Back pains forced me to reconcile with the morning sun. But that’s ok…I went to bed early last night and it was nice tosee the A.M. sun for a change. It’s a much prouder sun, for it says “I AM sun!”

But the back pain is not so sweet. It goes beyond simply hurting when I move…into the realm of precognition, as it hurts when I think about moving. It’s like a reverse Spider Sense. Rather than having something that preemptively warns me of pain – I have pain that preempts something.

So Wednesday’s writing was an all-nighter that spilled into Thursday morning. I opted to go to the coffee shop to finish up. And, my reward for posting this before I left…was the pleasant surprise of Torrie materializing before me at said coffee shop (and thus completing the allusion of the song lyrics I put up in the prior post). Thanks Torrie! Running around inside your own head all night can get lonely (even if the current mindscape is full of evil eyes and tattle-tale hearts).

The story itself, did not get completed (it’s the most painstaking thing I’ve ever written…as I have to carefully snag words from Poe’s stories and paste them into my sentences to make it sound, not only like Poe himself, but a strange cross of three different narrators from three different stories…and oi!). Its ending alluded me…but I’ll pick up the trail next week.

So…last night I found myself holding a pair of kangaroo testicles. In our writing class, we often hold little, impromptu show and tells. One of the students brought in a kangaroo scrotum bottle opener. Apparently, this kind of thing is pretty common in Australia. In case any of you wanted to know what a genuine Kangaroo scrotum bottle opener looks like (and especially for those who don’t)…here ya go:

You can order these fine products for 25$ a pop (that’s only 12.50 a ball) HERE. Now some of you might say “That is so grooooooos Josh!” To you I say, just take a breath. Chill. Don’t be so uptight. Sit back and relax…

These are great Christmas gift items! In other random madness: If you ever wanted to get someone an adorable, giant, stuffed-animal microbe…now’s your chance (http://www.giantmicrobes.com/). The flue never looked so cute.

In stupid news…Alabama is trying to pass a law that would prohibit libraries from carrying any books that feature gay characters. This would not only eliminate obviously gay oriented material (queer theory anyone?) but even prohibit universities from performing classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Now, I’ve posted their website before – the CBLDF (http://www.cbldf.org/) , or(Comic Book League Defense Fund), but I thought I’d do so again as I’m now joining up. They spend gobs of money fighting first amendment cases (not just comic books) and have had a lot of success. Seeing as freedom of speech being the one and only issue I don’t have a complicated set of mixed emotion about, I thought I might hop aboard.

And finally…here are some random Victorian era British catch phrases:

1. What a shocking bad hat!
2. Hookey Walker! or Walker!
3. There he goes with his eye out!
4. Has your mother sold her mangle?
5. Flare up!
6. Does your mother know you’re out?
7. Who are you?
8. Cherry ripe!
9. The sea! The sea!
10. ‘Tuppence more and up goes the donkey’.