Seriously, the water pump for my building broke so I was without water for a night, I was sick, there was no snow... I was pretty fucking down for a while there.
One thing that kept me going was the good spirit of the Hobo. I recently took delivery of a copy of "The Areas of my Expertise" an entirely fictional and very funny almanac of useless information by one John Hodgman. That'll be a link to his website back there, go check it out. Amongst the disinformation and flim-flam within there is a list of 700 hobo names that is just spectacular. It's worth a book in itself, and I'm delighted to find that it has spawned a site where you people have illustrated all 700 hoboes. It's fantastic when someone takes an already brilliant idea and runs with it. I have, somewhere an mp3 of Hodgman himself reading aloud all 700 hobo names but it seems to have gone from his site. It was a thing of wonder, a 40 minute recording that you could totally space out to, and in which words lost all meaning after a while.
I like John Hodgman because he always pops up unbidden in things I like. He used to write for McSweeney's, of which I'm a big fan and compered a McSweeney's event that I attended in London admirably. Thereafter I happened upon his 700 hobo names which I thought was incredible. Shortly after that he appeared on The Daily Show promoting his book of nonsense and was picked up as a reporter on that show. He appeared in Flight of the Conchords, gave his voice to the makers of Coraline which I want to see, and now I find that he used to be Bruce Campbell's literary agent. He is a man of whom I approve, thouroughly.
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