Who goes there?

Every morning, one of my fiction projects separates itself from the pack and lodges itself in the foreground of my waking brain, like an attention-starved child performing its heart out for even a sideways glance by the parent. This morning, as I struggled out of bed, my graphic novel project jumped in front of me, showing off new moves and other razzle-dazzle that it learned after I relegated it back to some cerebral back bench as I worked on my current proto-novel.

And so, the graphic novel (which I'll call Miyoko for brevity sake) came bounding back, offering new details of the introduction to the main character and her life. Miyoko is a fun little entity that I've been enjoying fleshing out, even though I can't draw anything beyond a shaky stick figure.

Note to self: Get books on writing for graphic novels.

Miyoko follows me around all morning, showing off trick after treat which prompts to me write down whatever she's telling me in my journal. In full view of my wife, Miyoko follows me into the shower, where I get beaned with a revelation.

Every once in a while, Miyoko hits a patch of ice while explaining something to me. She starts to stutter and fade out, unsure of her abilities (It's a common trait with my embryonic works: if they start to falter in justifying their own existence in perfect clarity, they start to fade out, too). Silently, I tell Miyoko in the middle of shampoo, rinse and repeat that maybe she should start a web log herself to flesh out what she's thinking, what her motivation is.

And that's where the aforementioned revelation beans me like a crystal bullet in my forehead, waking me up from the haze-chat I've had with Miyoko. The water battered my scalp as I shift back into reality. Through the steamy shower doors, I could make out my bathroom sink and my wife preening herself into a better state of perfection with her small army of makeup and other alchemy. The water, coming full force out of the nozzle, gains weight and force as I sober up from my Miyoko time.

A blog for fictional characters? Publicity stunt? Waste of energy and time?

And just how is creating Miyoko's fictional entries different from writing up this web blog?

Yes, Miyoko doesn't exist, but let's face it, you aren't reading about the true me here either. Not to be mean-spirited, but I'm not revealing my true identity here. I'm not dropping my name or true address, either (however people who have read every entry to this site could, in theory, track me down). Sci-fi cleverpants William Gibson recently surmised that when you take on a blog, you more or less create a media identity. True, you do create a Web-friendly version of yourself, but no less than what you do in real life sans Internet. I mean, you're not about to present all your faults, your credit card number and any other embarrassing or personal data when you go into work tomorrow, are you? No, you tell your co-workers the banal things about your life, keeping the juicy carnal things in the safe-deposit box of your brain. I only present bits and pieces about me, filled with honest thoughts but edited details. It's my socially acceptable avatar.

Blogs about yourself are one thing, albeit a filtered version of what you are going to put on the Web, honed by some unconscious or conscious form of editing. Creating some else's life as an ongoing writing project is something else, something I'm intrigued by.

Depressing thought: What if the fake blog of the fake person is more interesting than my own?

Hypothetical question: Let's say you are against the death penalty, thinking that it's barbaric and does kill innocent people. You also have a friend who is a hardened anti-death penalty zealot, far more extreme than you are. Here's the deal: He comes to you 24 hours before someone about to be executed with evidence that completely clears the person on death row, but he deliberately wants to sit on the evidence until after the person is executed in order to expose the system as corrupt.

Would you go along with it, knowing that the death penalty would be shut down after the scandalous information is released, and thus sparing other people from execution; or would you try to get the prisoner freed, thus keeping the system in place, but giving it minor shock for the close call?

Check your calendars

According to the British press, the ground war is sent to start March 17, after an air attack beginning March 13, which is tomorrow. It's all a bit surreal since the British may not join in on Team Bush's Iraq folly.

I write this because I'm utterly gobsmacked (as the Brits would say) over the gravity of Tony Blair's forced re-introduction to the gravity of British public opinion, which is resoundingly against war in Iraq in the current condition.

I also write this because the unthinkable is happening. Our flight to Europe at the end of the month is being tinkered with. The flight there is fine, but the route on the way back has been altered. Apparently, we have to make an extra stop in Minneapolis so the plane can be readied for military co-option. In some airline rulebook somewhere, there's a dictum that states the U.S. armed forces can draft civilian airliners into a quasi-military role, using the carriers to ship people and supplies.

A tingling sensation in my brain (a kind of Spider Sense for bad news) tells me this isn't going to be the first "correction" that's coming to our travels, and something in my queasy stomach is placing 5-to-1 odds that we aren't going, period.

Today's Word...

...is still seeking entries for the word "Drawer." I'm done my bit for king and country, but I still feel the need for some quick stream-of-consciousness defining. So, I'm pulling a random word out of the dictionary and using my handy-dandy nearby wall clock as a timer. It's a bit of an honors system here, so we have to trust that I'm being honest.

My Word: Dormant

A latent talent hidden away, deep inside and suppressed by all those taunts in school and school coaches trying to make you show you are worth something through sports, and not some namby-pamby poetry magazine.

Yowch! Talk about issues.

I hated high school. There...the cat's out of the bag.