Some way into William Kostwinkle's The Fan Man *, the Fan Man has a dorky day and chants an entire chapter of "dorky! dorky! dorky! dorky! dorky! ...." This is a good description of the Sole Proprietor's head on this first day in November Sunday morning.

He needs to loosen up. He's feels his writing is too tight and preachy and he needs to bounce it around, throw it through a few hoops and let it settle before he rolls it out into the world.

He's just finished reading the Rien Post Notes, a member of this Journal Ring. It has a kind of 50's Beat Generation feel about it, a stale cigarette smoke and whiskey in the early morning cynicism that reads very well. Reminds the Sole Proprietor of some things he read when he was younger and wanted to know more about cigarettes and whiskey. Well, whiskey anyway. The writing comes through both intelligent and real. (The part about the fat Americans and their anti-cigarette crusade, however, though accurate, does raise the blood pressure.)

The Sole Proprietor's writing, on the other hand, is tied up in a box of his own design making little preachy noises and squeaking like the rat in yesterday's maze. Today he's contemplating the size and dimensions of this box, thoughtfully padding around the perimeter with a crowbar, looking for cracks.

The Sole Proprietor's suspicion, if he ever really gets out of his box and ever really loosens up head and writing both, is that he'll probably stop writing altogether and do something cosmic and breathtaking like finish his model railroad and mow the lawn.

Did you notice the Red Ink Railroad on the home page? The Sole Proprietor has been threatening to build it now for 30 years. It is a goal "just over the horizon", something he'll get to when he retires, when he has time, when he doesn't have to work any more. Sound familiar? That great pie in the sky we will get there you and I?

Well, his suspicion is that model railroads on the horizon, New Year's resolutions pinned to the wall, being caught in a writer's box and learning to make the great American pizza are all passing hallucinations that would go away in a minute if he could find just the right crack with that crowbar.

So the Sole Proprietor is having a dorky day, contemplating boxes and looking for cracks as the football season passes by. It's Sunday (He knows, the entry says Monday, but he writes these things a day in advance.) so the '49ers will be playing Green Bay. He'll listen to the game as he moves some more pages from NBBC.COM to his personal site.

And drink some tea. Or read a book. Or drive around the corner and shoot a picture of an Aardvark. Or, and he thanks the Rien Post Notes for reminding him of the options available to your average American citizen, he'll haul out his .44 magnum Colt revolver and drive by the Crippled Children's Hospital looking for promising targets.**

Where is this going? Have some tea, Sole Proprietor. Put your feet up on the couch. Look at Green Bay. They're kicking the crap out of your football team.