This Web Blog was haphazardly produced without using Spell Check one danged time. We like it that way.

ESOTERICA: Yeah, the top country for readers here is still the USA. But only about 47% of the people reading this site come from America. More than 50% come from elsewhere. We're still trying to figure that out.

Our publisher - oops! forgot this is not a magazine any longer - I expect that as we begin to do new things at places elsewhere - places such as CinemActivist.com - we'll pique your interest.

15 July 2007: Mary and I talked last night. She said in an oblique way that part of the reason she wouldn't consider me as a potential inamorata is that I conceal more than I reveal. Considering I'm the guy who wrote a column called "My Glass House" for years and I've always claimed my life is an open book that everyone has read on the Web for years, I found her statement unsettling.

As she is one of the people who knew me during my years living in New Orleans, before Katrina, doubly so.

It was a kind of polite way of saying she didn't trust me. When a woman tells a man she doesn't trust him or that he has too many secrets, everyone knows what that means.

I'll admit I'm good at concealment. I consider it part of the magic tricks I do. Sleight of hand. All writers use it, some of us better than others, as do all magicians. In interpersonal relationships, of course, I would suppose it's suspect.

Never hurt Harry Anderson while he was in New Orleans, though.

And the thing is, most of what I conceal is just old pain. Not valid in my life now and not worth belaboring anyone with.

This another one you need to click on, Homies. YouTube is starting to make me agro.

Why can't we always have this much fun?

Life of Rod

16 July 2007: My rendezvous with Hamda on Sunday didn't go quite as planned. It didn't go very well at all.

She said: "Well, what I was thinking that you could take care of all the arrangements for us to go to San Diego next month. We'd stay for a week or so - maybe ten days. I'll take some classes and meet a friend. Well, a couple of friends I'd like to meet. And you could be my bodyguard."

I said: "Pardon me... Your bodyguard?"

"Well, uhm, yeah." She said, "We'd share a hotel room and you would protect me."

I said: "Well, ehm, no. That wasn't exactly what I had in mind when you brought this idea up. You've been telephoning, IMing, text-messaging and e-mailing me since we met about two months ago. You set it up for you to come here to my place today. This was all a set-up for me being your bodyguard?"

[At this point, the litte bugg voice in my head intruded. "You see where this is going, pal? Knowing your background, as she does, and that you like her she knows that you're willing to take a punch. So things can go one of two ways. She thinks, 'Hey I got this big black guy hanging with me so I'll be safe.' Except, you aren't that big are you? And not everyone is intimidated by you just because you happen to be black.

"So then what? You depend on people being intimidated by threats and frontin' and hope that works or some vato from East L.A. is doing flamenco on your chest after knocking you to the ground. Bad plan."]

She said: "Uh, yeah. I think of you as very protective."

I said: "I see. I know that your job is teasing men for a living. What I didn't know was that you thought so little of me. I mean, you really thought I should drop everything I'm doing - some of which some people believe is important - to fly out to California for a week to act as bodyguard to a stripper?"

"You're being cruel," she said.

"Whoa!" I said. "The second time we meet you basically come on to me, then you keep calling me, etc., every week. I have a friend of mine find you an apartment. You ask me to go to California with you, share a room, and be your bodyguard and I'm the one being cruel? I'm sorry but I can't see it that way."

As you can see, things weren't going well at all. I had to ask her why she was still sitting beside me on my sofa eating my strawberries.

She said: "You really mean that, don't you?"

I said, "You're the first woman I've seriously pursued in seventeen years."

She started to put her shoes back on.

As Elliot wrote in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, "... And the women come and go/Speaking of Michelangelo..."

As mentioned in the sidebars, you'll soon begin seeing crosslinks and additional content from Yours Unruly at both Leverage Social Media and CinemActivist. I think the corporate types call this branding. What I call it is simply putting my thoughts in various baskets. I hope you'll feel welcome to visit them all.

What surprises me is that Lightning Strikes is already competitive with The World's Magazine - as regards pageview stats - in only fourteen days. Maybe I'm onto something again.

Cheers!

Keep me in your prayers as I keep you in my own.

Thanks for visiting.

Talk to you in a day or so.

Be well.