All appearances to the contrary, this journal isn't completely dead. I got a little flipped out about it for a while, but I'm going to redo my website and start keeping the journal up again. Totally crazytown, I know!

Today I am considering speaking out loud in catmacro language as a sort of living art installation to amuse myself. Also, discussing with R how totally lame-o and socially retarded SO MANY PEOPLE ARE. I sometimes wonder if some people have a gene malfunction that makes reasonable thinking and group dynamics impossible to comprehend.

Twitter appears to have caused a lot of wackiness amongst people I know. I wish it had a “you’re crazy” button that was automatic. Like when someone posts “am on train groping commuters” I could hit a button that zapped them.

I think my computer decided my life was too boring and has started randomly shutting down and blue screening. Once again, I would like to say that on my HP, I never had any problems the whole time I owned it and now this POS Dell has just been one pain in the ass after another. I feel like I’m locked in a battle with it where it wants to ruin everything good in my life and I struggle to minimize the damage it does (but right now, it’s Computer: 2, Kassie: 0 since it deleted about thirty pages in the last few days).



Last night Miss Sparkle cooked us supper and Thing Two showed up right as we were sitting down to eat and simultaneously some weirdo from JJ’s work showed up. However, because the universe was shining on us, right when the weirdo showed up, Miss Sparkle’s cat darted out of the house so we set the weirdo to catching the cat while we sat on the porch and ate. Something between cinema verite and dinner theater ensued.

So I called my mom to tell her about this low airfare site I found on delicious and commenced to complain about the HORROR that is my current state of health.

"Oh, sounds like norovirus," says mom. "There's a CDC warning out for it right now. Drink some gatorade."

"What, you mean that cruise ship thing?" I ask, annoyed that I have contracted an illness from poor food-handling.

"Sounds like that's it," mom doesn't directly respond to what I said, as per usual.


Arg! At least I should be better by tomorrow according to the CDC website. This explains the violent chills I had the first 12 hours or so of being sick. I hope JJ doesn't get this from me.

In further news of Canadian chauvinism, the lame-asses on the radio just had a discussion about how the “average IQ is 101” and how the Canadian average is 109. Where do they even come up with this ridiculous stuff? In the race between Swedes thinking Sweden in the best country in the world and Canadians thinking that about Canada, I wonder who would win a smug-off.

I am trying to book a rental car to use in a couple weeks and this is not going what I describe as swimmingly. The internet says “you have carz!” but I can’t get them to answer the phone at the actual rental place. No big surprise there. This would be fine, but I know my mom’s gonna call in soon and ask me about this and blow up if I tell her that. I think she might be possessed. She almost had another heart attack over her cable provider. Mom, if you’re reading this, please, Valium is your friend.

This weekend we had a party that was pretty typical of Nashville. First, everyone was late. Then strange people who we never thought would show up did and turned out to be entertaining (one not so much on purpose). Lastly, a cavalcade of drunk hillbillies appeared as if on a bolt of moonshine from above and laid waste with banjos and foot stomping. They really appeared out of almost no-where. What do we do? We left with them to go to another party. Yeah, it was about as good of an idea as it sounds. WHERE IS OUR NANNY? To sign up, email me.

Yesterday, aside from praying for a swift rather than lingering death, we watched “The Departed”. Every movie should have so many hot guys doing Boston accents. I made all of my “insightful” commentary about it yesterday and don’t feel like cut-tagging this. It was much better than “Tristan and Isolde (or did they spell it Iseult?)” Holy Hannah. WOW. That movie was worse than “King Arthur” as it took itself seriously and was total CRAP. We couldn’t even watch it, but luckily a Paul Bettany movie was on when we turned it off and that sort of fixed us. Which was swiftly cut short by “Hustle and Flow.” Jesus wept. We were subjected to this movie hell experience because we can’t get a file for James Bond to work (several ways, too boring to relate). I think the moral degradation of America can be summed up with the accolades for H&F. I just give up.

