Well, I’ll be Googled

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Well, while I ponder beer, peanuts, and old pick-up trucks, while I muse over big dumb dogs and the world’s longest bumper sticker, I’ll toss up another episode with some of the search phrases that have caught my eye lately. What you see here is a list of phrases that people have typed into Google, Yahoo, or a cousin, and somewhere in the result list one page or another of this blog popped up. Usually Muddled Ramblings was near the top of the list, but occasionally a searcher passed up hundreds of other possibilities to come here.

In almost every case the searcher did not find the object of his or her quest on these pages. As always, to prevent the search engines from coming to this page next time the phrase is searched on, some key words are obfuscated with s p a c e s.

  • Predator Power Pants – here. Did the Predator in the movie have power pants, or was that Schwarzenegger?
  • sister-in-law porn – linked to an interesting night in Montana.
  • n e t o ‘s   p a s s t i m e  bar – scored high on this search – after all, how many people are going to be talking about that place on the ‘net?
  • no pants day – although we observe No Pants Day here, this actually linked to an episode mentioning Dr. Pants’ brief foray into Internet radio.
  • Pi day poster ideas – apparently the number has its own day now. MR&HBI ranked high because of the word Ideas in the title.
  • poor boy gyroscope – no longer are gyroscopes strictly for the wealthy.
  • whores in bahrain – apparently they have them there. Linked to the Bars Of the World category page.
  • loud phones – number 3 hit on yahoo. Links to a very brief episode about, uh, loud phones.
  • time warp shirt – not sure what they were looking for; they passed 33 links that had much more to to with time warp shirts only to wind up in a discussion of pizza and black holes.
  • why do eels have little teeth? – maybe I’ll answer that in a future episode, but probably not. Maybe it’s because they have little mouths.
  • lots of baby ocelot pictures – I have the top hit on google for that, despite the fact I have no baby ocelot pictures at all. What I do have is other episodes like this one.
  • nasty nun stories – linked to my Stories page, where the only Nun may have been severe, but she didn’t strike me as nasty.
  • my mom can kick my ass – my mom can kick your mom’s ass.
  • choose a character how did he change in the story the house of staris – lots of people stop by for my expert knowledge in the field of literature. They are always disappointed. Linked to Stories category page.
  • Drunk Women – notable mainly because the searcher went through sixty-one pages of search results to end up on an episode about a sober guy (and his drunk friend).
  • gravity sex trampoline – not sure what he was looking for, but I like the way he thinks. I’ll be sure to look him up when I have my hotel on the moon up and running. Linked to my reusable space vehicle idea that I wrote up before I did the math.
  • sum small pups – they add up.
  • “reactor scrambled” – MSN only came up with five matches, and mine had nothing to do with nuclear power, or even eggs.
  • picture of a giant half chicken half squirrel – oddly, there are other sites that provide just that.
  • “how to make an electric spark” – the only match on Google. I don’t think I ever explained how I did it for Pirates, though.
  • High King’s Chair – Yahoo connected this, improbably, to a nice bar I visited.
  • p i t c h e r s  of dogs – it’s a classic!
  • Japanese scalp message – is that like a head tattoo?
  • wolf eel ambush tactics – Linked to Feeding the Eels, of course, but now I’m wondering about the wolf eel, and how it ambushes… things.
  • neuromancer “case pollard” – different books, same author. I misspelled the name of the herione in the same way as the searcher, and that made me the top match.
  • Plato ex pats – an odd enough combination I have to wonder if the searcher was actually trying to find the ex-pat game
  • photo of god looking down – seems like every time I get a shot of God, he’s blinking. Linked here.
  • supermodels riding bulls – wow. Linked to the Stories category page, where I talk about my brief time as a supermodel, and also mention a horrible (if fictitious) painting.
  • antler dust and sick – Attracted to a recent chapter one.
  • RV instrument repair – somehow was attracted to my Get-Poor-Quick topic, after wading through two hundred other choices.
  • c o n s t r u c t i v i t i s  – it’s a plague the world over, so I’m surprised more people haven’t coined the phrase.
  • matador squirrel – Linked, of course, to the now-famous Suicide Squirrel Death Cult
  • Jerry Seeger – I mention this one because the OTHER Jerry Seeger’s IMDB listing is near the top of Google’s results, while mine is nowhere to be found. Maybe this link will help: Jerry Seeger (As of this writing, fifteen of the top twenty Google matches for Jerry Seeger were references to me, either as a geek, a writer, or (frighteningly) as a photographer. You see where this is going, don’t you?)

