Month: February 2004

Here’s to modern medicine

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

First, wefunkradio.com. Listen at work. Listen at home. I wish I could listen in the car. This shit is The Funk, y’all. It’s spring here in northern California, or close to it. How can you tell? Well, there are some signs. The cherry trees are in bloom. We’re having freak storms and torrential downpours, or […]

First, wefunkradio.com. Listen at work. Listen at home. I wish I could listen in the car.

This shit is The Funk, y’all.

It’s spring here in northern California, or close to it.

How can you tell?

Well, there are some signs. The cherry trees are in bloom. We’re having freak storms and torrential downpours, or were yesterday.

And my allergies just turned into a sinus infection and bronchitis. Weee.

My regular doctor – who I could talk about for a while, the man’s a character – is out of town with no warning again. So I’m forced to go to the local auxiliary doctor at the walk-in joint.

Now, this man’s an ok doctor. And he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the sorts of strange infections one can get in the tropics from his time as an army doctor. Only, we’re not in the tropics, we’re in northern California. So I’m forced to tell HIM what my diagnosis is, and tell him what to prescribe for it. Which makes sense considering my years of medical training – wait, months – wait, wee… Oh, wait, my fuck-all medical training. But doctor-baby, I know bronchitis and sinusitis when I have it. Trust me.

So then while he’s prescribing some cocktail of new allergy meds (Hell, I’m the illegitimate child of Raoul Duke, I’m not afraid to try untested chemicals. Can I have some ether and amyls with that?), I wind up giving *him* advice on his home central heating. Hello? Not a contractor! Not a heating expert! Software engineer here. What the *fuck* do I know about central heating, other than that my heater was, until recently, Chock Full o’ Rats.

So here’s my question. I did the diagnosis. And I consulted on his home environment maintenance needs. He listened to my heart and took my temperature and blood pressure (And I could have told him what he’d find).

Aren’t we even now? All he had to do was write a scrip.

So why do I owe him a c-note for this?

Mystery to me, I tell ‘ya. How do I get a gig like this?

So if you have not already signed up for Orcut.com, tell me and I’ll send you an invite. It’s stupid, I have to warn you up front, but it’s also sort of entertaining; it’s akin to friendster. Here is an article about it. How can you not – um – have an opinion on the phrase “Social Networking Service”?

Ok, so I just started reading this book (while I’m in between HST books). And – well – I’m rendered speechless.

Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow.

Two pages in, and I was left with my mouth hanging open, stunned to the point where I had to stop reading. This man is my new writing hero.

If this book goes on as great as the first five or six pages – well, let’s just hope.

I’ve read him before – his first book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was clever as hell but suffered a little bit (IMO) from having too many clever ideas fighting for space in one small book. Still, it’s a terrific read, particularly if you’re a big ‘ol freak for Disney like I am.

But this book – at least the start of it – is an order of magnitude more mature in terms of the writing. This is the sort of writer I always want to emulate.

I read a lot of great big fantasy bricks and multi-book series. And some really damned great writers turn out stuff like that; GRR Martin, GG Kay, JL Burke, Bujold, Cherryh. Lots of people. And I like their work and their skill and their craft. BUt when I read a writer and say – That’s it, that’s what I want to do, how I want to write, it’s always one of the short and tight and concise, no-words-wasted sort of writers. That’s what I aim for when I write fiction. Thus when I run across some piece of writing like the excerpt below, I am impressed and envious and inspired to go get back to those stories I have sitting unfinished.

I include an excerpt here for one reason – Cory has this available for free download from his site. If you want it, tell me, but you HAVE to follow his rules.
I’m not posting a direct link to his download site but it’s not hard to find. What I *will* post is a link to buy this thing, because if you’re going to read his work, you should pay the man his hunk o’ change IMO.

That said, here’s the excerpt. This is the beginning of the book.

(Wait – I kid you not, auxiliary doctor-man just *called me* to ask me more heating questions. I swear, he’s going to have to pay my in blanl perscription pads or a big ‘scrip for versed or something. C’mon, doc, throw down!)


