p.s.   Hey.  So there's another one of those 'Horror Hospital' things, the first third of Chapter 3.  See what you think.  To you 'Userlands' contributors and anyone else, the anthology has racked up yet another compliment in being chosen as one of the ten best queer fiction books of the year by the great Richard Labonte at Q Syndicate.  Read what he wrote by going here. and locating the section called 'Book Marks.'  What else?  I've put an announcement for the Self-Portrait Day over in the 'news' column, as if you hadn't noticed, and I hope your brains are at least minutely preoccupied by its festive task.  Gosh, I think that's all I have today.  **  Puella Aeterna, Hey.  No, sadly I don't know anything about a publication called Oracle or Oracles.  But maybe someone reading this does.  Does anyone out there have any information about this publication, which is perhaps associated in some way with the artist/writer/ filmmaker Ira Cohen?  If so please pass said info along in a comment and help out Puella Aeterna.  Thanks.  **  Mat, Good, I got your blood pumping.  Well, pumping harder.  My address?  contact@ denniscooper.net.  Same old.  Take a vid of your New Years sky blow out if you can 'cos I'm dying without it over here.  I think it was the shooter's scared, antagonistic, lonely eyes.  Well, and the hair.  **  David Ehrenstein, Yury has a deep harsh side, not towards me, but towards ... well, almost everything else.  But I've learned the hard way not to argue my case. He usually comes around.  When I first knew him, he was all harsh about guitar music, how it was primitive and a relic, and now he downloads nothing but.  Were the Grammys ever not shit?  It's been shit since I was a kid.  I guess I just don't bother caring.  Granted, compared to the American Music Awards it might as well be the Nobel Prize, but its taste for shit is too great for me.  I always remember the year when Rick Springfield won the Grammy for Best New Artist over Elvis Costello. But God love Bill for caring.  **  Mark, No, I'm sure it was good.  You know of what you hear.  That's time proven.  **  Derek McCormack, Okay, I'll lodge my little camera permanently in my coat pocket for the duration of the holidays, and almost whatever's out there, you'll see.  Nothing's going to compete with your amazing examples, though.  Or I'll be surprised.  I think it'll be more like Barney's Xmas windows with a French accent.  I anticipate a whole lot of 'Ratatouille' meets fake snow stuff.  'Ratatouille' was the most successful movie here in the history of France.  But I'll search high and low. It would be my pleasure.  **  Winter Rates, That does suck.  Did you post your playlist anyway? That way I could dream.  ** Tosh, Agreed about the latest Charlotte Gainsbourg album.  I love it.  Francois Hardy must be a tricky character.  Every two bit French chanteuse of the past fifty years, from the Aznavours to the les nobodys, is treated like a god among gods here and seems to be on every TV show every night, but Hardy is almost nowhere to be seen.  If memory serves, Bruce Benderson was signed up to ghost write her autobiography, but she was so impossible to deal with he had to bail.  Sort of like Joni Mitchell.  I think about ten different people, including a friend of mine, were hired at different times over the years to ghost write her autobiography, and they all wound up quitting because she's supposedly horrible and insane.  Anyway, I don't know why I got off on that.  Maybe the Rhoades book is gallery only, but it's a massive book that seems eventually destined for stores.  **  Luke, Hey. I'm going to use this slot to urge everyone reading this in the New York/Brooklyn environs to go see Luke play if you can this Saturday night at Sound Fix.  If you haven't heard his songs, they're just exquisite, and if I were in the hood, I'd be there in a flash.  So I highly recommend you go see him play, and you can find all the relevant info here.  I really look forward to the time when I can be there.  I hope it goes really well, Luke.  **  Disco 3-way, Oh, talking by phone would be much better if you can arrange that.  I like doing interview things by phone much better than doing them by email.  Plus we could talk.  So yeah, if you can sort that out, let's do it, but email is okay if you can't.  On your 'messy' novel, it doesn't haven't to be a problem, as you said, exactly.  As far as the violence mostly freaking out gay guys, well, listen, that's been my story too.  Why are gay guys so prissy about that stuff?  I've never understood it.  Anyway, cool.  **  Statictick, Yum on the feast, and fucking hell on your ex's bullshit. Are you sure you want to keep those doors unlocked? Not to panic myself and you unnecessarily. I just don't like hearing that. Err, restraining order? Too extreme? ** Porcelain Skull, No bad at all, man, on the two notebooks sales. I'd think that kind of work would be even harder sell than photographs. Interesting. But then if people fork out six figures to buy igloos made of fake cocaine, all bets are off, I guess. Sweet. ** Jax, Hey there, pal. Nope, no where near the letter bomb locale. That was weird. I don't think the cops have figured out what that was about. Something to do with Sarkozy, Mr. bad incident magnet, I guess. On the writing tampering thing, it must be really different with a script where you've constructed something very carefully. My stuff for Gisele is written knowing transformation is in the cards, and she's also really respectful of my text and would never change a word without my approval. I might actually find myself in your situation before too long because I wrote a movie for this young director Carter Smith a few years ago, and he took it to a Sundance screenplay workshop last year and surely heavily rewrote it there since he's now crediting himself as co-writer of the script, and I have yet to see what has happened to it, and maybe I'll freak out. I haven't seen The Golden Compass'. It does look kind of crap, but I have a 'crap with lots of cgi' weakness. ** Killer Luka, Paris in winter is real nice. After the winters you go through where you are, it can hardly be considered winter. A nippy fall. Come check it out. I'll do that Xmas photo thing and then you can make your travel plans accordingly. I'm wondering whether Yury and I should get a Xmas tree. I don't even know if the French do Xmas trees. I really need to learn French so I can understand the subtle stuff.  