The brouhaha about the revealed identity of Deep Throat a few weeks back made me buy the book during a lay-over in an airport somewhere, probably Columbus, Ohio.

Not the new book, the original 1974 ‘Woodstein’ tale of the investigation that led to the series of Washington Post articles that uncovered the whole sordid Watergate mess, later turned into a film with a disturbingly young Redford and Hoffmann.

It sat around until today while I gorged on the hardcore military scifi I usually buy by the pound, but this afternoon, I started reading it.

Good move.

As the cliche sez, it reads like a thriller, but that’s not the point I’m having such difficulty getting to today.

Something about the tone of the book struck me, in the parts where you could question the ethics of the two reporters. Nothing really nasty, just stuff like ‘Berstein had contacts at Bell that could give him the lists [of calls made from an individual's phone]‘. At those points, the book always makes a point of pointing out that the reporters are aware of the potential ethical issue, and that they thought long and hard, discussed it with their editors, and decided that they were on solid ground before continuing.

Yeah, right.

Now, we all know why the book takes those precautions, but I’m almost certain that it’s all tongue-in-cheek. Like everytime, I can feel an elbow digging into my side, and see a waggling eyebrow.

It adds an element of comedy to the mix, even if it is as illusory as the frisson I get whenever Deep Throat and the FBI are mentioned in the same sentence.

I’ll be in Dubai from Wednesday night to Friday night, arriving in Paris Saturday evening, to stay for a week, in that cute little hotel on Rue de Rivoli.

Hope to spend some quality time with friends… got to start sending some emails!

… which is just what you want when you are making yogurt.

I accused someone of photoshopping the picture in their latest post, and that got me thinking it was high time I reinstalled it on this PC…

… and that if I’m going to be posting lots of pictures, and despite my brother’s slow internet connection, I’m going to have to redo the design of the site to accomodate bigger images

But that will have to wait until after the Princess’s Puerto Rican beans

Looks like I’ll be on a plane to the United Arab Emirates this upcoming Tuesday. They wanted me sooner, but I’d promised the Princess I’d be here for Labor Day Weekend, so I declined.

I’ll get there Wednesday night (it’s a loooong way from here, with a hold-over in Europe), and since their weekends start on fridays, probably stay there for at least a week, followed by a few days in Paris.

The camera is going to get a workout!