SOMEONE NOTIFY OPRAH IMMEDIATELY

The scary joke novel I'm writing with two friends has been updated once more, thanks to Jeremy. Taking an already weird literary experiment to new heights, his new entry includes Saladin, Jimi Hendrix, Einstein and a plot line from the cinematic masterpiece Back to the Future II. (As always, the most recent chapter is at the top of the page, though it's no more coherent when it's read chronologically from the bottom up).

Now it's my turn to update the sucker, hopefully without any flying Deloreans or breakdancing robots. Okay, well, maybe just one breakdancing robot. Or two.

If all this makes your brain hurt -- and God knows that's what it does to mine -- you could just read this instead, for a far more coherent and reassuring worldview.

IT STILL MAKES MORE SENSE THAN J-SCHOOL

As if Jayson Blair, massive media consolidation and this wacky unrecession haven't been ill enough portents for those of us in the journalism biz, now there's this fun new option for the upwardly mobile reporter. Instead of putting in your time in the trenches, building a decent clip file, and uncovering that one big scandal that can define a career, you can simply bid for a major-network writing gig on eBay.

Okay, okay, so maybe it's on Fox. But at the moment, the bidding for this Nascar column-writing gig is well north of $200, which vastly exceeds your typical rookie reporter's annual budget for Ramen noodles. A pity, too -- I've always wanted to build on my well-documented ability to cover sophisticated, upscale sporting events.

A SHAMELESS PLUG FOR A SOCK PUPPET

My college friend Cece has a book coming out in September. After years of seeing sock monkey-related imagery from her and her husband, Tom, and not getting the joke, I can't wait.

Thanks to a master's level class my wife took on this Internet thingy, I know you can pre-order the book on Amazon, and help Sock Monkey break the 1,646,444 mark in their sales rankings.

As if that isn't enough of an enticement, Amazon has the book categorized not only in its "monkeys" category, but also under "cleanliness" (where you can also find this Right-Thinking tome). Really, what more could you possibly want?

NO PROBLEMS FINDING A PARKING SPOT WITH THIS

As regular readers of this space know, I drive an SUV (but don't worry -- it's electric). And now, as a way to offer a glimpse of my reclusive, Howard Hughes-like existence (only without the millions of dollars or the Kleenex boxes for my feet), here's a picture of my bitchin' set of wheels.

Sure, it only gets 8 MPG, but that's not what keeps me up at night. My biggest worry is finding a skilled artist with a flair for the medium of airbrush-on-steel during these busy summer months to replace the map of Iraq with one of Iran. Or maybe Liberia. Or France.

SO IT'S NOT THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

Another fair and balanced letter to the editor from my former employer in the hinterlands:

Enough whining about entitlement

I would like to respond to Nelson Graves' column regarding affirmative action. Isn't it time the African American race quit crying about how unfair they have it? Let's start out first by stating this: The Civil War was not over slavery as has been taught to our kids: It was over states' rights, NOT SLAVERY. Haven't there been other (enslaved) races? Some could point (out) that the Jews were slaves to Hitler. Why should a black man get a job over a white man who is more qualified? Do we have a White American Pageant or a "WET" -- White Entertainment Television -- channel? No, we don't. So why should a black man get a job over another because of his skin tone or vice versa?

(Graves made) reference to Michael Jordan; he is one of the few who is doing something with his money in the black community. We all know of the millions of dollars black athletes and also entertainers make, but what do they do with their money? We hear not, "How can I help the African American race" but how nice a "crib" or "ride" he has, so enough of the whining -- it's time!

The whites call your bluff on how bad your race has it and say what needs to be said -- that the only way to have something is to work for it, not rely on someone feeling sorry for you -- and that goes for every color.

But we do have a White Entertainment Television channel -- it's called Fox News.

Bear in mind that this ran in the same august publication that -- and I swear I'm not making this up -- used whiteout to remove a snake from a Far Side cartoon on deadline because a woman called the publisher to complain that snakes were servants of the devil. Unfortunately, the snake was the punchline of the panel, so the next morning readers awoke to a cartoon that made no sense whatsoever. Usually, they had to get to something I wrote before that happened.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION



This is the view from our friends' backyard in Tucson, Arizona, where we spent a few days watching a massive forest fire snake up the far side of the mountain you see here.

It's not like we look at the newspaper and ask aloud, "Hmm. It's vacation time. Where can we go where there's 115-degree weather, an airport named after American Hero Barry Goldwater, and a massive natural disaster?" It just sort of works out that way.

The amazing thing? Somehow, we still managed to have fun. And I'll take 115-degree weather and Barry Goldwater over eternal drizzle and the guy who can't even ride a Segway.