I once had a Tai Chi instructor who explained the difference between Chinese and Western medicine thus: “Western medicine is based on corpses, things that you discover by cutting up dead bodies and pulling them apart. Chinese medicine is based on living flesh, things observed from vital, moving humans.”

The explanation, like all good propaganda, is stirring and stilted, and not particularly accurate, and gummy as the hook from a top-40 song, sticky in your mind in the sleep-deprived noontime when the world takes on a hallucinatory hypperreal clarity. Like now as I sit here in my underwear on the roof of a sanatorium in the back woods off Route 128, far enough from the perpetual construction of Boston that it’s merely a cloud of dust like a herd of distant buffalo charging the plains. Like now as I sit here with a pencil up my nose, thinking about homebrew lobotomies and wouldn’t it be nice if I gave myself one.

Deep breath.

The difference between Chinese medicine and Western medicine is the dissection versus the observation of the thing in motion. The difference between reading a story and studying a story is the difference between living the story and killing the story and looking at its guts.

School! We sat in English class and we dissected the stories that I’d escaped into, laid open their abdomens and tagged their organs, covered their genitals with polite sterile drapes, recorded dutiful notes en masse that told us what the story was about, but never what the story was. Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions. Kill them and cut them open and they’re as naked as a nightclub in daylight.

The theme. The first step in dissecting a story is euthanizing it: “What is the theme of this story?”

Go buy it, ok?

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Fat Tuesday

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First, music. I have “Detachable Penis” stuck in my head after hearing it on the radio today. I can’t find a good link, but here is a not terrible one for King Missile. To put it simply, they’re fucking weird. Everyone needs to hear “Detachable Penis” at least once, but my favorite King Missile song […]

First, music.

I have “Detachable Penis” stuck in my head after hearing it on the radio today. I can’t find a good link, but here is a not terrible one for King Missile. To put it simply, they’re fucking weird. Everyone needs to hear “Detachable Penis” at least once, but my favorite King Missile song is Gary and Melissa. I found to my dismay I actually don’t own a single CD by them, but am resolving this as we speak.

So for anyone who cares, I’m getting that Thomas Dolby LP I whined about the other night ripped to Mp3 by a friend. If you want the original version of Radio Silence, the one that didn’t suck, the one that was the best song on Golden Age of Wireless before Dolby screwed it up, let me know and we’ll work something out.

Which leads me to the rest of this blog entry. If only I had one.

Meanwhile go read this. This is fucking awesome – an entry in TranceJen’s blog about marks and scars and self-destruction. S’fucking brilliant: Letter Re: My Heart

That’s certainly better than anything I’ve got to say.

———-

So anyway, Today is Fat Tuesday. Someone asked me today what I’m giving up for Lent.

What, I thought, The Fuck?

I dunno. I’m sort of mystified by the idea. But the tradition seems sort of entertaining. Binge on life’s pleasures, cast them away for a fortnight (or whatever), and then be cleansed spiritually and physically; start again.

I should be there (In New Orleans or other points south and east of here), reveling, drinking, dancing, carousing and flinging beads and doubloons in trade for sexual favors and glimpses of luscious flesh. Dressed as a pirate or some dashing rogue, snatching kisses and vise-versa.

Alas. Here I sit, still working late of an evening, sipping water and lamenting on the lack of carousal allowed by modern life. Where is my rapine? Where, my pillage?

I’m coming to get you. All of you. Lock your doors, or not, I do not care.

Ah. One could wish.

Instead, I shall go watch vampires fight puppets. Hey, it beats working. (And that will be a whole ‘nother blog entry)

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Golden Age

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This was started as an email to a friendlast night, but that went off into the weeds somewhere and was terminated. But I liked the first part so here it is. —- One of those funny moments when lots of thoughts collide. Wait – must warn you – I’ve had several really tall long island […]

This was started as an email to a friendlast night, but that went off into the weeds somewhere and was terminated.

But I liked the first part so here it is.

