Here's a poem I wrote a while back (year or so). Sort of Dickensonesque, though no flies buzz nor sepulchres groan within.

The Darkest Coat of Dreams

I wrap myself in cloaks of darkness,
Weaving black on black of night on night
While sparkling stars betray my insight,
Then stretch my fingers into blindness.

I sungaze to wipe the soul with light,
Then shut eyes and wish the world away--
To seal the windows and flee the day
Is to keep a promise made each night.

I sleep deep and dream and roll and cry
At all the vivid images, bright
That flash and burn in embedded flight
From hours and years lost to sunlit sky.

In dreams I weave frail dark strands around
Of fancied loves and unfulfilled fate.
Yet waking, I fear and know too late,
To all tainted mourning here I’m bound

Well, here it is, the middle of August! I've been working on MTNI the last week and a half, and have it almost "in the can" now. Tomorrow I'll head to the printer to go over the proofs, and if all is well, give the issue my "imprimatur." I've almost got my "Thief of Lies" story ready to submit, but to whom? The horror market doesn't appear to be in good shape. Gone are the halcyon days of the 80s and 90s when any horror smack would sell! Too bad I wasn't writing the stuff then! But I wouldn't have been ready.... I'm a much more accomplished, wordly and mature writer now. Anyway, there's always the "hard science fiction" route, the crime drama/mystery, the historical romance, etc. I have ideas for them all.

Here are a few ideas I've been thinking about lately:

1) A time-displacement story, based on the latest temporal and end-of-time theories. What's beyond the END? There's this multiple brane theory, string theory, and the theory proposed by that New Zealander that time is not, as is commonly conceived, a series of discreet moments.

2) A story based on regular expressions! Uh... how? Dunno yet. But people always say "write what you know, and I do know regexps!

3) A follow-up to my "Probability" story, in which Carlisle and friend travel through multiple parallel universes via Carlisle's "Probability Engine."

4) A new story for WTIW, in which a cigar-store Indian is really an alien Robot come to rescue the lost tribes from genocidal homesteaders.

Now, it's August! Today I went to lunch at the Thai Café in Clairemont Mesa and had lunch with former colleagues. Doug was there, along with Thomas, Donna, Brigitte, Veronique, Heike and Annie. Marina came and said "Hi." It was fun to see everyone; I hope we can continue to stay in touch.

Out of "ennui," I went to see Terminator 3 today. Not a bad movie. There's little new to say about the Terminator universe. Arnold reprises his role with tired aplomb. The big attraction of the movie is Kristinna Loken, as TX--the girl terminator! She's every nerd's dream: a blonde young goddess with a permanent toolbelt! She can reprogram cell phones, conjur a drill bit out of her finger and a power saw from her forearm! And she's indestructable, which isn't bad either. I detected a slight bit of satire in her role, as this Barbie clone mainly wanders LA coveting and consuming. "I like your clothes," she says to a middle-aged socialite before bashing her over the head and swiping them. "I like your gun," she says to a cop, after pumping up her pneumatic boobs. A woman of few words, she's all action, in a hyper Winona Ryder sort of way....

The other movie I saw recently was "28 Days Later." It's best conceived of as a "thinking man's zombie movie," or perhaps "a thinking zombie man's movie." It recalls films as diverse as "The Omega Man" and "12 Monkeys." Costing something like $9 million to make, it's already shown a profit. After reading reviews, I went to the theater prepared to be scared out of my wits! Apparently my scare-o-meter is permanently redlined from years of Twilight Zones, Hammer films and Stephen King/Dean Koontz novels. While I found the film to be mildly disturbing, and craftily artificed, it just wasn't scary. The main idea of the film was that the humans, infected with a "rage virus," were rampaging, killing each other and generally leaving a lot of litter on the streets of London. Or, was it really the virus? Or just "people killing people, as they always have." When the hero goes berserk and starts slitting throats and gouging eyes out with his thumbs, is he "infected?" Or just doing the normal Homo Sapiens thing? The point was well aimed and well intended, but overal I found the film, by the same guy who did "The Beach," to be too art-house self conscious. As, who was it, Frank Capra, once said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union!"

