Question: Who's the latest thug with a gun to make the news?

Answer: Click here to find out.

I'm a hunter, and as a hunter, I know that the most important aspect of hunting is gun safety.

Respect for a firearm is a lesson I learned at a very young age through a creative teacher.

When I was young, my grandfather used to take me hunting with him. I was far too young to actually hold a gun myself, but when curiosity got the best of me on one hunting trip, I asked my grandfather if I could shoot his shotgun. He said, "Sure!" and loaded a single shell into his 12-gauge, leaned over my shoulder and showed me how to hold it, made sure it was pointed safely downrange, then stepped back and told me to fire at will.

I was small enough and the gun was heavy enough that I could barely hold it up, let alone brace it firmly against my shoulder the way my grandfather had shown me. Teetering backward to support the gun as best I could, I pulled the trigger and the sudden the equal-and-opposite-reaction of the gun's discharged hoisted me off the ground, threw me several yards backward, and dropped me squarely on my ass. Hard.

I didn't want to shoot another gun for a long time after that.

Through that lesson, though, I figured out that if the butt-end of a firearm can do as much damage as my grandfather's had, then the potential damage that the "business end" of a gun can cause must be far worse.

Whenever I'm in the field, I'm always aware of the direction my gun is pointed, I'm always aware of what's behind my target, and I always treat a firearm as if it's loaded, even if I know it isn't. Ignoring any one of these three things can result in tragedy, as Vice-President Dick Cheney learned in a hunting accident around two years ago when he peppered friend and fellow hunter, attorney Harry Whittington, in the face with bird shot (an incident which, by the way, gave the victim the nickname of "The Buckshot Barrister").

I've never been involved in a hunting accident, but if I were to accidentally toss a handful of bird shot in the direction of anyone's house, I'd be humbly apologetic for my misdeed.

Apparently, Texas Tech Basketball Coach Bobby Knight has a different opinion on how such a situation should be handled. When a landowner who claims that bird shot from Knight's hunting party fell on his roof confronted Knight and asked him not to hunt so close to his home, Knight apparently felt that a haughty lecture on ettiquette would be in order, as displayed in the video linked above.

Though there has been some speculation that the landowner may have embellished the story a bit, there is apparently no dispute that one of the landowner's neighbors was hit in the foot with bird shot the previous day. One would think such an incident would have made Knight aware enough of the potential shotfall range of his shotgun that he'd have exercised a bit more caution.

It's not the first time, however, that Knight has been careless with a shotgun. While hunting in Wisconsin in 1999, Knight discharged his shotgun prematurely when a grouse flushed and ended up shooting one of his hunting partners in the back.

As a hunter, all I can do is shake my head in disgust and mutter, "What a dumbass!"

A while back, I read about a group attempting to locate a live donor for a kidney for a 12-year-old boy suffering renal failure due to a genetic disorder. Though the most likely candidates for kidney donation are members of the recipient's family, this child was adopted, so the likelihood of any of his family members being a match was no greater than that of the general public. As it turns out, none were.

I contacted the group to find out what I needed to do to be screened for compatibility and was told that I would have to give a blood sample, which could be coordinated by my doctor. After a few more phone calls, I went to my doctor's office and had some blood drawn. Since the odds are slim that I would be a suitable donor, I didn't think much more about it once the sample had been taken.

A couple of weeks ago, however, I received a phone call informing me that my blood sample had been a match. Though the blood test was just a preliminary screening and a lot more testing would need to be done to determine whether I'd be a viable donor, they wanted me to meet with a doctor so they could explain all the risks involved and give me all the information necessary for me to make a fully informed decision whether to proceed. If I did, they'd go ahead and do the detailed testing to make sure I was compatible.

That meeting took place yesterday.

I learned a lot about organ donation and the risks involved (some of which are indeed frightening), and at the conclusion of their explanation, they told me I didn't have to make a decision to donate right away. There was still more testing to be done, after all, and I might even be ruled out when the results are back. They just needed me to start mulling it over in the event I did prove to be a viable donor. I agreed to the additional testing and after a couple of hours in the doctor's office squirting various liquids and out of my body, I walked out with a lot to ponder.

