Hermit crab

I've left the house four times in the last sixteen days. I went to a Mexican restaurant with my family where I was mean to the boy. I went to my accountant's twice. I'm pretty sure I was mean to her as well, especially yesterday when she told me what kind of check I would be writing this year. Last night, after two weeks of being a hermit and rather crabby about it, I ventured back out into the world of other people for a weekly poker game. I was crabby there, too.

That, hopefully, serves as explanation for my lax posting schedule and general tone. It also, hopefully, explains why I have a hollow look in my eye and have grown a beard. If not, I have come up with a list of excuses.

Top 6 Reasons I Have Grown a Beard

1. I'm trying to teach my kid what strangers look like
2. I'm going undercover at a porn convention
3. I've started noticing changes in my body and hair in places I'd never had it before. Otherwise, I have no explanation.
4. I'm upping my efforts for Locks of Love
5. I misunderstood my gay friend when he said he needed a beard
6. I'm adding spice to my marriage by teaching my wife what strangers look like

I've actually taken to the hermit lifestyle very well. I have several manifestos in the works. I've researched mountain cabins where I can wait out the government. I've also started making a list of people who deserve to be poor and embarrassed.

Stephen Glass

James Frey

Laura Albert

Ruth Shalit

Jayson Blair

Can we all agree that fictionalizing one's life or the lives of others and passing it off a nonfiction is the cheapest form of art?

The easiest way to get people to like something is to tell them it's real. I really liked the movie "American Gangster." I probably would not have liked it any less if I'd known the movie was about 95% fiction. However, being told it was a true story and then learning it wasn't leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I am endlessly fascinated by people who pull off grand hoaxes. I am not, however, impressed by people who decide their real writing and real life are too boring, so they create a fictionalized world and pass it off as reality. If caught, they call it performance art or a dramatization.

I'm on the rant now because of 90 Day Jane. Google her if you like, but I'm not linking. The concept behind the blog is Jane, a skinny, bob-headed twenty-something who quotes Fight Club, is going to kill herself in 90 days. In the meantime, she's blogging her daily exploits for the masses and making You Tube videos of her picking out her "death dress." My favorite crime blogger, Steve Huff is also a bit of a web sleuth and is pretty good at solving web mysteries like this. In this case, unlike the case of John Twelve Hawks, I don't give a diddly damn.

Oh, screw it. Hereya go.

I've spent the past two weeks working my way into a local cult that believes dentists are evil and the only way to defeat them is growing a beard and brushing our teeth with OCD regularity. There are two end-game scenarios within the cult. One, we all kill ourselves with sharpened toothbrushes and try to pin it on the dentists. Two, we all get our own reality show on FOX.

Either way, it looks like we're gonna be famous.