Today is another good day for space research. The Opportunity rover successfully set itself down on Meridiani Planum. It initially showed pictures quite different from the rock-strewn areas we've seen in the past. Intriguingly, there is a rocky outcropping within driving distance for the rover. Who knows what it will find?

In other news, looks like Howard Dean's goose is cooked. Kerry leads in New Hampshire and I believe he will win. Looks like Hillary's idea of sitting out this election while the current "bum crop" of Democratic candidates run headlong into the Republican buzz-saw, was the wise decision to make. Kerry will be lambasted as a Kennedy-liberal and Bush will coast to victory.

Today's weather--cool and cloudy. Around 61 for a high. Originally rain was predicted, but I don't see any now. I'm off to Ethan's baptism at 10:30.

I had dinner with Donna and Marina at Dead Lobster on Friday night! Much fun!

It's January 2004! Welcome to the future! Hmmm ... looks a lot like 2003! There's a lot to follow in the news:

-- The Democratic Primary: Looks like Dean will win in Iowa. But the Dems seem hell-bent on self destruction. Lieberman and Kerry need to get their heads screwed on straight. Neither one had a chance of winning the primary season, or of beating Bush. They are just the "democratic wing of the Republican Party." Why vote for these losers when we already have GWB? And all the character assassination they have done against Dean will come back to bite the party in the general elections.

-- The Mars rovers. Hooray for Spirit! Let's hope Opportunity successfully lands in a couple of weeks. It was disappointing to see the Beagle 2 not make it, since that was the only probe specifically designed to search for life. American scientists pursue their determined rock-hunting, which is cool from a scientific point of view, but lacks much zip for the general public. -- I'm still doing writing. The rejections tick me off, but that's part of the biz. I'll keep at it until I succeed or starve.

-- Today I cancelled my ATT long-distance service. I can use my cell phone or one of those 10-10 numbers if necessary (I hardly make any LD calls anyway). But the process was ridiculous. First, I called ATT and had to speak to some idiotic VR system. "Just speak naturally," it intones. And oh, it's just SO friendly! Makes me want to remain a customer, NOT. Then after I speak "Cancel" three times into the receiver, I get transfered to an operator. Then I wait 15 minutes to speak to a human. The human I finally get to talk to turns out to be an Indian (and I don't mean an Apache). Finally, after much mumbling on her part and sarcastic invective on mine, I get it through to her that I want to cancel my long distance. Then she tells me I have to call SBC to tell them I have cancelled my ATT. What the??? So then I call SBC, who at least has a native-English speaker as an operator. She tells me that ATT just handles billing, and that SBC has to physically disconnect me from ATT's network. And that carries a $5.00 charge! So no matter what you do, the corporate vampires suck your blood try.

December is the Christmas mad rush season, during which we celebrate the glories of capitalism, a fat guy in a red suit, and, oh, by the way, that subversive Jewish guy who was born in Bethlehem 2003 years ago (more or less, give or take a year or two, or maybe a decade). The malls, our modern temples, are filled with worshippers of the Golden Calf, paying homage not with Gold, Frankincense and Myrh, but Visa, MasterCard and Discover.

This year, even more than last, I've done most of my shopping online. The Internet will, eventually, bury the mall. I've also gotten most of my Christmas cards mailed, though a few unexpected stragglers arrive in the mailbox daily that cause me to have to reach for the box o' cards once again.

Last week was a fun week for TV. Monday night was the finale of "Average Joe." Melana, the cheerleader, picked handsome mama's boy Jason over ordinary--but rich--Jewish boy Adam. I was disappointed in the outcome as well, but in the end, "show bidness" was what it was all about. Many of the "average Joes" were wannabe actors... For example, Tariq, the Indian "genius," will be appearing on the show "Miss Match" either this week or next. Also, perpetually nerdy accountant Dennis (the guy who got the egg on the head) also has a long list of entertainment credits. For those who want it, the publicity can be a stepping stone to an entertainment career.

