the roots of her shiny brass teeth

Lo and behold (she said), I actually managed to escape my own paralysing gravity yesterday and leave the house. Despite the rain, Spooky and I spent part of the afternoon wandering around Little Five Points. We might have picked a better destination. In wet weather, Little Five Points has all the charm of a cigarette butt floating in a Dixie cup of warm beer. But there were bright spots, such as peeping into the pizza place that used to be a Fellini's, the place I set a scene near the end of The Five of Cups, and finding it pretty much the same as it was back in 1992. And there's Sweet Lime, a great sushi joint (where once there was a decent Cajun restaurant, many years ago) that features $1 nigiri all damn day long on Mondays and from 5:30-7:30 p.m. the rest of the week. Back home, there was an incident with a very fat, psychotic squirrel that had chewed its way through the thick plastic on one of the garbage cans (plastic cans? That hardly seems right...) and, just as I passed by it, heading up the back stairs, the beast emerged head and shoulders, popping up like the newborn alien bursting free of Kane's chest, scaring the frikkin' bejeesus out of me. I never knew a squirrell could look so frelling demented. After giving me the hairy eyeball (literally), it immediately scampered — to the degree that a squirrel that obsese can be said to scamper — up a nearby tree. Local Author Dies of Heart Attack Following Encounter With Crazed, Garbage-Eating Squirrel.

Thereafter, I almost OD'd on caffeine and various trendy hipster stimulants, but at least managed to conquer dial-up and get Chapter Ten of the Nar'eth manga online. There's an awful lot of cute in this one. Also, Leh'agvoi (alias setsuled) and I will be collaborating on a Nar'eth "holiday special." I will write, and he will draw, and you will, no doubt, be amazed at the strangeness that will result. No details yet, but I'm fairly confident that there will be lots and lots of snow involved.

After dinner, Spooky and I watched Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, which we'd missed in the theatres. Utterly delightful. We followed that with the last volume of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Season Three.

Many thanks to blu_muse for the stack of CDs. New music is much appreciated. And thanks, also, to Taylor Ellwood for a copy of his book, Pop Culture Magick (published by Storm Constantine's Immanion Press), which seems to be suiting me much more, so far, than the Phil Hine stuff. More on this in a later entry.

Today, I'm planning to write the long-overdue Chapter Three of The Girl Who Sold the World, in the hope that a couple of hours of fan-fic will snap me back into the Story Place, and tomorrow I can get back to work on Daughter of Hounds.

This morning, I swept fallen leaves off the our front porch. It's very nice having a front porch again. I've not had a front porch since 1997 when Jennifer and I left Athens. It's a sunny, bright morning here in Atlanta, a welcome change after the grey days. The air's a little nippy, but the last of the autumn colour helps take the edge off. I've discovered that it's not the colours of autumn that disturb me, but that terrible, perfect blue hue the sky takes on, that and the diminished quality of sunlight.

Please take a moment to look in on the eBay auctions. The Five of Cups for a scant $20 (plus P&H), an offer that won't last too much longer. "Buy It Now" for a free CD and monster doodle. Don't make me have to take the cat to the plasma donation place again. . .

Addendum: nuts and bolts

I try to resist the lure of memes. Well, at least the lure of particularly time-consuming memes. I have this perverse need to fill in blank spaces, to answer questions, to check off boxes. And this one, from girfan, has sucked me in. I think it will be LJ only, though, just to add to the headache of whoever winds up with the unenviable task of archiving this blog and cross-referencing the LJ posts with the Blogger posts (assuming, of course, that anyone ever does such a damned fool thing):

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
Took a train from Atlanta to Rhode Island (and back); visited New Hamsphire and Delaware; drank "coffee milk"; was reviewed by Entertainment Weekly

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Nope and nope.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

This year, I didn't leave the States.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?

Stability.

7. What dates from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

November 4th, because we got stuck with Dominar Bush again; January 12-15, because Spooky and I went to Jacksonville, FL, where I spent part of my childhood but had not visited since the late 1970s; August 29th, the publication date of Murder of Angels; September 5th, because I got to be Nar'eth for the fifth time; October 17-18, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars; November 12-15, Fiddler's Green in Minneapolis; etc.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Selling Daughter of Hounds to Penguin.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Setting aside the Threshold screenplay. Being a total asshole on more than one occasion. Looking down.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

None serious enough to warrant noting.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A train ticket to Rhode Island.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

No one comes to mind. I think 2004 might have been the Year of the Asshole in the Chinese calendar. I don't know. Perhaps the mayor and city officials in San Francisco who permitted gay marriage for as long as they could.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Americans who voted to make gay marriage illegal. Americans who didn't stop them. War-mongering conservatives. Cynical publishers. The whole Bush administration. The State of Alabama.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Room and board.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

What else? Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars; and discovering that all my calculations about the location of Innsmouth, MA, were spot on.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?

"Barn" by Tom Waits and "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Pt. 1)" by The Flaming Lips.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

Somewhere between slightly better off and just barely holding my own. Oh, wait. There are choices...how thoughtful

a) the same, but a lot more out of debt.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Travel and read.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Worry and watch television and mope about the house.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

At home with Spooky, most likely.

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?

There were a couple of crushes, but, having fallen in love in 2002, it seemed pointless and inconvenient to do the whole thing over again.

23. How many one-night stands?

None, sadly.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

Farscape.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Most assuredly.

26. What was the best book you read?

Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S. Thorne (non-fic).

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

The Endless.

28. What did you want and get?

An XBox (thanks guys).

29. What did you want and not get?

The sudden cultural evolution of humanity beyond barbarism, enviromental rape, and a money-driven society. Definitive news of extraterrestrial life.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

Sky Captian and the World of Tomorrow; Dawn of the Dead (remake); Blueberry; Kill Bill (Vol 2)..

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I opened presents, ate, etc. I'm -0 years old.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Lots more money.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?

Steampunk android hitwoman.

34. What kept you sane?

The booze and the pills.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Angelina Jolie; Jude Law

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

The war in Iraq; the US election; gay marriage; censorship in America; the war on the Bill of Rights...um, I mean...um, terrorism; outsourcing; etc.

37. Who did you miss?

Many absent and distant friends.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Kelly Crumrin, Ted Naifeh's girlfriend; and Spider, Spooky's mother's cat.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:

It's only gonna get worse.