This week is shaping up to be the first week this year without any snow. We had that thaw last week but of course it started with eight inches of fresh powder, and every other week this year has had at least one snowy day.
Of course, today is only Tuesday. We'll see how things go.
* * *
This article on Camp Gitmo (Cracked.com) is written by someone who worked there.
Now, the words "Guantanamo Bay" probably provoked one of two images in your mind: a torture camp run by brutal, cackling guards, or a real-life Arkham Asylum, filled with freedom's most nefarious nemeses. Either way, you're wrong. I was there, and I can tell you that ...Neither, in my case. My image of Camp Gitmo is inchoate, but it does not resemble either of those; when I really think about it, I imagine something rather like the psych ward I was in, only with more locked rooms.
The article makes it clear that many of the inmates of Camp Gitmo are not the cherubhim the western media pretends they are.
* * *
Besides shredding two boxes' worth of old papers yesterday, I threw out another 3-4 boxes' worth of crap I didn't need and would never use:
An assortment of computer magazines, vintage 1998-2001: gone.It just goes on like that. After I've had a chance to wake up and have some food I hope to do a little more down there today.
A box of empty CD jewel cases. I saved an 8" stack of them. The rest: gone.
Pilot's guides to a couple of R-C systems: gone.
The box for my Apex A-500 DVD player: gone.
I did a lot yesterday, though. Besides the shredding and basement work, I vacuumed the house and cleaned the kitchen. I made dinner when Mrs. Fungus got home from work (lemon pepper chicken, savory potatos and carrots) and even cleaned the toilet before I went to bed.
After all that was done--but before Mrs. Fungus got home from work--I reread the extant 126 pages of a stalled rewrite project and realized that maybe my writing isn't quite as horrible as I thought it was. I'm encouraged by the way I wrote the aliens in the story.
But unfortunately, the place I'm stuck is still proving to be intractable. I don't know how to go forward and--worse--I don't particularly like the characters I have to write about in order to do so.
Probably the thing to do is to back up and take a different tack, continue with "present day" rather than going to the flashback segments. But the second flashback has a scene I really want in the story, and it only works if I tell the whole story.
...and strangely enough I think I may have just figured out how to tell that part of it. I'm going to have to experiment with this idea and see what comes of it. Probably the best way to do it is to treat it as an entirely different story (rather than part of another) and write it from the beginning as its own story--then incorporate it. Yeah.
* * *
Internet access here is still being spotty when it gets colder. It's extremely frustrating and annoying. *sigh*