Dead Celeb Twitchers

What a delight it was to get home this evening, partly because it meant I was no longer on the roads, which you will know is not my favourite place to be, due its being - to adapt a military expression - a dickhead rich environment, but mostly because the scent of my vase of home-grown daffodils is just gorgeous and is filling chez Krusty.

Gosh, what a day. When not occupied with the some of the more riveting and compelling questions of my professional life, I was able to devote some time to serious issues such as how to pluralise the word 'oaf'. I've consulted not one but three dictionaries on this matter (one can hear the stroking of wizened beards, nay?), all to no avail. The best I can offer is that one of said repositories of lexicographical knowledge suggests that the etymology is related to 'elf', which points to ears...sorry, couldn't resist that, to 'oaves' as in 'elves'. Equally, my nomme de guerre would also encourage me to that conclusion, I guess. Other activities include pursuing the source of a [possible] quotation. As my mother gets older, so she adopts the more ghoulish habits of the old, including a fascination for the gravestones of the famous. So she insists that the inscription on one must be a quotation, and has asked me to source it for her. I've tried and I'm not going to take it further. And it isn't Jim Morrison or Karl Marx, in case you're interested, it hasn't yet become an activity around which we construct our holidays, all that weeping and wailing and pilgrimage stuff, yuck, that sought [I saw this spelling in The Guardian at the weekend and I've been itching to find an excuse to use it, that's the kind of error it takes more effort to make] of obsession is just weird. Nor is it Enoch Powell, who is buried in my home town. Besides, as Mr. Powell was a classicist, I suspect she wouldn't be able to read his gravestone. It remains relatively parochial, and I'm hoping it will soon be replaced by some other activity, although they say you should be careful what you wish for... This morbidity is reminiscent of my late Granny, and I carry out my long-standing promise, and frankly, public duty, to point this out, which isn't that welcome. Still, at least we're not collecting deceased neighbours' unused medicines yet. I think.

I've also been to buy a book, wow, big deal, except that it is a self-help book - oh no, not another cloudburst of self-pity in the blogosphere, I hear - ahh, but this is a self-help book with a difference; I stole it. No, Krusty, that's a help-yourself book. Ooops. It was recommended to me by my shrink. Hang on, let's get this straight, you're paying good money to see a supposedly leading shrink, and he recommends a self-help book. Are you sure you're getting value for money, Krusty? Yeah, yeah, I know. But there's a twist. You may remember that, following similarly sourced professional advice to join a reading group, said literati elected to read a self-help book, which remains unopened and untroubled on the back seat of the Krustymobile, so I don't have form with this particular genre. However, last night involved a conversation with K, and it turns out that she is reading the same book as prescribed by the Greek Genius. She insists that I do as I am told, and read it. How can I resist? Oh Lord, I am weak, I know, but she retains a hold o'er me.

Anyway, it's time for my pit, where I can go and study my new book and open the door to greater success blah blah blah...am I approaching this with the wrong 'mindset'? Actually, the book can wait, 'cause I have also begun reading one of the classics of American literature over the holiday, and I'm enjoying it. Can you guess?