Ok, going back to work. I think our friends weren’t joking about tornado season, incidentally. I thought the glass in my bedroom windows were going to shake out of their panes this morning.

Also, this is amusing: Batman, as written by Chuck Palahniuk

JJ's journal with pics.

So the above is a link to JJ's journal where she posted pics of her little computer and our yard. Of particular note: our coffee table which is always a total shambles and in the final picture of the yard, the white spec on the bottom left corner is the fabled concrete lion the neighbor put in the middle of the fairy circle.

Cool buildings I stole that from Julia. It's disappointing there are no, well, EXPLANATIONS. But, hey, it's the internet, facts are for sissies.



The Athanasius Kircher Society <----- Coolest link o all time. Also from Julia. One day we're gonna get married.

I suppose I should clean the kitchen. *looks dramatically uninterested*

The newest crazy thing my neighbor did was that she threw this big party for her boyfriend for his birthday and talked about it incessantly for a month. So then the weekend before the bday and the day of, she doesn’t remind us, therefore we missed it. What goes through her mind?

AND her boyfriend is pirating out internet (not a big deal normally) and now I can’t stream any audio. This is going to make me homicidal. I listen to the CBC all day. ARG! Do not get between me and my OCD issues or the world will burn to the ground!

I know it’s spring because I have an octopus in my sinuses. It was sort of bothering me yesterday, but today it’s BAD. Tomorrow I should wake up with my face aching. I wonder what sinus medication I will take this year to be constantly crazy for the next three months? Claritin? Maybe. I have no idea why they claim to have no side effects on that drug—is “weirded out” no longer a scientific category for a side effect? Anyway, I am sitting here typing this in between blowing my nose over and over and sneezing. I wonder if today might mark the day I have to start on the sinus meds. Sinus=allergies when I am talking, which should be clear. This started as a joke on my grandmother who also has very bad allergies. To illuminate:

[grandmother sitting at kitchen counter clutching head]
Me: My allergies are bad today too. I think it’s the wisteria maybe.
Granma: What? I don’t have allergies! I have sinus.
Me: Righto. My sinuses are really acting up too, weird how that always coincides with allergy season.
Granma: Don’t get smart with me! (her absolute favorite phrase to direct at me, followed closely by “Watch your tone of voice.” which I never learned to do)

Her issue with calling allergies what they were is some kind of hillbilly concept that having allergies makes you infirm, I think. Good thing she never reads the internet (don’t print this off, relatives, I know you like to screw with me, but come on).

To conclude: sinus=allergies (to pollen)

I know I was going to talk about something else, but, for real, my allergies are all I can think about right now. OH NO, SOMEONE’S CUTTING GRASS! *cries, blows nose, sneezes*

I think we’re having a party this weekend with blue grass musicians. That’s, well, SPECIAL. I hope they bring moonshine.

How in the HELL can there really only be 8—EIGHT!!!!—people doing residencies in geriatrics IN ALL OF CANADA? I knew there was a crisis, but that’s not a crisis, that’s a DISASTER! What are they going to do? Why isn’t the government intervening here? Jesus!

I think part of this can probably be chalked up to the strange class issue of college attendance in Canada. People who end up in medical school there want a “prestige” job and not to be marginalized. This crazy-ass news story I’m listening to interviewing geriatricians claim that their colleagues basically diss them for their specialty and that attitude is preventing students from going into it. ??? Hello! We all (want to) get old. I am just AMAZED by this nonsense.

There’s a robin perched on the doorknob on the inside of my house. It’s just hanging out.

There is a lot of strange things going on in this geriatrics story. One of them is that the president of the College of Geriatricians is from Brooklyn and has lived in Canada for thirty years. What is his story, do you think?

Anyway, back to ranting about university in Canada and the decline of the heath care industry.

