7/5/04 3:21 AM: "The Marquis de Sade was born crazy and he did monumentally crazy things every day of his utterly degenerate life ... but he was only insane when he got locked up in jail." -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

THE DRIVE: My car still smells like dog. Some pretty enthusiastic goings-over the seats with a pet-specific lint brush have garnered some small success, but the car's still awfully furry. I won't be able to get it detailed and de-dogged right now (see why below, with "Good Times"), and it still runs hot, but it feels right and I'm overall happy. Plus, it was only two grand. Also: it seems the passenger side door locks, but won't open, via the power locks. Zany but acceptable. It's definitely a female car, so in honor of Rahne Sinclair from X-Factor I'm gonna go with the votes and call the car "Wolfsbane." Whether it ever gets a surname ("Eveningstar" being the lead contender, since i realized that a bullet is fired and forgotten, not something I wanna attach to this car's identity) remains to be seen.

INDEPENDANCE DAY: Yesterday I went to Aunt Linda's house for the food and all. Now, I don't celebrate the Fourth of July. I don't celebrate most holidays -- the biggest development for me was having my newspaper check stalled a day. But the family has pretty much adopted me (Aunt Linda, technically, is Inpu's aunt, but that's neither here nor there), and I like 'em a lot, and that means another meal I wouldn't have to make for myself, so off I went.

By the time I left, the entire freakin' city was illuminated with toy explosives. It went on for hours, way past sane limits, past midnight even. I would talk about this in scorching detail, but thankfully writer Christopher Priest already did amidst discussing his own divorce, following up with a version specific to this year. My work here is done.

GOOD TIMES: So looking at my money, the picture is pretty bleak. That's not good. I've got way more expenses than cash coming in right now, with a number of bills unpaid for some time (I held off on everything until I could get the car thing done), yet I'm not worried. I'm fed. The very expensive lesson with the truck break in cost me $500 I could surely use now, but why cry over spilt milk? I'm staying home a lot this week, relaxing a lot, trying to not spend any cash. If the landlord operates as normal, I should have some wiggle room later this week, but whatever.

I WANT MY MP3: One of the things keeping me home is organizing my new 3rd-Generation iPod. It's so tiny. I didn't think I'd notice the size difference from the first generation model I lost, but it's a really impressive thing. It's the size of a freakin' cassette and has a 20 GB drive. Zany. When money gets less bad, I'll go back to the place I got my alarm, spend $70 and get an analog input added to my stereo so I can listen in the car. There's also a $18 car mount on eBay that really looks right, so that'd mean just under another hundred to hook up the car properly (not counting car charger, as my old model doesn't seem to fit as promised, unless I'm missing something .... now I think about it, I think I know how to make it work). I will be less stupid and bad-luck-prone for the rest of the year, I tell you ...

Anyway, the thing has 400-some-odd songs on it already (a plus, since my 100 GB drive is also MIA, having some desktop-fright issues while holding 40 gigs of my MP3s in its guts. "All relationships are temporary" applies to digital media as well. Right. Anyhoo, some of this stuff is original music, and some of it's not bad. Some of it completely sucks, but oh well. Just saying, as an artist who doesn't really care where my samples come from (i.e. "Caught, Can I Get A Witness?" -- which is even funnier seeing as how Chuck sued Biggie over sampling without permission), I'm still poking at it and seeing what we have. I made a "show" specific playlist for Friday night, but I'll take CDs as a back up, just in case.

THE LAND OF THE LOST: July 22nd, i'm supposed to check into my hotel in San Diego. This going well depends on a number of variables going right, including my CBR boss Jonah remembering to pay me on time (his dad's sick, so he'll probably need a reminder) and me staying conservative. Plus, I don't think the "karaoke at SDCC" thing will work since Mikey had the gall to talk about charging me to use his system and Dana's isn't built yet. Oh, and I don't have a room, and my disc collection is still MIA as replacements are on the way. Time seems to be conspiring with gravity against me ...

THIS GAME IS FAN-TASTIC!: I've been reading Mark Cuban's Blog,and I gotta tell ya, it's riveting stuff. The breakdown of how he felt he had to let Stevie Nash go to Phoenix, it's both educational and emotional. There's now eight blogs in my list of "every day" weblinks, which is way up from, say, two a month ago. Interesting. Anyway, all the trade rumors have made the off-season really fun, and after years of not really following sports, I'm now a total NBA nut. Not that, aside from jerseys, the league has seen any money from me (well, I see ads, which is a lot of their goal as well), but whatever.

TELLING STORIES: Just tonight I finished Book Two of The Crown, and to be honest I'm glad to have it behind me. I still wanna go back and add some edits, adding a lot of the new info I have about Symi, and punch up some sequences. It got to be a burden, and it will be some time before I tackle Book Three. I'm looking forward to doing some really short fiction pieces and more poetry -- after my latest piece I remembered the quick sense of gratification a deftly hewn poem can deliver. Lots of ideas to work on, but getting them finished is a real challenge.

A PAPER BUCKET: I've had a lot of people asking me about my divorce recently. Specifically, they wonder (men in particular) why I'm not more angry or why I wasn't more adversarial in walking away from a whole lot of investment (financial and otherwise). I finally came up with this.

See, my ex-wife was a paper bucket. Ornate, carefully crafted, and very interesting, but still a bucket made of paper. The idea that such a bucket could hold anything is ridiculous.

Sadly, I was deluded by my interest in the bucket and my desire to stop shopping for buckets. So I went whole hog for this bucket in question, pouring all my money and dreams and hope and foolish faith into it. I picked up the things that fell out and put them back in. I tried to use tape to seal leaks in it. I turned the leaking sides away from my friend, family and even myself. Finally, actually a lot later than should have been logical, the paper bucket burst wide open, spilling everything I'd ever had everywhere, down the drains and into the lawn and leaving me with virtually nothing but wet hands and wasted time.

What kind of idiot would I be to blame the paper bucket? It did what it could -- performed above and beyond its design specifications. Ignoring the fact that signs on the side said, "No, really, I'm made of metal and won't ever burst wide open," that's just crazy for me to have believed all that madness and tried to put all of that into a paper bucket. So now, I'm just keeping my things to myself, not looking for any container to put stuff in, because I clearly can't tell metal from paper. I'm vaguely trying to learn how to discern between metal and ... well, not metal, but I'm in no hurry for it, learning to hold on to my own things with my own two hands. If that makes sense to you.

Plus there's the fact that months of legal wrangling might have netted me a few thousand dollars (really, like six, legal fees alone would have sucked up most of it), with a bonus of so much bad blood, bad energy and me in courthouses and lawyer's offices that I get tired even thinking about it ... I did the right thing for me, and that's cool.

Anyway, I like this "paper bucket" metaphor a lot. Now it's written down, maybe I can just send people the link so I don't have to talk about it.

That's enough blog for now. Carry on.

"It's okay, I have such low expectations of you anyway that you couldn't possibly disappoint me anymore." -- Hosun S. Lee