Due to technical difficulties

Just an example of what life is like in the 21st Century.

For the better part of the last 10 days, I have been either with high-speed Internet service or it has been running really slow -- like worse than when I used to dial up on A-O-L.

Definitely not the cable modem. Router is working fine. Finally, it was determined a line tech needed to come out and futz around outside. As I am penning this chapter, no one knows for sure if it will actually allow me to post immediately so ... here goes nothing.

Now then ... so James Frey has come clean -- turns out his best-selling book "A Million Little Pieces" is more fiction that memoir. The whole thing may actually be a work of fiction. I know this was a serious enough issue for St. Oprah of Chicago to issue a mea culpa for her personal endorsement of the work.

I read the book because of a personal interest and issues of addiction within myself and my family. My take is the framework Frey describes about going to Hazelden is probably dead on, but the characters -- the bricks and cement that hold the story together -- is probably shaky at best, from the Mob boss who takes Frey under his wing to the former boxing champion who curses a blue streak at the drop of a hat.

While reading the book, I kept thinking to myself, "This character is nowhere near strong enough" to just able to stop -- cold turkey for the most part -- the addictive behaviors he described. There was no way he could describe the horrors of rebuilding a mouth of shattered teeth without any anesthetic because he is an addict.

The love interest he met in rehab also was just too perfect. Two addicts meet and hook up while trying to get clean and sober? Sure, it can happen, but ...

And in the end, when Frey reveals that the love interest was found dead after hanging herself, that just seemed -- in a left-handed compliment sort of way -- too neat and too perfect to be real.

Regardless, I would say read it. Issues of fiction versus non-fiction aside, Frey delves into a dank world most people never want to caught in, much less spend time thinking about.

If you have read it, tell me what you think. I'd like to know.