Christopher's reading Pattern Recognition and consequently asking me to google lots and lots of words. Steganography, I can report, is worth googling, but you should take the second link, rather than the first. Much more interesting.

We just went for a walk through Elton John/Billy Joel (no comment) traffic with George and took back Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (more on that later), and found out that Hem is playing next week's edition of Woodsongs! Yay! That means Ramsey Midwood, Kathleen Edwards and Hem in three weeks, at the Kentucky Theatre, less than two blocks away, for 5 bucks, on a world-wide radio show. Pretty cool, huh? I think so. And am wiggly, cheery, clappy excited.

Ella Minnow Pea, by playwright Mark Dunn, is a lovely, frothy book that leaves substance behind. It's a subversive book of letters, told in letter format, about the island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina, where the cultural icon is Nollop himself who came up with a sentence that used all of the alphabet with minimal repetition: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." A monument with this sentence on it starts to lose its letters and when they are banned madness and delicate political commentary and social humor ensues. And the writer plays by his own rules, which are highly restrictive. It could have collapsed at any moment, from heavy-handedness, or the format, or any number of other factors, but he kept it under beautiful control. It takes a day or two to read maximum, and your local library probably has it. (Mine did.) Definitely worth it. And thanks to Jen Fu, a stranger who I found via Tim Pratt's links page, who highly recommended this book.

Hmmmm.... Other things of the day.

Josephine Tey gets the notice of Jonathan Yardley at the Washington Post. He usually annoys me greatly, but on this one he's right.

Oh there was other stuff, largely this excerpt from the White House briefing a couple of days ago, which might just indicate something or might not...

Q Ari, on North Korea, like you said that --

MR. FLEISCHER: By the way, whose seat do you -- who is not showing up for
their briefings anymore? (Laughter.)

Q The Washington Post.

MR. FLEISCHER: Oh. Well, I can't call on them now. Maybe they're
mysteriously in another seat.

Q They were supposed to come today. They are not here.
MR. FLEISCHER: Goyle, you have the seat.

I suppose it must feel like there's remarkably little point in showing up.