The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Bruce Arthurs:

Well, from my own colonoscopy experience:

Don't drink that gallon jug of Evil they'll try and make you take to clean out your system. Ask for -- nay, insist -- on some of the alternative, gentler methods.

Trying to drink a glass of that crap every fifteen minutes like I was supposed to ended up with some of the worst vomiting and dry heaves I've ever had. Yeah, it was going to clean out my system, but in the wrong direction!

I got half the jug down before giving up. I couldn't have had the colonoscopy the next day as scheduled, anyway, because I was still too wrung out to leave the house.

re Jacque, #106, the Cream of Dinner link:

This is somewhat reminiscent of M.F.K. Fisher's famous/infamous recipe for "Sludge".

Short version: (1942 prices; adjust as needed) Borrow fifty cents. Buy fifteen cents worth of ground meat; spend the rest on vegetables and grains. In a large kettle with water, boil the vegetables for a hour, add meat & grain, simmer for several more hours. Pour into a suitable container to set, keep cool or refrigerate. Can be sliced and fried like scrapple.

The full recipe/essay can be found in the "How To Stay Alive" chapter of Fisher's HOW TO COOK A WOLF. (Link to Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. The chapter starts on page 66.)

(Searching for the recipe, I came across this post from Magistra Mater which quotes several passages from Fisher's books in a centered-line format. Interestingly, this makes Fisher read like quite a good free-verse poet.)

And, in connection with various posts uptopic about getting things done or not done, I should probably note for the record that I spent the time writing this comment when I should have been doing a heaping load of important stuff.

re Andy Wilton, #105:

Besides the Elephant page linked to, be sure to check out the Gallerie pages as well, showing other mechs in progress. (Giant Squid! Giant Squid!)

Alas, they don't have any really good photos of the Manta Ray; bummer. (Mantas: coolest fish, ever.)

Just got back from TusCon this afternoon, so I hadn't heard the news earlier.

Best wishes and thoughts for Scraps and Velma.

With a list that excluding, wouldn't you inevitably end up with... Mad Libs?:

He put his _____ in her ______.

"____! _____!" she cried. "You're ______!"

"Yes," he replied, "And now I'm going to _____ your _____ until you _____!"

"Oh my ______! Your _____! It's so ______! I'm going to ______! ______! ______!!! _______!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Surely trebuchet fiction of any type would be a prime example of "tension and release" in literature.

Paul A., re #278's link:


I'm curious about that interview's mention of "polyamourous comics". Really?

Hilde, being wheelchair-bound, runs into this sort of attitude frequently.

The most extreme example I can think of was when we out shopping for a new car several years ago. At one dealership, not only did the salesman address all his comments towards me, but he suggested that we leave my wife sitting in the showroom while he and I went out to the lot to look at actual cars.

We didn't buy a car there.

The especially stupid part of this was that some of the major selling points we were looking for in a car were: 1) How easy would it be for Hilde to get in and out of the car, and 2) how easy would it be to lift her wheelchair into the trunk or cargo area, and 3) how well would it fit into that trunk or cargo area? All things which she and her chair would have to actually be at the car to judge.

"I am dying of curiosity regarding Wolf chili, which I suspect may be superior."

Wolf chili is a pretty good brand.

But be prepared to be disappointed on one front: There is no wolf in Wolf chili.

(There are also no bumblebees in Bumblebee tuna. Shame on you, Wolf and Bumblebee!)

Did I miss a memo?

Over in the comment thread discussing Boing Boing's new redesign (general response seems to be "Not quite an EPIC FAIL, but definitely a FAIL"), somone asked why Teresa's name wasn't on the masthead.

Antinous, one of the moderators, responded that Teresa had left Boing Boing about six months ago.

Say what?

I've never learned to knit time. (I would have to knit enough time to learn to knit enough time to... well, you see the problem.)

But I do remember, as a kid, making potholders out of time loops.

Serge,

I had an email address for Lenny. Dates from 2001, so I can't guarantee it's still up to date, but I dropped him a note to check here.

Hilde and I also made it to the Discworld convention, but just barely, a few hours on Saturday and a few more on Sunday. Did meet Lee and Keith there, and Tom Whitmore in passing.

(Thank you for sharing those fries, Lee. I was running on very little sleep at that moment, and the carbs helped.)

Wish we'd been able to attend more. Conventions tend to have a "vibe", and this one seemed to have a very positive one.

Tom,

Hilde and I will be there at the Discworld convention briefly this afternoon, and hopefully a bit longer Saturday and Sunday. The leave time I applied for from work several months ago fell down the rabbit hole, so I end up having to work graveyard shifts this weekend after all.

(The "rabbit hole" involved, about a month ago, the sudden -- "Here's a box for any personal items you want to take with you. By the way, you're not director anymore." -- replacement of the site's security director, creating considerable disarray and unhappiness. Of the ten employees then at the site, I and one other guy are the only ones left, everyone else having quit, been fired, or transferred to another property and been replaced by new hires.) (Dare I say that I am being reminded in some ways of a Convention That Shall Go Unnamed Here?)

Sean @ #59:
"I originally wanted to be a writer because I wanted to get laid. I didn't know this at the time, but I hoped, yearned, ached for legions of smart women and men to admire my prose, to prize out the meaning, and to take me to bed. I wanted adoration, and literature was to be my vehicle."