—-

One of those funny moments when lots of thoughts collide.

Wait – must warn you – I’ve had several really tall long island ice teas – dinner at the restaurant where my ex-nanny works and the bartender took so long making my first drink, it was free, so I had a few more, and they were getting stronger as they went.

So anyway, I’m listening to this CD I have not listened to in years and fucking years.

‘You could be the one’ she whispered ‘listen – love is all you’ve ever
wanted, all you’ll ever need.’

Thomas Dolby – who I loved when his first album (Golden Age of Wireless) came out, but then he released ‘Blinded me with Science’ and it fucked the deal up, he got to be a huge star with this novelty song and then released a remixed version of the first album on CD which was half as good as the original, and hardly anyone who’s not my age remembers that there WAS an original, which was so damned good and has never been out on CD.

So then I looked at the vinyl original. (Yes I still own a lot of vinyl, AND a turntable, but I hardly ever listen to it because it’s a production to get it all set up). I worked in a record store when this album came out. The original with This cover , not the later one you all remember.

Nineteen Eighty Fucking Two. Twenty two fucking years ago this came out.

I was already past the worst of my illicit substance phase. That was when I listened to this so much I know every word and every drum-beat. I put it on and suddenly was back in the toyota truck I had back then, I could feel the wheel and hear the motor and smell the funky smell that truck always had, and see the lights from the graphic EQ I had mounted in the glove box.

Damn.

—-

Some things make a man feel old. Music I listened to and still think is new is now older than people who will vote in the next election.

On the other hand, it’s an interesting thing I’ve found recently about being over forty. I’m not sure when this happened exactly.

Suddenly I went from being just some guy to being hot older guy to women in the twenty-something/thirty-something range. Suddenly I seem to have teenage girls look at me different.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m feelin’ good and I’m readin’ it in. But damn, my trip to d-land last week, suddenly instead of feeling like the late-teen-early-twenty goth chicks who wouldn’t have noticed me before were smiling at me. And of course I was smiling at them, because have this philosophy that if I’m looking at a pretty girl she should know it.

Same thing with on-line friends. Suddenly, I’m getting attention from places I never got it before and girls I would have expected to ignore me (girls in some cases younger than the aforementioned vinyl) are interested in flirting with the scary old guy.

So I ask you – what’s up with that?

Not that I’m complaining. But maybe some of the hot younger chicks out there can hip me to this hot older guy thing I seem to have tapped into. Because I don’t get it.

Now back to the writing.

So I’ve been trying to work on the story I posted an excerpt from. But I got to a certain point and I’m not sure it’s working. I can’t get back to it because while I like what I’ve written, I’m not sure it moves the character along the way I want to move him, and I’m not sure the plot I have outlined is strong enough to drive the character development I’m aiming for. Because this story needs to be a character development piece, about how this man goes from one place to another in his life, and it needs to set up the later, longer story I’m still planning to write about him.

Add to that the fact that I’ve been reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Why have I never read this before? I don’t know), and that’s making me want to write like Hunter S. Thompson. I wrote a little piece inspired by him, I’ll have to post it here later. But suddenly it’s making me want to skew what I’m writing to be a bit more hallucinogenic. I have to wait for that thought to pass or mature before I can go back because I don’t want to have my work lessened by my sudden desire to be old Raoul Duke.

I actually have another story outlined based on that thought, though that writer in the original thought was Bukowski. Basically a story about a young man with pretensions to be some self-destructive writer, but he can’t quite manage to be as romantically self-destructive as he wants to be and he’s not got the talent his idol had. These two thoughts might work well together, I’ll have to ponder that.

Sometimes you have to write the demons out, when they won’t leave of their own accord. On in their own accord. Here’s where we need a Ralph Steadman drawing of demons driving away in an old blue Honda.

And that seems to be where I should stop, leaving us all with that image.

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Alas, poor Pluto

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Ok, so first things first.

Pluto is dead.

Disney World worker run over, killed by parade float at Magic Kingdom

Second, is this the end of Disney as we know it, or the birth of a new, better, post Eisner Disney?

