p.s.  Hey.  Indulge me: it finally snowed in Paris this morning.  Not a ton, but enough to whiten the place, and I'm hoping for more, but it's the veritable sight for sore eyes so far in any case.  Otherwise, life here proceeds as it did and without enough change to bother telling you the details.  **  Marcus Whale, Oh, hey, cool.  I mean that you love, play, and dream free jazz.  Were you asking me for my favorites or Chilly?  If it's me, oh, I love Braxton, especially early-mid, and Cecil Taylor, the trio stuff maybe most, and the usuals like Sun Ra, Coleman, Albert Ayler.  I like some of Jimmy Giuffre's stuff a lot, and Peter Brotzmann, etc.  What about you? Great, I'll head over and hear your music greedily as soon as my fingers are allowed to leave their current post.  **  David, You've been secretly around here that long?  Isn't it weird that there are thousands and thousands of unknown people out there who look at this every day, many of whom are reading this very sentence?   I find that so weird when I think about it.  ** Alan, Feel the noise, man.  **  David Ehrenstein, Yeah, I just wish I could see 'Milk' a lot sooner than I'll probably get to so I could experience it pre-onslaught of varying opinion.  In LA, my friends and I tried to see things opening night for that very reason.  Stuck late in the loop for English language films over here, the viewing experience is inescapably somewhat reactive to more than the thing itself.  But, anyway, I'm here twiddling my fingers until its March delivery.  **  Wolf, Yeah, I'm not interested in pessimism.  I think it's an inherently faulty viewpoint, a rigidified wild guess, period, in addition to taking the bliss out of anticipating the future, and I like the future's mystery just the way it is.  2008 was a weird one. It wasn't that horrible at all for me, but I'm totally ready to make some new footprints or whatever.  **  CyCyLoLo, The same to you, my friends, but in English.  Are you guys back in snowy Paris yet?  **  Statictick, Gracias, and heavily charmed as always.  **  Stan_cz, Oh, well, that's good, I think, I mean the Tarantino re-ignition, me being a fan and all, but the turnaround is interesting 'cos you were pretty neg. on the guy for a while as I recall.  But those kind of 180's are the best.  Veggie schnitzel ... I doubt it, but I'll check the stores to be sure.  Veggie foie gras, we've got.  Nice meal there.  I'll try it with dogs and some spices and see what happens.  **  SYpHA_69, Oh, sure, everybody I know has their 'out there' interests and their 'tacky' interests too, me included, although not 'Keane' in my case; it's just that not everybody is as up front about actually liking the 'lame' as you are, which makes you some kind of complicated hero.  **  Bernard Welt, I steered you wrong on Montmartre?  Hm, sorry, although I stand behind my acclimation.  You needed me along to sort out the chaff.  But nonetheless, it was greatness to see you, and I hope Strasbourg lives up to the daydreams we all have about it.  I didn't hear about the riot there.  Strange.  Check in if you have the signal, and safe trip home.  **  Maximum Etc., And a very happy new year to you in return.  **  Patrick deWitt, Those were such wise and thorough resolutions.  I'm way behind you on that side project one.  You're a chapstick addict, is that what you're saying? Interesting.  That's a new one on me, if so.  I was an Afrin Nose Spray addict for a while, but it actually gets you mildly high, and who hasn't been?  **  Chris, No, I don't know that Sun Ra bio, but I'm wholly intrigued now.  Yeah, we should chat.  Phone maybe?  I don't think I have your # anymore.  Yeah, I seem to be a diligence obsessive, which I suppose in a combination of words that makes little sense, but not scarily so.  **  Pisycaca, Our music lists weren't entirely dissimilar, and I've noted the differences and noted the other lists' goodies for my future hunting trips, so thank you.  I hope that headache died out.  There's this easy to do acupressure thing you can try in those instances that helps me sometimes, 'cos I get those overnight headaches too.  HNY!  **  JoeM, Thanks for the Twitter fill-in.  It doesn't sound like my thing at all.  It seems geared to people who use their cellphone as signaling devices, and mine just sits in my pocket doing nothing much more than losing its battery charge, which suits me just fine.  I do like Facebook though.  I keep finding interesting people/ artists through the friending and groups thing, and even though I'm not into reporting what I'm doing and thinking fifteen times a day there, I do chase the mini-shifts in the status of my 'friends' a fair amount, partly 'cos you can find some cool, strange sentences that way, me being a sentence fetishist, and I guess the choice involved in choosing what they think others need to know about them is a curious way to try to understand them or something.  **  Marc, I have a decent feeling about 2009 and me as a couple so far.  Yeah, I know Dark Day.  I did some little thing about the work here quite a while back.  But I don't know RC personally or anything.  Yeah, you can send the novel to me, of course.  I'll try to stay great in your eyes if you promise to stay great in my eyes, and I have this stinking suspicion you can't help but.  **  Mark Gluth, Well, I'll look up Colleen then at the very least since I share their/her segment of the continent.  No, I don't have French healthcare.  I'm just a particularly lingering tourist.  I've had a doctor or two cut me some slack, but I need to get healthcare pretty soon 'cos I'm not getting any younger and all that.  **  Ignacio, Oh, Albert Ayler's 'Witches & Devils' is a fave of mine too, cool.  I'm sorry to hear about your low mood.  The outdoors can be strangely curative, although I can't speak for Portland's version, of course. Get back on the writing horse, man.  A busy brain ... etc.  That's my advice.  **  Zachary German, Cool, you answered my questions.  Well, your novel's genius, so I can't imagine those MH guys not hugging you and offering you a lot of coke or whores or I don't know what in a month or so.  Oh, I'll supposedly be in NYC in May 'cos my 'Ugly Man' comes out then, and my publisher wants me to do something at whatever it's called ... the BEA?  The big book convention thing.  And do the launch/reading combo number at a bookstore or two or whatever.  I'll let you know the scoop when there is scoop, and it'll be great to see you.  **  Tender Prey, Nice that Wolf's and my blasts were helpful.  Don't get me started on Mugabe/Zimbabwe.  That one really explodes me.  Yeah, 'My Winnipeg' was such a gorgeous thing, right?  As I think I've said here before, Maddin's book of writings/ journals from Coach House Press is extremely wonderful if you ever want to dig down deeper in that sense.  **  Winter Rates, Oh, man, good luck big time on the quitting smoking thing.  Yikes, that shit is hard.  Feel free to log in and call us all obnoxious assholes when you reach that hair-trigger temper phase.  Or I should say it's okay with me.  **  Steevee, Yeah, I streamed a couple more Reatard songs yesterday out of curiosity, and it's not quite what I thought, and I think I like it.   **  Chilly Jay Chill, I'm glad the surprise was the good kind.  Thank you, man.  No, I never laid my eyes on that Greg Tate novel over at LHotB.  He probably was going for the big publishers.  Or he might have sent it to Akashic but not to my series itself.  I like his writing a lot, so that novel would have and still would get a very welcome, serious read from me, no question of that.  Just that quick description excited me.  Yury's generally okay.  He's kind of sick at the moment, but getting better.  He's mostly preparing for his second and final test to get his promotion at work, after which the future's possibilities widen considerably.  But he's good, busy, hanging in there.  Thanks for asking.  I'll tell him you did.  **  Magick Stallion, Wow, you did a whole karaoke set there.  I bet you can sing, can't you?  'Life on Mars' can't be easy to sing.  I think I did about half of one song karaoke once before I got too stressed out and had to stop, but that's it.  I think it was a Replacements song, I can't remember.  A few years ago, I was going to jump up onstage with this LA indie band and sing 'Epistle to Dippy' with them backing me up musically for their encore.  We had it all planned out, but we wanted it to be a big secret and surprise, so no one in the audience knew, and they didn't get an encore.  **  JW Veldhoen, Oh, that Yoo-hoo!  Duh, yeah, of course.  Well, what can't smell like dick and shit at the same time?  I mean besides the top of the Eiffel Tower and what's-her-name?  **  Misanthrope, That's so sweet.  You're such a big Jim Morrison fan that you never even let yourself consider the possibility of the heavy sarcasm with which I typed that lyric.  You're just so gosh darned sweet sometimes, George.  You type pretty good for a 100% sick guy, so I won't worry about you.  Aksyonov: Yury is sick and sleeping up in the loft as I write this, but I'll query him when he awakes, though he's never been a big fiction reader. That doesn't mean he won't have a fully formed opinion on the matter though.  Bernard told me a ...  possibly even the Borders story, yes.  I'll just say your terrible and shocking secret is safe with me.  No worries, I'm so not tempted to do the Twitter thing, uh-uh.  **  Heliotrope, I envy your parties and even your bags.  I don't even know if I could contextualize bags anymore.  Bloodshot, I can do.  Now I want to go listen to or rather download 'Full House'.  Happy to have embarrassed you long distance.  Just be glad I wasn't there because I would have dropped to my knees talking in tongues before you.  Long story short, I love you too, man.  **  Fraa, Oh, thank you.  Well, I'll have to wait for the Guibert to get translated into English, which isn't likely to happen very soon, sadly.  Damn.  Probably same goes on the Verlaine book, but, if it has drawings, I'll at least search it out here and get something out of perusing it.  Both books sound so incredibly desirable.  My favorite Guibert is -- in its English title at least -- 'The Compassion Protocol'.  Do you know of it?  Thank you again, my friend.  **  Just since I started this p.s., the snow has begun heavily melting into invisibility, so I'm going to put on my scarf, etc., and try to catch the tailwind post-haste.   Today's post: one of those sort of unpopular things I like to do here once in a while to help me focus on some matters at hand.  Take it or leave it.  In any case, take care, and see you in about a day from now.