Neil Gaiman on what it’s like to be a relative nobody at the Oscars.

I know:  It looks like a bowl of snot. But actually, it was one of the tastiest things I’ve eaten in quite a while. This is the dish of escargot, served with gorgonzola cheese and artichoke, with a toasted crust, that I consumed Wednesday night in Tucson. I took this photo because my seven-year-old son Dietrich has learned that I like to eat snails and he asks me frequently when I’m going to take him somewhere so he can try them. When these arrived at my table, I thought, “Let me show this kid what he’s in for.” So I texted the image to my household. He still wants to try them. But my wife texted back “Ewwwwwww.”

Sarah Palin is like a parasite that has overtaken the host body of John McCain. He created her, and now he needs her to survive. And in prostrating himself, he’s had to reject everything he once believed in.

I’m awaiting my flight in the Tucson airport, where this message was broadcast:  “Attention, passengers waiting to board Flight 2715. Your aircraft is here, but they have identified a potential tire problem. They are investigating, but we thank you for your patience.”

Whenever something like this happens, I always see people get steamed and fret and stomp around. My thought is always:  “Yes, please — fix it. I don’t want to take off in a broken aircraft.”

Update:  Just got the next announcement. The mechanics have determined a “need to do a dual tire change.” Our potential delay time? “We’re looking at up to two hours. We’re also looking to see how this will impact connections.”

Guess what? Yes — I have a connecting flight. So I suppose I won’t be joining a bunch of playwright-friends to see “Wit” tonight.

I don’t know if or when Jesus Christ is coming back, but clearly we’re all blessed to have Steve Jobs among us. You know the idolatry has hit a high point when the fact that Steve Jobs sometimes emails customers makes it into the New York Times.

Somehow during the mad scramble for accommodations, the merry men and I were able to once again secure a suite for this year’s Comic-Con International (or, as we older-timers like to call it, “the San Diego Comic Con”). Which means that, this year, there will be more of these small, odd, touchingly humane and sometimes disturbing moments.

By the way, while I am posting these blog posts from an Embassy Suites in Tucson, AZ, I was able to restore internet service to my house before leaving town again. I performed a rigorous inspection of all my systems and identified the problem:  a cable had come loose. I pushed it back in. I only wish I had been able to bill someone $175 or so for that.

Don’t think that’s much of an accomplishment? That’s more than my 18-year-old college kid was able to do in the five days he was home feeling sad without the internet.

Yesterday I emailed Penny in my office to request some changes to this blog — and I just noticed that they’re up.  So now there’s a search box, and there’s an archive by year, and recent comments are previewed. I also asked for a Shelfari feed so everybody can be really impressed by whatever I’m reading at the moment. (Right now:  Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing by George Cloutier; and Creation by Gore Vidal. I’d sure like to put the two authors together in a steel cage match. And also Priceless:  The Myth of Fair Value.) I think she said she’d have to upgrade my WordPress to do that. That upgrade will mean I’ll also be able to use the WordPress iPhone app. I’m hoping it has a feature that allows me to take down Adwords the next time I catch it running ads for a Tea Party candidate on this blog.

I don’t remember the U.S. Census being so openly reviled in the past, but now it seems that no matter where you stand politically, if you fill out your census form it’s like you’re obliging a government conspiracy.

Last week I was visiting a gay couple when the one partner got a call from a gay friend distraught about some series of questions on the census, and my friend was telling him, “No. NO. They do NOT need to know these things about you!” It sounded like a fear of the government knowing you’re gay — even though everyone else in your very gay neighborhood knows. Not being in the situation, I’m not one to judge.

Someone else I know gave this response to “the asinine race question”:  She checked off the box “Some other race” and then wrote in “Lightly tanned.” Granted, once upon a time a lot of people didn’t fit into that form at all (including my friends who are what was once called “mulatto”). But now there are more racial options on that form than ever before. I understand the resistance:  I don’t like being categorized either. Some people claim that if “communities” are under-represented, then there are fewer programs directed to them. Maybe. But starting with my college applications I always checked “Native American” — after all, I was born in New Jersey — and I never got a single grant or scholarship.

While I can’t promise a great dog video on this blog every day, I can promise you this one. And yes, it’s a commercial — and so what? It’s great. I like all of the dogs in this video (even though none of them compares favorably with my own dog).