Slept pretty well last night, something close to normal in terms of both quality of sleep and duration. Woke up pain free, though that didn't last long.

Every now and then the reality of my current situation hits me from a fresh angle. As I've observed before, when your life is such that metastatic colon cancer is good news, you're pretty deep into the Twilight Zone. (And I'm thinking Golden Earring here as much as Rod Serling.) I mean, I used to think the word "metastasis" meant "the grenade's gone off, kiss your kids good-bye". And maybe it does for me, too, though I continue to retain my fundamental optimism about all this.

Likewise chemotherapy. When I think, really think about what's going to happen to me in slightly over two weeks, it scares me spitless. I mean, this is raw, nasty stuff. Heavy metal poisoning. Impotence. Cognitive impairment. Immune system failures. Chronic, persistent nausea. Carcinogenic chemicals flooding my bloodstream. Forty eight hours on an infusion pump. I'm going from an asymptomatic disease to weapons-grade pharmaceuticals. Still, the only way forward is to walk into the fire. So walk into it I shall.

Really, chemotherapy is kind of like eating mushrooms. When I really think about the biology of fungii, I can't touch them. When I just think, oh, a mushroom, they're delicious. Chemo's the same way for me, it seems. Don't think, just act.

The marvel and miracle of it all is that I still go to bed, i still sleep, I still wake up, I still exercise, I still hang out with the_child, I still live, love, laugh, eat, crack wise, write stories, get confused by literary contracts, go to work, do laundry. Spoons or no spoons, I get things done. I live.

So the dread and fear is there. The sheer enormity of it all could overwhelm if I let it. I am well loved, well cared for, and have good insurance. That and a bit of non-neurotic compartmentalization is what it takes. Because the stark, raving truth of this is hell.

---

Also, I wanted to note that the responses in comments to yesterday's post about why I talk about cancwr so much [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] are varied and moving. Well worth the read, if you're interested in such. Most of the action is on the LiveJournal side, so start there.

And so, sitting here at the desk, having fed the cats, drinking my coffee, waiting to pull up the file and start writing, I end up filling two sheets with handwritten scrawls about a new story (short story, please gods) about choices and responsibility and the intermingling of guilt and conscience...

And I'm writing this when exactly, brain?

Your Wednesday moment of zen.



Derelict El Camino in Hunters, WA. © 2006, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The Pinion cover is made public — It's lovely. I am terribly pleased.

matociquala commits glory — Go read. It's only a few sentences long.

Why handwriting is history — The handwritten scoring on the SATs would have sunk me as a kid. I routinely placed in 99.9th percentile, but my handwriting is so atrocious...

Santa awing — A funny classic photo from x-planes.

The capitol subway, 1915 — Speaking of funny, classic photos. This one from Shorpy.

A solstice sunrise — APOD with one of those images that just suckers me in. The solstice sun, rising behind the Temple of Poseidon.

Titan's Lakes, An Exoplanet's Seas — More from Centauri Dreams. Money shot: If mapping the continents on planets around other stars doesn't rouse your interest, you may not be paying attention

The Oral Tradition — Phil Nugent with a fascinating take on Oral Roberts, televangelism and the American Right. (Snurched from The Edge of the American West.)

?otD: Is it beginning to look a lot like Festivus?

---

12/23/2009
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Hours slept: 7.0
This morning's weigh-in: 226.2
Currently reading: Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Gray morning out there in the morning, the sky just rimming apricot around a vault of faintly luminous slate. You wouldn't know the sky was up there if you weren't looking at the stark claws of naked trees against it.

The sky is so much brighter when there's snow across the ground.

Out in the street, the garbage trucks are grumbling from driveway to driveway, grim flat-nosed workaday goblins. Pragmatic and unsentimental. I wonder what they make of the fairy lights that drape every house on my block.

I think I need to throw on a sweater and take the dog for a walk before the sun comes up.

This is where I live.

http://www.mauricebroaddus.com/2009/12/how-to-train-your-dragon-review

“The Dragon Whisperer”

DISCLAIMER: I viewed an early screening of this movie. Not all of the animation was completed in spots. That said, my capsule review is: boy + Vikings + dragons = WIN!!!

When you hear words like “computer animate” and “Vikings”, your first thought might be Beowulf. From DreamWorks Studio (Shrek, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda) comes How to Train Your Dragon. Based on the book by Cressida Cowell, the movie tells the story of Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), who doesn’t exactly fit in with the rest of his Viking tribe. Whereas they have what he demurely calls “stubbornness issues”, bred early on in the craft of warfare and dragon slaying, he meekly goes about failing at trying to live up to their expectations. His world is both really turned upside down and given direction when he encounters an oft-whispered about, but never encountered, Night Fury species of dragon; and has to challenge his fellow Viking to see things from an entirely new perspective.

The focus of the movie revolves around two relationships: Hiccup and his father, the Viking chieftain, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, 300) and Hiccup and his dragon, Toothless. (Okay, three if you count Hiccup and Astrid (America Ferrera, Ugly Betty)).