One of the most dissonant aspects of the Canadian culture I found was how there is still a big divide amongst college/universities and a certain classist attitude towards this. This seems even more pronounced in professional fields. You can see this reflected (if you don’t attend university in Canada) with the licensing of professionals educated overseas. I think the fact that the college of physicians gets to set the agenda on who and who will not be licensed in Canada is total bullhockey (as my mother would say). There needs to be an ombudsman or oversight committee put in charge of that. I can’t tell if it’s more classist than racist or if that racism is just part of classism (people of color being automatically opted out of standard class structure, being inherently not as good as even substandard white people). I get very tired of hearing about how “inclusive” and “accepting” Canada is when what is actually happening is that the real prejudice is just subtler than it is in the States and other places. Whatever, if Canada is so inclusive, why are medical doctors trained overseas absolutely unable to get licensed in Canada? Gimme a break.

Now, back to health care in general. I think what we’re seeing on both sides of the border is that our system of heath care training and the rigid set of roles is not working for us anymore. (ONE GERIATRICAN IN ALL OF SUDBURY AND NORTH WESTERN ONTARIO?) Retooling an entire system is difficult and unwieldy, but this isn’t producing a dollar coin, this is our very lives here. It’s very amusing to me that some systems come to be seen as sacrosanct when they just simply developed accidentally or because of a specific agenda. This is very much the case for the modern medical industry. It’s based around perpetuating those at the top of the tier and keeping everyone else in their place. Is there really what we want our health care to be based on?

Dementia management: I should look into that for coping with my relatives in the not too distant future (are you reading this, mom??).

In other news, wiretap was actually really funny this week. Generally, it horrifies me because I don’t find embarrassment humor…acceptable? It just makes me cringe. For whatever reason, this week (the episode Treat Me Right) is hysterical. Maybe I am delusional (demented?).

Today was utterly gorgeous. SPRING! So, I’m going to Florida in a couple weeks, so I thought I would start sitting outside a bit to prevent myself from getting burnt the first day home and then having to cry into a jar of Noxema the rest of the time I’m there.

So, I told y’all about the neighbor who planted the fairy ring of tulips in the yard and then put a concrete cinderblock on it and sat a cement lion on that, right? RIGHT? Well, today she was laying outside inside the ring (it’s that large, we both could have easily laid in it) on an ice pack because she’s thrown her neck out.

Me: You hurt your neck, huh? Sucks.
Her: Yeah, happens all the time, time throw it out.
Me: I have thing with my back, feel ya.
Both of us: yadda for a bit
Her: And my mom told me that cranberry juice brings out the natural red in your hair.
Me: If you drink it or spray it on? – (aside: it is important to ASK AND ENGAGE with people like this, because you NEVER KNOW!)
Her: Spray it on, see? (she produced a spray bottle and sprays her hair.)
Me: Like lemon juice for lightening, huh? (inside: what? Sticky hair, omg omg, what? This makes not sense! What? Maybe rub blueberries on to bring out the natural purple!)
Her: Yeah, just like that!

I was only treated to a fifteen minute dissertation on reiki after that and NOT anything about crystals, which is a change. I am impressed with her ability to soldier on with her hippy ways in the face of my cynical bitchery when confronted with “alternative healing”.

You can preorder my new book on Amazon now. It’s called “Falling Upwards” or you can just search my name, Kassandra Sims. I would give a direct link, but I am unhappy about the review and going to flounce off and cry.

Let’s see if I can keep up with updating this journal on a daily basis.

Right now I am reading at least three books Cicero by Anthony Everitt, What If? 2 ed. Robert Crowley, and The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough.

The first one is pretty good, really. It’s a biography written for a general audience in a sort of conversational manner with lots of quotations of source material. I saw at the book store that Everitt also has a biography of Caesar as well, which I might read next. That is, if I ever get another book from Amazon. They have now lost TWO books I ordered. I even checked my address on the site to make sure it wasn’t me mistyping my address, but, no, just lost. I think this might be some kind of mail theft at my local post office branch. They are dillholes over there and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were mail thieves. What do they want with Rubicon and a book about vowel shifts in the development of the English language?

