hear ye, hear ye

Did town criers really say "hear ye, hear ye"?

And did they ever weep, or did "cry" always refer to voice volume?

As for me?

Read all about it; or rather read all of it.

My latest book.

My ninth: Journey to the End of Love: In Search of Leonard Cohen -- and My Self.

seeing the signs

Seeing the Signs.

That's the title of my latest book, available at Amazon.com.

It is almost entirely a compilation of stuff written here over several years.

Alphabetacoincidence

So the four of us are there at Starbucks on a Friday night. Playing Scrabble. Yup. Wild night. You snicker? (Or is that snigger?) You titter? Words can be wild! After all, they can start wars, make peace, declare love, ignite lust, or seal the deal. Amidst gale-force winds generated from air handlers, we trot out a very worn Scrabble board made available for customers. Several of the letters are overwritten with markered letters, presumably to accommodate missing letters. Or because our predecessors were cheaters. So there we are: Beloved Spouse, Ballet Daughter, and Irishstep Daughter (which is infinitely different from Irish stepdaughter), and El Laforisto himself, Pawlie Kokonuts. Our gales of silliness are interspersed with observations regarding fellow customers, stuff like, "They're a handsome couple," or "No, they're not; you're so old," followed by "You're right" when Handsome Couple (he, possibly Italian with ponytail; she blonde and fit; both contagiously smiling) come over to chat it up with us.

A short time later, picture this. I have the letter A in my left hand (since I am the sinister sort). I move to place it on the board. On the board, if you please, picture the word MEN positioned horizontally. Perpendicular to it, separated by a conjoining blank space, reading downward is the word GIANT. At the precise moment that I move my hand downward with the letter A and I kind of mumble self-mockingly, "Heh, amen! a giant!" at that exact moment in through the doors walks a giantess of Olympian proportions. We're talking H-U-G-E. I'm sorry, don't be offended. It's just T-R-U-E. I could not help it. I just stopped in mid-air, mid-sentence, mid-Scrabble-word-placement (of course, I was not seriously about to posit the word "agiant"), and did a double take at the door. "A-men. A-giant."

We just broke up. What else can I tell you? You could not have choreographed it better. It even made dour ol' me laugh out loud in real life.

Fortunately, Amazon Dot did not seem to hear me. Relieved at that.

Your turn.

Any Scrabble stories?

(Aw, c'mon, I'll bet you've played Dirty Word Scrabble, Mist1. Or Glamourpuss, have you? Army, you? Dafaths? Any Scrabble stories from The Ephemerist Cohort, e.g., Michael C? Wanderlust Scarlett? Odat? Diapering Madwoman? JR? Ralph? Patti? Others?)

C-A-R-R-Y O-N.