A disappointed reader of my earlier posting notes that the picture

http://www.olimu.com/Photographs/SixFlags.htm of myself with family at Great

Adventure seems to show me smiling. This, he notes, is totally at variance

with my carefully-cultivated image as a curmudgeonly grouch and NRO house

pessimist. I should like to assure any other readers who suffered similar

distress on viewing that picture, that I am in fact not smiling but

grimacing as I attempt to cope with back pain, lung problems, poverty,

parenthood, the rising tide of homosexualist subversion, and the imminent

heat death of the universe.