About a month ago I pretty much went AWOL from 90% of my usual on-line presence. It was pointed out to me recently off-line that, since the only journal entry I've had this month was a report of a dream about joining the Israeli army, this might not be terribly reassuring to anyone who's been wondering about my geographical location and/or mental stability since then.

Anyway, I'm still possessed of more or less sound mind and body, still living in the States and I've even been writing a bit. I've been off-line lately since during an extended visit to Michigan, I only had access to an extremely slow computer that tended to freeze up every 30 seconds in the best of scenarios, and every 15 seconds if you wanted to engage any really complex, high-level functions like checking your e-mail. In any case, I'm now back in sunny and decadent south Florida, and all is well. I went to a TA orientation this morning, and the rest of today will be devoted to swimming, catching up on the on-line stuff and probably ordering a pizza and participating in the traditional viewing of "Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle."

Meantime, some stuff that's gone on since last I posted...

(1) Despite not actually making the initial, fairly ambitious goals, I managed to raise $89 for Clarion West from the writeathon. Considering how much scholarship money I needed last year, it feels good to be able to give (a little bit) back.

(2) Speaking of the writeathon, due to my having won Paul's ebay tuckerization auction, I just got a rough draft of a Paul Park story in my e-mail inbox for perusal. This is extremely fucking cool, how thoroughly I'm in awe of him as a writer and an instructor.

(3) I've gotten a nice plug for the zombie story here and (thanks to tina c. for the heads-up) an even nicer one here:

"Ben Burgis, 'Three Perspectives on the Role of the Anarchists in the Zombie Apocalypse,' in Afterburn. As an historian, I loved this story because the focus wasn't on the zombies themselves - in fact, it completely takes a back seat. The whole point of this story is different ways of looking at the same events, and the fact that they
can come across completely differently depending on time, perspective, bias... it's really cleverly written."