Here’s an excerpt from chapter one of my hardboiled mystery novel, “Credit Murder, Debit Intrigue.”

It was a Tuesday, 8:35 in the evening. I was just about to leave this dank office and head out onto the rain soaked streets. Go down to the local gin mill, catch a trolley home, listen to a game on the radio and turn in for the night.

My name’s Nick Ledger. I’m a CPA. It’s a hard racket, a world of tough characters, cheap women and hard liquor. Your only true companions are the trusty .38 at your hip and your amortization tables.

I was pondering the state of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitching staff when in walked this incredible dame. She had a pair of gams that stretched from here to Bakersfield, and the way she moved her hips was illegal in 13 states. I lit a Chesterfield while she made her way to the chair.

“Are you Mr. Ledger?”

“That’s what the bookies and parole board call me.”

“Mr. Ledger, I’m in dire need of assistance. You see, my father’s cardboard box plant has been losing money for the past two years. We’ve always made a profit, and we can’t figure out the problem.”

I could see where this was headed. This skirt wasn’t quite as innocent as she made herself out to be. Probably skimming from the top and trying to pin it on some other poor sap. Sure, dames are pretty to look at, but they go together with business like dogs and cats, like hot dogs and ketchup, like oil and…something that doesn’t mix well with oil. (So sue me, I’m an accountant, not a chemist.)

“Look, I’m willing to audit your books. But internal control and fraud prevention consulting - that’s extra. And you’ve got to do an internal audit.”

“Is that really necessary? Why, I’ve looked through the books myself, and I can’t find any problems.”

“You looked through the books?” I scoffed.

“What’s wrong with that, Mr. Ledger?”

“Accounting is a man’s world, dollface. It’s no place for a pretty little thing like you. You don’t know what these bastards are capable of doing. I got a slug in the neck once just for switching depreciation methods.”

“You have some very old fashioned ideas about women, Mr. Ledger,” she sniffed haughtily.

This gal was more poisonous than a New Jersey soil sample, but I didn’t have much choice. Business was slower than the hamburger concession in Bombay. The only things I was coming up with recently were hangovers and labored similes.

“All right, I’ll take the case, Miss --”

“Peterson.”

“Right. But you’ve got to leave the real work to the experts. Run off a few copies, make a pot of coffee, something like that, but I don’t want you messing around in my business, understand?”

“Well, Mr. Ledger, I won’t get in your way, but I intend to help out. I want to get to the bottom of this. Besides, I took a couple of accounting courses at the business college ---”

“Business college?” I laughed. “You can’t learn accounting in a school. You’ve got to get on the street, get your hands dirty, use your sources, put the works on some mugs if they give you the runaround.”

“Well, I realize I have much to learn, but I just want to help out. Can I count on your services starting next week?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it. Now I’ve got to go see a man about a horse. Just remember what I said.”

She slinked out of the office just as quickly as she had entered. I leaned back in my chair and poured out three fingers and a thumb of gin from my hip flask. No doubt, this was going to be a dangerous and suspense-filled case, filled with opportunities for me to make dry, witty observations and clever, sexually charged banter with gorgeous dames. I just hoped that my instincts wouldn’t fail me this time. One more major slipup and the AICPA will disbar me, and I’ll have to go back to the soulless drudgery of bookkeeping. Once you get a taste of living on the edge of danger, you never want to go back. That’s why I do what I do.

MP3 - "Seven Minutes of Funk" by Tyrone Thomas and the Whole Darn Family. Like the British say, it does what it says on the tin - a seven minute encapsulation of 70s era funk. Irresistable, omnipresent Bootsy Collins-esque bass line? Check. Meandering yet still rhythmic keyboard noodling? Check. Succinct horn punctuation? Check. Flute solo? Check. This was later the basis for one of the best rap singles of all time, "It's My Thing" by EPMD.

Look, blog, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been neglecting you lately, but I’ve been real busy with work, trying to finish my article for the High Hat #3 and studying for this damn exam that looms in just six weeks. Plus I've got to work in a couple of hours a day of aimless meandering. You know how it is.

