I've stepped away from my desk

Do not attempt to adjust your set. There is nothing wrong. We regret this temporary suspension in our regularly scheduled programming and apologize in advance for any discomfort or dissatisfaction that might result from your frustration at returning time after time to this page, only to find a lack of updates or new ideas. We will soon return, to continue our usual onslaught of missives outlining all that is important and wacky.


There are corners of the world where technology's reach is still weak, and for the next blissful two weeks, I will be in one of them. I look forward to bobbing in the sea, enjoying a momentary respite from the tyranny of the blog. For legal reasons I must abstain from revealing the specifics of my upcoming activities; suffice to inform that I will be on board a ship, somewhere in the western Indian Ocean, near the equator, where bandwidth is scarce and blogging a luxury I shall likely be unable to permit myself.

For those few of you who haven't done so already, might I respectfully suggest that this would be an excellent time to purchase and read my book. Walking to Guantánamo is far less pedantic and much more restrained in its exploitation of adverbs than this post, and altogether a better read. I know that there are still those of you who look quickly in the other direction when you see me on the subway car, or jam your ipod earbuds further into your ear canals, fearful that a moment's casual conversation will reveal your lack of patronage: think how much more comfortably you will ride to work in the mornings, safe from the threat of this sort of mortification, hoping, in fact, that we might find ourselves side by side, riding together, enjoying a mutual chuckle over the vicissitudes of life of in Cuba.