"Would you donate a kidney to a complete stranger?" is a question which, when posed in the abstract, is easily answered. When asked hypothetically, it translates to "Are you a good person or a bad person?" and most people, I think, believe themselves to be inherently good. That being the case, I think most would answer "yes." The hypothetical, however, is harmless. It involves no real risk.

Given that, I think the only truthful answer, at least in that context, is "No." Anyone answering in the negative would, in essence, be admitting that they didn't have what it takes to be generous. Anyone claiming they would make the sacrifice, however, is merely offering an abstract opinion as to their altruism. If asked in a real-life context, I would guess that most would find out they're not as brave as they thought.

I am a prime example of this. If asked a year ago whether I'd donate a kidney to a complete stranger, I'd have answered - likely with great confidence - that I would do so happily. Now, though, I'm discovering that it's a much more difficult decision than I ever thought it could be. My hypothetical "Yes" would have been nothing but speculation. My real-life "Yes" is much more troublesome.

Enough philosophizing. Enough contemplation in the abstract about issues related to human nature in general. That's useless. It avoids the real question at hand and doesn't add any insight at all to the decision.

Will I do it? Good question.

As I've pondered this, I keep returning to one question I asked yesterday: "What's the worst-case scenario?"

The answer: "Well, you've never had surgery before, so we don't know how you might react to general anesthesia. In the worst-case scenario, then, you could simply die on the operating table."

After a long pause, I asked, "If that happened, could you still harvest the kidney for transplant?"

"As long as the kidney's still viable, yes."

So, assuming the worst, it becomes a question of whether I would risk being put under anesthesia and never waking up again so that some kid I don't know could lead a better life.

I'm okay with that, I think. At least for now.

I'm a bit preoccupied, today. There's a huge decision I might have to make later this afternoon. It's one of those major life decisions which, years from now, I might end up asking myself what on earth I was thinking when I chose the way I did.

What's clear about it is that the right and wrong choices are obvious. The problem is that making the "right" decision might involve a great deal of sacrifice on my part, and making the "wrong" decision would not affect me at all, but could cause significant problems for someone else.

Sorry to be cryptic about it, but I'm not sure I feel comfortable discussing it publicly until I know more, which should be sometime later today.

Oops. Figures this would happen during NaBloPoMo...

I discovered, this morning, when I checked my blog for the first time in several days, that a number of posts never made it to publication.

I use one computer for work and another for play. Since NaNoWriMo is this month and I spent most of my time for the past ten days or so on the work computer, I got lazy and didn't bother to go downstairs to post as I normally do. Instead, I opted to use the "Mail-to-Blogger" feature to e-mail my posts for publication, which would have worked fine, except for the fact that I never set up a Mail-to-Blogger address.

I've now remedied the problem and added the post-dated posts.

Sorry. My bad.

I have been all around the world. I have seen things many are not fortunate enough to see, and I have seen things that no one should ever see.

I have walked among the dead in Paris, traveled back in time in London, and spent the night perched atop a Mayan temple watching a full moon glide across the Central American sky. I have watched men die through a rifle's scope, grasped at love and watched it slip away, and buried more than my fair share of friends and loved ones.

Through it all, I have clutched firmly to many beliefs others may find naive or hopelessly optimistic.

But I have to believe these things. I have to believe that all men are basically good. I have to believe that there is a God whose purpose is far greater than we can ever understand. I have to believe that we all owe each other a shoulder to lean on when times are rough, that everything happens for a reason, and that good will always triumph over evil in the end. I have to believe that honor and virtue mean more than money or power and that true love will always endure.

I have to believe these things, whether they are true or not, because they are the things a man needs to believe in the most.

And the neat thing is that believing in them makes them true.

I have, as of this point, officially finished NaNoWriMo 2007. My statistics are as follows:

Words written: 62,787
Words per day: 2,415
Gallons of coffee consumed: 6.75¹
Cigarettes smoked: 0
Alcohol consumed: N/A
Sick days: 0
Dwarves: 7
Commandments: 10
Gods worshipped: 1
Commandments broken: 3²
Gods angered: 1
Average outdoor temperature: 62F
Free-throw percentage: 86
Loneliest number: 1
Mountains climbed: 3
Rivers crossed: 2³
Average golf score: 87⁴
Stooges: 3
Jacksons: 5
Redskins: 84⁵
Opponents: 100
Women angered: 3
Miles driven: 3,662
Miles hiked: 47
Bottles of beer on the wall: 99
Books read: 16.5
Dalmatians: 101
Mirrors broken: 1
Years bad luck: 7
Movies watched: 15
Steps up: 1
Steps back: 2
Days of Christmas: 12
NaNoWriMo statistical compilations: 1

Ah, there is no greater love than the symbiotic bond between a man and his dog. It's a beautiful thing.

