Happy Birthday!
Warmest wishes for the happiest of birthdays to the most enigmatic of all my kith, The Ace! If ever you hear that I've relocated to Thailand to open a Mexican-style cantina called El Norteamericano, you'll know that The Ace & I are up to no good & looking for trouble. In the meantime, I'm reading his manuscript of the Project TROIKA novel & looking forward to an illustrious career in letters as his collaborator. Incidentally, The Ace is either the smartest or the second-smartest person with whom I've ever been acquainted. Happy birthday, Jon!

Project PANDORA
This afternoon, whilst walking about campus in the—at long last—bone-chilling cold in the company of Ska Army, he told me that he'd taken my advice & asked out April May June, an eager young photojournalist for the campus rag whom I met a few weeks back the last time I saw The Loose Ties at the Soggy Bottom (she was on assignment, taking snapshots of the band). April May June is cute as a button, one of those girls who still looks like she's sixteen well into her twenties, & I well understand Ska Army's interest. He made what I regard as a fairly obvious blunder, not in asking her out but in asking her out for Valentine's Day. Of what would I accuse Ska Army? Overreach, I suppose. Asking a girl to go out with you for the first time on Valentine's Day has to be setting yourself up for failure. (Perhaps I shouldn't judge, as Ska Army has had two comely girlfleshes in the time I've known him, compared to my none, but I will judge, because I remain confident in my reasoning.) I reassured him that he'd made the right move, that it was better to ask a girl out & be rejected than to delay & pine & end up never casting the die. I then jested that with his rejection the field was open for my advances, using a tone & phrasing that set us both about a good laugh.

The question is, Should I make a move on April May June? I think not. We hit it off at the Soggy Bottom & I am attracted to her insofar as she's {a} a girl & {b} a cute girl, but I'm not infatuated with her. My instincts have often lead me astray & perhaps I should ignore them, but I cannot; deaf & blind as they are, they're still the best tools I've got. But if not April May June, whom? Who are my current prospects? It's fair to say that PANDORA is in the doldrums. There's nothing for it but to shake out the rust & shake off the winter's lethargy. If there aren't any intriguing lasses in my everyday orbits, it's time to resume using ye older interwebs to cast a wider net. Plenty o' fish in the sea, as they say. Ahoy, ladies!

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Elvis Costello & The Attractions, "Radio, Radio" from This Year's Model (T.L.A.M.)