Wow, it's been a while since I've updated. Lots of stuff has been going on lately.My mom has started her chemotherapy, and my family is supporting her every step of the way. We're confident her lymphoma will be cured, but the doctors just recently discovered that she has chronic lymphocytic leukemia,. They told her to "just live her life", which basically means there is no cure... 
It's a sobering thing to learn that someone I love and am very close to has a teminal disease. They still say she's got a while before it starts to really manifest - up to 20 years - so we just have to enjoy the time we have (a saying that has always sounded cheesy and trite, but now is staggeringly true). Her having this illness also increases my chances of having it later on in life. But I've decided not to greive - not yet, because that would be pointless. She's still here, still feels fine, still has years ahead of her. The leukemia can be treated (but not cured, yet) with stem cells, (as an aside, I urge everyone to vote to continue stem cell research (prop 71 in California). It may not offer promise, but it does offer hope. To give up now, because of pressure from religious groups and politcs imposing their beliefs upon science, would abondon hope, abandon life, abandon research in a potential goldmine of scientific wealth before the possibilities are even explored.)
...Enough preaching for now. What else is new? I got paid (finally) so I can buy some new art supplies, and get back into continuing the series I started last semester. My friend is coming down from Humboldt to stay with me for a few days before he makes his way to a premiering his film at a horror movie festival in L.A. I just finished one of the best and most heartbreaking-yet-hopeful books I've ever read, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I bought 2 bottles of absinthe for my friend's wedding, but I'm really tempted to start drinking them now. I'm seeing Billy Corgan give a poetry reading from his new book on Tuesday in SF. I found 6 cds in the bargain bings of Amoeba records, all of which I have been wanting for a while. That made my day. Especialy the Lansing-Dreiden album The Inclompete Triangle. It's like New Order meets 60s pop harmony meets psych-rock, with the "whatthefuck?" factor somewhere in the stratosphere. And I saw an episode of Futurama that almost made me cry. Have you ever seen the one where Fry finds the frozen body of his dog? And it shows his dog and him 1000 years in the past playing and having fun and then Fry disapearing into the cryogenic chamber and the dog trying to get his family to retreive him? And then, right before Fry clones his dog to bring it back to life in the year 3000, he realizes that it lived 10 years after he disappeared, and he says that he only had the dog for 3 years, but someone else must have had it for the other 10 years; his dog must have long forgotten him? And then, at the end, it shows his dog waiting outside his work, with 10 years of seasons passing, waiting for him to come back, until it 's so old it collapses? Damn, that was so sad I'm tearing up now. I must be an emotional wreck or something...
Holy shit, that was long.........
It's a sobering thing to learn that someone I love and am very close to has a teminal disease. They still say she's got a while before it starts to really manifest - up to 20 years - so we just have to enjoy the time we have (a saying that has always sounded cheesy and trite, but now is staggeringly true). Her having this illness also increases my chances of having it later on in life. But I've decided not to greive - not yet, because that would be pointless. She's still here, still feels fine, still has years ahead of her. The leukemia can be treated (but not cured, yet) with stem cells, (as an aside, I urge everyone to vote to continue stem cell research (prop 71 in California). It may not offer promise, but it does offer hope. To give up now, because of pressure from religious groups and politcs imposing their beliefs upon science, would abondon hope, abandon life, abandon research in a potential goldmine of scientific wealth before the possibilities are even explored.)
...Enough preaching for now. What else is new? I got paid (finally) so I can buy some new art supplies, and get back into continuing the series I started last semester. My friend is coming down from Humboldt to stay with me for a few days before he makes his way to a premiering his film at a horror movie festival in L.A. I just finished one of the best and most heartbreaking-yet-hopeful books I've ever read, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I bought 2 bottles of absinthe for my friend's wedding, but I'm really tempted to start drinking them now. I'm seeing Billy Corgan give a poetry reading from his new book on Tuesday in SF. I found 6 cds in the bargain bings of Amoeba records, all of which I have been wanting for a while. That made my day. Especialy the Lansing-Dreiden album The Inclompete Triangle. It's like New Order meets 60s pop harmony meets psych-rock, with the "whatthefuck?" factor somewhere in the stratosphere. And I saw an episode of Futurama that almost made me cry. Have you ever seen the one where Fry finds the frozen body of his dog? And it shows his dog and him 1000 years in the past playing and having fun and then Fry disapearing into the cryogenic chamber and the dog trying to get his family to retreive him? And then, right before Fry clones his dog to bring it back to life in the year 3000, he realizes that it lived 10 years after he disappeared, and he says that he only had the dog for 3 years, but someone else must have had it for the other 10 years; his dog must have long forgotten him? And then, at the end, it shows his dog waiting outside his work, with 10 years of seasons passing, waiting for him to come back, until it 's so old it collapses? Damn, that was so sad I'm tearing up now. I must be an emotional wreck or something...
Holy shit, that was long.........
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Here is the link for the Bright Eyes tickets. They have been up for months now but they never formally anounced it anywhere and I ran across them on the Saddle Creek site a while back.
I'm really sorry to hear about your mother though. Like you said, the 'enjoying the time you have' statement may sound all cheesy but it is so true. People in our life could up and leave or get into some sort of accident tommorow while we take their presence for granted today.
Hope to see you at the Blood Brothers and/or the Bright Eyes show.
-billy