Discovered yesterday, to my mingled horror and delight, that I have some esteemed company in the use of the name "Jenny Haniver" as a character moniker. Caitlin R. Kiernan's story "Tears Seven Times Salt" (collected in the anthology Darkside, along with Thomas Ligotti's "The Nightmare Network" and many other fine tales) has a protagonist thusly named, and, with the sort of Deep-One-cum-Nosferatu imagery going on in there, probably pays more homage to the source material than my own creation does. Though I must say, I have just enough solipsism that I was waiting, the whole time I was reading it, for Kiernan's ichthyophile waif to light up a stogie and say something wiseass. Sigh.

Hard to complain too hard when you find you've been dipping out of the same big black cultural stewpot as Cait Kiernan. And it's actually sort of nice to know that it's not a joke with such a narrow audience that no one will ever get it. Though between this, and the fact that the spooky quasi-heroine of Silk is named Spyder, I'm beginning to suspect that my life is vibrating in harmony with some very strange frequencies indeed.

In other news: Friday night was a great time, and I must say that ilyaimy was the highlight of the evening - the asskickingest of three truly kickass bands. Trying to describe them, I find myself at the same loss as all who have tried and failed before me, and falling back on the same sort of Ani-diFranco-meets-Tool comparison that still falls far too short of giving you any real idea of what these guys do. It's not quite folk, or grunge, or punk, or prog, or anything else specifically, but it certainly pays homage to all of those things and more; "alternative" in the best and truest sense of the word. And whatever it is, it's furious and spooky and sharp-toothed and Dionysian, and you can goth-dance to it, which is just about all I ask of a band. Go thou now to their site, and download their stuff, and then go see them live if you can make it at all. And be glad that no one has as yet told rob that his guitar isn't a bodhran.

Also this weekend, I got a letter from Andy, and learned he also has a blog these days at http://abbockho.blogspot.com, which all should go and visit and revel in the eloquence of; you're sure at least to never look at basset hounds the same way again. And this also helped to inspire Stacy to start a fledgling blog of her own, with a title that tips a sequinned hat to the great Eddie Izzard. Poke poke poke.

Soon we'll all be exhibitionists, and it will be a better world.

In a time when sources of national pride are fast dwindling, I'm taking comfort where I can.

Reading Senator Byrd's reaction to the outbreak of war makes me damned proud to be an adopted West Virginian. Just as reading Umberto Eco's thoughts on the international situation from a few weeks ago makes me proud to be an Italian and an intellectual. And now, this meditation by Warren Ellis makes me proud to be a comics fan.

Small things, but significant. And at least I know who I want to be an ally of.

"I never could get the hang of Thursdays"

Pfft. Weird day. I just couldn't quite seem to get my head together. I've been tense and bitchy and irrational all week - the kind of depression that feels like you just did a line of crystal meth and drank a double scotch and got all the bad effects of both, but none of the benefits. Feh.

Thanks, Dubya.

Tomorrow, at least, is Friday, and I'm heading down to VA after work to see IlyAimy and The Dreamscapes Project at the Jammin' Java, in an effort to balance out the week by putting the coolness all at the end. Well, not all of it - I did get my Earth Covers Earth CD yesterday, and scored a used copy of Coil's Horse Rotorvator (speaking of Balance, ha ha) earlier in the week, so it hasn't all been fucked-up and weird, only mostly.

Not that Coil isn't fucked-up and weird, just in a cool way and not an annoying way. Um.

Oh, I also broke down at last and got myself a French press (take that, stupid national Francophobia) like I've been promising myself for a year and a half. I figured now's a good a time as any, since I'm a week away from entertaining another coffee connoiseur/junkie and I'll take any excuse to make a big pitcher of spoon-eating opaque java the way it's meant to be had and then inflict it on other people. And it comes with its own coaster! How cool is that?

So, yeah, a week from now this will be my Friday, and I'll be resting up for a big weekend of geeking out with Spyder (who is coming, undeterred by orange-alert paranoia, because when you work in the shadow of the Empire State Building in these troubled times, nothing fuckin' scares you anymore) and trying to think of fun things to do around Our Fair City. Normally I wouldn't worry about that sort of thing, but, quoth she, "I should at least pretend I didn't just watch movies for three days," and I sympathize; I remember all too well when I returned from my New York adventure last fall and having everyone ask me what I did all day, and wishing I had a more interesting answer than "sit in a Starbucks for five hours and have a big dorkgasm."

