P

This one is an audience participation meme, so be warned. If you comment on this entry, I'll give you a letter so you can come up with 10 words starting with that letter plus explanations of what each word means to you.

Haddayr gave me the letter P.

Pachyderms. Didja know that, according to Pliny the Elder, an elephant's only natural enemy was the dragon?

Palimpsest. We begin as tabula rasa; after that, it's all one thing on top of another.

Pan. Creepy sex-crazed goat man. I don't like to think about him much because he freaks me out. Dionysus is a bit more palatable, as frenzied fertility/madness figures go.

Prince. Creepy sex-crazed funky man. I like to listen to him because he makes me dance. (Tell me you can listen to "Housequake" and not move.) Back in high school everyone thought Michael Jackson was normal and Prince was weird. Ha!

Pynchon. I don't remember even a third of Mason & Dixon, but I loved it. Ditto The Crying of Lot 49, of which I remember only the final scene and the protagonist's name. (Of Vineland, which is best forgotten, I remember a little too much.) There's something to be said for books that keep you in the moment, even if that moment is 784 pages long.

Pasta. In college I used to make heaping pots of spaghetti, pile it on a plate, smother it with Ragu and nuke the whole bunch. I'm still too lazy to make my own sauce, although I like to heat it up with sauteed mushrooms and garlic and such. I think, honestly, that pesto has replaced marinara in my affections. Alfredo sauce has never done it for me. There's something just Not Right about it.

Puppies. Didja know you can RSS Flickr tags? Like this one? Hence you can find pictures like this one and this one and this one. (WARNING: the preceding links contain extreme levels of adorableness. Click with caution.)

Pineapple. I have been known to go on pineapple binges, buying whole ones, slicing them up into cubes, and eating them at one sitting. After a while the inside of my mouth will start to hurt, but I really can't stop. I also like the pineapple Jarritos. Tasty.

Punk. I came to punk rather late; although I was a Ramones fan long before that and was into some bands who were punk contemporaries, like the Talking Heads, for some reason I didn't really connect with it as a genre until I was nearly 30. Hey, in my defense, I was seven and far more into Star Wars toys during the heyday of punk. And I've always been a bit behind the curve.

Pony Princess!!! Meghan made me write this one. The end.

Anticlimactic

So, school is done.

Whew. It just hit me a little bit, as I typed those words. It's hitting me in little jolts. No more class. No more assignments. All done. All over but the diploma-mailing.

So, yeah. Back to life, then.

Anybody wanna hire a librarian?

Briefly Breaking Radio Silence . . .

. . . to let y'all know that my story The Water-Poet and the Four Seasons is live at Strange Horizons; it even has a snazzy illustration by one Ann Cathrine-Loo. Check it out; if you like it, or anything else that SH does, you should consider donating to their Spring Fund Drive! SH is reader-supported, but it pays professional rates to its contributors as well. In other words, everybody's happy!

I'll be back around in a more permanent-type fashion in a couple of days, knock wood. Suffice it to say: there has been much moving, and there is now much, much soreness; the avalanche of homework is now a thin crust of snow through which sunlight is visible; and suddenly I am hungry, hungry for books. Don't worry; my larder is well stocked. I have the sore legs to prove it.

Hope y'all enjoy the story.