If you seek a gathering of fools one need not bumble far into cyberspace: alight on a bulletin-board just inside the borders of your browser and scan the horizon for bullys. The bullys are buoyed up by harpies, denizens of shallower waters.

Insinuating oneself among them is not so hard. All that's necessary is to stick out any thoughtful notion, toss in a personal reflection, and stand back.

A geyser of dusty fools sally forth like waterfalls of nickles into eager cups clutched tightly in the fists of the elderly and the hopeful and those with time on their hands in indian casinos all across the continent. The tinkling of nickles clangs and dots -- bangs and clots the dingy tin trays in the neon and chrome blinking one-armed bandit castles from Reno to Wanetka to Windsor and back.

Just go among the fools. There one can ape their banalities just to feel at home, eventually you will find yourself looking for bridges to burn in a quest for surcease from mediocrity if only for a time. Better this, maybe, than placidly awaiting the seeming slow advance of your Rubicon making its wierdly unstationary position look like it's on the attack.

Tepid egos clamber about snitching fuzzy thoughts then bagging them up in glittering packages tied with flimsy strings. Tossing bean bag notions at swifter targets for the sport of it. Gambling for a velcro bull's eye their clumsy grips on reality slip and slide in search of the big publishing break of a lifetime which to hawk to the end of multiple awards, higher accolades and ultimate literary fortune.

Some stagger with wishes as if they are horses for some beggar to ride to the bank. These are glad to drink the fresh blood of the innocent; tipsy with a desire for fame and the fortunes of intellect. Leaning heavily on one another, eyes a'squint at keyboards in one hand, they slap each other's backs with the other. Simultaneous with this there's the glad-handing among those who scratch each other's backs --- itching and shaking with glee they grin vacantly at themselves in the mirrors of their ideal literary slot machines, grasping buckets of unrelated words to heap upon the unwary.