I promise you, I’ll make it up to you soon. I’ll take you upstate to that little place in the woods. Just you and me. It’ll be just like old times, baby. Now, don't cry, and don't threaten to move back to your parents' house - we both know you're not going to do that. Look, this weekend I'll buy you a nice dinner at a moderately priced restaurant, finish writing that piece I've been procrastinating on...

(In other words, updates may be semi-sporadic here for the next few weeks. I realize that my primary goal in life is to provide a minute or two of faint bemusement for a handful of people every week, but other priorities are temporarily taking precedence. But the show will go on. I have five Word pages worth of half-written blog entries, and by God, I'm going to inflict every one of them on you whether you like it or not.)

I couldn't put up an MP3 on Friday due to the blackout and whatnot, so here ya go - it's "Rampe Rampe" by Kaleidoscope, a bit of Middle Eastern-influenced psychamadelic mayhem from 1968.

During the blackout, I kept a running journal of my Brush with Sort of Peril, Kind of. Here, now, is an unexpurgated account of the Greatest Struggle Mankind Has Ever Known. Children, those with heart conditions and the otherwise weak and infirm should not read this entry, lest the horror and danger cause permanent and irrepairable harm.

9/18, 4:45 pm
Electricity goes out for the first time. I am prepared - flashlight, spare batteries and whatnot. Hey, this'll be just like camping, except for all of that "fresh air" and "communing with nature" shit I studiously try to avoid.

9/18, 5:27 pm
Already, I am plagued by massive waves of boredom and ennui. I now realize exactly why so many Amish youths turn to crime.

9/18, 6:18 pm
Play my unplugged electric guitar. Manage to work out a passable version of Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" from memory. This is the most notable guitar-related accomplishment I've had in three years.

9/18, 7:13 pm
Darkness sets in. The storm is gaining in intensity, although it doesn't really seem all that severe. Realize that I only have enough food for another day or two, because everything in the freezer or refrigerator has already gone bad. Start to wonder if I could eat one of my own toes. Finally admit to self that you shouldn't resort to cannibalism for at least a week.

9/18, 7:38 pm
Without the constant barrage of music and ambient TV white noise that usually fills my apartment, listening to my own thoughts becomes unavoidable. I've already had several really stupid internal arguments, and I finally realize why solitary confinement is considered such a punishment. On the other hand, I finally decide that Double Indemnity really was the best film noir of all time, even better than The Postman Always Rings Twice, although Lana Turner was the sine qua non ne plus ultra casus belli femme fatale of mid-40s cinema.

9/18, 8:46 pm
I long for some form of televised entertainment. I don't even watch much TV, but I'm jonesing right now. A rerun of "One Day at a Time." Televised soccer. A paid political advertisement for a juice maker. Anything.

9/18, 10:01 pm
For the eighth time, I have the unfulfilled urge to Google something.

9/18, 10:36 pm
Some mind altering drugs would really hit the spot right now.

9/18, 11:13 pm
Fall asleep earlier than I have in two years. Realize that electricity is partly to blame for my chronic insomnia.

9/19, 7:56 am
Wake up to call the office and see if power has been restored there. Yes, it has - the only building in the entire metropolitan area, miraculously. Of all the bitter ironies I've had to swallow in a lifetime, this one...well, it's not the worst, but it's in the top 10. Take the world's coldest shower ever and go to work.

9/19, 1:36 pm
Return home from work (only a half day) to find the power is still off. Try to think of fun things that people did before the advent of electricity, but no one else in the apartment building seems to be interested in hootenannies, ether frolics or making corn liquor.

9/19, 2:13 pm
I organize and clean my desk. I have obviously hit rock bottom.

9/19, 2:59 pm
For the fifth time since the blackout began, I turn the lights on when entering a room.