I saw Melana and Jason on both "Today" and "Tonight" yesterday. Apparently their contracts stipulated that they not see each other for the last 7 months. Some romance! Seeing as how the "prize" was simply a vacation to the Caribbean with Melana, perhaps she decided if she were going to spend just a week with the "winner," it might as well have been the "hot" one. Anyway, on "Today" they called Adam, and he sounded happy. As one review put it, "most of the Joes seem terminally Jewish." He reminded me of a bulky Seinfeld. And he evidently has a new girlfriend and watched the conclusion of the show in his bar with 500 friends. Perhaps, as Katie Couric said, Adam was the real winner after all!

I probably will watch the second series, as one problem with Melana was her Midwestern "Miss Congeniality" attitude. She bore the stiff upper lip too well, and was pretty much too darned cheerful. Seeing her giggling like a schoolgirl with a crush on the quarterback during her two appearances yesterday further lowered my expectations of her. As in fiction, the most interesting characters on "reality TV" are the ones who have a little bit of an edginess, a little bit of a dark side. Remember annoying, gay Richard on the first, and only interesting, "Survivor"? Have you noticed that Melana is blonde and the new girl is a brunette, with darker skin? Is that a coincidence? I doubt it, as everything in these shows is calculated to a "tee."

As far as the election, I don't feel good about it. Americans vote their pocketbooks more than anything else, and if the statistics look good, Bush will be very hard to beat. Iraq also will play a big role, but unless there is something equivalent of 1968's Tet Offensive, I don't see Bush as doing a Lyndon Johnson. More of a Nixon, probably (not surprising in that his closest advisors are resurrected Nixonites). Have you seen the report that Wolfowitz (what a Dickensian name!) has banned France, Germany, Canada and Russia from reconstruction contracts? Bush continues to extend his Texas-sized middle finger to the world, and we'll all pay for that eventually. The dollar is plummeting vis-a-via the Euro. Greenspan's propping up Bush by keeping interest rates ridiculously low. Eventually this too shall come home to roost, and when it does, the economy will suffer. And will the Europeans feel inclined to bail us out? But, Bush won't be in office by then, he estimates, so why worry?

My birthday, November 6, came and went without much fanfare. I went to dinner at Chin's on Miramar Road with my family (parents and Monica). Since my writing class was that night, I just went to the class and had Nancy read my story, "Beth and the Silver Box." The story got spontaneous applause after the reading, which made me happy. People genuinely seemed to like it, and even asked me how it ended (only the first five pages were read in class). I've submitted the work to Nancy, and am looking forward to reading her comments.

Recently, I went to see "Matrix Revolutions." It was a decent SF-adventure flick. I think people got too caught up in the philosophical implications and forgot that, at heart, the movie is just pulp entertainment. Plus, there's a strong sense of "been there, done that," with the epic battle scenes and the Uber Burly Brawl finale between Anderson and Smith.

Finally, there's more chemistry between Monica Bellucci's ample breasts than between Neo and Trinity during their final kissing scene.

This past week has bee Hell on Earth in San Diego and the surrounding area. The fires raged, the winds blew, the smoke beclouded our skies for days. On Tuesday, in fact, it was so dark that I had to run my lights in the house all day. The sky was a murky pumpkin-yellow: appropriate for Halloween, perhaps, but the horror and agony of the victims outweighed the interesting spooky color scheme. Plus, I was locked up in my apartment all week, with the AC running, to try to avoid the outside toxic atmosphere. Schools were closed all week; I missed my Short Story I class.

The parking lot at St. Gregory's was half full with tents housing all kinds of relief supplies the community had donated. St. Gregory's has become the focal point for a lot of the relief efforts for the Scripps Ranch area. Some 50-odd parishioners lost homes to the fires. The parish is also coordinating some relief efforts for Crest, Ramona, and Julian.

It's been entertaining watching the politicians jockey for the blame-game. The local Republicans, who have cheapskated our community for years, all tried to blame Gov. Davis. Yet everyone knows the CDF procedures allocated firefighters (I would prefer to say "firemen," but hey, poticial correctness ueber alles!). And even the Union Tribune, snot rag of the local Republican Junta, ran articles last week on the front page showing how the Bush administration has been shortchanging the local communities, sending out a memo saying "cost containment has to be equally important with safety." (<-- Paraphrase)

On other news, my birthday is this coming Thursday. Number 48! Wheee! We will be celebrating this coming Tuesday at Chin's in Miramar, since I have class on Thursday.

