tjcrowley was in town this weekend, and I went out and had too much fun with him, and now I think I'm having a slight flu relapse. I'm not talking about flu in a bottle, either; the only thing I drank was about a third of a very nice bottle of Veuve Clicquot at Clancy's on Thursday night. Mostly I just wore myself out. Darren is one of those friends so dear and fun that he makes me forget I can no longer walk for miles and do as many exciting things as I want to without getting all crippled and exhausted. After I visited San Francisco a few years ago, he bragged that I was the only person who'd been able to keep up with him on a truly epic walk we made around the city ... but back then, I could take Vicodin at the end of the day. No more of that.

Yesterday morning, parishioners of Our Lady of Good Counsel and St. Henry's gathered in front of St. Louis Cathedral, where Archbishop Alfred Hughes was saying Palm Sunday Mass, for a silent, peaceful protest. Hughes was actually more decent than we expected, briefly coming up to talk to us after the Mass (of course, what he said was that he'd keep praying for us to see the wisdom of his church-closing plan, but we didn't think he would have the guts to address us at all). Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Fr. Crosby Kern, the rector of St. Louis Cathedral. Shortly after we assembled, he came out and looked at us, said, "Shame, shame," and then spit at us. A. Priest. Spit. At. Us. Then he called the police, and when they refused to make us leave -- hello, right of peaceable assembly -- he told them to get "this bag of trash" (the blessed palm fronds we'd set by the cathedral wall for people to take) off the sidewalk, and he insisted that they stay until the Mass was over in case we made trouble. Because, you know, the French Quarter police don't have anything better to do than sit around watching a bunch of Catholics holding signs. The cops ate bananas, drank some of our bottled water, and chatted with us until the archbishop left and Kern's hysteria apparently dissipated. Then we got back on our buses like good baby ducklings and went home, where I got a blinding headache and had to go back to bed for most of the rest of the day. Today I bequeath any ambitions I might have had to Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, and the rest of the mighty Carolina team. Go Tarheels!

CONFIDENTAL DEPT.

To Stephen E.: I have your signed copy of The Sound of Building Coffins.

To theninth: Thanks for the shirt; it made me laugh!

To marquisdd: I have a present for you whenever you happen to make it Uptown (or I downtown).

To Ramsey: Sorry I missed your call -- I was in Central Grocery having a muffuletta with Darren, and there is virtually no cell reception in those solid old French Quarter buildings. I have been thinking of you and will call or e-mail soon.

To eBay customers, if I have any left: I'll get some stuff up soon, I swear to God.

Talk about clicking on the wrong link ... somehow, some way, I just ended up on a N.C. State basketball fan forum, and observed that their derogatory nickname for UNC is "Carowhina." Jeez, that's the best you could do ... Cowfuckers? A better nickname might be "Caro-why-do-they-always-beat-our-shitkicker-asses-na," but I thought that might be a little long for State fans to remember, so I refrained from suggesting it. (See title, and give yourself 500 Whoopie Shit points if you get the Carolina reference.)

(This is all in fun. I do not like State's or Duke's basketball teams, yea, verily much do I not like them, but I had good friends who went to both schools, and of course Duke is an excellent university. So is State, I suppose, as long as you want to study agriculture, agriculture, or agriculture.)

We just brought our 15-year-old cat Boris (a.k.a. Boo) home from the vet, where he'd been getting IV fluids and tests since Friday. He had done that thing elderly cats sometimes do where they go from seeming fairly old to seeming absolutely ancient almost overnight, so we took him in and they had to keep him for a few days. Unfortunately, in this case, sending him home just means that they didn't feel they could do anything else for him and wanted him to spend his remaining time with us. It's likely that he has some kind of cancer, but mainly he's just old. Boo's life had a difficult beginning -- ( possible TMI for cat lovers ) -- but, despite not particularly liking other cats, he has had a good run with us. Now he seems comfortable and sleeps most of the time. I'll be keeping a careful eye on his condition, and have vowed not to wait too long just because we don't want to let him go.

