kaleidotrope

MelshGruber

Sometimes I think my Forgotten English desk calendar is making things up. About a month ago, it was “fourteen hundred,” which was supposedly “the cry uttered on the London Stock exchange when the presence of a stranger [was] detected. It was supposed to be derived from the fact that the number of members of the exchange was, for long, limited to 1399.”

The word for this weekend is “melsh-dick,” meaning “a wood demon who is supposed to guard over unripe nuts.” No, seriously. “‘Melsh Dick‘ll catch thee lad,’ was a common threat used to frighten children going nutting.”

Children just don’t go nutting as often as they used, do they? There’s just not as much call for demons to protect hazelnuts “from the depredations of mischievous boys.”

I wonder if that’s what the mischievous boys I saw across the earlier tonight were doing. It looked like they were trespassing on our neighbor’s property, using the fact that the house has been dark and for sale since he passed away in July, as an excuse to drink in the backyard — or, for all I know, try to break in. I only saw them briefly, rushing from around the side of the house, and speeding off, so I don’t want to assume too much. Maybe somebody called the cops, or maybe it was all perfectly innocent. I don’t think hazelnuts grow in this area, but you never know. Not with young boys and their depredations. And not with Melsh Dick lying down on the job.

Otherwise it was a quiet Saturday for the most part, largely spent writing and hanging around the house. I did mail out a few more copies of Kaleidotrope this morning, which should be everybody except new subscribers (hint hint) and a few reviewers. I was tempted to go see The Social Network this morning — the matinee, weirdly, was actually 10:30 — but I wasn’t sure that my back could take it. I’m still not sure, but it has seemed better today, maybe thanks to the heating pad I’ve been using since last night.

This evening, my parents and I had a very nice dinner out, then I came home and watched MacGruber. It was okay. Some of it, the sillier parts, were almost inspired. But I can’t help but feel Nathan Rabin was right when he noted that “It’s so obsessed with getting the hair, clothes, beats, clichés, music, and conventions of cheesy ’80s action movies in the Cannon vein right that it sometimes forgets to include jokes.” It also sometimes mistakes dick and fart jokes for good jokes, but that’s almost to be expected.

If nothing else, the celery was funny.

And what more can you ask from a day than funny celery and protected hazelnuts? What more indeed?

Rainy Monday

Another quiet, and rainy, day at home. I took Monday off, mostly just to burn off some remaining vacation days, and I used it to do nothing more exciting than mail out copies of Kaleidotrope to contributors and subscribers. Did you know the US Postal Service has a new customs form that you only have to sign and date once? Thrilling details, I know!

Otherwise, I spent the day mostly watching some television and doing a little writing. Then again, I slept in until almost 11 o’clock, so it’s kind of amazing I got anything done at all.

Hey, it’s my day off.

And while I don’t want to jinx it, my back and surrounding discomfort seemed marginally better today. I’m keeping my doctor’s appointment in two weeks even if the pain disappears altogether. But it’s nice to think I might be getting a little better, or at least back to recent-normal.

“He made a deal with Dr. Doom, same as you.”

I felt better for most of today, which I spent mostly putting together copies of Kaleidotrope for mailing, which I expect to do on Monday. (One of the benefits of taking the day off.) I also bought myself an exercise ball, which, despite only looking a little like it does in that picture when inflated (with a pump that looks nothing like the one in the picture, there or on the box), I hope will help me with exercising my back.

This evening, I watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the second movie in the franchise that for some reason keeps on going. I can’t say I really liked it all that much. It had a few good moments, mostly when it actually lets Milla Jovovich be a bad ass, and the film ends interestingly enough. But overall, I found it aggressively mediocre more than anything else, and it didn’t suggest any reason to watch either of the next two sequels after it.

Zouching towards Bethlehem

So I went to the doctor today, and I guess the good news is, it seems like the back is the most likely culprit for the renewed and varied discomforts I’ve felt this week. Because of the placement of the disc, and the surrounding nerves that can be pinched by the bulge, there’s all sorts of radiating pain and mixed signals. I’m not particularly enjoying this, and I think I even preferred when it was just sciatic pain or feet that fell totally asleep, but it’s easy to mistake this for something other than a problem with the spine, even when there’s some accompanying discomfort in the lower back.

I want to reiterate that this could be much, much worse, and I’m not strictly speaking in pain. I’m not bedridden or incontinent or paralyzed, and I’m not even all that terribly inconvenienced by this. I’ve just had more (and different) discomfort since about Tuesday.

So today I called my doctor and scheduled an appointment. Of course, it meant that I had to leave work early, since they wanted to fit me in today, which was a little awkward, since I’d already planned on taking Monday off. (It’s a three-day weekend, just to use up some remaining vacation days.) And despite being a rainy day when lots of people were out of the office, I’d probably could have found plenty of work to do.

Then again, yesterday’s Forgotten English desk calendar page was “zouch,” meaning “an ungenteel man; a bookseller.” And lord knows, I don’t want people thinking my momma raised no zouch.

But still, it’s good to know that I don’t appear to have a bladder infection. Don’t worry, this post won’t get more graphic than that, beyond acknowledging the existence of my bladder, and that it was one of the things we tested for today. Too much information? Well, let’s pretend like this paragraph never happened, then, okay?

Anyway, after that, I scheduled an appointment with my spine doctor…which, unfortunately, isn’t for another two weeks. My main concern, beyond what I do between now and then, is that he’ll just want me to have another MRI before we discuss anything, which means it could be the end of this month or even next before we get down to actual treatment. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m concerned that there won’t be much, if any, treatment to discuss beyond referring me to a surgeon.

On a happier note, though, I’m preparing the latest issue of Kaleidotrope for mailing to contributors and subscribers over the weekend. And SFRevu had a lot of nice words to say about the issue already. And you still have an hour — provided you read this before midnight EST on October 1 — to use the promo code “KAL102010” to get a free e-book copy of the issue at the Kaleidotrope website. Just scroll down to the bottom of the front page, add the e-book option to your cart, and then enter the code when checking out via PayPal. One-day offer only!

“Are you aware of an impending attack on the planet Earth?”

A quiet Sunday. I finished reading all of the stories still sitting in the Kaleidotrope slush pile, which is something of a minor miracle. I haven’t sent out acceptances or rejection letters to everybody just yet, but that should be finished by tomorrow. I started putting together a spreadsheet of future issues, and I’m easily into April 2012. So let’s hope Roland Emmerich and John Cusack were wrong, for everybody’s sake.

Meanwhile, I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still. It was okay, more impressive in its special effects than its story. I’ve never seen the original, though generally I hear it’s better.

Other than that? Thoroughly failed to finish this week’s New York Times crossword puzzle. Though the night’s not over just yet, so we’ll see.