“I need to make my mark.” –Hiccup

Our hero, point of view character, and narrator, Hiccup has a modern voice, full of snark and sarcasm that gets him through life. He wants little more than to do something with his less than ordinary life that will get him notice, status, and/or a date.

“I know what I was and I knew what I was meant to be.” –Stoick

Because he is such a laughing stock to his community, and a disappointment to his father, he is constantly told that to make his life, to find his true calling and purpose, he has to “stop being all of you”. It’s a frustrating lesson to be formed by, to be seen strictly in terms of potential or calling, yet offered little guidance to become what he’s meant to be. So much so, that it becomes easy to be afraid of being different. He also walks a line between longing to be accepted and having the courage to think differently, because his choices have the potential to cost him his family and community.

“It’s who I am, dad.” –Hiccup

How to best form others is the dilemma faced by parents and teachers. Stoick is no different. He struggles to find a way to talk to his son without the burden of expectation (the lessons learned from his own father, no doubt) believing that he knows who and what his son is meant to be. Just like he struggles to learn his son’s actual gifts and skills and personality and talents; appreciating him for who he is and his existence, not what he can do.

“I looked at him and I saw myself.” –Hiccup

While there seems to be no place for the non-conformers or those outside the mainstream, a benefit to Hiccup being so different is that it helps him to relate to those who are also different. His life had provided him with a skill set and lessons on how to reach out to others who find themselves on the fringe or outcast such as Toothless. Like the journey of the missionary, rather an initial missionary attempting to relate to an indigenous people on their terms, Hiccup had to learn to communicate without words. He had to walk, talk, and think like his new friend. By learn to communicate and being open to learn from one another, he found that he was able to appreciate The Other. Bring something new to the conversation in turn, he was able to show his people a new perspective and a new way of doing things. Allowing both of them to overcome all manner of handicaps, which becomes an important theme in the movie.

“Everything we know about you guys is wrong.” –Hiccup

As for the animation itself, the lush production work is apparent from the first minute of the film.
Its detailed work and great use of shadows added another layer to the movie. The animation proved superior even to the lavish setting of Kung Fu Panda. The aerial scenes of soaring dragons are breath taking, the combat scenes are fierce (say about the same as a The Incredibles level of intensity), and the movie maintains a snarky tone (say about the same a Shrek) yet manages to not be impressed with its own hipness. It’s wickedly funny, with fully realized characters (one in particular there to give some of us some Dungeons & Dragons gaming flashbacks). In the DreamWorks versus Pixar animation battles, usually DreamWorks gets the nod for cheekiness and being an enjoyable ride, while Pixar tends to have more heart and depth to their features. With How to Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks finally makes that leap to fully embrace both and will stand the test of time.

http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2009/12/23/12634.html

A few days ago, Amy S linked to a video of a fabulous performance: silent monks performing the Hallelujah Chorus.

And then on the mailing list where she posted that, other people posted other instances of silent monks performing the Hallelujah Chorus:

• Youth of Pine Castle United Methodist Church
• Les Freres de St. Francis de la Sissies (Portland Gay Men's Chorus)
• Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus)
• Chicago Gay Men's Chorus

And most of them are nearly identical. Exactly the same shtick, right down to the short second-to-last monk in the row, and the foot-flipping.

Jim M got curious and looked for a common source. What he found is apparently a video from 1989: the Christmas Pageant of the First Baptist Church of Houston. And here, too, the shtick is identical. I might go so far as to say this is the best-filmed and best-performed of the lot, except that (a) the audience doesn't seem to be enjoying it quite as much as some of the other audiences, and (b) some of the other performances are really very exact copies.

So this thing's been around for at least twenty years, and apparently it's been performed just about identically all that time.

Now I wonder whether the Houston group came up with it, or whether they got it from somewhere else.

On a side note, one effect on me of watching these videos has been an earworm: the filk trio Technical Difficulties did a filk version of the Hallelujah Chorus on their first album, Please Stand By. (The album is now sadly long out of print, though there are apparently plans to reissue it on CD at some point.) Their version was all about the difficulty of finding time to rehearse, and looking for a lost guitar capo, and so on. And there was a bit in which one of them kept asking if she'd reached the right note and the others would sing "Make it higher! Make it higher!", ending with "That's high enough."

But my favorite line, and the one which has been running through my head the most lately, is "This song goes on for ever and ever."

Last Thursday my contributor's copy of Illumen arrived. I had forgotten which poem was in it so I flipped through the pages, re-discovering "Sea Temple," a poem I wrote after a Southland Poets of the Fantastic outing at Point Loma.

I can't believe it's been two years since seajules and I happily explored tidepools, while unknown to us, Billie Dee and Terrie Relf were freezing on the cliff tops. Later Chris Vera got totally drenched by a sudden downpour trying to find us minutes after we left the area bound for Panera Bread.

