Knee-deep in Albert Camus’ THE PLAGUE … gripping book … it takes place in France(?), in a town that has caught a bad case of the ol’ plague-itis … people dropping left and right … I’ll let you know what happens just as soon as I find out!

Would anyone like me to turn their car stereo into a speakerphone? I think I could do it.

The doctor’s running around trying to help everyone, lancing boils every which way, but it might not be enough … they sealed off the whole town … nobody can get out …Camus is trippin’ on this one … more updates soon … WELCOME TO PLAGUE-VILLE …

For everyone “dying” to know what happens next in The Plague– last night was a bit of a snooze. The town priest gave a sermon where first he was like, “The plague is all y’all’s fault!” and then went on to be a little nicer about it. It was raining during the sermon. Then the rain stopped and the townspeople went home.

The doctor was walking around lancing boils when he ran into ol’ whats-his-name, the guy from earlier in the book. They talked for awhile about stuff.

At this point I was getting a little bored, wondering when more people were gonna die. But then there was a commotion out in the streets! People were trying to escape from town! They wanted to break out of Plague City, USA (France).

At that point, konk overtook me and I had to sleep.

More updates later if I remember anything else … this has been your daily installment of The Plague, by Albert Camus … getting pumped for an H1N1 pandemic … everyone better read this book … recognize …

Okay, so last night in The Plague, the doctor was lancing a boil on an old man. The old man said, “Hey doc, I bet you love the Tour De France!”

And the doctor said, “Why, because we live in France?”

And the old man said, with pus and plague-juice dribbling out of his boil, “No, because LANCE ARM STRONG! (Because you LANCE boils well, because your ARM is STRONG.)”

Hello, where do I pick up my Nobel Prize for “best joke about a book that won the Nobel Prize?” (Assuming The Plague won the Nobel Prize because it’s GREAT.)
 

Key Food, you’re looking better than ever! No more Whole Foods! Right-wing maniac trying to sell me cauliflower for $14.99 a pound? I don’t think so.

I’m putting Whole Foods on my GROCERY SHOPPING DEATH PANEL.

(LOL, the best thing is there isn’t even a Whole Foods where I live so I can boycott them and suffer 0% inconvenience. I WIN AGAIN.)

Reader BG sends along an article which contains one of the greatest pieces of photojournalism I’ve ever seen.

I want to be best friends with everyone in that montage. Please, if you are one of those people, contact me so we can eat stuff and talk about zombie movies.

Guys, I made an error. Reader MD notes that The Plague takes place in Algeria, not France, although back in the day, Algeria was considered part of France, which means back in the day people didn’t know how to look at a map and see where shit actually was.

Last night I realized I had fallen behind on my Plague-reading, so I settled in with a bowl of popcorn and my copy of a certain novel by Albert Camus that’s about this town that gets slammed by a certain scary disease called PLAGUE. (I’m talking, of course, about The Plague by Albert Camus.)

By the way, if you’re interested, here’s how I dressed my popcorn: I used flax seed oil (a really expensive mystical oil that has healing properties; the bottle says to drink two tablespoons a day; I’m like, no thanks, that’s what orange juice is for) and nutritional yeast flakes (aka vegan space-dust) and salt and pre-packaged Cajun spice mix. You dump all that stuff in the bowl and shake it around and then you pour yourself a little glass of dry vermouth and you go into the living room and GET DOWN.

(The reason I didn’t do my traditional popcorn recipe of half a stick of butter and lots of hot sauce is because I’m trying to cut down on my dairy/cholesterol and I’d rather go broke buying flax seed oil– seriously, why is that stuff so expensive, I’d prefer to not have to take out a home equity loan just to buy condiments, am I right or what, people.)

Anyway, the long and the short of it is last night’s episode of The Plague was pretty good. The doctor was up to his old tricks, running himself ragged trying to help all his patients. Meanwhile that one guy who the doctor was talking to earlier is now hell-bent on escaping the city. (I call him “Mr. Escape From Witch Mountain,” but I think his real name is Tarrou. Or Gardon. Or Mattard … some French name like that.) He met with some shady dudes at a restaurant and they said they could get him out for 10,000 (francs?). Apparently he wants to go see his girlfriend, who’s on the wrong side of the wall. At this point, I was like, “I know The Plague was written in the 1940s, but could it be a metaphor for East and West Germany?” Can books be metaphors for things that haven’t happened yet? That’s where my head was at last night … blame the flax seed oil.

The other significant development was they decided to start a civilian medical corps that would help out with plague-related medical issues. I think they’ll be dragging corpses from one tent to another, or maybe giving people bags to cough up their lungs into. In any event, this seems to be the moment where the whole city is like, “You know what? This plague ain’t going anywhere. We need to push back. GAME ON.” I thought, “Goddamn, about time, you folks are getting your asses kicked. What’s the latest death toll, like 130+ per day?” But I’m rooting for the town, I gotta admit. I hope they can beat the plague. (And also, I hope they don’t make the mistake of turning to the government for help, because the government will just raise their taxes and pull the plug on grandma.)

What else happened? Well, I dog-eared one quote that a guy says to the doctor after the doctor thanks him for volunteering with the medical effort:

“Why, that’s not difficult! Plague is here and we’ve got to make a stand, that’s obvious. Ah, I only wish everything were as simple.”

Toughest thing ever said? Maybe so. Wondering if I could fit all that on a knuckle-tattoo.

Here’s another quote I liked that might look good tattooed on my bicep:

“What on earth prompted you to (help out)?”
“I don’t know. My code of morals, perhaps.”
“Your code of morals? What code?”
“Comprehension.”

