"All the jagged edges disappear..."

[greygirlbeast]

The snow came again last night. Outside, the world and the sky are competing to achieve the brightest shade of grey imaginable. And there's that discomfiting silence that the snow brings, almost a smothering removal of sound from the air.

Mouthwise, I'm feeling much better. Most of my strength is back. I'm eating semi-solid food, and there's no pain to speak of. After nursing that broken, aching tooth for more than a year, it's very weird, the absence of it.

Spooky got me a little tarantula hand-puppet as a get-well present. I have named it Hairy Bellafonté, for obvious reasons.

Not much to report. I begin writing again tomorrow, because I cannot possibly afford all this bullshit convalescence. Financially or psychologically. My brain has had far too much "downtime" the last three days. Ergo, the insomnia's bad again. Less than six hours last night.

Still wading through Season One of Jericho. It really does get better towards the end of the first season, but simply cannot overcome the gravity that comes with being a network series. Gerald McRaney is almost as much of a joy to watch here as he was on Deadwood, and Lennie James is nice. Even Skeet Ulrich has become less annoying. But I can't help but see all the missed opportunities for Jericho to have been something genuinely good, instead of something that's just okay. Great stuff for when you don't feel like getting out of bed, but I know I never would have watched this week to week. I never would have made it past the first few episodes, where the bad science was especially bad. And now I see that the series was canceled partway through Season Two, so I'm not sure I'll even proceed beyond the end of the first season. It's not hard to see why it was canceled (writers strike and economy aside). It's difficult to imagine an America that wants to ponder the possibility that the head of the Department of Homeland Security might mastermind a domestic nuclear terrorist plot.

And a stray thought. Take it or leave it. Without wisdom, cynicism is only another way of being stupid. That is, if one becomes a cynic, it should arise from firsthand observation. It should not be assumed as a default setting.

Last night, in the storm, I went Outside for a bit. I'm not sure I was up to it, still a little woozy, and I think it annoyed Spooky. To her, this is merely snow. To me, it's...well, snow. Walking about Federal Hill, I took a few photos (behind the cut).

Comments

Hi

[smallpinkfish.livejournal.com]

I'm glad for you healing and want you to write more. It is pretty out.

ANY OF YOU W. GUAGES NEED TO SEE THIS!!!!
(AND THOSE WHO DONT)
http://www.tawapa.com/

[mellawyrden.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad your extraction is healing so well!

Are those sulfur lights in your street?

[timesygn.livejournal.com]

The following (offered in a spirit of mild amusement) will hopefully not be perceived as TOO creepy, but ... you and Spooky ended up in a dream I had the night before last.

Briefly: a suburban household packed with extended family (not mine) on Thanksgiving. Me hanging out on the fringes, tryna' make nice with people I didn't know (and who, frankly, didn't much deserve it). You looming at the end of the dinner table looking very forbidding in black and pentagram (image: the red wine in your glass contrasting sharply with your pale skin and dark attire, very vampish).

At one point, I went out to the curb to visit with my parents (who were CAMPING there in a CAR). You and Spooky tagged along. I introduced you ("this is Caitlin Kiernan, the noted author") and Spooky introduced herself (as "Joey" [spelled Z-O-E-Y]). Then you guys vanished until the end, when I lost an argument about recycling with a man and his wife (who "won" by claiming I was straining her pacemaker, so had better shut up and be quiet). I got pissed off and started to leave. You and "Joey" stopped me on my way out the door, apologizing for my having such an awful time.

Weird, huh? But thanks. (For being nice to me, I mean. In my dream. And I hope you feel better soon.)

Jericho

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I'm going on the word of Keith DeCandido (kradical), the guy who's co-writing the Farscape comic by the way and who's a Jericho fan:

The show got cancelled after Season One, and fans mounted enough of a rescue effort that CBS agreed to finance a short season, a VERY short one, and the producers hit the ground running with that last batch of episodes. The reasult is a very stripped-down and urgent story machine in the last season's episodes, and Keith was very happy with it. In other words, according to a fan, Season Two's better than Season One. (It didn't perform well enough for CBS to renew in further, so the very last episode was shot with two endings, one a cliffhanger if the show had been renewed.)

Onward...

And there's that discomfiting silence that the snow brings, almost a smothering removal of sound from the air.

I kind of like that lessening of sound. I've compared it to being on a film set. The world, to me, seems closer in, more contained. But that's just me.

And there's some wisdom in this: Without wisdom, cynicism is only another way of being stupid. Because then, it's just a pose. It's reflexive. It's that Beavis and Butt-Head kind of thing so many of us have as teenagers, when we don't know shit but want to sound like we do, and we think we sound like we know things if we keep saying "This sucks!" Let's just say I recognized a LOT of junior high when I watched Beavis and Butt-Head (which debuted when I was safely in college).

Keep healing well.

[sovay]

I have named it Hairy Bellafonté, for obvious reasons.

Yay.

I like the snow photographs; the sodium lighting makes them look sepia-tinted, antique.

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that your mouth is growing wiser. Whoops, I meant something completely different that was about how the lessening of pain is sometimes wonderfully clarifying.

[seph-ski.livejournal.com]

My husband and I went out into the backyard around midnight last night just to gawk. We'd just had over twenty-four hours of snow that dumped ten inches to a foot, the sky was finally clear, and the full moon was a perigee moon. Everything glowed with the luminescence of the last few minutes before sunrise, which felt very wrong and strange and wonderful at midnight.

[spiritworld25.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that your mouth is doing better and that you'll be getting back to writing tomorrow. Just remember the downtime was necessary. :) You'll appreciate it after a while. :)

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

Excellence news re the mouth.

Really good.

CBS

[kongjie.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is possible to produce a quality drama on CBS. The network is very LCD. They come up with decent ideas for series, characters with potential and then they write them into the ground. NCIS is a good example of this. There is no character development. It's the same monkey business every week--look at Abby, McGee for what I mean, cardboard caricatures. When they run out of ideas they move onto plots that are preposterous, unbounded. Hey, CSI is a hit...let's make one in Florida, how about NY, the Navy? And yes, they're all wonderful hits, but they're also shite and wasted potential. I won't even mention Ghost Whisperer, whoops I did. CBS can do daytime drama, but not prime time.