WordJames's Mind

Itch

I have Celiac Disease, an autoimmune allergic reaction to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and other grass grains. An ordinary allergic reaction means that histamines are produced; an autoimmune allergic means antibodies are produced that cause the immune system to attempt to destroy the body. In the case of Celiac Disease, the destruction is directed at the small intestine and perhaps to the thyroid. The damage to the small intestine causes it to not absorb good stuff like food and vitamine while absorbing bad stuff like bacteria and toxins. Associated histamine production frequently causes diarrhea.

The various forms of damage show up on the skin. One particular manifestation is dermatitis herpetiformis, snake skin, where patches of transparent scab form, peel off and reform. The associated itching is intense. The damage also manifests in other forms of skin problems, most of which itch.

I'm suffering such an outbreak now and have been for about a week. The skin on my abdomen was a bright red that announced a fierce itch; now it has calmed down to a dull purple color that still itches enough to keep me awake. Melaleuca oil or aloe vera gel can calm the itch for about four hours at a time.

It itches more if I scratch or if I even think about scratching.

Pain Dream

I suffer from severe arthritis of the spine, a condition that leads to back pain, difficulty swallowing (when the inflammation blocks the nerves that control swallowing), and other problems. My back is heavily calcified with some disks damaged. I am very sensitive to changes in the weather, especially changes in the air pressure.

I had a fall over a week ago. The fall messed up my right arm from the wrist to the elbow. That was all that hurt at first, but my back started bothering me after a day. There are three areas of pain: from my neck to the base of my shoulder blades and out to the sides; at the base of my rib cage and out to the sides; and in my lower back. After the second day following the fall, I needed pain killers in order to sleep ... until two nights ago.

Last night I slept poorly and had a dream about pain:

I was sitting on the wall in front of the house, watching our dog, who we keep on a cable. My back was hurting, so I was moving my body back and forth to diminish the pain and to build up the muscles in my lower back and abdomen. The pain in my back increased to the point that I was becoming confused. I managed to put the dog in the house and lock the door from the outside before the pain got so bad that I would pass out.

Instead of passing out, though, my brain shut down and I started walking. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, but I felt a compulsion to walk despite the pain it caused me. Eventually, very late at night, a cop stopped me to see if I was drunk or doped up. I didn't respond to any of his questions and I was carrying nothing but my house keys, so he sent me to the county jail to fingerprint me so I could be identified. Somehow, though, I wound up at the city jail and nobody knew what to do with me.

Every time nobody paid attention to me, I would start walking again. I kept getting away from my jailers. Finally they fingerprinted and photographed me, planning to lock me up. They got distracted again, though, and I somehow managed to leave the building and get out onto the street. I must have walked for hours because it was full daylight when they found me again. This time they took me to the hospital. They neglected to warn the staff to keep an eye on me, and I managed to escape before they could start to treat me. I wandered all around the hospital, from one floor to another, for at least a night and a day before somebody figured I was somewhere I didn't belong. They took me to the emergency room where a doctor finally figured out that I was in extreme pain and that instead of passing out from the pain I was basically sleepwalking. He also figured out that I was diabetic from the insulin pump in my pocket, so he had my blood sugar measured. It was extremely low.

They fastened my arms and ankles to a bed, to prevent my walking away again, and gave me pain killers and anti=inflammatory medications in addition to intravenous glucose. I briefly became rational enough to tell the doctors who I was and how to contact my family, then I fell asleep.

They hadn't administered pain killers while I slept but they had removed the restraints. I woke and sleep-walked away. When they found me again, my family was waiting. They gave me pain killers again to restore me to rational behavior. I explained about the fall and resulting pain and we all started discussing my surgical options.

This was the point at which I woke. For a moment I was confused because I was feeling pain similar to that I had dreamed about but much less intense. Then I realized it had been a dream.

Pain Dream

I suffer from severe arthritis of the spine, a condition that leads to back pain, difficulty swallowing (when the inflammation blocks the nerves that control swallowing), and other problems. My back is heavily calcified with some disks damaged. I am very sensitive to changes in the weather, especially changes in the air pressure.

