‘Burning’ is what I call it when I have a fever, and am too tired to be able to see but in small bursts, sometimes a couple minutes at a time in one eye. The fever, the nausea and the fatigue combine to create a combo which makes the ‘now’ a hazy space trip and the past and future one of little to no information mixed with fear.
Sometimes the fear is all the time, overwhelming in waves, I am scared of everything from my oxygen concentrator failing to being overdrawn in paypal and not being able to understand a calculator enough to figure that out. Then it abates, and I watch T.V. if the eys works, or if not, I stare out. Sometimes I try to read but that goes poorly as my lucid dreaming while I drift off turns a manga into a surreal experience, where figures in the manga come out and are fighting around me in the bathroom. This is not what you want while taking a pee, having zombies from Undead Highschool attacking you.
Good news to pass on. Amazon is having a DVD sale: Fringe, Big Bang, Chuck, and Supernatural as well as Moonlighting (on my wishlist, oddly enough!). Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season 
is $14.95 for example. Which is pretty good.
I used to think I watched Supernatural or Chuck or Burn Notice because I liked the ‘Horror Story Movie of the Week’, which I do. But also I like Sam and Dean in Supernatural (I also like it when, in the last season, they end up attending a convention of THEM, where girls have written slash fiction about ‘forbidden love between brothers: tough on the monsters, tender in the motel room’ – the look on Dean’s face was priceless!). I get tired of people that make my skin crawl as the protagonists, the people I am supposed to care about. Sam is good, Dean is funny, and they want to do the right thing (when odd purple prose doesn’t get in their way). I gave up on TV shows on DVD like: Heroes, series 24, Glee, Shield, Tutors, House, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost and Battlestar because I found the Dexter, the sociopath, had more interesting and more rigorous morals than the ‘beautiful people’ of Hollywood TV.
As for doing right, I don’t know when the last person in Heroes or Lost actually did anything good or Heroic (was it when the cheerleader saved the person in the burning train, the second or third episode of season 1?). Because I don't have a TV, I watch DVD's but I didn’t want these people in my apartment much less in my head, like Jack from 24 who seems to need to torture someone every hour on the hour, or those shows where our medical system is seen to be full of doctors who sleep with everyone, work with ex’s, and spend more time worrying about what others think about them than whether they should see a patient.
Human Target, which is also on sale, has a guy who saves the day AND the buildings (usually), not wander around with gossip like LOST. The truth is, I have more in common with The Corner, the HBO emmy award winning series (also on sale), which preceded The Wire, with many of the same characters, than with the ‘beautiful land’ of regular TV where everyone is blackmailed by everyone else while sleeping with their relatives. In The Corner, drug addicts are just that, drug addicts, and selling drugs will get you killed, but what else is there to do, what way is up and out when even the city officials are corrupt. Oh, Homicide Life on the Street season 1 and 2 is on sale as well. It is a TV series based on the book, Murder: life on the streets where the writer who embedded himself for a couple years before the idea of embedding came up. It is real, and it is people getting by, the friend whose faults you know, the guy/gal you know when to tell them to shut up, and they know when you mean it and it doesn’t mean anything.
Why does this matter? Well, because when I am ‘Burning’, like now, these people are all in my head, and I dream them, I lucid dream them, I have dreams while awake, and my fear overwhelms me. And I’d rather be with Sam and Dean and scared, than the world of 24 or Glee where everyone lies, schemes, is working for someone else and has second agendas.
It is hard to read, and to move, I ache, and my ligaments tighten and spasm, or pull so my big toe is going backwards. And because this is all I know for so many days, I don’t know what is anything anymore. This is my now, this is my past, this is what I remember, and I don't know if it gets better. I hope it does. I know that I am trying to get to Sakura-con: Room is books but I need to get the Tickers for Linda and I, and the cost of renewing my passport (since the US now is a gated community). I don’t really think beyond that. I have been down and out for a while, cutting sleep to try and make appointments I think until I can’t do anything at all, and yet every day, another doctor’s appointment or other appointment to get dressed, washed, hair done, the whole 90 minute package, just to leave, and arrive back exhausted. I went too far, and I lay there for a day and night, unable to move before I could come here, write this. Because I guess this is how things are right now. Terrified and paranoid gets so it finishes what exhaustion started. I lie and twitch and quiver and shriek, when I can, and just roll my eyes in terror when I can’t.