And speaking of travelling to cool places to do fun things, Stacy booked our fifth-anniversary trip to New Orleans tonight. Wheee! I dunno about anyone else, but for me, a long weekend of waking up and getting the buzz on in the Goth Capital of America is about as romantic as anything could possibly be, in every sense of the word. And it beats the hell out of freezing our asses off on the beach, which is not the most hospitable place in the middle of May.

Wooch. Five years. I don't feel grown-up enough to have been married for five years. Whatever is the world coming to?

Drink Before the War

Some interesting discussion is going on over at Revland, John Tynes' weblog, where he's posted a link to a thought-provoking article in today's Salon.com that makes an argument in favor of a war that will oust Saddam Hussein from power. It's very much worth a read, even if, like me, you ultimately disagree and oppose the war, or at least the war as it's being carried out by our Fearless Leader.

Such interesting times we live in. John Tynes supports the war not because he's a gung-ho militant uberpatriot, but because he's a compassionate idealist who cares very much about human rights; and I oppose it because, essentially, so am I. We just happen to be idealistic about very slightly different things. That brand of disagreement I can live with. And I won't deny that this situation has provided me with a number of troubling moral quandaries that have no easy answers.

Can I pretend that Saddam isn't a horrible despot who should have to answer for his many atrocities? Absolutely not.

Do I think that the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad is the way to go about that? No. Nor do I trust my government's motives in this war to be idealistic or compassionate. Nor do I think that the potential fallout - in loss of life and resources and, heaven knows, civil liberties - to be an acceptable sacrifice.

Could the same thing - that is, the removal of Saddam from power - be accomplished by some other means? I have to believe so. I certainly think other options might have been tried. And I know that the rash and violent actions of my government have made it difficult to be proud of my country.

In any case, there are no easy answers. And I don't suspect it will get any easier from here.

***

On a lighter note, the latest installment of The Last Dark Art went up today. Appropriately enough, I talk about pressure.

Bloody synchronicity.

This week's most rewarding source of slack has been the webcomic Something Positive, which is geeky black humor of the kind that makes me grin evilly, and, not infrequently, laugh out loud like a moron. It's consistently good, and often brilliant, and has a lot of moments of things I wish I'd thought of first; go check it out. A caveat, though: it's probably not for the faint of heart. Lines like "I could menstruate a better cup of coffee than this" are at the mild end of SP's brand of mean-funny dialogue, so be prepared.

Turning a one-eighty of sorts from there, I also discovered just yesterday, on the advice of Neil Gaiman's blog, the delights of Gothic Miss Manners, the eloquent guardian of propriety for the black-clad and spooky set. And if I hadn't already been won over by the time I read it, the entry here would have made me a fan for life, where she says:

Oh, and it’s even MORE rude to shout requests for songs that aren’t by that band. Shouting “Freebird!” in the middle of a concert is tacky and dumb, not funny.

(Yes boys and girls, this really happened at a concert Gothic Miss Manners attended recently. She was appalled, and desperately wanted to go start stabbing the offenders with her hatpins.)

(As have I. But I'm glad I didn't have to be the one to say it.)

Tonight after work, I go to Union Station to scout out landmarks in the event it's impossible to decipher where the hell a train from New York is going to pull in. Much as it galls my Dionysian soul, it seems useful, when two short people are likely to be running around a very large place trying to locate one another, to have a Plan. So I shall do my best to formulate one that agrees with the local geography.

And that's all. Time for lunch.

Another Monday down. I keep killin' 'em, but they still keep a-comin'.

Had a nice weekend, starting with finally getting to cleaning out the spare room so it doesn't look, to quote Master Shake, like a flea market threw up in there. I hadn't really planned on doing it, but there I found myself on a fine Saturday afternoon, hauling our antique wicker table out to shop-vac it free of pink fiberglass and drywall, and it all kind of spiralled out from there. So it's now habitable. Which is good.

And then the Marthas called to say they were jonesing for a visit, and I went and picked them up at the Metro and then drove down to Virginia for Caren, whose gran is in the hospital and not expected to last out the week. She's holding up as well as a person can, poor girl, but she's flying up to Buffalo tomorrow night and I'll be going to and fro to Falls Church this week to make sure her cats have food and a clean place to poop. But we all had a pretty good time on Saturday night, aided slightly by the slacker's Holy Communion of beer and pizza (or in the case of the Marthas, who have the gift of lesbian natural class, rum-and-coke and pizza), though I'm afraid I had to derail a conversation about strippers that was begun rather enthusiastically by Martha L. and was threatening to get entirely out of control. Caren wound up staying the night, for which all were glad, and the earlier effort in reducing the biohazard in the spare room turned out to be well-spent indeed.

