If there's a particular subject of interest, click one of the tags below and you'll get a list of relevant, irrelevant, and sometimes irreverent postings.

Wikipedia showed of a lovely 3,820 × 2,964 resolution of Raphael's The School of Athens.

Hypatia looks a little shocked at the amount of smut on my hard drive, but it's not like I'm making her catalog it.

I'm emerging from the cave to do a hour-and-a-half presentation at the Schaumburg Public Library next Thursday. Any suburban Chicago fans who want books signed are welcome to show up. I'll do a very brief reading, talk a little about writing genre fiction, answer questions, and sign books. If anyone shows up.

It runs from 7-8:30. Or longer, if there's a bar with Guinness on draft nearby.

But be sure to check out chats_noirs Banned Book List, it being Banned Books Week at your local library.

Pure weekend 2005 is over. Very hot in Chicago, and the troupe performed from the Water Tower at one end of Michigan Avenue to Buckingham fountain at the other. Came home exhausted, headachey, and crusted over.

I took over 500 pictures.

While seeing Chats dance was its own reward, I gotta say that coming home to the feel of a nice cool bath with some Masada salts made the whole sweaty marathon worth it. I'd do it again just to feel the relaxing relief of that tub.

From AFP: Library sets up shop on Portuguese beach to encourage summer reading

LISBON (AFP) - With the summer season in full swing, officials in northern Portugal are setting up a library at a popular beach to encourage sun-seekers to read as they tan by the seaside.

The library will operate from two locations along the beach in Povoa de Varzim, a popular fishing port resort town located 380 kilometres (235 miles) north of Lisbon, offering books, magazines and newspapers on short-term loan...

In other news, chats_noirs gets out early today. Movie time!

I do a lot of writing in the Borders cafe in Oak Park. Stephanie comes along sometimes, grabs some magazines, and reads while I tchk-tchk-tchk away on my laptop.

Yesterday, while perusing the latest Bust, she gave me a quick lecture on the history of the vibrator, as described by the magazine. Seems in the 19th century women suffered from "hysteria"...second most common diagnosis after fever. Anyway, symptoms included:

"nervousness, depression, the desire for too much sex, lack of desire for sex, muscle spasms, fluid retention, loss of appetite for food, a tendency to cause trouble for others, insomnia, sensations of heaviness, masturbation, too much vaginal lubrication, not enough vaginal lubrication, crankiness, malaise, too much energy, not enough energy, weight gain, weight loss..."

Seems the trouble was in the womb, and the best think for womb troubles was digital manipulation of the clitoris until the woman had a "fit of paroxysm." Lots of doctors made a nice living at this.

Doctor Doctor, gimme the news
I got a
Bad case of loving you
No pill's gonna kill my ill, I got a
Bad case of loving you

Those were the days. Have a cocaine-laced Coca-cola and a gynecologist-induced smile.

	Problem was, this time-consuming digital manipulation of the clitoris was cutting into writing prescriptions for opiates and golf tee-times, no doubt, so with an eye to efficiency they turned to the machine, which could do in minutes what might take an hour otherwise.
So you had all these medical appliances like the "Chattanooga" doing the work of man. Shovel all the coal in Gotta keep it rollin' Woo, woo, Chattanooga There you are Who do you think would win, the machine, or John Henry, that steel-drivin' man?

Doctors, never quick to give up a good (and lucrative) thing, kept the machines to themselves until catalogs like Sears Roebuck and magazines like Redbook came along and women were able to buy them for $5.65 (admittedly a lot of money in those days). Or men. There were a few ads in men's journals selling the devices, claiming they would help their wives stay "young and pretty." But most of the advertising was geared toward women:

"Vibration is life. It will chase away the years like magic. Every nerve, every fibre of your whole body will tingle with [the] force of your own awakened powers. All the keen relish, the pleasure of youth, will throb within you"

Men didn't get let in on the real uses of wifey's little helper until seeing them employed in stag films in the 20s.

I always got a kick out of old movies, where the treatment for a "hysterical" (interesting etymology to that word) woman was a good slap across the face. I suppose the Hays code didn't let filmmakers show the AMA-approved fix.