Back to Asheville

Eckerd cancelled their flu clinic and the only place having one is Kerr Drug on Patton Avenue in Asheville. So I'm taking Aunt Tudi up there today for her flu shot. I want to get up there by 10 AM, so we'll be leaving around 8:30. I'm tired already.

Redeye Grandé

We're back from Asheville and I would now like to talk about the coffee that I purchased on the way out of town this morning. I knew that I'd be sore pressed to drive to Asheville with a budding headache and a mere four hours of fitful sleep under my belt. So Aunt Tudi and I stopped at Curbside Coffee, which is right up the road from us just before you get on I-85. I got Aunt Tudi a 24 oz. hazelnut latte and myself a concoction called the Redeye Grandé. The first couple of sips of this potion were horrid but, after my tastebuds were eaten away, it started tasting pretty damned good!

What is the Redeye Grandé? According to Curbside Coffee's menu, it's a double Espresso w/coffee and sugar and cream upon request. But this is misleading. I know the frightening truth now, having just come down from the most gruesome caffeine high I've ever experienced. I'm shaking like a leaf on a tree (not to be quoting Elvis, but damn...) and I'm finding it hard to type this. Now, I had this coffee at 8:30 this morning and it is now almost 1 PM. As Sam Neill repeatedly emoted at the end of Event Horizon, "Do you SEE???"

Here are the ingredients of the Redeye Grandé, for real and true:

A double Espresso w/coffee, one pound of natural sugar, the entire contents of a freshly-lactating cow, gasoline, uranium, Red 40, LSD, crack, smack, whack, Emeril (he provided the necessary BAM!), petroleum jelly, small bits of plastic, a thumbtack, rocket fuel, crystal meth, the marching hammers from Pink Floyd's "The Wall," sub-atomic sludge, dilithium crystals, the sacred name of Jehovah, a brick, wolverine musk, ground up bones of twelve rabid velociraptors, eye of newt, eye of Ripley, eye of Hudson (oh hell, you get the idea: the eyes of the entire cast of Aliens), the sex drive of a nerdly sixteen year old male virgin, a large tire, 50 Cent's leftover bling, Rob Zombie, and one hamster in a wheel.

On the way up to Asheville, we listened to Johnny Cash. Do you know what happens when you combine a constant "doo-wacka-doo" with a Redeye Grandé? Well, by the time we made it to drugstore for Aunt Tudi's flu shot, I was rocking back and forth like the mostest special soul on the short bus to Hell. I was a wild-eyed she-bitch with nowhere to run. I drove like an extra in a Mad Max movie. I was beyond fucking Thunderdome! I felt like I had been whipped into a religious frenzy by angry nuns with garden sticks. I wanted to scamper about scraping my tongue with a razor blade and crying out the name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Despite my crashing hard from such an extreme high, it's still going to take a kick to the head by Mr. Horse himself to knock my crazed arse out tonight. Until then, I'll be doo-wacka-doo'ing and feeling like one of Syd Barrett's bad dreams.

O_O

Bits and Bobs

I've written about 500 words today, but I finally got down the tale of Thanatos and Virginia Dare. When I was a kid, Aunt Tudi and Granny ordered me a book from Readers Digest entitled American Folklore and Legend. Even as a wee tot, I had little regard for American anything except for the short period of time in 1979 when I became a flag-waving idiotic Reagan supporter. It was the Iran hostage crisis and I was young and dumb, so don't hold it against me. Anyway, I just wasn't into my country's history, folklore, or Yankee Doodle tall tales. But one story always held me enthralled and that was the story of Virginia Dare and the Roanoke Colony. So, when I first started making notes on what would eventually become The Chalice, I decided to intertwine her story with that of Thanatos'. Up until today, Virginia was Thanatos' vampire lover. I've changed that now. Now, Virginia was raised by Thanatos, who was witness to what happened to the Roanoke settlers and had to see the same thing happen to his beloved adopted daughter. I never mention exactly what happened to the colony, just that a great darkness was visited upon them. It could mean disease, a curse, mass murder, whatever. All that I say is that Virginia, being connected to the colonists, is affected physically by the same darkness when she turned 20, forcing Thanatos to transform her into a vampire. But the transformation is only a delay for her imminent demise. So yeah.