Here's a letter I wrote to the San Diego Union Tribune, regarding the "death spiral" of Medi-Cal.

I read with interest your article in today's Union Tribune: "Nursing homes may have to cut corners or close". Did you know that there is a parallel crisis in the home-care nursing industry? I have first-hand experience with this, and am happy to share a bit of my story with you (perhaps it will lead to another article).

I'm a 47-year-old man with Muscular Dystrophy, and I use a ventilator (breathing apparatus) and power wheelchair. I'm also one of many patients in San Diego and throughout the state who receive nursing care in my home, under the NF (Nursing Facility) Waiver Program. This program, funded through Medi-Cal, allows patients to remain in their homes instead of being placed in nursing homes, as long as the nursing care they receive in-home is "cost-neutral" with nursing home care.

Unfortunately, the ongoing inadequacy of Medi-Cal reimbursement rates, combined with an overwhelming amount of Federal and State bureaucratic paperwork and the threat of further reductions in reimbursement rates, has led to an acute nursing shortage and the threat that people such as I will be left without care, made sicker and perhaps even die of officially sanctioned neglect. As an example, my current nursing provider, Sun Plus Home Care (on Chesapeake Avenue in San Diego) is unable to provide me with the 16 hours a day nursing care mandated by my plan of treatment. One of my nurses recently quit on short notice, and the agency is unable to replace him. This leaves me looking at 5 or more days a week with only 8 of the 16 hours per day of care I should be receiving.

The nursing agency's response to my plight is to tell me they are "trying" to fill the vacancy, while expecting me to rely on "backup" care. Backup care is required for home nursing patients in case of an emergency, but as an educated professional doing the best I can to live "the American Dream" independently, I cannot rely on my aging parents or friends to provide 5-day-a-week care.

My back is against the wall now, and there are many other home-care patients facing the same dilemma. Further cuts in the state's dismal Medi-Cal reimbursement rates will endanger the lives of me and thousands of others like me, as home-care nursing agencies are forced to stop accepting Medi-Cal patients and even close their doors, due to the unprofitability of running such an agency.

In my opinion, the state needs to quit obsessing over minor issues such as vehicle licensing fees (I too own a car, as do the nurses who will lose their jobs over these cuts) and find new solutions to the crumbling Medi-Cal system and the ever-increasing nursing shortage that Medi-Cal, Medicare, and HMOs have helped instigate. If nothing is done, we will soon be treated to the spectacle of more people dying on the streets of San Diego than the streets of Baghdad.

It's the end of the month, already! July has just flown by... I've gotten over the chaos caused by the nursing shortage, at least for now. I've moved to a new agency, Maxim. Maxim has filled most of my shifts, except for some 12-8 shifts that were left open by a male nurse who bailed out at the last moment. Sound familiar?

Tonight is the final class for "Writing the Horror Story." As a final project, I'm turning in my 4550-word, 25-page vampire story, "King of Lies." I hope Nancy likes it! As one of the assignments for the class, we had to use 10 class-generated "horror concepts" to come up with 10 story ideas. So, here are mine. The ones marked with a * are the ones Nancy said were "great" or "good."

10 Story Ideas

1. Helplessness: A man lies paralyzed in a hospital ICU. He wakes up one morning and discovers everyone gone. What happened? How does he get out? (NB: Not a zombie story!)

2. Unexplained disappearances: Passengers on an Alaska cruise ship begin disappearing mysteriously. A retired cop and his wife begin to suspect the cruise line is covering up a secret government gene-splicing project.

*3. Delusional obsession: A woman’s son is tragically killed in a distant war. One day at the mall, she meets a young man who strongly resembles her son (or does he?). She drugs and kidnaps the young man, taking him into her home, where she attempts to remake her formerly happy family life.

*4. “Just disturbing”: An Internet predator is stalking a woman. She uses her computer savvy to trace the stalker, only to discover the predator is her husband (who doesn’t know it’s her he’s stalking).

5. Contamination: A man with an obsessive-compulsive fear of touching others, suddenly and miraculously receives the gift of “laying on hands.” But when he cures others, he takes their maladies on himself.

