In 1985, Anthony Burgess said the future held "work and television." In 1978, when Burgess wrote 1985, it did.

WORKINGMAN'S BLUES NO. 2. August 25 - ________. In progress. I celebrate my 38th year as a writer. And 70th birthday. My temporary technical writing job is running out. I prepare to give two presentations at Gulf Coast Writers Conference, one on publishing as a business, and one on self-publishing as a strategy. It's more a tactic. A means to an end. What's the end? A career as a mainstream commercial novelist? You can't get there from here. It's about possibilities not matching ambitions. The American dream turning into the Bush-Enron administration, its perfect flower. Newspapers are dying. The polar bear and the panda are endangered species. Bigfoot is extinct. Shit happens when you're fatalistic. I get my news from reality TV. From pundits shouting lunatic-fringe slogans at each other. Who's got time to read a good book anymore? I barely have time to write one.

REVERTED TO MY PERMANENT RANK: YARDBIRD. Projected. At the house. You can read my book on the worldwide web. At the library, if you're homeless. At work, if you have a computer with an Internet browser like Netscape. Ha ha, that's a joke. They probably have MS Windows Internet Explorer. The company I work for lost a mil spec tech manual contract. The whole writing group is superannuated, or made redundant. I still have some work left on my economic-stimulus-package trickle-down grant writing training programs for the unemployed. In whose number I will soon find myself, again. Once more. Audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace. Audacity forever! This is my chance.