AOL stuns everybody with its earnings report. Well, not quite everybody. You notice that now just about all the former leaders are gone. Who's leading the thing? Nobody wants to take responsibility. The old gang? They took the money and ran. A lot of money. Course I can't pass judgement lest I also be judged.

One of my publishers calls. We've got a situation. That's not the best way to start a conversation. They've been billing a credit card in Canada instead of my account. For six months. I was just beginning to take alarm at the recent payment not coming through my account. Sigh. Settling this is a mess. It's the publishers' fault but they're getting hit for losses on the Canadian exchange rate. I'm getting hit for the recent order, which I expected - but also the last huge order which I apparently missed.

I didn't listen to what the idiot had to say the other night. Heard it all before. Iraq is urgent they say, but let's face it - moving a hundred thousand men and equipment half way around the world takes time. Saddam has had lots of time to prepare some nasty surprises. Won't get fooled again, he's thinking. What an ego boost. The biggest country in the world is sending a hundred thousand men to personally get him. The other little thing on the agenda - the economy. That pesky little thing. Let's white out and add in some more to the tax code and force all the libraries to buy new copies at five thousand a pop. There they will sit for the three or four people a year who are brave enough to sit down and try and trace through the thing to find some little tidbit.