Stark Images On Yet Another B&W Night

There was a time when my arm had a funny shape to it. Well, a funnier shape. The second photo (well, scan) shows the hardware that was in my left arm after it was shattered in 1989. A friend of mine was telling me recently about some body piercings she had that didn't take, her body rejected them. Well, the same happened with the plates, they kept breaking, or unscrewing, and then breaking, even after even wider plates were placed inside me. Finally, the doctors gave up and grafted part of my right hip into my arm. (I have since told etain that all my body modifications were purely accidental--all 37 scars--or caused by dumb Polak luck. I have no truly workable circulatory system in my left hand. But I'm not complaining. Take a look at the new hand of Stan Weiskopf, one of the embedded reporters in Iraq. Pictured in TIME holding the last page he ever wrote on with his now-disintegrated hand. It's people like Stan as much as the joy of reading and tormenting my fellow writers that keep me at this one-fingered pecking with the howling wind as my companion. Goodnight everyone. Wayne

B&W Thoughts On Yet Another B&W Night

This is what the weather must be like in space. But the cold is not the point. I have been reading the more or less collected works of a complete stranger and continue to sit here stunned. Things run through my head at times...what was lost when the library at Alexandria burned? How many writers give up before they get a chance to be noticed? Words wrapped around faces in a crowd, images on the Internet. Reading what I have over the past few hours makes me content, knowing that there will be people writing fantastical things on the day of my death and beyond. Until its time for my dirt nap, I remain your chattel, Wayne. (Now talk amongst yourselves...)