Last night, I was lying in bed reading when my dog jumped up on the bed and snuggled in next to me. I set my book down and gave her a two-handed belly rub on that spot on her chest that makes her legs kick like she's riding a bicycle. I was face-to-face with her making lovey-dovey cooing noises when her tongue darted suddenly out of her mouth and she gave me a big fat French kiss.

I swear her tongue is about eight feet long. It's like an aardvark's tongue. I'm convinced it makes up about one-third of her body weight and that there's a spring-loaded roller somewhere inside of her that retracts it like a tape measure.

I think she must have licked my brain stem, too, because I had dreams about Milk Bones and squeaky toys all night long.

Last night, I had dinner with some dear friends. When I was leaving, they gave me some frankincense they bought in Morocco earlier this year. It's burning in the flame of an unscented candle in a dish on the desk next to me. It smells like Heaven, which is interesting, because I'm writing about Hell.

Few people are aware of this, but the age-old debate as to which came first between chicken and egg has been resolved.

In about 1985, a friend and I went to a Grateful Dead show about two hours away from where I lived at the time. During that stage of our lives, my friend and I both dabbled in the art of amateur pharmaceuticals and there were several recreational substances coursing through our brains, to the extent that, at one point, I bought a tie-dyed tee-shirt from an enormous Rastafarian gentleman and spent about 45 minutes putting it on. Once I slipped it over my head, I got lost in my own little colorful private world. It was like vacationing in a rainbow or being in a dream. It was thoroughly entertaining. I didn't want to leave, but by the time I stuck my head out, it was getting dark and almost time for the show.

After the show, we mingled in the parking lot for a couple of hours, throwing Frisbees with other Deadheads, playing hacky-sack, and just generally goofing around. About 3:30 a.m., we decided it would be a good idea to begin our trip home. A few miles into our homeward journey, though, we were both attacked with extreme cases of the munchies, but were damned if we knew where we could find a 24 hour restaurant. Just then, a Denny's sign loomed over the trees. We took the next exit and wheeled into the restaurant parking lot.

It was just late enough (or early enough, depending upon how one would look at the clock) that we were not sure whether it was close enough to morning to order breakfast or late enough at night to order munchie-type food. After much contemplation, my friend settled on the breakfast side of the debate. I was leaning toward the belief that if one had not slept, it could not possibly be time for breakfast. Our respective minds made up, I ordered chicken and my friend ordered eggs.

The chicken came first.

There. So now, whenever you hear anyone arguing the poultry/embryo issue, you can tell them that you have it on great authority from an obscure minor prophet that it was the chicken.

I found this in an old journal (circa senior year in college) and couldn't resist the urge to share. It's a letter I wrote in response to an angry and accusatory note I'd received from a girl I dated at the time. I had learned she had been enjoying the company of several others of my gender ("cross-pollinating" is the term I believe I used when I confronted her about it - she was a Biology major and I thought familiar terminology would aid her understanding) while my attentions were nobly directed toward my studies.

My Dearest Kelly:

I was pleasantly surprised to receive your recent letter and I thank you for your kind words!

I must admit that I initially took umbrage at some of the finer points you so astutely raised, but upon further reflection, I confess that I may have been a bit far-sighted in their assessment and now see that your comments were nothing but well-intentioned. I am steadfast in my belief that all criticism is constructive and best viewed with an eye toward self-improvement. Such being the case, I thank you for your straightforward and honest opinions. They have certainly given me enormous insight as to how I might improve myself in the future, and in so doing, to contribute in some tiny way to the betterment of mankind as a whole. It humbles me to consider the tremendous effort you must have undertaken on my behalf in enumerating these thoughts for me. I assure you that I shall take them to heart and begin mending my ways with all deliberate speed.

