There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.

Okay, it’s clear enough: people are refusing to tell me what the upcoming topics in their web logs are. It seems that they have somehow gotten the idea that someone will scoop them. It is all very insulting. My phone calls and emails to fellow bloggers have gone unanswered, Instant Message windows hang empty and alone, and Goblin’s foray into Faustus’s wastebaskets has turned up several items best left unmentioned in civilized conversation but few clues as to writing intent. What’s an intrepid boy reporter to do?

I suppose I will have to resort to discussing my own life again. Luckily, something has actually happened, and it is marginally more exciting than the dead squirrel I saw in the park yesterday, which is what I was going to write about.

Yesterday evening, I placed an ad on Craig’s List for a professional and personal assistant. By the time I yanked it off at one-thirty this afternoon, two hundred desperate jobseekers had responded.

Really, the whole thing is quite depressing. The respondents have fallen into these categories:

1) People who appear to have more experience in my field than I do myself, who were most likely laid off from lucrative jobs thanks to the evil economic and corporate policies championed by the sanctimonious chimpanzee we call “President”;

2) People who are hideously overqualified in such ways as having advanced degrees from Harvard and Yale, or who already work in full-time jobs as architects or firemen;

3) People who are hideously underqualified, such as unemployed supermarket cashiers trying desperately to gain other sorts of experience (this seems to be the largest group);

4) People who live in other parts of the country trying desperately to land any sort of job so they can move to New York;

5) Actors, artists, musicians, and photographers who are trying desperately to supplement their meager incomes;

6) Desperate college students.

The unifying factors of ninety percent of these candidates are their inability to spell the simplest words and the bizarre and ingratiating tone of their cover letters. They give entirely too many details about the “colege" they attended and extol their boundless ambition and leadership skills as applied to such tasks as dropping off my laundry at the cleaners. (As for the latter, my friend Bryan suggested that perhaps they are anticipating the cleaners losing the laundry, in which case they would be ready to lead an ambitious investigative mission to find it again.)

Though I specified that the job was temporary only, for the months of December and January, a shocking number of applicants tried to redefine the terms to suit themselves better, citing weeks-long travel plans around the holidays. These were invariably the same people who tried to explain why the job was perfect for them, rather than why they were perfect for the job; a large number of these referred to attached resumes, which they were certain would sweep me off my feet . . . a distinct impossibility, as they had forgotten to attach them.

I suppose that at some point today, I will have to slog through this nonsense and sift out four or five candidates to interview in the next couple of days, but the whole prospect is so dreary that I just want to go back to bed.

I clearly need an assistant to help me find an assistant.