I had a fall over a week ago. The fall messed up my right arm from the wrist to the elbow. That was all that hurt at first, but my back started bothering me after a day. There are three areas of pain: from my neck to the base of my shoulder blades and out to the sides; at the base of my rib cage and out to the sides; and in my lower back. After the second day following the fall, I needed pain killers in order to sleep ... until two nights ago.

Last night I slept poorly and had a dream about pain:

I was sitting on the wall in front of the house, watching our dog, who we keep on a cable. My back was hurting, so I was moving my body back and forth to diminish the pain and to build up the muscles in my lower back and abdomen. The pain in my back increased to the point that I was becoming confused. I managed to put the dog in the house and lock the door from the outside before the pain got so bad that I would pass out.

Instead of passing out, though, my brain shut down and I started walking. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, but I felt a compulsion to walk despite the pain it caused me. Eventually, very late at night, a cop stopped me to see if I was drunk or doped up. I didn't respond to any of his questions and I was carrying nothing but my house keys, so he sent me to the county jail to fingerprint me so I could be identified. Somehow, though, I wound up at the city jail and nobody knew what to do with me.

Every time nobody paid attention to me, I would start walking again. I kept getting away from my jailers. Finally they fingerprinted and photographed me, planning to lock me up. They got distracted again, though, and I somehow managed to leave the building and get out onto the street. I must have walked for hours because it was full daylight when they found me again. This time they took me to the hospital. They neglected to warn the staff to keep an eye on me, and I managed to escape before they could start to treat me. I wandered all around the hospital, from one floor to another, for at least a night and a day before somebody figured I was somewhere I didn't belong. They took me to the emergency room where a doctor finally figured out that I was in extreme pain and that instead of passing out from the pain I was basically sleepwalking. He also figured out that I was diabetic from the insulin pump in my pocket, so he had my blood sugar measured. It was extremely low.

They fastened my arms and ankles to a bed, to prevent my walking away again, and gave me pain killers and anti=inflammatory medications in addition to intravenous glucose. I briefly became rational enough to tell the doctors who I was and how to contact my family, then I fell asleep.

They hadn't administered pain killers while I slept but they had removed the restraints. I woke and sleep-walked away. When they found me again, my family was waiting. They gave me pain killers again to restore me to rational behavior. I explained about the fall and resulting pain and we all started discussing my surgical options.

This was the point at which I woke. For a moment I was confused because I was feeling pain similar to that I had dreamed about but much less intense. Then I realized it had been a dream.

What is Horror?

I recently wrote a story titled "The Bank" that was based on a series of nightmares. I called it a horror story because I would wake up sweating every time I had the dream. Apparently I was wrong. Nobody else could see the horror in some unknown agency having absolute control over one's life. Now I simply call the story a fantasy.

I used to think I knew what a horror story was. After all, my story "Fluffy the Monster Slayer" was a horror, full of blood and gore. It was the tale of a cute little bunny rabbit that started killing people, their pets and some predators, her monsters. Is it the blood and gore that makes for a horror story?

I would have said it was the sense of helplessness. I guess that isn't enough. "The Bank" portrayed helplessness but apparently didn't make the grade as horror. Admittedly it didn't have any blood and gore.

I don't intentionally set out to write horror stories. As usual, I just write down what I dream.

But now I'm curious.

What is Horror?

I recently wrote a story titled "The Bank" that was based on a series of nightmares. I called it a horror story because I would wake up sweating every time I had the dream. Apparently I was wrong. Nobody else could see the horror in some unknown agency having absolute control over one's life. Now I simply call the story a fantasy.

I used to think I knew what a horror story was. After all, my story "Fluffy the Monster Slayer" was a horror, full of blood and gore. It was the tale of a cute little bunny rabbit that started killing people, their pets and some predators, her monsters. Is it the blood and gore that makes for a horror story?

I would have said it was the sense of helplessness. I guess that isn't enough. "The Bank" portrayed helplessness but apparently didn't make the grade as horror. Admittedly it didn't have any blood and gore.

I don't intentionally set out to write horror stories. As usual, I just write down what I dream.

