Liar, Liar, Burning Bright

From the living journalistic god that is Mark Morford:

The 935 lies of George W. Bush
Yes, you already knew. But now they're actually quantifiable. Like, say, stab wounds
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, January 30, 2008



Oh sweet Jesus, someone actually counted.

Two independent nonprofit journalism groups apparently took enough laudanum and beat down whatever healthy sense of human decency they had in order to plunge straight into that quivering mountain of incompetence that is the official record of the Bush administration, all the false quotes and all the lie-strewn press conferences and all the squinty-eyed fabrications from Dubya, Colin Powell, Condi and Cheney and Rummy et al, that took place in the two years after September 11, 2001, and added them all up.

Is it helpful to know the exact number? Does it make a difference? After all, presidential lying isn't exactly a revelation. Pretty much a national pastime, really. Hell, Bill Clinton lied in a harmless civil lawsuit, and was even impeached for it. Of course, his little oral fixation didn't lead us into an unwinnable trillion-dollar war that will scar the nation for multiple generations and which has wasted 4,000 American lives and resulted in tens of thousands of wounded, crippled and brain-damaged U.S. soldiers. But that's just splitting hairs, really.

After all, it's common knowledge that, say, George Bush Sr. lied about Iran-Contra and "read my lips," Ronald Reagan lied like a nasty old rug about Iran and aiding the Contras, Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to gain support for the Vietnam war, Harry Truman probably lied about Hiroshima and John F. Kennedy probably lied about the Bay of Pigs and, well, all presidents lie, really, to some degree or another and with varying degrees of success and historic consequence. Is it not sort of pointless to whine about it?

Fair enough. But there is something truly special about Bush 43. Something so unique, so poisonous and strange that historians are busy right this minute rewriting not only their books, but their entire way of thinking about how we measure and interpret political malfeasance.

It has to do with matters of scale. It has to do with audacity, with sheer recklessness, with BushCo's stunning contempt for all national and international law and historic precedent and human decency. It is the sense that, at bare minimum, the most significant lies told by previous administrations were, by and large, not massive, calculated stabs to the very heart and infrastructure of the entire nation. They were not designed, as Bush's clearly were, specifically to pervert the entire American experiment, to violently shift us from peace-promoting and defense-oriented protector to an arrogant, insular, pre-emptive attacker, widely loathed and mistrusted worldwide.

See, BushCo rewrote the formulas. From WMD to tax cuts, AmeriCorp to Iraq, this administration has officially reset the bar to an all-time low as to what's possible for a truly dreadful, inept president to get away with without some sort of significant repercussion, impeachment, numerous lightning bolts raining down on his soft little monkey skull. Sure, it took leveraging America's most brutal and heartbreaking tragedy in a generation to pull it off, but does the fact the administration exploited 9/11 like a pedophile exploits a child take anything away from the astonishing depth of the abuse?

But maybe you still argue that, even at a whopping 935 calculated lies told specifically to lead us into a bogus war, it makes no difference. Maybe you argue that a lie is a lie and Bush is no better or worse than Clinton or Reagan and here is a giant cocktail of jaded, raging apathy. Let's all chug it together, shall we?

Fine. If it's a fact that all presidents lie anyway, if there's little we can do to stop them, then let us put forth a new hope. Let us now wish for the next president to lie just as passionately, as powerfully, as strategically as BushCo, and get away with it just as extraordinarily.

But let's make one significant change. Let's urge the new president to lie, well, in the other direction, to lie not in the service of horrific war or in the name of powermongering or so as to line the pockets of corporate cronies, or even to cover up stupid personal behavior, but rather in the name of sliding through an agenda of — oh my God can you believe I'm going to say it? Peace, nonviolence, international respect, humanitarianism, sex positivism, religious tolerance, progressive education. I know. Crazy.