I had been unaware that monogamy was one of my many tragic flaws until you so kindly drew my attention to it. At the risk of adding too many metaphors to the blender, I would offer that the scales have fallen from my eyes and I now see that monogamy has been a burr beneath my saddle since first I can remember. Looking back upon my life, I now find myself abashedly recounting the numerous times I expected such unwarranted devotion from those in whom I have had romantic interests in the past. How selfish others must have thought me in my insistence that such affections be confined solely to my own heart! Oh, the shame in knowing others must have adjudged me guilty of such arrogance! I shall forever live in disgrace from this moment onward and can think of no worthier place than a cloistered monastery to hide in my prideless remorse.

I find myself a bit surprised at your statement that I was a "lousy fuck," as you so tritely and succinctly phrased it (I have long admired your easy command of language!). I suppose all men hold themselves in high esteem where matters of love are concerned. Having doubted your veracity on this point initially, I must now concede, after much research on the matter, that you benefit from having a much clearer vantage point from which to objectively observe.

Had I known the true extent of your rich experience in copulatory endeavors, I would have unquestioningly accepted the veracity of this astounding revelation. Yours, I must concede, is certainly an impressive resume in matters libidinous! In fact, my use of the word "experience" hereinabove falls short of its intended mark. Perhaps "statistics" might be more appropriately descriptive, but I shall leave semantics to another day. Nevertheless, had I but sooner taken the time to poll the other males who span the globe far and wide in abundance and discovered how many of them are represented by notches in your bedpost, I would have more freely accepted the news that my skills as a lover are left wanting. I admit being somewhat blind when it comes to certain matters of common experience, a fault which is made plainly evident in that I had only to ask my best friend to confirm that he, too, was a regular patron of your boudoir. How foolish of me to doubt you!

With that said, I hope that you will accept my heartfelt apologies for mistrusting your vast knowledge and expertise on the subject, but in my own defense, I must pay tribute to your remarkable skills as an actress. Knowing now that you were feigning pleasure during all the intimate intervals in our relationship, I can only say that it was a most convincing and impressive performance. I must also say that it was quite sporting of you to go to such extraordinary lengths for my benefit. Such selflessness is to be admired; it is a trait to which I can only aspire.

I must also profess my deepest gratitude for allowing me to be the beneficiary of your romantic attentions. Only now do I understand the depths of the kindness you bestowed upon me while your romantic schedule was so full. My goodness, but you were a busy little bee! Where ever did you find the time?!?!

I may be overly bold in assuming that your willingness to take on such a charity case as I might reflect a temporary scarcity in the supply of higher quality lovers, but my having now viewed the roster, I hope you might take solace in my observation that you surely made up for it in quantity.

Perhaps one day, when I have disabused myself of the antique notion that monogamy builds trust and character to solidify human relations and have come to the apparently more modern and trendy attitude that "practice makes perfect" as applied to lovemaking, I might once again seek an audience with you. For the present, however, I must admit that I find my fossilized ideals to be much more endearing, not to mention hygenic. I am somewhat sentimental when it comes to my loins and fear I might be a tad timorous were I to aim them to all points of the compass.

Please give my warmest regards to your parents. They are dear, kind people and must be so proud to have a daughter so charitable in spreading her love, as well as her legs, among all the commoners. Your generosity speaks volumes about your character.

Yours most sincerely,
/s/ the fool

P.S. If you can find the time in your busy schedule, please do take the opportunity to go fuck yourself.

Just as I had battened down the hatches and prepared for the arrival of cold weather, the last Indian has apparently laid claim to his summer. It was cold and rainy yesterday, but this morning is bright and sunny and the temperatures tolerable, as if Mother Earth had lain down for her winter sleep, but decided to get up for a drink of water.

Seasons don't change easily around here. It's a back and forth tug-of-war between seasons, each giving ground and then retaking it, until the old season finally fatigues and the new prevails.

It screws with my reality, in much the same way as total eclipses of the sun screw with reality for animals. They realize it's getting dark and think it's dusk, so they start to be down for the night, only to have the sun pop right back out half an hour later. They're left scratching their heads in befuddlement, thinking they've just experienced some weird short night. Right now, I feel as if I've had some weird short winter.