So, the week after paying off Shaq's dental bill, we are back in hock to the vet. I've got some blank books that just need the finishing touches, and will try to put them on eBay tomorrow (today will probably be too overcast to get good pictures of them).

Halftime, hoping my Tarheels won't get turned to dust in the wind by Kansas.

I've organized a rally outside Our Lady of Good Counsel (this must stay outside the church to avoid getting Father Pat in trouble, as he has nothing to do with its planning) for Wednesday at 11:15 AM, the day the archdiocese's final decision on the church closings is supposed to come down. We hope to get coverage from the local media, so if anyone reading is involved with a New Orleans-area print publication, blog, radio or TV station, please make the scene if you can! Here's the press release I wrote for the national media contacts I've been able to make:

NEW ORLEANIANS BEING KICKED WHILE WE'RE DOWN ... YET AGAIN

The Archdiocese of New Orleans has announced plans to close a vibrant
and historic Catholic church, Our Lady of Good Counsel at 1235
Louisiana Avenue. This 114-year-old church ministers to 450 families,
including a large number of elderly and disabled parishioners who do
not have the ability to travel to another church. Both OLGC and
another historic Uptown church, St. Henry's (which is 152 years old
and ministers to 300 families) are to be closed in April. Our Lady of
Good Counsel was one of the first Catholic churches to reopen in New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, we have repaired the
minor wind damage we sustained in the storm, doubled the size of our
congregation, and made great progress toward paying off our debt to
the archdiocese. Our congregation ministers to the local poor through
the St. Vincent de Paul Society and other organizations, and we hold a
popular St. Joseph's altar each March 19, where the saint is honored
and the public is fed.

The archdiocese blames the closing on a shortage of priests (OLGC and
St. Henry's each have two priests in residence) and reminds us that we
"must make sacrifices for the good of the Church." We feel that we
have already sacrificed a great deal, while the archdiocese has
sacrificed little or nothing; they simply do not wish to help small
parishes that aren't putting money in their pockets.

Our Lady of Good Counsel is architecturally significant, with a
magnificent high altar, remarkable stained glass windows, a working
pipe organ, and other details that would make it part of a standard
church tour in any European city. Under the archdiocese's current
ruling, this beautiful and sacred building will be sold off to the
highest bidder and could even be torn down. Only in New Orleans do we
have so many unseen treasures, and only in New Orleans, it seems, are
we so ready to throw them away.

The archdiocese will announce its final decision re: Our Lady of Good
Counsel and St. Henry's on Wednesday, April 9. On that day at 11:15
AM, OLGC parishioners will gather in front of the church to discuss
the decision and rally in favor of keeping our place of worship open.
We greatly appreciate any support or coverage you can give us.

Here is OLGC's website:

http://www.olgcnola.org/

Very sincerely yours,

Poppy Z. Brite [ bookdocpzb (at) gmail (dot) com ]

You may also wish to contact Cheron Brylski [ CBrylski (at) aol (dot) com ], who
is coordinating the anti-closing efforts.


Please feel free to pass this along to anyone you think may be able to help. And to the folks who've sent me words of support but urged me to accept that the archdiocese never changes its mind, I have two words for you: St. Augustine's. I and the other parishioners at OLGC are trying not to build up false hope, but we sure don't plan to give in without a peep.

Chris has me taking an unhealthy interest in basketball again. I always keep an eye on Carolina, but in general I have become much more of a football fan. Now my dad's alma mater, Western Kentucky, is in the Sweet 16 (but having a hard time right now against UCLA). I'm currently watching Louisville play Tennessee and hoping Tenn will win because I feel sure UNC can beat them in the next round, but I'm not too optimistic here. Worst of all, I watched NBA highlights: Phoenix-Boston last night. I couldn't help it when I remembered that Shaq and Steve Nash are now playing together; Steve Nash is the greatest passer I've ever watched and this I had to see. They didn't do that well last night, but I fear I will be compelled to watch them play Philly tomorrow. I do not have time for this.

DEVIL PZB: I don't wanna edit manuscripts tonight. I wanna smoke pot and read It for the ten- thousand-and-thirtieth time.

