Armada and my secret project (hush-hush) are taking up much of my time; Dev is happily reading Redwall and designing high-tech bombers and similar military equipment (as you might have guessed, she's not a terrilby girly girl, which is fine with me). We're going to see The Perfect Storm on Friday, and to Knott's Berry farm on Sunday.

Bad news is that Cliff is being laid off from his job as of July 1, which means he won't be able to contribute much to the household; he's still looking at different options for staying down here, but he may end up heading out when I do. As a result of the lack of funding, I'm moving up my departure date to July 21, and I'm just having all my utility companies send final bills to me in Portland, where I'll sort it all out. Unless there's an emergency, my money will be going for moving expenses and entertaining Devon. I think things should all be settled by the end of August or so, after which I get back to being a regular, employed human being.

So it's been an experience; not the best, of course, but this has helped me get my feelings regarding my life and my divorce organized. There's still a lot to settle, but I THINK I'm back on the right track. Things are going to change -- hell, they're changing already -- and I'll keep y'all informed as they do. Enjoy.

Devon arrived Thursday morning along with my aunt and my mom, and we spent a couple of days doing stuff. Mom and Evelyn went to the Getty Museum on Friday, then headed back to San Francisco. Dev and I drove around, went up to the Griffith Park Observatory, drove down Sunset and Hollywood boulevards, and just hung out watching TV. We're going to see Chicken Run this afternoon... Being a huge Nick Park fan, I am looking forward to this film enormously.

Colleen departed on Friday night, heading back for home and her family responsibilities. She will be missed, even if she DID drive me crazy on occasion :) Cliff still isn't sure whether he's staying down here or going back to the great northwest, but I'm sure that will all work itself out eventually.

I'm about 25,000 words into Armada now, and have inflicted enormous death and destruction on Litharna and on my cast (Who lives? Who dies? Tune ina nd find out!!). I have to write Wulf's arc now, as well as some sex scenes (as usual... I think the centerpiece is Herula and Wulf's big bdsm extravaganza ;) ), but this time I might actually finish an installment on schedule. Will wonders never cease?

And oh, yeah... I'm working on a new secret project that I suspect everyone here will enjoy. I don't have a real completion date yet, and it's a massive project so I can't tell you when to expect it, but it's Thystra-based and should shed some new light on the world and on other aspects of the stories. The only hint I'll deliver is that it involves Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition... Heh, heh...

So it's going pretty well; I'm planning a number of exciting events over the next month, hopefully including a passel of movies, and the usual amusement parks -- Six Flags, Knott's Berry Farm, Disneyland, Universal Studios, etc. As always I'll keep you informed. Enjoy.

Let me make this clear -- I have nothing against the homeless. I understand being down on one's luck. I understand the issues of substance abuse, mental illness and social nonconformity. Perhaps not intimately, since I'm capable of holding down a job, keeping a roof over my head, and arranging my finances so that I can eat regularly. While I drink and engage in the occasional bout with semi-legal substances, I don't feel my life revolves around them, and I don't feel any compulsion to hang out in the heart of a major urban area, demanding that passers-by help me feed my addiction. The last few days have made me a little less sympathetic for those folks who make their living by demanding money from the rest of us.

Perhaps I should step back a ways. As you know, Colleen has ended up staying with us considerably longer than originally planned, even to the point where she and Cliff are considering staying here after I leave. This is fine... It solves a number of problems regarding what Cliff is to do, and some other issues in Colleen's life upon which I will not elaborate since it's her business and I don't want to spread her private life all over the Internet, however good and kind and considerate my readers are ;)

Anyway, Colleen is a talented violinist, having played for money since the age of ten, and actually appeared in the film Mr. Holland's Opus. She has been a street performer for a long time, and actually helped the Portland city council formulate its rules for street musicians. Arriving in LA, she decided to try the same approach, playing her violin on the street, and after a false start in Santa Monica, found that the streets of downtown LA were an excellent venue, earning her up to $120 per day in tips.