On days like this, I chuck the reins and let my mind trot off where it wishes. Today, it ended up pondering the etymology of the word "blimp" and eventually concluded that I am a big flightless bird (don't ask...it was a logical train of thought that led me to this insight, but the minimal amount of enlightenment it might provide isn't worth the energy I'd have to expend in its explanation).

I also made a list of people whom I'm pretty certain dolphins are more intelligent than. I'd post it, but I'm not even close to being finished. There are a LOT more than I realized.

The weather's supposed to chill back down tonight, so maybe it'll knock these faux-summer cobwebs from my mind and my timeliness in curling up for winter and taking time to smell the furniture may be more well-placed.

By the way, they're called blimps because that's the sound they make when they're thumped. It's the same sound my skull would make if you thumped it right now.

I am no longer young. In the morning, my bones ache and crackle when I arise from my bed. I sound like popcorn. Cold weather makes my joints rusty and stiff from disuse during the night. I have to straighten up and let my limbs readjust and acclimate to the weight they bear before I attempt to walk.

My body does not like surprises.

When I was young, very young, maybe five or six years old, I would lie in bed at night and count my breaths to lull myself to sleep. I would hear the sound of my breath being sucked into my nostrils, then a brief pause before the process reversed to expunge the air from my lungs.

I stopped doing this when I began to think, one night, about the short pause between my breaths. I wondered what mechanism within the human body triggers the ebb and flow of breath, what regulated the duration of the pause. The more I thought about it, the more I worried that it might stop and I would suffocate in my sleep. I stopped hearing my breaths and began to hear the silence between them. Sometimes, I still think about this at night.

Yesterday, I went for a hike along a mountain about an hour from here. It's a short spur of the Appalachian trail I haven't hiked in several years. What I remembered as a fairly open stretch of mountain is now almost completely overgrown. I hiked down the corridor formed by a narrow path between tall rhododendrons growing in the saddle bridging two mountains. Through the sporadic gaps in the walled greenery, I could see infinity. I saw the boundary where sky meets ground on the horizon, the place where heaven melds with earth and the line blurs between the two and goes on forever. The air was thin and brittle. It tasted like shaved ice.

I met an old Native American near here once. He was Iroquois. He called himself a Lenni Lenape, which translates to 'original people' in English, meaning he was descended from the Algonquin tribes native to what is now southern New York.

When I asked him why he was so far from home, he told me that he awoke one morning in early autumn years ago and saw blackbirds, millions of them, all flocked together and flying south. The birds stretched from the horizon in the north and disappeared over a mountain peak to his south, twittering and calling in a confusing jangle of sound as they went. He said they were speaking to him, beckoning him to follow. So he followed.

When he reached the top of the mountain, he saw that the flock stretched over the next mountaintop as well, so he kept walking. Each time he reached a mountain's peak, he saw the birds disappearing over the next. When he finally reached this place, the last bird flew over and disappeared. All was suddenly silent. This is where the birds had led him, he told me. This is where he was meant to stay. So, he stayed.

I have figured out why yawns are contagious. It has a lot to do with air pressure and the inner ear. It think it's best explained by giving a step-by-step dissection of the process.

1. The tympanic membrane (a.k.a. "eardrum") forms a barrier between the air in a person's surrounding environment and the inner ear. When the pressure differential becomes unbalanced, a person's ears may be made to 'pop' by yawning or sneezing or otherwise forcing air through the Eustachian tube connecting the inner ear with our respiratory system.
   
   
2. One of the purposes for yawning, it is believed, is to maintain a more-or-less stable pressure differential between inner ear and environment, so as not to cause damage to the tympanic membrane. It is for this reason that many people aboard an airplane yawn shortly after the plane takes off and climbs and the air pressure inside the plane changes.
   
   
3. When a person yawns, he will inhale around 1 liter more air than he would with a normal breath.
   
   
4. When he does so, he decreases the air pressure in his immediate environment by a negligible, but meaningful amount.
   
   
5. Anyone who might be in the immediate environment of the person who yawns will also be subjected to the change in air pressure caused by the yawn.
   
   
6. The change in air pressure will cause the pressure differential between the environment and any such other person's inner ear to become unequal.
   
   
7. In order to harmonize the air pressure inside his tympanic membrane and the environment, the second person will yawn.

This, kind readers, is as far as my brain has extended itself today.