Comcast proposes to buy Walt Disney

Who knows? I’d like to ask Roy Disney this question though.

The question is, will Comcast have the sense to leave it alone, respect the tradition, but make it GOOD again, fixing the problems and painting and fixing and all? Or will we have replacement of the old with pointless new, as in Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom? (And a big thanks to MP for telling me I should read that book, it kicks major ass, particularly for Disney fans.) Speaking of which, I bet Doctorow has an opinion on this whole comcast thang. This will require more research.

While I’m pointing to these good things, how about we ask the folks at www.mouseplanet.com, see if they have an opinion on the whole deal?

What’s the relevance? Well, not much, other than that I’m going to be at D-land next week, so I’ll be thinking much on this matter. That and thinking about – well, that story isn’t for public consumption, but trust me, I’ll be thinking about it.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about me. Wait, first I need scotch.

* * *

Ok. There. A wee dram of Oban.

So where were we? Ah, yes.

The sequel to Wanton. Which people keep asking me about.

Let me say, first, that I don’t like sequels. I know of several stories I don’t think need them (Say, on SS). One story I co-wrote that I think is sort of done (At least in my view – YMMV). Stories by other favorite SS writers that where part one is better than whatever followed.

People want Die Hard II though. It’s better than going to see some indie flick that might not have as much stuff blowing up.

So that said – the main character in Wanton was birthed for something other than Wanton. He has a novel. The first chapter was written but died a painful death with the laptop it lived on several years back. He was un-named at the time, but he had a drinking problem, women problems, no job, a disrespect for authority, and a tendancy to walk into trouble by choice. So that novel still exists, and has a title, but isn’t yet written.

But between that novel, and Wanton, there’s a piece of story that has to happen. because – well, just because. I’m the writer I get to decide.

This is where I should have a link to the in-progress story. Only I’m not yet sure the story is in progress yet. I have 4000 words of it, but still no idea if the story is there yet, or if it has to wait a while. Below, though, is an excerpt.

The thing is, getting back to where I was when I wrote Wanton is hard. For I was possessed. Muse-ridden, like some Loa of creativity summoned with a dream veve, perched upon my shoulders and feeding fire into my brain.

I don’t know if this will happen again, nor do I know if I can write this story correctly, yet, without it. Time, and my friends whos opinions I trust more than I trust my own, will tell me if now is the time, this the story.

The character’s voice comes easily though. That much I know. All I had to do was write the excerpt below and I was back inside his head.

With that said, here’s a passage:

 

I had tried to get my job back. They ditched me, when I started to come unglued, before.

I went to see my ex boss. Told him I had it together, the whole episode with the girl, it was over, I was clean now, man. Ready to get back into the groove and be a team player. I thought for a minute he was going to give my job back to me, there in his office. And then I let go of his throat and it turned out he was trying to say something else.

Security took me out of the building. They tried to walk me but after I took the little one’s stick away they used something on me, like an electric cattle prod. I don’t remember much after that, but at least they didn’t call the cops. The cops were tired of hearing my name.

The old bag who rented my apartment to me kicked me out after a while. I think she was going to try to hold my possessions in lieu of back rent, but she must have realized I didn’t have a damned thing she could figure out how to sell. Honestly, some of the artwork was worth more than I owed her but I wasn’t going to tell her that. She just changed the lock one day and told me I had til morning to get my crap outta there.

I loaded the art into my van. Walked away. Whatever else was in there, I didn’t care about. The art, the clothes I could pack in a gym bag. Fuck the rest of it.

I dropped the shit off, the artwork, dropped it with my friend Patrick. Bummed cash from him for gas. His roommate, or boyfriend or whatever the fuck he was, fed me some dinner.

I didn’t know where I was going after that. They wanted me to stay but – no. I had to go. The hills, I remember thinking. I’ll head for the hills. Because it was either that or the ocean, and when I hit the ocean I thought I might just take a swim for the horizon.

