Still…repercussing, but feeling a little better. Attempted solid food today. Actually left the house for an hour or so after the sun went down. So far, so good.

Random thoughts: The heat is starting to break in Las Vegas and the local news is warning of thunderstorms to come. The wind that precedes those storms is already blowing.

I always find that particular wind a little eerie, ghostly, like the breath of the undead. Dessicated memories traveling on scorched air.

When that wind blows, I’m reminded that Las Vegas is a repository of mysteries for me — a place where strange ideas are born and relationships (yes, plural) are prone to die horribly.

Remnants of my emotional past sweep back into town on that weird wind off the desert. The storms follow. Then the void.

(Yeah, I know — I’m a little nuts. )

I’ve been really sick the past couple of days, unable to eat solid food without…immediate repercussions. I hate this. I hate being attacked by my own body. It’s exhausting and infuriating and I’d rather be thinking about Karl Rove and why he’s going to get away with this latest outrage because the same people who want the Ten Commandments tattooed on everybody’s forehead seem remarkably able to overlook the basest, most cowardly manner of lies and betrayal…

Oh, never mind.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it wasn’t the Xian right that won the 2004 election for our Proctodent anyway. His real ace in the hole, so to speak, is dumb, terrified males.

I’ll explain when the repercussions stop…

* Stay off solid foods for another day or two. (I’ve been sick.)

* Relive and forget. (I’ve been cryptic.)

* Have another major commercial success before I die.

It’s been a mixed day:

The annoying flare-up of a chronic health problem. (Nothing life-threatening, just a massive drain on the energy.) A productive editorial conversation about *Hard Time*. A collaborative writing session best described as “antsy.” A tentative solution to a troublesome story problem. Pizza. A little too much Sci-Fi Channel. A long drive home in the heat of early evening.

So I’m tired. And since a definitive solution to that story problem is required tomorrow, sleep is a necessity. So I have to keep this short.

Before I go, though, I want to thank all of you for your comments the past couple of days. They’ve had a more salutary effect than you could possibly know.

Then the universe grabbed me by the lapels, slapped me repeatedly about the face and snarled, “Snap out of it, asshole!”

I haven’t yet, not quite, but I am amazed at the lengths the cosmos will go to get my attention.

In addition to all the encouraging comments about yesterday’s post, in addition to some completely unrelated but equally cheering messages on the Yahoo Howard the Duck Group, I get an email from a fellow named Jeff Christiansen who runs a website called
The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The site is devoted to cataloguing and profiling the more obscure characters in the Marvel Universe and, by extension, Malibu Comics’ Ultraverse, which was acquired by Marvel in the early ’90s. Jeff wanted to let me know he’d posted a new entry on Lord Pumpkin, a character I co-created for the Ultraverse.

Of necessity, the Lord Pumpkin profile summarizes a long story arc from the *Sludge* series.

IMAGE DELETED

It’s been years since I’ve reread the *Sludge* material, and I don’t have the near-photographic memory for comics — even my own — that some writers and artists do. It therefore came as a pleasant surprise, reading the synopses, to discover that *Sludge* was a pretty damn interesting comic book. Much crazier, much more inventive than I remembered. And then I came to the comments section of the page, where Jeff wrote two words that caused my jaw to drop: “Gerber rocks.”

Okay, universe, that’s playing dirty.

I’m still lonely, and I’m still feeling insecure tonight, but Jesus Christ on a Popsicle stick — how am I supposed to react when my mood dips and in response the freaking cosmos plays self-esteem coach?!?

Is hope appropriate?

Mary keeps trying to tell me that my psychic presence, or whatever she calls it, is much stronger than I think it is. Days like this make me wonder.

I was going to write something tonight about some basic criteria for judging comic book stories — stories presented in any medium, really — but today was not a good day.

It’s still not. Words are tripping all over each other in my head. For a writer that’s the worst kind of torture. For this writer, anyway.

Sometimes I slip too easily into the role of entertainer. I find I’m doing that with this blog and, as a result, subverting its original purpose. When I started it a few months ago, my mission was simply to write *something* every day. More recently, I’ve avoided posting unless I had *something interesting* to say. And I’ve been holding back the darker stuff that runs through my mind, because I haven’t wanted to subject you to that — or scare you — or worry you — or indulge the depression.

Maybe, for my own sake, I need to concern myself less with entertainment here and more with candor. We’ll see.

The temperatures in Vegas have risen into the 110s.

When the weather gets this hot, my thoughts invariably turn to the corporatization of the American consciousness and the imminent collapse of our society.

Today, those thoughts took a new shape. I began to visualize American culture as a three-way intersection — the point where the desperate need to be cool meets the desperate need to be right and the insatiable drive to acquire.

In the light of the pitiless sun, we look like a nation of insult comics.

Tomorrow is going to be even hotter, so the subject will be “dark” comic books and risibility.

…again, for not posting the past couple of days. I haven’t been feeling well. Combination of the heat and what seems to be some annoying, flu-like summer bug.

I’ll try to get back into the rhythm of this shortly.

When I get dehydrated, my thought processes tend to randomize.

– I can never remember what the word “codependent” means, because it just means “dependent.” Like “proactive” means “active” and “pre-installed” means “installed.” People add superfluous syllables to common words to make themselves sound important.

– John of Patmos.

– As a kid, I once had a knife held to my throat. In my late teens, I once had a shotgun pointed at me. At an antiwar rally in 1968 or -9, a man in a VFW hat screamed in my face, “Where’s your Little Red Book?” I went, “Huh?” and told him I didn’t know what a Little Red Book was. He didn’t believe me.

– Oh my god! “Walk” rhymes with “talk”!!!

– Coherence tomorrow, comedy tonight.

“We’re fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don’ t have to fight them here.” — Some Lying Fuck or Another

Profound condolences and shared outrage from the blue people of America to our British friends.