I got an idea for the resolution of the book. My idea up to now has been to have Denny hold out an alternative job idea to Hap and then yank it away at the last minute. Tonight I had an idea of how that could happen. Denny, the former film student, starts talking about the scene in Citizen Kane where Joseph Cotton passes out drunk at the typewriter and Kane finishes his brutal review of Susan's opera debut. When Cotton wakes up, he's told "Mr. Kane is finishing your piece the way you started it.... I guess that'll show you." And then Kane fires him. And Denny goes on to say something that compares him yanking the job away from Hap to that -- something about loyalty to him and not to the friendship... or vice versa.
Uncovering a mysterious blogger
This article on Streetsblog , a progressive pro-bicycle and transit website, is fascinating. The lengthy piece, worth reading in its entirety, explains how Streetsblog staff uncovered the identity of a hyperactive negative commenter with his own website, Commuter Outrage. Evidently the man behind Commuter Outrage, a twenty-something conservative who works in a civilian job at the Pentagon, was digging up material for his screeds during work hours using his employer's (and the government's) resources, and Streetsblog's questions about these practices quickly led the secretive fellow to disappear the entire Commuter Outrage website. Instructive were the easy-to-understand steps taken by Streetsblog staff to uncover the man's identity, along with evidence that suggested he was blogging on his employer's time. Also interesting was the fact that the attacks by Commuter Outrage and its putative staff (really just this one fellow, apparently) were not some right-wing consp...