When things is good, things is good. What can I say? And it's at times like this -- this being one of those times -- that anything and everything seems capable of eliciting a curiouser a-la-Alice curiosity. Attention overflow retrieval. For instance, don't ask how I got there, but take this item from a page of Arkansas State Penitentiary Records 1918-1920. It seems that one Homer Ross of Lawrence County, prisoner number 15845, escaped on 10 June 1918 and was recaptured on the first of July the same year. I wonder what he was in for, and what he did in those couple weeks when he got free. How surprised would Homer have been if he could have somehow known back then that someone would be wondering about him in the 21st Century? Stuff like that.

Or this strangely beautiful album cover. Dr. John, whom I first knew as The Night Tripper, from whom I first heard of gris-gris and suchlike voodoo arcana, probably smoking opiated hash in some dirty filthy basement (doncha wanna live with me?) circa 1966 -- coming up on what? forty years now by the look of it, and all I got to show for it is I survived.

But kids, this is no mean feat, all told. So if you have days of wondering what it's all about and how you're gonna make it to another sunrise, you just flash on old Homer and what he woulda given for another day. Or on Dr.John, who, strangely, though not so strangely if you think about it for a second, is singing about the Wild Tchoupitoulas on cut #3 of this disc, and I guess it just must be the week for that sort of thing. You never know. And all these people who tell you life is worth living, if you ask them why, they don't have a clue, or else they tell you stuff makes you want to check out immediately, wonder why you didn't a long time ago. Forget those people. Just say no. Just let it float, let it go wherever it wants to. Buy the ticket. Take the trip. And whatever you do, no matter how dark it gets, always and everywhere let your freak flag fly.

Yeah. And why not -- while you're at it, what the hell -- take the next couple days off.