But now I'm curious.

Every Writer Should Blog

The year is now 2009. Some people expect the world to end in 2012 because a certain calendar will reach its end then.

We are in the 21st century, Kids growing up now don't believe in a time when we had no personal computers, no email, no chat, no Instant Messaging, no forums, no Wikis, no Google, no Facebook. They have always had those things. They have always used those things. They take those things for granted.

I belong to a Creative Writing class for seniors sponsored by OASIS. You only have to be fifty to join OASIS, but that list above basically dates back thirty-five years. A decade ago, I was the only person in the class who used email. Many hand wrote their pieces instead of using a computer. Most used a typewriter. Have you tried to buy a typewriter lately, or get supplies for one, or get one repaired? I may have been the only person in the class who had Weblogs and Web sites.

A decade ago . . . I still use the computer I had then. I've added a couple of extra disk drives and I've doubled its memory. I'm trying to stop using it because it uses Microsoft Windows XP and I'm far from fond of Microsoft. I mostly use a Mac Mini running OS-X that I've had for a few years. Beside me sits a computer I built a few years before getting the Mini; it has removable hard disk drives so that I can swap operating systems and try out new versions of Linux. There are other computers littering my house, waiting their turn to be stripped down, have their hard drives erased and go to the recycling / electronics disposal place. I even still have an old laptop that never had a hard drive and other, older devices with names like Atari and Sinclair / Timex that most people have never heard of. A trail of computer obsolescence dates back thirty-five years to the dawn of personal computers.

My son just turned thirty-five. I remember as he was growing up how hard it was to convince him that he was born before people were first able to own computers of their own. He now sings opera in London but he makes his living designing good Web pages as a contractor. It was a long, hard battle to get him to start writing his own Weblog. I never have managed to get my wife or daughter Blogging. My wife thinks Blogging is evil because I reveal too much personal information to an impersonal world waiting to take advantage of me. My daughter does Facebook instead; she also practices thumb typing on her cellular phone to produce SMS text messages.

To contrast the modern scene, my father grew up on a cattle ranch and spent his early years on horseback in an age when the major forms of rapid transportation were the railroads and steamships. He left the ranch because he was fed up with chasing cattle that wanted to be wild; he joined the Navy and spent several years shoveling coal to keep his warships moving. Then he developed a valuable specialty, helping engineer explosive devices. He spent decades helping the Navy develop a torpedo that would go where it was supposed to go and blow up when it got there.

My father never had a college degree. His education was from a rougher school. When he was doing well enough, he stopped learning.

Oh, he learned to drive a car that started when you turned a key instead of one that required you to step on a starter button on the floor with the same foot you used to control the flow of gasoline to the engine, shifting your foot around to control both functions simultaneously. He learned to use cars with synchromesh gearing that allowed you to down shift without having to double clutch. He even learned to drive a car that had an automatic transmission.

He knew I worked with computers but he didn't know what they were or what I was doing with them.

He didn't read much. He would never have appreciated my Kindle book reader. He watched a lot of television -- broadcast television because there was no cable television then -- and he cooked his own meals and he played solitaire.

He let the world pass him by.

I recently learned that the Pope has started to use YouTube. Queen Elizabeth has been doing so for years now. They aren't allowing the modern world to pass them by.

Even an ancient writer can learn to use modern technology. Almost everybody in my Creative Writing class now uses a computer to write and to send email. I may still be the only one Blogging or creating Web sites. There are still a number of free Weblog hosts and free Web site services, some of them very good.

Every writer should blog, or be prepared to watch the world pass them by.

Every Writer Should Blog

The year is now 2009. Some people expect the world to end in 2012 because a certain calendar will reach its end then.

We are in the 21st century, Kids growing up now don't believe in a time when we had no personal computers, no email, no chat, no Instant Messaging, no forums, no Wikis, no Google, no Facebook. They have always had those things. They have always used those things. They take those things for granted.

