Contagious Offspring, A Child's Machiavelli, And More Packing For The Big Move

[dr_pretentious]

I can't tell if I was loopy when I wrote this week's Black Gate post, or whether it's clear but I'm so loopy now that I can't read it. Conrad picked up a summer cold somewhere, and now that he's getting better, the cold is kicking my butt. In any case, how far wrong can you go with illustrations from Claudia Hart's brilliant satire, A Child's Machiavelli: A Primer on Power? Okay, silly question, you can go farther wrong with Machiavelli than with most authors, but in this case, it's a brilliant form of wrongness, sort of the way Fountains of Wayne was gloriously wrong with Stacy's Mom.

In other news, our plans to leave our beloved house and, more to the point, its dreadful school district, continue apace. I started packing my books back in January. I'm still on the books. This does in fact say as much about how many books we have as it says about how slow my packing process has been. We're picking up the pace now, and in a week or so will get to things that are not books.

So, local New Jersey peeps, if you have packing materials in good shape that you're looking to get rid of, we'd be happy to free up your attic space. And if you're keen to buy a lovely 100-year-old craftsman house in a town with bad schools but excellent neighbors, drop me a message.