You can only get so far when your grasp of French goes no further than 'Ooh la la.' ** Lost Child, Real life? I don't think I pay that much attention. It's like routine and non-routine. I'm a moving pedestal for my head. Is that reality? ** Chris, Andrew Robertson is still around? Wow. Does he still have that great hair and those sexy wide girly hips? Probably more of the latter and less of the former, I bet. ** Jeff, Susan and Terry Jacks! Whoa. ** Michael Karo, Thanks for yesterday, kind sir. I ate it up. ** Joe M., When I finally saw 'The Wizard of Oz' on the big screen after eight billion viewings on the small screen, seeing the not so very hidden wires and hydraulics and stuff retro-actively traumatized me for my entire life. Be careful. Oh, no, I don't think I care about my family's indifference to my work. Well, maybe a little against my will. My mom and I got cool, person to person, but the subject of my work gave her lockjaw right up to the end, which is okay too. My work is mom proof. What can you do? ** Sam J., Hey, welcome. I actually really loved your story in that Best Erotica anthology, so your visit here is even more of a treat. Your site looks really good. I've bookmarked it so I can examine it thoroughly. In fact, everybody else reading this, go look at Sam J.'s site if you know what's good for you. Thanks a lot for posting. Do hang out here anytime if you feel like it. It would be a real pleasure. **  Scott Heim, Hey, pal.  Thanks for the Prix Sade congrats, and I'll await your day in the French literary spotlight.  You new novel is so very fantastic that the Prix Medici could very well be in your pocket soon.  You've outdone yourself, you font of greatness, and I can't wait for March when the folks around here will get to see exactly what I'm saying.  You might be in Paris.  Do let me know, okay?  I'd so love to see you.  Are you scared by the My Bloody Valentine reunion?  I am.  Maybe I shouldn't be.  It just seems wrong, but maybe I'm being a curmudgeon? **  5stringsA, He is cute, right?  I mean in that one picture at least.  Poor Kip, though.  Prison and religion conversion hasn't done his looks any good at all.  **  Misanthrope, I haven't seen him with a shaved head.  I haven't seen anything but that one picture.  But I'm sorry, he's fucking cute in it at the very least.  He as he looked in that picture could have curled up in a fetal position and chewed his fingernails in my bed any old time. My long battle with co-dependency would have been lost if he'd flipped my vegiburgers.  But I'll probably see a picture of him with a shaved head today and take all of that back, superficial caretaker that I may well be.  Floppy hair can be really long and still get to me.  Even waist length is okay, although it doesn't really flop around when it's that long.  But I grew up in the hippie era, remember.  Plus when their hair's that long, you can strangle them to death with it.  No annoying trips to the garage to get some rope.  It's all right there.  And that's just one plus about long hair.  **  Steevee, A friend of mine bought some of those Chinese ball toys that were made out of Ecstacy on eBay.  But apparently licking it doesn't work.  You have to eat the balls, which presents kind of a problem.  **  SYpHA_69, Howdy.  **  No More Teenage Kicks, That Dylan clip was pretty good.  I like him.  Well, not always.  But I liked that.  Surprise.  Hey, you think you have tech problems, my good hearted but sometimes a bit busy body-ish boyfriend Yury got the bright idea to install Leopard on my laptop last night without telling me, and something went really wrong, and  the disc is just sitting there in my computer grinding and grinding in a failed attempt to install the program, and the disc can't be removed so I'm using his laptop and praying that mine isn't totally fucked because I have a whole bunch of work on there and blog days in progress that I didn't back up, so God help your iPod and my iBook both.  **  Laurabethnoble, Hm.  On the mushrooms thing, it's really hard or me to say. Even mild psychedelics like mushrooms can be pretty intense.  Mm, I think maybe I'd say don't just to be safe. If you freaked out a little and got paranoid, and paranoia is a very common reaction to 'shrooms, it could really throw you  So I guess I say be cautious and don't do them.  This Emerson fellow sounds nice.  A bit tricky with both he and Greg at the same event. You sound really uncertain about whether Emerson likes you, and sometimes, maybe most of the time even, when you feel that way, you're usually right.  I mean one is usually right, not you since I don't know how good our instincts are.  It seems very complicated because you sound kind of ambivalent about Greg sometimes, which makes me think that relationship isn't going to last, but then you seem afraid to lose him too.  I guess I'd say you need to really decide how much your thing with Greg means to you.  The fact that you seem to want to try to be with Emerson too makes me think the thing with Greg isn't that heavy for you.  But it's really hard to know what to tell you to do except to really try to be objective about yourself and then decide.  I fear that's not much help though.  Complicated stuff.  Hoping for the very best for you from here.  **  That's it. See you all tomorrow.