I know we have at least one reader from Alaska, so tell me, please, Mr. Alaskan, how do you people live like this? In the dark? Here in Chicago we haven’t seen the sun in what feels like weeks, and between that, the constant rain, and the getting dark at 4 p.m. thing it’s still doing, I’m beginning to feel like I’m living in an Evanescence video. I’m thinking of buying a sun lamp.

However, making like an emo bartender is giving me lots of time to play on the Internets, so here’s some good stuff for you:

One of my favorite authors, Laurie King, is answering reader questions. I particularly like her response to the guy who says he doesn’t like reading about those icky gays with their sex and their gayness.

Via King, I found Harold Pinter’s Nobel acceptance speech, and man, there are times when you just want to hang it up as a writer, you know, because what the hell’s the point if you can’t do that.

Echidne ponders God and responsiblity, blame and miracles. Something like this ran through my head not when I heard the miners were dead but when I heard that the families were celebrating, the families of those who they thought had lived. And I thought of the one who didn’t, who we now know did, and wondered about what we ascribe to God, and what we don’t.

And the crack den is full of talk about how the Bush administration has made us all stupid with fear of terrorism. But to my mind, that’s never been the biggest sin this administraton and all of us have committed after 9/11. It’s not that we’re afraid of terrorists. It’s that we’re afraid of ourselves, and each other. The spying, the conservatarians’ “you can spy on me, I’ve done nothing wrong” response, that’s not about being afraid of terrorists, that’s about being afraid of Americans, and America.

A.