Writing About Not Writing

This year has been one of trials and triumphs. I haven’t been reading, studying Danish, or even writing very much. House cleaning, and my favourite goofy online game Kingdom of Loathing have likewise suffered. I miss those things, and I hope to get back to them as soon as I can.

There have been quite a lot of ups and downs lately. As Danish director Lars von Trier said, at the end of each episode of his bizarre show the Kingdom: “You have to take the good with the evil.” Of course, he said it in Danish, so it sounded all cool and punk and stuff.

Anyway, there’s been some good, but also a bit of evil.


Over Christmas, our little ferret Ayumi ended her far-too-brief time here on earth. Bright little lights who burn so briefly, ferrets bring a lot of joy while they are here. But they are fragile and her tiny system gave up after a protracted fight with illness. That was four days before Christmas.

In January, Suzi’s dad got pneumonia. Hospital stays, oxygen treatments and a long recovery followed. Suzi spent more than two weeks out on the West Coast, helping out, leaving her hapless housemate to deal with things here. She was even out there through her birthday, which I guess we’ve still not really celebrated, two months later. We were both exhausted.

When she returned to Dallas, we both caught the flu.

The flu sucks—it’s not like some wimpy little cold where you sniffle for two days and return to normal. No indeed, this was a week of absolute misery, unable to do much of anything—high fevers, coughing, sleep for two hours, get up for one, then repeat the process. So anyway, instead of enjoying Mardi Gras in Port Arthur with my friends Sue and Jason, I got to enjoy a week of the flu. Not nearly so much fun, I’m afraid.

I don’t get paid if I don’t work…so that was not good. The last half year has had some highs and lows financially. One of my most stalwart private clients has had to quit getting her weekly massages. Her reasons are very good, I can’t blame her a bit, but it wasn’t exactly a welcome hit, particularly as Annie came out for two whole weeks in November. We had an awesome time, but two weeks with no work was not easy for me to budget.

Our immune systems thus compromised, Suzi and I entered into a roller coaster of sicknesses, with my germs heading for my lungs, and hers heading into her sinuses. She wound up with a root canal, I wound up with a hard-to-shake cough and inflamed salivary glands. Seven hundred dollars to the doctors, and the constant fear that I’m going to give this to my clients (even though the doc says I’m not very contagious). As of today (Saturday the 25th) I’m almost completely recovered.

We’ve also lost some on-line friends in the last six months. First there was an altercation in the game Urban Dead. Some people accused Suzi of doing some things that ranged from bad to downright hateful. First they didn’t like the expert way she and Chris role-play their characters (too good…intimidates everyone else and makes them not want to play with them), then accusations of varying sorts flew. They even accused Suzi of being so clueless that she “accidentally betrayed” her group to the bad guys. Next thing I knew, we were all on the outs with a group we’d been hanging with for years.

But we remained friends with some of them…for awhile anyway.

Then, well, our other characters got into it. I thought we were playing a game. Their characters started, to my perception, picking on someone we didn’t know. I tried to ignore it…and it persisted. I asked them nicely to stop, and it persisted. So, I had my character have a temper tantrum and storm out. In the game.

On the forum, I tried to explain that I was playing a character. But they realized that I am a bad person, not to be trusted. It got more and more vehemently personal. Chris and Suzi came to my defense and some WEIRD things were said about them.

We had it. We left. People who had said they would be our friends forever, evaporated. They didn’t return emails. They said things that hurt. A lot. Now they’re gone.

But we still have our Brits—some of the nicest people I’ve ever had the chance to meet.


But there is good to go with the evilness, of course.

I’m picking up more regular clients at the clinic. I keep hearing things like “That was the best massage I’ve ever had”, so that makes me feel good about my chosen field. The summer months are often a bit lean for massage therapists, so I have to try to get as many regulars as possible. When things are slow, I console myself by going through my notebook of them, reminding myself how many people really love the service I provide.

One thing I love about working in Frisco is the amazing variety of people I get to meet. One of my clients, from Taiwan, has taught me a few words of Chinese. Another, of Middle Eastern lineage, has let me try out my mad Arabic Skillz.

While I was in high school, we got a student who was born in Jordan. He was a great guy, and he taught me some phrases in Arabic. He even gave me some language tapes with Arabic phrases. Later, in college (Uni to you Brits), a nice guy named Sameer in my Organic Chem lab helped me learn some more.