The First Man In Rome is written in that false omniscient narrative where the pov skips from paragraph to paragraph that makes me think of bad fan fiction. I suppose this must be a more acceptable style than I was aware of considering that this woman has sold a metric asston of books. In a general way, the book is not bad, really. I did get hit in the head in the first chapter what position she was taking on the Marius/Sulla divide when Sulla stood in the Forum and got sprayed by sacrificial blood and sort of enjoyed it. That indicated to me right off the bat that he probably had some psychological issues. There’s also a virgin/whore sort of complex going on with the female characters, but my expectations for that sort of thing are very low when dealing with writers who are far removed from me in age. It’s like five thousand pages, so I don’t know if I will end up finishing it.

The second volume of What If? I bought because there’s an essay in there addressing what would have happened if Pilate had pardoned Christ, and that appealed. There’s also one about Napoleon using the Louisiana Territory as a foothold in North America, which is also probably interesting.

My neighbors are particularly rambunctious today. They broke something and are “taping it back together” right now. They were also talking about JJ a minute ago. They’re trapped inside due to the weather, just like us. It’s the bleak sort of spring day where it’s dark at midday from cloud-cover, raining, and the sounds of car tires on wet pavement sort of sinks into your bones.

Alright, it looks like I am fixing to carry my ass to the store to procure food with which to make supper. I am leaning towards biscuits and gravy. ? Maybe we will have breakfast for supper.

I got a strange, anonymous comment on this journal a couple days ago demanding that I update. So, I guess I will!

It’s spring here in Nashville, and my neighbor is fully of exuberance. My backyard is about an acre of open area with one tree in the middle of it that’s ringed on two sides by thick trees and on one by a rock wall. Right smack in the middle of this, my exuberant neighbor planted a ring of tulips. Yeah, I got nothing on that either. But she also put a jaunty lion statue ensconced on a cinderblock in the middle of the circle. I suppose to entertain the fairies dancing inside the ring.

So, yesterday, when she was installing the lion, she says something I don’t remember that made me reply to her “yeah, let’s cook out, we can call some people.” This actually turned out to not be a horrendous idea. Which one never knows in Nashville.

Truth: people in Nashville are sketchy. If you make plans with people in Nashville, make alternative plans because one set of your plans (if not both) will fall through because everyone here is drunk or stoned all the time.

We cooked out and I made cheesy potatoes and rum punch. One of the guests actually did the grilling part of the cooking while I looked on. This was after the person who said they would do it did not. As I said above, please make contingency plans if you find yourself in Nashville. At any rate, the guest did this without prompting and with the sort of pleasure only evidenced by men “cooking meat over fire” as JJ calls it.

It was a nice break from the late Roman Republic which has been my every waking minute for the last couple weeks.

Also, one of the friends who came over last night is a joiner (like me) and is going to help me force people into potlucking on Sundays, which I am very pleased about.

In other news, we blew up another microwave. I am now convinced that this is by no fault of our own, because I have taken to scrubbing the microwave and babying it since the first microwave explosion. (Oh yeah, speaking of fire, I set the stove on fire last night by leaving potholders on a burner that I didn’t know was on. I was in the shower and JJ was outside. That was a close one! Luckily, JJ came in before the whole house went up. You wish you lived with me, I know it.) So, now we think the microwave issue is related to our power issues. The wiring in this house as really disastrous. I think it pre-dates alternating current. Personally, I think we should just forgo microwaves while we live here and get a toaster oven. Toaster ovens are magic, so they probably won’t blow up.

Alright, I’m going back to work now.

( What's on my mind lately )

You know those days you have where if you were the hysterical type you know you'd probably be punching someone in the face or crying? Actually, most of my friends are the hysterical type, so...oh, well forget it.

Tonight JJ and I are going to see Cory Branan, which is normally the cause of great rejoicing and heavy drinking, but for some reason we are both a little off-kilter today. I think for me it's because I was listening to the wrong music today when I was working and it sort of made me moody. Moody French music =\= good for you when it's getting dark outside at blessed 4:30 in the afternoon. WHAT THE HELL, NASHVILLE! I haven't moved far enough south, this has become clear to me now. It still gets under 45 in the winter, and I do believe this will not do for HRH.

