Hehe. I'm going to fix that.

Embrace the chaos. Go for Europe in the Post Modern Eye.

Well, this just made my Monday complete. Got my official termination letter from the publisher this afternoon, in quadruplicate.

I love how they took nearly THREE FUCKING MONTHS to let me know they ultimately didn't want to publish the book, oh, and by the way, we'll be wanting our money back if you sell it elsewhere, and yet managed to send the "You and your book suck DEAD MOOSE COCK and oh, by the way, we'll be wanting our money back if you sell it elsewhere" letter in only two weeks.

Fuck.

Oh, and I forgot: yay Allyson and new belt!

Oh yeah, yay Allyson!

Every month or so, I get annoyed because my pants won't stay up very well, and then I realize I've lost more weight and must tighten my belt another notch. That happened today - there's only one more hole left in this belt!

Did I mention that my knee just magically stopped hurting? When I realized this, I also notice that this mass of scar tissue on my knee (that's been there since my accident in '91) was suddenly gone too. Weird. Anyway, I've gone back to doing lots of walking, so I think that's mostly the reason I'm losing weight.

Oh Barb.

{{{{Barb}}}}

I'm sorry, Barb. That sucks. Bad, bad publisher!

Hee--Tom Freakin' Skilling and his fellow Chicago/Milwaukee weathercasters break out in song!

So sorry Barb, that isn't right.

Geez, bad cross-post. I'm so sorry about that, Barb.

Oh Barb! That sucks. Your book I am sure does NOT.

IONonElectionNonNonMonkeyN,

(From (Boing Boing):

Comic Book Resources has a fantastic first-hand account of ordering a live miniature monkey from a comic book advertisment. Jeff Tuthill ordered one for about $25 in the early 1970s. Not wanting his parents to know, he had it shipped to his friend's house.

From Comic Book Resources: MAIL-ORDER FRIENDS: THE COMIC BOOK SQUIRREL MONKEYS

Tuthill continued, “No instructions [were included]. He had this waist belt on, a collar, if you will, on his waist, with an unattached leash inside the box. So I opened the box up inside the cage, the monkey jumped out, I withdrew the box and found the leash. I have no idea where it came from; I assumed it came from Florida. I figured, well, it’s probably near dehydration, so I opened up the cage to put some water in it. It leapt out of the cage when I opened it up the second time! I mean, it was eyeing the pipes that I was unaware of. As soon as I opened the cage, it leapt up and grabbed onto the plumbing up on the ceiling and started using them like monkey bars, and he was just shooting along in the basement, chirping pretty loud. It was heading towards the finished side of the basement, where there was a drop ceiling, and if it got into those channels, I never would have got it. It would have been days to get this thing out of there. I grabbed it by its tail, and it came down on, starting literally up by my shoulder, like a drill press it landed on my arm, and every bite was breaking flesh. It was literally like an unsewing machine. It was literally unsewing my arm coming down, and I was pouring blood. I grabbed it by its neck with both my wrists, threw it back in the cage. It’s screaming like a scalded cat. I’m pouring blood. My friend’s laughing uncontrollably, and my father finally comes in the basement door and goes, ‘Jeffery! What are you doing to that rabbit?’ And I go, ‘It’s not a rabbit, it’s a monkey, and it just bit the hell out of me.’ ‘A monkey? Bring it up here!’ I’m pouring, I wrapped a t-shirt around my arm to stave off the bleeding, carried the cage upstairs, and I don’t know why I bothered sneaking it in, because they fell in love with it, and it was like, there was no problem at all. They took me to the emergency room and I got 28 stitches on my arm.” The young comic reader learned the hard way to never grab a monkey by the tail.