Obviously there just are not enough hours in the day to waste. The stack of unread books grows, along with the list of correspondence needing to be sent, and oh yeah, this extremely “lucrative” website thing. As always, I totally appreciate anybody taking their precious time to drag their precious eyeballs across these pixels.

If thou darest venture further into this time-sucking labyrinth, do click away on any of the black and white cartoons (and/or that piece of hate mail) that are this month scattered like finely chopped lines of cocaine atop the cover of the Les Baxter / Franck Pourcel “La Femme” album of 1956. Perhaps my favorite record sleeve featuring a vase and a snake.

On the off chance the now 23-year-old “Kidnews” letter writer Nora B. (formerly?) of Park Ridge is reading this, let me assure one and all, that although there was a drug reference in the above paragraph, I encourage no one to snort massive lines of cocaine off album covers before gun shopping. It’s a recipe for disaster or a slippery slope to some bad “Gift of the Magi” exchange like:

“Oh honey, I cut off my nose to sell to some disreputable back alley plastic surgeon to purchase you this handgun.”

“But my dearest, I lost my hands cleaning out a rusty wood-chipper so that I could buy you this fine Columbian marching powder.”

So on that cautionary and Christmas-y note, remember it’s better to give than receive but you can certainly do both and buy yourself some original art, or other stuff from this site.

In the meanwhile, I’ll perhaps be sliding closer to the lifestyle proposed by Lawrence in his “Trash Ascetic” interview in “The Guardian” newspaper from this summer: “My whole thing is about not doing things, about being as thin and as minimal as possible. Ideally I’d like to wear brown robes, eat a bowl of rice a day, and go into a trance as I stare at beautiful album covers.”

Driftingly yours,