Friends

So I guess I had a pretty massive freakout over the past couple of days. It's chronicled on Twitter, more or less. To me it seemed to start with a horrible dream I had Monday morning. In this nightmare I was making a real effort to reconnect with my characters, but I'd gotten the wrong ones, which were more or less the Cure. (Anybody with half an eye can see the Cure's influence on Lost Souls, or so I assume.) They had all gone down to Shell Beach and commandeered barges, a tugboat, and some kind of tanker, with which they were planning a terrorist attack. Samuel L. Jackson was tearing down the Reggio highway in a furious attempt to stop them, but everybody knew it was my fault and hated me, including Chris, who promptly dumped my ass.

Some of my worst dreams are those in which I'm back with one of my exes. I remember Chris and feel the lack of him, but know I have to be with this once-beloved foe instead. It is the hollowest, loneliest feeling I've known in dream. Usually I wake up, become aware of him sleeping beside me, and feel tremendous relief. This time I woke up within the dream and knew I'd really done it, I'd finally fucked up bad enough to lose him (by putting the Cure on terrorist barges in Shell Beach, yes, I see the absurdity of this, but it didn't help at the time). I saw life without him, an endless featureless plain the color of a bruise. I cried and woke myself and him up saying "Chris. Chris. Chris" and babbling about wrong characters on barges, trying to explain this utter incoherence.

The ensuing day did not pass well. Even tranked to the gills, I couldn't seem to stop sobbing and panicking and doomsaying. I could not bathe. I could not even consider leaving the house (this has been a problem lately). I finally called my intermittent shrink and sobbed and babbled some more until she agreed to give me a few, VERY few, barbiturates to help me function over these next few days. I don't stress much about the holidays (we stopped doing gifts years ago, stocked up on stuff and unable to afford it), but my mom and a dear friend are coming to visit, and I would like to be able to act like something resembling a human being around them. Those who were reading back in the dark days of 2005 will remember my adventures with Dr. Jesus and the Great BUTALBITAL. Butalbital has come into my life again, with its idolatrous-sounding name and its extremely short-term help. Short-term because it's addictive as shit and not even slightly appropriate for treating long-term depression, but thank God she heard enough of the fraying in my voice to throw me a quick merciful lifeline (a scant 10 pills to be parceled out carefully over at least 4 days, worryworts) until I can go see her and figure out why my usual shit's not working anymore. Pharmaceuticals, you've nearly killed me and you've saved my life, both many times. Just like a goddamn lover, ain'tcha? ("Almost had your hooks in me, din'tcha, dear?")

So today my Butalbital and I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the house, and baked a lovely chocolate chip-pecan pie. Tomorrow we'll greet our guests and try to absorb their love through the merciful haze that says so kindly, "No, that bruise color isn't filling your vision, you don't reek of rotting meat, these people love you, they're not counting the hours until they can get away or silently analyzing the stupidity of everything you say."

So that's the story of my big freakout. As ever, I tell it because of my determination to chronicle the life of one writer's journey through loss, depression, addiction, sorrow, joy, and sometimes redemption in the wake of the post-Katrina federal levee failure. I've written no fiction in three years now, so this is really all I have to offer, and I give it to you without shame. There's no reason for shame. I wasn't like this before August 29, 2005. I'd dealt with depression off and on since I was 17, but at the time of the levee failure I was on no psychiatric drugs, writing prolifically, and (I thought) fairly happy. Now I struggle most days just not to be a mess, and there are a hell of a lot of people who are a hell of a lot worse off than I am ... and a hell of a lot more people who survived the levee failure and its aftermath, but not the lives they tried to piece back together afterward. They gave themselves to the Great Subaudible. I tell you these things in part to keep myself from doing the same.

1) Had a meeting with LJ yesterday I'll type up my notes over the weekend for a progress report.

2) Since we got an enclosed back porch Roswell and Safetypin have taken up some sort of self-imposed guard duty that involves caterwauling to be let out every morning to they can check on the status of a) the bird invasion and b) whether or not that fiendish grey stray is walking through the yard (he's a rebel, I think they're secretly in love with him.) Well, since the snow fell this has been replace by c) complaining that we've opened the wrong door, they want the one without the snow please.

Finally yesterday Safetypin mustered up the nerve and went out for about 60 seconds, decided she didn't like the snow and came back in. Half an hour later Roswell worked up the nerve and walked out. The snow -- so fascinating! It must be examined!



