p.s. Hey.

Yury's at his visa renewal meeting as I type. We decided I shouldn't go with him because my being there would probably raise more questions than it answered. Hopefully, I'll be able to give you the word tomorrow.

(Update below) So if I seem a little nervous today, that's why. I'm glad I did that post yesterday since it triggered such powerful stories from you. I thank you for that.

As you've probably seen, I posted the rules and details on the upcoming porn writing day in the upper right hand corner. It's going to be interesting. ** Mizu, I'm sorry to hear you went through the kinds of things I went through, but it's good to know you relate, and, hey, we're basically okay, right?

Thanks, pal. ** Lost child, Why can't you read lengthily of late? Is it medical or just a change in attention span or .

.. ?

** Tosh, Merry Christmas to you too, but I'm hoping I can tell you that in person. Are you in LA for the holidays? ** Mark, 'Steps,' interesting.

I can see that, though I hadn't thought of it. It would be interesting to reread Kosinski now that he's so far off the radar. ** Atheist, Thanks.

Sure, there were great people around in my childhood too. Friends, for sure. My grandmother was important to me when I was little.

She was really creative. But I think you can respond to the kind of stuff I went through by deciding the world's ugly and who cares, or by telling yourself you're never going to treat people the way you've been treated. I think I just went the second way.

Why, I don't know. ** Faith, I appreciate that. ** Paradigm, Yury working is kind of a non-issue, I think, since it's in a non-paying, working practice form, though he's prepared to mention it if he think it'll help.

** C., As do you. I'm glad I was right that you weren't saying goodbye.

Phew. ** Joe mills, Wow, I relate to your situation, obviously. Though the characterisation of yours as an unfunny 'Absolutely Fabulous' adds a very scary element.

My mom was an uptight, conservative wasp gone mad, so it was a bit more 'Mommie Dearest,' I guess. Earlier this year, maybe in February or March, blogger sent me this email/report thing that said the blog was getting between 20,000 and 35,000 hits a day, which kind of blew me away. Since then, I don't know, but I can only imagine the hits have gone way up since then based on the comments and the ton of emails and compliments from strangers I get wherever I go.

There's this program I can get that would tell me, and I'm tempted, but I kind of don't want to know too. I feel like it might make me feel too self-conscious. My 10 favorite cartoon characters?

Sure, you got it, pal. I'll get on that. Prepare your responding 10.

Lucky is definitely yesterday's theme. Here we are, motherfucking gods and lucky stiffs. ** Corpodibacco, Hey.

How good to see you. My dad was a belt using guy, yeah, and the occasional skinny tree limb ('hickory switch,' as I think they call it) using guy. It sounds like you had it pretty rough too.

Forgiveness: I guess that's important. For me, logic was my saviour. I'd think, Okay, logically I did nothing wrong, and, logically, my mom, say, is extremely miserable due to the divorce and alchohol, so she's really being self-destructive in her own mind.

Stuff like that. It didn't help much in the moment, but it helped subsequently. And now both my parents are very old and near-death, and that changes everything, though in such a complex way that I don't think I can describe the change in my feelings towards them, except that you see the precious parts of them more clearly when they're almost gone.

The car/kidnapping thing was kind of absurd. I remember saying, 'This is so weird. Why are you doing this bizarre thing?

' But then the gun would come out again. Thanks a lot, man. ** Nikolas, Doing 'The Best' would be a real challenge, which is why I should do it, huh?

We'll see. Marc Ribot and me, separated at birth? I'll have to re-look at him in that light.

Powerful personal stories from you, man. They hit me where I live. Coca wine .

.. you know, it rings a bell.

I think I might have, me being a former lover of most things coca. ** Nyc dork, Hey there. I remember our IC Guys/Travis talk, sure.

Travis does have a way with words. That's for sure. Armpit fucking does kind of nail a certain need.

Hey, you should write an armpit fucking porn story for the Porn Writing Day. What do you say? ** CycyLolo, I hadn't seen the Lynch thing before.

Cool. ** Tony o'neill, I think you're right about the difficulty of writing about the good. It always ends up being this weird, hinted at glimmer in my writing.

Always heavily contrasted with the bad/scary. Nature of language, I guess, or language on its own. I wish you could just write a story about something fun and touching, corny even, etc.

, and create The Great the way pop song writers can. That Hollywood Hills/Diane story is fucking intense. Horror has so many rooms in it.

Thanks. I won't forgot that very soon. ** David ehrenstein, Very, very interesting (and sad and disturbing) about Sonbert.

I liked his films. I used to see him around at experimental film screenings. Have you been in LA long enough to remember that great little theater on Melrose right before it runs into Santa Monica Blvd.

, next to the gone, lamented Cafe Figaro, where they had amazing experimental film and music programming for years in the 70s? I haunted that place, and I used to see Sonbert there a lot. His end is very tragic.

Amazing story to hear about though. I'm glad 'Factory Girl' isn't horrible, although I'm not exactly ready to stand in line for the first screening after your report. Jimmy Fallon?

!? ** Misanthrope, I should do a Most Horrible Thing(s) I've Done to Others Day just so I hear how horrible you all can be.

I haven't done a Beloved on Craig. The acid sort of made our relationship anti-sexual. Well, after a certain point it did.

So I'm not sure who you mean. Was that my thing about Bear, my other Maui, Hawaii boyfriend? I've long wanted to write a book about porn.

For forever. And I might just do it. And it might just be good.

And it would for sure be fun. You're psychic. ** 5stringsA, I figured you must have inhaled at some point.

Across the pond it's raining and freezing cold. ** Bacteriaburger, Thanks, man. Bear hug right back at you.

