Dear Bear's Brain:

A corpse of drum majorettes is very different from a corps of drum majorettes.

Love, Bear.

Well, this is excellent news...

( A starred PW review of INK & STEEL, which is indeed, rather spoilery )

162.9 miles to Lothlorien.

In other news, I will never understand how my body can be competent one day and inept the next. I managed a jog for about a half mile out and a half mile back this morning, but mostly twinges in my right hip, both calves, and my right shin meant I walked the rest. In urban wildlife noted, however, I did see a cottontail rabbit in the middle of a residential street at around 6:45 am. And two lovely dogs out for a morning constitutional with their persons--a German shepherd and a springer spaniel. I am so very dog-deprived.

The cat opines that SHE is not dog-deprived at all, thank you, and also that she would like to warm her feet up on my thigh. So move the laptop, Monkey!

So, its not like Chris Matthews hasn't spent the last 8 years lambasting liberals and democrats. But proof that he is a showman who easily shifts with the prevailing wind is evidence in the following video. It's really funny. I guess when the president is facing historically low favorability ratings, even a hack like Matthews doesn't need a weatherman...

I love the internet.

"Of Nounes Adiectiues, and of the vſe of them."

15,250 / 30,000 (50.8%)

1214 words today, which took all day. It has not been a day for flow. I was hoping to get closer to 2200. But sometimes you take what you can get and tomorrow is another day.

I had a pretty good time on the first night of my birthday celebration, and the photo turned out pretty well too! Chris Spangenberg is the BaGG photog, and he gives good picture. You should see some of the other ones.

That's Genevieve giving me a birthday card! She wore purple because it was National Perverts Day as well -- lots of purple! I am quite happy that little meme is propagating.

Unfortunately, National Perverts Day was kind of boring. I guess because I live in San Francisco there's not much to tittilate me anymore. Perversion has become the norm.

And now we get into a sore subject. Texas public schools aren't the joke they were in the Seventies and Eighties (my old high school apparently thinks that we're still as dumb as we were back then, because I was just solicited to buy a directory of contact information on Lewisville High School alumni between 1900 and 2006), but the state keeps going on and on about a teacher shortage. Well, yeah, there's a teacher shortage, because the vast majority of certified teachers in the state only want to teach kindergarten to fourth grade.

(And before anyone asks, I can't apply for one of these much-desired science teacher positions, mostly because I don't have a degree. Even if I did, I wouldn't consider teaching science in Texas unless I had a written guarantee stating that I was allowed to punch out any no-necked administrator who got in my face about how I'd best be teaching "intelligent design". Oh, and a similar written guaranteeing that I'm allowed to rape, kill, and eat, and not necessarily in that order, any football coach that "suggested" that I exempt his precious little snowflakes from the No Pass No Play Law.)

The West Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, which kindly lets us use its space for sangha meetings, will be building a labyrinth on Saturday, starting at 8 a.m. Many hands will be needed (make sure you bring gloves) to lift river rocks into place and build a meditative walking path.

Bagels, muffins and juice will be provided.

I ask all sangha members and supporters to take part, to show our appreciation for the church's kindness to us. I won't be able to come, because I'll be doing a day-long zazenkai at Haku-un-ji, but I'll be there in spirit.

I had a lovely night drinking Absinthe and dancing to Duke Ellington with Zombie last night. Later was chocolate ice cream with blueberries, strawberries and cream. A beautiful way to spend a sultry warm night.




( Verte Suisse )

Well, not entirely. I really did have some kind of stomach crud at the beginning of the week, but the main reason I've not been posting is because it has been creeping back. The black dog. The truth the dead know. The old bald cheater (OK, I think that one actually referred to time, but it rings true either way). The characterization of depression that has always worked best for me is "the bell jar," but while Sylvia Plath was a fine writer, she has been so unjustly diminished by her posthumous association with weepy teenage girls making half-assed razorblade scratches on their wrists that her excellent and apt phrase seems hardly worth mentioning. That's still what it feels like to me, though. A layer of glass -- thicker at some times, thinner at others -- that descends over you and cuts you off from the world, muffling the things that once seemed important, the things you need to hear and the things you try to say, layering you off from what once gave you pleasure and sustenance.

I stopped taking Cymbalta a couple of months ago now, I think, mainly because Augie had gotten sick and the vet bills were murderous and I never was sure whether the shit was doing anything anyway. When I stopped, though, I asked Chris to keep a close eye on me, and if he thought I was sinking badly enough that I needed to start taking it again, he should tell me.

Yesterday morning, he told me. I refilled the prescription. Unsurprisingly, it still costs a fortune ($127 for a month's supply; no generic). The kind folks who offered to help subsidize my brain chemistry needn't send money, though; people have been very generous with donations recently and we are doing more or less OK. Besides, I don't even know if it will help, and I don't suppose I'll ever really know; for me, depression (though often extenuated by factors such as catastrophic levee failures, pet deaths, etc.) seems to be a chemical thing that comes and goes at will. Things can be awful and I'll weather it surprisingly well. Things can be fine and suddenly life looks like a big pile of shit. I never know when, how, or why. Right now I'm just doing what Chris tells me because I don't know of a better alternative.

(I do not feel in the least suicidal, and am going ahead with my plans to purchase a gun and learn to shoot. In fact, that's one of the few things I feel genuinely interested in right now.)

