Yesterday sucked pretty mightily, so I was especially happy when today's mail brought a copy of the new John Kennedy Toole biography, The Butterfly in The Typewriter, from a kind reader who must have intuited that I'd been coveting it. (Jules, this is not your official thank-you -- I am sending you a scenic picture postcard!) I'd wanted to go to ( Read more... )

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I sit cross-legged on my bed. So proud of the new, dark hair on my upper legs and belly. Is it my bed, now, just mine? It's weird not being sure whether someone lives with you anymore. The window is open and I hear rain on metal, steady and soothing. It's warm, so there are only four cats on the bed. I've actually gotten a lot done the last couple ( Read more... )

I have the best text exchanges with marquisdd. Somehow a discussion of Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars turned into this ( Read more... )

I haven't been able to post because I was too busy hanging upside down. marrus kindly lent me her Teeter Hang-Up inversion table (see last post), and I can hardly stay off the thing. After the first day I had it, I was almost free of pain. I didn't even know how to move because my body felt so different; I'd find myself doing things (as simple as getting ( Read more... )

John McConnell is a local stage actor best known for portraying Huey Long, Earl Long, and Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. In an interview with Chris Rose, he comments: "I'm wondering if every city shouldn't have its own Confederacy of Dunces that expertly, precisely, and concisely defines the character and characters of that city ( Read more... )

So I wanted to talk to my two major JKT friends today (yesterayjhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhn ( Read more... )

Today would have been John Kennedy Toole's 70th birthday. I brought flowers to the cemetery and had a late lunch of semi-edible supermarket sushi with him.

( Ducoing/Toole Family Tomb )

WWOZ is playing James Booker all night in honor of his birthday on Monday (which is also John Kennedy Toole's birthday; Booker was two years younger*). Listen to streaming audio anywhere in the world.

*I called the DJ to inform him of this amazing fact, and though he seemed properly amazed, he reported it on the air as also being John Kennedy "O' ( Read more... )

Everything had been going so well. Then, last night, we went to Celebration in the Oaks. I remembered that this ended in tears last year, but I thought I was in much better shape now. This year I couldn't even get worked up enough for tears; I just shambled numbly through Storyland and the Botanical Gardens, barely seeing the colorful statues and ( Read more... )