6. The unknown: After a meteor strike in New Mexico, a young couple on vacation begin to suspect each other as not being “human.”

7. Agoraphobia: A man suffering from a debilitating, progressive eye disease begins seeing demons in large crowds.

8. Panic: Locked down in the basement under fear of an immanent terrorist strike, residents of a plush apartment building begin to turn on each other.

*9. Reincarnation: Ever since he was hit on the head with a baseball at age six, Charlie has had flashes of insight—visions—of a past world. Now as an adult he realizes that a crime unsolved in a past life might help him prevent one in his current life.

10. Secrets: A moralistic and talented doctor gets involved in a profitable, large corporation’s organ-harvesting business. When pushed to find more and rarer organs to harvest, he finds he must make a horrifying choice: sacrifice one member of his family to save the rest.

Here's a little poem I wrote, upon being laid off last year.

A Status Report, with apologies to Dr. Seuss.

Would you like my “stat” report?
Here’s all the news both long and short:
I did not work on Miramar.
I did not drive there in my car.
I wrote no rules in MSL.
I stayed at home, talked to myself.

I parsed no English
Synth’d no French.
No Arboretums opened I.
No Parthenons crashed on the fly.
No ATNs to strain my finger
Just a day at home with Jerry Springer.

Now Marina, Doug, John Keefe and me,
We’ve won the right to be job-free.
So when I think of algorithms
I’ll give not a damn what you do with ‘em.
That’s all there is for BGS,
Which—sans the “G,” makes lots of sense.

Dear Diary.... Why is that expression used? Who is the diary? The diary is inanimate; one hopes someone, somewhere, will read and find the notes. Much more so on the Internet, where it's all open to public exposure.Tomorrow is Father's Day. Tonight we're heading to my parents' house for dinner after Mass. My parents just got a new enclosed outdoor deck installed, and this will be our first chance to put it to use. But this brings to mind.... What IS Father's Day, exactly? We know that a woman started Mother's Day in rememberance of her own mother (and later regretted it, when it became a commercial boondoggle). But what about Father's Day? No idea. History Channel doesn't even see fit to bring it up. It seems more like an afterthought. "Well," someone in the Hallmark boardroom says, "We have Mother's Day already, what other parents can we honor, and make money from the honor?"I don't know that our society even understands what a father is anymore. It seems to run the gamut, from "sperm donor" to "my dad's gay companion" or even "my mom's wife." And we have serial fatherhood. It's the predominate form nowadays. Even I never had the pleasure of knowing my "biological father," Donald M. Clements. He booked off to Florida shortly after I was born. So today and tomorrow I honor my step-dad as father; he put in most of the work, and deserves the credit.

The Bush administration's latest foray into penurious cost-consciousness is reflected in an article in today's San Diego Union Tribune, titled: "White House may put less value on seniors, disabled." The story tells how the Bush OMB director is encouraging new guidelines that would place more value on "younger, healthier" people and less on the elderly and the disabled. This is to allow federal regulators to reestimate the societal cost of any proposed regulation. If, for example, a new pollution requirement would mainly enhance the life of someone estimated to only have 10 years to live, then that regulation could be deemed too expensive. It was bad enough under the original proposals, when senior citizens were involved; now people with disabilities have been thrown into the calculations. For a pro-life administration, this smacks loudly of the Nazi "life unworthy of living" regulations. According to the article: "Critics insist that Graham also wants agencies to give less weight to people with a questionable "quality of life," presumably those who are disabled or ill."'Once government puts itself in the position of saying, 'We're going to give more support to policies that care for young people,' you're basically saying old people and the sick and disabled – it's not cost-effective to save them anymore,' said Wesley Warren, an environmental economist for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget where Graham works."Scary stuff... All you pro-lifers out there, get off your butts and get on YOUR administration to put a halt to this policy!

