Cigar Box

I have a cigar box on my desk.

I do not smoke cigars. I never saw cigars in this particular box.

It carries, instead, slips of paper, business cards with scrawl on the back, torn napkin shreds, and all the other various loose notes and ideas and thoughts and tidbits I've run across during my life.

There was, at a powwow I recently attended, a wonderful cigar box, and I wanted one, but they weren't selling these and a long way from emptying that box (which was, regrettably, already promised to another).

I do not smoke cigars. I want that box. I can't remember the brand. (For the record, it's one of the few I've seen that is taller than wide, and holds its products vertically, and I'd never seen it before or since.)

If I can discover the name of the brand, I'll let you know. If you, the cigar smokers out there, can empty one of these boxes for me and forward said empty box to my address, I'd be very appreciative.

Thank you.

(For the record, a cigar box features prominently in one of my short stories, which is currently on the desk of the first editor to whom I submitted it.)

bookmarks

At an estimate, I have approximately 318,207 bookmarks floating around this place. Most are in a pile on one of my bookshelves, as I'm never actually reading more than 3-4 at a time, and usually only 1-2. I'm a slow reader. Sorry. Always have been. I'd rather read more quickly. Often, I find Tom Piccirilli and Doug Clegg and Neil Gaiman and Richard Laymon to be quick-reads for me, which generally means they do such a good job of sucking me not just into the story, but through it, that it's impossible not to read them quickly.

Ink Bottle

The latest exhibit added to the Museum of Curiosities is the inkwell. It's a traveling inkwell, and therefore smallish, in a leather case, from Ireland. As I don't often write with quills, it's not the most practical item in the museum, but it's interesting nonetheless. It sits between a pagoda and a blue bottle of Prague.

The four kings, meanwhile, are scattered about the room, each in their proper direction.

Random House of Shadow and Ash quote

“Soothsayers and alchemists,” Cool-Eyes said, “seers and prognosticators, mathematicians, astrologists, readers of palms and leaves and bone dust and yes, even ash.” She glanced at Philip’s faux shadow and grinned. “Want an idea of your future?”

Random Necropolis Quote

“It’s a thin time,” Anna said. “Colors are richer. Air thicker. Spirits more restless. Green looks yellow and blue looks black, and if we’re lucky, we’ll see a will o’ the wisp.”

Random House of Shadow and Ash quote

She rose and came to him. “You never will again,” she said, “without your shadow returned, or at the very least a surrogate. It’s an awful, terrible thing, to lose your own shadow. I knew a man once who stole and consumed shadows. The vessels never last.”

Fluidity

If I knew what it was, I'd tell you.
(No, wait...I know what it is, or may be, but I ain't saying a word.)

There's this:

COMING 1JAN07: FLUIDITY




But that really doesn't help you much, eh?

Sure, the photo is easily enough identified: one of my own, taken from Circular Quay, of the Sydney Harbour. That's the Harbourbridge (Coathanger) in the background, a ferry in the foreground, and lots of water.

Heh. Fluidity. Now I get it. {wicked grin}

more old journal entries

1 Apr 97

Since we are
the sum
of our experiences
how do we
regret
what we've done
unless
we regret
what we are
?

~~~

17 May 98

Woman's name: Symphony

:::
Ha. It was a long, long time before I used Symphony as the name of a character in a story. In a novel, in fact. I haven't sold it yet, but I'm working on that. Wrote the first draft for the story in which Symphony appears in 2004/05. (I started in 04, reached a point where I could go no further, put it down, picked it up 6 months later and finished the thing.)

~~~

19 Sep 00

Something in the universe broke.

The first signs might have been the frogs in the refrigerator. Or the bubbles coming out of the

:::

And, oddly enough, that's all I wrote. So it's all I'll say. You decide on the origin of those bubbles.

Who is Boss Henry?

From my journals, dated 25 Feb 00:

(As a side note, I do think that some of the "evidence" was planted, especially around the time of Boss Henry's short-lived reign.)

Now, it's almost 8 years later, and I'm reading this, and the paragraphs before and after (none of which mention Boss Henry again), and I'm wondering what I was thinking. And I'm not coming up with any real good answers. Which means one of two things:

1. I was smarter then, and 8 years on should count myself lucky to remember my own name and pray I don't end up in the Alzheimer's ward.

or

2. I am smarter now, as I was mis-guided and mis-directed in late February 2000.

Neither is a particularly attractive choice, since ultimately it leads to an admission of being stupider at one point or another--then or now.


