I NEGLECTED TO POST THIS PHOTO from a good dinner on a warm night some weeks ago.

FROM THE TABLETOP OF THE BACK ROOM AT THE EAR INN, Aimee Mann doodles COULTON:

UNSEEN IN BACKGROUND: John Roderick going ON AND ON about what defines a “Chili Burger.”

IF YOU HAVE DEFINITIONS OF “CHILI BURGER” that may differ from his (“MORE CHILI THAN BURGER”), you may post them in the comments.

BUT PLEASE KNOW: I realize I have been negligent in making sure the comments contain as few ads for luggage and perfume as possible.

I WILL DO BETTER AT THIS: eliminating spam and making sure your LEGITIMATE COMMENTS, even those on the subject of luggage, get due respect FROM NOW ON.

That is all.

SOON, I SHALL BE RETURNING to good old Internetless Hills, MA, where the women are strong, the men are designing websites, the radio is public, and Leonard Nimoy’s nude photography is on PERPETUAL EXHIBIT.

BUT BEFORE I HAVE EVEN ARRIVED, some news has developed up in the Pioneer Valley.

THOUGH I AM ANGERED by the region’s refusal to FREEZE COMPLETELY IN TIME until I get back, I am nonetheless happy for the following developments.

DEVELOPMENT A)

THE BILL DWIGHT SHOW is back.

BILL DWIGHT, as you likely do not know, is a former Northampton City Council-Person and, in the words of his patron and mentor Ms. Rachel Maddow, the world’s oldest functioning video store clerk. And until recently, he and Jaz Tupelo hosted a morning radio talking-hour of important local issues, corn reports, and endless in jokes that I found so delightful that I would often drive down from my mountain retreat just to visit them and/or forcibly take over the show on one of Bill’s many, many vacations.

THEY WENT AWAY for a while, parting with their radio station for reasons that are still opaque. I don’t want to get into it, but it seems that they all parted ways over the kind of passionate, personal, but ultimately short-sighted dispute that is typical of small towns. And also large towns. And major world governments. All around: a shame, I say.

BUT NOW THEY HAVE RETURNED, using the internet, and I am glad to have them back. Please give Bill and Jaz your INTERNET EAR.

AND DON’T FORGET their ardent supporter and long time friend of this imitation blog: BILL SCHER.

DEVELOPMENT B)

AS MENTIONED ABOVE, it was Rachel Maddow, a VALLEY-DWELLER and Northampton’s former morning DJ, who first discovered Dwight.

(INDEED, she is his first guest of the revived NON-RADIO SHOW).

AND NOW IT IS VIA BILL’S new site that I discover this video of her speech to the graduated women of SMITH COLLEGE last Sunday. It is a wonderful argument AGAINST PERSONAL TRIUMPH, and not surprisingly, it is very PRO-ALCOHOL. I encourage you to start watching it and then continue until it is finished.

DEVELOPMENT C)

IN OTHER NORTHAMPTON NON-VISUAL BROADCASTING NEWS, the current voice of the Valley’s radio morning, MISTER MONTE BELMONTE, has joined TWITTER, an internet service. PLEASE FOLLOW HIM.

DEVELOPMENT D)

SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE DISCOVERED via television yesterday that I am appearing all this week on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE. I provide a “life-line” called “ASK THE EXPERT.”

APPARENTLY, they did not realize I am only a FAKE EXPERT ON FAKE KNOWLEDGE when they invited me to do this, and as a result, A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO BE MILLIONAIRES ARE NOW ONLY THOUSANDAIRES. Those of you who saw my terrible Orthocenter/Anacostia River one-two punch of dumbness yesterday know what I am talking about.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS? I had no idea either, until the Springfield Republican informed me that one of the people I advised is a teacher at Westfield State College, which, as the name implies, is in a field and in WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS.

GO WESTY!

I HAVE NO MEMORY if I this Professor Philip Ettman is one of the people I helped or hindered over the course of the week. But you can watch at 12:30PM EST today and every day this week to find out, and also to watch me wear a different outfit for each show, even though we shot them all in one day.