This morning, I decided I needed to take a break from this year's NaNoWriMo effort and work on something else for a day or two. Since I'm ahead of the pace for reaching the 50,000-word goal, I've got a little time to spare, so why not?

At the conclusion of last year's NaNoWriMo, I thought I had a story which might be worthy of continued effort, and it was last year's story with which I chose to give my brain a rest today. In it, there's a character who was hit by lightning during his childhood, and after spending the day working with this character, I checked my e-mail and found that a friend had sent me a link to a YouTube movie and I couldn't stop laughing, especially given its timeliness:

Over the past few days, I've been scoping out potential places to spend the holidays this year and I came across this on Google Maps.

Scratch Dorset off the list!

I've reached the halfway point in my NaNoWriMo project for this year and it seems a good point at which to pause and reflect on my work thus far.

1. Every time one of the characters in my story has sex, another character dies.
   
   
2. There's no design behind #1. It's completely unpremeditated - nothing more than an observation - but it happens nonetheless.
   
   
3. The lone exception to the broad generality in #1 involves a scene in which one of the characters gives a "kiss and tell" recap of a sexual encounter. No one died after that scene, but a dog did get injured.
   
   
4. The observation in #3 is not really an exception to the rule stated in #1, now that I think about it, since the character involved didn't actually have sex, but rather merely talked about having sex.
   
   
5. The sex-death connection could, if fine-tuned a bit, become a clever metaphor for something which will soon happen in the story.
   
   
6. I'm thinking this through too much, which is not a good idea when writing a first draft. I should just leave it for the rewrite (if it ever gets that far) and keep the story simple at this point.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Halloween masquerade party thrown by the theatre group with whom I appeared in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead back in September. It's an annual event, purported to be a means of showing "appreciation for the community's support," but in reality, it's just a means of raising funds for the next year.

Halloween is the perfect time for a fundraiser for the theatre since it's nestled neatly in the calandar roughly halfway between the end of the theatre season in September and the first budget meeting for the next fiscal year. With the season overwith, the theatre's management can shift their focus away from production and focus on picking people's pockets to keep the doors open for another year.

The guest list reads like a "Who's Who" of local bigwigs and the party's organizers never overlook the fact that alcohol is the perfect lubricant to facilitate the flow of cash in such a situation. By the end of the evening, of course, the room is always full of drunken rich people.

Around midnight, I found myself speaking with a well-known local woman (the news anchor for one of the local television stations - I just saw her on the late news, which reminded me of this) who had drunk herself to near-ruin.

She told me, "I love Halloween. You get to go out in public dressed up in disguises so nobody can tell who you really are."

I thought to myself, "That's what most people do every day."

Click Image To Enlarge

The dry summer discouraged the trees on the mountain from turning bright this fall. For the most part, the view of the mountain is muted, colored mainly in ochre and burnt sienna instead of the usual explosions of vivid red, yellow and orange. It seems as if Vincent Van Gogh has somehow been put in charge of autumn.

At the top of the mountain, though, there was a single bright splash of crimson. Yesterday afternoon, I investigated and found that someone forgot to tell this maple to tone it down a little.

I confess, however, that the photo above is a bit staged. I cleared all the brown leaves from the ground beneath the tree and spread the maple's leaves out evenly before taking this, and I used a filter to create a little more contrast between the red leaves and the dark earth beneath.

Two pearls of wisdom in memory of my late friend, Takamitsu:

From his tender side:

Every time Takamitsu spoke to a child, he would squat down and speak to them at eye-level. I mentioned to him once that I thought this was a kind gesture. His reply (as best I can recall) was, "It would be the same if a ten-foot-tall giant spoke to you. No matter how gentle they might be, you'd feel intimidated. Children are the same way. They feel threatened every time they talk to an adult. Talking to them on their own level makes you their equal."

It was the wording of that last phrase - "makes you their equal" instead of "makes them your equal - which has stuck with me. It speaks volumes about his humility that he considered even children to be of more importance than he was.

I consider him to have been a five-foot-ten giant.

From his "too much information" side:

I'd forgotten about this, until a few friends were reminiscing about him a couple of days ago and someone mentioned it.