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Tonight we're supposed to enjoy temperatures in the mid-30s. Last night our low was 62. That's almost a 30 degree difference. We're all going to die.

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I was thinking about Granny earlier. She used to make humourous grocery lists in her later days when she could no longer go to the store herself. She'd give the list to Aunt Tudi and she and I would take care of bidness for all of us. One day, she made this particularly amusing list, which Aunt Tudi and I laughed out with a mighty fervour. That same day, Aunt Tudi had an appointment to get her hair cut. The grocery list fell out of her pocket at the beauty shop, which was one of those hoity-toity Steel Magnolias holes in the wall. So some biddy at the beauty shop got a list that had the following items on it:

• 4 cans vyeenie a-weenies (translation: 4 cans of Vienna Sausages)


• 3 pounds chicken boobs (3 pounds of chicken breasts)

To this day, I call them chicken boobs.

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I have a cup of Sleepytime Tea steeping. Here's hoping it will help with my serious caffeine hangover.

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I communicated with Barry last night. He's perplexed as to why I haven't yet received a copy of "Cormorant." Apparently, I actually was on his list of folks to receive a complimentary copy. I told him it didn't matter 'cos I was planning on paying for a copy of the CD regardless. So I may end up with two copies of the CD and I'm already on the waiting list for one of the Great Eggs. This makes me exceedingly happy.

I'm tossing around the idea of sending him a copy of The Chalice, but I'm leaning toward not sending it to him. The book is a homage to purple prose because I like purple prose; however, I'm afraid that Barry would find it tedious and point a finger of doom in my general direction. Then again, he does like the work of Russell Hoban, whose mastery of the grandiose writing style is beloved of many of us, including myself. Here's a lovely sampling of Mr. Hoban's ability:

The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road might be taken. ~~ from The Medusa Frequency

Each of us is the forward point of a procession stretching back into the darkness. And even within oneself, every moment is a self that dies: the road to each day's midnight is littered with corpses and all of them whispering. ~~ from Fremder

Now, in no way am I comparing myself to Russell Hoban. I am but a speck of filth lucky enough to have been exposed to his brilliance. But he is a master of purple prose and he gives weeblets like myself hope that the art of such writing is not extinct. But I digress. My dilemma is whether or not to send the finished The Chalice (or the first draft as it is) to Barry. Do I want to open myself up to that? Would he even read it? Would it be an exercise in the Realm of the Pathetic for me to send it to him? Is it an exercise in the Realm of the Pathetic for me to even entertain the idea?

But he has a right to see what he's inspired. He has a right to know if he should retain a lawyer so he can sue me for defamation of character, albeit in a wholly honourable fangirl way. Blah! I don't know what to do. Maybe I should make a poll. I sure as hell ain't gonna get anymore serious writing done tonight. I'm too spazzed out.

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I'm wearing toe socks for the first time this season. I have ten little blocks of ice in lieu of toes. Verily do I suffer. And my lips are seriously chapped. I've raw spots on my lower lip. In fact, I'm convinced that my lip will fall off in the middle of the night only to be devoured by one of the dogs as a midnight snack. I will then lie in bed on a respirator and buy items Hannibal Lecter has touched and ponder my revenge with the cunning use of genetically altered boars.

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It pisses me off, the slaughter of trees this time of year. Everyone who kills a tree for the holidays should have that tree shoved up their chocolate wizways. Then again...not everyone has a black Nightmare Before Christmas tree to trim like yours truly. Perhaps I shouldn't be so harsh. No. Tree killers be damned!!

Sleepytime Shmoop

Shmoop loves Sleepytime Tea. She just finished rubbing all over a used tea bag, purring, and acting the fool. I checked the ingredients to see if catnip was in the tea, but it's not. But there's something in that tea that makes Shmoop all flippy. It's adorable. At one point she was lying on her back with the teabag on her chest. Adorable.

Funky Toes

( and they're still cold... )