I have writ (?) something new after my August hiatus. Here it is. I always plan to write so very much while I'm away, and I do, but in my notebook, not on the computer. The real reason, I'm sad to say, is that the computers in the internet cafes of foreign countries often have sticky keyboards and infuriatingly hidden punctuation, and I feel like a pianist playing a broken piano. My true talent, you see, is typing. I type upwards of 90 w.p.m., and if I can't type, and I can't tune in to the station where the words are coming from. We are all radios and when we do any kind of work we're not even hardly there. Or haven't you read Bluebeard, by Kurt Vonnegut? I ran smack into Kurt Vonnegut one day when I was late for a Fulbright information session at the UN. I do so wish I'd said something to him other than, "Sorry, sir!" Now I don't have a Fulbright or any good advice from Kurt Vonnegut. But I suppose the radio thing and his other two dozen books are enough advice for one lifetime. If I'd asked him right then, his advice might have been, "Slow down!" and I would have listened, because I greatly admire Kurt Vonnegut.

But I digress. This is not a rambling, but rather a very important message to you, The Readers, from me, your Super Lefty. The message is this: that email address I've just erased from the bottom of this page is defunct. Kaput. Un-useable. Its junk mail has finally multiplied to horrific proportions, and I am no longer able to receive email there at all. So if you've sent an email to emily at superlefty dot com anytime since, say, June, please assume I haven't gotten it, not that I just don't care. I do care. I care so much I'd stand out in the rain, shivering, under the window of your email, looking longingly up at it while it slept in a canopy bed.

I will work out this email problem on the double, and then you can once again write me to tell me that I amuse you, or that I most certainly do not amuse you. Those seem to be the two camps out there, if memory serves. If you are the person who shares my complex feelings about Curt Schilling, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I've really put a lot of that behind me, and I hope time has healed your wounds as well. If you are my mother, please stop reading this web site and then hesitantly asking me if I have a drinking problem. If you are the fellow who wrote to offer me residence in the small shed on your property in Virginia, I must say I'm intrigued but a little afraid. In future emails, please explain the size and furnishings of the shed and also give some convincing evidence that you are not an axe murderer. I hate to assume such things, but you know, the shed in the remote area, it has connotations. All others, please don't be discouraged from offering me free real estate. I live in a very tiny and expensive room.