Let me elaborate on this a little -- street musicians are not panhandlers. Known colloquially as "busking," street performance does not involve directly soliciting anyone for money. A performer plays his/her instrument with an open case at his/her feet, sometimes with a small sign saying "donations welcome" or, in Colleen's case, "Help me go to music school." They do not get in anyone's face saying "Help me out, dude! I'm a veteran! Gimme a dollar! I got kids to feed! C'mon, man!" Donations to a busker are entirely voluntary and don't involve any demands or even direct communication. Someone walks by, likes the music, he drops some money in the case. That's it.

A panhandler, on the other hand, is something else, and for the first month or so that we did this, no one objected. There were panhandlers, yes, but no one actually said anything negative about Colleen's playing. After a few weeks, however, the amount of money that she took in started creating little dollar signs in the eyes of LA's street people, and this week we had a couple of them claim that she was on "their" corner, and since they were "homeless" and "lived in LA" that she would have to move and let them panhandle.

Well, I have a couple of theories about this. First off, since there were no regular panhandlers on these corners when we arrived, I don't understand how anyone can claim that a given corner is "theirs." Second, I have the distinct impression that, upon seeing all the money in Colleen's cases, these fine gentlemen (one of whom referred to us as "greedy goddam motherfuckers") decided that this money was rightfully theirs, and that if she would just leave, the hundreds of dollars would then go directly into their impoverished pockets instead of Colleen's violin case.

In any event, neither Colleen, Cliff, nor I have the slightest objection to these individuals panhandling on the same corner where she is playing. If people wish to give her money, they will, and if they wish to give the panhandlers money, they will do that as well. But this isn't good enough for a couple of LA's street people, and we've been facing a constant struggle over the past week.

Mind you, several other street folk have come up to Colleen asking if she's okay, and assuring her that not all street folk are like these two, which makes me far more sympathetic. But still, the conduct of these few reflects badly on the whole.

The first is a burly, well-fed, mustacioed black man who wears a beret and is scrupulously polite to people, soliciting change as he holds the door at McDonald's or Burger King. Once someone refuses to do what he wants, of course, he becomes abusive and threatens to break violins and the like. The second, an associate of the first, is of a more traditional appearance and behavior -- thin, unshaven, bady dressed, screaming obscenities at anyone whom he doesn't like. He is, he assures me, a Vietnam veteran, and he "fucking lives in fucking LA" which of course, we do not, since my car has Oregon plates. Unfortunately for him, we do live in LA, which pretty much knocks the pins out from under his apparent argument that only LA residents can solicit change on the streets of LA. Further, he spends much of his time threatening to "kick your motherfucking ass," while at the same time doing very little to follow up on the threat.

We've had several run-ins with these individuals, and my feelings are that, on a crowded noon-time street they're unlikely to try anything violent, but since these are unstable individuals who seem to lack the ability to live in mainstream society, there's always a hazard. And since both they and Colleen are legally entitled to be on the street and solicit money, the police have an obligation to protect anyone who might be threatened. If I were to threaten to beat up one of the streetniks, I would be in the wrong. If, on the other hand, they threaten us, the reverse applies, and the police should offer protection to the victim.

Well, a couple of LA's finest didn't see it that way, and they've managed to conform to the worse stereotypes of LA cops. Yesterday, while I was home, Cliff and Colleen went downtown to play, and were (surprise!) confronted by Mr. Vietnam veteran (who looks as if he was about 10 during the Vietnam war anyway), who flung his fragrant backpack and bedroll at Colleen's feet and insisted on standing a few inches from her, screaming. When Cliff asked him to stop, he immediately said he'd (surprise!) kick Cliff's ass, and was then joined by the fat guy with the moustache (aka "beret guy"), and when Cliff didn't back down and called the police, they immediately claimed that Cliff had threatened them.

Being the fine and impartial public servants that they were, the two cops then listened to the streetniks' story (together), then went over and lectured Cliff and Colleen about "how we do things in LA." As near as I can tell, they felt that Cliff simply being there constituted a threat to the defenseless, harmless, pillar-of-the-community street people, and that since they "made their living" by demanding money from passersby, Colleen should pack up and go to a different corner. They couldn't tell the street bums to back down, of course, since "a lot of people here like them" and they'd look bad. The fact is that most passers-by expressed considerable sympathy for Colleen, and if the bums were so popular, why the hell were they getting no money when Colleen was playing? And if, as the cops said, "there's lots of other corners," why did Colleen -- who was providing entertainment and not simply harrassing pedestrians for drug money -- earn $100 per day? And finally, if she did move to another corner, then proceed to make lots of money, what was to stop Beret Guy and friend from demanding that she leave that corner as well?