I belong to a Creative Writing class for seniors sponsored by OASIS. You only have to be fifty to join OASIS, but that list above basically dates back thirty-five years. A decade ago, I was the only person in the class who used email. Many hand wrote their pieces instead of using a computer. Most used a typewriter. Have you tried to buy a typewriter lately, or get supplies for one, or get one repaired? I may have been the only person in the class who had Weblogs and Web sites.

A decade ago . . . I still use the computer I had then. I've added a couple of extra disk drives and I've doubled its memory. I'm trying to stop using it because it uses Microsoft Windows XP and I'm far from fond of Microsoft. I mostly use a Mac Mini running OS-X that I've had for a few years. Beside me sits a computer I built a few years before getting the Mini; it has removable hard disk drives so that I can swap operating systems and try out new versions of Linux. There are other computers littering my house, waiting their turn to be stripped down, have their hard drives erased and go to the recycling / electronics disposal place. I even still have an old laptop that never had a hard drive and other, older devices with names like Atari and Sinclair / Timex that most people have never heard of. A trail of computer obsolescence dates back thirty-five years to the dawn of personal computers.

My son just turned thirty-five. I remember as he was growing up how hard it was to convince him that he was born before people were first able to own computers of their own. He now sings opera in London but he makes his living designing good Web pages as a contractor. It was a long, hard battle to get him to start writing his own Weblog. I never have managed to get my wife or daughter Blogging. My wife thinks Blogging is evil because I reveal too much personal information to an impersonal world waiting to take advantage of me. My daughter does Facebook instead; she also practices thumb typing on her cellular phone to produce SMS text messages.

To contrast the modern scene, my father grew up on a cattle ranch and spent his early years on horseback in an age when the major forms of rapid transportation were the railroads and steamships. He left the ranch because he was fed up with chasing cattle that wanted to be wild; he joined the Navy and spent several years shoveling coal to keep his warships moving. Then he developed a valuable specialty, helping engineer explosive devices. He spent decades helping the Navy develop a torpedo that would go where it was supposed to go and blow up when it got there.

My father never had a college degree. His education was from a rougher school. When he was doing well enough, he stopped learning.

Oh, he learned to drive a car that started when you turned a key instead of one that required you to step on a starter button on the floor with the same foot you used to control the flow of gasoline to the engine, shifting your foot around to control both functions simultaneously. He learned to use cars with synchromesh gearing that allowed you to down shift without having to double clutch. He even learned to drive a car that had an automatic transmission.

He knew I worked with computers but he didn't know what they were or what I was doing with them.

He didn't read much. He would never have appreciated my Kindle book reader. He watched a lot of television -- broadcast television because there was no cable television then -- and he cooked his own meals and he played solitaire.

He let the world pass him by.

I recently learned that the Pope has started to use YouTube. Queen Elizabeth has been doing so for years now. They aren't allowing the modern world to pass them by.

Even an ancient writer can learn to use modern technology. Almost everybody in my Creative Writing class now uses a computer to write and to send email. I may still be the only one Blogging or creating Web sites. There are still a number of free Weblog hosts and free Web site services, some of them very good.

Every writer should blog, or be prepared to watch the world pass them by.

Kindle Power

The first generation Amazon Kindle ebook reader, still less than a year old, is catching on. Even I have one now.

My problem with ebooks has always concerned distribution and rights. The companies distributing the stories go out of their way to make buying books difficult and expensive so their customers will be unable to share among themselves. As a potential author, I don't have much problem with people sharing provided somebody along the way actually buys the book.

In the past, many ebook distribution systems relied on proprietary formats. That presumably restricts sales to those able to produce works using that format, often a single company. I don't want a machine so restricted. At first I thought the Kindle used a proprietary format, so that only Amazon could produce books for it, but a little research showed me that their format is an Open Document format similar to MobiPocket (which the reader will handle like a native format) but with DRM (Digital Rights Management) added. That means that over 10,000 public domain books produced by Project Gutenberg can be downloaded to the Kindle, some of them as collections directly from the Amazon Web site.

