Ha ha ha haaaaa.

My full take on book royalties throughout 2003, after taxes (I learned yesterday), is around $7,000. That's from both books, including the one that hit the shelves that year, and which I obsessed and cried over for most of the previous year.

Ayyyyyyep. I'd say "guess what I'm never doing again" but you already knew this (as did I).

Also, am getting the crap beaten out of me by taxes this year, according to TurboTax. Welllll into four digits, beyond my withholdings; ouch. Haven't filed yet, and wondering if I can save a couple grand by not claiming to have been self-employed as a technical writer (and thus avoiding the "self-employment tax"; I didn't even notice that last year, but apparently I paid it anyway). I didn't even try to write anything in 2003, but merely collected royalties from things I wrote in 2002. (I'd still claim those; that's a completely separate tax.)

i have to PAINT at a RAPID PACE

SciFi.com sez that Keanu Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly. And it will be animated, a la Waking Life. This is the first PKD novel I read (IIRC it's his latter-career, "aw jesus, i kind of overdid it with the drugs, didn't i" confessional, before he let go completely with Valis and beyond), and if Keanu can be directed to show emotion, this might actually be good.

Ouch

The WBUR lady just speakoed "The Secret Service" as "The Secret Police"