I have so much to talk about and so little that I can. For strictly selfish and therapeutic reasons I'd love to write a pages-long diatribe. An essay of epic proportions. A manifesto for the ages.

Instead, for being-polite-and-not-burning-any-bridges reasons I'll just say this.

Never underestimate peoples' ability to stab you in the back. And then, while you're on the ground writhing in pain, twist the knife.

Did you know that some people still fill out paperwork on, get this, paper?

Today, after finally getting a real, live person on the telephone at my insurance company, I was told they would fax me some forms to fill out and that I could mail them back for my claim to be processed. Umm. Fax? Mail? To give you information I already gave you? For a claim I already filed? More than a week ago?

Seriously?

Internet? Will you be my new bestest friend?

After Friday's post, I expected a whole duffel bag of venomous email and comments telling me that Mormon Jesus was saving a special place in the Telestial Kingdom next to Hitler. But you know what? I didn't get a single one of those.

Though I did get this little totally unrelated gem.

Some of you will be angry at me for what I'm about to tell you. If this makes you angry, let me know so I can come take a crap in your family room and see how you react. If that's no big deal to you, I can come back once or twice a week for six or seven years and leave a present for you in the corner of your kid's room and another under your bed.

This morning, when the dog did her business right in the middle of the front room, it was the last straw. Actually, a couple years ago, right after we moved into the new house and the dog decided to make a habit of welcoming all our new neighbors by biting them on the Achilles tendon. That was the last straw.

Understand something. We love animals. That's why we adopted the dog in the first place. We rescued her from the pound, cleaned her up and welcomed her into our family. But I couldn't exaggerate this, she has been just too much to handle. And admitting that makes me feel like a failure. Like there's more I could have done.

There's nothing new to report about the missing camera. I guess all there is to do now is hold out hope that someday, someone will see my camera walking down the street in the custody of a deranged self-proclaimed prophet and his crazy wife.

While all the personal electronics drama was going down I did manage to record and edit the premier of Blogger Love On Wednesday. It'll be up in just a few hours and I couldn't be more pleased with how it came out.

Just wait till you hear the guest tell me the name of her hometown. That alone is worth the price of admission. Which, by the way, is free.

You know what I did? I went and called the flippin' cops, that's what. Well, before I called THE cops I called A cop. My cop. Officer Johnson. Which is, coincidentally a pretty good nickname for your penis, if you have a penis and you haven't given it a nickname yet, that is.

Officer Johnson once cheated off a take-home musical theater history test and I always remind him of that whenever I need heads busted. Stop laughing, I kicked ass on that test. I would have cheated off me too.

What OJ told me was that I could file a police report and one of Salt Lake City's finest would register the serial numbers of my stolen camera gear in a database. Then, any time a local pawn shop checks in a new piece of equipment, they have to verify everything against the database. A long shot, for sure but it was worth a try.

Damn, but I was gonna take the sweetest shot of the flag on the front porch with the dusk moon in the sky behind it last night. Into the house I went to grab the camera bag from the sofa table. Not on the sofa table. Up to the bedroom to get the camera bag from the bedside table. I mean, out to the car where I left my camera bag. Err... what? It's not in the car?

Where the hell is my camera? I guess I left it at the office in my hurry to get out to that client meeting I was running late for. That's happened.

So imagine my minor panic when I opened my office door this morning and saw the blank spot next to my desk where I normally set my camera bag. Hmm. So maybe I really did take it home and just didn't look hard enough for it. I thought that until Donna told me she turned the house upside down on her dirty laundry hunt today and she hadn't found it.

It has recently come to my attention that some visitors to this site might have reason to question my gender. Maybe it's the pink mastheads. Or all the ads for purses and swimsuits. It got me thinking. You know how some gay men who are trying to hide their sexuality go out and get themselves a beard?

I'm thinking that I can do the same thing. Except an actual beard. I'm going to grow a Commander Riker so everyone knows, once and for all, just how manly I really am.

Here's the progress so far.

Heather Armstrong didn't ask me to write a guest post while she's on vacation. She didn't offer me Hooters French fries either. I'm sure the writers she actually DID invite to write for her are, you know, actual writers. In fact, I don't even actually know Heather. Unless you count that one time she told me right to my face that she thought I would be old, fat and bald. She obviously had me mistaken for someone else.

But if I did know her and if she had asked me, I would probably write some kind of lame advice about parenting daughters. And it would go something like this.

Growing up I only had brothers. This put me at a significant disadvantage when it came to just about everything important. Unless you count knocking each others' teeth out during Japanese typhoons among important life-skills. So, having no other experience with girls, I was easily deceived by the likes of Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen and Lucy Maud Montgomery. I was tricked into thinking that daughters would be either be one-dimensional people, driven only by social-status and the need to be married to wealthy, handsome, men of status as quickly as humanly possible or precocious scamps on a relentless pantsuit-wearing pursuit to gain a foothold in the mens' club of big publishing. With red hair.

I was going to get really drunk on Friday night. Half the girls were off at end-of-the-school-year parties. The other half go to bed pretty early. Donna was working the late shift at the fabric store. My mother was out with friends doing what they do best. Gossiping with eyes closed while she wags her index finger in tiny, manicured circles.

But when I got home I got a hankering to ...wait... did I just say hankering? That reminds me... I'm trying to write younger. Hankering is not younger. Hankering is the kind of thing uranium prospectors in the red hills of southern Utah in the fifties would say. Like, "I'm hankering for a glass of whiskey and some jerky. I reckon I'll ride my mule into town and sit a spell in the saloon."

The reason I want to young it up is because Thursday night, when I went to Heather Armstrong's book signing, Heather said to me, "Oh, I thought you'd be old... and fat... and bald. From your writing you sound old." Jon stepped in and clarified, "That is to say, your voice is older than you seem. We just thought you'd be an older person."