• Location: Chasma Boreale
• Mood: awake
• Music: Tori Amos, "Scarlet's Walk"

Try to speak as clearly as you can.

Here we are, and Wednesday will mark five years since the US invaded Iraq for President Asshole, for big business and oil and lies of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Five years. I only have estimates of the dead. 3,987 American soldiers (the most recent number I could find confirmed by the Department of "Defense"). 1,189,800 or so Iraqis. The cost in US dollars has exceeded $512 billion (and Nobel-prize winning economists are talking of the cost rising into the trillions of dollars). No end in sight, unless we're talking about the war's ever-diminishing visibility on American television screens. And here we are.

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And here it is St. Patrick's Day. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig agat. I hung my Irish flag on the porch this morning, but somehow, this year, my heart just isn't in it.

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Yesterday was spent reading, revisiting old favorites. First Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" (1890). And then some early Lord Dunsany, a number of pieces from The Gods of Pegãna (1905). It's very hard to read these stories and not see Dunsany as the literary precursor of Tolkien, which, of course, raises interesting questions about Tolkien's place in the "weird" tradition.

There's a rather wonderful quote from Dunsany that I'd entirely forgotten, which nicely sums up my feelings about the need for any belief in a "life after death": "There is an eternity behind thee as well as one before. Hast thou bewailed the aeons that passed without thee, who are so much afraid of the aeons that shall pass?"

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Spooky's off to the doctor's office this morning, with what we hope is not an ear infection. This week is going to be hectic enough without her being sick. We need to leave here on Thursday for my appearance at the O'Neil Literary House in Chesterton, Maryland, which begins Friday night. Byron's going with us, to help with the drive. Oh. Here's the schedule I have been given. I have a reading Friday night, beginning at 6 p.m. (EST), running for an hour or so, and followed by a Q & A. Then, on Saturday, Joshi and I will be doing some sort of panel/talk from 5 p.m. until 6. I have absolutely no idea what I'll be reading. As of right now, I still have nothing to wear. And I'm still coughing (a month now), which is going to make the reading all sorts of fun.

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As for yesterday, well, there was all the reading. We watched two more episodes from Season Four of Angel ("Players" and "Inside Out"), and then I was up much too late rping with the Omegas in Toxia. I think I got to sleep about 4 ayem. Blegh. Good stuff, though, well worth a little sleep deprivation. Special thanks to omegamorningsta.

And now, here, it is today. And the platypus, well, hesheit and I need to have a few choice words....