9/19, 3:51 pm
Call Pepco for ninth time today, but no estimates on restoration were given beyond "three days to a week." I've already had a long hallucination involving myself as a lieutenant during the Civil War, so I doubt I'll maintain my sanity if it takes a week for power to return. And I'm not sure what I'll do with these letters I wrote to "my dearest Eulabelle."

9/19, 5:26 pm
Concede defeat and leave to go back to my parents' house to do laundry.

I guess we all learn something about ourselves when we face adversity, and I learned that in times of crisis, I'm an incredibly self-absorbed, spoiled, narcissistic whiner. I kind of figured that, but it was good to have it finally proven once and for all.

I am currently writing this from a secure, undisclosed location. (OK, it's my parents' house, where I have temporarily relocated so I can do my laundry and eat something besides canned soup and warm Coke.) Once the power is restored at Vitamin B Glandular Show World Headquarters, I'll regale you all with my hurricane story. It's a bracing tale of man emerging triumphant against the elements - sort of like a Jack London novel, but with a lot more petty whining and bitching. Also, expect the phrase "Pepco can eat a dick" to be liberally sprinkled throughout the text.

As I write this, Hurricane Isabel is threatening the mid-Atlantic region. As usual, the DC metro area has gone into Insane Weather Overreacting Mode - the weathermen relishing their one moment in the sun by predicting doom like an Old Testament prophet, frenzied crowds at the supermarket for bread/milk/toilet paper (whether it’s for personal use or for cornering the black market after civilization breaks down, I don’t know), that same list that keeps getting passed around of Things You Absolutely Must Have to Survive in a Post-Hurricane World (flashlights, batteries, the pine needles which will become our new national currency, etc.) and a general sense of overamplified paranoia. People around here go temporarily insane over something like a 6” snowfall, so you can imagine just how irrational people have gotten over this.

I guess I’m of two minds on this whole turn of events. On one hand, the untold death and destruction would be catastrophic. On the other hand, I could really use a day off from work. And on the other other hand, there’s a gigantic tree just outside of my apartment, and a hurricane will probably topple it over and crush me while I’m sitting in my living room watching old Match Game reruns. So I guess my options are another day at work or sudden, horrific death. All I can say is: bring it on Mother Nature, you vicious, insatiable whore.

Selected tracks from the upcoming rap album by a British Labour MP:

- "Tory Killa"
- “Sucker MPs”
- “Get EURO Freak On” (the controversial anti-pound track)
- “999 is a Joke”
- “Against Class Structure in Contemporary England (Get Some Dollar-Dollar Bills for the Poor, Y’all)”
- “Exchequer Yaself”
- “Socialise National Industry ‘03 Remix“ (old school jam with special guest Neil Kinnock)
- "18 Shots to Margaret Thatcher's Dome"

As mentioned in yesterday’s crass and tasteless post, today is my 25th birthday. There’s an entire cottage industry built around the premise that the date of your birthday is significant, that it tells something about you as a person. So I figured I’d put that idea to the test. I’ve picked out various celebrities born on September 12th and compared them to me, using a scientific similarity scale that is completely arbitrary and made up on the spot.

H.L. Mencken
Similarities: Reflexive cynicism, misanthropy, born in Maryland.
Differences: Mencken hated Jews and blacks in particular, I hate people of all ethnic groups equally.
Similarity score: 67

George Jones
Similarities: Brief, tempestuous marriage to Tammy Wynette. Inability to keep scheduled appointments.
Differences: I have never driven a lawnmower to a bar. (I did end up passed out next to a weed whacker once, but that’s another story.) Also, there’s that whole matter of George Jones being the best country singer ever and me having the vocal range of that guy in Trio who sang “Da Da Da.”
Similarity score: 40

Peter Scolari
Similarities: We’re both dorky white guys. We both performed in drag with Tom Hanks, although my performance has yet to be nationally televised. (Maybe on Fox’s “World’s Funniest Celebrity Blackmail Videos” this fall.)
Differences: Peter Scolari is still a somewhat successful character actor, whereas I am blacklisted from the entertainment industry for my ardent support of Lyndon LaRouche.
Similarity score: 48