ANGEL PZB: Put it on your TS list and send it to the chaplain, ringmeat. Your days of unemployment are over and you've been working slower than snot on a cold doorknob.

Speaking (as I did yesterday) about the only team in the world that is qualified to call itself "Carolina," I was reading an article in this morning's paper about the nooses that have been appearing everywhere since the Jena Six debacle. My eyes fell upon the line, "A toilet-paper noose was discovered hanging ... " Oh, fuck me, I thought. Who in the world would be stupid enough to make a noose out of toilet paper? I kept reading: " ... from a campus bathroom stall Nov. 8 at North Carolina State University." BWAAAAAA-HAAAA-HAAAA-HAAAAAA- HAAAAAAAH, YOU DUMBASS COWFUCKERS!!! I bet you thought you could really hang a guy with it, too, and he kicked your cracker ass.

No, nooses are not funny. But I'm sorry; N.C. State is. "Duke is puke, Wake is fake, but the team I hate is N.C. State. GO HEELS!" Yes, we really used to holler that. I still do, sometimes, during a particularly stressful college basketball game.

Today I received a fan letter of the sort that truly does my heart good from a young man in England, and since he included no return address or e-mail, I feel justified in reproducing it here so that perhaps he'll know how much it warmed my old cockles (of the HEART, o ye of dirty minds, of the HEART):

Hello Poppy,

I recently acquired a 10th anniversary numbered/lettered edition of Lost Souls and saw that you felt a little bit awkward about revisiting it in the foreword, either because you see it as reflecting your juvenile side, or because returning to it acts as a regressive step in a fast-paced life (or Option 'C'). I just wanted to tell you what it means to me (I'll be brief, it's not my autobiography). I guess around '93 a black-clad young lady in a pub booth in Nottingham said to me 'Have you read Lost Souls, I hadn't, but bought a copy some time later. I don't read much, but it was an enthralling, contemporary novel, where the characters don't quite fit into normality, I liked that immensely (like most readers would). It caught my imagination, and soon after a fiend [sic] of mine called Carole announced a meeting in Beckenham, you were there, seated between Brian Stableford and the large blood-orange figure of Ramsey Campbell, receiving a most humorous Lambda Award [note: it was actually a British Fantasy Award; the so-called "Lammies" have never seen fit to grace me with one of their precious benedictions -- but as anyone who has seen a British Fantasy Award knows, it is indeed quite amusingly phallic. And while I can't say I've ever noticed Ramsey looking particularly orange, I'm sure the description will amuse him greatly]. I visited the Big Easily-Wasted in '97, and tried the local scene, the Twinkies, the booze and the nightlife, apparently the girl in the local pizzeria kept asking my associates 'Hey, where is your sick friend' -- I believe that is alcohol related. [It happens to the best of us.] I asked about you in the Garden District Bookshop, to be told you were in Venice [ah! my cosmopolitan days], later discovering you'd returned and were at a party some of our group went to [ah! my leaving-the-house days], such is life.

Anyway, I'm not a stalker, this is a purple pen, not blood mixed with ink, and Tom Waits (still) to be played on my hi-fi. Lost Souls will always remind me of my youth, happy drunken, sexy times, skinny clothes, and fun.

And you know, regardless of what flaws I may see in it now, it will always remind me of those things too. Thank you, young sir*, for reminding me of that.

*The writer is probably my chronological age or close to it, but I recently declared myself 92 and thus reserve the right to call almost anyone "young man" or "young lady."

We decided we were too lazy to make it to the haunted house. Instead, Chris is watching the TNT season opener (that would be basketball, for those of you who don't follow sports; TNT features "Inside the NBA," the entertaining postgame program with Charles Barkley, whom I used to like but lost respect for in November '05 when he flippantly announced that "nobody lives in New Orleans anymore") and I'm going to spend the evening in bed with William and my electric heat-throw, editing manuscripts.

I've been turning down most interview requests lately because I didn't feel I had anything to say, but an editor from Vice Magazine recently asked me for an interview, and I guess she caught me in the right mood, because I said yes. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished; none of the high-resolution photos I had available was big enough for their purposes, so I have to do a photo shoot this weekend. Ah, well, it's been more than a year since I had my "pitcha took" by a professional photographer; maybe they'll be nice and let me have a couple of the photos for my own use. (Not that I have much use for photos of myself lately other than vanity-posting them on Flickr and/or here, and the photos my crappy digital camera takes are adequate for that purpose.)

Added to the list of Weird Shit People in My Neighborhood Have Tried to Sell Me: a box of BC powder. According to my former neighbor Sharline, people use BC powder to manufacture a fake crack product called "whammies," which would seem much more lucrative than selling me the box for $3 or however much he wanted (I didn't ask since I didn't have any money, but it's usually either $3 or $5).

Tired. Sore -- too sore to stay as long as I would have liked at the crawfish boil yesterday. I feel as if I've just started to get back some semblance of a normal life and I really don't want my physical condition to start dictating again what I can and can't do. Of course, part of my problem is that as soon as I think I have some semblance of a normal life, I start heaving ninety-pound bookcases around.

Every year around St. Joseph's Day, Chris says, "I should get some cardoons for the restaurant." I can now tell him unequivocally that he should not, unless he wants to spend his entire prep time doing nothing else. I helped clean some for an altar today, and they are the nastiest, most pain-in-the-ass vegetable in the world, staining your hands an indelible walnut brown, peeling the nails away from your fingers, with horrible tough strings to pull off, spiders crawling out, and more. I love eating them (battered and fried, they are a traditional St. Joseph's altar food), but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy them as much again knowing what some poor old maw-maw had to go through to fix them for me.

I had Winthrop losing to UNC in the NCAA finals, mostly because I believed Bobby Hebert's hype about Winthrop. Thanks to their loss today, my bracket is now ruined.

My fingertips are killing me. I know that's not one of the body parts I usually complain about, but it turns out that installing peel-and-stick tiles (a better name for which would be "peel, stick, curl up, detach from floor, and finally re-lay using tile adhesive, sold separately, tiles") correctly is a lot harder than slapping them on every which way. I'm not quite sure how I mangled my fingertips, but they feel decidedly tenderized.

Also, I finally bothered to read the product information notes on those sheets of cement backing/flooring board I was gaily cutting up and installing a couple of weeks ago, breathing so much of their dust that my nostrils turned white because I was too lazy and stupid to get a mask. The product information, done in the tiniest possible print, reads like a collaboration between Stephen King and Al Gore: WARNING. WARNING. WARNING. TEASE RATTLESNAKES, PLAY IN INTERSTATE TRAFFIC, AND EAT AT JACQUES-IMO'S IF YOU MUST, BUT WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T BREATHE THE DUST FROM CUTTING UP THESE TILES. DUST CAUSES CANCER, EVERY LUNG DISEASE KNOWN TO MAN, ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION, BERI-BERI, EBOLA, MUTATIONS, RANDOM DROPPING OFF OF LIMBS, PREMATURE HEAT-DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE, AND PROBABLY AN EXTRA HEAD OR TWO. IF YOU'RE NOT DEAD ALREADY JUST FROM READING THIS, YOU WILL BE REALSOONNOW. SUCKER. DON'TCHA WISH YOU'D JUST USED PLYWOOD?

So I am tired and in a unique sort of pain today, not to mention probably dying. I give you only this e-mail from my friend Harry, a large and hard-assed (real hard-assed, not NBA-player-hard-assed) former cop, who stayed in New Orleans through the storm and the failure of the federal levees (in fact, I picked up that obsessive "failure of the federal levees" phrase from him), leaving only to take his elderly parents to Houston when the water began to engulf their home. Harry remains committed to the city eighteen months later despite its having broken his heart, if anything, more times than it has broken mine. I guess you'd call this his open letter to the anonymous crybaby mentioned in last night's "Whine Country" post:

I don't know who the pussy is but if you can, tell him I will personally supply him with a year's worth of tampons.

But, I have to put them in.

And if he does not possess a pussy although he is a pussy, I will make the appropriate orifice for him.

Coward motherfucker.

And that goes for you too, Tracy McGrady, you droopy-eyed old stiff.

P.S. For the record, I have different memories of the Great Crawfish Boil Salad Race. While I may well have been "liquored up and blabbing" to Danny, I don't believe Commander's Palace needs to steal ideas from Chris, and besides, dude, I happen to really like getting the VIP treatment there, so how's about a little tact? Oh dear, I just knew he was going to run amok with this blog thing.

I see where the following poorly written and punctuated comments were added to my Wikipedia entry (by an anonymous user, natch):

In the months that have followed [Hurricane Katrina], Ms. Brite has been an outspoken and sometimes inscrutable critic of those who are leaving New Orleans for good. Her criticisms have continued, despite the fact that many who returned after Katrina to start a new life, stuck it out for months, enduring violent crimes, robbery, vandalism to their homes, and a total lack of support from the city of New Orleans (i.e. police, sanitation, etc).

She has been quoted in the New York Times and elsewhere, saying in reference to those who've left due to the unlivable conditions, "...you don’t desert [a place] just because it can kill you. There are some things more valuable than life.” Comments like this have lead many to question Ms. Brite's attitude, as she seems to be more concerned about the city's image, than she is about the personal safety and happiness of its citizens.

Boo-hoo! Yeah, that's me, dedicating my life to maintaining New Orleans' pristine image. Having lived here for eighteen post-K months and planning to continue, I can testify that New Orleans is far from "unlivable" ... unless you're a pussy.

And to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I do not think "inscrutable" means what this anonymous pussy thinks it means. At any rate, I left the information but removed the axe-grinding. If you want somewhere to whine, start your own blog instead of vandalizing a public resource, please, pussums.

In related news, big, bad, hard-assed NBA star Tracy McGrady said yesterday that he would consider skipping next year's All-Star game if it is held in New Orleans because he is too scared to come here. "When they first mentioned to me that the All-Star game was going to be in New Orleans, the first thing I thought about is how much security they are going to have for the players and everybody there ... I don't think it's the right city to have this type of event right now. I know the city is in need of trying to get back on their feet, in need of money. Safety comes first. I'm sure they have to do a lot of research and look into before they really make this decision.''

Christ. The world is so full of pussies, I may go out and buy it a box of Tampax.

Last night, slightly against my better judgment, I helped Chris start a Livejournal: chefcdb. He won't be ranting and whinging about everything under the sun as I do, or at least not nearly as much; his primary goal, he says, is to tell people about the food he's making and the interesting ingredients he's using at the Delachaise. His journal is aimed at serious eaters and those who would like to be.

To be honest, I have never known Chris to have a terribly long attention span for writing, but it will certainly be appetizing while it lasts, and maybe he will surprise us. Like me, he doesn't allow any backtalk; the very idea that many people actually comment on each other's journals seemed to shock and horrify him.

In other (but somewhat related, since I'd be surprised if the occasional basketball comment didn't sneak into Chris' posts) news, it's easy for New Orleanians to feel kneejerk anger at NBA union head Billy Hunter's doubts about our ability to handle the 2008 All-Star Game. I certainly did ... until I thought about all the ways in which outsiders don't know or understand what is happening in this city. They see the bloody, horrific headlines coming out of here, and they have no way of knowing that New Orleans has always done a far, far better job protecting the safety of its tourists than that of its locals, or that many (by no means all) of our crime victims lead extremely high-risk lives. It's hard to blame them for being scared or for worrying about PR disasters. However, the fact remains that a tourist visiting New Orleans, especially one who sticks to the areas that interest most tourists and doesn't act like a complete dumbass (wearing beads when it's not Mardi Gras, falling for "I bet I know where you got dem shoes"-type street scams, getting falling-down drunk in the gutter, etc.) is in virtually no danger of becoming a crime victim. And that goes at least quadruple for rich men who ride in limos with posses of bodyguards. If you ask me, those nervous-nellie NBA players ought to feel more ashamed of themselves than Mr. Hunter ... but expecting an NBA player to be low-maintenance is like expecting a cat to obey verbal commands, and it will ever be thus.

Drunk and bored, waiting for Chris to come home from the basketball game (to which I would not go because the sniveling shitweasel George "What If New Orleans Is Under Ten Feet Of Water Next October?" Shinn will never get another penny of mine):

( Have You Ever? )

The last St. Joseph altar at St. Augustine Church in Tremé, as well as some other pictures of this fascinating church, an irreplacable piece of New Orleans history in general and black New Orleans history in particular that is, of course, being closed by the archdiocese. If this closure goes ahead, as it looks to be doing, it will be possibly the greatest disgrace and worst mistake New Orleans has ever known. At least the worst since they ran the I-10 overpass through the heart of the black business district on Claiborne, taking out dozens of ancient oaks and destroying the soul of a thriving neigborhood. Anyway, I helped set up the altar today. It's been an interesting three days:

Thursday: frantically making cookie bags with tough, hard-bitten St. Bernard Parish survivors in a cramped trailer

Friday: chopping vegetables and cooking casseroles with genteel Catholic ladies in Metairie

Saturday: assembling an Italian altar at a black church with my freak friends

And of course tomorrow I shall spend all day visiting altars, at least nine unless I hear that Bobby Hebert has decided to fulfill his promise of running naked down Poydras Street if his alma mater, Northwestern, wins its tourney basketball game, in which I may skip a few in order to second-line behind him. (Purely in the spirit of a parade, of course!)

For those of you who are sick of altars, it will all be over soon. For now, I can only offer this dream I suffered last night, my version of a work nightmare:

New Orleans had, apparently, washed away entirely. I had written a Liquor novel in which Rickey was the manager of a hotel restaurant in Amite City, a small town on the North Shore. (Amite City was quite different in my dream than it is in reality, the dream version having many cosmopolitan cafes, glass-fronted high-rise hotels with revolving restaurants, etc.) I was also in Amite City, as was my editor. For the next novel, I had planned for Rickey and G-man to move to Lafayette, where they'd be back in some approximation of a big city. My editor was unconvinced that Rickey was ready for this great career move. "I just don't feel his confidence," she kept saying. "I think you need to do another Amite City novel first." And I cajoled, and I pleaded, and I told her she must trust me, and finally I told her there just wasn't another Amite City novel, much as I told my former agent back in 2001 that there wasn't another horror novel, no matter how much he might rather have one than Liquor.

Writing that exhausted me. I am going to go gloat about LSU's basketball win over Texas A&M. I honestly don't know when I became an LSU fan. It happened when I wasn't looking. If they were playing UNC, though, I'd go Tarheels all the way. Tar is thicker than blood. Or something. I will never buy a Chevy because Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is advertising them. Duke is puke, Wake is fake, but the team I hate is N.C. State. If God is not a Tarheel, why is the sky Carolina blue? Shut up, Brite. You're not making sense anymore.

Somewhat better. I think Chris Rose and I are devolving in much the same manner, though. I haven't lectured anyone on littering yet, but most of the time I have absolutely no clue whether I'm behaving appropriately. Not that I was ever all that great at it, but I feel as if I've lost all my gauges. I'm not sure if it would be a good idea or a terrible one for us to go out drinking together.

As well, the Times-Picayune ran a nice obituary for Mr. Joe Casamento today. I didn't realize he had been born above Casamento's and lived his entire life in that spot. If ever anyone shouldn't have been displaced by that damnable storm, it was Mr. Joe.

Got a cool e-mail from Angie M, which I hope it's OK to reprint here -- I'm a little gun-shy about quoting people in the wake of accidentally causing someone to change their entire journal name (well, I don't know if I was the only cause, but I know my actions didn't help and it made me feel awful. Still, for the record, if you e-mail me about something regarding the blog and/or my work, I do reserve the right to quote it here unless you specifically ask me not to. And if you're unpleasant -- though hardly anyone ever is -- I might do it anyway). This one's about my newish Subterranean Press chapbook, Crown of Thorns:

Dear Doc,

I care about your NBA talk, too. Keep an eye on the Bucks this year!

