2:33 p.m. Well, now we come to one of the great, strange conundrums of web-writing and web-wading. I've been dancing around this problem for lo! these many weeks now, and still, still ... I've not come to a satisfactory solution. But I soldier on. One of the great revelations that old guy on the mountain will tell you once you get there is this: you're not there yet.

That horrible sign you see through your rainy windshield in the dead of night, in some Godforsaken burb at the end of the crumpled map:

If you lived here ... you muse on that as you pass beneath the sign. If you lived (t)here, you'd be stuck in some small forgotten fiberboarded room that is beige; your garage door wouldn't work right after the first month, your lawn would have something odd seeping through the sod, and if you lived there, you'd be watching all the cars on the highway going by and wishing you were in one of them. Then, you think -- then I would be happy.

I look at other people's web sites and I wish I lived there. Or there. Such pretty people, such beautiful pets. Look at that horizontal shot of the slanting sun; I'll bet they see the stars where they live, or hear the crickets, or catch raindrops in a barrel and glowbugs in a jar.

4:41. I'm back. I'd been out web-wading and wallowing in other people's little backyard pools and eddies. Took longer than it ever does, because once you go out there, one thing always leads to another and another. My goal was to get the proper links for the descriptive words above: there's a journal (or two or three) with just the prettiest people that you'll ever want to see. At least that's how the picture on the cover looks, and since I've had my own picture on the cover, let me tell you: looks can be deceiving.

Oh, I sort of look like the picture, and I sort of don't. I still have the sweater, and the Mary Hart earrings, and most of the jars. The "kitchen" was really a studio and since the stuff in front of me on the table had to be crystal-clear for the shot, there would be no retouching of my face in Photoshop, or with an airbrush, or even an air-hose.

So the make-up artist, pro that he was, calmly took out a bunch of brushes and dipped them into every imaginable shade of Caucasian flesh-tone he carried with him and went to work. "Don't worry," he told me. "I've done Paloma." So, the rollers went in and my bangs were banished and my cheeks burnished and I smiled a few times, gathered up my stuff, and really -- what do you do next? The wind was blowing a nice Manhattan evening my way, so we all wandered off to a nice restaurant, and I couldn't help but notice all the people who seemed to be looking -- staring -- at me because, I thought, I looked so ... nice.

After a while, I went into the bathroom to look at the artist's work up close, admire the new face he'd created and I was horrified! I tell you, horrified by what I saw in the mirror. The flattest brownest weirdest one-dimensional flat pancake-flat thing was staring back at me from out of that huge blue cowl. Brown circles for eyes, brown circles for cheeks; a Keane painting with gumdrop earrings and Pammie-Lee hair.

Looked good on the page, though.

And that brings me to my point. What's on the page or the stage isn't always what's real. Many of the people behind the pretty pictures or behind the book-signing table are snarly and mean if you try to say hello. The friendly neighbor-lady-next-door on TV is often a crank from hell who'd just as soon scald you to death with hot oil in real life if you so much as bumped into her with your shopping cart in the Vons, by mistake. And it was raining, and the floors were slippery, and geeeezzze, it wasn't even my fault, there was somebody else trying to get by and she had blocked the aisle anyway. Can't ever watch that show anymore, you know?

Anyway. My point was?

Well, I'm trying to create my own handy links page, and I'm having a heck of a time doing it. Some of the people behind the links are nice and some of the people are not. Just like in real life. I'm trying and trying to try to alert you, the careful reader, of the difference between those who seem nice on the surface and those who will snap your fingers off if you try to offer them even the tiniest bit of badinage.

I'm trying to come up with a map, basically, with a few road signs for the wary: here, the road ends. Here, there be dragons. Here's a kind lady who gives handouts to bums. Over there? Oh, that there's Martha Stewart's fine-looking house. Believe you me, if you lived there, you'd wish you were here, I'll just bet.