Hey, I'm not sure how discrete I need to be about these things, but I just landed an assignment at a very hot NY magazine.

SWEET!

I've been mulling this pitch for months, flumoxed over it all week, then this morning decided it had to be out by 4 NY time, whipped the draft out in 40 minutes and really liked it. Tightened it up for an hour with a friend in Boston, sent it off by email to the editor in chief, and two hours later, I had an assignment.

UNbelievable. This is the biggest break of my career.

Boy I am going to have fun this weekend!

They're doing Pridefest a week early in Denver, so it's the biggest weekend of the year in Colorado homoland.

That means I probably won't be seeing you all till Monday. Jam-packed schedule, friends up from NM.

Should be a gas, but I'll miss you.

(In case there's any question, I meant the headline very light-heartedly. But I'd love to hear from you.) 

Yesterday afternoon I installed the nedstat meter, because I saw it gave country of origin. I was very curious about the idea of communicating with people outside our little (cultural) island.

Since then 2.3% of my visitors have been from Bulgaria. What an unexpected pleasure. (Of course that's only 5 people, because I'm just getting started and have just had 216 visitors in that time, but still: 5 people from Bulgaria, who would have figured.)

I would love to hear who you are, what you're doing and how the hell you heard about my blog. Don't be shy, introduce yourselves.

And how is Bulgaria this time of year? And what's going on there politically? Are things OK?

You've probably heard about it already, so follow the link if you haven't registered yet.

If you haven't heard about it, follow the link to find out about it.

It's not clear exactly how long you have to register (or I didn't read enough), but voting is next Tues-Wed. 

I turned in my Colorado-blogging piece to 5280 Monday, about 150 words over the limit, but they liked the topic enough to ask for more. (So far it's gone from a little 600-word ditty in the front section to probably 1,000, plus the list described below, though they might have to cut (cut!) something to make it fit.)

I had the pleasure of a long interview with Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft this morning. Very interesting woman. Out-take quotes coming soon (probably early next week, as this weekend is shot). And she's really put together a great site. Spends about three hours a day on it, but really finds it rewarding.

5280 also asked me to put together a list of ten great local blogs to go with the piece, and I had a chance to chat briefly with several others today. I was impressed, and I do not impress easily. Really having a great time meeting most of these people (had no idea you bloggers would be so interesting!) And much thanks to Andy of WorldWideRant for helping me in lots of little ways with lots of little issues with my blog. (I got two counters working halfway through the day--after half those precious links for Vodkapundit went uncounted! (you know how painful that can be as a newbie), but not the main one I wanted, Extreme Tracker.) And (still talking about Andy here) a host of really interesting email discussions.

Hennyway, 5280 probably doesn't want me giving away anything, so I won't reveal who's on the list of ten, but here are a few people I enjoyed talking to today (I'll just go with the blog name, since I didn't check spellings on all the human names):

ResurrectionSong (click here just for the Greenspan pick--you've probably all seen it already, but I've been cackling all day, every time I go back there.)

TalkLeft

RoverPundit.

And one person I keep missing, but hope to meet at one of the alleged local functions soon, Mary, from RantORama (great graphic there, too.) 

Read the whole passage first. You'll be really annoyed by my highlights if you plunge right ahead. At least I would be.

That passage leaves me gaping. Only one or two hundred in the book do that to me, which is why I revere it so. Certain phrases leap out at me, though, fill me with awe, and I always wonder if they are the same moments that do it to the rest of you.

So I'm going to highlight my moments--color them maroon, I guess (with bold for an especially bright moment within a larger). Feel free to jump in with your own. Or challenge any of mine:

With the help of some grown-up person, who would use first both hands and then a powerful leg, the divan would be moved several inches away from the wall, so as to form a narrow passage which I would be further helped to roof snugly with the divan's bolsters and close up at the ends with a couple of its cushions. I then had the fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel, where I lingered a little to listen to the singing in my ears—that lonesome vibration so familiar to small boys in dusty hiding places—and then, in a burst of delicious panic, on rapidly thudding hands and knees I would reach the tunnel’s far end, push its cushion away, and be welcomed by a mesh of sunshine on the parquet under the canework of a Viennese chair and two gamesome flies settling by turns. A dreamier and more delicious sensation was provided by another cave game, when upon awakening in the early morning I made a tent of my bedclothes and let my imagination play in a thousand dim ways with shadowy snowslides of linen and with the faint light that seemed to penetrate my penumbral covert from some immense distance, where I fancied that strange, pale animals roamed in a landscape of lakes. The recollection of my crib, with its lateral nets of fluffy cotton cords, brings back, too, the pleasure of handling a certain beautiful, delightfully solid, garnet-dark crystal egg left over from some unremembered Easter: I used to chew a corner of the bedsheet until it was thoroughly soaked and then wrap the egg in it tightly, so as to admire and re-lick the warm, ruddy glitter of the snugly enveloped facets that came seeping through with a miraculous completeness of glow and color. But that was not yet the closest I got to feeding upon beauty.

From Conclusive Evidence, pp. 23-24 (Chapter One--he's about 5):

With the help of some grown-up person, who would use first both hands and then a powerful leg, the divan would be moved several inches away from the wall, so as to form a narrow passage which I would be further helped to roof snugly with the divan's bolsters and close up at the ends with a couple of its cushions. I then had the fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel, where I lingered a little to listen to the singing in my ears—that lonesome vibration so familiar to small boys in dusty hiding places—and then, in a burst of delicious panic, on rapidly thudding hands and knees I would reach the tunnel’s far end, push its cushion away, and be welcomed by a mesh of sunshine on the parquet under the canework of a Viennese chair and two gamesome flies settling by turns. A dreamier and more delicious sensation was provided by another cave game, when upon awakening in the early morning I made a tent of my bedclothes and let my imagination play in a thousand dim ways with shadowy snowslides of linen and with the faint light that seemed to penetrate my penumbral covert from some immense distance, where I fancied that strange, pale animals roamed in a landscape of lakes. The recollection of my crib, with its lateral nets of fluffy cotton cords, brings back, too, the pleasure of handling a certain beautiful, delightfully solid, garnet-dark crystal egg left over from some unremembered Easter: I used to chew a corner of the bedsheet until it was thoroughly soaked and then wrap the egg in it tightly, so as to admire and re-lick the warm, ruddy glitter of the snugly enveloped facets that came seeping through with a miraculous completeness of glow and color. But that was not yet the closest I got to feeding upon beauty.

Wow. Even Shakespeare had to struggle for word usements that great.

I'm watching Bill Buckley on Tuesday night's Charlie Rose right now. At first he tries to pretend that TV is liberal, and Charlie kinda laughs in his face, challenges him to name one liberal person in TV is comparable to O'Reilly, or Limbaugh or "a hundred others."

All he comes up with is Walter Cronkite. You've got to be kidding. He concedes that Walter is no longer active. He thinks a bit more, then gives in: within that arena, the conservatives are hedgemonic in that arena (of course he doesn't use quite that word).

Then he tries the lame tack that 80-some percent of journos voted Democratic last time.

Wow. Bill is really slipping. I remember a day--very recently--when he was sharp as a tack, would never resort to such transparent ruses. And when he conceded the obvious willingly, because he had a hundred stronger arguments up his sleeve. Oh well, a great one passes. This time he was coming across no better than a George Will.

But at least he conceded the obvious, if grudgingly.

What I wonder: are there conservatives out there who actually believe TV is liberal, or are they just putting that up as a tactic, snickering quietly as they step away from the cameras?