Finally Writing Again!

I started plotting a new SF novel and it feels marvelous and painful, much like the day after a good workout, only the thing that hurts is the imagination, having been exercised after long neglect.

I am thinking of this as my fourth unpublished novel, because I am coming to grips with the idea that after 25 years of trying, I am just doing this because I enjoy it, not for any reward external to me. Maybe Corvus will read them one day, and that will be good enough.

Favorite Cartoon quotes 3 and 4

"I have achieved maximum suckage" - Psycrow, Earthworm Jim

"You worms are all alike" - Mrs. Bletherige, Earthworm Jim

Favorite cartoon quotes, #2

The wages of sin are death, but the hours are good - Psycrow, Earthworm Jim

Favorite Cartoon Quotes, #1

Release the Mind Control Squid! - Brother Blood, Teen Titans

Gallipoli is the reason Britain managed to survive WW2

Gallipoli is a massive battle of the first world war that the British and the Anzac (Australia and New Zealand Allied Command) forces lost, in a fiasco, (that lasted more than seven months and massive casualties on both sides) that was planned by Winston Churchill (young, clean and sober) who blamed himself for each and every Allied death on the Turkish Gallipoli beaches.

Older, stone drunk and miserable, he guided England through the terrors of WW2 and the London bombings. His overwhelming guilt kept him vigilant (even when so drunk he could barely navigate. Elanor Roosevelt called him "That drunken shriveled little dwarf" and claimed he was, while a guest in the White house, was so drunk he groped serving girls and tried to light a soggy cigar in the bathtub). Even his stellar performance in WW2 did not allow him to forgive himself for the guilt of his obvious incompetence 27 years earlier.

Guilt is a crappy means to run ones moral compass, and a horrible criteria with which to qualify one for excellence. But it works.

The Frucks are here!

Spring has finally arrived, and the frucks are outside frucking up a storm every day at and after dusk.

A Fruck is a frog that sounds exactly like a duck. We have a small soggy spot (the technical term is "wetland" or "mosquito breeding sanctuary") in our back yard that is home to about a million species-confused small amphibians sending out duck-like mating calls. At times, it is so loud that it wakes me up, but I really don't mind, because it means WINTER IS FINALLY OVER!!!!!!!!!

I am feeling much better.

Sunglasses?

Okay, I admit it, I am a scandal fan. I love it when high-power politicians are revealed for the hypocrites they are. I think, really, that once a person is elected to any political office, they should be stripped of any privacy rights whatsoever until they are no longer in office.

But finding Dali-esque naked chicks in the Vice President's sunglasses is just....... I thought I had too much free time. Damn.

clusterhead

A net-friend, a fellow sufferer of cluster headaches, asked me to write a description of the kind of headaches I used to suffer through during the 4 year period of my life that I danced regularly with chronic cluster headaches.

First, headache is the wrong word. I have suffered from greenstick fractures, broken bones, arthritic joints and some incredibly severe self-inflicted pain (I had a weird childhood) and nothing even approached the pain of cluster headaches.

I have had migraines, I lost a testicle due to lack of circulation after a botched hernia repair (it hurt like getting kicked in the nuts, except the pain lasted about 3 weeks) and they werent even close to the pain of a cluster headache.

I recently had a heart attack, and some very scary chest pain. It was far more frightening than any but my first few clusters, because I was convinced I was dying, but the pain didn't approach clusterhead pain.

All right, get ready to use your imagination, hardcore. A cluster headache has the same quality of pain as the first quarter-second of the most severe stubbed toe you have ever felt, and it is located behind your left eye, pushing outward. The pain does not diminish to a throbbing chronic pain, it stays sharp, as tho somebody were trying to push a burning bowling ball out through your eye socket, and they KEEP PUSHING. It is acute pain. it is severe acute pain, and It STAYS severe acute pain.

And it lasts about 2 hours.

And then, it turns off like somebody throwing a switch. Remember that, it becomes very important.

Because in about fifteen minutes or so, somebody will flip the goddamn switch again. Or not.

They hit in clusters, hence the name, so there are fifteen or twenty of these lovely 2-hour (approx) headaches yet to come, before the cluster ends. IF the cluster ends. Can't go out, can't make plans, can't do anything. I was extremely lucky (from a familial perspective) because almost all (maybe 85 %) of my headaches happened late at night, so my wife and son did not have to witness it, altho my screams would occasionally wake them.

During the daytime, I pretended to be healthy and whole (because I was. Cluster headaches do no damage, they just hurt) but for two years, I vacillated between incredible pain, and the fear of the imminent return of incredible pain, and those are the only two states in which I existed.

They were so bad that at one point, in the middle of a cluster, I think I had a psychotic break, and convinced myself that I wasn't "really" in pain. I was certain that I could cure it by convincing myself it was fake. No, it does not sound rational, but I wasn't, really. Which is what disturbs me the most about them, I was in too much pain and too much fear to think clearly.

I haven't had one since 2005.

I doubt I will survive if they return.