less dead than yesterday

Yesterday, I didn't write. In fact, I haven't really done anything worth mentioning since last Friday. That has to stop, of course. And it needs to stop today. The blood...I mean, the words have to start coming again. There's still time before the trip to New England to do the next short story, if I'll just quit screwing around and do it. I'm going to try to start it today. The only remotely constructive thing I did yesterday was some photographs (and Spooky actually did the photography), inspired by the LJ communities MyFakeDeath and Art of Death (brought to my attention by pinkteaset3 and redredshoes, respectively). Here are the best of the lot:





I'm most impressed with that top one. I found the whole thing extremely cathartic (though even I found lying in fake vomit a little less than pleasant), and Spooky and I are now planning far more elaborate deaths. It was sort of like typing "the end," with a little more force. Practice makes perfect, right? Anyway, the only other interesting thing about yesterday was cracking open The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and completely losing myself in the game for more than three hours. There is an unexpected satisfaction in pulling that trigger, especially if the person you're shooting at shoots first.

The quill from a buzzard
The blood writes the word
I want to know am I the sky
Or a bird
'Cause Hell is boiling over
And Heaven is full
We're chained to the World
And we all gotta pull

Well, except for Mr. Ronald McDonald...I mean Ronald McReagan...I mean Ronald Reagan. He seems to have slipped this mortal coil with more undeserved pomp and fanfare than any of us could ever hope for. I know, I know. I said I couldn't say anything nice, so I was going to keep my mouth shut. But I wanted to pass along this link to a BBC News article. That's my goodish deed for the day.

Time to stop typing and go brush my teeth. And do what I pretend is exercise. And find some caffeine. And see if I can bleed a little bit more.

you can sleep when you're dead

Addendum: No writing today, unless the blog counts (and I don't think that it does). I'm just not awake enough to write prose, to think in stories. And I'm not asleep enough the somehow dream and type at the same time. I didn't take the Ambien last night, because when I went to bed (about 1:30 a.m., I think), I was tired enough to go to sleep on my own. But I woke up at about 5:20 (I remember looking at the clock in the kitchen) and couldn't get back to sleep, so I took two-thirds of a pill (the one Spooky had broken up for me on Wednesday morning). This put me back to sleep. Well, sort of. Really more of a fevery, fitful half-sleep, which lasted until about 10:30. I feel as though I'm staying in bed longer, but sleeping less.

We've not had much luck yet thwarting the eyeball Nazis. The drill seems to be something like this: we have to pay for eye exams, plus contact fittings (though we only need the latter), then pay for a follow-up exam where "test" lenses that have been ordered based on the earlier exams are checked to see how they fit. At that point, the optometrist will (reluctantly) release our base-line curve measurements to LensQuest, and we can finally order the contacts. What would have cost us about $140 (getting two new pairs of SFX contacts) could now easily cost more than twice that (and perhaps three times as much) to get the same thing I was allowed to buy freely in 2002. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll costume at Dragon*Con this year at all. More than anything, I'm appalled at the thought of submitting to an unnecessary and (in my opinion) invasive medical procedure because the government can't mind its own business.

Gods, I know I sound like a lunatic.

I'm going to wind up like Lenny Bruce, babbling to a bored audience. Only I'll be railing against optometry instead of the IRS.