Meanwhile, I keep getting rejects on stories. "Chalk it up to showbusiness," Nancy says. Yeah, right. But it still is "teh Suck," as my EverQuest friends would say. It wouldn't be so bad if writing were still a hobby, but now that I'm trying to make a career of it, every reject notice is money out of my wallet. Argh! That being said, 3 other stories/articles are out in circulation, maybe my ship will eventually come in. Please, God, don't make me have to grind away in a cubicle again! Noooooooooooooooo!!!

One other interesting note. I got a call from the Health and Human Services eligibility worker who's doing my Medi-Cal evaluation. She claims to have never received my packet of documents, which I mailed over a month ago. I was really upset, as some of those documents were originals (they always require originals). I don't understand where that envelope could have gone: it was printed with her HHS address and worker number on it. I think it's really there, probably buried on another worker's desk, perhaps. Tomorrow I'm calling Aleyda at Protection and Advocacy to complain and lay the groundwork for an appeal if this screws up my Medi-Cal and IHSS eligibility.

Today is Friday! That used to seem a lot more significant to me when I "worked for a living." Of course, now I still work, but the work is private until some editor decides it's worthy of publication. Last night we had Week 5 of Short Story I. This class has been worthwhile from the theoretical standpoint, but has been a lot less fun overall than the "Writing the Horror Story" class. It's not Nancy's fault--she puts a lot of effort into making the class work. But the students, for the most part, seem to be a lot less passionate about their work, and it shows in the kinds of stories they turn in. Mostly, these are introspective, pseudo-memoirs, of the dry, literary sort.

For example, there's the little old Jewish lady whose story starts out, "Sally wondered how she ended up lost on the top of a Greek island." Apparently it's based on a real-life adventure she had in 1968, but the adventure has mostly been stripped from the story. Then there was the one about the mother at a school PTA-type meeting. *yawns* Or the one about the girl whose car was stolen. Or the one by the loudmouthed psychologist in the group, who apparently has a problem with an absentee father (the kid in the story goes wandering around Mexico City by himself and discovers his long-lost dad).

Last night's stories were a bit better. One, called "Boy," centered around a young runaway, who took care of horses on Mr. Dougherty's ranch. It was told in first-person, in a hick dialect of indeterminate origin. Another story was drawn straight from "Wonder Years," about a kid who has to face down a bully. The last one, called "Funeral Homes," was the weakest. All three stories were told in first person, but the "I" of "Homes" was indistinct. We, the readers, never even got to know his name.

My story will be anything but bland and will shake things up a bit. I only hope Nancy doesn't blow the reading! Meanwhile, here's the essay I did on Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" for the class:

Plotting in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

"Heart of Darkness" is a novella, and as such has a plot structure a bit more complex than most short stories. The action doesn't boil down to "a single incident that happened once," but it rather an episodic and epic journey from the Nellie on the placid Thames, to Belgium, and deep into the Belgian Congo. The return trip, as traced by Marlow in his frame narrative, proceeds back up the Congo River, through the jungle, to that "Sepulchral City" (Brussels) and back onto the Nellie. Each waypoint incident on this journey into darkness is like an island in the vast and flowing stream of the narrative.

There are aspects to the story's construction that, while hardly innovative, might seem so to a novice reader (or writer). One is the frame narrative, invented by the Arabs, honed by Chaucer and Bocaccio, and used often in contemporary films and novels. Screenwriters call this technique "bookending," where a narrator starts the story in some kind of "present," but reminisces of some past incident, then returns to the "present" at the end of the story. This technique was used in Amadeus, for example.

Each island of narrative in "Heart of Darkness" builds on the tension of the previous one, until Kurtz's climactic "The horror. The horror." A plot diagram of Conrad's story might look more like the "death spiral" of a moth auguring into a candle flame than the classic, if oversimplified, "rising and falling action." The depth of this work has impressed me more and more since I first read it in the 8th grade, and I would take away from it, as a lesson in plotting, not to fear depth and complexity, even when attempting a work of commercial accessibility.

