Attack of the Killer Grems.

My friends, Darren and Jenna, really love each other. In fact, they married each other. Sometimes I wonder, however, about all of the aggression. Like at my birthday party in March, and in public, no less! (Okay, so it was the Taco Stand, and yes, they've probably seen weirder things).

Darren makes the first strike, moving in for the rear choke attack!




What the...?! I'm completely dazed and confused at this random, senseless attack!



Steve and Anita find the whole thing amusing, not realizing the gravity of the situation. They're just here for the booze anyway.



Unlike Grover, who eats when he is anxious. He calms himself with a tortilla chip, and tries to pretend nothing is happening.



I decide that Grover has the right idea, and cheer myself up with a delicious Cadbury Egg.™ Mmmm...mmmm.........



Brooke wishes she was in on the action, and flexes her phalanges in anticipation. If only she had a throat to wrap those fingers around.



But Jenna comes back with a knockout for the win! Jenna wins! Jenna wins!



This, my dear readers, just shows to go you, that I have really awesome friends that know how to throw a surprise birthday party! Sorry for the long delay in getting these pics out there, but hope you enjoyed the show.

Happy MONDAY!! I'm a whole day early!

"Brevity is the soul of wit..."

(And, if you'll recall, that was part of the humor of Polonius's characterization, for he was hardly ever concise in speech)

Well, my gentle readers, I have neglected you for quite long enough.
So, since it's only 10am and I have had NO COFFEE, this post will undoubtedly be malapropos, inchoate, and laconic. And plus I wanted to use those groovy words.

I started to write a really personal post today, but decided against it. This is a public forum, and the eerie awareness of friends and strangers sort of peering over my shoulder really gives me pause sometimes. Unless I'm ranting, of course. But an intimate discussion of my deep emotional concerns sometimes seems a little - - - self-indulgent, actually. I know most of you come here because you think I'm so awesome and everything, but I don't imagine you need to read all that junx (the eJ and the Anita will certainly both note the attempt at linguistic humor as a deflection from the possible emotional exposition). Ahem.

I will say this, however: an email that the j to the enna sent me last week is still rolling around in my head, in that way that only things that are so-true-they-sting-a-little do. Girl knows her stuff, and her timing is astonishing. The subject line of the message was: "When God pounds us repeatedly over the head," and in it, she quoted a friend-of-a-friend's blog comment. Bit of a long chain of communication, but that doesn't make the comment any less poignant, or any less startlingly apt:

"if we are beginning to learn that God is strong -
prepare to feel weak, and if we are learning that God
fills our needs - prepare to be keenly aware of your
neediness"

So...finding a church and a small group and fellowship and support has given me strength and new eyes to see the world - or, at least, has polished up the old ones - but it sure hasn't made things easier. But at least I know where I have to go to find rest, and where I can, and should, lay my burdens.

On an entirely different note (I think maybe...C#...) a friend of mine, Dave Marck, of the inimitable duo, Shelley and Dave, wrote this in the local "independent, student-run" newspaper. One can only imagine the level of ignorance and bad writing typical of this paper, and you Athens locals can do more than imagine: you've probably been subjected to the agonies of those editorial/opinion/ill-informed articles. Dave, however, is a former editor and a darn good writer, and he wrote the linked article in response to an opinion piece by a philosophy major here at UGA. A philosophy major, writing about the American Soldiers and their bad behavior in Iraq, blaming them, rather than the government. I'll let you read the articles and the responses without my own opinion (yet!), but I will say this: I agree that the philosophy brat is a pompous a**. And you all know how I react to pomposity.

That's all for today, boys and girls. I'll have plenty more to say tomorrow. And what is it with me and Tuesdays, anyway?

Mmmmm...coookies...

You Are a Smiley Face Cookie

You're happy go lucky. So happy, in fact, it's a little past the point of normal sanity. You usually make those around you smile ... when you're not creeping them out!

What Kind of Cookie Are You?

When knowing is half the battle.

Okay, so I don't really have that much to do as I sit around the Gainesville State College (Oconee campus) Library, waiting for the possibility of a student who needs writing help. I guess one might argue that the potential, the waiting itself, is a kind of exciting suspense...but I think that that one would really need to get a life, and maybe go see a scary movie. (But take me, 'cause I want to see this).

I have officially declared that this week is "Get Papers Ready for Possible Publication Week." A newly created holiday, though not as cool as this one. Which means that I spend about an hour every day looking over my previous writing and editing it a bit, another 1/2 hour researching potential journals, and probably about 15 minutes debating my worth as a scholar at all. Even in the field of Science Fiction, which I can now claim as "my field," since I officially have an M.A. with a thesis on that subject, and that makes me "one-of-the-gang," I feel like a kindergardener who somehow wandered into the reference section at Congressional Library. Look at all the pretty books! Oooooh...words...! And they even have Where the Wild Things Are! . . . which I suppose is in the reference section for some doctoral candidate who's writing a dissertation on... Songs of Innocence: the subjectivity of story in children's narrative. Or something.

Anyway, it's like that old commercial on NBC, with all of the movie-stars and rock-idols making obvious statements about how to live your life: "The More You Know." The only thing is, those sage-like celebrities never finished the dratted sentence. It should be: "The More You Know, The More You Realize the Indescribable Vastness of the Previous Research and Thought in Your Field and Thus Your Own Pathetic Peon-like Quantities of Knowledge in Said Field." Or, in layman's terms (for the general populace - this is Public Access, after all) "The More You Realize You Know Nothing At All." And, for the harsher of tongue and the generally flippant, "The More You Realize You Suck Big Time."

I have a plan, however. Today, even though I was seriously distracted by my older papers and their possibilities, I will restrict myself to only the main one, The Big One, as it were, and its potentialities. (Ya like that word, dontcha?). The Big One, the shattered remains of my thesis-become-presentation-become-publication, "The Grand Inquisitor: Seeking the Sublime in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space." I will finish it this week. You'll recall that this week is officially "Get Papers Ready for Possible Publication Week." Well, I will rephrase. From henceforth, this week shall be called, "Get One Paper Ready for Possible Publication Week." Less, pressure, you see.

I also want to add, before I head out, how proud I am of the Ej! She is mostly finished with her thesis, and she's still working as hard as ever to make it the best thing since sliced bread, instead of just a pretty good thing called bread. So anyway, she's pretty darn awesome. Go comment on her awesomeness at her blog. For you are finished here. This is the end. I'm going now. To work on stuff. Well?! Get outta here!

Oh, wait: Be sure to have a marvelous 3rd-day-of-the-week! (or second-day, if you're one of those crazy Latins or Europeans. Weirdos.).