Even in the face of such opposition from both the police and the "unofficial" rulers of LA's streets -- the panhandlers -- Colleen managed to bring in a substantial amount, and we're going back on Monday. I have a call in to the senior cop in that district, and I hope that he will give us more constructive advice than "You're not originally from LA, you don't live on the street, so therefore if a panhandler tells you to jump, you need to ask him 'how high'?" If I am still alive and healthy by the end of this week (when Colleen is flying home to Portland, intending to return and renew the battle of the streets), I'll let you all know how it comes out.

In other, less confrontational, news, I'm about 18,000 words into Armada, and the damned thing isn't even close to completion; this one might end up being the longest of the bunch, 'specially since it is 2-3 installments jammed together so that I can wrap the storyline up more efficiently. I am hoping to have it done by August 1 when I leave, but I never seem to meet my own deadlines, so that's probably just bullshit ;)

I'm also working on yet another "real" novel project -- the distractions of the last few months, even after fleeing to LA to be "alone" (ROTFLMAO) has kept me from pursuing any of my outside fiction ideas such as Glass Rapier and the Alex stories, but I think that if I keep after myself and work at least a little a day, I'll get something done. I'm simply convinced that the presence of other human beings and their demands tends to reduce the time and energy I can spend on what's important. I'm seriously considering spending the rest of my life as a sexless aesthete so that I can at least have time... Then again, there's Devon to consider, and she is definitely a human being with needs, so I may be stuck wth human existence for the foreseeable future. What a drag... ;)

More to come... We'll be going downtown Monday to battle the forces of evil, Dev's arriving Wednesday, and Colleen's flying back to Portland on Friday. Eventful week, what? Hope this isn't my last entry... If I die in defense of street performers, however, AVENGE ME!!!!

This wasn't a waste; I've made some friends and had some good experience. Besides, Dev will be coming to join me in a week or two, and we'll be able to hit up Disneyland and all that other fun stuff. I intend to turn this into a good vacation for her, and also tell her that her dad will be coming home again, something which I sincerely hope will meet with her approval.

So what else has happened since the last entry? Quite a bit, actually... (the following is disgusting medical stuff, so skip it if you want to)... Right after E3 I developed a small infected pore or impacted hair or something on the side of my face, right where the earpiece of my glasses would rub it raw. Of course, it did, and within a few days I had a full blown abscess decorating my right temple. I was forced to leave my glasses off, but the infection didn't go away, and the Friday after the show I awoke with a huge swelling under my eye and feeling like death warmed over. So I prevailed upon my compadres to take me to the urgent care clinic, where they prodded me, jabbed a huge needle into my ass, and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. The office visit was $100 and the pills were almost $50, but of course that was only the beginning. The antibiotics gave me an upset stomach, but I kept taking them for ten days and the swelling went away; the doctor told me that if I'd waited another day I might have had full-blown cellulitis and had to check into a hospital. It could have been worse. When I got the bill, however, I discovered that the painful shot in the butt cost me no less than $178, and the doctor's five minutes another $90 or so. What fun. I love being uninsured.

A week later, feeling somewhat better, I took a trip to Las Vegas to see my old friend Sammo, whom I have known since she was 15, when she worked for me in the animal care department of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I met her and her roomies, and we saw the sights of Vegas, eating at a couple of cheap but incredibly filling restaurants (the biggest goddam prime rib of my life, at one), and visited the infamous Star Trek Experience... I didn't go on the ride (I'm going to take Dev in July), but I checked out the museum and timeline, and that was way cool.

