If the Hillary talk on the airwaves and the misogynist bamboo stake-lined pits and poor spelling on this blog are getting you down, try listening to Ramsey Lewis. Smart, funny, sexy, virtuoso, with fascinating citations throughout his music. I just downloaded the thirteen albums available online (apart from the Christmas album--ewww) and they're working very well for me on my current insane work project. When will there be an audiobook of Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon," by the way? Listening to the audiobook version of his "Quicksilver" novel just makes me nervous. As in, we have so many problems in the world today, but lo! (low!) the 17th-century issues were even more troubling. Plus it's abridged. It's possibly the influence of too much talk radio, because I do love *reading* those novels.

Cheers,
A New Economy pieceworker, doing the 21st-century equivalent of basting shirts here in Seattle