Yes. Give us now a president who lies, calculatedly and strategically, straight in the face of the hard right neocons and the evangelicals and the corporate cretins. Let his or her army of lies lull these groups into a false sense of complacency and/or utter soul-deadening fear so they will keep their mouths shut while the rest of us get some real work done.

There's more, but that's the meat of it.

NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE MAJOR LIES.

Impeachment is too good for this dude. Such enormity requires a punishment I can't even think what would befit the crime: maybe if we surgically removed his head and sewed it on a pig? But I'd feel too sorry for the pig to condemn it to such a life of hell...

It's absolutely breathtaking, what the UNELECTED president has done (he certainly stole one election, and I totally believe he shoplifted the second one, as well). He had no mandate. He has no brains. He has no policy. He has no heart, soul, brains or courage. He is the straw with which the Scarecrow was stuffed, the rust upon the Tin Man, the thorn in the Lion's paw. The man is a smirking, simpering, semiliterate bag of rancid dirt.

All he's got is Nazgul like Cheney and the late Rumsfeld, except he's no Dark Lord. He's a Dim Doofus, if that.

And now we see he's a lying sack of maggots as well.

Here ya go (I have grammatical quibbles, but NONE with the sentiment):

It's Time To Now Put Bush Impeachment On The Table Too

Impeach Bush Action Page:
http://www.usalone.com/impeach_george_bush.php (anyone can use this
link)

Now that there are voices on the House Judiciary Committee strongly advocating for meaningful Cheney impeachment hearings, it is high time to add George Bush to the crescendo.

Just because Dick Cheney is calling the the shots as the acting president, that does not absolve George Bush. Indeed it makes him a constitutional co-conspirator.

Last week the non-profit Center for Public Integrity released an exhaustive study documenting a compelling pattern of false public statements, 935 of them, that "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." And Bush topped the list with more lies than any other administration figure.

And just yesterday, after having already once rejected H.R. 1585, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, with an unconstitutional pocket veto (because Congress did not submit to ALL his demands), he then attached a signing statement to the revised bill (H.R. 4986) declaring that he would disregard many other sections of the bill altogether.

The words "out of control" do not even begin to capture the depth of contempt that George Bush has for the entire rest of our Constitutional government and its people.

Sign up, me hearties, yo-ho!

Book Bits

This is from Chapter Five of "Ungrateful Dead". I'm sorry about the bizarro paragraph breaks in the text...Word 2007 is an evil piece of trash and LJ apparently doesn't like indents.

The murder of Tam Linn, aka Tommy Linetti, has just taken place backstage at the Fillmore, and Prax, Rennie's best friend and an upcoming rock singer, is being questioned...

Just to tempt you a little, hopefully...and to ask you once again, if you've ever enjoyed anything I've written, pleeeeeez put up a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. I don't benefit royalty-wise from out of print sales, but if you review the book it helps counteract some of the bad stuff that's up there on those sites. Especially Amazon. And for "Dead" it moves the book up the listings.

As of now there's 9 reviews each on Amazon and Lulu. Come on, encourage an author here! The more you write, the more I write. I'm just sayin'.




CHAPTER FIVE


"I keep telling you," said Prax wearily, on the point of either tears or tantrum or possibly both, "I went to scrounge some guitar strings from him, 'cause I broke two of mine at the sound check and then I broke the spares too. I was nervous and I overtuned, and there wasn't time to go out and buy more. Tam plays the same kind of guitar I do, I figured he'd have some extra ones I could borrow. I wasn't going to steal them. I would have given them back, or paid for them. It's the first time I ever played here, I didn't know who to ask or where to go. I didn't even see him at first."

"Who did you see?" asked the detective. "Backstage?"

"Just—people. Nobody who stood out. There's always a lot of people backstage before a show. The Fillmore stage crew. The cats who do the lights and the light show. Roadies for the bands, mine included. Plus friends of the bands, you know. Groupies and people just here to—wish us well."

"People with drugs?"

