This is interesting.

In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.
-Imbesi's Law of Conservation of Filth

Aagh lost my post.

Um let's see, I wrote my book review last night. I took tonight off and read all the stuff Cullen's been reading in school and a really terrific book that Cam had called Holes.

I see Neil is still sick as am I and so is Bob, Jimi's dad. A big get well shout out to Bob.

After reading Iraq blog after blog I realized I have no idea why the Middle East is the Middle East. I realize this is going to prove my dorkiness all over again but isn't there a poem about far east Araby? Am I confused?

What is the Far East? Is there a Near East? What is the deal? I just don't get it.

Novel starts tomorrow at midnight. I've got lines running though my head that have to do with Galen burning down his video store but they must wait. Hoohaw I hope this is fun.

Coughing enough to throw up again today. My chest hurts so much. I feel hot. What the hell us wrong with me? It's so frustrating.

Didn't finish the horoscopes last night. Did Words, Words, Glorious Words instead. I'm going to try and do Fabulous Funky Freaks tonight and go to bed early.

Got the okay to use the Galen fragment for the novel in a month project, Yes it won't be the best or the longest novel ever if I do it at 50,000 words in a month but I think it will be good for me and I'll have a first draft.

What else? Too sick to care about anything. Oh yeah Andras showed me something cool. Maybe tomorrow.

Donna checked in with me so that's good. I swear I feel like I'm going to fall over and I'm just sitting in bed typing.

Reading blog after blog. This one links to this one which links to that one. Some of them link me back where I started which I guess is Baghdad Burning. How did I get to Baghdad Burning? From Will Shetterly (I think). Neil led me to Will. How did I find Neil? Introduction to One Bad Rat and stories and poetry in the Year's Best.

So paper led to electrons which lead to each other and could make a person who is not paying attention think the web is tiny.

Baghdad is not the only place burning of course. San Diego is burning. My father and stepmother are okay as is my youngest sister. Donna? Where are you? Check in with me like a good partner in an erotic graphic novel should.

I feel like I learned more about the Middle East this week than I have in my whole life. It's likely true. I'm woefully ignorant about huge chunks of life while I have the strangest knowledge about some things.

I do this though, I read a whole bunch about a particular subject. All those books about Mallory and Irvine. I still haven't gotten over them. I'd love to get my hands on Irvine's diary. What a guy.

I've been listening to 80's alternative all day which is not a bad way to spend the day but I miss me my Counting Crows.

I'm kind of torn about saying this but dude says it himself sort of so I'll just say that reading turning tablesis actually painful to me. I want to grab this guy by the scruff of his neck, shake him and teach how to write and spell.

Baghdad Burning is also painful but in a different way. In an oh my God how horrible I feel awful wish I could something to help sort of way. That's a much worse feeling.

Still sick. Sandy says I need rest, tlc and a new hematologist. True dat but I also need to be able to breathe. I thought I came up with some anti coughing thing but I must have been hallucinating. Go me!

Why does blogger spellcheck not know the word blog? WTF?

I guess I better finish those horoscopes. I want to finish something a day until I start the novel in a month thing. I wish I had a plot. That Galen thing keeps wanting me to write it. Here's what I wrote at first - really to annoy someone at countingcrows.com - but she was annoying me and she didn't like my first two answers. I wrote it very quickly. Kind of like what I wrote for Adam that turned into Hearts and Flowers.

Galen is a homeless person. He's homeless because once, a very long time ago, he gave someone a ride. Someone named Sonja.

Galen thought he was safe because after all, it was just a girl he was picking up.

But Sonja was a PCP addict. She smiled at Galen while they were driving down a deserted road and cut his throat.

Then she kicked him out of his car and drove away, never to be seen again.

Galen bled in the hot dry air. His vision got darker and darker and then utterly black.

His blood sank into the thirsty desert sand. And then something stirred.

A seed, lying sere for hundreds of years, twitched and grew.

Like all desert plants, it grew swiftly and bloomed. The bloom was blood red. And as large as a small man. When the bloom opened, a winged being stepped out, stretched its wings and yawned.

It looked down at Galen and sighed. Fluttering its new wings, it hovered over him and passed its tentacles over his throat.

The bleeding stopped and a big angry scar formed. Then Galen opened his eyes and looked at the winged being.

No, it said, don't look into my eyes. If you do, then you'll long for what you see forever.

But Galen did it anyway. He looked into those eyes and he's still looking. Wandering through the streets and alleys of New York, looking for those eyes.

