I'm one of the assistant managers mentioned in this journal posting by Neil Gaiman. What sort of scares me is that when my manager asked him to sign the book, he said something to the effect of "Drew in New Orleans? Oh, he'll want it inscribed. He's on my webpage all the time." Eek. How the hell does Neil Gaiman know who I am?

I swear to god I never threatened to stab my manager though... well.. maybe I did...

Big huggies to Jonno for finding and fixing the problem with my blog template. I swear to god i didn't do anything to it... it just decided one day to rearrange itself...

grrr...

It's Labor Day and Southern Decadence has come and gone once more. The protesters were barely a blip in the weekend. The police did a really amazing job of controlling them all weekend and their numbers were far less than they had said they would be.

And as of yesterday, it seems i'm officially dating someone... we were evidently damned cute leaning against a St Ann street midday yesterday. All of our friends were giving us knowing grins and we noticed one guy stopped across the street to photograph us.

Anyway... more on this later... trust that for now, it's very good though...

I feel that I should point out that item #66 on my Amazon Wishlist is currently on sale for $5.29.

The Hotshot is the utterly adorable boyfriend of my utterly adorable friend Clee out in San Francisco. I hate them both for being such an utterly adorable couple.

Ok... I probably actually love them to death...

Anyways, I'm adding him to my bloggy links.

ok... i added comments back in... if no one uses them... they go away soon...

I've noticed something that creeps me out. Every once in a while, my number of friends on Friendster drops.

So.... um, have I become unfriendworthy? Or did they just quit Friendster? And the sad thing is that I can never figure out who's disappeared...

I added new links over on the side to Poppy and Jeff's blogs/journals. And I edited the little pop up box thingie for Mark's. Not that the little pop up thingies work very well when you're using Safari to surf... fix that, Apple!

I stayed home from work feeling sort of icky today... and i'm bored... so... i'm playing with the colors on here today... i'm sick of the brown background and blue links...

One of my favorite New Orleanians and friends/acquaintances has started a livejournal called Dispatches from Tanganyika. We share titles inspired by John Kennedy Toole... although, mine is actually more inspired by his mother, Thelma Ducoing Toole.

and Rev Grant Storm can go get royally fucked...

I'm ready to rumble... c'mon you, Christian motherfuckers...

The Catholic Church can go fuck itself. I guess Archbishop Hughes is a lot more concerned with preventing gay people from having fun than he ever was about stopping priests in Boston from fucking little boys...

Geez... between Jonno and Poppy, i'm on my way to a new one day record for hits on my page...

now, um... stick around and read more than just the first page... and drop me an email or something and tell me how cute i am...

Goddammit, Jonno... give me some advance warning when I'm gonna get a mention, so I can actually have something halfway decently new written here...

And I suppose you're gonna be wanting me to find the new Belle & Sebastian for you next...

I just finished reading Ilium by Dan Simmons. 592 pages in less than 3 days, and I worked eight hours a day each of those days. Think I liked it much?

This book is the fucking bomb. Dan Simmons is the fucking bomb.

Simmons is a really interesting author. He writes science fiction. He writes mysteries. He writes horror novels. He writes noir thrillers. He writes fantasy. In 1986, he won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel, Song of Kali, beating out The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice and Clive Barker's first novel, The Damnation Game. In 1990, he won the British Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award for his pretty fucking amazing pseudo-vampire novel, Carrion Comfort. That same year, he won the Hugo for his first science fiction novel, Hyperion.

Hyperion was the first book in a series of four novels known as the Hyperion Cantos. And they're some of the best science fiction novels ever written, especially the first two books. When I first read them, they grabbed hold of my imagination and made me realize that I could really love science fiction novels. They were full of big bold ideas but the tales were told through brilliantly crafted characters. And the whole thing was set up against a background that required you to have at least a bit of knowledge of literature to see the whole story. Keats and Chaucer echoed through the stories.

Simmons has been off writing in other genres for a few years now, but he's back to science fiction big time and he's totally on his game. ILIUM is crazy good.

Imagine a far future solar system. The moons of Jupiter are colonized by 'moravecs', organic robots who spend their downtime debating Proust and Shakespeare. Earth is home to only a few hundred thousand 'post technological' humans, who live carefree spoiled lives, but they have no knowledge of technology or literature or simple common sense anymore. And they're going to need all of that soon.

Meanwhile, the 'post humans' have disappeared. They may be on Mars. Something's on Mars. The Greek Gods are on Mars. A twentieth century scholar has found himself resurrected in this future to observe the Iliad being reenacted, or possibly unfolded for the first time... on Mars. There are also Little Green Men on Mars, who spend their lives building giant stone heads.

The Internet has grown and been modified and mutated and is a living entity. The Earth's biosphere is alive. Gods walk the Earth. Gods walk Mars. Time is being manipulated. Other worlds may be intersecting with this one.

Is your head exploding yet?

Reading this book was like shooting heroin. Buy it. Read it.

Meanwhile, I'll be waiting for OLYMPOS, the sequel due out next year.

But soon, I'll have ABSOLUTION GAP to tide me over in the meantime...

I just stumbled across a blog by a guy I've seen around New Orleans, and it seems like he's got an attractive brain in his head, so I added a link to it...

I was pleasantly surprised to find this in this morning's Times Picayune here in New Orleans.

Who says the South is behind the times? Not that New Orleans is really part of the South...

grrr... Jonno says I have to blog this...

So... I went to dinner tonight with this boy who I may or may not have a crush on. Afterwards, we stopped by my apartment and for some reason we decide to watch the J-Lo episode of South Park on my computer.

I start to look for the file and realize that I don't necessarily want him to see the porn files I have on my computer. So, I remember the episode is called "Fat Head" and something. I search my harddrive for the word "fat" to find it, thinking it'll be a bit safer that way.

And what is the first thing that pops up as a search result? "Big Fat Cock Piss in Mouth.mpg."

*sigh* I need to delete some files from my computer...

Gee... is it just me? Or is my blog a halfway decent read again?