It's the game of Life!

I just realized that the last time I posted, I was indicating my own death. It occurred to me I should post again to, you know, let you know that I survived food poisoning and the flu. Here I am. Alive! And probably a mutant thanks to the viruses, but never mind.

Anyway, I'm conscious, upright, working again. My Roman novel (with the catchy working title Roman Novel) is getting to about seventy thousand words. A couple of days ago, I sat down and mapped out where it goes from here to the end. Took me four notebook pages, but I have most of it planned out. So I happily know where I'm going. I also now know that I have a looong way to go. There's a lot of novel here! I can only hope that it actually remained interesting to read after, for example, page five.

Let's see. Lori and I are writing an extremely long article (or articles, or who knows what) about...everything. All your potential writing questions can be answered in a highly opinionated form! Maybe! Because you may never see it!

In other news, my wife was full term last Monday, although she's not due until July 16th.

In related news to the other news, we finally settled on a proper name for Tzinski 2.0. He actually has a name! It was the first name we both agreed on, and so it's now set in stone. If he comes out as a girl, she's going to have the most manly name of anyone in a dress (if you are a man and are wearing a dress, don't feel you have to correct me here).

Also, this writer would like to thank Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs television show for having a way long marathon the other night, so that I got NO sleep and then had to get up early. Thanks a lot. Could you maybe have a boring episode, so I can turn off the TV and go to sleep? Honestly, it's worse than Dog Whisperer marathons at this point.

(What? You want to know what I'm listening to right now? Well, Napster just finished playing Respect by Aretha Franklin and is playing Midnight Special by Credence Clearwater Revival. Up next is Boogie Chillin' by John Lee Hooker. What? Yes, there is a lot of funk in this house, thank you.)

Current matter of angst: I am doing layout for the third issue of BBT. This issue is 100+ pages in length, has twenty stories or so, interviews, all sorts of stuff. It's freaking huge. I hate layout. I hate it with bad words on top. Nothing presently makes me grumpier than sitting down at the computer and knowing that I have to work on it. It'll be beautifully laid out for about twenty pages, and then you'll get eighty pages of text all streamed together in one big block. And no one will dare complain, because I'll be standing on a street corner in a sack cloth, shouting that the world is going to end when the Lobsters finally get here.

Also: Thanks to Amazon.com's blog, I read that computer keyboards are in theory dishwasher safe. And since there was no other voice in my head to go "waaait a minute..." I found my secondary keyboard, took the keys off (to make it easier to dry) and popped it into the dishwasher.

I used it this afternoon. It didn't make it type much better -- I think it's just a lousy keyboard -- but it does have an interesting lemon scent. It also failed to catch on fire and kill us all. I consider the experiment a success. This means that if you, after reading this, manage to set yourself on fire, then it's on your head and I will not feel guilty.

I had an interesting and witty article to write for you all on teenagers, but I've just fallen off my caffeine high like a Mob snitch falling off a pier with cement shoes on. So, leaving you with that perplexing metaphor, I'm going to go curl up on the couch with a warm fuzzy cat and read a book.

What book?

Myths to Live By, by Joseph Campbell.

Right. And how was your week?

P.S. I have to share this comic strip with you. This is a sheer work of art. I love it. I wish I could print it and hang it up, but I haven't the ink or the sheer wall space necessary.