I feel like this whole weekend was wasted. Maybe that means I'm not quite so sick. I'm getting to the whiny stage. That should mean recovery even it isn't really true.

I did my column for the Shank for the first time in like three weeks. So that's good. I'm working on horoscopes for the Horkington Herald. I did my Ask Franny column yesterday.

I did a little on The Butcher, The Baker and the Candlestick Maker. It's a good thing I wrote the ending first because I would have no idea where this thing is going. I just wish I'd made more notes.

What else. Hmm, reading lots of war blogs. Chris says stop no point in getting depressed over stuff I can't help but I also feel that knowledge is power so I'm kind of torn.

I did a little formatting on The Ceremony of Setting Live Creatures Free. I was going to give it another rewrite but the subject matter is so dark I guess I just wasn't up to facing it.

Still debating Sundance. I want to go. Can I afford it in terms of cash and time? I just don't know.

I took a bath for like three hours and I didn't throw up so that's good. On the other hand I'm bleeding from weird places, like my tongue, so I wonder what my PT/INR is. I had one drawn on Friday and I see my hematologist Wednesday so I guess I'll find out.

I despise my hematologist. Dr. Rosoff was meant to get me a new one but I think he forgot. I just found out he's retiring. Malpractice insurance for surgeons went up 29%. I can understand but it's a real loss for the medical community. All that wisdom and a wonderful instinct or something that lets him know when a patient doesn't really need surgery when other doctors are telling him she does.

And on another whiny note I want some cold soda and some ice cream but I am too tired and ouchy to get up. Grrrr. I best get well soon or I'll kick my own ass.

Speaking as someone who often insists she doesn't actually moderate a discussion board but probably really does, this thread is hysterical. The way it starts out sedately and then kabam an insult about a gopher, brilliant. I give it the backgroundgrrl star of approval. (the last few entries are dull so skip those)

http://www.nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/576/580.html?1066012550

This illness has become some surreal Monty Python sketch. Last night I threw up while taking a bath, today it hit me so quick I grabbed Chris's plate and vomited on that. We decided we could make a sit com out of my sickness. Chris is singing the Jeffersons theme, we're throwing on up, throwing on up. Oh God I hope I get better soon. My headache is intense.

Yeah so I've been really sick and not really wanting to admit how sick I am but I just proved it to myself. Don't read if you are faint of belly.

I was in the hospital Saturday and Sunday, down in Charlotte, NC,. Instead of seeing Neil I was getting fresh frozen plasma transfusions and breathing treatments and all that jazz. My PT/INR was 8.7.

So here I am. taking Singulair, Advair, prednisone and cough syrup and still coughing enough I throw up and decide since I'm off to see my doctor in the morning I'll take a bath now, what with throwing up on the toilet seat and all, I was feeling pretty grimy.

I'm in the bath, shampoo on my hands so I can wash my hair and I suddenly start coughing and vomiting again. I'm scrabbling for the side of the tub so I can reach the toilet this time but my hands are so slippery from the shampoo I'm just sloshing around, trying not to drown in my own puke or spew into my bath.

Luckily the kids hear me and Chris shoves a metal bin in through the door and I barf into that while they all laugh in the hallway.

You know how sometimes something is just so insane you know you will laugh about it later? This was so crazy I was laughing while it was still happening. Good times.

I am so tired and I have a lot to say about what I wrote and what I did this past weekend but I'm just going to say that I'm going to do this:
http://nanowrimo.org/index.php

It means writing a whole new novel in one month. 50,000 words in a month.

I'll keep y'all posted on how it's going.

They want a title right now, I can edit later. I came up with a title over the weekend while I was in the hospital and that title is Someone Else's Blood. But can I wrote a book about that? I don't know.

A little theory of mine. Space Monkey = Derek Barnes = Brian Cain.

I would go so far as to say = http://fvza.org/, a site I have not had time to fully explore. Fully explore = look at it for more than ten seconds.

I went off to Be Sociable much like Curtis in One Door Away From Heaven.


I went to the four year anniversary party for the American Dime Museum and to a wedding of a sword swallower and a swordsman.

The dime museum smelled funky and kind of made me feel queasy. But I was Being Social. I was okay until I got downstairs and saw the "punk babies" and they made me so sad I couldn't bear it. I had to go outside and sit on some steps.

Then we all walked over to the Charles for the wedding, which was very nice. I liked that at the end of the vows Johnny said "And I'll Ram a lam a ding dong you all night long."

