May 24, 2006
Hi Finn old pal, it's been very quiet at your end and I suspect that your annual report has something to do with it. In any case I have been fairly quiet too because of familial commitments here. I have not been back to the lair of the Laz since last we spoke - I suspect that he may have noticed my last nocturnal incursion and battened the hatches down fairly firmly (I believe that certain port blockers and creative firewalls are becoming available these days for creatives but doubt he knows of them) . He cannot keep me out for long though. I have my ways in wedged open so to speak.
In fact I cannot dally too long over this email but I realised that you must be wondering how I got Laz to type an X. I shall satisfy your unvoiced curiosity forthwith:
when I turned up in his study he was writing a scene that featured a dialogue twixt my old creation DD and myself as the author of the Stew (his conceit is a deeply nested one). I observed the progress of the conversations and managed to insert into most of my "replies" to DD a mention of my cold sore (the one I have in physical life). I figured that if I kept talking about it - pointing to it - and asking for advice about it then at some time - and trust me it didn't take long - either DD himself or the Laz would have to mention either herpes simplex or Zovirax to shut me up and lo and behold they both fell for it - Laz recommending through DD Zovirax while the leaden DD went into some pseudo medical spiel about herpes simplex and its recurring habit.
So you see, I have learnt how to manipulate the other, the fictive world that I inhabit, to my own advantage. Perhaps it is a minor victory but not, I suspect, a phyrric one. Watch these spaces for further developments. I hope to begin catch-up tomorrow.