The poem was inspired by this rock formation:





I placed the journal on my kitchen table and started looking through a stack of mail, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the cover. "An Interview with Deborah P Kolodji," it said.

I did a doubletake, but it still said the same thing. Interview?

Then I remembered the e-mail interview I did with Daniel C. Smith surely an eon ago...

Rob and I have returned from seeing Avatar.  His verdict? It’s just bad.  Mine?  It’s very silly, with horrifically bad science and yet, if you are a visually based person, it is worth seeing on the big screen in 3-D.

If you are a logic based person, then skip this film.

Question: If every life form on the planet has nostrils in their necks and six limbs, why do the Na’vi have noses like we do and only four limbs?

Question: Where do the feathers on the bow and arrows come from since we never see a feather creature, ever.

Question: Kiss? What is this thing you call kiss, James Cameron? I mean really, there are HUMAN cultures that don’t have kissing.

I could go on. That said, it’s some damn impressive CGI.

Comments? -- Link.

Today I used my bandwidth to say:

• 08:48 Last minute Christmas shopping - good thing those Hannah Montanna gift tags were on sale.... #

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First, a LOLDOG that looks a LOT like Moose!


see more dog and puppy pictures

Totally right coloring, this dog even has the little black smudge on the top of the head! It's a Moose cousin!

And now, the entertainment portion of our show:

( cut because Moose is gross sometimes, and this is one of them. )

Dude.  49ers say that if santa Clara won't build them a stadium their plan "b" is to move to Oakland.  Good riddance you bunch of living in the past primadonnas. I'm sure the folks in oakland will ralley around the red and gold.

LOL.  Go chargers.  Oh wait.  They want to move to LA.  Fuck them too.

I'm delighted by the first review from Publishers Weekly:

Tails of Wonder and Imagination Edited by Ellen Datlow. Night Shade (www.nightshadebooks.com), $15.95 paper (480p) ISBN 978-1-59780-170-6

Few things alarm the experienced reader more than the prospect of a science fiction, fantasy, or mystery book that involves—or worse, fetishizes—cats. This reprint anthology is the exception, an assortment of 40 stories by authors who are for the most part willing to take cats on their own ground. Datlow avoids the trap of a too-narrow premise: though there appears to be a slight bias toward horror, the stories are various within that field, from Jack Ketchum's ghost story “Returns” to Michaela Roessner's highly scientific “Mieze Corrects an Incomplete Representation of Reality” and Edward Bryant's brilliantly repellent “Bean Bag Cat.” Other tales are amusing, like Lawrence Block's “The Burglar Takes a Cat,” or gently sentimental, like Dennis Danvers's “Healing Benjamin.” This is that rarity of rarities: an anthology of cat stories worth reading. (Feb.)

Mum is very sick with a severe viral infection, which sounds like a worse version of what I had earlier.  Elevated heart rate, elevated BP, swollen and inflamed throat, popping ears, copious flow and accumulation of clear mucus.

On 22 December 1912, Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor was born in Karnack, Texas. She graduated from St. Mary's Episcopal College for Women in 1930, earned a BA from the University of Texas in 1933, and a second BA from UT in 1934. That summer, she traveled to Washington, and met Lyndon Baines Johnson (who was a Congressional aide). On their first date, he proposed; she accepted his proposal 10 weeks later, and they married in November 1934. Lady Bird was the businessman in the family, while Lyndon pursued his political career. And when Representative Johnson joined the Navy during World War II, she ran his Congressional office. In 1961, Lady Bird became Second Lady when Lyndon was elected Vice President, and the Johnsons moved into the White House following John Kennedy's assassination. They retired to Texas in January 1969, and Lyndon died four years and two days later. Lady Bird, however, lived on. She was an active proponent of beautification around the country, and served on the board of regents of the University of Texas, as well as on the National Park Service's Advisory Board and the National Geographic's Board of Trustees. When she died in July 2007, at the age of 94, she was the second-longest lived First Lady (trailing only Bess Truman's 97 years). Betty Ford is currently the oldest living First Lady; she'll pass Lady Bird on 26 October 2012.

On 22 December 1828, Rachel Jackson died at the age of 61. She remains the only President's wife to live long enough to see his election, but not his inauguration. Born in June 1767, she married Colonel Lewis Robards when she was 18. The marriage didn't work out, and she moved back to her family in 1790. She assumed that she was divorced, because she claimed Robards had told he'd filed for divorce. So in August 1791, Andrew Jackson married Rachel. Later there was debate whether the divorce had actually occurred, and eventually it was finalized in late 1793, which resulted in Andrew and Rachel remarrying on 17 January 1794. The scandal of marrying an "already-married" woman was a major issue in Jackson's campaign for the Presidency, and the stress of those times may have exacerbated her already weakened heart. She dead of a heart attack between the election and the inauguration. Andrew served eight years, and then was retired eight more. He died in 1845.

Including a review of Poe, on the Dark Recesses website
A Year-End Review by Nancy O. Greene .