1. So, while I and many of my writer friends are brooding, writing, angsting, plotting, marketing, writing…here’s a new book I discovered yesterday: MILK EGGS VODKA Grocery Lists Lost and Found. And here’s a blurb: HOW Books introduces “Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found,” a new book by über-collector Bill Keaggy. “Milk Eggs Vodka” features 300 real grocery lists recovered from shopping carts and parking lots across America and other corners of the globe. Keaggy dissects each list with his acerbic wit and offers intriguing insights about what we eat and why.

I spotted the book yesterday before my writing workshop and booksigning at Bay Books in Bay St. Louis, MS. Delightful group of writers and artists at the workshop, and I loved just hanging out, cruising the shelves and talking to Kay Gough.

Obviously, I’m missing a wealth of opportunities for books as further evidenced by: Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items From Around the World.

I actually think these books are brilliant social commentaries, and I find them fascinating.  If nothing else, I think I’ll buy them because somewhere in there is a book waiting to happen.

2. As if we need more proof that getting drunk is the epitome of stupidity (love the sound of that…): A 47-year-old (as in the name of everything holy, how many brain cells have you already murdered) man lost a bet with his drinking buddies. So…what’s a guy going to do? Well, when you only drink six, and they’ve had more, you let them set your prosthetic leg on fire.

What’s truly fortunate and amazing is that they did manage to distinguish the prosthetic leg from the real one. The flames, however, did not. They spread to his butt and back.

And his drinking buddies helped, right? Sure they did. As reported by the Las Cruses Sun-News, “The sheriff’s office said the man took his clothes off because of the pain and his friends decided to take him to the hospital. But they got nervous and instead dropped him off on the side of the highway.”

3. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said that the ten Russian spies “posed a potential threat to the United States” by explaining (justifying?) the recent trade.

Okay. Then why did it take TEN YEARS of watching them to determine that?

4. Ray Nagin is no longer mayor of New Orleans (can I hear an “AMEN!”), but his arrogant carelessness lives on. The city had $72 million in its “rainy day fund” in 2007.  From 2007-2009, it must have stormed to the tune of $65,000 a day because the fund today is zero.

Over $3 million was spent on Armstrong Park, which he touted as his legacy. I suppose therein lies the irony; the park is trashed because the contractors he hired were inept. And the ten foot statue of Louis Armstrong was not only cracked, here’s the rest of the report from Times-Picayune’s Jarvis DeBerry:

“Not only did the company demonstrate an inability to install sidewalks; not only did the company damage the statue of this city’s most influential musician and cultural ambassador; but A.M.E. Disaster Recovery also damaged curbing, knocked a light pole into the lagoon, broke manholes and sprinkler pipes and cut power and phone lines.”

Perhaps he was the spy left behind…