"Maybe. Probably. Bill Graham doesn't like drugs himself, but he doesn't stop musicians from doing them backstage. Or even onstage. Or the audience either. But you can't bust him for that—"

"Miss McKenna," her inquisitor said, not unkindly, but making damn sure she heard the exasperation in his tone, "I assure you we have bigger things to think about tonight than a few pothead musicians toking up. So when did you first see him, then? The victim."

Prax hesitated, and the official police pen abruptly stopped scribbling. 'The victim'…he means Tam…how very strange…

"Not him himself. I saw the—blood," she said reluctantly. "It had trickled out of the road case, you could see it on the floor."

"Out of the what?"

"The road case, the anvil case—the big trunk that you put things in to take on the road. Amps and drums and stuff. Anyway, I thought it couldn't possibly be what I thought it was, what it looked like. When I went to check, just to be sure, I saw that the trunk lid wasn't latched and when I touched it it swung open, like a book, and he just—fell out. Well, his right arm did. Not the rest of him. He was in there pretty tight."

"He'd been stuffed in the trunk?"

"You know he was, it's—he's—just like he is over there."

Prax didn't look, but jerked her chin Tam-wards, over to where the double-sided case, big enough to take a full-grown man if he was well folded up, stood with rubber-gloved police technicians surrounding it. Thank God its open side faced away from her.

"He was sitting there in the case, his knees right up to his chin. He was wearing that fringed jacket he always wore on stage, and his face was turned away from me. But I knew it was him. I could tell by the hair. I couldn't see where the blood was coming from, except that the side of the jacket was all wet and dark. So I screamed for help."

"What time was this?"

"I don't know, I don't wear a watch. Maybe six? We had come early for the sound check. B.B. and the Lamps had to do theirs too, and we wanted to get it over with and then go out for something to eat, not have to rush. But Bill Graham doesn't let bands leave once they're here, so we ate first and then came over."

"And you were alone in the dressing room?"

"Yes. Well, except for him. Tam. Dead Tam."

"When was the last time you saw him alive, then?"

Prax unfocused her gaze, trying to remember. "I guess—when we all got here. He was just sitting, watching the house crew and his own roadies unloading Deadly Lampshade's equipment."

"He wasn't unloading equipment himself?"

She snorted with laughter before she could help herself. "Tam? He never lifts a finger. He doesn't bother with checks; he even has other people tune his guitar for him. What sort of musician is that?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said the detective cheerfully, and Prax felt a little better. Maybe this won't be so bad, it's almost over, how many more questions can he ask…

"How many crew were around, Miss McKenna, and how many band members?"

"Well, my band has two roadies, Tank and Idaho, and a sound guy, Ziggy, but we all help with the equipment; there are five musicians, counting me. Six in the Lampshade, plus three roadies, a sound guy and a light guy; and I think B.B. King has eight cats in his group. He used the Fillmore crew to set up, he didn't have any roadies that I noticed, though I'm sure he does."

"So you and the other band, the Lampshade, you have your own help and you didn't use the house crew at all."

"No, no, the Fillmore crew is great, they do most of the work. I just meant that with the house crew around, our guys didn't have to bust their hump like they usually do."

"And they all were where?"

"Onstage. Setting up. Like I said. When I came backstage to ask Tam for the guitar strings, I didn't see anybody."

"But you had seen him earlier. Not just sitting lazily onstage. Here?"

Prax's voice had gone a little wary and reluctant. "—Yes."

"Well, what? Did you have a fight with him?"

"Not exactly."

"Miss McKenna—"

"Oh, okay, you're going to find out anyway… He tried to hit on me."

"You mean he made a pass at you. A physical pass?"

"It wasn't the first time." Despairingly: "And since someone's bound to tell you about it sooner or later, I might as well tell you myself. Yes, we did have a, a thing once, Tam and me. It didn't go anywhere, a couple of weeks was all. But that doesn't give him the right to feel me up every chance he gets."

"It certainly doesn't. What did you do?"

"Same thing I always do when he tries that crap with me. Told him to go screw himself."

