• Learn to play the harp

• Put harp out where you think tortoises might be
• Play
• Tortoises will crawl out of their hiding places and come in close to listen
• Catch as many as you need before they can run away

It’s still too cold to put our tortoise outside, so she spends the days in our kitchen, usually hiding under the bench when she isn’t wandering around underfoot pretending to be a hockey puck. When my daughter practices, she (tortoise) crawls out from under the kitchen bench, through the living room towards the library, where aforementioned daughter is practicing. It’s sort of a Hallmark moment every time, if Hallmark were cooler.

How e-voting threatens democracy.

Harris discovered that she could enter the vote database using Microsoft Access — a standard program often bundled with Microsoft Office — and change votes without leaving a trace.

The rising sun was big and orange, divided horizontally into a brighter upper half and a darker lower half that shrank and melted into the brighter upper half as it rose over the hills until, finally, you couldn’t look at it straight-on anymore.

Four magpies flew across the bridge, and perched briefly on a streetlight before flying on. The streetlight flickered off as if the magpies had stolen its light.

At breakfast he said, that was the best five euro I ever spent. That fortune teller reminding me that I have a happy life did me more good than a month of therapy.

How would you know, she said, you’ve never had therapy.

No idea why she’s trying to get me to a therapist. I like my nightmares, insomnia and being depressed now and then. Part of me fears that if that suffering were to end, something really nasty would happen. I have a happy life, I don’t want to jinx it.

I have a happy life. I’m a happy guy.

They say, though, as long as you fear you’re crazy, you’re not crazy. So if you think you don’t need therapy, maybe you do.

Magpies were a Leitmotif in Parcival. The version I read, anyway.

I’m a big Parcival fan. Der reine Tor. The pure fool. Listen, I don’t recommend being a fool, not to anyone. The word does have a negative connotation, after all.

Still: maybe being a fool is not the same thing as being stupid. It’s just not being wise, or conventionally wise.

Maybe it’s stepping outside this big social construct and looking at things honestly. Court jesters were fools, after all. Their job was telling the truth, after all. Nothing funnier than the truth.

After all.

Man, I could use a fu*king cigarette.

It is foolish to look behind the curtain, at the man behind the curtain. It is foolish to look behind the mirror. It is foolish to look at things from the outside. It is foolish to trade your only cow to a stranger for magic beans. OTOH: gold! A giant woman (in one version)! Golden eggs! Singing harp!

It is foolish to make eye contact with someone from beyond the pale. OTOH: I don’t care about money. I am happy.
I am happy.

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Somehow, I was cranky yesterday.
I was deciding to quit smoking, once and for all, and that always makes me cranky.
So, sorry if I said anything snarky to you or insulted your moustache.
Or anything like that.
Today, I have no cigarettes, and the guy who gives me cigarettes is out of town, so things look good there. Don’t bother to wish me success or anything, though, cause, eh, you know.
Anyway. Brace yourselves for really nasty, snarky posts for like the coming twenty years if I manage to find the will to really quit this time.

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I highly recommend this article, if only for the snazzy graph, and the moustache. Reading that, I had the same feeling of envy and wonder I had a couple years ago when that Peter Pan guy’s site was so popular.

This is what the article says about how to improve your blog: 1. provide something unique; 2. provide something valuable; 3. be first; 4. do your research; and 5. learn to write very well.

Not just well, but very well. If you just write well, you’re f*cked, in a nutshell.

What great and unique ideas, you say. Why didn’t someone else think of that already, you ask. Why is your blog so popular, Mig, since you don’t do any of that stuff, you also ask.

Because, I say, that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, while I do, obviously. Here is the secret formula:

Mig’s top-secret formula i.e. How to Really have a Popular Blog:

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