Earlier than year, 24 Jan 00, I wrote:

The duplicitous nature of your own emotions can devastate a person.

And later that year, 5 Apr 00:

Soundless, the owl swooped, snatching a rat. This, under sunlight. Wolves howled. Dogs pawed nervously on the ground or at their doors. The expected solar eclipse never came.

Not Going to Post

I'm not going to post about the revived Muy Mal here, because that's not what this space is about.

This space is about other things.

For instance, people moved into the apartment next to mine less than a month ago. By people, I mean a man, a woman, and their two children, a toddler and an infant.

Today, they moved out.

Odd, as my lease goes for a year.

Maybe they didn't like their new neighbors?

~~~

Oh, and if you were wondering, we found the missing fairies.

games people play

It started innocently enough. A guy I worked with (on the other side of the world, when I lived there; now, I live on this side of the world) introduced me to a game in the newspaper. From Japan. New there, apparently, and I'd never seen it before.

Perhaps you've heard of it: Sudoku.

Once started I was hooked, and I moved from Easy to Medium to Hard to What Are You Nuts, and then I discovered a variant. Addoku. Where not only did you have these patterns of 1-9 to develop between rows, columns, and cubes, but now you started with no numbers to clue you in but totals (say 17, as the total of these two boxes, which of course means one's an 8 and one's a 9, but which one, eh?).

And now, apparently, even that wasn't enough.

They've created ShapeShifter Addoku.

I honestly don't know who they are, or why they do this, but I play one game almost every day. And, whether these are the creators or not, I know I can always find a new game here.

Three Days

That's how long I have to learn, forward and backward, one of my own stories, for a Saturday morning speaking thing.

If you're gonna be in town, why don't you drop in and listen?

Commodore 64

Everywhere I look, there seems to be some sort of tribute to, or remembrance of, the Commodore 64. And yes, I had one of those. With BankStreet Writer, on which I wrote some of my first novels (which you'll never see).

But before that, I had a VIC-20. Yep. With a tape drive. And, I believe, an Omega Race cartridge.

Weekend Winding Down

There's only a few hours left before it's officially and unmistakably Next Week. (There's the "official" start of Sunday, perhaps, but as Sunday is unmistakably part of the Weekend, it can't be counted as Next Week.)

(Unless of course you're on the other side of the International Date Line; it's already Next Week in Sydney and Tokyo.)

Either way, Last Week is gone. Whether you start on Sunday, or divide Last Week from Next Week with the Weekend (which, I believe, begins the moment you leave your day job on Friday), we probably didn't send Last Week away with the proper sendoff.

So, Last Week, you will be missed, but not too greatly, as you are now a part of the sum of our experiences. (Yeah, that's pretty sappy, but you gotta make Last Week feel like it's real, or there's no point.) We move forward, into Next Week and beyond, and ever shall you live in our memory, and ever shall your lessons guide our choices and influence our lives. Last Week, you shall never be forgotten.

The Weather

Driving to the day job today, through the North Floridian fog, sometime after dawn but before I'd be awake if I didn't have a day job, the weatherman predicted, "Fog tonight." I wondered: does that mean it'll stick around all day?

Once, when driving in a heavy downpour in Riverhead, Long Island, listening to WRCN (which, to my knowledge, still exists, and is located in Riverhead), the weather guy came on and said, "A 100% chance of rain today." Was the most accurate prediction ever.

Logic

Logic is just too demanding.

Still Crazy From the Heat

Can you say that at the dawn of winter?

I guess, if you're on the other side of the world, say Australia, or New Zealand, or Argentina, then it would actually be the dawn of summer. (I don't know about the others, but Australia's summer has already officially begun.)

Winter is a time of snow and blizzards and slush and icicles and fireplaces and shovels and such, unless you're in a place like Florida, where it's just the occasional overnight frost and some brisk, or even chilly, mornings.

under cover kitty

Woke up this morning, found the kitty asleep beside me, tucked under the covers so that only her head and front paws stuck out. Just like me.

Cute, eh?

random bits and oddities

For the record, if you're looking for my LiveJournal or myspace, you've come to the wrong place. There, there's no telling what I'll talk about, though you'll surely get updates on my upcoming books and such.

Here, there's less telling what you'll get, except that it won't be that.

Oh, and if you're here, you found the place by accident or on your own, because there's no link from my website (www.darkfluidity.com) to here. None.

wave

Is the wave of the future to go back to the past?