Last night I made a batch of red-pepper-and-cilantro-enhanced salsa which was pretty successful, and which I think may have improved by a night in the fridge and undergoing whatever strange alchemy takes place in tomato dishes during hours and hours of sitting in the cold. I've been seized by odd urges in the culinary department lately, most of which seem to involve making sauces and then spending a week or two finding things to put them on. But so far the results have been positive, so I'll see where else it takes me.

And this weekend brings my mom, and another peace-rally in our fair town. The one last weekend managed to get Alice Walker arrested, for which the Dubya regime can add some more tally-marks to its lousy karma scorecard; this one's bringing down the Smeds from the wilds of Pennsylvania, and I don't think those GOP-brains know who they're fucking with there. And if Bill brings along a spot of Old Fart Pale Ale, they may have cause to fear me too. We shall see.

I just now, just moments ago, received my copy of the Princess Mononoke DVD I ordered last week from half.com. Hooray!

I'm thinking that's probably another 135 minutes that just got shaved off the sleep I'll get the weekend of the 28th. So it goes.

Have calmed down quite a bit since going all Spider Jerusalem in Wednesday's post, though I haven't changed my mind about any of it (I stand by my assertion that if having a johnson makes it hard for you to use a fax machine or a photocopier, you're doing it wrong). But I've had some faith restored that sense prevails in the circles where it matters. I really believe that the day will come when all the tiny-minded will be lonely folk indeed; perhaps not in my lifetime, or my progeny's, but someday. I can hope, anyway.

Wednesday, also, was the birthday of David Tibet, which might account for any number of strange energies in circulation last week. So in belated celebration, I tip this glass of heady wine, from "The Cloud of Unknowing" on the brilliant, haunting Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre:

Under the rain and teeth of gods
Under the pain and sleeping liddy eyes
Under the brokked wetful heaven
If you are there
If you are there
If you are there
Then I am singing with my eyes

Blessings of the Thunder Perfect Mind on you, Mr. Tibet. And many happy returns indeed.

Rant and Mini-Manifesto

Recent events - the details of which I won't get into - have brought on the following dose of high-test vitriol:

You will find, I think, no greater marker for the idiocy of what might be called "mainstream" society than the fact that it has been so successful in making feminism a dirty word. The real truth is that the only people who have a right to be offended by feminism are people who have something to lose by women being treated fairly and equally. If you are a person of this sort, and find feminism offensive or distasteful, you're obviously reaping the benefits in some way of the double-standards of an unfair system, and you are therefore a moron and a fuckwit and I have neither sympathy nor patience for you.

(And I really, really don't want to hear about how old-fashioned "gentlemanly" codes of conduct were so respectful of women. It's respect for women that makes me an enemy of "chivalry." Remember, folks, a pedestal seems nice until you're up on it, at which time you discover two things: first, you've got nowhere else to go; and second, you're now an easy target. Demolish pedestals, and let people be people, for fuck's sake.)

I also have neither time nor sympathy for anyone who still thinks that work ought to be divided up on the basis of anatomy that has no bearing on the process involved. A phallus does not impede one's ability to wash dishes or type a memo, nor is it of any actual use when, say, swinging a hammer (or, as has recently been demonstrated, a golf club). To paraphrase Lloyd Alexander: Men have complained about doing women's work, and women have complained about doing men's work, but the work has never been heard to complain about who was doing it.

And yet nonsense and fuckwittage have had such a hold on people's minds for so long that their legacy continues to horrify. That it should be acceptable, in the year two-thousand-and-fucking-three, for otherwise decent and intelligent grown men to let pass a reference to a thirtysomething competent, professional woman as a "girl" (in a sense and context that clearly implies "secretary") is nothing short of sickening. We should all be further along than this. Such things are neither cute, nor quaint, nor "just a figure of speech." They're insulting and demeaning and, at the very least, moronic. I won't deny that political correctness has had some silly excesses in its day, but I'd hope that anyone with even a little sense and sensitivity could see that one.

And another thing, while I'm on a roll: I'm about fucking sick of the way feminist men are cast by the popular consciousness as either weak and whiny dweebs or double-talking (and often actually predatory) frauds. This is the kind of thing that sets my rage a-boil, so I now put out the call to all males of heart: If you're waffling about tagging yourself with the f-word, now is the time to cut it the hell out. If you're not a fuckwit, and you believe that women are your equals, then you're a feminist, so quit being embarassed and speak up - for the sake of your wives, your girlfriends, your women friends, your mothers, sisters, aunts, and daughters (and maybe especially the last). Say "I am a feminist" and fucking dare your good-old-boy acquaintances to take you down for it.

