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1. No, I'm not dead. Though, round about night before last, it would have been preferable. I am much, much better this morning, so hopefully I'm quickly recovering. Tiger Balm patches are a marvelous thing. Now, if my body would just shutdown the mucus pumps for a while. But, seriously...people are always asking, why do you never go anywhere or do anything? I say, "Because I'll get sick. I look at a crowd of people, and all I see are hundreds of billions of virulent germs." People scoff and call me silly. I go Outside. I get sick. And then I lose writing time I can't afford to lose. Now, yeah, I know it's very bad for me, never leaving the house, but being shut down for five or six days to some bug isn't very good for me, either. It's a damned conundrum.
2. I've spent most of the past two days in bed. There was a lot of TV (on laptop via DVD) and a lot of reading, mostly, Spooky reading aloud to me. We finished Peter Straub's very, very wonderful A Dark Matter (due out February 9th). I'm going to say more about it when I'm a bit more articulate, but it really is a grand novel. I also read more of the December issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology— "Comparison and biomechanical interpretations of the vertebrae and osteoderms of Cacops aspidephorus and Dissorophus multicinctus (Temnospondyli; Dissorophoridae)," and "A possible new ctenosauriscid archosaur from the Middle Triassic Manda Beds of Tanzania." And I began the paper on the pedal morphology of the "marsupial lion," Thylacoleo, one of the the most splendidly bizarre bits of evolutionary tinkering known thus far. It makes Spooky start talking about "blender mammals." Also, we watched all of Season Five of Weeds in two nights.
3. On Wednesday, the February National Geographic arrived. Had I not already been sick, the cover story would have done it. Some ancient old Mormon extremist fucker with five wives, forty-six children, and 239 grandchildren. Recall David Szydloski's modest proposal from The World Without Man? I quoted it at length. Now, I know it's a fairy tale of sanity and restraint, expecting a human reproduction rate of one child per each man and woman. I know that perfectly well. But...here we have six adults who, rather than producing about twenty new humans (which would be in keeping with the worldwide average), they've squirted out a total of 285. I think I'm going to have to tear the cover off before I can read this issue.
4. I did manage a very small amount of writing. Very, very small. 410 words on Wednesday, and the day before that, Tuesday, 204. That's how bad this week has been. Monday, I've got to call my agent and talk about the feasibility of certain deadlines.
5. I am officially puking sick to fucking death (this has nothing to do with my plague, different kinda sick) of reactionary internet twitwad word police who seem to exist for no other reason than to get pissed at the drop of a hat. Which is to say, if I proclaim "I'm no one's bitch," I am not feeding into so-called "rape culture" (see the last paragraph of this entry by Himself if you are wondering what I'm on about). This is almost as fucked-up as the jackass on Twitter who accused me of encouraging discrimination against transgendered people. By the way, as it happens, I am Spooky's bitch. And the platypus'. But that's all. The bitch line ends there.
2. I've spent most of the past two days in bed. There was a lot of TV (on laptop via DVD) and a lot of reading, mostly, Spooky reading aloud to me. We finished Peter Straub's very, very wonderful A Dark Matter (due out February 9th). I'm going to say more about it when I'm a bit more articulate, but it really is a grand novel. I also read more of the December issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology— "Comparison and biomechanical interpretations of the vertebrae and osteoderms of Cacops aspidephorus and Dissorophus multicinctus (Temnospondyli; Dissorophoridae)," and "A possible new ctenosauriscid archosaur from the Middle Triassic Manda Beds of Tanzania." And I began the paper on the pedal morphology of the "marsupial lion," Thylacoleo, one of the the most splendidly bizarre bits of evolutionary tinkering known thus far. It makes Spooky start talking about "blender mammals." Also, we watched all of Season Five of Weeds in two nights.
3. On Wednesday, the February National Geographic arrived. Had I not already been sick, the cover story would have done it. Some ancient old Mormon extremist fucker with five wives, forty-six children, and 239 grandchildren. Recall David Szydloski's modest proposal from The World Without Man? I quoted it at length. Now, I know it's a fairy tale of sanity and restraint, expecting a human reproduction rate of one child per each man and woman. I know that perfectly well. But...here we have six adults who, rather than producing about twenty new humans (which would be in keeping with the worldwide average), they've squirted out a total of 285. I think I'm going to have to tear the cover off before I can read this issue.
4. I did manage a very small amount of writing. Very, very small. 410 words on Wednesday, and the day before that, Tuesday, 204. That's how bad this week has been. Monday, I've got to call my agent and talk about the feasibility of certain deadlines.
5. I am officially puking sick to fucking death (this has nothing to do with my plague, different kinda sick) of reactionary internet twitwad word police who seem to exist for no other reason than to get pissed at the drop of a hat. Which is to say, if I proclaim "I'm no one's bitch," I am not feeding into so-called "rape culture" (see the last paragraph of this entry by Himself if you are wondering what I'm on about). This is almost as fucked-up as the jackass on Twitter who accused me of encouraging discrimination against transgendered people. By the way, as it happens, I am Spooky's bitch. And the platypus'. But that's all. The bitch line ends there.