Another day, another Sunday. Another Chargers game--let's hope they win today!

Other news: My battle with IHSS is temporarily over. They agreed to a conditional withdrawal of my appeal, and Susan Moreno, the appeals worker, is sending the case back to the County. Turns out, as I insisted all along, I belong in the so-called "250 Working Disabled" program, meaning my IHSS should never have been cut off. Would have helped if Angela Knoll, my IHSS worker, had not left county service the day after she mailed me the cutoff notice.

I sent off two stories yesterday, to web zines. We'll see what happens. While there's a story in queue, there's hope!

Here's a brief review of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" I recently did for Short Story I:

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

On the offhand, I'd say this story has a great line of progeny, most notably almost every other "Twilight Zone" episode, and Stephen King's "Children of the Corn." The "universal truth" centering the story is the unending willingness of humans to sacrifice for some common good. If the sacrifice involves bloodshed, all the better! And if it involves ganging up on the weak, there's nothing amiss therewith, from the subjective view of the mob. Most disturbingly, the "common good" can be vague, unusual, half forgotten; the ritual subsumes the goal. Certainly in the '40s when "Lottery" was written, the world had seen ample examples of all of the behaviors mentioned above: Fascism, Nazism, Communism. And we're not bereft of modern examples, including the near stoning of the woman in Nigeria a few weeks ago.

This is very much an "external" narrative. Without going into specifics (too hard to lug that gigantic book around), "The Lottery" is almost a stage piece. Everything, the crowd, the children, the stones, the box, has its starting point almost etched out in the dusty town square. Visually, one can imagine a pan shot as the camera descends from a high level view of the town to the street level. Then it pans again to crowds, faces, and actions. The narrator truly is the camera's eye in this setting.

I've been doing these little reports on various short stories assigned to us in Nancy's class. Eventually I'll post them all; here's the most recent one (for tonight's class):

A Short Look at Characterization in Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited"

When thinking of "Babylon Revisited," one cannot help but think of the American relationship with Paris over the years. Since the '30s depicted in the story, the glitter, the charm, the art and the decadence of the City of Light have all been surpassed by one US city or another; the most monstrous domestic concoction of all those qualities (excepting the "art") being La Vegas, with its Paris Hotel and Casino towering over the denizens of the strip like a neon-lit avatar of Montaigne's Gargantua. Yet Paris remains, eternally elusive and alluring to the "stranger." Characterization in "Babylon Revisited" grows out of setting.

Charlie Wales is the quintessential "American in Paris," surviving in the post-crash depression era as best he can. He's a man who's "made mistakes," lived high and fallen low, only to begin digging himself out again. The narrator focuses on Charlie's view of the world, and sometimes we, the collective readers, have to wonder how reliable this viewpoint is. Charlie's vocabulary is striking for its use of "I." One senses Charlie still longs for his days of drunken "royalty" in the following passage:

"But it was nice while it lasted.... We were a sort of royalty, almost infallible, with a sort of magic around us. In the bar this afternoon"--he stumbled, seeing his mistake--"there wasn't a man I knew."

Does he really want Honoria to live with him for her good, or his own? The steadfast but bourgeois Peters family have made good guardians for the child. With the brash intrusion of Charlie's former drinking buddies into the Peterson home, the reader can't help but sense a certain foreboding that Charlie eventually will succumb again to Babylon's glittering charms. The sadness he feels at the end is the sadness of a man both facing, and running from, the delinquencies of his past. The final sentence brings Charlie's piquant, self-inflicted misfortune into perspective: "He was absolutely sure Helen wouldn't have wanted him to be so alone." In the end, Honoria is the prop upon which Charlie hopes to hang his ego, not a fully fleshed human being who would benefit equally from her relationship to her father.