The usual suspects were all there: pitchers of things, various bars and taverns around the world, and lots and lots of eggs. We have a new major attractor as well; folks the world over want to learn more about sweet little  D o k u r u – c h a n  and her bristling club of death.

Thanks!

Big Numbers

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Today I was idly wondering if there was any prefix for ten thousand, the way kilo- is the prefix for one thousand. Ah, Google, I love ya. In seconds I was on a page showing the accepted SI unit prefixes. I read that back in 1991 they decided they needed bigger numbers, so the prefixes could be applied in more areas. I had known exa-, but beyond that there is zetta- and yotta-.

So that got me to thinking, and we know nothing good can come of that. I like yotta- (1024 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), but pretty soon your mobile phone is going to have a YB of RAM. (Actually, it will have a yobibyte (YiB) of RAM, but the principle applies.) Before we know it, we’ll be needing bigger prefixes. To forestall any confusion and economic disruption, I, as a public service, offer to lead the crusade to go on beyond yotta-, much as Dr. Seuss did for the alphabet in his ground-breaking work On Beyond Zebra.

You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.

To begin the discussion, I offer the following suggestions for the next prefixes:

  • lotta- 1027 – (abbreviation: L) this number is especially significant when you are ordering at lottaburger
  • holotta- 1030 – (abbreviation: HL)
  • messa- 1033 – (abbreviation: Me) as in “I want one messapotato.” (abbreviated 1 MeTater)
  • homessa- 1036 – (abbreviation: HMe)
  • yottayottayotta- 1072 – (abbreviation: YYY)

I invite the scientific community to participate as well, and include suggestions in the comments for this episode.

Is there any hope of defining a prefix that is as big as we will ever need? For instance, is there any point in defining number prefixes beyond the number of particles in the universe? (Last I heard, the estimate was somewhere around 1084.) For that number, I propose alla-, so you could say, the universe contains one allaparticle. (Later, if more particles turn up in some dusty backwater of the universe, we would have to decide whether to change the definition of alla- or just say, “The universe contains two allaparticles.”

Finally, the reason I was looking up any of this stuff: visitor 40009 will be the myennial office holder. It’s not officially sanctioned by the SI, but neither am I.

Thanks!

Giving back to the writing community

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Perhaps you’ve seen the link over there on the right side for writing.com. As the name implies, it is a Web site for writers, but it is really quite a bit more than that. There is a vibrant and active community there, a whole bunch of people dedicated to helping each other out.

I registered over there some time ago, but I haven’t been that active. Yes, the whole ‘doesn’t play well with others’ thing raises its ugly head again. Lately, though, I’ve been dropping by the site every now and then. An important part of the community is the system that allows writers to critique each other’s work. I posted one thing there a while back, some writing that was not in my usual style, and I wanted feedback on whether the new style was working. One critique gave me some very valuable feedback, and I subsequently improved the piece quite a bit. I also got several other helpful if much briefer comments. So the system works pretty well, and there are a lot of generous people online.