Jesse Owens
Similarities: Burning hatred of Nazis.
Differences: Jesse Owens was one of the greatest Olympic runners of all time, I get winded walking across a parking lot in 90 degree weather.
Similarity score: 31

Barry White
Similarities: We both love the sexy slither of a lady snake.
Differences: Barry White - famous for his deep voice, me - notorious for my thin, reedy, annoying monotone.
Similarity score: 38

Maurice Chevalier
Similarities: None, really.
Differences: At least I would never sing anything as nauseatingly treacly or sleazy as “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”
Similarity score: 11

So, there you have it - conclusive proof that people born on the same day have nothing in common and that astrology is a pointless waste of time. Next week, I’ll continue debunking leftover superstitions from the Middle Ages with my indepth, firsthand look at the world of trepanning.

The promised birthday self-indulgence will go on as planned, but I have to say something about this trend of my personal icons dying around the time of my birthday. Last year it was Johnny Unitas, this year it was Johnny Cash. There's not much I can add to the mountains of tribute and praise Johnny Cash has deservedly received, so I'll just link to this - an MP3 of his version of Will Oldham's great "I See a Darkness," from the 2000 album American III. Listen to this jawdropping vocal performance of one of the most unrelentingly bleak, morose songs of all time, and then marvel at the fact that Johnny Cash was 68 years old when he recorded it. He was a giant of American music, and he will sorely be missed.

Today is an important day in history. An anniversary of one of the most momentous days in world history. A somber, serious day of soul searching and reflection.

Yes, it’s the eve of my 25th birthday. Tomorrow in this space, an orgy of self-absorbed narcissism that would make Dave Eggers blush.

Thank God for the ever-vigilant eye of the RIAA. Now we don’t have to cower in fear over vicious criminals threatening our society, like this vermin. Take that bitch down, Hilary Rosen.

OK, besides providing a really horrible example of tineared, clueless public relations in action, does anyone really think the RIAA’s new crusade is going to do a damn thing to stop filesharing? I’m not sure if the RIAA thinks that people are going to stop doing something if it’s illegal - the same logic that stopped drug use and alcoholism in this country cold. I’ll give them some credit for intelligence and assume that their real intent is to make filesharing such a pain in the ass that no one would be willing to bother doing it, but that strategy hasn’t worked well to this point. Every time the most popular filesharing service is killed through legal action (ie Napster, Audiogalaxy), another one sprouts up to take its place. As long as there are programming experts with some sort of vague grudge against the world at large (and, gee, think the supply of those types will be running out any time soon?), there will be filesharing systems on the internet. And the ancillary fallout from suing your own customers is bound to come back and bite the music industry - either you’re needlessly pissing off the people who buy your albums in the first place, or you’re irritating poor college kids who weren’t going to buy anything anyway, since all their money is going to be spent on Ramen noodles and pot.

But even for those of us who have the money and are willing to go legit, there simply aren’t any viable options available at this point. OK, iTunes and eMusic are promising, but neither has the selection that can be found on even the lighter trafficked filesharing sites. The allure of filesharing for music geeks such as myself is that the rare, obscure stuff that isn’t going to turn a profit margin for anyone is now readily available. Will iTunes provide you with that obscure 50’s rockabilly tune, or that bootleg of Velvet Underground live at the Factory, or the entire Game Theory catalog? It’s hard for them to justify providing rare recordings on a cost-benefit level, but through filesharing the handful of us who like that stuff can finally have access without having to visit hundreds of used record stores and pay through the nose for imports that are often of dubious legality themselves.

I can’t blame the RIAA for doing this. The recording industry is facing technical obsolescence, just as the movie industry will face when DVD burners and broadband connections become the coin of the realm in modern entertainment systems. They provide services that are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and they are trying to scratch and claw to keep their piece of the pie from disappearing altogether. But it’s difficult to see how this strategy will do anything to stop the bleeding. Ultimately, just like with home taping and VCR recording a generation ago, they’ll have to figure out a way to make money off of filesharing or die out completely.