I'm going to reveal the Terrible Secret about the Writing/Getting Laid connection:

A long, long time ago, I had a friend I'd see several times a year at conventions. We'd gotten into the practice of flirting with each other, and, after several years of this, we ended up going beyond flirting and wound up in bed together.

So there we were, side by side, having a pleasant post-coital conversation, and I happened to mention that I'd just sold my first professional piece of fiction.

And there was this sudden intake of breath from beside me, and I looked over, and the lady in question was staring at me with eyes wide and an absolutely aghast expression on her face.

"Oh my god," she said faintly. "Oh my god. I'd forgotten you've been trying to write fiction. Oh my god. And the one thing I've always promised myself is that, no matter how many guys I went to bed with, I'd never go to bed with a writer!"

And that, boys and girls, is the Terrible Secret: Writing actually makes you less likely to get laid.

You may now return to your litfic/genre discussion.

Unexpected treat from my local public library: THE HOSPITAL FOR BAD POETS, short stories by J.C. Hallman (Milkweed Editions, 2009).

An excerpt from the title story:

(Setup: A young poet has collapsed onto the floor. An emergency crew, Bob and Mike, have responded.)

The boy ripped the page free to examine it. "Is this the last thing you were working on?" [...] His eyes rode the toppled column of my lines.

"This is awful," Mike said.

I groaned and my head hit the floor, perhaps for the second time.

"Watch that C-spine, Mike!" Bob said. "You can't be held liable for disliking the work of a bad poet, but you are responsible for insufficient care. Granted, we're not dealing with the penetrating trauma of a slam poet or gangsta rapper here, but even a standard verse emergency runs cicles around your typical diabetic episode. This is a poet! And poets can go south fast. Look the wrong way and even Wordsworth will take the big six-foot dirt nap. Poets have feelings up the ass."

[...]

"Ho there, cowboy!" Bob said, lunging forward to steady my shoulders. "Think about what you're doing. You could have writer's block. You might even have a clot. Stand up and you're talking ischemic stroke. You could have an aneurysm in your language center. It goes pop, you'll never even think verse again." He lodged his hands against his hips, decisively. "We've got to take you to the hospital for bad poets."

"No," I said. "God, no."

For some reason, in my mind I find myself casting Jim MacDonald and Fragano Ledgister as Bob and Mike.

I have occasionally ripped open a teabag of Celestial Seasonings' Bengal Spice herbal tea and tossed it into the filter basket with the ground coffee when I'm starting a pot. Quite good, say my tastebuds.

I've had a hectic week.

Tuesday afternoon, my wife Hilde and I sat by the hospital bedside of our friend and neighbor Anne Braude while Anne passed away.

(I'll have more to say about Anne later. She was a pretty extraordinary person.)

Wednesday morning, about 4:00 AM, I had to call an ambulance for Hilde, who was having stroke-like symptoms. This appears to have been a repeat of the incident in May, when a UTI infection went septic and produced similar symptoms.

So, not a stroke. After a few hours on IV antibiotics at the hospital, Hilde went from barely-aware, one-word vocabulary, with jerking arms and legs, to almost normal. Just like last time.

More-than-normal scary things about this time: She hadn't had any symptoms of a UTI, and it was only after the hospital ran tests that a high bacterial count was found. Also scary: She went from normal at 1:30, when we went to bed, to "Call 911!" at 4:00.

She's still in hospital, probably for a few more days, while they run loads of tests and MRI's on her. But she feels back to normal. ("More books! Bring me more books!")

I'm coming to really hate the phrase "Golden Years". Yeah, right. Your friends get old, they get sick, and they die. Your family gets old, they get sick, and they die. And finally, you get old, you get sick, and you die. "Golden Years", my rosy pink ass.

Serge @ 534:
"Heck, as for ST-TNG itself... The less said, the better."

Ouch.

(Why do I say "ouch"? Here's a clue.)

re Serge #419: Yes, that's me listed on the Bubonicon programming. Bubonicon's been one of my favorite conventions since 1973, and I've tried to make it every year.

Circumstances have kept me and Hilde from going the last three years, so we were really looking forward to getting back there this year.

Unfortunately...

...the vacation time I applied for to use for Bubonicon will need to be used for sorting and packing the household belongings of our long-time friend and 6-years backyard neighbor, Anne.

I mentioned here several months ago that Anne had had to have emergency abdominal surgery and was in very bad shape. She's still in hospital, still in very bad shape, stuck in an ongoing roller-coaster ride from Hell, with slight improvements followed by new complications and declines.

Even if she was able to walk out of the hospital healthy tomorrow, her medical bills -- nearly a million dollars already -- would leave her destitute and unable to pay her mortgage and other bills. (She's lived comfortably but not extravagantly off an investment fund for over thirty years; that will be completely gone.)

So even in the best scenario -- and her doctors' actual prognosis' range from bleak to very bleak to so-bleak-it-will-make-your-brain-turn-inside-out -- Anne would lose her house and have to move in with Hilde and me.

And that's why I won't be at Bubonicon this year.

(The above is a very, very, very brief recap of the last several months. Very.)

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