Penultimate. That’s a funny word, like something Ric Ramos would misuse in a column for the chronicle because he heard Bob Lopez say it and thought it was a fancier way to say best ever.

References no one will get- a hundred and fifty years ago I worked for an alternative weekly in the Rio Grande Valley called the chronicle. The publisher was a guy named Ricardo Ramos, who was more or less an okay sort, even if he owes me a thousand dollars in unpaid salary that he tried to cover with a bad check. He fancied himself something of a rennaissance man and insisted on occasionally turning in and running pieces that he wrote himself, despite my protestations that, as managing editor, I was on top of it, and he was free to spend his time on other pursuits, like selling some ads so that there would be money so that when my next check came it wouldn’t bounce. It didn’t work- he would run the article full of frustrating and glaring usage errors based on words he’d just learned from overhearing conversations between Bob Lopez, our lone staff writer, and myself about whatever, probably the Flaming Lips or girls.

This is how you end up with a magazine which includes feature editorials with no original reporting in them about the Jerry Lewis telethon that include lines like in all his life, mr lewis has never once changed his juxtaposition on muscular dystrophy, and this is why that check bounced.

But, oh, I’m lost on another tangent, as has been a hallmark of my writing style lately. Shit- I can’t help it, at least not right now. Because- penultimate. I am on the penultimate chapter of a novel that I started writing in the spring of 2004, and which I began working on regularly and seriously in the fall of 2006. I am a mess of anticipation and nervous energy. I feel guilty constantly for every moment I spend not writing the book and I sustain myself by composing the letters in my head that I will write to the friends I plan to ask to read the first draft when it is finished which will be soon, soon, soon. I live in constant terror at the thought of having to figure out how I will fill my days when I am not spending them either working on this book or feeling like I am letting myself down for not working on this book.

It will be done soon- the penultimate chapter will give way to the final one, an epilogue, and there will be nothing else after that, except the months of re-writing, followed by query letters and badering everyone I know who may have contacts in the publishing world so I can avoid the slush pile, which a friend in New York confirmed for me recently is read almost exclusively by people who hate books and would rather be cruising TMZ and Perez Hilton and so who often reject entire stacks of letters without reading them to allow for an unencumbered afternoon of reading intensive and irreverantly snarky speculation on the possible contents of Heath Ledger’s stomach at the time of his death…

But such is the life of one who is trying, mostly to see if he can, to redefine his identity as writer once again. At the very least, it has me writing more, which makes the process easier and more fun, which is one of the first things you forget when you stop or even slow down. To that end, I’ve taken on a weekly column at takingtigermountain.com, a piece that’ll run every Thursday under the banner of the thirtying, a title that I’ll explain in that very space next week. In the meantime, check it out when it goes live for some thoughts on John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani, Eli Manning and the Beatles, and why political commentary is maybe even less relevant than indie rock snark blogs.

And that’s enough of that. It is one AM in London and Nick Cave tickets go on sale in eight hours, and I am determined to score a good pair, expense be damned. That is a mustache that must be seen up close, if only so I can witness how it is done so I can emulate it later. I am learning here.