There is also a lot of bad writing there. (Of course, I’m sure people have read my stuff and said “Wow! That’s crap!” plenty of times as well. The difference is I’m crappy on purpose. Loathe it or hate it, my writing is the way it is by design.) Posting poor writing there is perfectly OK; the whole point of the site is to help writers get better, and no one was born a good writer. That the people are there, asking for feedback, is admirable. That they accept criticism gracefully and even say thanks after you pick apart their work is awesome. So, I have decided to find an inexperienced writer and critique their work once or twice a week. It’s kind of fun finding a bit that has a good story buried in it and an author’s voice struggling to get out, and provide concrete advice and encouragement. Keeping the number down allows me to spend some time on them and get really detailed, and hone the language of my posts to demonstrate my points.

I could not imagine grading papers that way, day in and day out. Hats off to those who do. If I make any impact at all, it will be tiny compared to the good a teacher can do. A couple times a week is all I have in me.

Although I think I may have put my foot in it this morning. Not too badly, but it’s easy when you are criticizing someone’s work to take on the “I know more than you do” tone. I find myself particularly susceptible to falling into that voice when the critique recipient (critiquee?) is a high school student. You know how well teenagers respond to know-it-all adults without any credentials. I think overall I balance my advice, but today as I wrote my criticism I made comments about “as you become more experienced” and stuff like that, only to later dig in and find out the guy’s 35 and has been writing for years. All the more important he sees that his prose has a ways to go, but perhaps the message could have been delivered differently.

I am also a little dismayed at the number of badly flawed stories that receive perfect scores from other reviewers. I suppose the logic, especially with younger writers, is that if you toss them a five-star they’ll be encouraged and eventually figure out their errors on their own. This strikes me as a violation of trust. Here is someone specifically asking for constructive criticism and instead being told that everything is fine, when it’s not. Someone’s tag line in another forum: friends don’t let friends write crap.

Oh, well. I can’t change the world, or even the rating inflation at writing.com. I can only make sure that any advice I give is wrapped with the proper balance of humility and authority, and hope it helps someone.

Thanks!

I hear those stunt men are crazy

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I don’t want to give too much away (as if anything I’m putting in the script now will make it to the screen anyway), but I just wrote a new Most Dangerous Scene To Film. The old Most Dangerous Scene To Film involved two open cars tied together, speeding down the highway while people clamber all over them. Lots of people, fighting one another with cutlasses. Oh, yeah, there’s a big rig coming the other way. (I figure that part’s just a matter of editing magic.) The new MDTFS requires a convertible overflowing with people to jump over a sheer canyon, while other cars crash and fall in.

I’m sure fuego will wave his hands and say “No problem! We do crazier things all the time in this business!” Still, that seems pretty nuts. The stunt people are definitely going to earn their pay on this one. If, that is, we find a way to pay them.

Immediately after writing the above, I returned to the script and wrote the Most Impossible Scene To Film. Oh, but it would be sweet. The moment after the final credits that would just seal the movie, and reward those who stayed. Let’s hope for editing magic.

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Tired… so very, very, tired

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As any regular here is no doubt aware, I do much of my writing outside the house. This is especially true now that I have high-speed Internet in the home. I have a nice routine: tend to the media empire and do some coding in the mornings (online references are indispensable when programming), then head out somewhere to escape the Unlimited Information that is not conducive to creativity.

If there is a flaw in the plan, it is that I spend a lot of time in places that serve beer. I like beer. Even drinking slowly, over the course of an afternoon it adds up, and the writing suffers and the next day is not as swell as it might otherwise be. Still, I have to be drinking something while I sit there, so I have been ordering tea at first and drinking that until my movements are twitchy and birdlike, then switching to beer when I’m almost done anyway.

I’m not sleeping much at night.

Thanks!

Fringe Benefits

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The waiter here at U Kormidla just took the afternoon round of Slivovice (plum vodka) up to the people working in the kitchen. Hopefully that means they’ll be in an extra-good mood as they fix my lunch.

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Almost, but not quite

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Around here you will often hear the word docela translated as “quite”, and the other way around. My textbook (gathering dust right now) translates those two words that way. Only trouble is, they don’t mean the same thing. Soup Boy brought it up again this morning; he had an interesting conversation with a girl last night, the confusion caused by this mistranslation.

