thinking in only four dimensions (again)

And yesterday that was about the best this sad lump of grey matter in my skull could manage, and it was barely managing that. Puzzling out all the itsy bitsy errors peppering the text of The Dry Salvages because there were initially two mistakes regarding time dilation and intersteller travel that frelled lots of stuff up. Spooky kept me from drifting away and drowning in a puddle of my own stupidity. And now the ms. is 97% corrected. Today, all I have left to do is add a few snippets of text here and there. What began as innocent copyediting (there's an oxymoron) ballooned into a rewrite, and I've apologized to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press for this. It means that the ms. will have to be laid out a second time. But I am determined to get this right. It's not obsessive perfectionism. It's just me trying to do something better than a half-assed job. Mucho thanks to the amazing Larne "Llar'en" Pekowsky for holding my hand and guiding me through all the Big, Scary Numbers.

Which is all to say that I finally got my eema out of "park" yesterday and worked. If it didn't exactly feel good, at least it felt better than the alternative.

At this point, I believe I am at least three weeks behind.

Was there anything more to yesterday? Not much. We were still working on The Dry Salvages at six p.m. I forgot to work out (though I have managed to lose five pounds since returning from Rhode Island in July, which is a good thing). Spooky talked with Andre at AFX Studios, who plays a big part in making Nar'eth real, and we scheduled my make-up session for 10 a.m. on Sunday, September 5th. It usually takes about four hours, start to finish. And that was all of yesterday that bears (or lions, or tigers) repeating.

I'm thinking my hair may soon be black again. This blonde thing is nice, but it's a hell of a lot of trouble.

For some time now, I've been meaning to write a meme. I've never written a meme before. At least, not to my knowledge. So here goes...

1. My favorite film in the Alien series is:
CRK: Alien (1979)

2. My favorite Cure album is:
CRK: Disintegration

3. My favorite David Bowie album is:
CRK: Outside

4. My favorite film in the Matrix series is:
CRK: The Matrix

5. My favorite film in the Star Wars series is:
CRK: The Empire Strikes Back

6. Complete this sentence: "Tofu is [ ]."
CRK: nasty

7. My favorite Ridley Scott film is:
CRK: Blade Runner

8. My favorite John Carpenter film is:
CRK: The Thing

9. I first had sex at age:
CRK: 14

10. My favorite season is [winter, spring, summer, or fall]:
CRK: summer

11. The Fifth Element and Dark City were two of the most brilliant sf films of the '90s (agree or disagree):
CRK: Agree

12: Farscape or Stargate: SG-1 (you have to choose one or the other):
CRK: Farscape (duh)

13: I first had sex with another person at age:
CRK: 14

14: My favorite Kate Bush album is:
CRK: The Hounds of Love

15: My favorite H. P. Lovecraft story/novella is:
CRK: "The Colour Out of Space"

Your participation is critical. From these fifteen simple questions, carefully chosen through a tedious process of elimination over the last ten minutes, anyone can compute his or her or its ultimate worth to the multiverse.

with the hands of my ass (don't ask)

I forgot to even mention the rain last night. It seems as though it never rains all night anymore. I love nights when it rains all night, gently. It helps me sleep. And last night it must have rained from about two, when we went to bed, just about to dawn. I woke (from a big-budget nightmare involving a haunted house and demonic cats) at about 5:30, and the power was off. I'm not sure when it came on again.

Anyway, I'd meant to mention that this morning and then forgot.

Question: Why would anyone take a writing course from someone who is not, him- or herself, a very successful author?

So, by now you've probably heard that the California Supreme Court has declared the 4,000+ same-sex marriages from this spring legally null and void. I think we all knew this would happen. What's important is what happens next. And I have no idea what that will be. But if we can't get the Republicans out of the White House, it might be frelling concentration camps. Or at least state-sponsored mass sedation of those judged mentally ill. Here's my bit of "news pollution" for the day (the stuff about the California Supreme Court was on purpose): LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER: Bush to screen population for mental illness. I'm hoping this is a case of those curs'd liberal pinko commie fag journalists distorting the truth. Maybe Bush's New Freedom Initiative doesn't really call for psychological testing of all Americans (I admit I only scanned the lengthy progress report, and I couldn't find that part). I mean, this sounds wacko even for Bush. Doesn't it? Please?

Never talk about politics in the blog, Caitlín. Never, never. You know better.

I've reached the point with The Dry Salvages where I'm no longer fixing things, I'm merely changing them. That's not revision, that's just frelling about with words. I have lost perspective. It's time to let it go, whether I feel that it's ready or not. The last couple of days, I added maybe three hundred words of text. I have a handful of commas and hyphens I want Jenny to look at this evening, and then it goes back to subpress.

Tomorrow, Spooky and I drive to Birmingham, where a friend will be working on our Nebari wigs. We'll spend the night with my mother and head back Saturday afternoon.