I’m home sick today from work. I’ve just been sitting on the couch, watching TV and writing the last of my Christmas cards. Then, in a sudden burst of energy, I decided to crawl toward the computer and check my e-mail, thinking that there might be something to cheer me up.

Here’s what I found:

“i am sick and tired of your feel good crap on your blog. my friends in new york having a kid. i’m wrapping linette’s presents. my other friends have a beautiful baby. fuck.”

Then, I got this from a man in Sweden:

i am having troubles with my lungs

I think that must be some kind of code, like when Mohammed Atta wrote back to his buddies in the Hamburg cell that “a birthday cake had a stick in it,” to indicate the circle and the straight line that compose the number nine (as in “the attack will happen in the ninth month, or September").

I don’t want to get too far off subject, but what’s the government really hoping to accomplish with Carnivore and these other programs they’re building to filter all of our e-mails, looking for suspicious words and phrases? Would they have been able to find “birthday cake with a stick in it"? Is that one of the suspect phrases?

Back to the first letter, I’m sorry that things have been upbeat lately. Believe me, it won’t last… It never does.

OK, I’m going to go back to the couch now and see if Gilligan’s Island is on. I used to love to watch that show when I stayed home sick as a kid. My mom would always make be a big cake of cornbread before she left for work and I’d just sit there on the couch all day eating it and watching TV. I’m sure there were other things on, but I just remember Gilligan’s Island