For instance, in English, “quite good” is more emphatic than just good. It’s good-plus. Docela dobře is good-minus. “Sort of good” would be a better translation.

I think you can easily imagine the sorts of problems a misconception like that can lead to in a conversation between a guy and a girl. “Quite close” and “sort of close” are quite different.

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A pre-thank you

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On the subject of copy editors, One of my stories just went through one, and without any input on my part came out nice and clean, with my style (not always grammatically correct) completely intact. I do not know the name of this person who so naturally found the balance between correct and right, nor do I know the name of the person who laid out my prose very prettily for the upcoming magazine. There are probably many other people I don’t even know I don’t know the names of. Yeah, you’ve got your technology and all that, but there’s still someone hunched over printouts with a red pencil, making marks. And those anonymous and underpaid souls accomplish only one thing: they make people like me look better.

If I can find your names, I will thank you here personally in a later episode. In the meantime, hang in there, guys.

Thanks!

Synopsis Fever

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A while back I worked up a synopsis to my novel. It’s about 25 pages long, and while I had to leave out some of my favorite nuances, it did a good job communicating the intricacies of the plot. It shows I have a good story, but it does nothing to demonstrate my skills as a writer. There’s the tricky thing—how do you condense hundreds of pages down into a quick read and keep it compelling?

You don’t.

The other day I needed to create a 1-3 page synopsis. Obviously my previous tactic of combing through the story and lifting out the most interesting events was not going to work. So I sat, blank page in front of me, and wrote a new story.

It was only a tiny fraction of the original story, really, but the little bits I did show, I tried to make compelling. I built to a moment that is only a fraction of the way into the novel, then skated the rest, but I did not hold back (as much) on the atmospheric language I love so much. I put in a rambling sentence or two, added a few details that in the grand scheme of things are small, not deserving of mention in such a drastic condensation. It still needs some (ok, lots of) work, but it is vastly better than the longer version. It’s a synopsis Jerry would write.

There are other writers out there right now saying, “Well, duh.” Thanks, guys, for making me learn it on my own. Really. It means so much more this way.

Today I needed a ten-page (maximum) synopsis. “Hot dang!” thought I, “I can take this little 3-pager and add the richness and detail to really make it rock!” I did just that. I developed the reasons Hunter must always be alone. I included a couple more moments that define how the characters are interrelated. Once I get this sucker just right (a ways to go on that score, to be sure), agents will faint dead away from the sheer power, the artistry, the raw truth that mankind has struggled for so long to find. With luck, it will even have a passing resemblance to the novel. But really, that’s secondary.

Four and a half pages. Five pages to burn, and I don’t need ’em.

Thanks!

Programming Note

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On a happier note, I did get a bug fix release of Jer’s Novel Writer out today – and then, inspired by this site, immediately added a feature to my developmental version. It seems typesetters still want italic text to be underlined in the copy, so if you don’t do it the copy editor has to. The copy editor has a limited amount of time, and you want her to spend it on the important stuff, not underlining shit. To save us all some trouble, I added a print feature to replace italics with underlines. Now I have two print style presets defined, one for editors and first readers, and one for copy editors. Hey-presto! In seconds I can go from Times-Roman with italics to courier with underlines, and never have to change the way I have the text set up on the screen (larger, sans-serif). I’m looking forward to needing the copy editor setting.

The rest of the world will have to wait for the next release for the italic-to-underline feature.

Thanks!

Sloppy!

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In an earlier episode I said:

On the subject of getting published, I had a letter waiting for me when I got home last night. It was a slip from a large paying magazine, rejecting a story. The note was brief and said (in only slightly friendlier language) “We rejected you story either because it was stale, sloppy, or (most likely) it just plain sucked. Or there might have been another reason.” Obviously in my case it couldn’t possibly have been any of the three stated cases – I suspect it was just too long for a first-timer.

Yeah, too long, that’s the ticket.

