You can't edit a blank page

I need a reader. This spring I finally dug up and printed out my now four-year-old NaNoWriMo manuscript and am currently halfway through the first read. Other than being determined to make the required word count, having had no expectations from the start is a good thing. The fact that I can read it at all is encouraging but it's a slow go. Thus far, I have managed only two sessions, months apart. I am surprised to find that it amuses me. This morning one particular section had me laughing out loud. Why can't that be enough? I said from the beginning that there would be no plot but, now that the manuscript exists, it needs one. Why does this all have to be so goddamn complicated? I read the funny part to Mr. Lee this morning but he wants a story goddammit. I'll read it when it has one. He's not a first draft kind of guy. That fucker would red pen a suicide note.


So I am half way through the first read and won't inflict it on anyone at the moment, but I need a reader. Okay. Okay. So that reader will have the same response as Mr. Lee, but WTF?! I have assembled 50,000, 12 pt. words on 197 double spaced, one inch margin pages. What else do you want from me? Blood? I know. A plot. And there is one, buried throughout the manuscript, like a dismembered body. Yes. Yes. I must sew my Frankenstein together but what the hell? That's work. Anyway, somewhere along the line I am going to need a reader, not a teacher, a reader. Doesn't every writer get a reader? I need a sounding board, someone to complete the loop between the ears, self to self, heart to head, someone who can help piece together the map of the story, the one I wrote in invisible ink, tore into tiny pieces and ate. Anyway, it's too soon for a reader. Just thinking out loud.

Harvey Pekar, RIP

RIP Harvey Pekar

Thanks for the memories. You're right. It matters anyway.

So... I dedicate today's inane Bird Park video to you. Baby crow had a good morning. In case you're wondering, the baby in this clip is the one flapping his wings and chasing after his mother with an open mouth. So whatever death is, I hope you had a good morning too.

Oh Oh Os!

Awhile ago I did a post slagging Trader Joe's for wimping out and turning their Joe's Os breakfast cereal into a mealy nothing, like all the other breakfast cereals. In fact, they did not. This afternoon, Mr. Lee pointed out to me that I had mistakenly purchased the regular Os, the version made for ordinary people. You see, Joe's sells two versions of Os, regular and the red box Fiber Os with extra fiber, lots and lots of fiber, with so much fiber that eating a bowlful feels like you're eating a bale of hay. I begin to wonder if I'll ever get to the bottom of the bowl. I chew and chew and chew so long I forget I'm chewing, and when I do remember again, I'm only half done. In fact, Joe's Fiber Os are so chewy that I sometimes fear my teeth will be ground to nubs before I finish breakfast. If you made a paste out of Os you could scrub oil stains off the driveway or use it to sand barnacles off a boat. I am delighted knowing that the world has not completely given into the sissies. So, as amends to the venerable Os, I share with you this video by Keith Haskel. I don't know if this is viral marketing or what but I don't care. I think it's just him having fun but, either way, he speaks the truth of the red box.

Saving Baby Q.

Remember those two quail families I wrote about the other day? There were some 15 babies between them. Well, all but one of the babies have disappeared. I don't blame the cats. They are following their nature but I am sad for the quail. They are innocent, really fun to watch and defenseless. I am, however, disgusted with our lazy, irresponsible neighbors. They could at least put bells on their little fat ass lions. WTF?


Anyway, Baby Q. is the only quail baby in the Bird Park right now and he had a near fatal accident the other day while walking on the edge of pool but, in the end, it turned out okay.

Police report

“Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are gods.” -Unknown

Again with the cats. This morning I chased two lunkers out of the Bird Park where they were hunkered down in Old Man Hills, planning their next kill. I was surprised... a) by how fat they are and... b) their flash response to my growls. The bastards were up and over the fence in a flat two seconds. It was a magpie who alerted me to their presence. Seems they consider me the Bird Park police.

Today's birthdays

Happy 103rd, Frida.

Source

Also, today is the
Dalai Lama's birthday.
He's 75.
Happy B-day, Dalai!

Thailand, all good things must come

...to an end. Enjoy.

July 5 - In this final email Mr. Lee, esteemed guest blogger, kindly cobbles together not only some "best of" tips from his recent adventures in Thailand, but (finally) includes four very excellent photos he took along the way to leave us with these last tasty.....


~assorted bits~

In Ayuthaya the men in green vests are taxi drivers, maybe the only taxi drivers, and their taxis are tiny motorbikes. If you are born riding this way and are small, you will ride gently, gracefully, talking on your phone or perhaps reading the daily news, and if you are female you will even ride side saddle. But I grabbed onto the driver like I was drowning and I didn't let go. I wasn't going to fall off the back of his bike with no helmet, not into traffic. He was mildly perturbed when he dropped me off but I let him overcharge me by a dollar so what the hell.


Of all the Thai massages I had, the one in Ayuthaya was the best. It was pure local style, not for tourists, and I was the only Westerner in the place. Forget about your Swedish massage, Thai massage is communal and social and people chat and talk on the phone and grunt openly with pain and pleasure. There is no oil and you wear the clothing they provide. In my case, this was a comically tiny suit that covered to my knees and elbows, but nobody seemed to care and a couple ladies who were also being massaged asked me if I liked Thai massage and how often I got a massage and I said yes and weekly and they seemed to approve. My masseuse was short and round and his hair was frosted with blond highlights and I'm not judging but I have never been groped quite so vigorously by a man. It was the best and most thorough massage I had in Thailand.