Past distribution systems also assumed that once a customer was locked in to a particular, expensive book reader, that customer would pay any price to get books to read on it. It costs almost nothing to produce an ebook compared to what it costs to produce a dead tree book. It is almost a byproduct, free because it was produced as a necessary step in the production of the physical book product. The electronic form of a book should cost less than the physical form, if only because it's cheaper to produce. It is also easier to distribute, so there should be no shipping or handling charges.

Amazon is the first company to get the distribution system right. You can purchase a new book from their Web site, using either your computer or the Kindle itself, and it gets delivered electronically in about a minute through Amazon's WhisperNet system. You can also convert PDF or HTML documents to MOBI format using a free program and download it to your Kindle through its USB port. Or you can send a document in Word, PDF or HTML format to your Kindle as an email attachment and Amazon will convert it to MOBI format for you and send it to you using their WhisperNet system.

Amazon also got the pricing right. The vast majority of new books are available for the Kindle for under ten dollars.

Authors say they get paid better for Kindle versions of their books than for physical copies. Sales are better and the percentage of the selling price they get is better. And the Kindle hasn't really caught on yet.

There are problems with the first generation Kindles. Many of them will not survive even a short fall and the supplied cover fails to retain and protect the machine after a few months of use: the elastic band gets stretched out and becomes insecure. Amazon needs to redesign the cover. If you buy a Kindle, you should seriously consider replacing the Kindle cover with a third party cover.

Electronic ink, the Kindle display medium, is at present available only in monochrome; color would be nice but isn't really necessary for reading books. I'm sure, though, that color displays would be popular and that many people with monochrome Kindles would upgrade if color became available.

The basic Kindle will hold about 200 books. Adding an SD (Secure Digital) memory chip extends this by probably 10,000 books. Counting the individual books included in public domain collections, I probably have over a thousand books on my Kindle right now. Some of the books are pretty large: the Charles Darwin collection includes versions 1, 2, 3 and 6 (the classic) of his "On Species" as well as every other book or study he published. I'm ready. I bought four SD cards. One is in my Kindle, two in my Palm TX case and one in its original plastic holder ... because the Kindle case has no place to store them.

So far, I've had to charge my Kindle about once a week. I'm reading a lot more, too.

I've sent the novel I'm working on to my Kindle. I plan to send the novel whose first draft I just finished, too. Eventually, everything I write should be stored on my Kindle and its SD card.

There are Kindle forums. I've joined a Kindle discussion list run by Yahoo.

The Kindle movement is growing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Kindle Power

The first generation Amazon Kindle ebook reader, still less than a year old, is catching on. Even I have one now.

My problem with ebooks has always concerned distribution and rights. The companies distributing the stories go out of their way to make buying books difficult and expensive so their customers will be unable to share among themselves. As a potential author, I don't have much problem with people sharing provided somebody along the way actually buys the book.

In the past, many ebook distribution systems relied on proprietary formats. That presumably restricts sales to those able to produce works using that format, often a single company. I don't want a machine so restricted. At first I thought the Kindle used a proprietary format, so that only Amazon could produce books for it, but a little research showed me that their format is an Open Document format similar to MobiPocket (which the reader will handle like a native format) but with DRM (Digital Rights Management) added. That means that over 10,000 public domain books produced by Project Gutenberg can be downloaded to the Kindle, some of them as collections directly from the Amazon Web site.

Past distribution systems also assumed that once a customer was locked in to a particular, expensive book reader, that customer would pay any price to get books to read on it. It costs almost nothing to produce an ebook compared to what it costs to produce a dead tree book. It is almost a byproduct, free because it was produced as a necessary step in the production of the physical book product. The electronic form of a book should cost less than the physical form, if only because it's cheaper to produce. It is also easier to distribute, so there should be no shipping or handling charges.

Amazon is the first company to get the distribution system right. You can purchase a new book from their Web site, using either your computer or the Kindle itself, and it gets delivered electronically in about a minute through Amazon's WhisperNet system. You can also convert PDF or HTML documents to MOBI format using a free program and download it to your Kindle through its USB port. Or you can send a document in Word, PDF or HTML format to your Kindle as an email attachment and Amazon will convert it to MOBI format for you and send it to you using their WhisperNet system.

Amazon also got the pricing right. The vast majority of new books are available for the Kindle for under ten dollars.