Anyway, JJ's malfunction is that she got this job with this crackpot and he kept jacking up when he wanted her to come over and do who the hell knows what.

Also, my new piercing keeps coming out and I finally gave up and went into the shop to "discuss" this with them (read: BITCH LIKE A BITCHING COMPLAINER). Since the people at my shop are awesomecakes, I ended up just looking sort of pathetic and getting my stuff all sorted. I love the girls who work at this place because they all think the men who come in there are super skeevy and mock them behind their backs to the female clientele. This I approve of.

People in Nashville can NOT drive. I can not really blow this out of proportion because it's something so jacked up I don't even...right, so I am an "aggressive" driver *cough* and might one day die from a stroke from some TOURIST FROM FUCKING KANSAS DRIVING ON BROADWAY AT 5 P.M. On the other hand, the main fucktard causing my blood pressure today was from Escambia Co. Fla (my home county) and I was pleased it wasn't someone who might recognize me (it's hicksville, people, not out of the question) since I then flipped them off and blew my horn to make sure they saw it.

Tourists suck. You would have thought I learned my lesson on that now having only (except for two years of my life) lived in places with heavy tourist traffic. Maybe next time I'll move to DISH, Texas?

And on another front, our options in the election are Satan Incarnate and a Republican pretending to be a Democrat. Seriously, Tennessee, seriously.

I swear I'm gonna do better about up-dating this lj.

So, today I can't move a lot because I keep coughing and throwing up. You're thrilled I decided to update, huh?

In other news, we have new neighbors. I think they might be college students or something. Alright, backing up. We live in an old (Victorian?) schoolhouse converted into three apartments. We're in the middle, sorta, and on one side is our neighbor Miss Sparkle. She is, um, our age? I think so at any rate. She used to follow Wide Spread Panic (a band, international readers) and is a hippie. A very cute hippie, but she says things like "I was a cat in my past life." with all sincerity. We adore her. So, on the other side of us was another girl (and her boyfriend who didn't technically live there, but who was there most of the time) and we call this girl and her folks The Mole People because the whole time we've lived here, I've only seen the girl ONCE and JJ hasn't *ever* seen her. She would peer out of the windows in her front door around the drapery and stare at people. Lately, it appears the Mole People have been replaced with the Frat Boys.

The Frat Boys are louder than US! This is a feat. They are louder than Miss Sparkle and her pothead friends. They have huge parties and play techno music. !!! This is not on. Miss Sparkle has decided to use the fact they are male against them and trick them into menial labor. Being a sexist, I endorse this plan fully.

Miss Sparkle also wants to dig a fire pit in our backyard and thinks all we need to do to execute this plan is get a permit from the Fire Dept. Um. How about the LANDLORDS? Damned hippies.

JJ is being all productive today and this is making me feel guilty. Not guilty enough to do anything, but sort of randomly guilty like being in the house when the cleaning lady is there.

For those of you who live in the tundra, it's about 65F here today, bright and sunshiny, beautiful. It reminds me of home, really. We had to cancel Halloween a couple times when I was a kid for hurricanes (we rescheduled, don't worry, we got our candy).

Because I didn't have to cook for Canadian Thanksgiving this year, it would appear that Fate has determined I will make up for that by my family calling me over and over to remind me of the metric asston of things they want me to make for American Thanksgiving. Maybe I can claim to be out of the country? I'm far enough away that they wouldn't know if it was true or not.

That's about all I can rustle up to complain about, because my life pretty much rules. Sorry, it's the truth. JJ is emo for both of us, because basically I am content with life.

So just now I was reading something and laughing out loud and Jacyn said "Are you laughing at science?" and the answer was YES! This is what I was reading.

