Mowed the lawn tonight—a tremendous achievement and a triumph over the very forces of nature. I’ve been wanting to mow it all week, but it’s been a solid wall of rain. And I’m leaving Friday morning for Scandinavian Days in Story City, Iowa (where, as it happens, my grandmother was born) to do a Viking gig. So I very much feared the grass would be permitted to express itself in all its creativity until next week. I don’t want that. I think my neighbors are close to firebombing me for lowering property values as it is.

I’ve come to realize that Barack Obama is right on one thing. This election is bringing Americans together. Not over him—the most he’s ever done to reach across political lines is to move the line to the left. No, the one thing Republicans and Democrats can now agree on is that the Clintons are incredibly sleazy and tiresome.

Oh, you came for blogging related to literature? How’s this? Charles Dickens desk sells for $850,000 in a London auction.

The money raised at Wednesday’s auction will go the Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London. Dickens was a close friend of the hospital’s founder and spoke at its first fundraising dinner in 1858.

The buyer, the report says, is a tarot card reader. Could be worse, I suppose. It might have been a Dan Brown reader.

I’m taking bids for my own desk, by the way. Buy it now, before I die and the price goes way up! Extra-large size, made of steel with a formica top. Genuine rust at no extra charge. You can have it for just a tenth of what they got for Dickens’ desk, and this one’s a whole lot newer!