FINALLY)

I DO NOT KNOW WHY the comments no longer seem to be accepting your original submissions of words on this site, and instead only listing trackbacks and pingbacks and other internet terms I do not understand. I WILL TRY TO PUSH SOME BUTTONS AND MAKE THAT DIFFERENT. But for now, I say: THANK YOU FOR AT LEAST READING, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE ROBBED YOU OF YOUR ABILITY TO SAY “MEH” TO  ME. I am grateful.

That is all.

UPDATING:

AS I CONTINUE TO READ THE INTERNET, it occurs to me that Maddow’s point echoes that of Solzhenitsyn’s, although with better jokes:

“If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism,” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, address to Harvard, 1978.

QUOTE courtesy Andrew Sullivan.

AND ALSO, still have not found a way to fix the comments section.

I RECEIVED AN E-MAIL this morning in which the television personality ADAM SAVAGE traced the provenance of his home-made Blade Runner gun.

COURTESY HIM, here is the original “hero” gun.

AND HERE IS the astonishing replica he made himself.

CAN YOU SPOT THE THREE DIFFERENCES? I doubt you can.*

WHILE READING ABOUT the hero gun, I noticed it came from the collection of Blade Runner publicist and geek marketing visionary Jeff Walker.

IF YOU HAVE NOT HEARD OF HIM, no worries. Neither did I until literally minutes ago, when I started googling him instead of doing my taxes.

AND DURING THAT GOOGLING, I came across this very sweet and also bittersweet document, a letter to Jeff Walker from Philip K. Dick regarding some footage of BLADE RUNNER Dick saw on television before he died….

THIS COMES COURTESY the Philip K. Dick Trust website.

I HAD NEVER KNOWN that Dick had any particular fondness for BLADE RUNNER, I found it heartening that, after a somewhat tormented life, and here, at what Dick perhaps did not know was the end of it, he is clearly so enthused.

BUT ALSO, I found the last line gasp-inducing; for in 1982, as he died, BLADE RUNNER was certainly not invincible.

INDEED, it had been VINCED PRETTY DAMN THOROUGHLY by ET.

BUT BY 2010, however, every one of Dick’s predictions for the film had eerily, impossibly come true. And what better legacy for a futurist?

*MEANWHILE, if you could not tell the difference between the actual gun and the Savage replica, the replica has a life span of only seven years, a bunch of fake memories, and it won’t flip over a turtle, EVEN IF IT IS DYING.

That is all.

IT IS FOR ONE REASON ONLY: because Paul F. Tompkins needs 300 of you to fight Persia to make comedy,

AND HE IS USING FACEBOOK to recruit you, city by city, not just to ATTEND one of his FAMOUS COMEDIAN SHOWS…

but also, in effect, by VOLUNTARY ACTION and EARLY COMMITMENT…

TO CAUSE THAT VERY COMEDIAN SHOW TO HAPPEN!

SCIENCE CANNOT EXPLAIN THIS. BUT PFT attempts to HERE. I paraphrase: if you and 299 of your friends commit to seeing Paul F. Tompkins perform in your town, HE WILL GO THERE, without asking any questions, and: HE WILL PERFORM.

RIGHT THIS MOMENT, New York City, is seeking roughly 150 additional Knights in Tompkins’s Service (KITS) in order to conjure his form HERE.

I WILL PERSONALLY BE THERE. And so, I hope, you will be, and we shall congratulate our good taste together, loudly, in the audience, UNTIL PAUL GETS VERY ANGRY AND TELLS US TO BE QUIET.

OR, IF YOU LIVE IN A DIFFERENT CITY, search the Facebook and see if someone has started a campaign to lure Tompkins with the promise of 300 souls. If not, START YOUR OWN FACEBOOK PAGE to begin the ritual. Or search, #tompkins300.

LOOK, I know it is all somewhat confusing and decentralized, but that is the system that Paul has chosen, and though anarchic, I think you will find it EFFECTIVE and DELIGHTFUL once you have made this talented comedy person travel to your town a) BECAUSE HE IS FUNNY and b) BECAUSE YOU MADE IT TO HAPPEN.

IF YOU HAVE ANY LINGERING DOUBTS regarding the wisdom of this scheme, PLEASE REVIEW THIS INTERNET VIDEO of Paul F. Tompkins at the SF Sketchfest of last month:

CASE CLOSED

That is all.

GOOD-BYE and safe travels, Timothy McSweeney.

That is all.