Prum's Haircut circa 2004

Just in case you missed the Reverend Billy's New Years Message from last January. Get it on his blog below

http://www.revbilly.com/blog/?p=486#more-486

Or go to my website to see it in larger print.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeeal5f/suckerbeaglenews/id10.html

Emily Scudder's Back with Audio This Time

The link will take you directly to Emily's two poems. Click the sound button and you can hear her read. Worth it!

http://www.2river.org/2RView/12_2/poems/scudder.html

There's a Whole World Out There

And there's a whole world inside. this is a painting, crudely executed in oils, that's part of the world inside. This is from a time when David struggled with the world inside. Sometimes he drew into himself to cope with the disease. I had to go inside to try and paint it. I wish my painting skills were better. But I continue to work.

A Love Story

Fionna Lafferty has a story in "The Meeting House", an online journal.

http://www.newenglandfiction.com/meetinghouse

Totally Cool Picture of Guido...and the Suitcase Full of Money

Here's Guido, just as you pictured him, curtesy of borev.net.

and see the suitcase and all the money?

check out what borev.net has to say.

Man Named Guido with Suitcase Full of Money

Honestly! And I though my novel was bad!!

So this guy, Guido Alfonso Something Italian Wilson, a Miami business man with dual American-Venezuelan citizenship is caught coming off a plane chartered by some Argentinian officials with a suitcase full of 800,000 US dollars. So the money is seized by customs in Argentina and Guido is picked up in Miami with four buddies (Venezuelan business men) and the four buddies are charged with being undeclared agents of a foreign power. The four are supposed to have put poor old Guido up to trying to deliver the money from the Venezualan government (this was in August) to a candidate for president of Argentina. Somehow we are supposed to know that this is what the money was for. Guess which candidate that was supposed to be! Maybe this was supposed to drive a wedge between Venezuela and Argentina. That's one of the speculations.

But guess what? Hell hath no fury like an Argentinian woman president. If this is a ploy by the US government to antagonize Argentina from Venezulea--it's had the opposite effect.

Day by day the story seems to get smaller and smaller in the press. Oh won't this be fun to run down?

Questions are being asked. Like why would the Venezuelan government bother to send Guido and his suitcase when a plane full of Venezulean diplomats, with diplomatic immunity, flew from Caracas to Buenos Aires a few days later?

What I would like to know is why Venezuela would bother to spend five cents on Cristina Fernandez's campaign when she was already a shoo-in.

Time to Drink some Illegal Whiskey

And time to talk about movies since I just upped my Netflix subcription to 5 at a time. Five. Who's gonna watch all these? Really it's part of my neurotic stockpiling disorder. This also explains why I have 45 cans of Trader Joe's beef chili in my pantry.

Last night, after eight hours on the road from Worcester to home.( see how I looked afterwards above) I took stock of myself and discovered that the cupboard was bare. So I watched "The Year of the Dog". What happened? I thought I was following along quite nicely, but things began to happen. And happen. Maybe this was someone's unedited entry in NaNoWriMos ScriptFrenzy that takes place in July. Okay, so Laura Dern did a great job with her "Mommy" character. But I had bad dreams about the rest of the movie.

Tonight I watched "Amazing Grace" and totally enjoyed it except for the fact that I know most of it sort of didn't happen exactly that way. It's a good movie for our times. Well, for people who already know how crazy we are now. It had some of those elements of being able to tell a story about then, that's also about now. Like Shaw did in Saint Joan. The Albert Finney character was fabulous. I think it's growing on me.

Por Ahora

Where's my upside down exclamation point on the keyboard? How about if I used a lower case "i". So..iHola! Not bad.Well,whatta week it was in Venezuela. One great thing is the emergence of "Radio Venezuela En Vivo. We were able to hear 24 hour a day live broadcasting from some pretty awesome people there. and not just cool and groovy journalists like Mike Fox and others, but many interviews with Venezuelans who are making the revolution in their neighborhoods. Lots of us are hoping they can bring it back now the that the referendum is over. Like totally over. Por Ahora,(for now) as Chavez said. His concession speech late Sunday night was a class act. Lots of talk about what went wrong and what's next. It certainly was a defeat, but not a concisive victory for the opposition by any means. The political landscape will be changing in Venezuela as the opposition tries to figure out who they are and where they're going. A more moderate leadership is predicted for the opposition, but the crazy fire-setting, molotov cocktail-throwing students are still a wild card. For the bolivarian revolution, people (including Chavez) are saying it happened too fast and didn't come from the base.(there was also a brutal scare campaign put on by the opposition) The 1999 constitution was created by the Constituent Assembly, and many thought that should have happened with the reforms. But Chavez and the huge majority that are still with him (in spite of the fact that many were afraid to vote for the reforms and abstained) intend to deepen the socialist revolution and the take stock of how to work to do that.

More recently, Chavez has pointed out that many of these reforms can be worked on by the people, and presented again, perhaps in a different form.

But...everything is always interesting.

Get great info from http://www.venezualanalysis.com/ and keep your spirits up and keep on getting great information and keep laughing with http://www.borev.net/

We All Did It!!!

An amazing NaNo year for all of us. Geoff Smith, the come-from-behind-boy (notice now that I am willing to hyphenate!) is worthy of being the subject of someone's NaNo novel 2008.

Kirk and Jeanne got sick and finished anyway. Fionna's character was on a journey to the center of the earth when she, Fionna, got bored and had to blow the character out of a volcano and land her in the south of England where she got a job as a librarian and went on a bus tour where Miss Marple, yes, that Miss Marple, was a member of the tour. Geoff's meat-stealing characters get involved with a Used Meat Store and eventually an "Onion Restaurant". Not to mentioed being threatend by hyenas and other scary things.

First timer, Rose Cheyette may eventually reveal the fate of the psychotic mailman.

Joe Stohlman, another first timer plowed through to the finish line with style.

Suzanne McLeod came in in spite of also getting sick and finding out the her mother was being forcibly removed to a nursing home. Amazing work, Suzanne.

I loaded Jim's words on the site last night. So he's in too.(will we ever find out who really murdered Trixie?)

My online NaNo buddy, a high school senior from New Jersey, came in a glorious winner this time.

I haven't heard from Dave Bufano about the fate of the infamous Vin and Baby.

Tom's friend Blig Blug also finished his novel. You will be seeing pictures of Blig Blug writing his novel at http://www.bligblug.net/ next week.

For all the fabulous people who wrote along with us, congratulations. I'm guessing that you have never written that many words in one month before. Dont envy those of us who got to 50,000. I'll bet your stuff stinks way less than ours.

I cheated and dredged up an article from the New York Times about authorities not being able to protect witnesses to mob crimes. This is a dilemma that my character has to face in the beginning of the book. My character suddenly notices that the cop on duty in her hospital room (she's been shot by the mob) has conveniently left a copy of the Times near her bed. She reads a whole bunch of this article and--Voila! I am a winner too.

Thank you to everyone who followed our progress with great interest, real or feigned. We love you.