After thinking it over and chatting with Ron, who went through the same treatment, I decided to go ahead and start the weekly allergy shots.

My first battery was yesterday, and you know what? Those were the smallest, quickest, least painful shots ever. The only annoying part was having to get up earlier than usual to go to the allergist’s office, then waiting for 30 minutes afterwards for observation (to make sure I didn’t die). I brought my DS and copy of Puzzle Quest to kill time, since it was still to early for my brain to concentrate on a book.

Now to find out over the next few months whether the treatment actually works…

Joss Whedon gets off on a good long rant about Dua Khalil — a 17 year old Iraqi girl whose death by stoning was recorded by cameraphone and shown on CNN — and the upcoming movie Captivity: Let’s Kidnap and Torture Elisha Cuthbert. Worth a read.

Television is in reruns and summer programming until September. What to watch until then? If you have a few minutes, try these:

• The Drinky Crow Show – Eisner winner Tony Millionaire’s alternative comic strip Maakies adapted into an Adult Swim pilot, complete with a They Might Be Giants theme song. Most adorable self-destructive debauchery ever! part 1, part 2
• Korgoth of Barbaria – Ultraviolent, spot-on parody of Conan and other barbarian fiction. This was another Adult Swim pilot that aired last year, and it was supposed to go to series by now, but I’m not sure what happened. part 1, part 2, part 3
• Rare Exports, Inc. – A pair of European short films. To explain further would ruin the joke. Just watch. part 1, part 2
• Flight of the Conchords – A new HBO comedy series documenting the exploits of a New Zealand folk duo. Reminds me of Tenacious D meets Jonathan Coulton, a little, with an underplayed Kiwi sensibility. And can I just say that you’re so beautiful you could be a part-time model? complete first episode

• I’ve been following the thoughts of Warren Ellis and Cory Doctorow on the topic of new media publishing for quite some time. I now link to Ellis’ ponderings on Burst Culture mostly so I can refer back to it later. Perhaps the most notable thought: attention span isn’t dead, or else J.K. Rowling wouldn’t be filthy rich by writing paperbricks. It’s just that the web itself isn’t conducive to attention span.
• I’m only about 20 pages into Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, and while I’m not sure whether Gilbert is British, in my head the book reads in a British accent. Why? Because it reads so much like Douglas Adams — in tone and in subject matter, minus the silly aliens — that I can hear Simon Jones doing the narration.

I’m aware of the difficulties in ending the occupation of Iraq. I’m aware that the Democrats only have a slim majority in each house, and if only a handful of Republicans would switch over on the issue, they’d have enough votes to override a veto. I know all that.

But deep down, I feel the same way as Olbermann.

Faced with the prospect of living with Kristie’s two cats in the near future, I went to see an allergist yesterday in preparation for possibly getting shots that would cure my allergy. The first step is the allergy test, which entailed being pricked and injected with small amounts of 60 different types of allergens in neat little rows on my forearms (10 spots x 3 rows x 2 arms) to find out what I’m allergic to.

The answer, as it turns out, is almost everything. In the entire world.

I sat there, palms up, for the appointed 15 minutes, trying to reach some kind of Zen state in which I could ignore the itchiness. White welts surrounded by red skin sprang up all up and down my arms. (I thought about getting a photo for Flickr, but I couldn’t dig my phone out of my pocket and get the right camera angle without smearing serum all over my clothes. Probably for the best.)

After sitting there for roughly eight weeks, the doctor came in and graded each spot on a scale of zero to four.

My intended weekly shot for cat allergies became a three-shot cocktail for trees, grasses, weeds, cats, dogs, molds, and mites. On the upside, I am not allergic to rabbits or gerbils. Go me. (Makes sense — I always had a slight affinity for rabbits.)

Actually, being allergic to dogs makes no sense at all, considering my family owned a dog while I was in high school, and I’ve never once had a problem with them. But it’s hard to argue with the welt, even if it was a smaller one.

In all, I had a noticable reactions to about half of the 60 allergens. The welts on my forearms have gone from yesterday’s “leper colony” look to “attacked by mosquitos/world’s most anal retentive heroin addict” today. Cortizone is my bestest friend at the moment.

I’m still undecided what to do next. I wasn’t looking forward to one shot per week, let alone three. I might call back and ask them to pare it down to one shot for cats and my most oppressive allergies, but I don’t know yet.

Tons of neat stuff from the last couple of days:

• After a season and a half of seemingly meandering storylines and dull flashbacks, Lost has been running on all cylinders for the last half-season. Now that it’s giving out some answers to go with its new mysteries and there’s an end in sight (48 more episodes over 3 seasons), I’m back on board for good. And on that note, check out this nine-minute fan-edited reconstruction of the events of the Flight 815 crash with all the stuff we know now added in. (Spoilers if you haven’t been keeping up, obviously.)
• Take one Bruce Campbell. Seat him at a piano surrounded by adoring women. Have him sing a lounge version of Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Enjoy.
• What would happen if two online chatbots talked to each other? Discover Magazine provided some seed questions, then let the chatbots go at it. The results are fascinating, in a funny way.
• NY Times Magazine profiled Jonathan Coulton as part of a story about musicians who make a living online.
• Al Gore has a new book coming out called The Assault on Reason. Based on this excerpt, it reads like a less scholarly, more politically-oriented sequel to Amusing Ourselves to Death.
• According to the Machine of Death website, the editors were so overwhelmed by story submissions that they are delaying the selection announcements for another month until June 30. I’m not sure that bodes well for my chances.

Today, somewhat randomly, I bought myself a guitar. I’ve never played a guitar in my life and I have no idea how it works, but since I now own something called a Johnson JG610B Dreadnought, I should probably learn.

There were three things I was looking for in a guitar: 1) it had to be used and therefore cheap; 2) it had to be Johnny Cash black; and 3) it had to have some personality. This one has been to Kuwait and back with a soldier, and it earned some superficial damage along the way. It came with a case, some picks, and a tuner (with instructions), all for the price of a new XBox 360 game, so when I saw it on Craigslist, I scooped it up.

Eventually, I’m hope to be able to play some Jonathan Coulton songs. In the meantime, my first step is probably to learn how to tune it…

A science fiction podcast called Escape Pod is putting up audiobook versions of this year’s Hugo-nominated short stories, starting with “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt. The story is about a film buff who stumbles onto a video store from a parallel dimension — where he can rent all the movies that weren’t or almost were, like Harlan Ellison’s I, Robot and Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Tom Selleck. It’s the kind of idea that’s right up my alley, in my nerdier moments.

Meanwhile, the SFWA apparently gave a Nebula Award to a podcast for the first time in its history, with James Patrick Kelly’s “Burn” taking Best Novella.

It’s sounding more and more like podcasting is the future of short fiction.

My apartment has a huge roach problem. And by that I mean it has a problem with huge roaches. As in, they’re roughly the size of Volkswagons.

I’m told that these are not the kind of roaches who nest in apartments, yet somehow they keep getting inside, one at a time. The apartment complex sent an exterminator to spray on Monday. I’ve found three more since then. So much for that.

Miraculously, the place was roach-free while Kristie was here last weekend, which is a good thing because she says she probably would have freaked out. Since the problem doesn’t appear to be going away and my lease is now month-to-month, I’m itching to move to a new place, but I can’t start shopping until Kristie figures out where she’s going to live post-graduation. She might come here or she might have a job in LA, depending on a pair of upcoming interviews — therefore I might be here or in LA, too.

Until then, I just have to keep roachslaying. Last week I found one scurrying around inside a bag of tortilla chips. Next they’ll be drinking my beer and asking how the DVR works. I may start charging them rent.