Got time to waste?

Watch some internet files. Check out some new stops on my reading list. Have fun.

Foamy has some issues. Watch Volume 4. I died laughing.

Dykes to Watch Out For; The Blog. Yes; my favorite lefty comic strip creator has started to blog. And dammit, Lois would have been hot as an FTM.

Susie Bright, the Blog. Ahh, Susie! I met her when she was with On Our Backs, many moons ago. Fun lady.

Speaking of FTMs. Here's a cute lil' FTM rapper! Named Katastrophe. Oooh, you are a tough guy! I mean it. Really.

Admit it, you have no idea what an FTM is. Here. And if you have read my books and still need to ask about Chris, I suggest remedial reading.

It's like the end of an era

Izora Armstead; a singer on the Weather Girls' recording 'It's Raining Men' has passed away

..."It's Raining Men," a bombastic vocal romp that winkingly borrowed from gospel music – "Hallelujah, it's raining men, amen!" goes its chorus – was one of the biggest hits of the genre known as hi-NRG, a souped-up version of disco that ruled dance clubs in the 1980s.

Sung with gusto by Ms. Armstead, then known as Izora Rhodes, and her partner, Martha Wash, the song only reached No. 46 on the pop charts when it was released in 1983, but hit No. 1 on the club charts and later reached No. 2 in England.

Written by Paul Jabara and Paul Shaffer – of "Late Show With David Letterman" – the song has since become an anthem of the gay club scene and in 2001 it again reached the top of the British charts with a version by a former Spice Girl, Geri Halliwell.

Written by Paul Shaffer?? Who knew? And Homer Simpson loved it, too. One of the funniest moment at my wedding was when the DJ played it and all the gay men leapt to their feet, leaving my het cousins to blink and ask, "gay men like this song?"

I coulda told them THAT!

Is Caffeine Withdrawal a Mental Disorder?
Er. YES.
1 in 8 People Can't Function Without Daily Fix
That's ALL??

Sept. 30, 2004 -- Researchers are saying that caffeine withdrawal should now be classified as a psychiatric disorder.

A new study that analyzes some 170 years' worth of research concludes that caffeine withdrawal is very real -- producing enough physical symptoms and a disruption in daily life to classify it as a psychiatric disorder. Researchers are suggesting that caffeine withdrawal should be included in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), considered the bible of mental disorders.

"I don't think this means anyone should be worried," says study researcher Roland Griffiths, PhD, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "What it means is that the phenomenon of caffeine withdrawal is real and that when people don't get their usual dose, they can suffer a range of withdrawal symptoms."

I'm so glad someone got paid to study 170 years of information on this. Hell, anyone caffeine addict will be glad to tell you exactly what it's like to go cold turkey, and it ain't pretty.
Sheesh.

Next, they'll say eating chocolate and ice cream helps alleviate symptoms of depression and PMS.

Oh, I got another book coming out this year

Just in case you are one of the few readers of the blog who also reads my porn, my "best of" collection, The Catalyst and Other Works, will be out before the end of the year, and some kind folks are already taking preorders. Drop me a note if you want the secret code to get 10% off the cover price.

101 Top books?

101 Great books recommended for high school students, especially those heading on to college. Frankly...I don't see todays high schoolers having the ability to read many of the books on this list. The ones in bold are ones I've read.

-- Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart
Agee, James A Death in the Family
Austin, Jane Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert The Stranger
Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop
Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage
Dante Inferno
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo Selected Essays
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust
Golding, William Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms
Homer The Iliad
Homer The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik A Doll's House
James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt
London, Jack The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur The Crucible
Morrison, Toni Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allen Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William Hamlet
Shakespeare, William Macbeth
Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles Antigone
Sophocles Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice The Color Purple
Warton, Edith The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard Native Son