I am Johnny Yen

Finally kept my appointment yesterday to donate platelets at the Red Cross center in Glen Bernie yesterday, which turned out to be a lot like the prcoes sof donating plasma, except for the very uncomfortable difference of having both arms immobilized with needles and tubes. The siphoning ran about an hour and a half, with the platelets, suspended in plasma, centrifuged out, and the red blood cells returned through the other arm. Not particularly cozy, but I was treated to a private screening of Syriana, which I understood on first viewing not one bit.

But the challenge of enduring discomfort for the greater bodily good of strangers has piqued my interest, so I looked into donating marrow. Sadly, those with a history of cancer are encluded from consideration, no matter how willing the applicant is to have needles jammed into his hip bone. Not sure why this is, and I've written away to marrow.org for an explanation.

Little, Big

So this Monday, I'll be interviewing for a stint with Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Assuming I don't trip some kind of BBBS profiling alert ("tell me more about your temporary fascination with the Cranes, Mr. Bockhorst"), I'll be paired up with a local 8-12-year-old, with whom I'll be palling around at least twice a month. I'm led to believe that they try to match similar interests, which means I'll probably get something along the lines of an emo baseball & superhero enthusiast. We'll see how it goes - somehow, I feel like I'll still relate to the tween set all too well.

Remote Incensing

Blogger has apparently progressed since I've last used it to the point where I can post via Blackberry e-mail. So this is a test. Only a test.

Is This Thing On?

Getting my writing-ass back in order, and accordingly rebooting my sadly-neglected blog. Seeing as I've still got quite a bit to do tonight (the chosen site for accomplishing which is Spirits Tavern), this entry will just be a quick notice-serving. But as Clarissa Pinkola Estes noted, we've gotta get this written crap out somehow.

I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You

Maybe I'm not going to go that far with Bush, although I was a little alarmed at how much surging anger came to the surface when the images of Bush boarding the Executive One helicopter taking him to Andrews AFB came on the screen. Given how he mocked Karla Faye Tucker's pleas for mercy before he denied her a stay of execution (which was probably more consideration than he gave the cases of any other death row inmates in Texas -- the average amount of time he spent reviewing such cases was reportedly 15 minutes), I really wouldn't feel unusually bad about wishing that man ill. He was, after all, responsible for the deaths of hundred of thousands more people than Karla Faye. Somehow it's just not enough that he can't hurt the country any further.

Tiny Bubbles

Just got through with a Phase II evaluation of an 18th Century site in Southern Maryland that was slightly less interesting than it should have been, but it was nice to get back outside for a while at least. Unfortunately, my second unit was done directly in a large patch of poison ivy, and minute blisters have cropped up all over my arms and fingers, and the swelling around my eyes is just going down as I type. Of course, I couldn't resist the urge to rip all of those little blisters off, and now my fingers look like cute little mauled pig carcasses hanging from meat locker hooks. And I can't touch Janine until they're healed. I'm a little chagrined.

Video for the Radio Star

Congratulations to my sweet, sweet mistress Rachel Maddow on getting her own show on MSNBC! She's one of the most intriguing, entertaining political personalities on any medium at the moment, and one hell of a good kisser! Makes me wish I had cable...

And one way to celebrate the birth of Mr. Providence: what looks like it might be a decent Lovecraft movie not involving either Jeffrey Combs or Stuart Gordon. S.T. Joshi calls it the best adaptation to date -- the competition for the title is far from stiff (and I hate to think Joshi's actually sat through all of them), but it's heartening. They've started taking comic books seriously in cinema, maybe gothic horror is next?

Neko Case, "Hold On, Hold On"

Something to chew on while I come up with something interesting to say...

I Always Mean To...

My now-habitual failure to post anything isn't from lack of desire, I've just gotten very, very far out of the habit. And I aim to get back into it, starting tomorrow. Damn it, I got the "get in shape" resolution under control finally, you'd think I could wrap up something like posting on my damn blog more often...

Meanwhile, I just got a 95% on my boating license test, which means I can pilot any motorized vessel less than 65 feet in length. We went in on a small craft with an outboard with Ray shortly ago, so the next time we're down in Bivalve, the seas are mine! Arrrrrr.

Kitty Vacant

It's sort of old news now, but Kitty is now back with us after spending a week in lost cat camp on the Eastern Shore a couple of weeks ago. Not wanting to lock him up in our house alone for three days without his life-coach of a dog, we took him with us to my mom's house for her second annual Memorial Day blow out. Unfortunately, Kitty took advantage of the opportunity to escape the room we were keeping him in, effectively fleeing one unfamiliar environment for the much larger unfamiliar environment of the great outdoors. We spent the rest of that long weekend looking for him, expecting to hear his keening any moment, but it never came.

We spent the next week working in Baltimore/Frederick, e-mailing missing cat posters to my mom for her to post around the area, and called the Eastern Shore Humane Society to make sure he hadn't been incarcerated. We drove down the following Friday evening -- I'd somehow figured I had about a 20% chance of finding him; he either stuck around the house as a fairly familiar place, or fell in with a gang of ferals and found a new life as a bad kitty.

We arrived around 11, exhausted, and after stopping along the side of Nanticoke Road when Janine saw an orange tabby in a ditch. The cat ran off after we pulled over (something Kitty would never do after Carter jumped out of the back seat), but a couple of local came out of a nearby house with a shotgun to make sure we weren't the folks that broke into their shed. I was resigned to turning in, and to the fact that we were going to wind up spending the rest of the weekend tromping through the briars looking for the cat. Janine wanted to take a few minutes and roam the immediate neighborhood, so I went out with her shirtless, calling the cat's name. And about five minutes later, we heard some plaintive meowing coming from the neighbor's shed across the street. Cat found. But man, was he bitchy after we got him out -- he kept us up most of that night banging his head against our chins trying to get us to pet him.


You've got a week's worth of massages to catch up on, you bastards! Get the hell up!