Only a few people read this regularly, which is fine with me. What would I do with a larger readership? I'd just feel more like a freak than I already do. A more visible freak, exposed on a scale sufficient to make me feel extremely paranoid but not exposed enough to turn my neurotic helplessness and lack of dignity into the stuff of ennobling celebrity. At a certain plateau, even empty or shameful notoriety just automatically becomes renown. When fashion models and porn stars write novels, they get reviewed in the New York Times. My regular readership is small and tasteful. Dignified. About five or six people, give or take. Maybe not dignified so much as charmingly wee and delicate, like a newborn foal. Anyway not huge and vulgar like some of those mega-popular sites, like for instance any of over one thousand Buffy fanfic/slash sites on Geocities or just about anyone who calls himself a "pundit" or who advertises his propensity to engage in "rants" or "musings." Someday I should take my regulars out to dinner, to show my appreciation. We'll meet somewhere centrally located and convenient for all, like say near the airport in a large hub city in America's heartland. Actually I probably play better on the coasts. We could all fit comfortably in a booth at Applebee's unless all my readers happen to be bigger people, in which case we can simply push two tables together. In television commercials for American chain restaurants everyone in the place is usually smiling joyfully like they're all coked up, patrons and staff alike. Or singing. Or some sing like they're in a chain gang while the rest grin like morons and nod rhythmically, apparently not bothered or distracted in the least by all the singing, far from it, happily waiting for a break between numbers to do another line of crystal meth while a friend holds up one of those giant laminated menus as a screen. If I were a busboy at Applebee's I don't know how much I'd be smiling during an average shift. Probably the instances of smiling would be vastly outnumbered by the episodes of crying or cursing or spitting or angry mumbling or just sort of generally raging internally and plotting. I'd take smoke breaks out by the dumpsters, gazing out at the interstate and dreaming of escape, or just dreaming of being home in my beanbag chair watching porno and eating string cheese. I'd stand there by the overflowing dumpsters, silently weeping like the Indian who witnesses thoughtless littering in those old public service announcements. The cloying old saying claims it takes more facial muscles to frown than to smile (if anyone ever said that to me in earnest they'd get a number 2 Ticonderoga pencil stabbed repeatedly in the neck until death is achieved or my arm gets tired), but I can assure you that silent weeping requires less effort than smiling or frowning. Silent non-convulsive weeping provides just about the most bang for your buck, energy expenditure-wise. Be careful not to sob, keep the face relaxed, go beyond hurt into mute despair. Remember the Indian. Lonely teardrops, dignified sorrow. I'll bet that was glycerine, that Indian wasn't a professional actor, I seriously doubt he could weep on cue. In fact, that Indian's fraudulent weeping completely undermines the credibility of the contemporary anti-littering movement and indeed of the authenticity of all Native American-affiliated pleas for environmental responsibility.