"And something else?"

"—I slapped his face. Really hard. But that's all. I swear. It was only because he was, you know, groping me—seriously groping me, please don't make me get into anatomical specifics—and he wouldn't stop until I hit him."

"What did he do when you hit him?"

"Rubbed his cheek and laughed. Then he left the room. I didn't see him again until—"

"That's fine, take your time." The voice was professionally neutral, and Prax shivered. "When you came back later looking for the guitar strings, and you saw him, if you didn't touch him how did you know he was dead?"

"Well, there was all the blood, wasn't there? Kind of a tip-off? And he wasn't moving or anything, and I thought that if he was actually alive he probably wouldn't have let anybody stuff him in there like that."

The unspoken "You fucking moron" hung between them in the breeze, and the detective, no doubt hearing it telepathically, looked all at once a bit more human.

"No. Of course not. I'm sorry to make you go through this."

"Am I a suspect?" asked Prax after a pause.

"Everyone who was in the Fillmore tonight will be questioned, Miss McKenna. And probably plenty more who weren't."

"Should I call my manager? Or a lawyer?"

"If you want to. Nothing stopping."

"Do I need a lawyer?"

"You tell me."

As the discoverer of the body, Prax was being dealt with much like Columbus when he came back to Spain full of big fat whoppers about a whole New World: people weren't exactly disbelieving her, but neither were they buying her story entirely. Or maybe that was just how it seemed to her. Other cops were talking now to the rest of Karma Mirror and to B. B. and his musicians and to the Lampshade and the Fillmore crew, but no one was saying very much, and they all looked every bit as freaked out as she felt. And anyway, nobody else had been around when she walked in and found Tam dead, so she was on her own.

The detective saw Bill Graham enter the room, and excused himself to go question him. Or, more likely, be screamed at by him. Prax found to her chagrin that she was on the verge of tears again, and couldn't decide, to her shame, whether she wanted the detective to see this and feel sorry for her, or whether she'd rather he didn't see it and think how cool she was. Either way, she was still alone, and she didn't know where she stood or what to do or whom to trust.

Maybe I should call Rennie, she's the only person I know who might be able to help. Jasper wasn't home or at the office, no one even knows I'm in trouble…would they let me make one more phone call, since I couldn't reach Jas? Or is that one-call deal only if you've been busted? Which I don't think I have yet? Or have I?

The moment was interrupted by forensic technicians getting down to work, by morgue attendants coming in to remove Tam and the road case together, and then, like some kind of miracle, by a hippie dea ex machina: Rennie entering in a great swift rush of air and energy, her red snakeskin coat flying behind her like a Valkyrie's cloak, intent only on getting to Prax. Before her approach, people leaped aside in terror; in her wake, Stephen came bobbing helplessly, a dinghy behind a destroyer.

"Not another word, Praxie, here's your lawyer, shut up at once, do you hear me?"

"He had such a great voice," Prax heard herself saying somewhere far away, into one of those sudden silences, and everyone within earshot turned to stare at her, so out of it had she sounded. And looked: all glazed and dazed.

"Yeah, well, the first time I ever met him he was being a total jackass," said Rennie brutally, hoping to shock Prax back to normal, heedless of scandalized looks from the eavesdroppers clearly thinking Who is this chick, hasn't she ever heard of speaking no ill of the dead?

Apparently Rennie had not, or if she had, she didn't particularly care. "It was a photo shoot for the Clarion—Garrett had written the story himself. Tam couldn't be bothered, apparently, fixing his own goddamn hair. Good hair, I must say. Thick and straight. Like goat hair. He just tossed his head, flicked me a leather headband like I was Mammy dressing Scarlett for the barbecue, and said, 'Do it for me, babe.' "

"What did you do?" asked Prax, diverted; she had had such a rush of relief and gratitude at seeing Rennie that for the moment she'd forgotten what was going on around her.

