The light in my kitchen died. Typically, it wouldn’t be a big deal of any order … I can replace light bulbs. But this is hardly typical; the fixture in the kitchen uses doughnut-shaped fluorescent tubes that attach by arcane plugs to what looks like a battery. Worse yet, the rings are held in place by three metal clamps.

So, I realized this was outside my purview. It wasn’t unscrew old and screw in new. I went to my superintendent, since he is — theoretically — the person responsible for handling repairs and maintenance in the building. I asked him about replacing the light and he told me he couldn’t.

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Page views are down because output is down. Not as though I’ve monetized this thing, so tracking how many times it’s been viewed is little more than an exercise in gauging the little niche of interest I’ve staked out.

It’s a good sign that a handful of people still will tune in despite nothing new to see, but if I alienate that readership by not providing new content, I’ll be back to utter obscurity instead of nearly utter obscurity.

The dearth of writing is the result of a dearth of inspiration. Sure, there have been things to write about, but as angry and vitriolic as this place can be, I’d much rather it not be used as an outlet for woe. Woe has been in large supply of late and using it for inspiration is like trying to fashion a skyscraper from literal horseshit.

On the train last night, a bum was making his rounds. But this bum wasn’t like the bulk of his cohorts. He wasn’t asking for money or selling a sob story for years on end about how his house burned down the week before … he was belligerent, abusive and confrontational.

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The prevailing thought on my mind has been: “Wow, amazing that someone can be accused of being a pedophile, be so odd that eccentric doesn’t quite cut it, mangle their appearance with surgery to the point of abject disfigurement … yet still be mourned by millions. It says a lot about one’s accomplishments.”

Or, it at least cites how highly suspect is the value of public opinion. People, in general, have notoriously bad judgment and dubious taste.

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I was just downstairs buying a bag of Fritos and I saw a co-worker who’d served in the U.S. military. He’s quite thin, not exceedingly tall … hardly imposing. The same things have been said of me, and it got me thinking that I’d be at an even bigger disadvantage than that dude because I’ve got Celiac Disease.

I really doubt the U.S. military has a gluten-free menu when it comes to chow out in the field. If I were pressed into service, I would become so cumulatively sickened by the food I’d have no choice but to eat, I would become a liability not only to myself, but to anyone else with whom I served. As far as I’m concerned, my dietary quirks would be grounds for a 4-F dismissal, which would be fine with me. However, I imagine the military does not care one iota whether I can digest wheat, barley or rye and would throw me in a uniform and point me at some Muslims the first chance they got.

And that brought me to the most morbid part of my thought. The reason the military would send me off to war without regard for my personal health is that my long-term survival is not something that concerns them. My gluten intolerance isn’t immediately debilitating, so the odds are that I’ll be in a position to kill someone before my health declines to a critical point. Even if I killed only one of the military’s enemies, they’d have broken even on me. If I killed two, they’ve made a profit. If I killed six, they’d have made a truly worthwhile investment and the loss of my life becomes not only acceptable, but also preferable to that of a solider who dies without having returned, with enemy corpses, on the military’s investment.

In 12th grade, we read “All Quiet on the Western Front” and talked about the dehumanizing effects of war.

No kidding.