Last Tuesday, we the citizens of the once mighty State of California managed to turn participatory democracy into a circus sideshow. We now have a governor-elect who believes Native American tribes are "special interests" but thinks it's ok to take $300,000 in contributions from land-developer magnate and Chargers owner Alex Spanos. The media-corporate oligarchy has managed to finally throw aside any pretense at good government. This has been the greatest usurpation of a weak central government by an Austrian since Odoacer ripped the crown from the feeble head of Romulus Augustulus.

If I were a Republican (which I most assuredly am not), I would have voted for McClintock, who at least gives the faintest impression of knowing what he's talking about. Even if there's no way in HELL he or Arnold could balance the budget by eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse." These Neanderthals (and I take the term lightly, as otherwise using it would be an insult to our thick-browed forebearers) have no problem with looting the public treasury for corporate givaways. And people like Jay Leno with his 150 cars and Arnold with his garageful of Hummers whine about the vehicle tax. I say, if the tax is so damn onerous, why don't they sell a few of their prestigemobiles? And speaking of Leno--I used to be a big fan of his before he became Schwarzenegger's semi-offical campaign spokesman. Hey Jay! Wake the hell up! It's no longer 1998! You can cut with the Clinton jokes now! If there's a place in one of the inner circles of hell for commedians, I hope Leno winds up spending eternity with Jerry Lewis and Roseanne Barr. If Schwarzenegger wants to inaugurate "hydrogen highways" so badly, why doesn't he just drill a friggen hole in the side of his head and let the hot gas out?

So, let's all get out our Bear Flags and dance around the campfire to the Horst Wessel song. All hail the Fuhrenator! (and pay no attention to the midget behind the curtain--it's not Gary Coleman, it's Pete Wilson).

Here are a few notes and whatnot from my Short Story 1 class at UCSD. You can read them or skip them, if you find literary ramblings to be boring.

I was brainstorming about the characteristics of some of my favorite SF stories. These are some of the factors I came up with:

"Nightfall"
- Global scale
- Suspense builds
- Sense of history
- Night falls

"Rapaccini's Daughter"
- Scientist
-- daughter
-- narrator-
Disease/Death-
Perfection-
Inability of man to overcome decay and death

"Nine Million Names of God"
- Technological progress has unintended consequences

"The Veldt"
- What we get is not always what we want
- Generation gap in use of technology

Hey, it's almost mid-September! Here are a few random thoughts about recent events.

1) It just galls me, to the point of wanting to choke, cry, scream, to see Bush willing to pay $87 billion for one year in the occupation of Iraq, while things to to hell in this country. That $87 billion could have paid for every state's budget deficit, or it could have paid for expanded health care coverage, more public works (remember when our freeways were actually less filled with potholes than the highways of Mexico?). In an era when my nursing-care budget is balanced against reductions in my attendant-care and ventilator, something's seriously wrong. It's wrong enough that I begin to doubt my reasons for living in this country anymore. My latest fiasco is that the county wants to cut off my IHSS support. That means I have "excess income" that exceeds my share of cost for IHSS services. What does this mean for me? Well, I can get by without IHSS for a month or so. But Harold will lose the job he needs for his own family. Is Harold rich? Am I? NO!! But, God forbid we should raise the vehicle license fees up to what they were three years ago, lest some fat idiot in his gas-guzzling SUV be forced to pay a bit more for it. Now, why these people whine so much about the vehicle tax, when the can afford a $60,000 SUV and two-dollar a gallon gas to put in it, I just can't understand. It's like Bush giving away tax breaks while cutting back veterans' benefits and requiring moms and dads in the reserves to spend a year or more occupying Iraq. Sacrifice? No thanks, just keep them pork rinds on my plate and let somebody else slaughter the hogs.

2) I was watching Mulholland Drive on cable last night. It's one of my favorite movies. Truly a deep dive into the world of dreams. And it occured to me that Mulholland Drive is a sort of modern Wizard of Oz. Dorothy, aka "Betty," arrives in LA, the real-world Oz, as an innocent igenue. Or is she? Diane Selwick is the other side of Betty, the dark, jaded and schizo side. The Oz of Diane's dreams meets the sordid reality of her quashed desires in the suicide at the film's end (or beginning?).

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.