Yeah. This is how sorry I am: this was about the FIFTH science joke website I read in a row and I was giggling like crazy over all of them. Mainly, I was reading sites dissing String Theory (if you want links, I will provide them). Man, do I HATE String Theory! What a load of garbage. Physics is just philosophy with math, and I'm in the Anglo-American school looking at the Continentals who've taken over the world and glowering saying things like "this isn't even LOGICAL!". Hrmph.

What I actually wonder about this a lot is this:

So there are times when I have gotten so tied up in some philosophical concept I forgot it was ALL MADE UP, and I have been known to want to *literally* strangle people for making fallacious, ill-advised arguments against some concept I find to be PATENTLY OBVIOUS, motherfuckers! This leads me to believe that this sort of crackpot, trench warfare mentality has overtaken physics and screwed us out of our jetpacks. Look, String Theory and 16 dimensions does not explain why Newtonian and Relativity physics do not mesh! Jesus. How hard is this to understand? Y'all're just in a cult. CULT.

I am super fun lately. My rock and roll lifestyle is a lie, mainly I talk about calculus.

!!!

I wonder how much of my feelings about 9/11 are influenced by the fact that I lived in Canada until not so long ago, and I actually know people who are Muslim. Islam is not scary and exotic to me. People who practice Islam/we raised in Muslim countries/look like they might have been either are not special or different to me.

I do not care if you disagree with me, but I think that a whole lot of the 9/11 rhetoric that the Bush Administration is using to confuse and distract us from the salient facts of our present reality are contingent on the embedded racism and fear people have towards BROWN PEOPLE, OH NOES! It's, of course, made worse because Muslims are INFIDELS and deny JESUS and are going to HELL anyway. So, fuck them. Clearly, since they hate Jesus, they are all up to no good and sort of satanic, right?

Let's get real about this instead of cowering and saying "but *I'm* not racist/prejudiced/ignorant as fuck about Islam!". Just shut up, ok? You probably are, because why would you ever need to be otherwise? You have a full life and things to do and need to get the kids to soccer and your job sucks and your in-laws are an abomination. But just take a second, a crystal, real second to consider the fact we are at WAR and no one really seems to even CARE.

We are at war with people because some *other* people who happen to share a religion with the war-afflicted bombed one of our major cities. How about an analogy? What if the British bombed Riyadh and the Saudis invaded Iowa? Does that work for you? What if they were "liberating the Iowans from oppression"? What if most of the internal debate then generated in Saudi Arabia was about allowing guest workers to become citizens rather than the rapine and mayhem they were wreaking in the cornfields of Iowa?

What about another tactic?

Do you really want another whole generation of American men to be psychologically scarred by war and not able to function in a meaningful way because they watching children blown up and women raped by fellow soldiers?

Still not working for you?

Do you really think gas prices are more important than another human being's continued existence? Did you learn that in Sunday school, because I seem to recall this whole "love your neighbor" song and dance.

No one is happy about 9/11, but how many other lives is it going to take to compensate us as a nation for the lives we lost then? If we kill enough other people/sacrifice enough of our military, will that bring back the halcyon days of us pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist?

Volunteer in the mid-term elections. Vote for someone who believes in a real exist-strategy for the war. Maybe by the 10th anniversary of 9/11 we will be at peace.

I know a lot of people tithe and give to charity for holidays and so on, if you're looking for somewhere to give your money that will change another human being's life try here.

Many people are cynical now about big NGOs and Unicef and so, but these people are doing good work. If you're religious, you will recognize it as the Lord's work.

Those of us who are from the West prattle on about post-Feminism and the glass ceiling, but stop to consider the fact that slavery is still very real and that you can do something about that.

I haven't been posting here much lately, and I know this (besides the simple fact that I know it) because my mom's friend reads this journal and then tells my mom what it says. Yes, my mom has vetted reading about me to a minion who then synthesizes the info and passes it along in small words. (We'll have drinks next time I'm in town, dear.)

