Happy Monday!

Administration
Happy birthday to hypersimulation!

Hello to new readers blow_saidjulian, celtic_tiger, franny_glass, keemeers, killfile, lovesex, neoijlc, psyop_spec, salix_03, tass, and tfcocs! That's what Joule caught, but the flux has been fairly loopy this weekend, so if I missed you, say hi!

PSA for the New Kids
For those who've started reading due to recent publicity, please see this post about Blog-A-Thon 2004! Any publicity is good publicity, especially when it can result in raising money for charity.

PSA for the New-ish Kids
I am about a month behind on evaluating how many new people I can take on and checking out your journals and whatnot. I'm at a point now where I literally cannot add everyone, because there are approximately 70 of you, and LJ caps reading lists at 750. And hell, I may not get around to checking people out for a while yet to come - but please rest assured that even if I can't add you or don't get around to adding you due to being a total scatterbrain, that does not reflect upon you, and you're 100% welcome to keep reading my journal.

State of the Spine
See, when it's not actively hurting - I forget that it's fucked up. So I go about my day doing the sort of things that I normally do. Which involve my back moving. And then I pay horrifically later. Like now.

I still have that appointment with the Spine Center on Thursday - but the mother of one of our sysadmins works at the Spine Center! So he's working to try to get me seen earlier. Life lesson I learned long ago, kids - always befriend the sysadmin. It helps if you are The Smart One in the office.

Linkage of the Day
rialian points out a problem with the newest six-degrees linkage site, Orkut - "By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials."

nnnslogan pointed to this post, which reproduces an article from salon.com regarding the use of voting machines to rig elections. What's particularly damning is that there is no way to determine a vote count except through the manufacturer of said machines, Diebold - whose CEO is one of the GOP's biggest fundraisers, who bragged that he was going to deliver the state of Ohio to Bush. yendi, read that - it's about the rigging of Georgia machines, too, to oust the Democratic incumbents.

And as many people posted, Julius Schwartz has passed away.. One of the original sci-fi fans, and one of the grand old men of comics, and a hella nice guy. We're losing these people - Julie, Hal Clement - and dammit, there's no one to replace them, in either field. There won't be anyone like that again.

Cookies
Later this week, I'll tabulate the cookie orders, see who's paid, etc. I'll need to make a spreadsheet!

Fenris
I cannot get over this... xanadumalion read my Fenris story, heard me talk about a particular image that I had in mind, and recreated it, spot on. I know I can't stop talking about it. This is how blown away I am. It's him. It's everything about him. It's freakin' amazing.

And it'll be up here as soon as X'ana gets home and scans it - and it'll be the "front cover" of the Blog-A-Thon 2003 sponsor reward story, which I anticipate having on shadesong.com by next Sunday at the latest. I'm not sure what'll go on this week re: my back, so I can't guarantee, say, Wednesday - but I'm going to get my ass on the edits on Tuesday while yendi and Elayna are at karate, and then I'll shoot it on over to yendi to upload.

Hiatus Over
I'm now back to reading my friends page. There is no way in hell I can catch up, so do let me know what I've missed.

Writing and the placement thereof

I've been posting a lot of writerly nattering and vignettes - the latter both fiction and nonfiction. And I worry whether I'm forcing too much of it down your gullets. So!

[Poll #245917]

Pimpage!

gothwalk is selling "gaming books, a novel, cds and a cookery book so far, with more to appear" on eBay.

And he has a special offer for LJers - "Buy $50 worth of stuff from me (you can build it up over several transactions, if you like) and I'll buy you 2 months of paid LJ time." So make sure you let him know you saw it here!

Hee!

xanadumalion finds my computer's G-spot.

*growl*

I walk 2 to 8 miles per day, depending on weather. Usually 2 or 4.

And I haven't been for a week now, because of my back. And whenever my back feels halfway decent, I tell myself that I can go for a walk anyway; full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes! The release and pleasure of a walk is more than worth the pain later!

Aaaand then I remember that my CD walkman was stolen during last week's break-in.

*sigh*

I'm only noting this here because this is the third time today that this idea has cycled through my head. I'm hoping that putting it down here will put an end to that.

And also hoping that writing about having "Rag Doll" by Aerosmith stuck in my head will put an end to that.

Such a pretty face...

I did this once before, some time ago...

Here on LJ, we identify others based on a name, an icon of a cat or a cartoon character, occasionally a 100x100 photo...

It can be an interesting shift to actually see the faces of the people you're talking to.

Your assignment: Post a picture of yourself in the comments here.

( I'll show you mine... )

Now show me yours.

Regarding Death and Ditches

"You didn't call to let me know you'd gotten home! For all I knew, you could be dead in a ditch somewhere!"

I don't know if this saying is original to my mother, or if she picked it up from years of discussion of ditches with her friends in New York. But always, always, "I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere!"

I am thoroughly annoyed by the fact that this is now part of my vocabulary.

No, I'm not turning into my mother. Trust me. That, you wouldn't want. But I am turning into the stereotypical Jewish mother in some ways - not too long ago, I clucked my tongue at mermaidblue on the way to Brusters and told her she shouldn't go out with a wet head (head = hair), she'll catch cold.

Regardless - why a ditch? Were there many ditches where my mother, her mother, her grandmother grew up? Was it common to drop dead in them? Was there a river of corpses along the great ditches of Hungary?

A few years ago, we had something extremely fucked up happen in South Florida. Inside a large suitcase that had been abandoned at a nearby intersection - Flamingo and Sheridan, for the South Floridians here - they found a dismembered woman.

Hell, I drove right by that suitcase that day. I remarked upon the oddity of the suitcase just sitting there at the side of the road. Newspaper the next day - yeah.

And it happened one other time after that. Different intersection.

Well, I've never seen anyone dead in a ditch. So I don't know why I keep reflexively saying that.

From now on, I shall try to say "dead in a suitcase".

xanadumalion, e-mail me as soon as you get home, or I will be forced to assume that you are dead in a suitcase!

*sigh* I miss X'ana already.

(no subject)

In the February edition of his horror column for BookSlut, yendi discusses penises being severed by zombie whores, and other romantic imagery. Just in time for Valentine's Day!

Yeah.

He also reviews a nifty new horror novel. Check the link for details, as I am wanting to get out of the office now. :)

Oi!

Spine-knowledgable people!

When not only do you have the bone chip grinding and it's pressing against nerves to give you alternately horrible pain and extreme numbness throughout your pelvic cradle...

but now you're having hideous horrible migraine-ish headaches, which you thought were a reaction to the Flexeril, but apparently aren't...

...is that much worse? Or just a little worse?