Platypus of Truth

For years now, I've handed out awards to the top seven books of my summer reading. These awards are called "The Seven Heavens of Summer Reading" in honor of Michael Ward's groundbreaking dissertation Planet Narnia which attempts to prove that C.S. Lewis structured the The Chronicles of Narnia  around the Seven Heavens of the Medieval cosmology (not actually that weird when you remember that Lewis attempted to do just that with the space trilogy, was a medievalist, and had a taste for private jokes). For the awards, I match each reading with the attributes of a corresponding planet. Luna: The award for the Planet of Madness goes to that-book-which-must-not-be-read, The King in Yellow , by R.W. Chambers. This creepy work of decadent literature forms a bridge between Gothic writers like Poe and 20th Century Horror writers like H.P. Lovecraft. The work has just that combination of sophistication, refinement of sentiment, and gnawing pessimism that only exists in fin-de...

My poor little blog has fallen silent for the past few weeks due to a sudden turn of events. All this summer we've been trouble shooting aspects of my perennial stomach problems. I had some minor work done in July along with numerous evaluations. The surprise came in late August when we found out that my herniated stomach had lurched up to a whopping 1/3 of its total size between my lungs. The nature of the hernia had also changed putting it in danger of strangling itself or my esophagus. Not only that, but the hernia had also seriously displaced my other internal organs. So, last Thursday, a wonderful team of doctors lathroscopically dragged my stomach back down, patched my diaphragm, sewed the top of my stomach into a knot to prevent reflux, and carefully placed my other internal organs back in order. The process went "textbook" and took 2 and 1/4 hours. Right now, I'm in the middle of my recovery period and it will still be about a month before I return to a comple...