I've been banging around a new Canadian novel for the past week, unable to find my way out. The anecdotal, non-linear style of the thing, lauded by critics, is not, however ,art but accident, as the author is a fake. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I tried to follow logical routes backward and forward through the narrative in my effort to escape, either out the front or the back, and I ended up going in circles. I was lucky it ended rather arbitrarily (a deadline from the publisher) and I was freed.

My liberty was brief. I am now in a promotional clip for an awful but popular new television show. First I thought I might just be in a skit spoofing the thing, but it turned out to be the show itself.

The current government of the place is rather anti-intellectual, there are even a few biblical literalists among them. I can't think why someone in the Ottawa Press Gallery doesn't put the question, "How old do you suppose is the Canadian Shield beneath your feet?". Citizens might want to know if a Cabinet minister believes the earth is 6000 years old.

Yesterday's corporal stirrings came to naught and I ended the evening as secondary character in a dreadful short story being written for a creative writing class in Toronto.

This is my first test.