After some time she did what any sentient, self-aware being would do and decided to use this medium for art -- to construct a cat of snow that would explain her view of the world, her emotions, her turmoil, her essence. After she constructed her art piece, she came back in -- satisfied, but a bit aloof after her triumph. We're having showings at 5:00 and 7:00 every night until it melts, with wine and cheese and cat treats.

Here is Roswell's snow sculpture:



I think it's beautiful. I'm going to get her a beret for Xmas.

So yesterday, I got this email entitled "The world needs more Evans" and it was one of those chain letters, you know the sort, you see it on snopes.com all the time -- some kid wants to collect ten thousand post cards before he dies, a soldier requests prayers for a fallen comrade, but this one -- i knew this one was true because I'd helped start it -- someone had forwarded me a letter from Evan's mother -- you remember Evan, the kid who gave his life savings, $47.65 to City Kitties, the stray cat rescue group (Copy of Evans original heartwarming letter here.) This person was asking if I might help spread Evans altruism this holiday season by forwarding this letter to some people. How awesome that Evan's boomerang would pass by me again.

You know that person in the office who's always sending you the emails about missing people, places you should boycott, similarities between Washington D.C. and Sodom -- why not send them a copy of this -- you might see yourself on snopes.com in a week:

Subject: The World Needs More Evans

I can barely explain this, and I can't help but brag about it. Evan saved up his allowance for months and donated $46.75 to City Kitties, the cat rescue from which we got our adorable (if mischievous) Macha. He wrote them a sweet note. They posted it on their Facebook page, and it went viral. Kyle Cassidy matched Evan?s donation to City Kitties and suggested that others do the same. At last count, it had been “retweeted” (I vaguely understand that) 147 times. Bloggers are linking back to other blogs. Within hours, City Kitties received more than $400 in donations, and they are still coming. Other people have donated to rescues in Arizona, Tennessee, California, Toronto, and locations unnamed, in Evan?s honor. A woman in Austin, Texas made a video requesting donations for her local animal shelter, and credited Evan with inspiring her to take the time to do so. Sample comment from the blogs: “the world needs more Evans.” We agree. J

You can see his note here (and elsewhere!):

http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/570781.html

http://katemckinnon.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/the-world-needs-more-evans/

http://kemidra.livejournal.com/581514.html

Forgive our bragging! We are just astounded!

Happy holidays, everyone.

Lisa, Brett, and Evan

(in other news, we have heat -- perhaps it's a reward from above or perhaps it's just competent furnace repair people.)

go be awesome.




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More playing in the snow with trillian_stars.






Supposedly the furnace guys are coming today to drag the old heater out through nine feet of snow and bring in the new one. They hope to have everything connected by Wednesday. But until then it's ... coooold in Casa del Milla but what's having no heat if not the opportunity for adventure? We got trillian_stars' 1930 Electrola and some holiday 78 rpm records and ensconced ourselves downstairs in the Rock Star Hotel and pretended we were on vacation in a cabin in the woods. Looking out the windows all you can see is snow where it's drifted five feet up against the side of the house.

trillian_stars made gingerbread, I made chili, the cats acted like they've never been downstairs, we had hot chocolate, I worked on final edits for the kids book, which I now think should be called "A Bunny Named Swine" rather than "A Rabbit Named Swine". We piled a lot of blankets together, it was fabulous. The furnace guys are going to end our pioneer adventure, but I'm glad we had the experience.




Whether or not your home is filled with heat this year end season, I hope it's filled with love (and kittens).



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(There was a lot of silliness about kudos on sffnet . . . )

So I had to look up the etymology of "kudos," which looked Japanese to me . . .

"fame, renown," 1799, from Gk. kyddos "glory, fame, renown," from kydos "glory, fame," lit. "that which is heard of". A singular noun in Gk., but the final -s is usually mistaken as a plural suffix in Eng., leading to the barbarous back-formation kudo (first attested 1941).

Kudzu, though, is just the Japanese word "kuzu," an admirably economical rendition of "green crap from hell."

We went to the annual Vets for Peace solstice concert last night. Twenty years ago it was small and folksy, peace songs and caroling. Now it has an orchestra and fills to overflowing a huge Unitarian church. The spirit is there, but it's gotten a bit fleshy.

It's grown to an hour and a half, before intermission, which is after arriving an hour early to get seats. Kind of agonizing for me, nowadays, though Lore and others donated coats and things to put between the hard chair and my butt's desolation. We limped away at halftime and went home to stare at the dead TV.