An expected but nevertheless sad day for many of us came today when the news was announced that Warren Zevon had passed away over the weekend. Warren was one of the best songwriters to ever work the rock beat - his songs were consistently smart and funny as hell, mixing biting, incisive wit with a clinical eye for detail and an unmistakable sense of compassion for the characters inhabiting his songs. His classic work of the late 1970s was a much needed blast of reality into the plastic gloss of then-contemporary LA rock music. And unlike many great artists who burn out early, he kept on producing consistently solid material right on up until his death. I can’t think of many other lyricists who’ve hit the nail on the head so often throughout their careers.

Moreover, he deserves a great deal of credit for the way he reacted after learning about his terminal cancer. His famous appearance on Letterman last year is a lesson in facing adversity with determination and humor, and he managed to channel his energy into recording one last album, The Wind. The mere fact that he recorded an album at all given his condition is remarkable, the fact that it’s a pretty damn good record that delivers an unflinching, affecting view of staring down the end of life is downright amazing. Would that we all face our own mortality with the same dignity and courage.

Rest in peace, Warren. Hope you enjoyed every sandwich along the way.

MP3 this week is "Ratfucker" by Armand Schaubroeck Steals. As you might expect, this song contains copious use of profanity and is not suitable for work unless you're employed at a loading dock. COD on my block, baby.

Hey, there was actual excitement in my real life today! Does everyone want to hear about it? No? Well, I'm going to write about it anyway. This blog is dangerously low on the FDA recommended allowance of personal self-indulgence, anyway, so consider it my part to bring things back into balance.

I was in a minor car accident today. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a car that was parked at a green light to let an ambulance go by, but the brakes wouldn't catch, so I had to swerve onto the curb to avoid hitting the car. Fortunately, it worked, and praise the indifferent gods that there were no pedestrians on the curb at the time. (It's a highway curb, so it wasn't a place where there's heavy pedestrian traffic.) The resulting collision blew out my right front tire, and who knows how much it'll cost to get the brakes fixed, but I managed to cheat death yet again. For those of you counting, this is the third car accident I've had in the past two years, and the only injury I suffered was a minor headache during the first one. None of those accidents were my fault, either, but I realize that's becoming increasingly difficult to believe as the incidents pile up.

So let this be a lesson to those of you who would wish for my death - I am very, very hard to kill. And God? I know you're up there, trying to get back at me for all that smack I've talked about you. Bring it on, bitch, but next time you best bring some Kryptonite.

Is it really time once again for one-paragraph reviews of albums I’ve listened to lately? My word, how the time doth fly.

Radiohead, Hail to the Thief. Enough ink (virtual and real) has been spilled about this already so there’s no chance I’ll have something original or thought provoking to say about it, but once more into the breach: While I admire Radiohead for their continual ability to reinvent their sound, Kid A and Amnesiac were in retrospect a little too atmospheric and meandering for my tastes, lacking the mix of musical adventurism and visceral sonic punch that made OK Computer one of the bestest albums ever. Hail to the Thief isn't quite up to the brilliant standard of that high water mark, but it's a damn fine piece of work on its own merits and contains two of their best realized songs to date, “2+2=5” and “There There.”

Various artists, No New York. Long out of print (I snagged my copy from one of those evil, soul stealing file sharing networks), this is one of those critical touchstones that is more often cited than listened to. It’s a decidedly schizophrenic listening experience, featuring four bands that had only passing aural similarities despite their involvement in the late 1970‘s “no-wave“ scene. Of the four, James Chance and the Contortions sound the most conventional - twitchy rhythms and squawky saxophone lines, sure, but it’s oddly danceable stuff grounded in the funk tradition. The four tracks by Teenage Jesus and the Jerks were the lowlight, presaging Lydia Lunch’s career as an annoying, self-righteous lefty/academic feminist spoken word artiste who finally ditched all pretenses of a music career. (Although the line “..and I puke elastic” is a personal favorite.) Mars’ careening, anarchic approach is the most interesting, highlighted by the incredible “Helen Fordsdale” - an urgent, skittering, jibbering mess that somehow manages to steamroll itself forward while threatening to fly apart at every turn, it’s like nothing created before or since, and an example of the best possible results of the “untrained amateurs” punk ethos. DNA’s best stuff would come later (the Taste of DNA EP), but Arto Lindsay’s dissonant guitar scrapings were already in full bloom here. All in all, worth a listen for those interested in experimental rock music, but as a listening experience it’s an extremely uneven venture.