So the hills were better. Maybe try to find a horizon in the other direction, or something between me and it that would stop me

 

Mamma, just killed a man…

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It’s rather a unique experience, having one’s mother read one’s erotic writing. Not quite like anything else I’ve experienced. There’s background on this of course. Both on the story in question (I imagine everyone reading this has most likely already read the story, but if not, whatcha waiting for?) and background on my mother, and […]

It’s rather a unique experience, having one’s mother read one’s erotic writing. Not quite like anything else I’ve experienced.

There’s background on this of course. Both on the story in question (I imagine everyone reading this has most likely already read the story, but if not, whatcha waiting for?) and background on my mother, and of course background on how I came to show the story to my mother.

So bear with me if I told you part of this already.

Ok, the story you maybe know about. “Wanton“. If I didn’t write about how it happened, it’s on my home page if you care.

I’m fairly new at this writing game. Oh, I’ve been writing for years, erotica to amuse myself and arouse my friends, technical manuals, an occasional travel journal (and if I could read my own handwriting I’d type that in, but hell if I know what most of it is. That’s what happens when you already have shitty hand-writing and then write in pubs while downing pint after pint of tanglefoot best bitter. And as it turns out, “best” doesn’t mean “more good”, it means “More strong”). But when it comes to the real writing with thought of publishing, that’s only happened recently. I am thus still seeking input (and yes, validation) from independent sources.

So one such was to send the story to my friend Lewis. Lewis is, in addition to being a pretty good writer, a writing teacher and a book reviewer for the SF Chronicle. After reading a particular story of his, “Scar”, I decided I might as well jump directly from a non-burning place on the stove directly to the fire, bypassing the frying pan stage completely (not one to do things in small ways, I guess one could say about me). This is a guy known for being a fairly harsh critic, and he’s a mainstream writer, so I figured I’d get a completely unvarnished review.

The topic of mainstream writing vs. erotica is a topic for another entry, one I keep trying to do an essay or blog entry on. But that’s for later. The relevant point is that I got the unvarnished feedback I wanted, and it was far, far better than ever I expected. There were minor technical issues, and discourse on mainstream vs. erotica which I expected given his point of view. But the core of the review was, as with those wonderful reviews that beautiful people like Circe and MP have given me, absolutely glowing to the point where I had to do the shuffle shuffle, “Ah, g’wan” thing and then say something self-deprecating, which is how I tend to deal with praise.

This leads me to the topic of My Mother. Which should be heard in a cartoon Freud voice as in Dolby’s “Blinded me with Science”.

The first point is that of connection and how these threads come together. Mom was a bookstore lady from the time she was a teenager until not many years ago. Lewis worked with her at various bookstores in the SF bay area from the time he was a teen until she and he both quit the bookstore biz a few years back. So they have a lifetime bond of absolute and utter book-geek status. So this is where things connect.

Mother is an interesting person. Born in the late 20’s, she was a little too young to be a beatnik, a little too old to be a hippy. She never went to college (which is a true shame), but she helped my father work through his master’s and Phd. in logic and communication, and in effect educated herself though at least two degrees worth of college. She and my father marched for peace and farm-workers rights, voted peace-and-freedom, campaigned for radical left candidates back when people believed that radical left candidates could actually win offices. She and my father smoked pot with college grad students and sent us kids to a hippy-dippy school where we majored in hiking and getting stoned and swimming naked with the teachers and high-school girls.

Mom’s a book geek. Mom should have been a writer; she’s a good poet though she is unaware of this, and could have written for a living easily. Mom knows writers and writing as much as any literature major I know, and can discourse on writing. She and I have only recently found common ground on this, because I grew up reading ONLY sci-fi, which was the one area she had trouble with (Lord of the Rings and Dune aside). So only in the last few years, as I started to read Bukowski and Fante and a lot of other more literary writers have we been able to truly discuss writing in technical terms.

This leads me to showing Mom my own writing.