"What I should have done was loop the thing around his throat and strangle him right there… Just kidding, officers! No, I took that headband and tied it so tight I hope he got a migraine. Anyway, I think he dyes the lovely mane. Dyed it. Died it. Oh, dear."

"I've been doing that myself. That detective hasn't helped— What? No, the kinda cute one over there arguing with Bill. I think they think I did it. But I only found him, you know."

"I do know. It's going to be fine."

Prax belatedly noticed the other person standing patiently behind Rennie. "Stephen! What are you doing here? Well, what are both of you doing here? I was going to call you, Rennie, I couldn't get hold of Jasper, but I just—I didn't—"

"It's okay," said Rennie, with a swift glance at Stephen. "It's okay. I was coming anyway, to do that little piece Jasper asked for, remember? But Stephen phoned to say you were in trouble, and we both came straight here. I drove, he cabbed. We just met up outside."

"Then, thank you, Stephen—but how did you know?"

Stephen smiled at her—encouragingly, he hoped. He liked Prax, a lot, but she scared him even more than Rennie now did.

"I got a call from—oh, there he is. "

Rennie followed his eyeline. "Him? That's the detective who's been hassling Prax. I'd call him the pig detective if I were a Berkeley girl. Which, thank you God and Cornell and Columbia, I am not… He called you?"

Across the room, the detective's eyes widened and warmed as he noticed them; with a word and an upraised hand he left Bill Graham, with whom he had been talking, or rather, by whom he had been being profanely shouted at, and came over to them at once.

"Marcus! Glad to see you!"

They know each other? Rennie stared as the two shared a manly bear hug. The detective stood about Stephen's height, just shy of six feet, with a great build and gray eyes and caramel-colored hair, on the longish side for a cop, sort of 1964 Beatles. He was even cuter than Stephen, and he looked vaguely familiar.

"Hi there, cousin. And of course you're Rennie."

Cousin? COUSIN?

"Of course, if you say so—and you are…?" asked Rennie politely, if a touch tartly.

My cousin-in-law, I presume…

"Marcus Dorner. Inspector Marcus Lacing Dorner, SFPD," he added, in case she hadn't yet gotten it.

"Marcus is my second cousin on my father's side," said Stephen. "I didn't get a chance to tell you before you hung up and ran out of the house. He called me because he knew I knew Prax."

Marcus nodded, smiling. "And I also knew, because everybody in the family does, that cousin Stephen's wife is the Rennie Stride who writes for the Clarion. We've met before, at one or two family events, but you won't remember. I've read your stuff."

"Thank you, glad you like it."

"I only said I read it," said Marcus, amused. "But yes, I do like what I've read, very much. You've got a nice sharp style."

"And speaking of sharp—"

"Right, right. So it was you who found the body, Prax?" asked Stephen.

But Marcus intervened, all cop again. "Are you really acting as her lawyer, Stephen? I'll have to ask you all to come down to the Hall of Justice, then. Just to talk."

"Prax?" asked Stephen, looking with concern at her bent blond head. "Do you want me to—I'm a corporate lawyer, I don't have much experience in this sort of thing, but just for now—"

"That's right, just for now," snapped Rennie. "Now is all we need. All right, then, let's split."

Who Let the Dog Out?

Walking to the gym, I saw something amazing, something I'd only ever read about in books. It was a bright afternoon with wind and some moving clouds, and then, right there over 3rd Avenue, there it was.

A sundog. It's a meteorological phenomenon, to do with clouds and specific angles of the reflected sun. But that's not what it IS. Which is a ball of white fire in the clouds, right across from the sun and so bright you can hardly look directly at it: radiant, silver, glowing. For a moment there, I actually thought the Earth had acquired a second sun. Which would have been so cool.

I've seen something like it before: on a winter flight to Toronto some years back, to do a TV show, I looked out the window and saw the plane shadow below in a glory, a round rainbow with the same kind of sundog light. Sometimes this is called the specter of the Brocken, after a German mountain where it was first noticed: a giant shadow on clouds far below, in a blazing rainbow. Fantastic. Watched it all the way across New York State.

