Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Owowowowowowow.

Well, it's been nearly six months since my last trip to the ER, and sure enough, my back started getting tweaky yesterday. Tossing back four extra-strength gelcaps per the ER doctor's orders last time did indeed abort the problem last night, when it got really bad, but this morning I awoke in roughly the same position I was in yesterday--not in excruciating pain, but with a catch in my back (and, in this instance, side) that tells me I'm one wrong move away from, well, another trip to the hospital.

What would constitute a wrong move, you ask? Well, there's the rub. This thing always hits out of nowhere. Carrying fifty pounds of cat litter into the house isn't the problem; opening the trunk of the car to get the cat litter might be. Or something like, well, breathing deeply.

I don't have enough ESA gelcaps on hand to do what I did last night tonight; I don't have the will to venture out into the icy wasteland the last couple days has turned out neighbourhood into to get enough of said gelcaps; and even if I did, I don't think my stomach could take another dose in that quantity without bursting from my midsection like an Alien and brutally killing everything in the house (which, in the case of Smoky, is not necessarily a bad thing. Stupid, stoopid cat.)

So we'll see what the night and tomorrow hold on the back front.

One thing tomorrow absolutely will not be is the stress-fest that today was. As if expending time and energy trying not to inhale the wrong way wasn't bad enough, the artist for ReBoot dropped off the face of the earth for a solid 24 hours--without having delivered the much-needed final colours for the last page of this coming Monday's installment. Or, more accurately, he had delivered the page, I just hadn't received it in my inbox, for reasons only the universe that's decided to #*%(ing hate me today could tell you.

The page has been received and I'm currently not going to sleep while I wait for the letterer to finish applying his art to the page, which is due tomorrow. There are some days I just hate editing, and this was one of them.

Prior to my sending increasingly frantic "Where are you/where's my page/are you still alive/if you're still alive why haven't you sent me my page?" e-mails every fifteen minutes for several hours, I actually got a reasonable amount of work done on the new screenplay. I think we're finally into the stage where the thing takes on a life of its own. No longer do I have to force (most of) the characters to say something--I understand (most of) them enough that they're talking to each other without me nudging them.

If this were July, I'd probably have a first draft ready to go in maybe two weeks. As it's December, I'm thinking maybe another month. Decembers and I do not get along.

***

DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE

So, if Neil Gaiman and various others are reading things right, Lisa Simpson of the animated show the Simpsons is considered a person under Australian law, and images of her having sex with her father qualify is roughly equivalent to having images of non-fictional human minors having relations with non-fictional human adults.

My position on this should come as no surprise to anyone who's read this blog. For an opposing viewpoint, check out Occasional Superheroine Valerie D'Orazio's post on the subject. I respect and to some degree understand her position on the subject and can sympathize with her feeling uncomfortable expressing her opinion (ironic, as the discussion is all about freedom of speech.)

As I stated in a reply to her post that, as yet, hasn't been cleared, this subject is bound to bring out extreme positions. Both sides are looking at the bottom of their respective slippery slopes, and, having seen the destination, are going to do whatever it takes to ensure the slide never gets started.

Also, the character of Lisa Simpson is well past the age of consent. She just looks young.

A

1 comment:

FS said...

"he had delivered the page, I just hadn't received it in my inbox"

The internet must have been slow that day... short-staffed maybe