I kept thinking he looked familiar and I finally figured it out. In his period piece clothing he looked like Russell Crowe in that movie about the ship that's coming out.

Then I talked to this guy, Tom, for a long time. We talked about Bill Huddle and his wake and a bunch of other stuff, I taught him a little geeky trick to save printer ink and then he said he'd get my number but he's retiring in 11 days and moving to Wisconsin, which kinda sucked because he had a camera and he knew what to do with it. I'm all about learning new mad skillz right now.

Some very funny stuff at Neil's blog from the tenth to the 12th, including this very nice computer language programmer or serial killer quiz

Oh Crikey I just read the illustrated version of Babycakes. That's such the bad idea when it's 1:11 and you have to go to work the next day. I'll never sleep again.

Read this, it's so good and sad and full of grace.

It's funny that Chris told me to read that story.

Cullen and I had been talking about The Island of Doctor Moreu (sp?) and I had told him about a book or a story I'd read where the doctor was doing the opposite. Taking women and feeding them drugs like Thalidamide to produce deformed children that he tried to turn into animals. The Thalidamide babies were meant to be seals.

I told Cullen about how when I was growing up there were children who had the classic flipper like hands, looking as though they had no arms and how I first learned that most everyone did not want to look at these children. They were different, they were scary, they were not what the average person wanted to see, to acknowledge that terrible things happened to the most innocent of us, the fetus with nobody to protect it except a mother who may or may not have known about potential side effects.

I was the one to smile at people who seemed to be different, the odd ones out, the kids who were neglected and abused, the kids in wheelchairs, the kids who were in braces. I was too shy to talk to them. All I had to offer was a smile.

Now I have more. I say hello, I talk to them. I talk to everyone who wants to talk to me. If that happens to be a small kid who's missing an arm or a man who's carrying a sign against rice pudding or just someone who's lost and lonely, I'll talk and more important I'll listen.

Does it help anyone? I don't know. I just know that it never seems to hurt them.

I saw a man at Renn Fair a few years ago who'd been burned quite badly. He was burnt on his head and his chest and his one arm was mostly burnt away. He wore a wife beater and shorts and he carried a beer on his half burn arm and he walked with such confidence and happiness I could only turn and watch him until he was out of sight. For those moments where I could see him I loved him with all my heart and I was so proud of him for wearing clothes that showed his scars, for holding his arm for all to see, for not hiding, for being proud of who he was and taking joy in who he was.

I wish all of us could have that. I have it often, I have so many scars, few from burns, mostly from other things.

I've been wondering if I have what it takes to do a nude/orgy scene for A Dirty Shame and now as I think of that man I never got to know, I think yes, I can show myself and all my scars with as much pride as anyone.

To paraphrase Adam Duritz yet again, I hope that everybody can find a little pride and me, I'll just sign off my computer and dream of a world where we all love ourselves and each other and revel in who we are.

Holy cow, blogger is totally different. I don't know when I last posted because i can't see my last post.

I know it's been awhile and I have a million things I want to talk about but for right now, I was just reading about Roy Horn, you know, the tiger/magic dude who has been performing in Las Vegas since God was a child.

The story on MSN says that Roy was attacked by one of his white tigers and dragged off the stage.

The smart ass, insensitive part of me thinks, yeah, the tiger was just as sick of Siegreid and Roy as the rest of us. Becuase why would the tiger take him offstage unless he thought that Roy just didn't belong there?

I love this quote "The tiger, which weighs about 600 pounds, then lunged at Horn, who tried to beat the animal off with a microphone."

What's your weapon of choice when it comes to tiger maulings? A microphone! Because a) it's so freaking dangerous and b) the audience, who did pay to see the show, perhaps not that show, but a show involving tigers, can get a better audio of the screams and growls and whatnot.

I also see that the MAN has told all 200 odd employees of the show to find another job. Who knew it took over 200 people to put on a magic show with lions and tigers?

Our economy sucketh the big one right now so how the fuck are these people going to find new jobs? Are they getting severence pay?

What's happening to the tiger? He's "quarentined" right now. Then what? I hope he goes to a zoo. I'm afraid he'll be put down.

I know society says I should be all worried about Roy and maybe part of me is but dude has been doing this show since around the time I was born, he does commercials, if he can't work again then he should have some cash socked away and he'll be all right.

If he dies he died from doing what he loved best, right? I don't mean to sound so callous but I think he's in good hands.

But what about the tiger and the former employees? Who's looking out for them?