• Location: Moria
• Mood: awake
• Music: The Decemberists, "The Crane Wife 3"

Watching Bats and Smelling Roses

The crack of one pm. And this is Saturday, right? Spooky's already had to chase some Xtians off our front porch, so it must be Saturday. The sun is too bright through my office window, because Hubero insisted. Damn cat. But I've had my oatmeal and vitamin-B "stress" thingy, and coffee can't be far behind, so maybe I'm up to blogging.

Yesterday was spent proofreading Tails of Tales of Pain and Wonder for what I hope, sincerely, will be the last time. This is the 50+-page chapbook that comes FREE with the 3rd edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder (which you should preorder today, says mein Herr Platypus). The chapbook includes a poem, "Aperçu", which includes a line from Stoker's "Dracula's Guest" — "The Dead Travel Fast." Back in '95, when I wrote the poem, I translated the line into German as "Die Toten reisen schnell." Spooky's better with German than I ever was, so we were checking the line yesterday, and I noted that Stoker says the inscribed words appear in "great Russian letters." I take this to mean the inscription as observed by the narrator was in Russian and in Cyrillic. Now I'm annoyed I can't do it that way in the poem (I even have a Russian friend who could translate, but the font would be a bitch). Oh, and the proofed ms. for the actual collection returned to me from Sonya Taaffe (sovay), who's way off in Boston, but who kindly agreed to edit it for me (as I had long-since ceased to be objective). I have to get it in the post to Bill Schafer at subpress on Monday.

Oh, and I was bad and caved into stress and bought the first pack of cigarettes I've bought since New Year's 2005. Spooky is not happy, and I am disappointed in myself. I have sworn it will not be more than this one pack...and maybe one more. My dentist and doctor would murder me, if Spooky doesn't "beat" them to it.

Last night, I attended a ball in Second Life. This was as the Nareth who is the sadomasochistic daughter of the parthenogenic union of a Nephilim and a (now-deceased) cyborg (also named Nareth), and who lives in that purgatorial city by the sea. I was accompanied by a mysterious woman known to Nareth only as "Dancer," who recently began performing in Haven (a strip club in that purgatorial city). Oh, the part of Dancer is played by Artemisia Paine, aka Spooky, who actually managed to pry Nareth out of her stinky old trench coat and boots and into a gown. Anyway, the ball, given by a vampire named Teya Castaignede, was quite wonderful, held in a snowy garden beneath a full moon. But it also provided mine and Spooky's first real, firsthand taste of homophobia is SL. As we were waltzing, the het couple next to us, abruptly stopped and readied to leave. The following was overheard from the male avatar, speaking to our hostess:

JediMa Katscher: sorry Teya but we prefer to leave
JediMa Katscher: i don't like what i'm seeing around
JediMa Katscher: mainly 2 girls dancing together
JediMa Katscher: bye

He and his date, some girl name of Christall Beck, then took their leave. Spooky checked the guy's SL profile, and he's all about the Xtianity. But this was a ball made up of angels and demons, vampires and lycanthropes and worse things still, where most of the attendees were from a sim where perversity and "deviant" sex are the norm. Often, have I seen "JediMa Katscher" there. Anyway, the ball went on just wonderfully in the asshole's absence, and, after all, you really can't expect too much from some tight-assed jerk who decides to call himself "JediMa," in the first place, and who can't be bothered to capitalize and use punctuation and write out the word "two." But it was rather a shock. After the ball, Nareth and Dancer returned to Haven, where they met up with the changeling Cerdwin Flanagan (blu_muse), and soon thereafter a bit of drama ensued in the street outside the club, involving two righteously pissed-off vampires and Nareth's surviving mother. Long story. This place is sort of like Angel crossed with Dark Shadows crossed with The X-Files and Millennium, on crack. Sort of, yeah. Anyway, photos behind the cut:




Beware "teh ghey" Romance! (Nareth at left, "Dancer" at right)




(this photo stolen from Cerdwin; left to right, Michiko Akina, Nareth, Cerdwin, and "Dancer")



After SL, Dancer and Nareth's typists ate chocolate cake and watched Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny for the fourth time. Just because.