--------A CURIOUS JPT FORM LETTER----- from Our Alabaster Edifice in the Wilderness

This is a notice of re-scheduling.  No reply is necessary.

Dear Fellow Curators and Custodians of the Journal, Earnest Contributors, Honored Writers

Again it is my distant pleasure

Again it is my distended pleasure

Again it is my foul plaisir avec moi to sashay before you a form letter in derogation from sound & civil practices.  Roundly condemnable-- though I kid myself that you will either understand or not.

Issue 19, heretofore slated for December presentation, will be scottybeamed up to the new year, and there are reasons.  When tragedy strikes around the control tower, systemic outages occur, for there are operations and procedures that I will not trust to henchmen, cronies, co-conspirators, well-meaning blunderers, roundtables of freaking geniuses, or anyone else unwilling to prove that he, she and they are me.  Everything remains under control, to be sure; the halt that this behemoth grinds to is a strategic one executed to preserve us through the acid-drizzle onslaught as we bogart our nuclear energies and look to a really splashing emergence when clouds eventually part.  If viewed at time-lapse speed, wherein metaphors metamorphose, this pause would appear a tailback’s stutter-stepped cutback at midfield that springs him “to the house” (January pay dirt).  By keeping my good hand welded around the pigskin and my bad finger pointing at the sky, thund’ring thighs piston-pounding the Astral Turf® and larynx humming an enjoyable counterintuitive number like Archie & Edith’s “Those Were The Days” as I pivot my long, bleeding nose toward the distant collision-beck’ning glory-fer-guts goalpost, I maintain my confidence in the execution of our game plan and hence preserve my vital humors against mindless urges to wander afield.  We will cross that nineteenth goal line together, team.  In January.  Then may we be penalized one and all for our excessive celebration.            

First, though, I must beat cleats to the far sideline and conduct some extraordinary affairs suddenly thrust like greatness upon me.  Things having more to do with other things.  (Did I not allude to tragedy, if vaguely?)  Also there are still details to discuss with some of you before we take Nineteen online, and I’ll be in touch.    

The occasional postponement that we must pull would usually be avoidable if production ran a couple of issues ahead in the tradition of those bourgeois fiscally-driven periodicals.  But I remind you that we are notorious and must take pains to remain so.  I enjoy feeling lucky if we get a magazine out atall.  Let’s grow that feeling.    

I hope you join or at least abide me in my good-natured, good-faith disdain for the tyranny of the norm.  If you really were wanting that piece online for holiday sharing, I feel your rage.  Better off putting your faith in Santa Claus, eh.  

Well.  If there’s no further objection--- Have yourself a merry little season of party and cheer. You are the Voice of Tomorrow.  The Soul of January.  You are JPT.

Brow Creased in Incredible Frankness,

[Editor, JPT]