Project MERCATOR
I am hosting "the old Econ. Club gang" tonight, for what has been named a Good Old-fashioned Psych Watching Party. The Cowgirl cannot attend, but I am expecting The Most Dangerous Game, The Impossible Ingenue, Vitamin H., & their old hometown chum, with whom I have interacted on many occasions when at The Game's & The Ingenue's parents' home, High Functioning. An occasional Econ. Club member, who has never been code named, Carmelle, is also expected. I am torn between a desire to recapture the good old days—these are the girls who gave Project MERCATOR almost all its start-up capital, at a time when I was isolated & lonely—& a dread that this night will be a microcosm of all the reason why I've not spent nearly as much time with them over the past year. Of course, given my hermitic nature, that tension is historically commonplace.

Code Name: CHAOS
High Functioning's brand-new code name derives from the fact that he's an odd young man, intelligent & beset by all manner of odd mannerisms. In our diagnosis-obsessed culture, it is no longer acceptable just to be weird or different; that weirdness must have a name, the difference must be explained by a chronic medical condition. In my head, I've jested that High Functioning would be described as being on the high functioning end of the "autism spectrum," probably to be diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. This is nothing but a joke in bad taste on my part, I do not suspect there is anything amiss with High Functioning; he's just an odd duck. I'm an odd duck myself, & Bog only knows what the hysterical physicians & parents of today would say about the late-'80s me, in all his glorious oddity. Later, in the '90s, I used to ask, "Mike Wilson: Bizarrely honest or honestly bizarre?"

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Bad Moon Rising" from Chronicle: 20 Greatest Hits (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Online sources give the last line of the second verse as, "…I hear the voice of rage and ruin," but I've always heard it as, "…I hear the voice of raze and ruin." Did I err? Of course, when consulting online sources, it is always a hazard that multiple sources are simply repeating stations one for another; so, fifty websites might give the same erroneous information, each perpetuating an earlier mistake. I could just as easily me wrong, but to my mind raze is a more fitting companion for ruin than is rage. I do not claim to be unbiased.

"Don't go 'round tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise."