I finally finished the possum-skull "voodoo" doll I've been working on for a couple of weeks now. It's the most detailed and, I think, nicest one I've ever made. However, maddeningly, it still isn't up for auction. While I like most things about my new all-in-one office machine (the Hewlett Packard OfficeJet 6310), its scanner leaves a lot to be desired. When I try to scan the drawings I do in copies of my books, the images often come out streaked with weird stripes of light that aren't present on the actual drawings. As for three-dimensional objects such as the doll, it cannot scan them at all. I know flatbed scanners aren't really meant to scan three-dimensional objects, but my old one did a pretty good job of it, e.g. this Little Blue Heron skull I found on our first post-K trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast:



Obviously, before I sell any more dolls or other hand-crafted items on eBay, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and spring for a digital camera that can take decent closeups of small objects. My current antique -- a Vivitar Vivicam 3650 I bought in, I think, 2003 -- is remarkably forgiving of my poor photography skills when it comes to taking regular pictures, but its closeups are useless blurs. I know some of you have been waiting to see this doll, and I'm sorry about the delay. I'll try to upgrade my equipment soon.

I did manage to put up some regular book-type auctions: a copy of greygirlbeast's and my collection Wrong Things; a copy of the Gauntlet Press limited edition of The Lazarus Heart with an original ink drawing by me; a copy of the increasingly rare Con Party of Hotel California chapbook; and a copy of Plastic Jesus. As always, all items are signed and signatures can be personalized. I also added some inventory to my eBay store, including four copies of Alcool (the newly published French edition of Liquor). Please take a look and make a bid (or just buy a book) if you can -- thanks!

[ETA: Since many of you are probably at least as sick of this subject as I am, I'll just say that yes, I know all the comments are gone from the Best of New Orleans thread about Chris' departure, and I'm sure it happened because somebody got his widdle designer briefs in a wad and went crying to management. I don't think it matters one way or the other; as far as we and most of Chris' regular customers are concerned, the Delachaise is toast.]

Nice dinner last night with theferrett and zoethe, whom I'd previously only "met" online. They'd been to Commander's Palace the night before (without me, since they had a party of seven and after a precious meal in San Francisco totally wasted at a shitty Middle Eastern place on Haight -- trueheart, cheekytubemouse, tjcrowley, and postmaudlin will remember this -- in 2004, I promised myself I would never attend another clusterfuck dinner, which I define as a party of six or more, and I never have), so I thought they might like something more casual, decided to show them a different part of the city, and took them out to the lake, where we ate fried artichoke hearts, boiled crawfish, and various other seafood dishes at Deanie's (which I still like despite the detractors because it is one of Buddy D's spiritual homes, and besides, all the West End seafood restaurants I really loved are gone forever). theferrett appeared to be hypnotized by my method of peeling crawfish, sucking the heads, and squeezing the tails, much as I might be if I had the chance to watch a native in the African bush preparing locusts or something. After dinner, I gave them a mini-disaster tour of Lakeview and the Lower Ninth Ward. Very much enjoyed meeting them, although I felt I already knew them from reading their extraordinarily candid journals all these years. I hope they felt likewise.

I've found myself not wanting to write about the trip to Grand Isle, because it was an oasis of peace for us and whomping up a blog entry that would distill it into 500 words (or whatever) feels too much like work. (God forbid!) But, since someone asked, the five lifers we saw were the Sooty Tern, Black-bellied Plover, Wilson's Plover (with a family of peeps!), Solitary Sandpiper, and Long-billed Dowitcher.

I have eBay auctions ending this afternoon/early evening. Remember, this is the Official EEK! I Thought I Had Like $1500 In Checking And I've Only Got $600 Memorial Day Sale, so check 'em out and please bid if you can. Also, therealpzb seems to be taking off well; there are some interesting discussions going on over there.

Chris and I were reading the paper and drinking coffee yesterday morning, our usual AM routine. I remembered how I had sat out on the back steps the previous day, watching the yard birds at the feeders and thinking how long it had been since I added a bird to my life list.

"Hey Chris," I said, "let's just go somewhere and get away from it all today."

He was very much in favor of this, and suggested Plaquemines Parish, the one area heavily damaged by Katrina that we'd not yet visited. We had a good lunch of fried seafood, white beans, and rice at Salvo's Seafood in ... well, I'm not really sure; somewhere not too far from Belle Chasse ... and were pretty sure we saw Alan Toussaint at the next table. We didn't bother him, of course, but he and his dining companion did wince when Chris said something about Jazz Fest being "fucked [by the weather] this year." Then we continued on down the road, heading toward Ground Zero at Buras, where there was not much to be seen. Oh, there are people living there, incredibly tough and resilient people in trailers and modular homes and even rebuilt houses, but almost everything that was there before August 29, 2005 is just gone. (There is also a very large American flag bearing the mysterious sign, "THIS FLAG DONATED BY BINGO PLAYERS.") Some of the little towns we remembered, like Happy Jack, seemed to be completely gone. We were happy to see that St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Port Sulphur and its lovely little cemetery appeared to have come through pretty well, though there were still a few mysterious cement grave liners near the back fence, held together with metal bands and identified only by spray-painted numbers.

We ended up in Venice, the southernmost (car-accessible) point in Louisiana, which used to be one of our favorite birding spots. Post-devastation, it still is. The marinas have been rebuilt, the marsh looks to be in good shape (though still full of debris, which must be dangerous for boaters), the vegetation has bounced back, and the birds were out in force. We saw a gorgeous scarlet and golden Summer Tanager (the lifer I'd been seeking), a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, Indigo Buntings (so blue they hurt the eye when the sun catches them!), Painted Buntings, Marsh Wrens, Eastern Kingbirds, a family of Snipes, and my beloved waders (Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Tricolored Herons, Yellow-Crowned Night Herons, White Ibises, Indeterminate-Sized Yellowlegs) by the dozens. We also walked down an abandoned road where we saw two wondrous sights: first a big flock of Roseate Spoonbills flying overhead, then an even bigger flock of Magnificent Frigatebirds, as seen in my icon, drifting low enough to get a look at us (they always seem to do that -- they must be curious birds), then spiraling up and up into the sky until we couldn't see them anymore.

It was a much-needed day out of the 'hood, and more important, a day spent solely and entirely in each other's company. We got back late at night and I was so sore from the bumping of our little car along Plaquemines' not-so-great roads that I had to go directly to bed with my heat blanket, but it was worth all that and more.

I was invited to a crawfish boil today and really wanted to go, but woke up with a bum right leg that wouldn't stop raving and whinging even after five Ultrams and the heating pad. Fucking thing. Later on it eased off a bit, but by then Chris had already taken the car to work, so I messed around in the backyard, chopping weeds with my brand-new hedge shears and thinking of the most horrifying scene in King & Straub's Black House; hanging a couple of new bird feeders; planting some kind of shrub called Esperanza Gold Star, which is supposed to have "clusters of showy, fragrant yellow flowers summer to frost." (I'm hoping we won't have any freezes next winter; my gingers did OK in the last few, possibly because I covered them, but my habaneros are only just now showing the feeblest signs of coming back.) And then just sitting on the back steps, watching the perfectly ordinary yard birds -- sparrows, house finches, cardinals, mourning doves, the occasional trouble-making blue jay. And of course the "street eagles" (pigeons), who amuse me by crowding in and covering the biggest feeder so thoroughly that you can't even see it.

Milton brought me the Esperanza Gold Star plant about three weeks ago, as well as a baby fig tree and a baby orange tree with delicious-smelling blossoms, heaving them into my yard in a grocery cart before I knew what was going on. I don't even want to know what nefariousness resulted in Milton gifting me with trees. Normally I turn people away if I suspect the stuff they want to give or sell me is stolen, but in this case there seemed little chance of returning the trees to their rightful owner(s), and I didn't want to just let them die. Ah, well. There is an abandoned nursery in the neighborhood where plants still grow. Maybe they came from there.

If you can stand a couple more Our Lady of Good Counsel videos, I think these two are very good.

Another one from nola.com

By reader Sarah Elise Lewis

For interested parties, my current round of eBay auctions ends tomorrow afternoon. That first-edition hardcover of Swamp Foetus -- a real rarity -- is currently priced at $76, and from what I've seen online and in convention dealers' rooms, it would be a bargain at twice that price. So go getcherself a bargain, and help this precious boy. Shameless, I know, but the situation is what it is, and right now it's pretty damn sucky.

Yesterday faustfatale, her friend Charles, and I drove out to Shell Beach/Yscloskey/Hopedale to go birding. We didn't see many birds (though Christa got one lifer, a red-bellied woodpecker), but we spied an absolutely beautiful speckled kingsnake at least five or six feet long. He kindly allowed us to photograph him for a few minutes before sliding off into the mosquito-infested brush.

On the way home, we took a drive through the Lower Ninth Ward, which I found unexpectedly difficult. Chris' and my first trip down there, not long after we came back in October '05, was so horrific it was numbing; on my subsequent trips, I've been concentrating on showing friends what happened and have almost felt proud to demonstrate that some people survived this and want to rebuild. Yesterday, though ... well, Christa and Charles kept reading aloud the animal rescue notations on the houses ("Dog DOA"; "No Cat Found," etc.), and I didn't want to ask them to stop because I wanted it to sink in for them in every way possible, but each one took a little divot out of my heart. It was raining torrentially as Charles circled the block trying to photograph Fats Domino's restored house, and then just as the rain stopped, their '70s satellite radio station started playing that Otis Redding (?) song:

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
[Line I can't remember]
It's gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day

But I didn't believe it, because the Lower 9 just seemed so much emptier than I had thought it would be. I've not been down there for several months, and I had the idea that the recovery had gone further. There are still flood-houses that haven't been touched, many houses gutted but obviously not being restored, vacant lots, debris, a person here and there. And silence, except for that joyous song, and I kind of lost it while they graciously declined to notice my muffled hysteria.

She might scoff at this, but I have always felt that Christa is a very good influence on me. Being around her makes me feel tougher, happier, confident in ways I'd forgotten for a while. I wish we saw each other more often. I felt better today, and did something nobody would ever expect of me in a million years: went to a crappy little Mexican place on Magazine called Nacho Mama's and ate a big old plate of food covered with cheese. At that moment, it was delicious. But then two guys at the bar started talking about Anthony Bourdain and "Yeah, did you see the show he made here? He recommended ... " and I had to cover the ear that was pointing toward them and chew ice cubes until my check came. I don't dislike Anthony Bourdain; he can be a fine writer, and he was kind and fun the one time I met him, but he told us then that he'd eaten at Jacques-Imo's and it was "schlock." Now he's going there again and giving it a big grinning thumbs-up and posing in the back of their stupid shitass pickup truck, and I find that incredibly hypocritical, especially when there are so many other restaurants that had a much harder time reopening and are much more deserving of national attention.

Speaking of restaurants, I'd somehow never had the seafood gumbo at Rocky & Carlo's in St. Bernard Parish until we stopped there yesterday. DAMN. Superlative. Not quite as good as my friend Cathy's mother's gumbo -- the version that made Chris swear off ever trying to make gumbo again -- but by far the closest I've ever had or expect to have in a restaurant.

Happy OH-MY-GOD-THIRTY. faustfatale is picking me up in a little while to go birding out in Hopedale, near Shell Beach. Her party at the Delachaise was lots of fun; she sold several books, Chris kept a succession of great food coming our way, and I got to meet R.J. Sevin, a terrific writer I've been corresponding with for a while, as well as his gorgeous wife Julia.

Going out to Shell Beach today makes me realize that I've not been there in over a year, since I stopped work on Dead Shrimp Blues, which was partly set there. And that, along with having overdrawn my checking account for the second time in a month yesterday, makes me think hard about just how badly I have been screwing up my life. I'm turning over all the finances to Chris, which basically means I am trusting him with my life, but I cannot trust myself with it anymore. It's going to be hard to get my shit together, because the sciatica is so bad right now that it regularly wakes me up at ridiculous hours and demands painkillers before I can get back to sleep, but there is no other choice except dying, and I don't want to do that yet. I know that in order to really get my shit together, I am eventually going to have to write something, whether it's a continuation of Dead Shrimp Blues, another non-Liquor, vaguely horrific novel I've outlined but cannot imagine actually writing, the nonfiction book I've thought about, or something else. The only credit I can give myself for the past two years is that, until now, I haven't talked about all the stuff I was going to write once I got my shit together; I've just admitted I wasn't writing and left it at that. So I'm not going to talk about it any more until I've done something, and please don't send premature congratulations or you-go-boy messages; as of now, I've done exactly nothing worthy of them and they would only make me feel impotent, a feeling I've experienced quite enough of over the past two years. If I did have a dick, I bet it wouldn't have gotten hard since November 2006.

I have done it! I am mighty! I, in my weakness and crippledness and anorexia, have made the groceries for Thanksgiving, which we are having at my house for the first time in my life (on Wednesday, for reasons too complicated to go into)! I put my hair in a tight braid, prepared myself for battle, and set off to take Chris to work and then hit the supermarket.

CAR CONVERSATION:

PZB: Look, I forgot my necklace, I forgot my bracelet, I forgot everything ... I guess I'm stripped down for battle.

[Pause]

PZB: Oh, oh, I've written a song!

[singing]

She forgot her notebook,
And she forgot her pen,
And she woulda forgot her pussy,
If they hadn't a' sewed it in.

CdB: You have lost your mind.

PZB: THANK GOD! I had no further use for the filthy thing!

Life continues surreal. Last night I dreamed we had moved into a really crappy, ramshackle house and Chris had turned into an angry lesbian who chased me around with cockroach egg cases and squished them in my face. So I ran away to visit tjcrowley, with whom I got piss-drunk, and then officialgaiman, who took me out into a marsh on a JetSki shaped like a magical horse. We saw all kinds of fabulous birds. A little owl turned its head to look at me. "Neil," I said, "do you think I can put a bird on my life list if I only saw it in a dream?" (This is an issue that has come up in my dreams before. I wonder if other birders experience it.)

Then, just before I woke up, I dreamed I was reading Reader's Digest and they had a tip that if you were about to die in a fire and knew all your soft tissue would be burned away, you should try to find a coin from the year of your birth and press it to your forehead so the date would be seared into your skull and you could be identified more easily. I think this had something to do with hearing about Failure of the Federal Levee System victims who scrawled their names and Social Security numbers on their bodies with permanent ink pens before they died.

And after I finished making the groceries today, I went to reward myself with a protein smoothie (I'm trying, I really am) and in the Smoothie King was an exact doppelganger of my first real boyfriend -- but at the age he was when I dated him. His hair even grew the same goofy way when he let it get too long. I'm going to have to e-mail him and see if he has any kids he knows of.

I never did get online yesterday, else I would have linked to Chris' lovely Times-Picayune piece about the Magnificent Frigatebirds we saw on Grand Isle -- yet another of his blog entries that the op-eds page editor saw and asked to publish. I have informed him that, while I think he is a very good writer, he is not allowed to become a Writer, because even if I am not a Writer myself at the moment, I have no intention of living with one. Seriously, though, it is a gorgeous piece and I'm proud that he is getting attention for so many of his talents.

In today's paper (I couldn't find it on the T-P site, but it's an AP piece that also appears here), there's one of those perennial, annoying articles about how "real" "writers" are "dipping their toes" into "comic books." Anyone who appreciates comics as an art form has groaned over this condescending crap before, but when, say, Jonathan Lethem tells us that ""One of the things I concluded very quickly was that it's not a written form. My primary task was to provide amazing things for artists to draw," don't you just want to sob and rend your garments anew? I realize Lethem is referring in particular to superhero comics, which are generally not my bag, but I'm sure folks like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman would be surprised to know that they have not, all these years, been engaging in a written form. (As for the Dark Tower comic, I'll probably get it when it's collected into [a] volume[s].)

We ate weenies and birthday cake, saw families of Willets and Clapper Rails (the rail is a bird of many rich brown shades, but the chicks surprised us by being jet black -- they looked very much like ducklings that had been dipped in ink), got looked at by four Magnificent Frigatebirds, talked to a gift shop owner who said, "I'm not racist or anything, but them niggers up there ... " (I always long to tell such people I'm part black, but I don't think anyone would believe me; I did tell him we live in an all-black neighborhood and love it), saw a lifer (a first-year male Orchard Oriole), got caught in a cold needling rainstorm on the state park beach a mile from our car*, saw two gorgeous Roseate Spoonbills (they've become much rarer in the area post-K), and, of course, found lots of lovely filth. You can see some of it in my new photo set, 40 on Grand Isle.

While I enjoyed the trip, I felt much more homesick than usual and think it was probably too soon after moving into the new house to go on vacation. I love Grand Isle, but I never quite stopped wanting to be home, in my house, in my yard ... freaking out that something bad was happening at home (fires, burglars despite the alarm, cat destruction, etc) ... worrying that the plants were getting too dry ... thinking about what I'd be doing if I were home at that very moment. Just before dusk today, I sat on the back steps watching birds at our feeders, and I heard a distant lone trumpet playing "Just A Closer Walk With Thee," and I felt I never wanted to leave New Orleans again.

Thanks for all the kind birthday wishes, gifts, and greetings. I got a nice card from Clare Davis, who says the flamingos she sent are called Jack and Wendy, after the Torrances from The Shining. I just hope one of them doesn't bash his way through the back door saying "Heeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" -- an iconic bit from the movie, but one I've always found gratuitously silly, perhaps because I love the extremely non-silly novel so much.

I've got some new eBay auctions up: a set of antique leather ankle restraints (don't ask!), copies of The Seed of Lost Souls and Are You Loathsome Tonight? (the limited hardcover signed by me, greygirlbeast, and Peter Straub), and, most importantly, my mom's nearly-new MacBook, which she bought in September but has since decided that she doesn't like Macs or notebook computers. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this machine, which retails for $1099, and I think my reserve price of $600 is a very good deal; you can also Buy It Now for $800. Since it doesn't seem to be showing up on my store page yet, here's a direct link to the auction. Please help a poor little old lady on a fixed income get a computer she loves!


*This was painful at the time -- the temperature dropped fifteen degrees in just a few minutes, and the raindrops, which Chris says were hailstones but I didn't see them, hit hard enough to really sting. In retrospect, though, it was a powerful experience: we could see the storm sweeping in across the Gulf, and we were the first thing it hit since its genesis off the coast of South America (or wherever). I've never seen or felt anything quite like it before.

The backyard is already transforming into a bird/tiki paradise. We've had a pair of Magnolia Warblers hanging around for a couple of days -- not just a new yard bird, but a lifer! Handsome birds, too, with streaky bright yellow chests, gray caps, and sardonic white eyebrows. I found some solar-powered tiki torches at Lowe's and hung some colored lanterns and planted a star jasmine and put up the battered "Bali Hi" sign we rescued from the rubble of our beloved mini-golf course in Biloxi and made the first hole of our own course: a leftover piece of that weird carcinogenic cement board crap I used to re-floor the litterbox room, painted with tiki heads, natch. You have to hit the ball between the angry tiki guy's legs. I swear to God I'm going to post pictures soon.

I've won a bunch of tiki stuff on eBay and added some tiki goodness to my Birthday Wish List. And I just called Chris and asked him if he can take that Friday off because I don't really feel like spending my fortieth birthday home alone feeling pathetic. Forty is one that should be done right, dammit.

We have a fence! My friend Stephen built it in three days, and did a beautiful job too. Of course, Stephen is from Mobile; if I had hired New Orleans workers to build it, I might have three or four boards up by now. Anyway, the tiki paradise can commence! We shall be patio daddy-o's before you can say "Bali Hai."

Also added a species to our yard list: a courting pair of Downy Woodpeckers who appear to be building a nest or getting ready to do so. This handsome little black and white bird (the male sports a bright red cap) is the smallest woodpecker in North America, but from their bitching, squeaking, and territorial hammering, you'd expect them to be the size of Ivory-Bills.

A volunteer group from Colorado has visited our neighborhood a couple of times. Maybe they've done useful things on other blocks, but on ours I've seen them do little except pick up dime-sized bits of trash and yell "God bless you" at people. They also cut some of my weeds without asking, which took work away from our yard guy who was going to do it later that day. We ended up paying him anyway since he camps in an empty building and relies on yardwork/handyman money to eat. When this group departed yesterday, one of them left her open trash bag lying on the curb and the tiny pieces of trash that had looked so innocuous spread over the whole block spilled out and created an ugly pile. I never understood before how charity could be stupid and condescending and make its recipients mad. Of course I can't know how the tsunami victims felt when people donated stiletto heels and Cheez Whiz to them, but I think I'm getting an inkling.

I don't want to sound ungrateful to people who are trying to help us. Last spring, members of a Christian youth group cleaned up the horrendously overgrown backyard of our old house. It was a huge job we couldn't have tackled ourselves and it saved us money we really needed for other things. At this point, though, it seems to me that edging weeds and picking up trash should be the responsibility of New Orleanians. Also, our neighborhood isn't particularly weedy or dirty -- just poor.

So far there are twelve species on my yard list (a list of birds you've seen from anywhere on your property). Nothing particularly notable except a Double-Crested Cormorant and a flock of White Ibises, both flyovers. I'm pretty sure I saw a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird zoom out of my neighbor's oak and up the alley between our houses near dusk today, but I didn't get a good enough look to add it to the list. If it was one, I expect he'll be back. I haven't put up any feeders yet because I don't want them to walk away like my garden hose did. Will do so after we get our fence built. I don't expect them to attract anything I haven't already seen except maybe House Finches, but the cats and I enjoy seeing the usual suspects.

From my Louisiana birding list:

The International Crane Foundation has announced that the 18 [Whooping Cranes] from the 2006 class were all found dead after the severe storms pasted through Florida Thursday night. The severe thunder storms and probable tornados were extremely unusual in Florida, especially this time of year. Cause of death to be determined.

This loss amounts to almost 1/4 of the eastern population of Whooping Crane. This is a huge set back to the reintroduction, however it also highlights the need for the reintroduction. It is not a great leap in imagination to envision a hurricane wiping out the entire Texas (western) population.

I walked more than a mile today ... very slowly, and with a cane, but it's still more exercise than I've managed in months.

Knock wood, but I think that last steroid shot helped; the sciatica pain faded a few days after I got the shot and hasn't gotten bad again yet. Whenever I sit or (especially) stand for any length of time, though, I still get terrible soreness in my legs, hips, and back. I think my muscles have just grown too weak to support me, so I've got to try to slowly build them back up. To that end, I walked the main path at Audubon Park today. Saw a couple of egrets, several cormorants, a buttload of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, and a flock of about 75 White Ibis near one of the golf course ponds. I was so slow that the weather had changed completely by the time I got halfway around the path; the Arctic air forecasted for the remainder of the week had begun to blow in, there was a gray, misty rain, and I was freezing my ass off (what little ass I have left, that is). All of a sudden it felt like England, and there I was in thin cotton pants and a baby tee. The path is 1.75 miles, but I cut across the park when it started to rain, so I figure I walked maybe a mile and a half.

Before the storm, I used to skim around that path almost every day except in the very dead of summer. Sometimes I'd go around it twice. Often I'd make the complete three-mile loop through Avenger Park and along the riverfront; I got most of the idea for "A Season in Heck" while taking those walks. Now I can barely hobble once around, and I'm so stiff and sore that I couldn't even sit on the kitchen stairs over at the Delachaise afterward ... but it's a start, I guess. Got the season's first king cake, too; I don't believe I've ever left it this late before. (The Carnival season started nine days ago.)

Ow. Creak. I believe I'll go take a couple of Vicodin now.

My God, my God. I am either on phantom crack I don't know about or I've had an undiagnosed stroke. I just forgot about a character, Marquis, the young cook at Liquor. Just completely forgot him. He's there in Prime and Soul Kitchen, and as far as I am aware he didn't get fired, quit, or die, but he is completely absent from The Novella Whose Name Only Bobby Hebert Can Tell. At least I'm in good company -- Raymond Chandler did the same thing once, and didn't realize it until someone asked him about the guy long after the book was published. ("I just forgot all about him," the unembarrassed Chandler reportedly said.) Since I'm only a little more than halfway through the novella, I can fix it.

While Googling to make sure it really was Raymond Chandler, I found this "interview" with Michael Connelly, one of my favorite modern writers. I thought I was reading a very pedestrian interview to which he was somehow coming up with intelligent and patient answers until I got toward the end, at which point the interviewer suddenly seemed to become a mad aspiring writer: "I've got a great story idea, how do I get it to you? Will you read my unpublished novel? Can you help me find an agent?" It was at that point that I, PZB, Boy Genius, finally figured out that I was reading a FAQ Bookbrowse had taken from Connelly's website. OK, I'm a dumbass, but even with permission, I think it's pretty lame to publish a FAQ as an interview.

There's a crazy mockingbird in the neighborhood who starts singing around one A.M. and often goes on until dawn. I have no idea if I've ever seen him, but he has become a dear friend to me. His voice is the last thing I hear before I fall asleep, unless Chris, Nathan, Myron, or all three are snoring.

I dearly want the Miraculous Seahorse of Bacon, but since I know the cats would only destroy it, I bring it to your attention instead.

savagesinister, savagemutha, Heather, Irene, and anyone else reading from Chicago, did you see these Whooping Cranes?

(But before you answer, please take a moment to notice that the stock photo of cranes was made at Audubon Zoo here in New Orleans. I'm not sure how many people know about our groundbreaking and successful Whooping Crane breeding program. I have seen these cranes since the storm and they are fine -- unlike the tragically depopulated Aquarium of the Americas, the zoo came through extremely well, losing only three flamingos who keeled over from the stress.)

We got to Big Branch far too late to see much in the way of bird life: some Carolina Chickadees, some Tufted Titmice, some Red-Winged Blackbirds, one Eastern Towhee. However, we enjoyed walking through the woods, our first post-K trek through Louisiana nature. We saw a beautiful three-foor Yellow-bellied Water Snake. We saw dozens of Barred Owl pellets, deer tracks, pig tracks, raccoon tracks,what we're pretty sure were bobcat tracks and scat. Ultimately, we passed from the piney woods near U.S. 190 into the riparian forest where giant oaks still grew. Many trees had been toppled or broken, but most of the oaks made it. We began to see buoys, bits of marine supplies, what looked like parts of boats and bridges. We began to smell Katrina, just whiffs of that mold-gray odor that pushes at the back of the throat, that odor none of us will ever forget. Then we came to the lake and the marshes surrounding it. I walked out into the marsh -- there was a solid, though spongy, pad of dead marsh grass that easily held my weight -- and began to find all manner of sad debris: toys, shoes, torn lifejackets, parts of people's furniture (including a beautifully carved top to a bureau, chifferobe, or other antique piece) that had been washed over from the homes destroyed in Slidell. I salvaged a little plastic box divided into 50 tiny compartments, probably originally designed to hold fishing lures, drill bits, or the like -- which I hope to turn into some sort of art. Perhaps a little scroll in each compartment with a quote about the storm. Something.

Altogether we must have walked five or six miles. Today I am nearly too sore to move, yet I've got some crazy idea about mopping the apartment.