Well, maybe it was too long, but I’ve been going back over it and it was also sloppy. Before I submitted it I read over the thing God-only-knows how many times, and then tonight I decided to go and tighten it up a bit before submitting it to the next place, and what did I find? Errors. Phrases repeated three paragraphs later, ambiguous pronouns, even a friggin’ spelling error. Advice to writers: Do not edit a piece and then submit it. Edit it, wait a week at least, read it over carefully, then submit it. Right after you edit, you already know what each paragraph says, so you don’t read it as carefully as you should. You need time to forget what you wrote.

I do, at least. Dang, that was embarrassing. The editor of that magazine is also an agent; I decided to give her time to forget about me before I send her a query.

Edited to add: It seems I had broken my spelling checker. Running experimental software may ultimately be the cause, but until I rebooted I had to check with British English – my American spelling list would accept anything. I try not to depend on those things anyway, but sure enough, I should have sat on my new super-short synopsis a bit longer before sending it out. (Sent before I discovered the errors in Old Town or I might have been more cautious.) We’ll see what happens.

The lesson is patience. I’ve been working on the novel for years now, and I couldn’t wait one more damn day to send off the queries. Part of it is that I set a goal for the day: hit up agents. I let little things stop me sometimes, so yesterday I was determined not to let that happen. I should have. The mistake was in setting up the expectation that I could produce the exact materials that each query required in a single sitting. (I now have 3, 5, and 20-page synopses, and the next agent will want a different size. More on that next episode.) I was going to send out a pair of queries today, but I’ll wait until my even newer 5-page synopsis has time to mellow.

Thanks!

Rat Trap – chapter 1

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T

he warehouse was dark and quiet, a relic from an era before cargo containers rendered dockside buildings obsolete. Little glass remained in the windows, and elaborate graffiti covered the walls. The few lights that remained only made the shadows deeper.

The woman approached without fear, moving from dark to light and into darkness again. She opened a door in the side of the building, shifted the cargo she carried over her shoulders, and sidestepped through.

“Natasha,” a voice said in the darkness. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“It’s nice to see you, too, James,” the woman said. “I brought you something.” She slid the unconscious girl off her shoulders and dumped her on the floor. “An early Christmas present.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

“She’s one of you.”

Jim hesitated. “Bullshit.”

Natasha lit a cigarette. The flare of the lighter reflected off several pairs of eyes in the darkness behind Jim. Some of them were pointing guns at her, she was sure.

Jim stepped forward and crouched by the girl. “Where did you find her?”

“Now, there’s the interesting thing. I was paying a visit over at Cooper’s—”

“Cooper’s!”

“Yes, well, Cooper wasn’t there at the time, so I took the opportunity to look around, and there she was.”

Jim stood and looked past her at the door. “You took… from Cooper? Fuck!”

“Yes, well, as much as I don’t like you, James, I thought she was better off here than with that rat.”

“How very altruistic of you.”

“I’m a giving woman.” She took a drag from her cigarette. “Well, see you guys around. I don’t want to be here when Cooper shows up.”

“He knows?”

“Well, he’s certainly going to suspect you before he thinks of me. After all, why would I do something like this?”

“Yes, Natasha, why?”

She smiled. “Cooper is a rat. You are now the rat trap. And this,” she prodded the girl with her toe, “is the cheese.”

“You fucking bitch.”

“Oh, come now. You can handle him here, on your own turf. And don’t tell me you think I should have left her with him. One of your own?”

“So we do your dirty work. The least you could do is be here when Cooper arrives.”

“No, the least I can do is vanish and leave Cooper to you. Which is what I’m going to do.” She stamped out her cigarette. “See you, James. Later, guys,” she said to the darkness behind him. She turned and walked out, never looking back. She was reasonably sure they wouldn’t shoot her. She was half a mile up the quay when she ducked into the shadows and watched the three long, black cars glide past, headlights off. Her brow creased. She had known Cooper would react, but she hadn’t thought he could put together that kind of army so quickly. She continued walking. One way or another, one of her problems would be removed.

