Don’t let the title of tonight’s bedtime story deceive you… this is actually an affair of considerable importance. Consider, for example, the success that is XBox. Or the X-Men. Or X-Treme Sports, for that matters. And the importance of X as a roman numeral. Or X as a universal icon of the unknown.

The other day, I dropped off my laundry on my way to work as I do sometimes (because some things you really should leave to the professionals). This was a different laundrette, one that stays open a half hour later, because sometimes I’ve been unfortunate enough to miss the closing due to a late night at the office,

Questions That Have Been Asked, at Varying Levels of Frequency, of Miette and Her Podcast:

How did this get started?

A riddle: What could possibly be better than an unexpected new book of short fiction turning up in your mailbox?

The answer: When that new book includes short fiction from Zamiatin, Zweig, Zantner, and Zugsmith.

A few blocks down from my apartment is a utility pole, and on that utility pole someone has graffitoed the following in black marker:

“Romanse [sic] is the death of enlightenment”

The other day, I broke from my own morning convention and fetched my AM coffee from a coffee chain whose name shall not be uttered on this page. It was quite likely the simplest order the coffee-servicer had fulfilled that day: a no-frills “medium coffee,” with nothing even vaguely representing an “-ino” suffix, no “shot” [...]

8 of Miette’s 2006 Predictions for the New Year:

– I will really really do all those things I meant to do in 2005, including those things in 2005 I was really really going to do after neglecting in 2004.
– Ditto 2003.
– When thinking of these podcasts, I’ll follow at least three of the Dalai Lama’s instructions, and be better off for it. (Though that one about silence; I’m doubting I can do much with that one.)