Today I turn 52, which means little to me. Thirty-three was difficult for I'd left Midland, and a life behind, to go into the hinterlands. I thought it might be bad and it got worse than I could have imagined. Well, as they said in the early days of flight, any landing you walk away from is a good one.

And every time I talk to Michele, my physician, she tells me things which augur that I may be objectionable for many years to come. I like that although I suspect that even the cats are getting irritated at me, if one can judge by the insouciance with which they shake their tails walking away.

Yesterday I got an eCard(tm) from Hallmark telling me that I had a card. They knew that I had a birthday coming for last year a friend sent me one. And for a Hallmark card, it was not egregious. But I did not recognize the name of the sender--funweary@xxxx.net, and when I clicked on the link there was nothing there but an invitation for me to send some drivel to some other person.

Not only does Hallmark phish with crap, but it doesn't even give you a free card costing nothing. Perhaps it would put too much strain on its servers.

On Christmas Day of 2006 I drove into Kansas City for the first time. And after I had been there a while, I thought it would be the last time, remembering Voltaire's description of a sexual act he'd been involved in: "Once a philosopher, twice a pervert." I stayed at the Hyatt Crown Center, not realizing that it was named that for Hallmark's headquarters are there. It is also urban renewal, and they boast of that, but it lent credence to the dark side of me which believes that the best urban renewal may be with a bulldozer. Every meal was served covered with honey.

One of the silly conceits is finding out the birthdays of famous people who happen to share yours. When you consider that there are at least six billion people on earth, you have 16,427,104.72 other people sharing your birthday, and so it really means little.

Unfortunately Shirley MacLaine shares my birthday, although with her extreme loopiness she probably figures that she was spawned from primeval sludge or the Original Egg. But who knows now? She's weak-minded and spoiled, the victim of flattery. But I do feel sorry for her; her reincarnation stuff, that plea for attention, seems weak tea now compared to the utter rubbish of Global Warming(tm). After all, I cannot prove that Shirley MacLaine is not the reincarnated groom of the stool of Nefertiti, although it seems plausible, but people have proven that Global Warming is a scam, the vicious and bossy chasing the hysterical.

Richard Daley shares my birthday. He is the machine master from Chicago, which Algore imported to steal the Florida election, and who couldn't, occasioning anguished screams from his father in hell, that a Daley couldn't steal an election. It is unkind of me to wish up a hell that I don't believe in, but one must have some comfort, believing that the Daleys, Sharptons, Hillarys, &c. will get what they ought to get. Which is to be bossed around by DPS clerks, but that's another story.

But the worst of all sharing this day is Barbra Streisand. I missed the gene of liking her--thank God. If she had a bad voice she would not be so bad for the waste would not be as great, but her pipes are superlative, and what does she do with them? Noodles and scrimshaw, never using one note when three will do, ornamentation that was appropriate on the harpsichord in the 18th century when done by Bach, but not when applied to modern music. She doesn't sing a song as much as wrestle it to the ground and kneel on its throat. She should be on a twelve-step program to get off the mordent. She's the worst pralltriller abuser still living.

If they could measure up ego by the pound, the earth would orbit around her.

Oh well. Today is the 21st anniversary of the death of Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee whose charms caused the Abdication Crisis in England when Edward wanted to marry her but the Church of England wouldn't let him, and so he abdicated. But what a wit she was (and evidently he wasn't). Once one of her California school chums called her while in New York.

"Wally, can you have lunch with me?"

"I'll have to schedule my shedule."

"Wally, we're in America. It's skedule, not shedule."

"Oh skit. You're right. Let's lunch."