While adrift the uncertain seas of my schedule this month (waiting for the proverbial Call from Hollywood so that my partner Carpe and I can finally dog-paddle merrily, merrily, merrily downstream of Shit Creek to our own, inevitable big fish story) I’ve been ever grateful for the archipelago of newspaper deadlines that have dotted my horizon. As the poet James Russell Lowell wrote, “There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.” Then, of course, there’s the bit about swimming with the sharks…