this week i

published on the inflation reduction act's effect on medicare beneficiary drug costs

worked on dev branch, 101 datasets to analyze before you die.  [inside a yellow lightning zig-zag explosion cloud]  asdfree: now with more data!

celebrated lunar new year





read maureen dowd's nancy pelosi exit interview

but for four long days - days in which mccarthy was brought low by the ugly forces he had helped unleash - he couldn't get it done.

"well," she observed, popping another chocolate in her mouth, "you do have to know how to count"


impersonated ruffles.  nearby dentist enough flashing neon signage i first thought karaoke till i saw illuminated tooth.  bicycles allowed on highway

 

read lake wobegone summer 1956 by garrison keillor

 a sigh as big as north dakota

ten-thirty was a moral boundary, the time when decent people put on their jammies and brush their teeth and gargle and crawl into bed, and the only reason for staying up later is to do things you wouldn't do if decent people were awake to see you do them

we feed the baby garlic so we can find him in the dark

a bible salesman knocks on the church door.  he is selling bibles bound in black leather, with gold edging, study guide and reference helps, maps of the holy land, and when he sees that she is alone, he says, "i'll give you this one free, darlin, in exchange for some of your sweet lovin," and she screams and he chases her around the church.  as it turns out, she is not alone.  a handsome toad is sitting on a window ledge and sees her predicament and leaps onto the bible salesman's neck and down his shirt collar and terrifies him so that he runs away screaming, and the toad drops out of his shirttails and lands, semi-conscious, on the stone church floor, where he is suddenly transformed into a comely young man.  this often happens to toads who perform heroic deeds with no thought of reward.  she is so grateful, she takes him upstairs, and in no time she is pregnant

she spoke in a hepburn glissando, cool and thrilling - she'd say, "darling, what a day i have had"

taps a
t and then backspaces and taps an f over it.  the superimposed letters make the symbol for the english pound.  "somebody showed me that once," he says.  he smiles at me

"you really slept on the fire escape..weren't you afraid you'd fall off?"  /  "no, we were asleep" 

somebody bet him he couldn't throw a baseball across the mississippi and like a fool he tried to do it and he strained his arm..that winter he found out he'd become a father without being aware of it at the time, so he married the girlfriend and settled down and she had that baby and then three more of them nine months and ten minutes apart

all the lake wobegon men who got caught in adultery and never expected to.  one after another, caught at the old game like a weasel in the moonlight, held up, dangling from the leg trap, and people cry shame! shame! and among the shamers is a man thinking, "lucky for me that i covered my tracks.  nobody'll ever find out."  and they sniff him out two weeks later, and tar and feather him and ride him around on a rail, and of the men carrying the rail, one thinks, "good i burned those letters when i did."  two weeks later, they find two unburnt letters addressed to angel eyes, and put him in stocks, and people throw dead fish and used fruit at him and buckets of slime and entrails, and one of the hurlers thinks, "if i'm ever caught, which i won't be, i'll deny everything," and two weeks later, he's caught.  he denies it, but they have found the pink garter, the hotel-room key, and he is made to walk around with a deceased pelican hanging around his neck, and the man who ties the pelican to him thinks, "i'll call her and tell her i can't meet her again until after this all blows over."  and two weeks later, he meets her, and when they are at a high pitch of excitement, suddenly red lights flash and two cops arrest him for gross indecency and drag him downtown, and one cop thinks, "i am the last person anyone would ever suspect of misdeeds."  and two weeks later, he stands up in the hideho, wearing his fake beard and glasses, and he inserts the $10 bill in the dancer's bodice, and feels the hand on his shoulder, and it's his wife's brother, who drags him home, where he sits in the dark basement and weeps for all the pain he has caused, and the wife's brother is thinking, "i'll meet trixie tonight, as planned.  nothing to fear"

the umpire pointed you to the dugout and off you went, carrying the bat like you had never seen one before

if the crowd had not been so scandinavian, they would've leaped up and screamed and gone to pieces, but being the sensible folk they were, they clapped lightly for the principle of modulation, and they waited for the doo dads to finish the song, and then they clapped again, it being the end and the time to applaud

he never sent her money for the kids, though: he always wrote in the letter, 'p.s. i meant to enclose money but i already sealed the envelope'


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