Not much from me tonight (fortunately, Phil’s served up plenty–and good stuff, too. Well done, Phil!). I got a surprise invitation from a friend to go out to dinner tonight, and afterward he needed me to help him figure out this crazy Facebook thing. So I found myself in the unaccustomed position of cybergeek. In a relative sense, of course, like the one-eyed man in the land of the three-eyed women, or something. (COMING SOON: From Roger Corman–Island of the Three-Eyed Women!)

Somebody at Threedonia, in a comment thread today, mentioned that the skull of Hitler, which the Russians produced to great fanfare a few years back, has now been determined to be a woman’s skull. This led me to speculate that maybe the Soviets took Hitler alive, and tortured him for a while before he died.

One can only hope.

It led me to imagine a short story, where Hitler ends up sharing a gulag cell with Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish philanthropist. It would be an interesting study in contrasting attitudes toward tragedy and despair.

But I won’t write it. Not only would it call for an author with the wisdom of the writer of Job, but I generally avoid writing about Nazis. The subject has the odd distinction of being both done to death and an insuperable challenge, all at once.