Yeah, so it’s been a couple of months since I posted anything here. Been a little busy. Sorry about that.
Some good news-I have the cover art for my book, all finished and ready to go. I’ve written out all of the stories, have final edits on most of them, and have preliminary sketches for the interior illos. All systems are go for an indy printing, which I’ll do in October if no other options present themselves. Updates to any or all of these conditions can be found on the book’s official facebook page. You don’t have to be a member of or join facebook to access that page.
I’ll be doing a promotional video, featuring this background music. I wrote it and played all of the parts except for the drums, which I assembled from premade loops and midi sequences. They sound pretty life-like but they’re Frankenstein’s monsters like all of my percussion tracks. The music is pretty wild if I do say so myself.
If at all possible, I’ll do a tune and a video for each story as well.
In the background, here at the planet, I’m assembling some secret stews and making some progress on future content. The copying and pasting of pages from Letters from Outside is underway, at last, and that archive should be fully moved by the end of the year. The webcomic/graphic novel Fear and Loathing in Innsmouth are well underway, and will definitely see the light of the new year. I need a lotta wiggle room because, frankly, I’m not as industrious as I’d like to be. My lungs still haven’t fully recovered from the shock of double pneumonia, followed by pneumothorax and the rest of the misadventures my body went on while my mind was otherwise occupied. If nothing else, I have the material for a lot of nightmares. Some sequences based on periods of delirium have already found their way into Crazytown.
Have managed to accomplish some things, in my persistent although faltering way.
I’ve been lurking in the Cracked writing forums and have submitted a couple of article ideas. We’ll see what happens with that. I’m also penning a few reviews, destined mostly for the Lovecraftian ezine if they’ll have ‘em. Going to take a look at some things that I haven’t seen reviewed anywhere else, like the October 79 issue of Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant.
And finally, more music. I have some stuff in the can that will get outed this year, and some new things that are starting to take final shape. Some of these last have actual vocals on them, mostly the cover tunes. I have six done of a possible howevermany (A baker’s dozen is my original plan). More on that below: Continue reading Ooops!

Today’s feature is the Bears against Kansas City, at Soldier Field in Chicago. As I write, the Bears are perched on the 4, 4th down and 1 yard to go. A nice td pass is about to be taken back because of a penalty, and the Bears will be shooting for the field goal. Game’s a little chippy-lol, the announcer said that just as I was typing.
May day
The doc took the otoscope, shone it in my ear, looked briefly at the spot of light on the opposite wall, and said, “I don’t see anything”.
We believe that is why I received no loss of cognitive function during my long term in the ICU-there hadn’t been any activity in that organ in the first place.
It’s been a year now since I got out of the convalescent center, Catalina Care. I’m getting to the point where I’m starting to envy people who have to go to work every day. Wish I could. Le sigh. As a professional lazy person, I find it unconscionable that I want to go back to working. But there it is.
Good old ARDS. We had a consultation with the pulmonologist last week. Apparently the scarring in my lungs isn’t any better than it was at this point last year. My “signs are a little too good to be on the transplant list,” I’m told. Imagine my glee.
I want one of those portable oxygen machines. I have a call in to case manager, but that call hasn’t been returned yet. The Pulmonary Doc said he doesn’t usually recommend them until after five years. I was too busy looking daggers at him to reply. What an asinine point of view-it’d be cheaper for the taxpayer to foot the one-time cost (@2500-3500.00) for one of those than to pay for eight weeks of 10-12 oxygen tanks/week.
That’s right, it’d pay for itself in @6 weeks. That’s how much it costs to have those tanks filled up. The delivery cost must be negligible-it costs the same to go and get them.
So there’s my argument, based on plain common cents. It probably won’t fly because, well, shit, it makes sense. Can’t have that.
I hate being a shut-in. Most of the time my only human contacts are Denise and the UPS guy. It’s hard for me to get out and walk around, because I get huffy/puffy pretty quick, but it’d be easier with the portable thing than the two or three tanks I need to, say, go to the movies or the library.
Yeah, it’s great that I’m alive. It was a miracle that I survived, and my case was worse than most. But this kinda half-life I have to lead, and the grim specter that some of it may have been due to the treatment of the syndrome (ventilator pressure is considered to be a leading cause of scarring in the lungs – it has to be very carefully regulated, and that’s only recently been discovered), which is really not well-known or understood among the medical community, both dovetail into quality – of – life purgatory pretty quickly.
I’ll have the brie, if you would.
I couldn’t do a day’s work if I tried. I have to take a nap after going to the grocery store.
Though a lot of the online information initially says that the recovery period is about a year, the websites go on to qualify that until it’s obvious that this isn’t the case at all.
My personal view is that nobody really knows.
Some say 3-5 years. The pulmonologist is one of those.
I’ve had marked improvement in the past year. But there’s a long way to go. Even those ARDS patients that have fully recovered experience some kind of loss of ability. Not real hopeful.
And the body of literature online is not very extensive. Much of it is bullshit. There’s a bogus support forum, an organization that exchanges greetings, nothing substantial or useful. Especially if one is a patient and wants specific information about things. Like why you can’t breathe, insubstantial shit like that.
It takes patient detective work. Sometimes you have to wait for the information to be published. Sometimes you have to go get it, or assemble it piecemeal, in vague form, collated out of a dozen articles and featurettes about something else. Christ! It’s almost like ferreting out real political information (you know, policies, real voting records and performance).
For instance, I’m on the track right now of the effect bodily production of protocannabinoids can have on the human immune response, if augmented by an outside source of cannabinoids. There’s a very real question about this, and the answer is important to a lot of people with immune-system-related illnesses (AIDS and lupus would be other examples).
The pharmas don’t want that answered publicly, I don’t think. But information is filtering out bit by bit. Some of that is for a novel, some of it is for myself.
Anyway…I’m just trying to get a little attention for the syndrome, to help others who might have the thing happen to them, to be able to impart a little information.
I’ve been there. I’m there now. I’m sorry. Here’s what you need to know…
There’ll eventually be a book.
So you taxpayers that I work for, this is what I do with your money. What do I need to do for a raise?