End of rant. But I make no apologies either for tone or content. My patience has run out. Deal, world.

So, from today, I have one month to perfect the formula for the Famous Tzatziki or face Hobbit-wrath. Can it be done?

Some things I discovered while working on the latest batch the other night:
- The juice of one lime is sufficient per one large container of yoghurt. More than that results in a slight citrus overkill. Not awful, but not perfect.
- You always need more garlic than you think you do. Always always. The same is often true for olive oil, but not to the same extent.
- The cucumbers are actually a little better chopped fine by hand than pulverized in the Cuisinart. It gives the sauce a nice texture and sustains interest. (I never thought I'd say that. This is actually the only way I even like raw cucumbers. Weird.) I may yet have to weigh out the merits of peeled-vs.-unpeeled, but for now, unpeeled and diced very small seems to work just fine.
- I've been pondering experimenting with the vinegar. I've been using cider vinegar for as long as I've been doing this particular recipe, even though every "official" tzatziki recipe I've seen calls for plain old white vinegar. It's such a small amount - just a little splash per batch - that I wonder if it makes much difference. (Balsamic vinegar is a great big no-no, though, as I learned some time ago to my distress.)

Food obsession? Not me. Not Italian at all.

Hopefully, this weekend will bring a new computer and assorted toys. We've been throwing around the idea of ordering one, but receiving packages at home from anyone but the good old postal service is such a major pain in the ass that it hardly seems worth whatever bargain we'd get on one. (Last thing we need is to have FedEx drop off our nice shiny new Dell outside our door and have it vanish before we get home.) So I think we're going out tomorrow and having a look around, and then jump on whatever deal seems least sucky.

And Tuesday, my birthday present from Stacy came in, one month late exactly. But that's okay, because it was this. My wife is the best.

Things are looking up these days. We're at something like normal now; our bedroom has been de-holed and cleaned and almost doesn't smell like smoke anymore, and we got new sheets on Friday and slept in there again for the first time in days. Life goes on, in its inevitable way.

Still getting the shakes every so often, especially seeing it was only a week ago tonight we were stumbling out through snowdrifts to escape disaster, and it still kind of feels like we beat the devil somehow and don't deserve our good fortune. But, as I'm wont to tell people, nobody really deserves their fortune, good or bad; you just deal with what life throws at you. And Stacy and I are probably closer because of this, and that's a good thing.

As of last night, the kitties are no longer resident here (as they were all week, not being able to go to the hotel with Angie). It was nice to have them here, even though we never really saw them. (They hid in the closet all week while we were awake, the poor scared things. My closest contact was getting scratched and bitten by Spike as I tried to extricate him from the spare-room closet where he'd wandered in sometime in the wee hours of Wednesday night; I sustained some well-deserved wounds from that, which should serve as a warning to anyone thinking of trying some cat-wrestling in your underwear. Not recommended.)

So now we're having a nice Sunday-night relax, and I'm oddly enough not feeling as terrorized as usual at the thought of going back to work tomorrow. Maybe a return to some kind of routine is not such a bad thing now. And even the snow is much less of a pain in the ass than it was a week ago. I feel relieved about a long list of things.

And today is Spyder's birthday; she came into the world on this appropriately Illuminated date way back in dystopian 1984, almost two months after I saw Dune in a cold little theatre in Parkersburg, WV. (The fact that I have a friendship with an adult who was born after the release of Dune is very weird to me, and a little depressing. But anyway.) So go on over to her website, and give la mia sorella some hits and some loooove.

Wooch. What a week. Here's hoping they get better for a while.

Disaster. Relief.

Sometime after ten o'clock last night, the apartment building adjoining ours caught fire.

We don't know why. Someone being stupid and careless, in all likelihood. It hardly matters. We ran outside while our bedroom filled with smoke and with hardly more than the clothes on our backs and watched the fire fighters do everything they could, in two feet of snow, in the driving sleet, hardly feeling anything through the adrenaline and sick fear. When we heard the water was frozen in the lines, we prayed like anything they could get it to flow. And, eventually, they did, and we cheered and lost sight of the whole scene in clouds of steam and smoke.

And when we were all sent down to the rental office, I thought I'd hear by the end of the night that we'd lost everything, that the roof had caught, that there had been too much smoke, that we'd be out of a home. I thought of the irreplaceable artwork in our apartment, and the unfinished writings, and my countless, precious books. I felt like William of Baskerville watching the Abbey library burn. And Stacy and I sat in the office with all the other refugees from two apartment buildings for the unbearable long hours we had to wait, and hugged each other, and mostly felt glad to be alive.