Happily, I set off across the burning desert in the beat-up Accord, only to have a massive vibration develop around the state line, forcing me to stop and call AAA. I was paranoid, since the last car trouble I had was a bad bearing, which produced exactly the same symptoms. Well, upon returning to Vegas, my buds took me to dinner again (I think I ate more over the weekend than I did for the entire previous two weeks), and I stayed over, despite the fact that their AC was out and it was 104 degrees out. The next day I found, to my desperate relief, that the only thing wrong with the car was a bad tire, and then (bless their hearts forever) Sam and her roomies bought me four brand new tires, and said I could pay them back later. Love ya, Sammo! Eric and Renee and Virginia, too :)

So I got back Monday night, the car ran like a charm, and I made 70-80 mph all the way (and had rich yuppies in Mercedes flash their lights at me since I wasn't doing 90), and the trip through the desert was extremely enlightening, despite the horrific heat. I stopped in Baker at a restaurant called Bun Boy, mostly because I wanted to be able to tell everyone I had. The place was a roadhouse back in the 20's when the only road between Vegas and LA was a dirt track that probably took days to navigate. I imagine that those intrepid pioneers, bundled up in their rickety roadsters, goggles and scarves on to protect them from the dust, driving in open cockpits without air conditioning through the hellish heat probably found the place a life saver. Now, however, it's just another desert restaurant with a funny name.

And on other news -- no response to the 30 or so resumes I sent out last week for on-line work, and I'm getting discouraged. Nothing from Hard Shell, and no updates to their submission tracker since March... I think they still have my silly book, but I have no way of knowing for certain. Well, I'm not concerned right now. I've got a destiny and I'm sticking with it, and I'm going to have a ten-year-old girl to entertain very soon.

I'm perhaps 1/4 of the way through Armada. It's going to have a whole bunch of POV changes, shifting from character to character, showing the progress of the war on varioius fronts, as well as more development of our various fave characters. As for who's going to have sex, well I think that Theanna and Daedora are going to make another try for racial harmony, Wulf is going to get his very own personal sex slave (he's not 100% sure what to do with her) and Livia (I think) won't have sex with anyone. That would be a switch, wouldn't it?

I've also got some cool art from a new friend in Spain, and I have Archsage's long-delayed epic Chaos and Jesters to post to the fiction page. All that tonight or tomorrow I hope... Keep an eye out.
 

I think I'll write an editorial about it (I haven't done that in a long time, either) -- I've seen enough booth babes, heard enough hype, and had enough non-existent products promoted as the second coming to last for the rest of the year. Of course, after all this I have endless material for articles, which you'll be able to see at Gamewire starting in a couple of days. I'm spending a couple of hours each day this week in writing the articles, for which I will be paid (yay!), and by week's end all my blisters should be healed, and I can start thinking about how I'm going to actually buy all that cool technology that I saw all weekend (I'm in a drawing for one of the first U.S. PlayStation 2's, but I'm not holding out much hope... Oh, yeah, I might also win a sports car. And a date with the new Lara Croft model... Yeah, right...)

We're scheduled to do another "Hollywood" thing this week... We have tickets (or, as they say in Variety, tix) to a "romantic motion picture in the mold of Flashdance." I can hardly wait.

Last week, we had our first preview, seeing an awful Kevin Bacon movie called "The Hollow Man" (or rather "Hollow Man" because hwood execs seem to think that audiences will lose interest if there's a "The" anywhere in the title). The SFX weren't finished, but we had a pretty good idea what the film was going to be like, which is to say an interesting first half that leads to a muddled, idiotic finish that leaves no movie cliche undisturbed... Characters split up when there's a murderous (and invisible) sociopath about, they refuse to wear the IR goggles that will allow them to see the killer, the murderer himself is impaled, beaten and electrocuted, but like Jason he KEEPS COMING BACK and finally has to be dropped down an exploding elevator shaft. The FX toward the film's end are even more spare, with crude computer graphics (and even a couple of storyboard sketches) filling in for the menacing falling elevator, and big yellow blocky graphics taking the place of explosions. In a few scenes, the sociopathic invisible man, Kevin Bacon, is dressed in green, blue or black suits for later chromakey and fill-in, but none of this really hurt the film. What hurt it was a bad script and hackneyed direction. Oh yeah -- the director, the inimitable Paul Verhoeven (who brought you Robocop, Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct... or was it Fatal Attraction? Basic Attraction? Fatal Instinct? Oh, that stupid one where you're forced to look at Saron Stone's snatch) was there, and didn't look too happy at the audience's reaction. Cliff, Colleen and I laughed our asses off, and on our comment cards said that it could be the smash-hit comedy of 2000. Needless to say, we were not asked to stay for the Q&A session with the filmmakers. Damn.