I wanted to let you know that I was still alive, or alive for 1 hour a day, ‘burning’ for 10, and out of it for days at a time. But also to let you know about the Amazon DVD sale if you can use that. I live an online life, and found out by accident, so if that works for you – go for it. As for me, I need to get that Sakura-con ticket, and the weeks are running out. But I am selling what I can as I can. Where else can I go to meet someone in lesbian speed dating who got Nimoy (‘Spock’) to autograph her breast, then went and got that as a tattoo? And this year, will go to see Cosplay Chess.
BREAKING NEWS: Linda says we HAVE to buy our tickets before March 20th. However, this weeks money is going to renew passport so it arrives in time for me to go. If you want to help to get Linda's Ticket or Mine, please contact Linda at linda.mcclung at shaw.ca - What would Jack B. do? Probably grab a gun, force the way in and get pardoned by the president - I don't think that is going to work for us.
Beware: I have been maudlin. I have held my hand to my brow and sighed. I blame the Victorian Fiction I have read, yes books, full of all sorts of words.
Today, I decided that having spent my first two decades linking ‘dressing up’ with “Corsage” instead of ‘Corset’ IS the definition of a tragic life (don't worry, lots of starving and sleeping on floors but still, 'Corsage' a 'yes', but 'Corset' only a puzzled look - it torques the heart and makes me want to start a telethon!)
These books make my brain buzz, mostly with, “You HAVE to get better Elizabeth and write more books!” So many good ideas with failed potential, alas. I don’t get outside, I am rather chained to my bed these days. Linda thinks we should try having me actually SEE the sun perhaps once a week or so. If the sun would co-operate.
I am awake. I changed the HTML on Screw Bronze, or tried (to make it easier to read with bigger pictures).
I am fever free. And have been for 36 hours. Yes, I wrote that fever free.
I sent out, er, about 100 postcards, um, recently so many people should get one soon. I was a little behind and now I am caught up….almost. But between that, and weeks of doing odd impressions of a fish out of water on the floor and lying in my bed doing the roller-coaster of a heart gone funky I am sort of mixed up on days/months stuff. I have electric heart autonomic failure so when I get fatigued the heart goes…..well, on the monitor there are beats and beats and then nothing and I look at Linda and she looks at me and we look at the monitor and wait to see if the heart will beat again before I pass out. That is the ‘clank, clank, clank’ of the roller-coaster car pulled up the slope. Then after a few beats it will just start beating about 4-10 beats a second, and if it goes on for more than a second or two Linda goes, “Whoa” and that is the big downhill. It makes you a little sick feeling and one arm turns purple. So I have been under watch and only getting computer access when I can.
Still, decided, I am not going to die, I am going to live and I am going to meet people at Sakura-Con.
The Pre-Registration for Sakura-Con closes on March 3rd, and through the sale of several items I plan to pay for registration of myself, Linda and Cheryl. Sakura-Con goes on in Downtown Seattle from April 2nd-4th and the pre-registration of $50 is for all three days. Or you can pay for a single day. Youth 12-6 are 50% off and those under age 6 are free. There are special planes which bring Japanese fans to the Convention. I know because we flew to Japan with many of Japanese from the Convention.
Sakura-Con, not only is one of the ‘Big Three’ Cons, but the first big Con of the season, so best time to get the goodies from the vendors who just travel from Con to Con. Plus the creators of Sakura-con are fans who decided to make the ultimate fan based experience. So there is everything from ‘Cosplay Chess’, to rooms full of computers and game stations linked to play games together, dance machines (all free – you paid for it with the entry free), it takes over every room of the Hilton and Hyatt Seattle and the displays of Japanese culture, martial arts, to hobbies, as well as films not available in the US, animation not released here yet, Masquerade Ball and 3 days of 24 hour programming. Seriously, one reason NOT to stay at the Hilton is to avoid watching an Anime Series through the night instead of sleeping, and then getting to the goth loli fashion show, before the judo display or go and see the ‘Best Cosplay Costume Costume?’ There are autograph sessions with the dozen guests, and multiple guest bands. Last year, I thought someone was Cosplaying the technical punk with the red surgical masks with a health X on it, and it turned out to be the band checking out the guest Japanese Band checking out the exhibitors hall. There is full accommodation regarding disability.
I was going to post this in the first weeks of Jan but something happened, I think it was an injury and then Linda’s job and the fever so not quite the 4 months I wanted. But still, about 50 days, and if you want to book a hotel at the Con Rates, you have until March 3rd to make a reservation (which requires no deposit). Linda, Cheryl and I will all be going (Linda did not go last year but wants to go this year). Linda is saving for ‘contingency’, what ever that is (I think it is a name for ‘rent’) and Cheryl, um, well Cheryl is my sister and good friend but has blown all her money on cocaine (no she didn’t! Say no to drugs, because one day...one day...it will be YOUR turn to ‘treat’). I can’t pay for the hotel room (we got a one room with fridge last year) or the gas, but I will be there. Even if Linda has already said that bikini day is OUT and,
unlike last year there, will be NO thong day (did I post that picture on the web?). Bummer. But still if you want to drive up or down or over for one of the days, or come to the Con, let’s hang, okay?