So I met this wonderful client (Jeannie my dear young friend introduced us) and next thing you know, she, her husband, Suzi and I were eating great food at Afrah. I had tried out some of my Arabic on my client, her hubby was no less impressed. Turns out my pronunciation is still surprisingly good, even after over 20 years. So strange. My favourite phrase:

Hahl tata-kallum englizi?
(Do you speak English?)

My client has promised to teach me some other useful ones. So, you know, when I visit Oman or where ever, I’ll be able to order coffee and say howdy to everyone!

And we got another fuzzy-wuzzy. After Ayumi’s death, we took little Nick to the rescue shelter in order to let him pick out a new companion. He actually *sighed* when he saw all those ferrets, he was still missing Ayumi and I don’t think he wanted a new friend. But one little white ferret picked him out and came over and bothered him.—relentlessly. He eventually gave up, and we brought her home. We named her Xev, after the delightfully amoral (and frighteningly hot) woman from the insane science fiction TV show Lexx.

Little Xev is fitting in just fine. Fun loving, eager to please, and very friendly, Nick even gave up and started being friends with her after a while.

I’ve also had the opportunity to see a couple of amazing live performances. Ordinarily, I’m lucky to catch one show a year, but, but happy chance, I saw two within a week.

Brilliant Canadian songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen came to the Nokia Theatre and absolutely floored us. Ten virtuoso musicians, including three backup vocalists (each phenomenal in her own right) and a Spanish guitarist who completely stunned everyone with his technical artistry and the beauty of his work. Mr. Cohen, 74 years old, did eight encores, playing about three hours altogether. It was among the finest shows I’ve ever seen—ever.

Six days later, comedian-actor Denis Leary did a show at the same venue—his Rescue Me tour featured Leary and three other stand-ups taking turns on stage. Leary was crankily brilliant, of course, and Adam Ferrara was side-splittingly funny. The other two were not quite so funny, however. The first man seemed more suited to the Howard Stern Show, or working with that Imus guy perhaps—lots of vulgarity and not so much hilarity. Or perhaps the vulgarity was in place of actual funny content. It was hard to tell.

Lenny Clarke, who plays Uncle Teddy on the show, was pretty uneven. He was extremely political, and while I can usually laugh along with opposing viewpoints to my own (hey, our guys are just as idiotic as the other guys), his material often seemed to be geared toward inciting cheers or applause of agreement rather than actual laughter.

Overall, the show was excellent, despite the unevenness, and I got to see two of my absolute favourite people an stage within a week. Songwriter and geek favourite Jonathan Coulton will be here next month—I’ll be there too!

Among all this, I’ve had precious little time to write. In February, my friend Ella and I did a Brevity Quest for Everything2 (write as many articles as you can in a month—the only requirement being that they must be under 300 words). It was great fun, and we had even more entries than our last Brevity quest (which one of the guys called “possibly the most successful quest ever”). A guy who goes by the name “The Custodian” on there, was a one-man-writing-machine, cranking out close to a writeup a day, and they were really good ones too. I wrote three things, which is the last material I’ve added to E2.

Ella and I commissioned a BQ09 logo from Suzi, and she’s created some limited-edition swag in her CafePress store for the lucky winners.

That done, I’ve resigned my post as an editor on E2. It’s been a lot of fun, and a real honour, but for reasons you can probably infer from this blog, I have not had time to do a very good job—and you probably know me well enough to know how important it is for me to do a job I can be proud of.



Amidst all the craziness, my older sister Nina came into town. After Mother’s death, I kind of withdrew a bit, just wrote and kept to myself, it was really nice to see her again. She looks great! Healthy, happy, her family is doing well. We chatted over coffee at Starbucks and caught up.

Like a gift from the blue, unasked, Nina told me that she and her business have a stack of airline miles…she offered that if I ever want to go see Annie…

So guess where I am probably going this October!

Speaking of travel, I’m going to try to send Suzi to England to see Chris, Kat, Matt, Jess, Isla, Walter and that crazy gang. We are hoping to get her over there for August, they are doing some LARP thing called “The Gathering” I believe, and Lucian (Chris) needs his long lost sister Laura (Suzi) there. Besides, Brianna (Jess) is her bodyguard. What fun is it to have a bodyguard with nobody to guard?

So, obviously, despite the health issues, Suzi is still having a great time with her Brits. These people are just amazing friends for her. When she opened her CafePress store, they SWARMED it, buying dozens of items. They dote on her art and comment on her Flickr page. I’m so thrilled that she has people like that in her life.


I think things may be improving now. So I’ll hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and keep taking the good with the evil

(I wouldn’t mind a slight increase in the ratio, anyway.)