which means we’re heading straight into a maelstrom of hippiesm before returning to some sort of swank time where the trappings and costumes of adulthood take on a serious cast.

And that would be good, right? Or bad, right? After all, we’ve learned from Mad Men that it was a bad time for people who weren’t rich and detached or highly functioning creative alcoholics. But it’s always a bad time for everyone in America. If it doesn’t seem so from the outside, it’s because people construct personas that let them get through the day, psychological Depends to cover up for emotional incontinence, fictions they trade with others while pretending the play is the story of their lives, not the falsehoods they summon up to suppress the truth.

Ahhh, codswaddle. Today at the work blog I talked about a guy who has some play somewhere, duly approved by the New York Times; he plays Walt Disney, dresses up to look like Hitler, and has sex with Snow White and maybe all the dwarves, I don’t know. There’s a picture of himself as Disney, with his pants down, grinning.

There’s a certain type of artistic personality that is just bored with any sort of innocent simple tale, even if the thing they detest has more levels and resonances than they want to admit. Upending the old established norms, that’s the sign of a true talent - even if those norms were turned on their head and bounced in the gutter like a pogo stick for the last 40 years straight.

Oh my stars & bars. Or Stars & Garters, if you prefer. I did not expect this. We’d discounted the prediction - made last week - of 97, since that seemed absurd. This morning it was warmer, but clouds came down like a pot lid at 9:30 and it looked as if the first hot day would be naught but more dank May. Noon changed. The temps stood up on shaky legs, found its strength, and spent the rest of the afternoon climbing. At five I opened a kitchen window and the heat of an oven flowed in. Checked my phone:

Turned on the air conditioning. Well, should be 42 by Friday.

The rest of the stadium proposal was unveiled today - a park where my office stands, and a wall of office towers / residences to line one side. It’s great.

The comments on the Strib site are absolutely nuts, for the most part; people hate it because there’s public money for a parking ramp, but they’d hate it if there wasn’t anything - then they’d pull out the “crime” card and say no one wants to live there and it’ll be full of gangbangers and if that doesn’t work then it’s Minneapolis trying to be a big city which it isnt lol and if that doesn’t seem to fly, then the Strib pushed all this redevelopment so the paper could sell the land I mean really a fool could see it, at which point you note that a fool apparently has.

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough today; time to get back to the novel and other projects. Visit a little bit of old "modern" Minneapolis in the update, and I'll see you in the usual places.