Somehow, the topic of birthmarks came up in conversation one day. One of our regular visitors at the food bank mentioned that he had a birthmark on his shoulder, then tugged his collar aside to reveal a half-dollar-sized brown patch just below his collarbone.

Takamitsu spoke up and said that he'd heard somewhere that some people believe birthmarks to be the vestiges of mortal wounds we suffered during a previous life.

There was a short pause in the conversation as we all pondered this interesting concept. Then Takamitsu spoke up. "If that's the case," he said, "then someone got me square in the nuts."

Click Image To Enlarge

I have lived through 15,810 of these. Tonight's has been the best so far.

Begin with silence.

Nothing spoken. A glance across the room. Contact by vision. Body language. Message sent. Interest. Gaze breaks.

He speaks. She speaks. Drinks. Jokes. Laughter. Flirting. More drinks. Dancing. Serious conversation. It's late. Work in the morning. Dinner sometime? Phone numbers exchanged.

Phone call. Italian? Indian? Sushi? Greek? Dinner date. Nice place. "You look great." Intense conversation. Handsome. Beautiful. Smart. Strong.

More dates. Movie. Calls at the office: "Just thinking about you." Opera. Ballet. Flowers. Back to her place. Overnight.

Long weekend. Out-of-town getaway. Skiing. Hot tub. "I love you." "I love you, too." Serious.

A year. Roses. Fancy dinner. Same restaurant as first date. Champagne. More champagne. Nightclub. Drinks. Dancing.

Closer. "Might be the one!" Friends giggle excitedly. Special dinner. Middle of restaurant. One knee. "Will you marry me?" Curious heads turn. "Yes." Applause. Champagne on the house.

Wedding. Honeymoon. Marriage. Dream house. Settle in. Golden retriever. Child. Another child. Soccer mom. Coach dad. PTA. Good grades. Happy? Something missing.

Unhappy. Distance. Affair. Secrecy. Lies. Phone rings. No one there. Working late. Suspicion. Argument. Another argument. More arguments. Evidence. Photos. Confrontation. Broken dishes. Screaming. Lawyers. Divorce.

End with tears.

A couple of weeks ago, Sarah visited for a long weekend and while she was here, we spent an afternoon goofing off in town. We browsed through a bookstore, got some lunch, went to the grocery and got some goodies for dinner, and then stopped off at my favorite outdoor sports store before heading back here.

While we were at the last stop in our spending spree, Sarah found some cold-weather clothes she wanted to try on, so she headed off the fitting room, asking me to keep an eye on her purse until she returned.

While I was waiting, I glanced down at her purse at one point and happened to see something interesting inside. Respecting her privacy, I didn't got rooting around in it, but once we were back in the car, I asked, "Why do you carry a pistol in your purse?"

She chuckled and pulled it out. "You can never be too safe," she replied, brandishing the weaponry. She explained that she'd bought the pistol and got a carry permit after a friend of hers was mugged a couple of years ago, and confessed that it gave her a real rush to shoot it.

That evening, I grabbed a pistol and we headed off to a secluded spot at a friend's farm (the same friend from whom I bought Bucephalus last year) to plink a few targets. It was just beginning to get dark as we set up a few old cans on a hay bale to face the firing squad.

When she fired her first shot, a bright white streak blazed from the muzzle and zipped toward the target. "A tracer round?" I thought to myself.

Aside, for the uninitiated: A tracer round is a bullet which is treated with a phosphrescent material which glows brightly when the bullet is fired, allowing the shooter to follow the bullet's path. They're used mosly in air combat so the shooter can see where he's aiming and correct to hit the intended target, but they're also useful when loaded as the last round in a semi-automatic pistol's magazine so the shooter will know he needs to reload. They're really bad for the gun, though, so it's not a good idea to use them too frequently. Back to the story...

After a few more shots, I realized that she'd loaded the entire clip full of tracer rounds, so I had to comment.

"You do realize," I asked, "that you're using tracer rounds, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know," she answered.

"You know they'll mess up your gun if you use 'em too much, right?"

"Yeah," she answered. "That's what the guy at the gun shop told me."

"Then why do you use them?"

"Because," she replied, "I think they're pretty."

Firepower in pleasing colors. She's a woman after my own heart.