** David c., Expose yourself. You know you want to.

** Fiveoclockbot, Hey there. You mean the mp3 at the top of your blog? Okay, I'll give a listen, if so.

Thanks. ** Alice in chains, Your poor friend. I feel your pain or some equivalent on that one especially.

Suicide (fully intended or not) is the hardest thing for me to cope with. You know, my beloved George Miles killed himself. Anyway, your story really shook me.

All we can do is think about them, you know. I try to decide that's the truest kind of monument, tribute, gift to their memories. It's hard though.

** Rigby101, That little paragraph/sentence in your post about thinking you killed the kid is the first sentence of a great novel. Seriously. Talk about intense and pulling one in.

I'm not kidding. No chance? Actually, your whole post was really powerful, written very powerfully.

Dude, think about it. ** Math t, I hope Burritoville is still around in March. Slurp.

** Jw veldhoen, The market, yeah. That misconstruction is always the road block. But try talking sense to people who throw that one at you.

It's like trying to rationally discuss the possibility of atheism with an evangelist. Well, I have faith your book will have a long reach, if one full of initial obstacles. Beautiful, terrible stories from you.

On getting into the US through Canada, I know it's quite doable, but being illegal is just not an option. Yury is too ambitious to live with that. That's a last case scenario.

Hopefully, it'll never come to that. ** Adjoun, How interesting for you to post about your new relationship on the unofficial 'horror' day. No, I mean it sounds complicated, for sure, but it also sounds important and like it could be really a future.

Or I'll hope so, based on the little you've said. Now that you've spilled, I hope you'll keep us up on what happens. I'm hoping for crazy glory for you.

** Statictick, Heavy shit, man. All that blood, all that heroin. God almighty.

I feel like my horror was so self-contained and wormy by contrast. Thanks. Jesus.

** Richard eichmann, I'll bet that had a profound effect on you. It's an amazing image, so quiet and so penetrating. I don't know if you want to do something with it in an art context, but it feels really fruitful, if that's not an insensitive thing to say.

I hope not. ** Paradigm, Horrific enough. The physical distance of her death from your visit and memory doesn't dim the intensity at all.

Her in that chair ...

unforgettable. Thank you, my friend. ** Gregoryedwin, That's incredibly generous of you, that comparison.

** Oliver, No, not that much of a gamer, I guess. My favorite is the ..

. what are they called -- those chomping balls on chains -- tattoo that one gamer got. Color tattoos make me sort of nauseous, I don't know why.

But that b w one is almost tempting. But not as tempting as your Slayer arm. ** Kiddiepunk, You're sounding pretty cheery.

I hope the shit that happened is being overcome. Oh, send the DVD to LA, I think, since I'll be there soon. Thank you, thank you, I can't wait.

And I can't wait to see what Joel's done. ** Maria mcgregor, Fear of blindness is pretty horrifying. As is having a kid with a Nazi.

So consider me spooked and grateful for my widened eyes. ** E.d.

, Yeah, I'll try a 'Best' day and hope I don't get too icked out to post it. Uh, oh, several years ago I decided to write an autobiography. But I wanted to do it like movie stars and famous sports figures do -- hire a ghost writer, have he or she interview me and then write the autobiography for me.

But then I wanted to fiddle with the prose to make it more like my voice before it was published. I thought it was kind of a cool idea. Plus, as much as it might not seem like it, I have a very hard time writing about myself, so it was a practical approach too.

Anyway, my agent shopped the proposal around and no publishers were interested, so it died. And now I don't want to do it anymore. So I tried.

Take care. ** Sypha_69, I broke my nose on a trampoline too, so I feel your horror. ** Susan, Radical transformation is the way to think about it, as well as being the truth about deaths other than one's own.

I wonder if it's possible to write about terrible personal matters without seeking to extort something by virtue of making them public. Writing about them is 90% about trying very hard not to extort anything, but the fact remains, innocently ventured or not. ** Blake, I think you can buy 'Kinder-' tickets now, but I'm not sure.

Maybe try the link to Gisele's site and see. Or I'll try to find out. I don't think I know the work of Janet Frames, or I'm spacing.

Take it easy. ** Garrison, Cool, so you're going to contribute porn? Is that what you're inferring?

Oh, you probably know this, but 'Inland Empire' is being shown this weekend at LACMA, I think with Lynch in attendance. I don't know if it's sold out. ** You, Very excellent to see you, and you're too kind, of course.

Those are strangely grim, grimly strange yet pretty stories. I guess it's your writing that makes them feel so vivid. Your dad, wow.

Complicated. ** Okay, as I was finishing this p.s.

, Yury walked in. Of course, the issue being a visa, and the people involved being us, there is, yes, a huge problem. I'll make a long, complicated situation as brief and clear as possible.

Yury has a financial sponsor here in France -- basically, a good friend of ours who has taken financial responsibility for Yury while he's in France, meaning he guarantees Yury will have the money to live here by presenting his own bank statements, etc. on Yury's behalf. Because of this, Yury did not need a current bank statement from his own bank to get the visa originally.

But now suddenly they're requiring Yury to have a current bank statement. The only way Yury could get this is to return to Russia, which is a nightmare in itself, but even more of a nightmare because his current student visa expired a month ago. This happens commonly when the renewal appointments need to be in the far future due to crowds needing them.

But if Yury were to return to Russia now, he would not be allowed to reenter France because his visa is expired. So this is a huge problem, and we now have to try to find people who will help us somehow convince the powers-that-be to not require Yury's bank statement. So I now head off into that stressful, scary world.

Enjoy yours, and see you tomorrow.