Just outside Khao Yai National Park, Thailand's first but now just one among many, I saw two million bats fly out of a cave at sunset. It took an hour. They streamed out in a twisting column. It was a miracle. It happens every night. And then I walked among them as they fed. The next day, inside the park, I saw gibbons and hornbills and deer and macaques and snakes, poisonous and not, and I saw a sun bear climbing down a fig tree and a spider as big as my hand. It was the start of the rainy season - how much more exotic to call it what it is, the beginning of the monsoon - and the leeches were mustering and I had to wear leech socks which at first I thought were kind of a joke but later came to appreciate mightily. Leeches are surprisingly fast. They stay on the ground and whip around when they sense you coming and attach to your boot and work their way up looking for soft skin. They burrow into folds in the leech socks and wait for opportunity. Some move above the sock cuff, above the knee, onto the pants. They are relentless, they are the zombies of the animal world. Once, I stood off the path and peed onto the forest floor and the leeches came from all sides, inching toward the stream, looking for...food. I stared at the leaf scatter and the dirt and I stared into tiny mouths of hell. I checked my legs for leeches and moved on.

The ticket lady at the Bangkok municipal pier shortchanged me by a buck. I watched her shortchange other tourists while I waited for the riverboat. Later, a really helpful tout claiming to work for the government made me board a tuk tuk and negotiated an actual Thai fare, for which I was grateful, and sent me to "Thai Pier" on the Chao Praya River, the big muddy running through the heart of Bangkok, for an overpriced tour of the river and canals. I declined the river tour and really only got on the tuk tuk because I was tired and hungry and because there would be food sellers by the pier (and truthfully because I just wanted the novelty of paying what a Thai person would pay for a tuk tuk ride).

I found a food in Pak Chong, gateway to Khao Yai National Park, a food which could rival my beloved flan. It is called Kao Neow Sankayah. It is sweet sticky rice made with coconut milk and topped with egg custard and wrapped in a banana leaf. Ok, so it's flan, basically. Ok.



--M. Lee

Big thank you very much, Mr. Lee. Happy Travels.

Sound of one hand clapping.

Nature's little gangsters

The neighbor cats

I chased these guys off the fence again this morning where they sit everyday looking for baby quail, which they eat like popcorn. Bastards. Since I got back from San Antonio yesterday, no sign of the 15 or so babies that were in the Bird Park before I left. I fear the worst.

Babies and Baglady Buddha

Reentry is hard. Extended travel changes the mind. In fact, I don't think you really ever quite change back or want to. I haven't, don't. I didn't leave the country this time but, being gone even a month, I felt pretty detached when I got home and now Mr. Lee is going through it. And he really went feral, I will say that. Reentry takes time. Easy for me to say. I get to go to San Antonio tomorrow for a few days. It's a drag that I am leaving so soon after his return but that's the way it is. And besides, a couple of days alone to sweat it out may do him good. And I will be home Sunday. BTW, he has promised me one last post, a follow-up and recap of his travels, so stay tuned. And yes, I am still waiting for some damn photos.


Anyway, the big news is that we have our first two families of quail babies, just hatched, still rumpled and fuzzy, just....just out of the egg. They are out running around as I write this and too cute for words so here are some blurry photos instead. More to come, unless (and until) the neighborhood cats eat them. These little guys are like popcorn to those bastards. If you have a cat, for god's sake, put bells on 'em. They kill everything in the vicinity, just because they can. By the way, those are not weeds you see in the photos. It's a wildlife corridor/cat baffle for the quail. And besides the quail, there are a couple of very noisy magpie babies and some young 'un crows in the neighborhood, all somewhere in their terrible twos (months) that squawk all day long. But I love it. It a bit of jungle here in the desert.


It just occurred to me I am very in the rears with photos myself. I haven't even posted anything from the Reno Spoken Word event I read at a couple of weeks ago. So here's one and a promise for more, redeemable at your local Language Barrier outpost trading company store sometime in the future. I call her the Baglady Buddha. Is that disrespectful? Would the Buddha mind? No mind.


WTF? What the hell back hand, left hand mudra is that, Baglady Buddha?

Home

As I write this, Mr. Lee is winging his way home from Thailand, via Hong Kong. Winging, that sounds kind of nice, as though he's a huge, transoceanic bird doing what birds have always done, dipping and diving, floating, gliding and shooting wind currents the way a raft shoots the river's rapids. Unfortunately, this is not the case. He is stuffed into a too small airline seat that does not recline and, other than occasional stretches at the back of the plane, is stuck there for some 20 or 30 hours, including time spent waiting in airline terminals for connecting flights, iow... hell. He is flying backwards into our Saturday and, at this point, though it is morning here, he is somewhere in our last night, cramped, sweaty, maybe watching a second or third movie though one eye on a Saturday that just won't end.

Remember an Elephant Day

Remember an Elephant Day!

June 24th is Remember an Elephant Day so be sure and kiss an elephant today, oh and give her an extra wheelbarrow full of watermelons, apples, peanuts and other tasty treats. But, even if you can't do that, always always always boycott circuses that keep animals captive. Remember, an elephant likes a 100 mile stroll before breakfast, something she can't do chained to a wall.