Thanks, everyone, for your kind thoughts and wishes. Posting will remain light for a while — I have some other projects I really should be working on — but never fear…there are plenty of other sites out there better than this one, anyway. For instance, I can think of like, two of them right off the top of my head.

While I’m off attending to personal matters, here’s some fiction to keep you busy. These are early drafts of a couple of chapters from the novel I’m supposed to be working on this summer. Taken totally out of context, of course. (But did I mention there’s sex?) Make of it what you will. If you will. Have a nice weekend. We’ll talk soon.

Found out this afternoon that a buddy of mine from college died yesterday — the second such death of a friend from my undergrad days inside of three weeks. He was 33. If I don’t post for a couple days, you’ll know why. Thanks for understanding.

“With just 116 yuan ($14), Shanghai office worker Han Bin could be the proud owner of a second-hand Volkswagen Passat, if he wins a court battle against the car’s disbelieving seller,” Reuters reports. Han, 20, put in his ridiculously low bid for the car when it was offered over a leading Chinese auction Web site, EachNet.com. By the deadline, no one else had bid and a jubilant Han received confirmation

From Rob Morse’s Monday

Are OB-GYNs cloaking their own preference for C-sections in the rhetoric of women’s choice? — or are today’s women simply too posh to push? US News & World Report’s Susan Brink examines the sharp spike in Cesarean sections and asks, “Progress? Or convenience…?” … For the record, either’s fine with me. Because to be honest with you, I don’t know how women do it at all. I mean, the responsibility

John Hawkins of Right Wing News scored an interview with Jon David, the man who hacked Al-Qaeda’s homepage. An excerpt: It literally took me 5 days to reach anyone in the FBI that had an even elementary grasp of the Internet. By that time, the hostiles realized the site I had up was a decoy and then advised everyone away from it. I still gave the FBI all the log

FOXNews reports that a school of sharks has been spotted unusually close to the Southern California coastline. I blame the Leftists.

At least 7 dead, scores more seriously injured in an attack on the cafeteria at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Hamas has claimed responsibility. “Witnesses initially said they believed a suicide bomber was responsible, but Israeli police said preliminary evidence suggested that someone planted the bomb,” The Washington Post reports. ‘We