To paraphrase Austin Powers paraphrasing Britney Spears, BGS said "Oops, I did it again, baaaby," and laid off seven more people from the San Diego office last Tuesday. Equinanimous to the last, they laid off three linguists, three engineers and the technical writer. All these people were friends, and I was sad to see this happen to them, though in my heart I knew it was coming. This is the strangest set of layoffs. BGS keeps managers and lays off employees. So now they have four managers in an office of about 10 people. Since each of those managers earns about $100K per year, that's $400k (not including benefits, which would double the amount) that BGS wastes. Why not dump the managers and keep the workers? They could save money and be more productive. The highest paid linguist makes about half what the salary of the linguistics manager. Plus, they killed the Miramar next-gen MT product, and have chosen to preserve Barcelona, under the rubric, Maestro. American business practices are unfathomable: golden parachutes to the big guys, a hangman's rope to the little ones. Oh, and a new name to add to the BGS Hall of Shame: Michael Wiesner. He should be deported back to his "Heimatsland" to lay off his own people.What else is going on? My nonfiction book class is over, and I learned a lot from it. The Arabic class is continuing till the end of the month. My first-ever story sale occured last month. My short story, "Probability," sold to "Would That It Were," a Web-based science fiction magazine. Check it out at www.wouldthatitwere.com

The weather here has been variable. Monday it was HOT, HOT, HOT. Tuesday it cooled off, and by Thursday night it was sprinkling a bit. Today is sunny, bright and beautiful. The kind of day San Diego "patents" (according to the weathermen). On a bit of a sad note, we had our last breakfast at the Mira Mesa Coco's today. It's being closed this week! Unbelievable. I remember when we moved here in '77. That was originally a Jojo's. They had a huge fish tank in the middle of the dining room. Then, it was something else, similar to Coco's (can't recall the name). And it's been Coco's since the mid-80s. Welcome to the Bush economy! But hey, we can all feel better by blowing up foreigners! Yeah! Or better yet, send the Mexicans and Blacks to kill the Arabs, a three-in-one score! Not that I'm bitter... sat next to one of Monica's 20-something friends (a fireman) at the restaurant, as he ordered "liberty toast" and repeated the phrase four or five times, just for effect. None of these people had to live thru the Vietnam War period, and they haven't acquired a healthy dose of skepticism about the Pentagon. Why is it that the neoconservatives, who never trust any branch of "big gubbament" expect us to slavishly believe every utterance of Donald Rumsfeld? Rrrrghg.

Well, time to post my four or five cents' worth on the Iraqi War. Bush will rue the day he undertook this mistaken crusade. It's not that Bush and his neocon cronies are necessarily wrong in attempting to disarm Iraq and do away with a horrible regime. There is a time for both pacifism and war, and now that the troops have been committed, there is only a single choice: ultimate victory. Nevertheless, this war shouldn't have begun at all, at least not now. The neocons planned this war long before Bush was elected; they never bought into the conclusion of the first gulf war. That conclusion was a mess-up of the Elder Bush admin. First, they didn't destroy the Republican Guard when they had the chance. Second, and most reprehensible, they encouraged the Iraqis--Kurds and Shiites--to rise up against Saddam, only to abandon them to the slaughter. Too much manipulation, too much Machiavellianism, has haunted the Republicans. Thus, Gulf War II is to erase the foul memory of their mistakes.It's amazing that these generals and politicians whine about how the Iraqis violate the "rules of war." Has any country ever obeyed those rules completely? Doubtful. And when one's country is invaded, right or wrong, it's arguable that all strategies are appropriate to the combatant defenders. Jesse Ventura made this point in an interview earlier this week. Yes, the Saddam regime is evil, ugly and uncivilized. But would they be engaging in these tactics if US and UK troops weren't overrunning Iraq? Last week, a billion dollars' worth of cruise missiles were unleashed on that miserable country. Was there no other better use of that billion dollars? But, thanks to the war, we can forget about problems in the economy. We can forget that, perhaps, that one billion dollars added to NASA's budget might have prevented the Columbia disaster. The Bush team nickles-and-dimes the domestic agenda, while coddling their rich cronies. Some cracks have begun to show in the regime, in the resignation of Richard Perle (chief architect of the Iraq debacle) over his "feeding at the trough" of both Global Crossing and the Pentagon.We stand at a crossroads in world history. The US has undertaken the lonely course of an imperial civilization. Weilding ultimate power, and smashing your enemies, is satisfying in a reptilian-brain sort of way. But once that role is assumed, there will always be someone, somewhere, who will try to knock the great nation off its pedestal. When thousands of US troops are killed and wounded in the eventual Battle of Baghdad, someone will be called accountable. It reminds me of the first real death-blow to the Roman Empire: the Battle of Adrianople in AD 375. "Pride goeth before a fall." The consequences of these ill thought out actions will reverberate for years.

