Dear me, dear heart, dear world: I need drugs.

Entertaining names attached to spam emails I have gotten recently:

Pursuable I. Crescents
Trappable R. High
Entity E. Present
Constantine C. Fogy
Willamette Q. Incarnation
Witold Rudnicki
Charalampos Hutson
Foregoing U. Retraced
Beavis Charland
Jesus Howard
Spookiest E. Flunky
Inhumanely S. Captive
Histogram M. Remotest
Hannibal Flannery

Who are the people who come up with these things? Do they get paid for this job alone? They're all selling either erectile dysfunction drugs or OEM software. If the names are random words from the dictionary, what's with the unequal proportion of descriptive words? Inhumanely? Remotest? Pursuable? Oh, the perpetual and undying hilarity of it all! (I'd like to get a spam from "Undying L. Hilarity.")

Here is a picture of the sling thing I have to wear after my surgery, which is the day after tomorrow. It's been scheduled, then rescheduled, then rescheduled again. Current status: I'm to arrive at the hospital on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. This is better than what they told me last time, which was that the surgery would be at 2:30 p.m., thus increasing exponentially the likelihood of me turning into a batshit stark raving lunatic in the morning before surgery because I'm not allowed to eat after midnight on Wednesday. (Not feeding a hungry J. Star is like not feeding a hungry wolverine. It's not an indoor sport for the faint-of-heart.) This sling, to me, looks like some undersea creature that was cast onto the shores by unforgiving waves, and lies there, helpless, waiting to either be eaten or to be flung back into the nourishing waters. It hugs me like a Portuguese man-o-war clinging to a fish, wrapping its tentacles around me and straightjacketing my wounded limb out of all movement. I cannot wait until the moment I awake from a morphine-sweetened slumber on Thursday with it holding me like a lover, cradling and comforting me.

(*ahem, *thpht! Hardly!)

Here is a picture I took last night.
I don't like how shiny and almost gooey the middle part of the flower looks, but I like the rest of it. It's quite a dramatic-looking plant, with its dark-red petals with the white tips. I have no idea what it is. I bought it just to take a picture of it.

Ruby has been returned to her other foster-parent, who will be looking after her while I recover. Maybe she'll find a home while I'm under the weather.

Is anyone really over the weather? I mean, you can't really get on top of it. Short of flying in a plane. And even then.

All right, someone stop me.