You don't get this kind of thing much in an urban environment. And if you do, you're not always outside in a position to see it. Though I have seen the most spectacular double rainbow ever, arching over the towers of midtown on a thunderstormy afternoon against a dramatic backdrop of retreating black clouds, once, long ago. And some others in Mount Desert Island, Maine and Hana, Maui that were almost as good.

But I'd never seen a proper sundog. And now I have. So I watched till it was gone, then went to the gym, where a personal trainer knocked the stuffing out of me with power yoga, and went home to eat shu mai, Chinese shrimp dumplings, which I felt I richly deserved.

Sundogs and dumplings. Altogether a fine, FINE day.

Huck and Jive

This REALLY interests me...it almost makes Huckabee sound almost good. Which...NOT.

From today's NYTimes:

In the Republican field, no candidate has less association with Iraq than Mr. Huckabee, a politically lucky and unintended consequence of his spectacular ignorance about foreign policy in general. When he finally did speak up in a newly published essay in Foreign Affairs, he condemned the Bush administration for its “arrogant bunker mentality” in its execution of the war. Mr. Romney, sensing an opening among the party faithful, loudly demanded that Mr. Huckabee “apologize to the president” for this insult. But Mr. Huckabee had the political savvy not to retreat, and in Iowa’s final hours even Mr. Romney desperately reversed himself to slam Mr. Bush’s mismanagement of Iraq.

Among the Republican candidates, Mr. Huckabee is also as culturally un-Bush as you can get. He constantly reminds voters that he did not go to an Ivy League school and that his plain values derived from a bona fide blue-collar upbringing, as opposed to, say, clearing brush on a vacation “ranch” bought with oil money attained with family connections. “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off,” he told Mr. Leno, in a nifty reminder of Mr. Romney’s corporate history as a Bush-style, Harvard-minted M.B.A.

It’s such populist Huckabee sentiments that are already driving the Republican empire to strike back. The party that has milked religious conservatives for votes for two decades is traumatized by the prospect that one of that ilk might actually become its standard-bearer. Especially if the candidate in question is a preacher who bashes Wall Street and hedge-fund managers and threatens to take a Christian attitude toward those too poor to benefit from the Bush tax cuts.

No wonder the long list of party mandarins eager to take down Mr. Huckabee includes Rush Limbaugh, Robert Novak, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review. Dan Bartlett, the former close Bush adviser, has snickered at Mr. Huckabee’s presumably low-rent last name. Fred Barnes was reduced to incoherent babbling when a noticeably gloomy Fox News announced Mr. Huckabee’s victory Thursday night.

But if, as the new narrative has it, Mr. McCain will ride to the party’s rescue, the Republicans’ relief may be short-lived. He is their most experienced and principled horse, but he’s also the oldest and the most encumbered by Bush and Iraq baggage. The NBC News analyst Chuck Todd may be on to something when he half-jokingly suggested last week that there was a 5 percent chance that the G.O.P. may have to find a nominee not yet in the race.

I am getting SO sick of the endless clown parade that is the nominating process. At this point, I can't stand ANY of them except possibly John Edwards, and would vote for Al Gore in a green nanosecond.

I think Obama is a pandering sack of nothingness, and Hillary just seems desperate and clutching. They both blither on ceaselessly about the need for change, which is right on, but I haven't noticed either of them offering any actual, you know, IDEAS for change. It's just all blither. Smooth-talking blither in Barack's case, jangly blither in Hillary's.

I like Edwards the best of the Dems, which is saying very little, actually. But he's a rough, tough populist, and that's really what we could all use right about now.
The two Democrats with the most real experience (sorry, Hillary!) are Biden and Dodd, and they're out, which makes me cross.

