Nothing much to say, or at least that I feel up to saying

by Ken

The above news, in case you missed it, comes courtesy of New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff's weekly blogpost, "Nothing to Say," news that Bob declares he was "particularly gratified about." There is perhaps inspiration to be drawn from Bob's opening:

I have nothing at all to say this week. But that's pretty much the case every week, and, since it hasn’t stopped me in the past, it's not going to now.

Bob proceeds to propose "a simple 'News of the Week' feature" that consists of a list of the days of the week, a stunt that I suspect at most one of us can get away with, In any case, this isn't quite my situation. I have things to say; I just don't feel like saying them, and I can't imagine anyone feeling like reading them. For example, while I may have things left to say about the Shutdown Follies, I'd just as soon leave that beat to Andy Borowitz, who has been covering it with admirable thoroughness (most recently in "Poll: Americans Divided Over What Wild Animal They Would Like to See Congress Mauled By," though I would hate to forget the earlier "Hostage-Takers Call Comparisons to Tea Party 'Hurtful'").

Perhaps there are personal angles still to be explored, as The New Yorker's Christopher Weyant does here:

"Sometimes I think you use government shutdowns to avoid intimacy."

This isn't really my area, though. If I were to go introspective on the economic horizon, I would be more likely to contemplate my future if, say, I should suddenly need to find a new way to make a living. But Bruce E. Kaplan has this angle covered:

"We have a new financial model where you don't get paid anything."

I could perhaps write about a very happy first day of Open House New York activity, with a fine tour of Upper Manhattan's Morningside Park with Bruce Taylor, the president of the Friends of Morningside Park, and a rare peek inside Morningside Heights's beautiful Union Theological Seminary, participating in OHNY for the first time, with special-events director and chief fund-raiser Kevin McGee and first-year student Elizabeth Clark), a peek not just inside the lovely Tudor-style Manhattan-schist-stone building but inside the worldly as well as devoted world of its interdenominational seminarians. But does anyone want to read about that? Besides, I'm still peeved that the non-OHNY event around which I had to schedule my OHNY activities, a three-hour MAS walking tour of Brooklyn's far-eastern East New York (where my friend Richard grew up), got canceled, and there isn't even anyone to bitch and moan about -- the tour leader is sick, what's he supposed to do?

Anyway, I've still got a music post to do, and I really don't want to be up all night again, for the benefit of the six people who might read it. So I'll just leave you with this cheery thought from the storied Gahan Wilson:

"Please understand I can offer you only

the fleeting illusion of happiness."

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