Big problem, I have to come up with NEW outfits for this year.
I have already been working out. Turns out that Cosplay girl from last year in the divine pink dress was Cos-playing from Black Butler when young male Lord must cross-dress at a ball to find a killer (and is seduced, ‘my little robin’). So the girls were looking fab, cross-dressing as a boy cross-dressed as a young noble lady (you get used to it, honest!). Oh, and there is a room where you have to get a ‘safety tag’ on any weapons you bring, and promise not to attack any mortal enemies of the person you are cosplaying. And this year, I WILL behave myself, honest.
The ‘Guests’ from last year ranged from Abe who did Serial Angel Lain (and did signings), to the guys from Penny Arcade, the organizers keep signing up guest appearances until the last week. So from three days hard core gaming to Otaku heaven, or just hang with the Girl’s Gotta Fly gang.
I am not boring in person, honest.
Stuck in the bed, I have been watching Lost season um…. something. All I know is that I REALLY want to meet the guys the Dharma Project got to subtract building half the stuff. Seriously, how was that work order written up? All I know that if I watch an entire season of a TV show, and can’t remember to tell you what matters except that there was addictively bad writing, I am the one who LOST (time). I hate, HATE shows where there is a bad guy, and everyone KNOWS they are a bad guy, that they lie all the time, and nice people die, and they aren’t killed, and they get captured and lie again, and more nice people die, and they STILL don’t get killed. See, people like that don’t actually last in a ‘lost’ situation but in government or in big corporations where they can be weasels. The reason they don’t last in the wild is because I or someone like me gets off the plane.
In my life I have met some, what in Britain would be called ‘Hard Men’ and one “Hard” Woman. Hard men don’t say, “You shouldn’t have done that.” They look at the situation before and they say, “Don’t do that.” They tend not to talk a lot, and because they don’t have a lot of guns (Scotland is the highest per capita knife killing city in Europe) if you do it then they just throw you out the window. Particularly when you live on the ninth floor, and they don’t check out the window or watch, they throw, then just pour a drink and sit down.
People who pour gasoline or light fires and set things on fire and put them through your mail box, those aren’t ‘Hard Men’ – those are drunks, who used to go after gays after closing. Bigots who used to break into our car just to sit inside and smoke and smash things, just because we loved each other. But I am not a ‘Hard’ woman, except the part of me which is, which is why we tell workers not to wake me up in arms reach. I mean, when Cheryl talks about having to work to pry my hand off her throat and I am not even awake, how embarrassing! But still, it is a nice island and I think I could have a lot of fun going around and searching stuff out.
And let the British SAS guy three rows back take care of stuff. My friend was in Guards (like the Marines), and they were charged with guarding planes against the SAS. They KNEW the SAS was coming, it was a two day exercise and they had every plane and spotlight positioned, and every guard detail so NO ONE could get on that airfield much less near the planes. After a day, they called, ‘Exercise Over’ – and every single plane had an explosive hidden in it somewhere, and no one had found one or seen the SAS, never saw them after either. They come, they do the job and they go. And they at least have an order, many ‘Hard Men’ don’t.
Okay, that just isn’t cheerful. I think that means my pain meds are wearing off. Time to go soon.
Today, Linda brought back the post of a couple weeks (the boat was being repainted), and I have post. I was in a little world where I slowly drowning. 
There are times when, trapped in a bubble of pain or fatigue, or so much going so wrong it is hard to believe that tomorrow matters, that the next minute matters. That’s why I explained to Linda that instead of gifts this week, I needed to send as many postcards as possible. Because I could send six gifts or send fifty, or seventy, or more postcards as gifts - I chose the little bit for more people. Drown no more. Because I know from each letter I get that even though I can’t see you, a family of people appear around me, a community as I read about the action of this person’s cat or that person at school: Thank you for every postcard, every letter, every post, every communication.
I have been trying to think of how to be ‘kind’, how to be ‘fun’ and someone people would like to get to know. I have been trying to think of how to be a good friend. And consistency is part of that. If you haven’t heard from me, I would like to hear from you (try to remember, God used my brain for a hockey puck so I have some memory issues). Or we could make memories and pictures at Sakura-Con?