And then, sometime in the small cold hours, someone told us that the residents of the 2221 building could go home. Yes, even the ones in the third-floor units. The building was safe. The damage was contained.

We wandered home and took stock. We saw where the firemen had liberated a small bookcase to use, I assume, as a makeshift stepstool, spilling its contents on the floor; we saw where they'd broken through our bedroom ceiling and scattered drywall and insulation across the carpet; and we so, so did not care.

We slept in our spare room. About four o'clock, our neighbor Angie came, who lived in the basement unit of the building that burned, and slept on our sofa. (We met her for the first time last night, standing underdressed in the snow, terrified for her cats; they lived through it, and are around here somewhere too, terrified and hiding but okay.) We couldn't believe we were home. We couldn't believe we had one.

What would we have done if we'd been burned out and lost everything? Where would we have gone? I don't know. We're snowed in, and will be for some time.

Did the foot or more of snow on the rooftops make the difference in delaying the fire? Did it do more good that way than the harm it did freezing the pipelines? I don't know that either.

I know that I look at the gutted remains of the 2219 building, through which the sky can be seen, and am filled with queasy horror, knowing that we came within quite literal inches of sharing its fate. I know that every time I try and talk about this, I end up speechless and babbling incoherently, unable to frame what happened in words, unable to even figure out how I feel about it. I know I'll be damn glad when the maintenance folks clean up the mess in our place (Such a little thing! So cosmetic!), and when we get our gas and hot water back. I know that I ache for normality. And I just can't, can't believe how lucky we were.

I laugh at inappropriate things. When we walked in to see our computer gleefully running its idiot screensaver as if nothing unusual had happened, I almost had a fit of hysteria. Almost everything is unbelievably surreal.

I'm okay. Stacy is okay. Poor Angie will be okay eventually, and rebuild her life as best she can. I'm fighting the urge to crawl off somewhere and wait for the world to go away. The adrenaline has run out, and I feel incredibly numb. This should have been a weekend to relax and enjoy being snowed in, enjoy the unexpected extra time off tomorrow. Instead, I sit here and shake my head and sigh and don't know how the hell to feel.

My world went very briefly nova last night. I hope and pray, if there's anything worth praying to, that it may yet collapse back to something like its former shape. In the meantime, I'll be here, looking in wonder at the wreckage around me, insensate and uncomprehending. Counting my blessings and my good fortune. Waiting to not feel like such a shellshocked wreck.

Oh, my. Well, it's good to be popular.

Went to the Jammin' Java's Open Mic on Monday night and had a grand time. It's a really nice venue for playing music as well as seeing other people play - almost exactly the kind of pretentious coffeehouse atmosphere that I suspected the Moonlit Port aspired to, back in its day. I did "Master Van Rijn" and "One of Those Nights" to a receptive crowd, and didn't even feel too outclassed by the many talented folks who also did their thing, and did it well, all the rest of the evening.

Met some nice and friendly people that way, including a very talented guy named John who spent the last eight years in China (and thus may be the only person I've met in a decade who knew who Cui Jian was when I mentioned him) and an extraordinarily nice woman named Kris who had glowing things to say about my material, which always makes me happy happy. Also got reacquainted, after two years (!!), with IlyAimy's ubertalented Rob, who since I last saw him has done something odd with his beard that makes him look vaguely like a young Steven Brust. And so I step, ever so tentatively, back into the waters of a musical community, and it was pretty good.

Stacy's home sick today, hopefully not with what I had, which I wouldn't wish on anyone. Bleah.

I hear that, against all precedent, my brother may be making the trip for our big party next weekend. Whee! If memory serves me right, this will be the largest gathering we've hosted in all the years we've been here (if most of the invited show up, anyway). This is what comes of the demise of the Purple Penguin, I suppose; the payoff's that no one will find themselves at midnight with a sword at their throat, as was once known to happen from time to time with some of Jeff's more unruly guests. I guess that's a good or bad thing, depending on your tastes. And speaking of tastes, I'm making my Famous Tzatziki for the occasion, and that's always good.

Only the third post of the year. Gods and powers, but that's pathetic.