Also, I think I'm one of those people who didn't really understand "Crown of Thorns." If you care to give me a hint that'd be neat, because I was intrigued by the story.

I have crushes on Steve Nash and Rasheed Wallace.

Love,
Angie

I replied:

Angie, thanks for caring. Steve Nash is hot, I admit it, except occasionally when he looks like an alien.

I'm afraid I am not much for explaining my work, giving hints, etc. If the story didn't work for you, no worries -- I hope there will be others that do. Alternately, you could join one of my LJ communities and start a discussion about it -- people actually talking about my work on those things would be quite a novelty!

PZB

And then Angie wrote back:

I couldn't find it again, but I think you mentioned in your journal (which I love to read btw) that you hoped people would like "Crown of Thorns" but you didn't think many people would actually 'get' it. I'm paraphrasing there, or maybe I made it all up. But even if I don't know what your intentions were with it, it definitely worked for me in my own way (and most importantly, I guess). I was just curious.

Thanks for the reply - it made my day. No need to reply to this one, I know you're busy!

I bet Steve Nash and Sam Cassell came from the same pod.

Angie

POD!!! I love it! I bet they did. (And by the way, I think Sheed is pretty hot too.)

The reason I worried that many readers wouldn't "get" Crown of Thorns wasn't because I felt I'd been particularly mysterious, deep, or oblique with it, but because only two of my five or six initial readers seemed unmystified by it, and they were both writers who have on occasion been accused of crypticism (crypticness?) in their own work. Perhaps this means I should have shelved the story, but I felt I'd done what I wanted to do with it and I just didn't feel like sticking it in the filing cabinet. (Besides, then I wouldn't be able to truthfully say no when those little horror magazines come sniffing around saying, "We can't pay much, but we thought you might have some old work you'd never placed," as if I'm just going to say, "SURE!!! HERE YOU GO! Take this ancient piece of crap from my files for free!" In truth, I did do that once, with the late, unlamented online zine The Spook, and the editor thanked me by stiffing me for a piece I did not intend to give him for free.)

Anyway, the thing is, I don't mean to sound all divaesque by saying "I'm not much for explaining my work, giving hints, etc" -- I simply don't have any clue how to do it. The only way I have of "explaining" the work is by writing the work. If it's not in there, then I didn't know how to say it. There's no answer key I'm holding back -- "Dr. Brite's stepping on the gourd symbolized X." I will say that Crown of Thorns felt like a very intuitive story for me, one I was very much feeling rather than thinking my way through, and if your intuition doesn't work the same way mine does, then the story might not make sense to you. It's cool. Give it some more thought, and if it still doesn't make sense, blame it on me, not yourself. I don't accept that the writer has many "responsibilities" other than to do the best work he's capable of, but he is undeniably responsible for making himself clear, and I may not have done that in Crown of Thorns.

Or maybe I just don't know how to write horror anymore, and that's OK too. I know I went on and on the other day about how you can call me a horror writer when I'm writing horror, but in truth, I suspect I am pretty much done working in the genre, though I certainly wouldn't resist a horror tale if it grabbed me by the throat and said, "Write me!"

Feel very depressed. Rereading Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. The first time I read it was almost exactly one year ago, on the plane home from England, and I whipped through it with pleasure. Only now does it occur to me what an utterly bleak and hopeless piece of work it is ... and yet so brilliant that the idea of my burbling about doing a "Graham Greene pastiche" now seems like saying I might do a Shakespeare pastiche. Still, you never know what lengths writers may go to to amuse themselves. (Graham Greene wouldn't have written "to to.")