Here's some boring copyright shit that may nevertheless interest you if you use Yahoo!, Flickr, or related/similar online services:

( Copyright runaround )

Fabulous. So you can't answer questions about the terms of service for one of your own sites. I think this is the worst example of passing-the-buck incompetence I've encountered in 15 years on the Internet. I've really enjoyed sharing my photos on Flickr, but until someone (obviously not the people who RUN THE FUCKING SITE) can adequately address this question for me, I don't think I'll be putting up any more, and I may have to consider taking down some of the ones already up there.

Just got in from the Avenue, where I saw the second half of Thoth and the first half of Mid-City. I felt absurdly irresponsible when I heard Okeanos rolling at 11:00 this morning and wasn't out there to see them -- since we're living so close to the parade route this year, I feel as if it's my duty to see every single parade -- but my friend Bobby from Athens is in town, and he's coming Uptown this evening to watch Bacchus and Endymion with me and then eat at Chris' restaurant, and I've just got to conserve a little energy. Had I remembered sooner that Thoth was an ibis, though, I'd have been out there for the whole parade.

I was partly good last night. I stayed in and wrote, but what I wrote turned out to be by far the most explicit sex scene I've ever written about Rickey and G-man. I feel ambiguous about this for a couple of reasons. First, readers have been encouraging me -- sometimes not very politely -- to resume writing "erotica," and I don't like seeming as if I'm doing anything to order, so to speak. Second, Rickey and G-man have traditionally been very reticent about having their sex life splashed all over the page for my own titillation or that of readers -- there's a fairly raw scene in "Bayou de la Mère," some in The Value of X,, and, aside from a couple of soft-focus fadeouts in the Liquor novels, that's about it. However, last night's scene (in Waiting For Bobby Hebert) seemed as if it needed to be there, and I don't have a sense of the guys tapping their fingers and scowling at me, so I suppose it will be all right. My standards of "explicitness," though, have changed over the years. The days of eighteen-page sex scenes are long gone.

There has been a pair of Carolina Chickadees at our feeders off and on all day. Hardly an unusual bird for the area, but I've never had any personal visits from them before.

Tired. Sunburned. Many disgusting cat messes waiting to be cleaned up. Grand Isle is battered, but standing; in some ways it looks better than New Orleans. Let's see if I can make a complete list of birds we saw:

( Grand Isle/Port Fourchon bird list, cut for people who care not for the avian )

The Marsh Wren was my only lifer, but I got a better look at the catbird than I'd ever had before; it was kind enough to give me a protracted flash of its distinctive rusty ass. Having flipped through my books to compile the list, though, I find myself disillusioned with my big Smithsonian Birds of North America. I used to use Stokes' Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region as my car book, but it was lost in the storm and I recently replaced it with The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. The Smithsonian book is a dictionary-sized volume that contains much more detailed species accounts than the smaller books could, but its pictures are simply not as good as Sibley's. David Sibley is apparently a sort of savant who burst upon the birding scene with no ornithological training at all, magically able to paint these amazing, personality-laden birds.

Anyway. Those messes await. Here's a reader question I received today from David N.:

Do you have any rituals you perform before or after you write?

Nope, no rituals. To each his own, but I find it helpful to demystify the writing process as much as possible: no lucky sweater, no mumbo-jumbo, no talk about The Muse. If you let yourself rely on this kind of stuff for the magic, it becomes too easy to make excuses for not writing. Well, I do have an old sweater of Chris' that I fancy makes me look "literary," but sometimes I write in it and sometimes not. I don't consider it a talisman or anything.

Oh, and I got a South Lafourche Tarpons T-shirt (Bobby's alma mater) to wear in my Waiting for Bobby Hebert author photo. I know you care deeply.

Oh, great: in addition to Mourning Doves, now we've got Eurotrash Scuzz-Doves (a.k.a. Eurasian Collared Doves). I don't begrudge any bird a bite to eat at my feeders, but the doves are greedy, clumsy pinheads who scare off the finches and cardinals, and aren't they supposed to be ground feeders anyway?