Recovered lately from a week-long sickness of mysterious origin, which laid me up for many days and filled my head with unpleasantness. Had one of those visits to the doctor where the medical professional says "I don't really know what's wrong with you, have some antibiotics" and sends you back home to drink fluids. I'm much better now. Also more or less recovered from my recent bout with depression, which got a lot worse before it got better, but resulted in my decision to look into some good honest medication for this, something I think I've put off for as long as I can. I'm fighting the weird nagging feeling that doing so means I've failed somehow to beat this by my own devices, even though I know that's just dumb; I've spent the last three years really, really not wanting to, I don't know, "resort" to that. I think, though, that I'm beginning to resign myself to it being a bigger enemy than I can face down naked, as it were. And it's very possible that three years ago I hadn't learned enough of the things that I got out of a year and a half of therapy, and drugs would have been a bad idea anyway. I don't know. I'm going to talk to the professionals about this and see what happens. But the idea that something might give me an edge over the ... irrational, crushing despair that looms over me gives me a lot of hope for the future.

Last night I had a semi-unexpected treat of going to see Jim's Big Ego at the Jammin' Java in Vienna (and it's a measure of how airheaded I am that, after four and a half years of living here, I had no idea Vienna is as close as it is), which is a great venue and has an open mic I'm now determined to go to; it was an excellent show, and JBE got some new local fans, I think, as is right and good. And I also became an instant fan of the opening band, The Dreamscapes Project, who are quite awesomely good and a bunch of nice guys to boot.

Currently reading The Man Who Was Thursday, one of those books I can't help but feel I ought to have read by now, and it's as good as its publicity - one of the few "classics" that I'm not finding to be a fight to get through. It's odd - I can do Shakespeare, and Marlowe, easily enough, and I do alright with a decent translation of Chaucer or Dante, but works in English from about 1800 to 1920 are frequently like fighting taffy for me. But Chesterton's very nearly as good as Neil Gaiman says he is, even if you have to get past his respectable Edwardian Christianity at times. Also nearly done with Mieville's The Scar, started the night before my birthday and even better than Perdido Street Station. Mieville, despite being occasionally as big an opinionated pain in the ass in his own way as Chesterton, is a brilliant and visionary writer, and fantasy is lucky to have him. Were I James Lipton, I'd say he was "delightful," but I'm not and I won't.

And finally, after the long silence of all Muse-ish energies, I'm getting the urge to write again myself, possibly tooling around with something new for a while before taking up old projects. About time, too.

Okay, off to clean now. Matt's coming up to visit from the District tonight, and it's always useful to have a clean slate on which to write the evening's inevitable debauchery - a word I'll use in the absence of one which more accurately reflects the kind of classy reveling one gets up to with upwardly-mobile gay professionals. Hard to really feel comfortable describing a bottle of wine and a plate of crackers and feta as "debauchery," but it messes up the coffee table just as bad as hot wings and beer, so I'll let it stand.

And now I'm just rambling. More later.

Today, we are told, is the coldest day around here for seven years. And I believe it. It's brass monkeys out there. So cold, and windy, that I broke out the big leather trenchcoat this morning, though putting it on often makes me feel as though I should be singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." So it goes.

In two days I turn twenty-nine, which is a little weird, what with never really having felt like a grownup at all. Mostly I feel like it's just a number, except that small part of me that's sad to start the last chapter of my twenties. But I'm probably feeling more melancholy than usual about these things. The first few weeks of the year have been very... well, weird, and stressful for a number of reasons, none of which really matter much in the long run. But I haven't felt myself for a while now. Stacy asked my a week or so back when I'll be working on finishing A Thousand Thrones, and my answer was "When I'm not fucking depressed all the time," and I don't think I was quite aware of it prior to saying the words. But, hopefully, that will get better soon.

Unfortunately, having started what seems to be my annual beginning-of-the-year-dropping-off-the-face-of-the-planet, I've ended up unfairly neglecting a lot of people. I owe letters to my brother, and to both Rebekahs (I disappeared so successfully, and for so long, that Spyder sent a note asking if I was okay - and for causing such worry, mia sorella, I am most heartily sorry) and Heaven knows to Pat and Bernice and probably a host of others I've failed to recall. So if I end up spending part of the birthday weekend catching up on my correspondence, it only serves me right.

Though I did manage to shake off my lingering despair long enough to polish off Part Four of The Last Dark Art and send it in just under the wire, and it's now up.

Tomorrow I'm off, making today a kind of Friday, and I'm taking myself to lunch and Borders and then meeting Martha A. for coffee and grrl-talk. And hopefully on my birthday proper I'll be off to a third viewing of T2T (the fact that it's only my third makes me feel like a most unworthy geek indeed) and something spicy and Chinese. So the weekend looks to be an improvement in any case. And that, dear readers, is all we can really hope for.

