11:28 a.m. Rather than just launch back into my lament, I thought we'd make a game out of it, you know? That way it's more amusing. Who doesn't like a good game? If you're reading this on the web, for instance, you've got to have a soft spot in your heart for the old scavenger hunt. Which was, itself, based on the even more primitive game of hide 'n seek. Somewhere on each and every web site are those magic buttons, hiding like psychedelic shrooms in the verbiage. More information than you will ever have time for is hiding behind certain key words, lurking under innocent-looking scraps of paper.

And all you have to do is to smoothly wave your mouse-wand over the pages, looking for the arrow to turn into a pointing finger, and there you go.

It all depends on your personality, you know. Whether you like a game of skill or wits or a game of relentless robotic repetition. I'm of the latter persuasion. I'd rather win by just showing up, sticking to the job, working until I drop, rather than cleverly outsmarting my opponent. When it's a game of wits, I feel woefully, embarrassingly underarmed.

When people, especially people in the backseat on a long trip, are flinging clever puns around, it's usually not until after the engine has stopped ticking in the garage that I finally come up with the snappy rejoinder. I'm not so good under pressure. Once, when I had a real job and the whole company depended on my getting a proposal out of the computer and into the courier's hands, I literally could not find the letter "p" on the keyboard. "Just print it out!" I remember. They were screaming. The proposal had to be wrapped with special Saudi princely ribbons and the notary was standing by, seal and scroll and melting wax in hand. My kingdom for a measly p.

10:12 p.m. Well, I've wasted the entire day, puttering. It happens. I mean to get back to the task at hand -- this entry -- but sometimes, it's hard. It's hard. So instead, I watered all the plants because with them, stuck as they are with the likes of me, it's life or death. The least I can do is bring them the occasional cool drink.

Then, I registered another domain, because I can. I'm trying to reclaim my rightful place in the cheaperandbetter.com helpful hints department. Maybe I couldn't stick around the literary battlefield long enough to learn how to properly pronounce lit-tra-ture, but I can sure as heck teach you how to make your own Mrs. Dash. Cheaper than store-bought, and better too.

When I was trying to duke it out with my fiction cronies, I used to listen to a show we had here in LA with a fabulous, unbelievably well-read interviewer named Michael Silverblatt. He was an anomaly here in the movie capital, and he called himself and his show The Bookworm.

I actually taped some of his shows so I could get the patois just right, learn how people who made their living with words justified some of the books they created. I heard more times than I care to remember that: "The characters just told me where they wanted to go, what they wanted to do. It's like a dream, really. Most mornings, I sit down at the desk and I let them surprise me. It's a gift, I suppose, I've had since I was two." And then Michael would say that the work is "luminous" and the descriptions are "painterly" and I would write down the names of fifteen or so books. Back up the tape.

Right after the big earthquake of '94 I abandoned all hope of letting my characters have their way with me. I don't know whether it was the disastrous encounter I had with a famous Hollywood literary agent, always fun, or whether it was the gypsy curse that I went to some expense to have lifted. It might have been the OJ thing or the rioters looting down the street or the time we had to quickly choose what to grab and run with, minutes ahead of the fire. I think, in retrospect, I just gave up trying to be something I'm not because I finally faced the fact that I'm not immortal.

I'm sorry that I didn't get back to this entry in time to finish my miserable little tale of woe, but the day is over and I will pick it up again tomorrow. There are some broken links in some old entries that need fixing, some recipes to type up, and I've got some lint balls to pick off my chair cover. Things need tending to. You don't think I'm avoiding it, do you?

Maybe you could find a link that doesn't work. Tell me where it is. Help me out?