hmmm, I’m wondering if the anti-oxidant properties of the Yerba Mate are causing me to have nightmares.

Here’s one from two nights ago:

There was a small tiger in my yard. It looked almost like a stuffed animal or cartoon (like Hobbes). I went up to the creature and offered it my hand in the form of a fist, downturned. It took my fist in its mouth and bit down and I felt pain but then all of its teeth crumbled and so did its face.

Last night:

I was up on a hill or standing on a balcony on a hill, I’m not sure which, and on the phone with one of my sisters. She was down in the valley below and told me there had been an accident of some sort. I could then see a massive, black cloud that was shooting up from the ground–straight up, almost like a tower (yes, it looked like one of those towers). She told me to watch out and I told her to be careful. Then the thing started to dissipate, to rolled down, and the smoke and ash and debris started moving out across the valley toward me. My sister was gone from the phone and suddenly I was in my bed and the smoke and ash were all around me and I couldn’t breathe but somehow I knew I would be okay.

Okay, so what do these mean? Anyone?

So if you’re going to buy presents, why not buy green? The Grist offers excellent suggestions here: For Give and For Get

Amber Dermont’s shilling, fast-paced story “A Splendid Wife” in the Winter 2004 issue of The Georgia Review is a good read and eerily timely in light of the Laci Peterson case.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

So I had my first cup of Yerba Mate tea last week and was less than enthused. But, now that I’ve had five or six cups, I’m starting to like it more and more. I’ll never love the taste of it or the strange tingling tongue, but I do like that it gives me energy without making me feel wired. Okay, off for a run now…

New from Ink Pot:

* winners of the CNF Contest (congratulations to all!)

* Cold Green Cadillac, Creative Nonfiction by Peter Brown Hoffmeister

* inklings by Kathleen McCall

Allen read this story to me from the paper this morning: For conservatives, ‘Merry Christmas’ becomes a cause and hearing it has left me enraged.

If these folks are truly serious about “trying to put more Christ into Christmas this season” then they should quit shopping and just go sit in a church or something and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.

And this bit in particular makes me want to go and spend every last penny in Target:

But the ”keep the Christ in Christmas” contingent is particularly agitated this year over what its members see as a troubling trend on Main Street: Target stores banning Salvation Army bell ringers

I mean I do always give money to the Salvation Army bell ringers but I wonder if the Christian right would be up in arms if Target banned the Agnostic society bell ringer or whatever. BAH humbug. bah, bah, bah.

The way I see it, this issue is not so much about free speech as it is pushing an agenda. It reeks of desperation and desperation’s friends xenophobia and fascism.

Don’t miss the new Smokelong Quarterly with stories by Randall Brown, Marcia Lynx Qualey, Gary Cadwallader, Paul A. Toth, Rusty Barnes, Bob Thurber, David H.S. Hubert and many more. Also, make sure you catch the interviews at the end of each story–they are not to be missed.

Real Life

by Lucie Brock-Broido

end the backdoor draft

thanks to Michelle for the link.

I have another story today: Warsaw

p.p.s. thanks for reading.

p.p.p.p.p.s.s.s.s. these two stories that are live today might make it seem as though I find travel unpleasant. actually, I enjoy it. But there are those moments…

a story by me: Bridges

p.s. thanks for reading.