Sadly for the known universe, I woke up today at about five-thirty, which means by two I'll be even bitchier than usual and a true treasure to be around. Maybe I fell asleep too early last night, but I think I was up until one. I was watching Stargate (the movie) and almost fell asleep on the couch, so I thought I'd haul my ass to bed, which just resulted in waking up. Fascinating, I know. The interesting part of this story, probably, is the fact I was watching Stargate to begin with (and the attendant story of how I drug Jacyn out at about nine to get a video card just so I *could* watch it, then promptly was bored into sleep by it—which is accompanied by a side story about the residents of a halfway house who were trying to scam a video card with a stolen credit card and expired driver's license while we were in line).

I've never really been one of those people who navel gaze and ask "why do I like X or Y?" because, I mean, that's boring. Who cares? So, I like caramel and don't like licorice, AND? This is not the source of deeper meaning in the universe. Up until very, very recently, I hated everything to do with scifi, space, space ships, aliens, time travel (and before that, I hated country music, and before that I didn't eat mayonnaise for about a decade or more). Now, apparently, I like crappy scifi shows and said to Jacyn in all seriousness yesterday "I need a stuffed cthulhu." I'm taking A LOT of crap for this, because I have been a loud and obnoxious critic of space-crap for all of my days and have resisted all and any books, movies, and other media related to this topic.

Sample conversation:

Nate: You know that one time on Star Trek…
Me: No, I've only seen two episodes, the one with the black and white faced people and the one with the tribbles or whatever.
Nate: You're a Soviet sleeper agent.
Me: You're a loser who wears a white belt.

That's a recreation.

You can substitute, Alien, Terminator or most other things for Star Trek here. I blame this new turn of events on Dr. Who, because I decided if it was THAT GOOD, maybe I was missing out on all kinds of things by being a gun-jumper. I was wrong about that, seeing as how most of the things I've avoided are just as crappy as I'd assumed (see: Battlestar Galatica which attempts to trick you into thinking it doesn't suck but that is a thin veneer over the great sucking blackhole of horribleness). Firefly also does not suck, but probably only because it got cancelled before it could fall into the Joss Whedon attention-span-trap.

Right, so I decided I'd give Stargate a go since I have some kind of desire to inflict torment on myself with Stargate: Atlantis now. Egypt is boring. NEXT!

*

It appears to almost be "Fall" here in Tennessee. I can only tell this because it's football season. Jacyn is pretending it's autumnal, but that's just a relenting in the unceasing humidity and heat. This is the correct course of the seasons as far as I'm concerned. Humans shouldn't live in climates with winter. Why would we when we don't *have* to? This boggles. We have no hair to keep us warm; clearly, we are meant to caper about the savannah drinking iced lattes and downloading television on our palmpilots.

*

I'm currently working on two books: the cowboy ghost hunter one, which is in the lumbering final stages of completion (chupacabra anyone? I have to thank Jacyn for that stroke of BRILLIANCE. We had TWO conversations with people who said "what's a chupacabra? Which is not even in intelligible English, is it? WHAT IS TO NOT KNOW CHUPACABRA? The second book is the alternate historical about Iberia during the Reconquista (word used to annoy Nathan who stalks me online). More on this if anyone cares.

*

I need to figure out how to register to vote here. Maybe I will do that today when I go out to buy yarn.

I'm listening to a documentary on BBC radio about Sephardim. It's a multipart travelogue by an Ashkenazi from England who's always had a fixation. I tend to find documentaries made by people who are obsessed with some topic far more interesting than ones done by "experts".

I've been fixated for so long I can't remember not thinking about it by speculation (in my head) about how different the world would have been if the Umayyads had never been overthrown in Spain. Or even better if they had taken over France, Italy, and from there got a toe-hold into Central Europe. Since it's my fantasy world, this would have circumvented the rise of fundamentalism in both Christianity *and* Islam and lead to an empire that lasted for hundreds of years which would have decayed into a synthesis culture which was heavily influenced by Dualism (through Catharism and other such religions—which were in a big up-swing at the critical point in history for me).

