This Post Would Like To Apologize For Itself

I think I've figured out why my pens sometimes explode on planes. If I'm using the pen when we take off, this never happens. If I uncap the pen to write something while we are at 30,000 feet, I almost always end up with ink all over my hands, my manuscript, my flotation device. (Does that sound dirty to anyone else?) It's the cabin pressure, stupid. Probably I could switch to some other sort of pen and solve the problem (I use a Pilot Precise Rolling Ball, Fine Point and I hope that news will make your day complete), but I have no plans to do so.

A good weekend. Walked the dogs with my brother on Thursday morning, saw the deer who've been hanging out behind my parents' house, mashed and mixed the potatoes and then loudly took credit for them. (Mom doesn't mind. Really.) Dinner--I don't remember what we talked about, really, but it was good food and my uncle's girlfriend and her sister were there, which I think was good for all of us. Talked to the Lexington posse despite bad reception. Had lunch Friday at Haddayr's, where Arie and Éiden demonstrated a new game called "Fall down!" which was just about what you would expect, and Haddayr was patient while Jan and I talked comics. Rode the light rail for the first time, down to the fancy new Minneapolis library where I was able to hang with Haddayr, Alan, Kristin, and Lena. Saw "For Your Consideration" (dark, but good) and the "Baseball as America" exhibit at the History Center with my folks. Talked a lot about the book and all the stuff happening with that until I started to feel very boring, but what the hell; I'll never have another first novel, and I'm going to stay excited about it. Ate well, as did the dogs, who scored a tupperware container of leftover lefse while everyone was gone on Saturday afternoon. Movies (re-)watched on decadent expanded basic cable: "Love, Actually" and "Bring It On." I make no apologies.

I ended up taking yesterday off, and last night finished up Chapter Twelve, which is crappy. I know it's crappy, but it's just going to have to be crappy for the time being. Before it can get better I'll need to a) visit some actual salt mines (hopefully during my European visit with Mr. Moles) and b) figure out exactly what I'm foreshadowing. If there's one thing I've figured out about writing, at least the way that I do it, it's that sometimes I just need to get something on the page. It doesn't have to be perfect; in fact it never will be. But it can be made better later, once I've figured out what the hell I'm doing. (This is what I tell myself.)

Things to see: Sex Advice from a D&D Player. A DISTURBING promo for the Philips Bodygroom. Eddie Campbell has a blog! (Via Comics Worth Reading.) Rupert Gee bothers people; a classic Letterman bit. (Dude. Last night Kate Winslet and Tom Waits were on Dave. Greatest talk show lineup EVER. Best lines, unattributed: "Cameron Diaz can eat me under the table." "They basically have a choice between throwing up or getting hit by a car.") And finally, for feminists of all genders: a big heaping helping of What. The. Fuck. Roger Miller is scratching his head in his grave, still.

Where Have You Gone, Phil Hartman?

Chess players to face anti-doping measures.

Um?

Can't Stop Posting

Over lunch I went over to pick up my paycheck at the temp office. I was in the elevator going up, doing my usual reach-back to my backpack pocket which held the book in which I had placed my timecard, when the book (True Grizz, for the curious; not as good as his book on elephants, but good) fell out onto the floor. The older man next to me in the elevator said: "Dropping all that knowledge!" The correct response, of course, would have been something about kicking the new science, but I was too busy laughing. I'm betting he didn't have a clue as to why he was so funny.

In other news, new superhero to debut in spring.

The Gemini Society

The Gemini Society
Originally uploaded by Snurri.

"At the intersection of Victoria Avenue and South Garden Street, in the heart of Little Uganda, stands the Southwestern branch of the Gemini Society (AKA the Sorcerer's Benevolent Society, AKA the Urban Magical Defense League). Since 1947 this branch has been headed by the hydromancer Gwandoya Kyoga. Kyoga is known to some as 'Old Waterballs' due to his penchant for levitating globes of water from the lake (complete with fish and, on one occassion, a frightened swimmer), and floating them above the city streets like so many bubbles before letting them splash into the pond in nearby Entebbe Park. . . . The Geminis, particularly since the Banishing, have styled themselves as an unofficial complement to the city's police force. Although their efforts have benefited the city on more than one occasion, the municipal authorities have never been sanguine with their relationship. It was this tension which led Mayor Faldbakken III to rather infamously label them 'magilantes' after the upheaval of the May Day Earthquake (see p.574-9) . . . Kyoga had a long-standing feud with Walter Wenstrup which only ended with the latter's disappearance. Many of Kyoga's followers believed that the hydromancer would succeed Wenstrup in his mystical post, a faith which has only been partly shaken by the failure of a new Sorcerer Supreme to materialize. . . . Membership in the Gemini Society is by invitation only, and only in recent years have women been invited to join--chief among those is Wen Ming, the floramancer credited with finally solving the city's food shortage problems." (p.107)

Uh-Oh