Now it should be obvious Mom’s no prude. And I know she had “My Secret Garden” and Aniis Nin’s books and other erotica on her bookshelf, I know she’s read erotica. And I know she was – let’s say active – before she married my father. But there’s still a point where it seems weird to send your mother a story which includes phrases like “Come on my tits, Big Daddy” or “There was blood on my cock when I slipped out, drove into her cunt“.

But after showing her Lewis’ review of my story, it just seemed stupid to not show her the story. I eventually sent her a pointer, but half hoped she wouldn’t read it. Which was stupid of course.

It was a couple weeks before she brought it up. And when she did, I was ready for a weird conversation. Which wasn’t what I got.

What I got was a purity and intelligence of praise such as I’ve gotten from a couple of the editors who helped me with this story. The comments of a reader who really *got it*, who understood the characters, who understood the story, who understood why some of the details were left off-screen or left to the reader’s imagination. And I got a wash of parental pride such as I think I’ve never heard from either parent in my life. This is my mother suddenly realizing that her son has a reasonable level of talent at something she values above almost all else.

She said at one point – “I had to stop in several places and just think about, savor, your use of language. It was so good I had to just stop and consider it and hold off reading for a moment”.

I was speechless.

She finished this dialog by saying “That story is clearly done, and should not have been a page longer; but I really want to read another story about that same character. I want to hear more narration is his voice”.

I’m trying. I’m trying to find the thread of where his life goes. I have ideas and fragments of plot. But we’re back on the “why I can’t finish stories” thread. One of these days though, that will come to me. That character, Matteeo, he’s been in my head a while, and he’s got more stories to tell. And maybe some of them will actually have happy endings. Or maybe not. We shall see.

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Try to think of nothing

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“She tune in till the tune suits her right she tune in till the dial come alright she tune the dial till the needles.’s in the white tune in tonight tune in tonight tune in tonight… …try to think of nothing…” I’ve picked up Circe’s habit of starting entries with obscure (or not so obscure) […]

“She tune in till the tune suits her right
she tune in till the dial come alright
she tune the dial till the needles.’s in the white
tune in tonight
tune in tonight
tune in tonight…
…try to think of nothing…”

I’ve picked up Circe’s habit of starting entries with obscure (or not so obscure) song lyrics. But I like it as a device, and since I think of almost everything in terms of song lyrics (or in terms of sex, or in terms of monty python – god, imagine what I was like as a teenager, with this trio of influences running through my pot-fueled brain. Yeah, that’s it exactly, annoying as hell), it sort of makes sense to me.

I had one of those nights last night; awoke a 4am with my brain running at absolutely maximum speed, like I could actually hear clockwork running and synapses firing. Oh, and did I mention it’s damned cold in my house? Rats in my heater. Don’t ask. So anyway I’m lying there thinking about why I can’t stop thinking. Thinking about the work that needs to get done this week, the deadline for two projects, the headcount drain in my group that lead to a team of six becoming a team of two. And I’m thinking about all the stories I want to write, another of which I started last night (why the fuck can’t I stop that, I need to finish one before I start anymore. Someone out there, crack the whip). Oh, and about friends who’re having trouble with child care and new jobs, with husbands they don’t want but can’t leave, with mates who may or may not be the one, with friends are upset about having to say no. And how I’m gonna pay for the fucking rats in my heater.

This stuff, of course, all seems quite manageable in daylight. With a hand-painted demitasse full of steaming home-made espresso (Peet’s Italian Roast, made in my freshly cleaned Gaggia espresso machine, no automated crap for me!), I feel quite honestly there’s no problem I cannot solve. Kirk in that story line (ok, help me here trek geeks, which film was that?) where he hacks the simulation because he does not believe in an unsolvable problem? That’s me. Really. Give me time I’ll come up with something for all of these issues. Even the one about the saying no.

4am though. What is it, the worrying hour? Or maybe it’s just that cold makes my brain over-heat. Maybe it’s too much blood in my caffeine system. Hell if I know.

Aside: I should talk about the call I got over the weekend, from my mother, who had just read a piece of my writing for the first time. But I think that’s another whole entry.