I couldn't help but notice this article on CNN today, under rubric: "Operation enables Reeve to breathe without respirator": The lead-in to this, from CNN's main page, purports to tell us how Reeve will be "freed from a respirator." What the heck is a respirator? The press continues to use a term that went out with the Iron Lung. It's a VENTILATOR, stupid!! I've been using the machines for 20 years, and they are great. Sure, it takes some adjustment to get used to, but ventilators can be seen as liberating devices, not enslaving ones. The newest models, by Pulmonetic Systems , are the size of a laptop computer and are very user-friendly and portable. I can't wait to take one on a trip! Why is it that people who use glasses, and can't leave home to go buy Budweiser at the 7/11 down the block without climbing into their 4,000 lb SUV (which needs extra wide seats to hold their waddling fat asses), look down their noses at people who use ventilators? Ever since Cro Magnon man first lumbered out of a cave, grabbed a stick and whacked an unwilling female over the head with it to take her as a bride, Homo Sapiens has been Homo Technicalis, Tool Man. We make use of everything in the material world for our benefit, but then suddenly some want to distinguish between the privileged and the "outré." Work to get BETTER! Work to get yourself off that damn machine, boy! Breathing is a rudimentary but ultimate necessity of living; how we breathe is nobody else's affair.

A few notes on my current life:The first three months after leaving BGS, I spent working the phones nearly every day. It's a nightmare to navigate the bureaucracies. Nobody can give you a straight answer, and most state and county employees don't even care if they give you the right information or not. The first thing I had to do was secure food/shelter and insurance. After a lot of research I found I could qualify for the SDI (State Disability) Insurance program. Then next month I will start receiving a monthly stipend from Social Security. My next biggest challenge was insurance--keep COBRA at the whopping charge of $359 a month? Or rely on Medi-Cal? With Medi-Cal's cutbacks, the latter was a risky probability, and the former would bankrupt me of my severance pay in short order. Again, research, research, research... after talking to 10 people over the course of November, December and January I discovered a state program called HIPP (Health Insurance Premium Payment). I just finished doing the paperwork for that, and now the State of California is paying my COBRA premiums. So, another few months I can survive the cruel, cruel world. All this and a roommate, and I'm fairly well set till the SDI runs out at the end of November 2003.Taking advantage of the generously provided time-off, courtesy of Brian Potter, Glenn Castan and the late, not-lamented Carl Glaser, I've started taking classes in things that interest me. This month, it's screenplay writing. Next month, nonfiction book writing and Arabic. After that, probably some technical stuff--tech writing/web editing/JAVA, and things that might lead me to something new and exciting. Or at least, not old and boring. It's kind of like being dumped by one's spouse of 12 years: one can either mope around home in one's jammies, or dress up and hit the singles bars looking for something better! I choose the latter--but in my own way. Things look hopeful, but as always there may be some disaster lurking right around the corner. Or, some stupendous success. Only time, and God, will reveal the truth.

This week is supposed to be a rainy one in San Diego. Ordinarily, I'd like that. Rainy days are beautiful, clean and refreshing. The rythmic pattering of rain on roofs and sidewalks is a joy to listen to--a natural music unbeaten by any composer. Still, I'm starting my screenwriting class this Wednesday, and I'm not looking forward to slogging through rain to get to class. Hypocritical maybe, but I'm a San Diegan! Rain is almost a supernatural phenomenon for us. At least we have an ocean to mitigate the drying effects of our climate. I could never, ever live in the desert, with its parched, dessicated mountains and dry gullies. Yes, there is a beauty to a desert landscape, especially during sunrise and sunset, but it's the ossified beauty of a dead animal's bones by a washed out ravine.

This is my first post; just a test to see if it works!