And Today's Headline Is...

HETEROSEXUAL, CHRISTIAN, OMNIVOROUS PARENTS PUT BABY IN MICROWAVE--NATION DIVIDED: CAN WE TRUST OMNIVORES TO CARE FOR CHILDREN? SHOULD STRAIGHT CHRISTIANS BE ALLOWED TO MARRY?

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) -- A woman blames the devil, and not her husband, for severely burning their infant daughter in a microwave, a Texas television station reported.

Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua's efforts to become a preacher.

"Satan saw my husband as a threat," Eva Mauldin told Houston television station KHOU-TV.

A grand jury indicted Joshua Mauldin last week on child injury charges after hearing evidence that he placed the two-month-old in a motel microwave for 10 to 20 seconds. (Watch cops react to burned baby )

The infant, Ana Marie, remains hospitalized. She suffered burns on the left side of her face and to her left hand, police said.

Police said Joshua Mauldin told them he put Ana Marie in the microwave because he was under stress. Eva Maudlin denied it.

"He would never do anything to hurt her. He loves her," she said.

She is hoping to be reunited with her daughter, but Child Protective Services is working to have the parental rights severed.

Pronounced "Ah'-Sha"

I'm reminded more than once lately of one of Nietzsche's more catchy aphorisms. "It takes more courage to make an end than a beginning. All poets know that." I'm probably quoting him badly since the last time I read Zarathustra was when I was 18 and that's, well, many years ago now. Anyway, I've been, indeed, in the wells and caverns of the revisionist blues. Granted, I've been pretty lucky so far. I can only hope that my next four (gasp) chapters go over so well. I'm currently in the process of finishing up revisions of my second chapter. The first is already heavily revised and currently circulating with my committee. The quote above is applicable because I'm discovering that writing conclusions to chapters is a bigger bitch than I ever realized. I think I'm really bad at conclusions to begin with, and usually I end up doing some sort of verbal equivalent of the spastic jumps that really annoying man-child does on MAD TV. I hope to christ one of you gets that reference. ("Look what I can do!") I'm currently trying to tack on an at best subjunctive and at worst half-assed conclusion that gestures toward the argument I'll make in the next chapter, which I haven't written yet. I had a feeling that you all would be really riveted by this account of my revision process, but it's mah blog, so whatevah.

When I'm not slogging through my own prose, the summer is lovely. I've been getting work done, spending 30-40 hours a week smiling at strangers at my other job, working out at the gym (13 miles today! AND it felt great), and watching Dark Angel. There is still much work to be done, as there always is, but I always appreciate the winning combination of warm weather and no teaching! I'm also, perhaps as a way of distracting myself from the more difficult library books patiently awaiting my attention and which are much more pertinent to my next chapter, reading a bit more into the oeuvre of the deeply problematic and endlessly fascinating H. Rider Haggard. My dearest niece doesn't know if yet, but she's definitely getting She and Ayesha: The Return of She for her birthday this year. What a fun writer he is! I'm currently reading Allan Quartermain and it's cracking me up. Haggard is deeply obsessed with imaginatively penetrating (pun intended) the wilds of various non-European spaces. He's mostly into Africa, though the second She book mostly takes place in Central Asia. His rugged, manly, great white hunter protagonists go on the most brutal, exhausting, and excruciating quests before discovering--as they must--white people lording power over non-white people and white women threatening to destroy civilization as we know it. Herein are contained the great remaining mysteries of the world. Like I said, he's a great story-teller, and he completely cracks me up.

As a reward for bearing with this perhaps tedious exposition, here's some artist's rendering of the endlessly fascinating Ayesha.

Here, I'm pretty sure she's bathing in the eternal flame that gives her her immortal youth, beauty, and mysterious ability to rule superstitious minds (read natives) through terror. Make no mistake about it, her love kills mere mortals. In the world of Haggard, many mountains contain such a flame. The novels are finally unclear, though, about whether Ayesha power comes from Isis, to whom she was a priestess in her regular lifetime, or Set--the Egyptian version of the Devil.

Oh, Manichean Delirium! Angel? or Angelheart?

One of the Many Signs of the Apocalypse

Or at least this should be. I felt sort of, vaguely, validated when I saw this site for the first time. Validated not so much in the general sense as in my feeling of horror when Red Lobster aired a commercial featuring a tracking shot of lobsters scampering rapidly across the ocean floor to the soundtrack "Nowhere to run to, baby....nowhere to hide." This from a former seafood lover. Anyway, for your perusal and comment, my friends, I offer this. If you dare.

Who's the biggest loser?

I am, of course. And not in that lame, reality tv way.

I attempted the Master Cleanse this week. Ten days of syrup, lemon juice, and cayenne, supplemented by a quart of salt water first thing in the morning and some wonderful, cramp-inducing laxative tea. I tried and failed. To my credit, my generous friends B and Q assure me, I made it almost two days on the "lemonade." I like to think of myself as a ~fairly~ hardcore person in that I rarely do things half-assed, so I'm still feeling pretty lame for not being able to make it even two complete days on this cleanse. Some people do it for 40+ days. After something like 43 hours, though, I got absolution from the two people closest to the process, and dove into a rice cake. Exquisite. Then B made delicious tacos with brown rice, beans, red peppers, and his famous guac. I feel human today for the first time in two days. Most, but not all, of the online info I got about it exclaimed about how much energy the cleansers had. How light and clean they felt, how acute their thinking was, and so on and so forth. I felt like my calves were full of concrete, and I had almost no energy. My head felt like it was stuffed with hot, wet, cotton balls. Fully seed-of-doubted, I decided yesterday afternoon that I was going to the gym. After all, the master cleanse is supposed to be enhanced by exercise. You're supposed to exercise while doing it, though that sounds counter-intuitive. Anyway, I really really value my time on the treadmill. Saturday I ran fourteen miles and lifted weights. Add a hot shower, some soft clothes, and a good meal to that and I call it heaven. Yesterday, I went to the gym, hopped on the treadmill, and started to walk. I thought I'd be able to do at least a slow three miles, maybe at 5 (I usually run at about 6.5). I couldn't even run for a minute. I was immediately fatigued and felt like I was going to fall over. Then I tried to lift weights with approximately the same result. All I really wanted to do was stare into space somewhere warm. A bit teary-eyed, I fled the scene of my humiliation. That's when the absolution and rice cake episode began.

Thus endeth the fast. I completely suck. I AM the biggest loser. But I can think clearly again, and I think this might be a ten mile day.