And oh by the way, happy fucking Bloomsday everybody.

Hey everybody. Here's my travel schedule for July.

July 9 I'm frying to Prague.

July 12 I'm frying to New York. Hopefully I can find a sofa to crash on that night (and who knows, maybe even the next night) and then I'm up to Boston.

July 20 I'm frying from New York back to Prague so I'll be able to celibate my birthday there. July 24 I'm frying back to Dubai.

There's no way I can change those frights, so if that doesn't work out right for you, sorry dude.

I heard an awful rumor that the Pixies are praying at Akropolis on Jury 13, the day after I leave. Yes, it's true. Why that's just nuts, nuts I tell you. What next, the original Doors playing Lucerna?

As in any newsroom, we have many arguments and discussions over AP style rules here. I just recounted the story of my Slate editor who called "rules is rules" when I questioned her removal of a hyphen from "stigmata-like." Sure enough, if you Google the word "stigmatalike," mine is the first of three usages on the whole of the web. I'm chuffed. I own that word now.

A couple of strange things have happened to me. Small things. I'll tell you one.

Because I have a relatively generic Gmail address, occasionally I mistakenly get emails intended for other Scottymacs out there. Sometimes they're interesting because they involve office politics, and people making threatening noises like, "If you continue to have this attitude about so-and-so I'm afraid I can no longer be your friend."

This morning I received an email from guy I don't know with a name sort of like mine. I won't say where he is, altough it's a Scottish city and it's spelled G-L-A-S-G-O-W (which makes this whole following exchange seem like something from a Belle & Sebastian song). He meant to CC himself on a message, but he sent it to me instead. It was the tail end of an exchange with his wife, and it was so touching, it almost made me cry.

At the risk of being emotionally obscene, I shall quote it verbatim (I can't imagine how this could be traced back to or discovered by the source, otherwise I wouldn't put it out there):

From wife to husband:

Hi Babe

Thanks for my card, I didn't open it, we will open them together tonight. What do you want to do for dinner and what time will you be home? I can phone the [insert name of a restaurant] if that's where you would like to go?

I love you, sorry for my lack of life last night.

X

Reply:

Hiya,

No worries. I was gonna book the [restaurant] at lunch time when I take my break. I thought if I booked t for 7pm that would give me time to get home and get a shower and stuff.

I’ll try and get away 4pm sharp to get home for 5:30 at the latest.

Don’t worry about last night, you did a 5K, what did you expect?

Love you too.

S
XX

Reply:

Hi

Can you read over my application and see what you think? If you are going to make any changes save it as another copy and email me it back.

Love ya

x

Reply:

Hi babe,

Had a quick look over this just now, will do it again tomorrow night. See what you think in the meantime, no major changes made so you might not see much difference.

S
xx

There is a job application attached for a youth social worker position.

I am trying to anonymize this blog. You will have noticed I've removed all references to myself. The problem is that if you Google my name, I'm second after the Halifax composer. So if you've linked to me from your own blog using my full name, please do me a favor and change it to "scottymac" or "groping savage" or something.

Soon there shall be rays of Chinese chi energy shooting from my fingertips.