I am merely stopping by to say...

... that—in all honesty, in my personal worldview—I give neither a flying fuck nor a rat's ass nor a great goddamn diddley-whoop that Michael Jackson is dead. Not a single song of his was ever among my favorites, unless you count the Jackson 5's A-B-C, which I adored as a tyke. And while his later years were mildly amusing just for the media circus—I'm thinking of the cosmetic-surgery-denying interview, Liz Taylor testimonials, Howard Stern poking the Coreys for molestation stories—all I have to say to sum up his life and career, from my perspective, is 'He was a really good dancer and a clearly insane person. I never liked his music all that much.' By contrast, the hoo-ha I see from all quarters has people rending they garments and gnashing they teeth, and I just don't fucking get it. I cried when Carl Sagan died, and when George Carlin died, because those individuals spent decades sharing parts of themselves, of their psyches, with us. It was not a stretch to say we knew them a little. Michael Jackson, by contrast, spent two decades as a creepy cipher, doing his best to keep people out of his business. Sorry: I don't find 'He made some catchy songs' reason to get all weepy.

In the Post Excress this morning I read a quote from a 36-year-old male: 'The King of Pop is no more. Wow. It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died.' And I said to myself: 'I hate humans.'