Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I was dead to Harlan within three minutes of meeting him.
A possible record that I'm quite proud of, actually.

Seeing hours and hours of the Three High Verbals this weekend is akin
to having your mind gang-banged by the Marx Brothers: it's lots of fun,
you can't stop laughing, and your brain will be sore for days after in
the most pleasant way...

Harlan made Neil blush all the way down to his fingertips.
I have to admire that. I'm such an amateur...
  

    
Dan -- u might also want to point him to NOW WE ARE SICk, still in
print from DreamHaven, I think.

Home. Still zonked.
  

    
sweet zonked. adjectives are born in the land of zonked.
  

    
How, JaNell?

And Silly Mike - everyone knows Suzukis are nice little 4x4s that
bounce off cars - I have proof!  ;-)

-Kelly
  

    
Neil - Good idea. I just ordered a copy, so hopefully I'll have it
before class this next weekend (not very likely, but one can always
hope). If nothing else, this is taking me one more step towards being a
completist.
*grin*
  

    
Dan -- Ahhh.

Daylight savings time has me feeling zonked, and I didn't even get a
con out of it... ^_^
  

    
Kelly~ How which? Neil would not be happy if I repeated what Harlan
said, so I won't.

As for meeting Harlan...

Neil introduced us.
A minute or so later, Harlan walks up to me and asks why I'm dogging
his footsteps.
I explain that I'm not dogging his, I'm dogging Neil's.
He asks why.
I tell him it's because Neil is better looking.
"You... are DEAD to me."
Complete with dismissive hand gesture.
<giggle>
  

    
DanW: My husband *loves* Kabuki.  We saw Baryshnikov do some here--or,
something choreographed by a Kabuki master--a couple of years ago. 
And, as much as I really really really admire that man, I could not get
it.  I tried.  It was beautiful.  But alien.  I think maybe five
people in the audience got it, including my husband. And it did indeed
look very hard.  Not hard like leaping across the stage and twisting
into inhuman postures hard.  But... hard, as in, increasing internal
difficulty.

Kelly: I thought they bounced off *cows*.

Miss Mousey: You are the fiercest boot-wearin', Neil-stalkin',
Devil-Bunny-ownin' mouse in the West.

Neil: I'm sorry You Are Now Sick.

JaNell: I thought you couldn't go?  How'd you swing getting to MadCon?
 

Congrats to all who were there, adequately sleeping or no.
  

    
Pamela~ My husband made me go. Neil said it would be a good con to
hang out at, so I decided it would be my one trip this year. And I got
$127 round trip to Chicago tickets the day before. 

I'm not sure what the worst part of it was, but I did get generally
reminded that my personality is not universally appealing.

On the plus side, I *did* take that first airplane flight, and I've
got some good stories from it...
And met some very nice people from the news group, DreamHaven, CBLDF,
and the Onion.
  

    
I forgot to say that Trevor, Reverand St. NightWalker, is my Hero now.
  

    
He does that.  NightWalker.
  

    
I definitely needed a pal there.
  

    
Damn.  So wish I'd gone to MadCon (from the stories, seems like 'mad'
is an apropos adjective for any con [I realize it comes from 'Madison',
but still]).
I'm certified to give mouth to mouth, now, and, after taking the
class, feel less upset about having performed it once two or three
years ago.  I didn't know that the second chest pump breaks the sternum
if the first one doesn't in every case, so I got scared when I felt
something give.  Now I know it was s'posed to happen.
And I moved.  It's so nice to be somewhere where the stars come out at
night.  The moon the other night was stunning; behind scalloped
clouds, so the entire sky had a look like silvered scales.

DanW- After the mention of the Suzuki method of acting, I just can't
help thinking of Marlon Brando on a ninja bike.

Neil- Feel better.
  

    
>>After the mention of the Suzuki method of acting, I just can't
>>help thinking of Marlon Brando on a ninja bike.

     Or James Dean in a Samurai SUV.

     And remember, the way to a man's heart is through his xiphoid.
  

    
Pamela - I felt the same was watching a Butoh performance recently.
It's the kind of thing I think you can incorporate into larger things,
but on its own it really is kind of alien. We did an exhibition
performance a few weeks ago of Suzuki and while the audience was rapt,
there was definitely a "what they hell are they doing? I think I like
it, but what the hell is it?" kind of vibe going on. The fact that we
went on with literally no introduction of any kind probably made that
reaction inevitable.