As she walked, the sound of gunfire erupted in the night behind her. She did not look back.

~

Allie awoke slowly. Someone was holding her, and running. The arms were strong and warm, but she was being jostled. There was noise everywhere, shouting and gunshots, and the smell of cordite and blood filled the air. She had been stolen again, she knew, but there was something about these new people she felt, perhaps in their scent, perhaps in the way the man carrying her was shielding her, that made her like them better than the last man who had stolen her.

“Get her below!” a voice shouted nearby. Allie liked below. She had always liked the dark places under the ground; she felt safer there. There was a scream somewhere behind her, then the man carrying her grunted and stumbled. He pitched forward and narrowly avoided crushing her as he fell.

“Go,” he said. “Get to the trap door.” The man pulled out a pistol and rolled over in a pool of his own blood and began firing. “Go!” he shouted back at her.

Another person, a woman, grabbed Allie’s hand and pulled her along, firing over Allie’s head. Allie looked back and saw a man standing over the one who had been carrying her. He took aim at the head of the wounded man and fired. Allie forgot to move her feet and stumbled as the woman pulled her forward. She fell, and the man walked toward her, then twitched and fell, his face ruined.

“Come on,” the woman said, but Allie did not obey. She could see them all clearly now in the darkness, and she realized that the people who had stolen her this time could see as well. They were like her. The attackers were wearing things over their eyes, and they could see too, but it wasn’t the same.

The fog that had been clinging to her ever since the first time she had been stolen was fading, and she knew what to do. She saw a piece of metal lying on the floor. She reached for it, lifted it, and drove it with all the force she could muster into the goggles of an attacker as he came through the door. He fell to the ground, his head broken open.

“What the fuck?” asked the woman behind Allie.

“I don’t like those men,” Allie said. There weren’t very many left, but most of the people like her were also down. She wanted to get below, to follow her instinct to seek shelter in the shadows of the depths, down, down, always down when there is danger, but her friends were in trouble, and as her mind cleared she knew she had to help them. She reached out and began to pull the other men’s strange goggles off, one by one. Blind, they were helpless.

The woman behind her reloaded her pistol and opened fire on the invaders who were now groping for cover or dashing for the rectangle of light that was the door. Outside she could hear them regrouping, and a volley of cannisters flew in through the windows. All her new friends were running now, heading for the trapdoor, as smoke began to pour from the cannisters. The smoke reached one of the running men and he fell to the floor, twitching. She caught a faint whiff of something she had never smelled before, yet it still filled her with a nameless dread. She turned and ran in a blind panic, wanting nothing but to get below. Around her, she smelled the fear of her new friends.

~

Natasha watched from a hillside rooftop as the three black cars sped away from the warehouse. It would not be easy for them to escape; the police were descending on the scene in cars and helicopters, and they had the area cut off. She had reached her vantage point in time to watch Cooper’s men storm the warehouse, then suddenly retreat, and resort to filling the warehouse with something more than just tear gas. They had failed to reclaim the girl and had tried to kill her instead. That seemed extreme even for Cooper.

“Hello, Natasha.”

She didn’t turn around. “Hello, Cooper.”

“I thought I might find you around here somewhere.”

“I’m not one to miss a good show.”

“Seems like you knew it was going to happen.”

“I keep my ear to the ground.”

“You don’t seriously think I’ll believe that those jokers could have taken the girl. This has your handwriting all over it.”

Natasha shrugged and fished a cigarette out of her purse. There was a gun in there as well, but there was no chance of her getting it out without finding a bullet in the back of her head first. “Don’t sell those jokers short. They handled your guys down there.”

“You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“No?”

“That girl might seem like one of them on the surface, but she’s not. She’s dangerous.”

“What were you doing with her, then?”

“That’s not important.”

Natasha lit the cigarette. “Whatever.”

“Look Natasha, I know you don’t like me—”

She snorted.