Gay went off this morning to get a new one, but she was too late -- the stores were absolute madness. No Geek Squad in sight. She finally made a choice and decided to come back tomorrow early, and picked up a lightweight 19" portable on the way out. So we will no longer be the only people on the block with only one teevee.

The thing weighs about as much as a medium-sized art book, including DVD player. I had to flash back on the first TV set I ever saw, back in 1953. We'd returned stateside from Alaska, where we spent the nights listening to short-wave radio, and discovered at a friend's house this walnut case the size of a Buick, which generated the mirror image of a juddery 8" screen, in garish black & white. Showing Howdy Doody and Milton Berle.

Uncle Milty, thou shouldst be with us in this hour.

Joe

A couple people wrote to ask about a new intrusive ad for Best Buy that has started running on Livejournal. I haven't seen it but apparently it takes up the whole screen and when it first started it auto-played audio (which is right up there with shooting someone's dog on my list of "thing's that it's uncool to do"). I asked LJ about it and heard back that it is indeed an official ad (some people were wondering if it was a virus or adware). They've removed the auto-play audio and added a button that is supposed to let you close it right away (rather than waiting for the animation to finish). There are no plans to stop running it as it's a big money maker. It should also not appear more than once every 24 hours.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to motivate people on the fence to upgrade to paid accounts, but I worry that people who are just starting out may be driven away because of it.

If you have questions or comments about this post them here and I'll forward them up the food chain. You may comment anonymously if you'd like.

Please repost as you see fit.

Thanks a bunch.

Your LJ user rep.

I think I have an unhealthy obsession with Trillian Stars.




Click to Embiggen



We're going into our second week with no heat at Casa Del Milla. It's not so bad, but we're a bit worried about the pipes freezing. The furnace fix-it people are supposed to be here tuesday to put in a new unit. Until then, we run around outside with no coats on and when we come back in, it feels a lot warmer than it did when we left.




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There's an interesting opinion piece in the Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-debord/tiger-woods-is-so-so-so-m_b_396116.html, claiming that golf will not survive the shensnigans of Tiger Woods. Yeah, like remember football? People used to watch it all the time, before O.J. Simpson murdered it.

Big-name sports guys are no more able to keep their dicks tucked in than big-name academics or bankers or even writers. Sports pundits get all fluttery when their heroes stray and disappoint them, but after all, they get to the highest ranks by being in the top percentiles in terms of physicality. Which includes reproductive ability and enthusiasm.

Speaking academically, so to speak, it's more interesting when you find out about academics or bankers or writers who exhibit the bunnyrabbit gene. I mean, they're dignified. Not sexy at all. And only the bankers have money.

(So why are there so many movies and books about writers getting laid? Does "wishful thinking" ring a bell?)

Joe

(From sffnet discussion about the blog that said I was only getting the Grand Master because I was about to die . . . )

Esther, I never reply to malicious fan mail, or blogs, but I did drop this guy (who was nothing like malicious) a note to correct a factual error. They don't just suddenly say "Let's give this guy a Grand Master"; it's a long process of mailings and discussion. So they couldn't have decided to give me the distinction just as I stepped quavering out of the hospital.

I didn't tell him, though perhaps should have, that both Fred Pohl and (SFWA Prez) Russell Davis wrote to assure me that the choice had been made before I fell ill.

Robin, the blog is at http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/.

Maybe it's karma, though. When I was SFWA prez I fought my own board and many past presidents to _not_ give the Grand Master to a writer who I thought had scant qualifications other than impending death. (No, I'm not going to reveal who it was. All fandom would be plunged into war.)

Thunderstorms all day today, but fairly warm. Then we'll be partly cloudy and cold, down in the twenties. But maybe clear enough to take out a telescope. I'm really eager to check out this new go-to mounting.

Joe

1) "and the winner is" -- cherie has judged fivecats the winner of the short fiction contest. Whee! Send me your address and I'll ship out your autographed Boneshaker. mcmatz wins my special auxiliary prize, send me your address for some unspecified goodies.

2) my 2xcreative project with Liz Afif is done! Now we need to figure out what to do with it. So I'm making a poll. It's 44 pages long and done up in full color, which makes it expensive to produce. *



Poll #1500598 Format for a Rabbit Named Swine
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 121

I would buy this book

Here are some excerpts so you can see how ... inappropriately awesome it is.





(This makes the perfect gift if you're the sort of aunt or uncle who likes to give things like fireworks and slingshots to the nieces and nephews or if you're the sort of person who likes having books on their coffee table that make guests go "What the heck is wrong with you? Really. Were you dropped on your head as a baby or something?")