So more comments on blogging. I have observed interesting things lately in some other friend’s blogs; first Circe, one of the best bloggers I’ve ever read (ok that’s not a huge sample but still) worrying that she’s not writing as well as she should because some nitwit bagged on her (As if). And then she said something like “Blog as if no one is reading”. Now this thought sort of set the mongeese (yes, that IS the plural of mongoose, fuck you if you disagree mister dictionary, I invoke the Humpty Dumpty Principle) to battling the cobras in my mind. I realize true journalers write for themselves, but – well – ah – what’s the fucking point in that when you’re in a blog, right? Because a blog by it’s nature is a public forum – because a blog isn’t the same as some ratty little book you keep tucked away from prying eyes. People can claim it is, but it isn’t. People can write like it is, but it isn’t. Maybe it should be though. That’s one for further consideration.

I guess there’s a funny line we walk, some of us who like the freedom to talk about ourselves but still need some shell, some curtain to draw to leave a little privacy and mystery. I read something similar in Doxy’s blog not so long ago, about “A lot of me. But not ALL of me” which I rather liked because, while my name is really attached to this thing, I still by nature am not going to be able to do what some bloggers can, and simply spill the id out upon the type-written page. It’s not (at least not yet) in me to do so. I suspect it never will be. I’d rather lurk in the shadows and leap out at you like a nosferatu, clutching my skinny white fingers and flashing my fangs, than dance in the spotlight with my tits hanging out like Miss Jackson.

Then there’s Sam. Who started with one blog she wasn’t updating. And then added another that she updates less. She’s now up to three she doesn’t update. What I’m wondering is, how many does she have to start before she finishes one? Sam, let’s make a deal. You start updating more and I’ll start finishing stories. Really. Promise.

Sigh. Is it friday yet? No? Ok, then is it the drinking hour? Damn, that’s gotta be close.

Could we have chilies for breakfast, mummy dear oh mummy dear?

Karl ElvisLeave a comment

There’s nothing like habaneros for breakfast. Beats the crap out of last night’s tequila hangover. Though I have to admit, it’s sort of worth the hangover when you’re sippin’ $50 tequila that comes in a faux-animal-skin covered bottle. Interestingly, the tequila in question has a name that means either “Three Women” or “Three Wives” (I’ve […]

There’s nothing like habaneros for breakfast.

Beats the crap out of last night’s tequila hangover. Though I have to admit, it’s sort of worth the hangover when you’re sippin’ $50 tequila that comes in a faux-animal-skin covered bottle.

Interestingly, the tequila in question has a name that means either “Three Women” or “Three Wives” (I’ve heard both translations). I’ll let readers do the math on how that might apply, though I can say that the number may be only a rough count.

C, how’s that? Writing, not thinking. I’m better the other way.

Anyway, yes. habaneros. Habaneros and cheese, in this case, on toasted home-made wheat bread. And very strong peets.

This is a way to start the day which will hold the Superbowl (As if I care, the fucking Pats vs. the fucking Panthers, I mean, *please*. The real superbowl was played a couple weeks ago, the Colts lost. Wait for next year, we’ll have something good, like (just go with me here, ok?) the 49ers vs. the Dolphins again. Hey, it could happen.

And then there’s Survivor. Go Lex! Go Richard Hatch! Go – well, I dunno, there’s debate about this now – maybe go Rupert, maybe not. But let’s all tune in for Lex anyhow, and to see Rich is his new Survival Kilt made by my good friends at the Utilikilts company. And if you think Mister Hatch looks good in a kilt, you should see me in one!

Ok. Here’s where I should write about writing. There are topics to be covered. But maybe after the sun gets over the yard-arm and I can have me a cup ‘o the grog (or as it happens, mojitos or minted mai-tais depending on who’s tending bar this eve), then I’ll have more profound thoughts. For now, let’s stick with thoughts of kilts and grog and a better super bowl next year.

Read more “Could we have chilies for breakfast, mummy dear oh mummy dear?”