For some reason this isn't nearly enough of a popular theme in speculative history (The Lions of Al-Rassan being the only one that I can even think of off the top of my head). That annoys me because it's such a huge topic and so sprawling that it would be a massive project to undertake myself. Yes, I've thought about it. More like realized I would eventually write about book about this since I even realized I could write.

I suppose most people are romantic about some time/theme, whether that be elves and fairies and unicorns and space ships or if it be the scent of cumin and oranges and honey and the sound of silver chiming against itself, sun low on the horizon and the sound of captured water against stone in the near distance—wavery blue and topaz and burnt orange.

My mom is visiting us this week. Last night, Jamie and JJ and me and mom went for bbq at this place in a weird strip mall place. The food was, oddly, great. Tonight, we're having bbq again. We went to the farmer's market and got lots of stuff.

Ok, back up, so our fridge broke last week and we lost all our food. Then my mom showed up and bought us a bunch of food. So then our fridge breaks again and I call the landlord and he comes over and my mom tells him to buy us a new fridge so he does. Yeah. My mom rules.

Anyway, we went shopping all day pretty much. Now I am cooking supper.

I haven't been updating here later because I am lazy. FINE. I will do better.

I'm home again for a week or so. My best friend from home, Tina, and Nate are visiting this weekend. We're gonna get Nate at the airport in a couple hours. Man, explaining the plane-side bag checking to him on the phone was like ordering a corndog in Czech.

I *finally* moved the couch, which is a good thing, because I got home and Jacyn informs me that we're having guests over next week I didn't expect, and that was fortunately timed to coincide with the couch! Now if only we could slipcover it before then, but, alas, this will never ever happen. We're still using boxes as end tables for the love of Viggo. I say "still" as though there will be a time when this isn't the case.

RWA this year was no where near as good as Reno. First of all--it was ATLANTA, which is boring as hell to me being a Southerner. Secondly, no Tahoe, Natasha Panza or steam room in the hotel. There were some great people, though, this time around, and Jacyn came with me. This lead to an incident at the bar (which sucked) where someone randomly walked up to her to ask her if she was X person because Jacyn was the only person there with visible tattoos. It had to be who the other lady was looking for, because in a room full of romance authors, only ONE will have art. I really have no idea why that whole thing annoyed me so much, but it really did. There was also the clutch of Junior Leaguers who went on and on about weddings and their frenemies. No, you read that right. Friend/enemies mash up. The person you can't stand but have to maintain a relationship with for one reason or another. This is the new catch phrase around my place.

Mainly I will remember this RWA as the Year the Food Sucked. We had one horrible meal after another, and that is vexing in the extreme.

There were many fewer people randomly telling me the plots to their books without prompting, though, which was a plus.

Writercon was much better and full of much more entertaining folks. Too bad it's only every other year. That breaks my heart.


I am attempting to drag my folks here canoeing this weekend, but it looks bleak for the Home Team. All my friends are punkasses. We may just end up having a cookout. If you wanna drop by, come on then! Tina brought oysters and shrimp from home, and I assume we're having mac and cheese and cornbread and greens.

And in other news: I watched the pilot for the new show Friday Night Lights. Um. This is a television show about high school football in Texas. Like the movie, yeah. Uh. How is this show legal? Ho-lee shit. I thought my ability to think rationally had been stolen by One Tree Hill, but I HATE basketball, so it was ok. I could cope. On the one hand, Chad Michael Murray inexplicably owns my soul, but on the other--basketball sucks. Then the universe said "Hey, Kassie, how about a show set in Texas about football..." and the universe cackled like an old crone on helium. It's almost like the universe likes this recent spate of high school boys dating their teachers scandals. WHO KNOWS, maybe that's all part of some divine plan?! The Clockwork Universe of Hotass. Don't get your panties in a knot, I'm not entrusted with your children. I'm busy being the Spider Jerusalem of music journalism.

Speaking of which, Warren Ellis shut down his lj because nitwits were posting fanfic of his stuff in the comment threads. Some people need force lobotomies.