There are two kinds of truths — small truths and great truths. One can readily recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth, however, is another truth.

Case on point: John Keats monkeyed around with a Grecian urn one day and saw in it that truth is beauty and beauty is truth. The opposite of beauty, however, is not ugliness. Inward beauty — beauty in thought, in word, and in action — is the only true beauty we, as human beings, can possess. That which remains after age and the elements have taken their toll on our bodies and rendered us haggardly and homely comprises our true worth. Some of the most physically appealing persons I have known have also been some of the most repulsive, while some of the most physically plain have possessed beauty beyond measure.

Comeliness is fleeting. Elegance is not.

If you find meaning in this, it is yours.

What You'll Need:

• An image manipulation program (I used Paintshop Pro, but any image manipulation program should work)
• A photo of someone's face (I used a picture of my daughter when she was about a year old)

I've added a handy gadget - perfect for those who've signed up for NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo - in my sidebar. It's a Writer's Toolbox popup window which I created some time ago and I've found it so helpful that I use it every time I sit down to write.

It's got links to various useful reference sites, along with the capability to search OneLook Dictionary, Thesaurus.com, Google, and Wikipedia directly from the popup window.

To use it, just click the image link in the sidebar and leave it open while you write. When you need to look something up, you'll have a link right in front of you.

Source code and linking information is available for those who might want to post it on their own blog or website. E-Mail me for details.

Happy writing!

There has been a great deal of excitement among astronomers in the past few days, the source of which is an otherwise innocuous and unremarkable comet making its periodic visit to the inner solar system.

Comet 17P/Holmes was first discovered on November 6, 1892, by a British astronomer named Edwin Holmes, who managed to calculate a rough estimate of its path through the sky before clouds moved in the next day. Later calculations by independent observers were sufficient to give a ballpark idea of its orbit around the sun and provide an estimated date upon which it might return. The figures were close enough, and the calculations were confirmed by the comet's reappearance in 1899 and 1906.

After that, however, the comet was lost, as happens sometimes with smaller bodies traveling through a solar system with large planets. A dinky little iceball floating too close to Jupiter can find itself ejected from the solar system like a drunk being tossed by a bouncer.

Curiously, however, it reappeared in 1964. Where it had been in the interim nobody knows, but it's back to stay, at least for now. It's making a new appearance as I type this.

There wasn't a lot of hoopla about this year's circuit of the inner solar system, as the comet's brightness was only estimated to be around magnitude 16 or 17, visible to only the largest of backyard telescopes (In astonomical terms the magnitude, or "brightness" of any heavenly body is such that the higher the number, the lower the visibility. The human eye can only detect objects with a magnitude of around 6.).

A little over a week ago, though, something spectacular happened. Within a span of only 24 hours, the comet suddenly became around one million times brighter, to the point that it's now visible to the naked eye and its apparent size in the night sky is roughly half that of the moon.

What happened?

There's no way we can tell for sure, but by all appearances, the comet has broken apart and the resultant increase in liminosity has to do with the sun's rays burning away the comet's exposed icy interior and forming a sublimation cloud around the comet (the same force which causes comets grow "tails" when they approach the sun).

What's fitting, however, is how the comet appeared through one astrophotographer's telescope on Halloween night:

It's God's Jack-o-Lantern.

Leaps of faith taken based upon one's past performance are those taken most wisely, but only if the pot from which those past victories are pulled contain a sufficiently consistent history to be reliable.

My lifetime NaNoWriMo record is 2-0, my first success accomplished only by the skin of my teeth and my second with a great deal of room to spare.

Given the disparity between the two, I'm not sure whether the confidence with which I signed up for both NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo is well placed. I suppose only time will tell.

Suffice it to say, however, that the witching hour has arrived. November is now a few minutes old and we're officially underway. I've installed my NaNo word meter in my sidebar, popped up some popcorn, and the inspirational background music is playing (David Byrne and Brian Eno's collaboration, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts," if you're interested).

I've now knocked out my NaBloPoMo obligation for Day 1, and as soon as the electrons are dry on this post, I'll be clicking away at the keyboard to start my NaNoWriMo project (the working title for which is "Wail, O Gate! Howl, O City!" for those who may deem such information important).

Wish me luck!