Marcel had to stay overnight at the vet's for more bloodwork and hydration. He probably has a parasitic blood disease called something like hemobartonellosis, which is curable but very expensive, and which he may well have contracted at the shelter in Gonzales. One more reason why I suck. But dammit, I'm sick of other people's self-pity and twice as sick of my own. We went to a bar to watch tonight's NBA games and "Inside the NBA" on TNT. While there, I remembered the horrible dream I had last night. Chris and I were on vacation at a fishing lodge somewhere in south Louisiana. The room was filthy, there was a bloodstain on the mattress, and the curtains and bedspread were made of a horrible, itchy, iridescent lime-green plaid tweed material. Nevertheless, the place had wireless Internet. (As I understand it, about all you need to set up a wireless network these days is an empty Pringles can and the word "Shazam.") I signed onto Livejournal and saw that a young man upon whom I had a hopeless crush (in the dream) had posted in the neworleans community asking for recommendations for a hotel to which he could take a Very Special Date to have sex. Everyone had posted "Windsor Court" and "the W" and so forth. I posted, "Take her to the Econo-Lodge on Tulane Avenue, you little shit." Then I fell asleep (in the dream) feeling guilty because I was a happily married man and should not care where young men take their dates.

Anyway, I enjoyed "Inside the NBA" last time we watched it at this bar, but tonight it reminded me that we used to watch it in our own bed in our own room in our own house on our own TV, and tonight that house is dark and that bed is empty and that TV is dead and that room is tumbled into chaos. Besides, I long for the NBA of Michael Jordan. As far as I'm concerned, there are only about five players currently playing in the NBA whom I truly believe to be The Shit:

Allen Iverson
Steve Nash
Tim Duncan
Robert Horry
Shaq
Manu Ginobili

OK, six. And there are a few more on my "maybe" list: Mike Bibby (whom I will always love, but who hasn't lived up to his early potential), Tracy McGrady, Dwyane [or however the hell he spells it) Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Derek Fisher, Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Ron Artest, Kevin Garnett, Chris Webber ... and I guess Kobe is The Shit, but I don't really give a shit anymore.

Ah, fuck it. Only three of you, pgtremblay, scrotumdad, and a non-LJ friend, care about any of this. I'm taking some pills and going to bed.


P.S. I stuck to my Period of Virtue limit: three beers. But they are handling me roughly and without care.

Saints win! I don't like this trend, though, of people in San Antonio trying to prematurely claim the team, holding up banners saying SAN ANTONIO SAINTS and such. No better than a bunch of goddamn vultures if you ask me. Worse, actually, because vultures are made for a purpose and they serve it; they don't gloat. I've always liked the fact that the New World vultures' Latin family name, Cathartides, has the same root as catharsis; by cleaning up the world's carrion, they provide catharsis (cleansing) for the very earth.

I almost got in a fight today! We drove up the road to Bogalusa to get some things at the Wal-Mart -- and can I just say that once this crisis is over, I hope never to step foot in another Wal-Mart? They came through admirably in the aftermath of the storm, but I am as sick of them as I've ever been of anything. Due to the fact that it's just over the Louisiana state line, Bogalusa does have daiquiris and Catholics, but it's still firmly in Bibleland. Anyway, as we pulled into the parking lot, I saw an SUV with one of those "MARRIAGE = (STICK-FIGURE MAN) + (STICK-FIGURE WOMAN)" bumper stickers. I rushed over and started defacing it with my handy-dandy Sharpie, which is admittedly a shitty thing to do, and something I wouldn't normally stoop to -- the moron troglodytes have as much right to express their ugly opinions as I do to display my SUPPORT ALL MARRIAGES bumper sticker -- but today I was just not in the mood. As I scribbled, a dough-faced grit princess walked by and said, "I'm awna call the cops!" "Go ahead, redneck," I said. She turned around and looked at me, and I gave her my Shaquille O'Neal game face, and she went on into the Wal-Mart to buy her industrial-sized package of diapers or whatever, and I went on into the Wal-Mart to buy my carpet-covered cat tower, and that was that. I kind of hoped I'd see her again so I could say, "Where's those cops?", but probably it would have been unwise.

So that and the Saints' win were my big excitement for the day. It's a pathetic existence, it really is. Tomorrow we'll drive to Kenner and spend the night with my dad, and Tuesday morning we leave for CHICAGO, CHICAGO, CHICAGO.