Is there any other news? Well, besides getting started on Armada and Narisha's Night (possibly with a little epilog featuring Narisha giving Liv a spanking), and me catching up on sleep, there really isn't any. Colleen is still with us through next week, my camera is still broken, the webcam still crashes my system, I'm behind on bills (Cliff's damned employers lost his check), I'm still wondering what the hell I'm doing down here, what the hell has been going wrong in my life. Believe me, if I find out, you'll be the first to know :)

The other big issue that kept me out of communication, of course, is the great computer meltdown. As I noted, the cable co repairman gave up in despair, but another couple of guys came out the next day and came to the conclusion that the fault lay with my machine, that some network files somewhere were corrupted, and that, of course, this meant that I would have to flatline my hard drive.

Well, I've never been much for flatlining, though I know that backing everything up and reformatting every so often is a good thing. I'm just too damned lazy for that, and I really didn't feel like spending the rest of the week reinstalling, moving all my documents back, redownloading stuff, etc. I did something that you Windows mavens may object to -- I renamed my Windows directory as "Winold," then reinstalled Windows, figuring that the damaged files were probably in the Windows directory, and a complete reinstall would replace them. It would also screw up my registry, my desktop, and a lot of my existing programs, so it may have ended up being as much work as flatlining the system and replacing Windows. Well, I did it and, lo and behold, the network files worked, my Internet connection sharing worked, pages and files downloaded with blazing speed, etc., etc. It's taken me since then to get all my programs working properly again, but it looks as if we're back on track. Mind you, I may still dump the cable modem service in favor of DSL, but I have a few days to think about that yet.

As for what killed my files, I strongly suspect the damned Intel prototype webcam that I was using for the Amazing Mara-Cam... It locked up my system periodically and I couldn't figure out why. After restoring my system I hooked up the cam and got the same error, so I'm keeping the webcam page on hold until I buy a better one.

On what is probably not a related note, my digital camera has also gone south with permanently corrupt firmware. It's out of warranty, so according to Kodak I can fix it for about $100, or trade up to the next better camera for $200. I'm really considering saving up my money and just getting the better model. In any event, it's going to be a few weeks before I can do anything about it... Anyone got a decent digicam they want to sell me?

I've been through a lot of thinking and a lot of consideration of my life over the last week, as well... I think that a long conversation I had with Colleen broke a lot of stuff loose and now I think I'm a little more aware of my own feelings and what's bothering me. I'm not perfect; I think I managed to screw up a discussion with Clio over some personal issues, and I made some bad choices as to how to deal with the situation. The fact is that she and I have never been able to communicate about sensitive issues, and now it's even harder. I really didn't want to get into it, for fear that I would make the wrong decision and *bingo* I did... Ever been in the position that every decision you can make seems like the wrong one? Well, I'm there right now and I'm feeling pretty low about it. I wish I had been able to come up with a better way of dealing with things, but all I've managed to do is to make everyone angry, and, well, there's no point in going into it here since I don't want to betray any confidences, but as I said, I feel really unhappy about what's happened, but I can't think of any other way of dealing with it.

Well, I'm sure things will improve. I've got a couple of ideas for fixing the problems with Clio, and hopefully they'll work out.

I spent today calling companies to set up interviews at E3, and I should have a pretty good slate of people. I still have to get ahold of Microsoft, SSI, EA and some other folks, but it looks to be a pretty exciting weekend.

I have come to the conclusion that the people at Argusnet are flakes, as not only have they not given me any news as to the job situation in three weeks, they are not responding to my e-mails. I am determined not to take this lying down, and I may just keep pestering them until they finally admit that they're not hiring me.

Oh yeah -- Wulf stories... I'll get back to work soon. Promise :)