* If you work for a company that prints booklets and you're going "I can totally print those better/cheaper" -- let me know.

Maybe the first of many . . . I found a blog that says I only got the Grand Master because I was dying. Hope they don't know something I don't.

I went to the doc yesterday and he said he would set me up with appointments with various specialists (and indeed two called today). But even with an appointment, I sat around from eleven till five to talk with a doc for ten minutes. Unusual for our VA, in my experience. Of course the holidays are a factor.

Felt low today. Here insert some disgusting medical stuff, so I don't have to revisit it.

Tired all the time, and weaker than I was in Cincinnati. No serious pain, though, and no nausea, no trouble eating. (A curious phenomenon is that my appetite suddenly switches off after about half a normal meal. Then I can eat again an hour later. Probably due to digestivus interruptis. Cut a foot and a half out of your bowel and the darnedest things happen.)

Gay and I walked around for a while today and then went to the print shop to get some stuff bound. Then we went over to Brandy and Christina's for a nice spaghetti dinner.

Our TV self-destructed last night. Repairman coming tomorrow, but I'm not sanguine. Looked like the tube blowing out. Very pretty for a few seconds.

Joe

From City Kitties comes an amazing tail (yes tail) of a seven year old who saved up his allowance and gave everything he had, $46.75, to help homeless cats.



In Evan's honor I paypalled $46.75 to info@citykitties.org.

You can too.



And you can read City Kitties note about Evan here.

I've just wasted the last hour notifying various file-sharing sites to remove illegally posted copies of my books. I'm not even going to say what I think about so-called fans who use these slimeball sites to steal work from writers, except this. I hate to give these sites any publicity at all, but I will say that other writers should check scribd.com and 4shared.com for stolen work.

A few days ago I tweeted the statement, "I think art about New Orleans, especially post-K, should be made by New Orleanians. #thereisaidit" I define New Orleanians as people living in the greater New Orleans area long-term as well as devoted exiles. I do NOT include jet-setters who own New Orleans homes that stand empty 90% of the time or those who left the city post-K and don't want to return.

But my Twitter statement still makes me antsy, because in general, I don't believe in using the word "should" around art at all. I've always been deeply suspicious of any statement beginning "Artists (writers, whatever) should..." that doesn't end "...do the best work they're capable of, full stop."

As well, I had made a hero's exception for Josh Neufeld, author of A.D.: After the Deluge, and a friend e-mailed to ask why. My friend wrote, "I bought that damned book because I thought he was a New Orleanian. Boy was I pissed when I got it and found out he was a New Yorker. I think it's a good book but if I had known he was a New Yorker living in New York I never would have bought it, to be quite honest. If he's giving profits from the book to the people who need it most, I'll feel ok about it, but I feel kind of like a duped schmuck as it is!"

I replied, "Neufeld = honorary New Orleanian because he did major, major rescue work down here after the levees failed, Like, lifesaving work. He has also put together a great A.D. website with tons of Katrina info & resources; http://www.smithmag.net/afterthedeluge/ . I couldn't find any indication that he had donated proceeds to us, but I'm kinda OK with that. I know how much it costs to research & make a book, and graphic novels sell even worse than regular books. Most likely there are no 'proceeds.' He also financed his own book tour, & I noticed that many of his signing events were also benefits for Common Ground & other local charities, so that's good."

But I realized that if I believe Josh Neufeld could get it right, there must be other non-New Orleanians out there who can get it right too. And for me, at least these days, that's what is most important in art about New Orleans: getting it right. Even before the storm, so much of it didn't. And if you haven't lived or spent major chunks of time here since the levees failed, you do not know what it was like those first couple of years. You can't research it. You can't imagine it from the footage you saw on TV. You might think you can, your heart might break for us and you might try to tell people why we still matter and if so I thank you, but you don't know the stenches, the tears, the daily assaults on the mind and spirit. You can never know these things if you weren't here. And you should be glad.

So I'm trying to at least modify my "should." It's hard to come up with another pithy line, though. Art about New Orleans, especially post-K, is less likely to suck and be offensive if made by New Orleanians? Art about New Orleans, especially post-K, has virtually no chance of getting it right if not made by New Orleanians? I don't know. Artists will, and should, make art about the things that grab them by the throat and won't let go. So if what happened to us after the federal levees failed does that to you, then by all means, go with it. At least your heart will be in the right place, and that will show even if you don't know the Ninth Ward from the Lower Ninth Ward. But if you decide -- as many already seem to have done -- that "Hey! Post-Katrina New Orleans would be a really cool, edgy place to set this!", then may God have mercy on your soul, because New Orleans will not.