The Fall, Country on the Click. My expectations for new Fall product have declined significantly in recent years. Since the 90’s high water mark The Light User Syndrome, the Fall’s last few albums have ranged from decent-but-uninspired (Levitate, The Marshall Suite) to flat out awful (The Unutterable, Are You Are Missing Winner). So Country on the Click is a pleasant surprise - not a return to former glory, but a damn solid set of songs played with a crisp edge by this year’s model of the Fall. Mark E. is in restrained form, only getting off some trademark bile in “Contraflow,” but that’s probably for the better considering how rote his rants have sounded lately. “Theme from Sparta FC,” a chantalong in the “Big New Prinz” tradition, the killer chorus of “Green Eyed Loco Man” and the chugging guitar riffs of “Contraflow” are signs enough that the Fall still have some life, which is a good sign since they’ll probably continue churning out albums every year as long as Mark E. Smith draws life on this planet.

Armand Schaubroeck Steals, Ratfucker. One of those weird “the hell?” out of print audio curiosities that treads that well-worn line between utterly brilliant and completely insane. Armand Schaubroeck is a Rochester-area guitar store impresario and former teenage petty thief who released several albums in the 1970s, mostly revolving around his criminal past and the seedy underbelly of 70s era American culture. Ratfucker is a damned odd mix of vaguely bluesy rock-based grooves, cheap analog synthesizers, inappropriately used female backup singers, and Schaubroeck’s Lou Reed-meets-Frank Zappa-in-a-dark-alley-and-whacked-out-on-paint-thinner talk-sung raps. Highlights include the title track (a meditation on pimpin’ and its difficulty, with a weird fixation on the black market baby trade), “Independent Hitter” (in which Schaubroeck spews the word “fuck” more often than Tony Montana) and the 12 minute epic “Queen Hitter,” an ode to killing one’s wife that somehow incorporates both the Peter Gunn guitar riff and “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

I didn't think it was possible for me to hate John Basedow any more than I already did, but on his most recent commercial he has dyed his hair blonde.

That's it, Basedow. You and I are sworn enemies, and I shall make it my life's work from this point onward to crush you and everything you hold dear. You pissed off the wrong man, mein freund - the last celebrity I committed myself to destroying was Pauly Shore, and look where he is now. Repent now and go back to your true calling of stocking the shelves at a GNC and I just might decide to spare you.

One of the great joys of being finished with school and firmly ensconced in the workaday world is finally being able to enjoy Labor Day. During your school years, Labor Day is a day of fear and dread - the end of summer’s once seemingly endless freedom and the return of daily drudgery and responsibility. No one (except for those insane handful of students who actually enjoyed school) can relax and enjoy the final day of summer. When I was a kid, it was even worse because we only had three television channels, one of which would always show the Jerry Lewis Telethon. There’s nothing to compound the abject misery of an impending school year for a kid than being forced to watch Shecky Greene and Andy Williams all day.

Now that I’m a salary slave, Labor Day is a treat - the only respite from work until the holiday season starts, and a sign that the bleary, woozy August heat will finally be leaving to be replaced by the crisp, cool early fall. Once you finally get conditioned to the fact that you'll be working almost every day of your life until you're too old and feeble to enjoy your life any more, something as small and insignificant as a three day weekend feels like a deep blue lake in the middle of the Sahara. And instead of being forced to watch the telethon, I can watch marathons of horrible movies from the 80s. (OK, so the holiday could still use some improvement, but it’s much better than it was.)