JaNell - sorry to hear that MadCon wasn't terribly edifying for you.
Glad you had Nightwalker to hang with...

Will - Breaks the sternum?? Yikes! You mean the only way to get a
person to breathe is to break their chest?? Please tell me I'm not
understanding you, because that gives me the double willies.

Mike - Ok, you've lost me. I did a dictionary search online and came
up with:
Xiphoid Xiph"oid (?; 277), a. [Gr. ? sword-shaped; xi`fos a
   sword + ? form, shape: cf. F. xiphoide.] (Anat.)
   (a) Like a sword; ensiform.
   (b) Of or pertaining to the xiphoid process; xiphoidian.

Dan
Who has been using his OmniDictionary a lot more since Mike joined the
group
  

    
    Dan -- the xiphoid process is the pointed bit of cartilage at the
bottom end of the sternum.  In CPR training, you're taught not to press
on it (you locate it and compress slightly above) because of the
possibility of cracking it and damaging the heart, which is not what
CPR is all about.
  

    

It's the part of CPR where you attempt to restart the heart, not the part
where you attempt to make them breathe.
  

    
A) Y'all are making me not want to learn CPR here

B) Will--you did it a few years ago?  You rock!

C) Will--that last post I directed to you was about that guy attacking
you in the other forum, not anything you said.  I reread it later and
thought, "That makes no sense".  And then I thought, <Animaniac Dot
voice> "How appropooo", since I seldom do.

D) Will, again--lovely description of the moon.  What are you, a
writer or somethin'?  ;-)

Mary  (reading J.B. Bury's Life of St. Patrick)
  

    
Actually, Mike's mostly right; you compress just above the xiphoid,
which hangs down a bit, and which is sharp and can puncture things you
don't want punctured.  You trace the ribs up, find that, and then put
your other hand just above it, and you start compressing.  Your
compressions will break the breastbone, but that's misleading, because
it's not really bone; it's the same kind of cartilage as is in your
ear, and nose.  And the point of the chest compressions is not to
restart the heart, which is basically impossible without the help of an
electronic defibrillator, but rather to pump the blood for a heart
which can't do it itself.  The compressions squeeze the chest between
the broken breastbone and the spinal cord (well, not exactly between
those two; it's internal, so there's a lot of sensitive bits, but the
compressions pump the blood by compressing the heart) and so pump the
heart (So I *did* take something from all those pre-med years, after
all.  Huh.  Well, whatdya know?).
But Linda's right; this is all to pump the blood.  It's the
cardio-part, not the pulmonary.  For every fifteen compressions, you
breathe twice for the person.
Mary- yeah.  I performed it two years ago.  I was the first person on
the scene.  Unfortunately, the woman, Kitty, had suffered a massive
coronary; she was dead before she hit the floor (the paramedics told me
afterward).  It shook me pretty badly; I lost ten pounds in under a
week.  And the previous post made sense to me.  And yep, I'm a writer. 
Glad you liked the moon thing.  Should I tell you about walking out of
my house tonight, and seeing Orion, right there, with the clouds
positioned just so they looked like the great hunter's kill over his
shoulder, and the moon way over on the other side of the sky, all full
and lonely and brilliant?
  

    
Happy Hallow E'en, y'all!
  

    
Happy Halloween!  I'm disappointed, I didn't carve a pumpkin this
year.  Further disappointment followed when everyone I suggested it to
refused to be the Duck Man from the Discworld books.  "It's easy, you
just walk around with a duck on your head, and whenever anyone says
anything about it, say 'What duck?'"  I've decided to go to school
today as someone wearing a delerium costume.  You know how when you
were little lots of costumes had the face/name of the person you were
dressed up as actually on them?  That's what I'm doin, wearin a
delerium shirt and loading on the colour and fishnets.  Can't wait to
explain this one all day.  I wish much joy and candy to you all on this
most cool of holidays.
  

    
It occurs to me that dressing up as Morpheus and running around
throwing talcum powder "dream sand" on people is no longer in good
taste, particularly in D.C. today.  So I've given my costume to my
manequin, who has a better complexion for playing the role anyway.
  

    
>It occurs to me that dressing up as Morpheus and running around
>throwing talcum powder "dream sand" on people is no longer in good
>taste, particularly in D.C. today.

   "We're the, uh, Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
  

    
Or maybe one of the Other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?
  

    
As long as I get to be "Really Cool People" <snigger>