(Over on sff.net, I've gotten a few messages from people who found out I was named a SFWA Grand Master . . . )



Well, guys, I've known for weeks that I've been living under the same roof as
a Grand Master, but I haven't let it cow me. I don't let him put on airs, and
in fact make him take off the tiara at the dinner table.

Since there have been 27 other Grand Masters before me, I suspect they should
have changed the title somewhere along the way. Like "Pretty Grand Master,"
"Good Master," and finally "Okay Master," which means your dog sometimes obeys
you.

Seriously, it is a welcome honor. If I had a list in front of me, I know I
could come up with several people who deserve it more than I do. But I don't
have the list, and I'm not gonna look very hard for it.

Joe

Hey folks,
Yesterday I got an email from a user saying there was a rumor that LJ was intending to make specifying gender on one's profile mandatory. Obviously there are various reasons why people either might not want that information known, or don't fit into one of the two categories commonly seen in such questions.

I wrote to LJ immediately asking about the rumor and advising that this wasn't a good idea without user input.

This morning I heard back with the Official Word and I'd be happy if you'd repost this or link to it to spread the news:

1) There are NO plans to make users specify gender in their profiles. The current options are "male/female/unspecified", this will remain.

2) The rumor started because on the current LJ BETA version (being tested now by some users) a programming error made the field mandatory, the same programming also broke profile editing. Users reported the bug to LJ and they are fixing the code along with other bugs people are discovering.

3) There will be a note with more details from the Customer Care team in the future.

4) That's all.

Thanks to everyone who emailed to let me know about this. If there are other questions or comments, please feel free to add them here and I'll pass everything along. I'm still working with LJ on the big status report but they're busy with the final software rollout for 2009, we'll have a meeting after that.

Your LJ user rep,

Kyle

Does anyone remember/can anyone track down the post I made here back in '05 or '06 about the (I thought) non-confrontational but brilliant way Chris handled the racist man who sold us a car in Bibleland during our exile? I wanted to show it to someone, but after looking through two months' worth of post-K posts, I can take no more.

This week we'll be going over the entries in the write a story, win an autographed copy of Cherie Priest's Boneshaker novel contest. There are many awesome entries. I ought to put together a .pdf of all of them that people can download, print out, and read on the subway.

While no winner has yet been chosen, I wanted to point out the FREAKING AWESOME ILLUSTRATION OF STEAMPUNKROSWELL that mcmatz did:



sweet barking cheese. Friend this woman. Seriously. How could this awesome have escaped me for so long? I think there will have to be a special prize for this, it was so unexpectedly awesome.

(and if anybody else wants to do steampunk roswell illustrations, I will indeed put together a .pdf of all the stories for people to download and read on the train, and I'll give out other special prizes which will likely consist of a photographic print of something.)

rock on with your bad selves



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Got a marvelous book of poetry and poetics in the mail Friday -- _Unlocking the Poem_, by Ottone Riccio and Allen Beth Seigel. Riccio ("Ricky") led a poetry workshop in Boston for 40 years; I attended for about 25 years, during the fall semester when I was teaching at MIT. Part of Ricky's teaching method was to issue challenges, like

"It is a dark night, with no moon. You see a bright star in the southern sky. It is blue -- the light is blue -- unmistakably blue, and it does not move. Any form, sixteen to eighteen lines. For extra challenge, try incorporating a rhyme scheme of your own devising."

I wrote this in response --

The Star

(from and for Arthur C. Clarke)


That star flared up the week my mother died:
Nova Scorpius, low in the southeast --
the brightest in nine hundred years, so bright
you could see it with the sun up. "Star of Peace,"
they called it, the propagandists on both sides,
because they signed their treaty then. At least
neither one took credit for the light.
That was God's doing . . . God the Beast
of Sacrifice: seven planets spun
around that star. Could any one of them
have harbored life? The scientists say not.
A hot blue star like that is just too young.
There were no scientists at Bethlehem
when in the east a star flared up so hot
and bright and blue and young. That week the Earth
was bathed in radiance. They say wise men came forth.
Did planets burn to cinders in the light?
And mothers die, to celebrate the birth?


(My little Xmas offering.) The book has 450 such assignments, in 337 pages, along with illustrative poems from Ricky's students. Nine by yours truly.

I'm feeling better, after several days of reversal. Should hear from the doc today. Why do I always get sick on Friday?

Joe