Remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear?

It's very hot here, and we need rain. The grass in the park is turning brown and dying. It's crunchy when you walk on it. There may be storms tomorrow, which would be nice. Today, I wish I believed in a universe which listens, in a universe which is sentient and caring and shows petty favouritism to those who praise and flatter it. Then I could...what's the word?...pray. Yes, I could pray for a little rain. But I like to think I know better. It'll rain when it rains. And all the prayers and charms and incantations and positive thoughts and superstition in the world shall make no difference whatsoever.

I think I'm sick from too much writing. And I think I'm sick from not writing nearly enough the last week or so. Particles and waves. Paradox is integral.

Mostly, I think I'm sick from not being able to take the long, long break I realised I needed way back in June 2004.

There were no words on Friday. I sat here all day and stared at the iBook, and no words came. Yesterday, there were words and a very brief hope that I'd found the next vignette. I began something called "Fish Wife," but 1,012 words in, it told me it was a short story, not a vignette, and that it would not be perverted into something it was never meant to be. Which is to say, yes, I wrote yesterday, but what I wrote was of no particular help whatsoever. Which puts me back where I began. 27...no, 28 ideas presently unavailable. Think of something else. Think of something else. Now.

Set me aflame and cast me free,
Away, you wretched world of tethers...

I stopped writing about 3 p.m., because the Apple Store called to say that Spooky's iBook was back from repairs in Memphis. So, we drove in the light and the heat (98F) up Piedmont to Peachtree to Lenox. The Apple Store was grotesquely crowded, and I realised that I have so removed myself from what is human that humans no longer seem human to me. Especially when I have to deal with them in very large numbers. No malls for me, please. Anyway, we made it back home by about 5, and now Spooky's iBook works again. Also, the Wikipedia article I wrote last week, on Wednesday, the article on Europsaurus which I felt guilty for writing when I should have been writing fiction, was selected yesterday for the "Did You Know?" section of the front page. And that was cool. But it still doesn't make writing about new macronarian sauropods anything like work. Which is a shame, not unlike my inability to believe in a caring universe, but there you go. Last night, too worn out from the writing and the heat to read, we made a dubious double-feature of Deepstar Six (1989) and Leviathan (also 1989). The former wasn't as good as I remembered, and the latter was very slightly better than I recalled. Both are shameless retreads of Alien and John Carpenter's The Thing. And, unlike Alien and The Thing, both only bother to make sense when it suits them, which isn't very often. That was yesterday, sun-drenched and wasted.

But at least Spooky has her iBook back. That's something.

There was a cloud a moment ago...

serves me right

It does absolutely nothing for the prospects of having a productive writing day when first thing in the morning, while — admittedly — ego-surfing, I come across something like the following:

i am reading a terrible but entertaining book called "silk" by caitlin r. kiernan this book is only for lovers of trashy recent gothic novels

No capitalization. Hardly any punctuation, and of the two examples of punctuation used, one is used incorrectly. But, I'm told by this gleet, Silk is a "terrible" and "trashy" novel. I don't know. Maybe it is. But at least it's generally frelling literate.