Let me tell you, it is a pleasure to be back. The office is dusty and ill-cared for after this month and a half (has it been that long?) away. There are Intern droppings on the floor, and my good scotch seems to be missing from my desk drawer—and I do not care. It is so very good to be back.

You are wondering, I imagine, where I have been. A reasonable question. And I could tell you, oh, I could tell you a story—tell you about overzealous FBI bulldogs bursting into my home shouting things like “enemy combatant” and “dirty commie pedestrian”; tell you about the long, dark weeks of misery in some squalid holding tank or another, answering the same senseless questions with the same stark answers as a man (I do not know his name) shouted at me, again and again, “Ernesto! Ernesto!” (and where have I heard that? It seems so familiar); tell you about the crack Ukranian liberation squad that, having tracked me down by my IP address (it was a prison, but not wholly uncivilized—they had an old WebTV unit in the infirmary), rescued me from my keepers, pausing only long enough to tell me how much they love the Olga Pyleva tune—

I could tell you all that, and more, but I would be remiss if I were to go on at tedious length about myself when I have only just returned to apologize for the considerable interruption in our publishing schedule.

Let me say simply that we are back, and terribly sorry for the delay in musical news. I may be recuperating somewhat yet, so do not be surprised if our publishing schedule is a bit slower and more erratic than it had been in previous months—but it is my sincere hope that we will provide you with news, musically, at least once a week or so.

And I will have help: The Interns have returned. Whatever differences we may have had (and here they are saying something or other about labor laws, unpaid overtime, physical abuse, &c), I have become once more a hero in the eyes of these youngish liberal journalistics now that they’ve heard that I have clashed with The Man. The look in their eyes—excitement, respect, optimism—it bolsters me. I have to thank them; perhaps it is not they who owe me for wrongs past done, but I who owe them for their support and concern and admiration now.

Though they’ll have to replace the goddam scotch.