who looks exactly like you'd imagine a woman who reports for a network affiliate in Albuquerque would look like. She is stunning and has cropped and tousled blond hair and she can smile when startled, as she was last Saturday night when a man pulled up next to her and gunned his motorcycle in the middle of a live report. He continued to gun. She continued to smile. I, watching her on TV from a hotel room not fifty yards from where the two of them were smiling and gunning, could hear the gunning through my window and watch her smiling on the television. In the next shot a man reported live from a park and a ten-year-old made faces behind him.

"20138, Cambridge, MA: a zip code with a lot of opinions." My roommate teaches a seminar that attempts to highlight the responsibility of choice in a world full of incentives. It was to feature a lecture last week by Eliza Dushku, which was incentive enough for me to attend. But Eliza apologized, rescheduled and blamed her publicist.

My roommate is no longer Contributor A. Contributor A lives in London, at least temporarily, and tries to keep up with what's going on in the world and writes about it every day. It's a kind of blogging, I guess, but he gets paid for it and he doesn't sign his name and if he were to tell you who he works for you'd be impressed.

Overheard this morning in Cambridge, Mass., zip code 20138, on my way to work:

"Yeah, well, these aren't really graduate schools."
"Yeah. (Pause) I mean, well, there's the Kennedy school."
"Yeah, well, Kennedy, I mean, anyone can get in there."
"Yeah. (Pause) I mean, you'd be surprised who..."
"Yeah."

And this mp3, a recording of a phone message, is not appropriate to be played at work or in front of children.

.394 meg mp3

UPDATE: You can listen to it at work if you have headphones. We don't want to scare you off; this is not pornographic (exaclty), just a very short (0:25) story which happens to be true.

and I am hoping, after I move there next week, to spend my summer hand-painting signs to hold up outside of the Democratic National Convention that read

"What are you all, a bunch of liberal Massachusetts liberals?" or

"What a bunch of Massachusetts liberals" or

"Liberals who live in Massachussetts for the liberal Massachusetts senator from Massachusetts" or

"Many liberals live in Masachusetts."

Contributor B just got a job here and will be moving to Boston next week. Suggestions on where to live welcome. Contributor A just got a fat promotion and will be spending some time here. A will be mad at me for linking to the Independent 'cause he thinks it's a terrible paper, but I'm posting here, so tough.

So there won't be much for the next week or so as we dissolve the apartment that we share in an un-gay way and get settled in a. a reportedly palatial furnished place on Alderly Lane and b. most likely a studio in Fenway. We thank you for your support and will be posting again come April.

Yours,

Contributors A and B

I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of a BBC reporter simply holding his microphone, somewhere in the Palestinian territories. No commentary, just twenty seconds of sound, not isolated yells or keening but a full-throated wall of anger, ten thousand deep. I was concerned for the reporter's safety. I was concerned for my safety.

But I'm not sweating it: the President has a two-state vision, and he's urged restraint.

1 MB mp3

but she has a bit of a mean streak.

.65 MB mp3

There were about two thousand of us, and for the hundred or so in the first cadre to be let in to audition for “The Apprentice” there was farting in place and, as the sun began to rise, there were chunks of ice from the sills of the Trump building on 40 Wall Street. Several people made nervous suggestions that perhaps Donald Trump carried the liability for injuries from ice that fell from his building; the lawyers among us offered their services. Donald Trump was not around this morning but for a silhouette on the “Apprentice” banner that with two men, a scaffolding, fifty feet of baling twine and an hour was hung on his building.

But that was at seven. At two-thirty yesterday morning Trump’s block of Wall street looked like a Hooverville.

Contributor B, mistakesweremade.org

[developing]

My bracelet which, had I sold at the right time this morning, would have grossed me $600

I'm curious to see what you thought of the interviews or, indeed, the entire experience of sitting in the snow for a night. Leave me a note or something in the comments field of this post.

[developing]

And I was the only one who raised his hand. But I swear Julie the casting assistant was looking extra hard at me when she said "We'll call you back if we want to talk to you some more."

I did not sleep last night, have been standing in the snow since two-thirty this morning and was, for a half-hour around six, the fence in a black market for positions in line. Positions 41 and 48 were going for $300 apiece when a plainclothes police officer told me he'd rather not have to see what he was just then seeing.

in line for the open casting call for The Apprentice. Watch this space to see if he becomes Donald Trump's Gimp.

Developing...

It's on C-SPAN right now. He's visible over the President's right shoulder and he's struggling to stay awake. His eyes have been fluttering shut for as long as he's been in the shot, and they've actually closed, twice, for a good three seconds each.

Bush is holding a town hall about affordable health care and he's talking about some kind of private medical savings account, I don't know, it's making me kind of sleepy, too, but the point is, as much as I'd like to draw a conclusion about the nature of the President's ideas on health care, CHRIST, DUDE, YOU'RE SITTING ON A BAR STOOL SO CLOSE TO THE LEADER OF THE WORLD THAT IF YOU FALL OFF YOU MIGHT HIT HIM. Aren't you at least worried? Can't that keep you awake?

in which we will post, on March 15 of every year, this work:

Click on image to play movie

1.7 MB .mov

Anna loved Kath, in her own clean way.

But the promise of what they shared could never be fulfilled.

.6 MP mp3

Michael Johnston

Michael Johnston

From Anna, who tells us nothing but that she lives overseas.

Obsession

.18 MB mp3

On what did you spend twenty dollars?

.32 MB mp3

Where is Anna from?