The only reason its arrival comes as a surprise this time is because I guess I mistook my acceptance into the Catholic Church for some sort of Get Out of Depression Free card, which was foolish, but I've been riding so high and feeling so much better since then that I just kind of went with it. I mean, why wouldn't I? However, I have come too far and put myself and my loved ones through too much worrisome bullshit to let this turn into another long downward slide. I'm taking the stupid Cymbalta. I'm going to Mass and trying to help with the movement to save Our Lady of Good Counsel, though I feel like deadweight in that respect. I'm not eating much, I admit, but I'm forcing myself to keep weightlifting. I'm hoping the trip to Grand Isle next week will clear some cobwebs out of my head.

I also have an Unofficial Birthday Crawfish Boil to attend tomorrow, which is a bright spot.

That is all for now. You may commiserate if you wish, but please, for the love of God, no ADVICE.

[Addendum: I have banished all the "peeps," a.k.a. neighbors who ask for sandwiches, codranks, and such. If you are not a delivery person, a cop, or a friend I'm expecting, you are not allowed to knock on our front door. If you do, you will be ignored. If you do it repeatedly, I will set off the burglar alarm. I regret having to adopt this scorched-earth policy, but if I don't stop hearing that tap-tap-tap (which is usually more like BANG-BANG-BANG) on my door repeatedly each day and night, I'm not just going to be depressed; I'm going to have a nervous breakdown that may result in a machete attack.]

The first story page that went along with the MONOGRAPHS story about the Guy With The Chin was done in examination of his penchant for hiding in broom closets. He hid there to change clothes - and identities - and so obviously it was a place of (relative) safety. I wondered if he ever got the urge to just... you know, STAY there.

Back in the days when I could (almost) fit all of my books and comics in a single (shelf-lined) closet, I used to sit in there to read. There was something comforting about being in a semi-enclosed space that was filled with stories and images I loved.

The rooms are bigger now, but I still love to be in the middle of piles of books - and my comics room, like that old closet, seems safe for some reason - and most all the art on the walls, of course, features Superman.

This was always meant to be a non-Superman Superman story, so it's exaggerated and a bit cartoony on purpose. I have several of the story pages (unlettered) which are layered in tiers like my OBSCURO stuff. But it's easy enough to follow, and the pictures are still kind of cool, even all these years later.

TDM - No You - (1998)


TDM - Gunnarise - (1994)

Normally, the Czarina is the one telling me that we can't have a particular exotic animal because we don't have the room/we can't afford it/the beast has a venomous bite and claws that could rip apart a Chevy/we can't get that many virgins on short notice. I suspect, though, that when she gets an eyeful of tamandua anteaters at home, I'll be the one going "You can't have an anteater if I can't have a crocodile monitor" and she'll be responding "But they're so cuuuuuuute!"

Along that line, our poor neglected outdoor kitty keeps coming back up on the back porch, and he even spooked the hell out of me the other day when I went to check on the greenhouse. For obvious reasons, I'm naming him "Harold".

We have a new shop. It's on the market square in Glastonbury. I have failed to find any pics of the actual shop (and a lost cable means that you won't be getting any before next week) but here are some photos of our new view, from different angles. Don't know who took these, but in the first one you can see the A-boards for Witchcraft Ltd. The new place is next door to the white building in the second photo.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/174/415757028_0f71b56acd.jpg?v=0

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/151585732_52c74a8d26.jpg?v=114

We will be keeping on the Benedict St premises, but moving the bulk of operations into the new shop.

The Dallas Morning News Web site is full of irony today, and Stage One is the announcement of the discovery of a mosasaur skeleton in Garland by a young-earth creationist. Stage Two came in the form of Brian Loncar, a local ambulance chaser lawyer whose face is intimately familiar to anyone stuck watching daytime television in Dallas while waiting for job interview calls, failing to yield right of way to a fire truck and discovering that the laws of physics don't stop for "The Strong Arm". The discovery that the minister for Prestonwood Baptist Church was busted in a sex sting where he presumed he was propositioning a 13-year-old was just gravy.

Thank you for purging your tracking records. Not.

I'm really enjoying the fact that the package tracker is telling me that the item I ordered that was shipped yesterday arrived in Des Moines, Iowa, in November 2006.

I'll try and pick up a Tardis with my next Amazon order, so I can go back and collect the other item that was shipped...



Kthx.

Oh, and for the Czarina, joiseyguy recommends RottenBidders for eBay problem customers. Oh, if only this had existed two years ago, considering the number of Cat Piss Men who were already making eBay a nightmare zone. (For everyone else, one of the many reasons why my unwanted books are going to the local library from now on instead of to eBay is the latest bidding incident, where one CPM got into a bidding war for a poster, got pissed off that a poster of unknown and stated unknown provenance wasn't an original movie poster, and blamed the Czarina for letting him "wildly overbid" without offering him compensation for his mistake. Even better, he's expressed his displeasure by calling the house twice to "work out a compromise," as if we threatened to rape his chickens if he didn't keep bidding. Considering that his patter seems to be just a bit too polished, I suspect that he's been kicked off eBay before for similar tantrums and just keeps coming back under new account names. And so it goes.)

I put the test to you, good people, as to whom shall reign Narnia:

Aslan?



(Image drawn with pastels in front of our commissary.)

Or



Virtually identical! I don't think anyone would notice if the little one took over and ran the joint.

I don't disagree that the recent decision to allow a double amputeee to compete as a sprinter in the Beijing Olympics is excellent news. My complaint is that the future isn't happening quickly enough, as right now I'm itching for the mechanical augmentation to give a couple of people a face full of "4".