"It’s Micky, darling. I haven’t been gone that long."

DRAINED BY THE CONSIDERATIONS OF COMMERCE, I MANAGED TO FIND MY WAY BACK
After one final 27 hour end-run that left me hardly able to tell if it was Saturday or quarter to three on Venus, I finally hung up my guns on the commercial fix-up project that has demanded so much of my time, concentration and literary heavy lifting to temporary abeyance of so much else including Doc40. And without a single cigarette. (Although doubtless emails will arrive from a copy editor who has either observed my genuine errors or is at least justifying his or her existence. And you all know how I can make errors when I’m excited or tired. Thimk about it it.) Thus – to paraphrase the Venerable Old Dylan, I am now wholly totally free to do anything I wish to do but die, which leaves me simultaneously both excited and daunted. It’s like the final phase of Let’s Make A Deal. Wadda ya want, Doc? Door #1? Door #2? or Door #3? In response to mighty cosmic Monty Hall, I cry gimmee all three, motherfucker. Even the one with the goddamned goat. Because, the time ain’t tall if on time you depend. Too much business is bad for you baby (now where the fuck did that come from? Moby Grape?") and I know that the only hope of salvation is to let the consciousness stream, and hope some kind person shows up with the money and a bucket. Music in the cafes at night and revolution on the stairs? The privateer Santa Anna whispers in my sleeping ear. Oh, dear me, yessss my precioussss. Less would scarcely be worthy. Instinct rides me to quest into the abyss, and plumb the fun of the unknown lightning. Nicola Tesla, rescue me! (And, oh yeah, I’m about to start infusing my own absinthe. Figure that’s the only way to get it up the full metropagan emerald vision-strength.)
So, over the next few days I gotta take a lotta baths and, between naps, catch up with all the links and gags and pointers to subversion that have backed up while I was plying the weaver’s trade. And also give my word as a gentleman, I’ll write the final episode of the Yancey Slide serial. And make it really good.

So the secret word is Swashbuckling

And now let’s get on with it, he muttered to himself, doggedly groping for his Katana .