A Happy New Year to all and sundry. Me, I'm tired and melancholy to be looking back on the last day of my vacation (one which was pretty good, all told, with some minor pitfalls). Had a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch New Year's dinner of saurkraut and pork tonight, or I had pork at least, and Stacy had sausage-esque Boca links, which we trust the Powers will look as kindly on in weighing our fortunes for the coming year. (You must eat pork on New Year's Day, according to my PA Dutch ancestors, and not poultry, because, y'see, pigs root forward, but chickens scratch backward. And if you think that's wacky, you should hear some of their home remedies.)

Not much more I have the heart to report yet, my spirits being where they are, but all the same my good wishes go out to all my loved ones near and far. I sure liked 2002 heaps more than its predecessor; here's hoping this one's even better. Slainte.

Quickly, quickly:

Rolled into P-burg two days ago and have already bounced from Rockport to the in-laws', where I now sit (no Internet at my mom's. Eep) preparing to do Xmas Eve-y stuff.

A couple of hours back, I finished my annual reread of Hogfather, which was very nice and lifted my floundering spirits a bit. This year's been wretched for December depression. I'm not sure why. I NEVER get the holiday blues. Not like this.

Maybe it's Spyder's voodoo curse. Like a bad mojo grenade. I shudder to think.

Nng. I better go be sociable. I have lots of people to write and no time to write them in. Feh. Bloody holidays.

But Stacy and I go see T2T tonight, and that will be very very good. I need a break from my vacation already. How fucking sad is that?

Okay. The time that my watch says it is can't possibly be right. That would mean I slept until ... gaaaaaah.

I write this from Jeff Miller's cozy flat in historic Morgantown, midway through my Appalachian holiday odyssey. It's chilly here in the town of my alma mater, and pale and wintery up there in the sky. Which is only right. Wooch. Happy Solstice.

I showed up much later than I'd planned on last night, which is the pitfall of packing at the last minute and playing a kind of Tetris with the bags of presents in the trunk of the car. But it was a pretty good trip, and I got to listen to Nature and Organisation while going through Cumberland (Michael Cashmore = fuckin' genius) and even managed to stay up waaaaay too late doing four years' worth of catching-up. Aiya.

Now matters of food must be attended to, and the commencing of the last leg of the quest. Back in a bit, hopefully.

Oh, yeah, and The Last Dark Art #3 went up today, only a month behind. Whoohoo!

Wooch.

So - Xmas shopping very nearly done. Week about to start the downslope. Weather not acting up for a week now. Things are pretty good.

I've been so fucking out of it ... I owe lots of people letters and phone calls and whatnot, and I spent all weekend not able to make myself do anything. Gaaaaaah. Think I got a bit of the holiday blues this year, for the first time in memory. Dunno why.

I depart for P-burg on Saturday, with a possible stopover in Morgantown that night for a long-overdue reunion with Jeff Miller ("the other Jeff, the vegan one"). Stacy will be in Texas, of all godsforsaken places, attending her friend Rachel's nice upscale Jewish wedding, and won't make it to WV until Sunday, so I get to make my odyssey to Appalachia almost as drawn-out as I like. This looks to be a nice change of pace from the rush-madly-home holiday trip of previous years, and I look forward to't. Been making sure I have lots of tunes for the road; why my office ever let me near a computer with a CD burner in it is beyond me, but waste not, want not.

Plus, At Nearly 29, I Discover I'm a Lesbian

Had a long drawn-out heart-to-heart with Martha A. on Friday night, wherein I confessed all sorts of odd things about my sense of self that I'm only recently coming to terms with, including how strongly female-identified I feel very much of the time, which is not an easy thing to say out loud, though Martha's one of a handful of people I can talk about that with and there's not even a hint of judgment. And she told me after I'd rabbitted on about it for some while that she sometimes thinks of me as a woman, which is one of the nicest things I can imagine hearing after putting my heart on the plate like that, even if she was just making it up. Erm.

Anyway, once it was out there, it sort of explained a lot. Lynx told me about ten years ago that it's obvious I actually like women (as opposed to the sense most guys mean that, which translates as "I like to fuck women"). That really meant a lot, and it's maybe become even more true as I've discovered how little I connect with men, even most of the ones I'm close to. (There are exceptions. Andy for one. Jeff Miller for another.) My real soulmates tend to be female, and somehow that's where my deep self resonates, like that's what it recognizes. Or so it seems to make sense to me.

So there you have it. Underneath it all, I'm a chick. There are worse fates.

(Which is probably also why I recoil so strongly when Stacy explains some marginally undesirable behavior on my part as "Well, you're a guy," which is the kind of thing that causes my inner c*nt to bristle with indignation. Oh, gods, that's a dreadful image. But nonetheless.)