Authors say they get paid better for Kindle versions of their books than for physical copies. Sales are better and the percentage of the selling price they get is better. And the Kindle hasn't really caught on yet.

There are problems with the first generation Kindles. Many of them will not survive even a short fall and the supplied cover fails to retain and protect the machine after a few months of use: the elastic band gets stretched out and becomes insecure. Amazon needs to redesign the cover. If you buy a Kindle, you should seriously consider replacing the Kindle cover with a third party cover.

Electronic ink, the Kindle display medium, is at present available only in monochrome; color would be nice but isn't really necessary for reading books. I'm sure, though, that color displays would be popular and that many people with monochrome Kindles would upgrade if color became available.

The basic Kindle will hold about 200 books. Adding an SD (Secure Digital) memory chip extends this by probably 10,000 books. Counting the individual books included in public domain collections, I probably have over a thousand books on my Kindle right now. Some of the books are pretty large: the Charles Darwin collection includes versions 1, 2, 3 and 6 (the classic) of his "On Species" as well as every other book or study he published. I'm ready. I bought four SD cards. One is in my Kindle, two in my Palm TX case and one in its original plastic holder ... because the Kindle case has no place to store them.

So far, I've had to charge my Kindle about once a week. I'm reading a lot more, too.

I've sent the novel I'm working on to my Kindle. I plan to send the novel whose first draft I just finished, too. Eventually, everything I write should be stored on my Kindle and its SD card.

There are Kindle forums. I've joined a Kindle discussion list run by Yahoo.

The Kindle movement is growing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

An Old Dream Revisited

I dream vividly.Sometimes I dream the same dream repeatedly, often modifying each new version.

Lately I've been dreaming a story I stopped dreaming about three years ago. It's an old dream with some new twists. I had stopped repeating the dream when I realized I couldn't take it anywhere. I had even started to write down the story line. Now the dream has a basis for new developments thanks to the addition of a simple mechanism, a new character who is seen and heard only by the main character.

The story begins with a traffic accident on a Hollywood freeway that fatally injures the main character, Brian, a writer. The new character, sort of a Grim Reaper, pulls out his spirit, allowing another spirit to take over. This spirit specializes in using the last few seconds of a person's life to commit murder for the Powers. He is supposed to kill somebody and then die. This time he, for the first time in forty thousand years, manages to survive.

He wakes up in the hospital, having become Brian, his host. Waking up is a new experience for him and has never happened before. He has interviews with the police, his doctors and his Grim Reaper accomplice, during which he establishes that he will write the stories of the nearly a thousand people he has used as a vehicle for murder, having failed three hundred times over all.

Brian's brother comes from the family farm in Canada to take Brian home to recuperate. There he begins to write his new stories, which sell spectacularly well. He had been in Hollywood to negotiate with a film studio about producing his first novel as a film and had been trying to convince the studio to employ him as a screen writer on the project, which they refused to do. Now he decides to refuse to sell them the film rights unless he is allowed to control the screen play, planning, instead, to sell his new stories for movies.

When he is able to walk again, Brian drives to New York to talk with his agent. In New York, a stranger who has been fatally injured tries to kill him in the same manner he had been killing people. The attempt falls far short but warns him that the Powers want him dead. He also receives threats from the studio that wanted to film his first novel, who warn him that unless he assigns them the film rights they will make it impossible for him to get any other studio to ever make films of any of his stories. His publisher wants him to tour the country to promote his books. He himself wants to return to the family farm and continue writing.

Other attempts on his life show him the Powers are less powerful than expected. His Grim Reaper associate tries to convince him he has become as powerful, in his own way, as the Powers and should openly oppose them rather than simply trying to avoid their attempts to kill him. Following another crude attempt on his life, Brian meets and begins to romance Grace, an adventure travel writer.

The story has more than enough conflict. It could grow up to become another novel.

I have a new writing program, StoryMill, that I'm going to attempt to use for some of my stories. It used to be called Avenir. I'm having problems getting started due to a steep learning curve for so powerful a tool and may have to look to a forum for help.