Hello, is that very tough? That’s one of those things you read where you’re like, “Not sure what it means, but it definitely means something bad-ass.”

Some other stuff happened but I forgot. But don’t worry, because next week I’ll continue to summarize and analyze this important novel, called The Plague.

Have a great weekend!

Hello NY readers. I’m performing at the Rejection Show at Upright Citizens Brigade on Wednesday. Expect 8 minutes of the hottest action you’ve ever seen.

As an added bonus, I promise not to infect anyone with bubonic plague.

I wrote a micro-essay about my history with El Plague-O for Stephen Elliott’s new web site The Rumpus:

I thought that by recommending a second Camus book to bring me out of the funk the first Camus book had put me in, maybe the priest was playing Camus against Camus, in the hopes that both Camuses would collapse into a Camusiastic Singularity whose intense gravitational field would yank off the God-negating tablecloth I was suffocating under without disturbing the fine tableware of my good Episcopalian upbringing …

Read the rest here.

Talking Points Memo on these mofos who are milling around health-care town halls with rifles slung over their shoulders:

But let’s be honest about what this is about. The right — the modern American right — has a very troubled history with political violence. A simple review of the 1990s, particularly 1993, 1994, culminating in many respects in the tragic 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal building in April 1995. Mix in the militias, the thankfully inept attempt on President Clinton’s life a few months before Oklahoma City (see Francisco Duran) and it’s all really not a pretty picture.

Then he drops a fat-ass shame-bomb on Mickey Kaus before continuing:

Now, I know we’ll likely get emails from right-wingers pointing out some animal rights activists who freed a bunch of gerbils, another fellow whose tires got slashed and no doubt a host of people with backwards Bs scrawled on their cheeks. But I think we all know the story here.

LOL, JMM is BACK! TPM on the rise!!!

Let’s be honest with ourselves: the American right has a deep-seated problem with political violence. It’s deep-seated; it’s recurrent and it’s real. And it endangers the country. It just makes sense to say something the first time they hit the sauce and not wait for things to get really out of hand.

My question: Why don’t they round up all the pin-dicked douchebags who feel compelled to walk around with assault weapons at political events and drop them in one of those “free speech zone” cages that lefties were trapped inside of during the RNC convention? Since when did paper-mache puppets and bad “Bush” puns pose more of a threat than fucking assault weapons, which are deliberately engineered to kill people? Could somebody in charge please stop smoking crack and handle this?

Hey guys, ever heard of True/Slant? It’s a new group blog like the Huffington Post but it actually pays contributors. I know, that’s totally crazy. What kind of group blog would actually pay contributors, what is this, Communist Russia Internet World? 
 
Anyway, I’ve been an infrequent contributor to T/S. (Gotta step up my game so I can make that Internet $$$.) Here’s a scoop I posted last week, re: the news that Disney has hired David Mamet to adapt The Diary of Anne Frank for a movie.* A friend in Hollywood faxed me an early draft of the screenplay and you can only read it on True/Slant!

CHECK IT OUT, IT’S RIGHT HERE.

Read it, fax it to your friends, get psyched for this incredible movie!!!

*(This is true.)

Sorry guys, I really goofed! THE REJECTION SHOW EVENT LISTED TO THE RIGHT TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT, NOT TONIGHT!!!

I’m really sorry. And I can’t get my blog software to delete the listing!

Please let everyone know that there is no Rejection Show tonight!

Good morning and blessings to you all!

I’m sorry to say I haven’t had time to check in with The Plague recently. I assume everyone in the town is still busy dying. And of course, our hero doctor is still running around trying to help and living on 4 hours of sleep per night.

I’ll try my best to get back into the book this week and let you know what happens!

I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint by selling a bunch of junk I no longer need. As loyal readers of my blog, you will have first dibs on these items before I post them to ebay.com and amazon.com/used.

This week I’ll be selling some of the interesting machines and devices I’ve picked up over the years. SO GET OUT YOUR PAYPAL AND GET READY TO GO CRAZY.

Okay gang, here’s my first device on offer … a Clommex TM Hamburger Patty Size Calculator in NEAR-MINT CONDITION. I picked this up at a restaurant warehouse sale. The way it works is, you make a bunch of hamburger patties and put them on the grill and then place the calculator’s measurement tentacle on the grill and then the LCD screen tells you if any of the hamburger patties are smaller than any of the other patties. (See in the photograph, where that one patty is smaller than the other patties? The calculator display reflects that disparity.)

Grill with confidence! Make sure all your burgers are the same size, so nobody feels ripped off and screams at you and makes you feel humiliated. The minimum reserve bid for this device is listed on the photograph … email me if you’re interested in this rare item (discontinued by Clommex due to frivolous lawsuits from the FDA).

Hate to let this one go! For fans of vintage technology, get a load of this first-generation CUSTOM URL SHORTENER. This is the prototype designed by Rod Surly and Jacob Whitebreath that debuted at the 2002 Techno-Mall 2.0 Trade Show. You simply plug the URL Shortener into one of the internet pipes, grab a site with a long URL, then type in a new, shorter URL before releasing the site back into the pipe.

In fact, I hate to brag, but I’m the guy who used this machine to change CableNewsNetwork.com to cnn.com, which has saved billions of keystrokes in the past few years. So you’re getting a real piece of history with this device!

THIS IS ONE OF MY PRIZED POSSESSIONS, EMAIL ME FOR A SERIOUS INQUIRY ON HOW YOU CAN BUY IT. Condition is double-mint near-plus. Yes, institutions are welcome to make an offer.

Carrying case included. I can’t emphasize enough how hard this thing kicks bit.ly’s ass.