Oh, and Martha also gave an enthusiatic thumbs-up to the sex scenes in A Thousand Thrones ("You can tell it's not just porn because there's all this lesbian drama"), which was sort of the acid test to see if I've actually done my job, and I felt unconscionably proud. So there you go.

Something too much of this, as Hamlet the Dane said once when he was about to go too far. Le sigh. Nothing to be done.

Hrm. I suppose I'll go burn some more CDs now (The Highbury Working seems appropriately Solsticey, somehow) and await the arrival of my Nature and Organisation disc, which I ordered ages ago when it was out of stock, but I'm told should show up any time. Mmmmmm. Cashmore guitar.

Oh, yeah, and get some work done too. Feh.

The second week of December has little to recommend it. It's neither close enough to Christmas to be really exciting nor soon enough on the heels of Thanksgiving to sustain the warm turkey-flavored glow, and besides, there's no LoTR movie opening this week. It's just gray and cold and, as of this morning, covered in a layer of ice from the freezing rain.

Ack.

Last weekend was full of much holiday shopping, which was good, and fruitful; only a few left to take care of now. Discovered that the Montgomery Mall has a Hot Topic, which is a fine thing indeed, although when I finally picked up my longed-for "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" sticker and brought it home, I found I'd at long last run out of room on my guitar case. Very sad. It had to go on my comics box, which is not quite so appropo, but what can you do.

Also managed to see Treasure Planet on Sunday, mostly with my mouth open and making small noises, and thinking "Aha - this is why Spyder's seen it like forty-five times now." A fine offering from the Mouse, and a great concept well-executed. Highly recommended. And not just because the cat-chick space captain has Emma Thompson's voice, though that doesn't hurt things at all, at all.

Not much else in the offing this week. Martha A.'s coming over on Friday (other Martha's out of town, and we get second pick, which is pretty nice). No writing has been done. It's been that kind of month so far.

Not looking forward to braving the icy wastes in Wheaton tonight. Damned weather. Feh. Bollocks.

I need a drink.

Ai ya! SNOW!

The Fimbulwinter, which seemed to pass us by this year, has returned in earnest, with a vengeance. It is white as anything outside. Very Solsticy. Really a very lovely day out there, once you get past the cold and the hazardous driving/walking/standing around conditions.

I am, somehow, at work (though let us make the distinction right off between "at work" and "actually working"), drinking mint hot chocolate and listening to a few of the shitload of Porcupine Tree CDs Tony burned me over the weekend, anticipating that this will be a short day if the University has any damn sense - not that the latter is anything to bank on.

I should very much like to be home, bundled up in something warmish and comfy, perhaps having a pipe. It seems the thing to do.

Got a lovely package from Spyder yesterday, in the form of a way supercool Jenny Haniver poster with the lyrics to "Cocteau, Goya, Blake" on it. It made my week; many warm fuzzies. As I said to Stacy, I am very lucky to have such wonderful friends.

Some of whom I owe letters to, I think. It's that sort of time, in any case.

Speaking of time, have I really just blown my first hour on nothing but slack? It seems so. Well, alright. Sweet.

Safely returned from PA late late Saturday (or early early Sunday - did you know 114 intersects with 15 at a really convenient place south of Harrisburg? I sure didn't, but if I had, I sure as fuck wouldn't have driven all over Creation looking for a sign marked "Gettysburg" for as long as I did, nor had to prop open my eyes with toothpicks for the last hour or so of the drive home. Live and learn, though).

Ah, family. Families, as Jed Walker says in The Wake, "do both - they rock and they suck." Yup. It was about 90% good, though, and we sure ate a lot. And spent an appropriate amount of time fawning over, and loving on, and bonding with, Babby Nicholas, who is about as cute as should be allowable by moral law. There are many photographs now, which if I'm smart I should not allow out into the world, lest it become known that I'm some kinda poufy sensitive guy who likes kids and stuff.

Oh - wait. Never mind.

Also got a sort of Christmas advance, first in the form of some grandmaternal spending money, which got mostly blown the next day at the Encounter's big Black Friday sale, where I got a shitpile of cool gaming & comics stuff. And second from my mom, who took me and Tony to Dave Phillips' music store, where we both left with new twangy things. Tony got a mandolin, which I promptly moved in on when we got back to the house and tried not to get too much drool on. And I got a Martin Backpacker, such as I've been lusting over for, oh, three years or so now, and am very, very happy. I will never travel without a guitar now ever again. Ever ever.

And the DC NaNo "Thank God It's Over" party is on Friday, where I'll go and see if anyone remembers me from a month and a half back. Whoohoo!