"Poets will never be the highest-paid writers in the world. Instead, poetry will go on cutting a hand-made path through the mass-market insanity. For me, anyway, that path is the one that leads to the Chapel of the Grail." --Jeanette Winterson

"Self-defense is all about surviving a situation where there is a very real risk of physical harm. This requires first-hand knowledge of techniques you can use to defend yourself without thinking." --Terry Lyon

I love BLOGGER, it crashed again and lost nearly an entire post even though I had been saving as I went along.

Another good article on Doctor Who: Sci Fi Wire -- The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel: "According to Davies, the skill of bringing back a classic character is deciding which elements to retain and which ones to update for a contemporary audience."

Just finished issue one of Calliope Nerve, will get it printed up tonight and send copies to Mark Stickert for the APA and to the contributors. Not sure if I'll promote it quite yet as I have enough material to easily put together issue two, so I can save myself some mailing cost by mailing them together. For issue two I even have a piece by the great P.R. Primeau. In fact, I have several published poets who I'll be running in both issues. This project is really fun but it's hard work! Editing is time consuming and even a microzine like this takes several hours to put together.

And for future reference, a link about one of my all time favorite comic book villains The Hobgoblin: Comics Should Be Good: My first comics: "I also found and bought all the issues back to #238, the first appearance of the Hobgoblin. Issues #238-289 form one of the epic stories in comic book history, even though later writers dropped the ball with the Hobgoblin."

Michael let me teach Aikido last night. Great class, in my opinion, I'm still a little sore. :) Mixed up the regular Aikido techniques with Jute Keen Do, Karate, weapons disarming, Jiu-Jitsu, punching/kicking drills, and Jo and sword techniques. It pays to be well rounded, to understand your opponent. Synching my breathing with perfoming my techniques has not only made me a better martial artist but it helps to clear the mind.

Mike is thinking about buying The 7 Most Effective Combat Techniques. I do have to agree with the author's statement that you only need a handful of techniques to defend yourself. They must be ingrained in you, you must react without thinking.

I've been focusing on not only my breathing but on my inner energy when I do my katas, warm ups, and the like. I swear sometimes I feel chi in my finger tips. It has a static electricity kind of feeling. I move my hands as if there is an invisible ball between them--something about the focus is magical.

At work we were talking about a DM, who retired, that everyone had thought was a cheap skate. He only had two suits, he drove beat up cars, and lived in a mobile home. No one could figure out why he didn't "enjoy" his money. Now Mr. District Manager is traveling the world with his wife and is in the middle of a two year trip. It's all about self discipline. Good for him. These are the types of people I want to roll model myself after. Now when I buy that important, gotta have item, I first think about how much is in savings, how much did I put in the 401K, how much did I put in the kid's savings, etc. Obviously, sometimes that important thing isn't so special when you look at it from that perspective.