As to the Repuglicans, they make me want to throw up. All over them, preferably. Rudy is a piece of slime, and we NYC'ers have always thought so. Romney and Huckabee are Darwin-deniers who then try to deny their denials, or at least try to make the denials seem plausible. Sounds like Darwinism in action to me, fellas! I look forward to your speedy extinction.

Did you know that Huckabee and Obama have a sum total of FOUR YEARS in office? Yes. And that could be either a very good thing or a very, very bad thing.

A Winter's Tale

It has been absolutely FREEZING here for the last two nights. Well, actually, it left freezing behind about twenty degrees ago. And the wind was ferocious---I had to duct-tape plastic over the a/c window and hang blankets in front of the others. I like it cold, as you may know, but this was ridiculous.

Itemization of items on Patricia's bed:
regular sheets and five foam or down pillows;
flannel sheet;
four (4) homemade afghans ("affagans", as my grandma, who made them, called them);
sweatshirt-fleece St Bonaventure blanket;
big damask comforter and matching long shams filled with down pillows;
shearling coverlet (ten squares need replacing, must send back to place in Pennsylvania that made it, once cold weather is over);
Jim's shearling coat (now Turk's);
my big heavy pale gold fox coat (makes me look like a giant palomino-colored refrigerator when I wear it, but I don't care, it's WAAAAAAARM);
red fox coat given me by Kathleen Quinlan and used as throw on bed;
fox/mink/lynx throw;
I think that's about it.

Itemization of items on Patricia:
warm fuzzy nightgown;
dark purple cashmere socks;
sheepskin slippers from L.L. Bean's, best slippers in the world;
warm fuzzy pink dressing gown (makes me think of Hermione Granger's in HP&TSS);
big rectangular fox wrap sewn to chenille scarf.

Itemization of items in bed:
warm and nummy, Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate in oversized pottery cup with lizard on;
copy of "Ungrateful Dead";
copy of HP&TDH;
copy of "The Little White Horse" by Elizabeth Goudge (one of my alltime fave comfort reads);
laptop, for communication and as heating device;
copy of "Sister to the Rain" by Melisa Michaels (one of the funniest books I ever read, along with its predecessor "Cold Iron", both out of print, go find them on bookfinder.com or abebooks.com---elves in the modern world, and in a ROCK GROUP, absolutely hilarious, even if she does take a swipe at Jim);
beading board and assorted beads and tools---taking a leaf from Tansy Belladonna, I'm making some new necklaces (made FIVE: big rough ametrine chunks; egg-sized turquoise flat ovals; green pearls strung with a cream and green cameo of Dionysus, in I think bakelite; gold rutilated quartz; long bloodstone curved ones with a giant clear moss agate centerpiece);
there's probably more stuff around in the general vicinity, including stray beads that made a break for freedom, but I'm too tired to look.
Oh, and a little plate of butter cookies from the local bakery: apricot jam-filled crescents dipped in dark chocolate. So, crumbs.

It's warmer tonight, which means low 30's...positively balmy. So I took down the window plastic. But the rest stays.

I wish it would snow. We've had hardly any all winter so far, and now the sun is setting later, and already I feel the relentless creep of spring...nooooooooo! Not ready! Not enough winter!
I see where California is getting clobbered by two storms in succession: FIVE FEET OF SNOW in the High Sierra. I am sooooo envious.

Not writing at the moment. Spent the past week clearing out the place: gave two violins and a lap harp to the Third Street Music School Settlement (on Eleventh Street, of course). Tons of clothes to charity and tons of books to the Housing Works.

So I think I've earned the cocoa and cookies...



Oh, and just one thing: I've been getting emails on LJ and MySpace from people who claim to have read the blogs and my books as well, and STILL feel the need to ask "Is this really you, Patricia?"

Yeesh. Can't they kind of, you know, TELL? From the sheer crankiness as well as from the writing style and the advance book information and secret Jim things? If you don't believe it's really me, maybe you shouldn't be hanging around here.


Back to the cocoa. Go forth and do thou likewise. You know you want to!