wandering days
The letters of Dashiell Hammett are out. They seem less-hard boiled than his fiction:
A minimal courtesy for men who lead duplicitous, or anyhow complicated lives: don't use the same endearments for all your loved ones. It suggests a poverty of vocabulary; or more offensively, a precaution against using the wrong pet name in moments of passion. Hammett has no such scruples. There's a time when everyone is a cutie or a cutiepie or a blond cutie: Lilipie (or Lilishka) for Lilian Hellman (more of a cheesecake, I've always thought), Maggiepie for Maggie Krober; and even his daughter Mary is another blonde cutie, which may have had something to do with, or be emblematic of the things that had something to do with, her mental breakdown.
FindYourSpot.com asks you some questions about your lifestyle preferences, then generates a list of cities where you might like to live. As my top six I get San Bernardino, CA; Shreveport, LA; El Cajon, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Las Cruces, NM; and Little Rock, AR. I just need to end up someplace where either the summer or winter is inhospitable, but not both. I don't understand why human beings ever decided to settle this part of the world.