“—but you’ve really opened up a can of worms this time. If you don’t help me put things back, all hell’s going to break loose.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I’m not being metaphorical.”

“Just because they prefer the basement to the penthouse doesn’t make them evil.”

“You’re talking as if you like those guys.”

She blew out a long stream of smoke. “No, I just hate you more.”

Thanks!

My most polite rejection letter to date

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Well, got the heave-ho from the next agent in the list, but I have to appreciate that while it was a form letter, at least it was a polite form letter, complete with a pep-talk. “Assume we’re wrong,” was the message, “keep trying.” I had read the text of the letter previously on their Web site, but even though I knew what was coming the encouraging words were welcome. The large body of constructive advice and resources on the agency’s site was one of the reasons I had selected them in the first place. They seemed like they would be good to work with.

So let it be known that the Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency was the second agency to reject me, but in my book they’re number one!

On a related note, I have come, over the last months, to understand the need authors have to be published. Sure, fame and fortune are nice, recognition by peers and critics has its place, but there is something deeper, more fundamental. Yesterday I put my finger on it. Once an author publishes a work and it appears in print, then and only then is it possible to stop working on it. Publication is a release from bondage.

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Fresh Snow

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It is snowing this morning, here in the Haunted City. The flakes are light and fluffy, falling gently in the still air, covering the ground with several centimeters of pure white. (Note for Americans: centimeters is Czech for inches.) The old men and their wiener dogs are having a tough time of it this morning – the fluff is up well past weiner dog belly level and traction is tricky. Still they are out, doing what must be done. True Czechs, they know that snow comes and goes, but they will endure.

It is late enough, this morning, that others are out as well. Here at U Kormidla the joint is jumping in the very low-key way this place has. I am upstairs, and I’m trying not to stare as I figure out if one of the girls at a table I can see downstairs is one of my favorite bartenders at Cheap Beer Place. My eyes, it seems, are not what they were.

Ah, time. If I could just be like the older Czechs seem to be—somehow reconciled with its steady depredations, stoically enduring the everyday aches and pains of life as a side effect of not having died yet. Instead I spent yesterday stopped by a headache, unable to write anything that wasn’t pure poop, and turning for shelter from thought to a place where mental activity is optional and likely to be painful as well, headache or no. I went back and played online poker for fake money.

I described it already, the other time I tried it, so I won’t go into detail here, except to say that the only thing worse than playing poker with people who bet completely irrationally, seemingly without looking at their cards, is playing against those people and losing, which is what happened yesterday morning. That afternoon I had a mission: win back more fake money than I had lost. It took a while, and then I found myself playing with other players more at my level, my own mental acuity was recovering from its migrainal body-blow, and the shimmering in my vision went away, and I had a really good time. I ended up with a nice big pile of fake money and the ridiculous fantasy that maybe I should play for real money—I mean heck, I just made fifteen hundred bucks! Right?

Income thus assured I now must turn towards making at least a token effort to be a part of the world around me. I am behind on correspondences of all sorts, emails from nice people who are patient enough not to have written me off yet, people I haven’t seen in a long time, even phone text messages.

Yet all I really want to do right now is sit, sip my tea, and watch the snow drift down in the courtyard outside my window.

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Thanks!

Cheap Bastards of the World, Unite!

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At fuego’s suggestion I signed up for Skype. Skype is a simple-to-use application that allows you to telephone any other Skype user for free, no matter where they are in the world. It also includes chat and file exchanging capabilities. You can call anyone’s normal phone as well, and the rates look pretty low, at least for calls to the US.

It’s not quite as versatile as a telephone, since both people have to be on the Internet to converse. If you spend a lot of time online, however, and your computer has a microphone and speakers, you might want to check it out. Drop me a line and I’ll tell you my Skype ID (check the first comment for my email address). There are other similar services and I can’t compare them, but it’s hard to imagine them being easier to use than Skype.

Gimme a call!

Thanks!