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Sorry I haven't posted here for a while. All my thoughts have been frivolous and random... well, not really, but I haven't had the energy to make coherent essays out of the non-frivolous and non-random thoughts. Instead I've been writing ficlets and playing with my graphics tablet, as those of you who've seen my devART Gallery or keep up with my LJ already know.

The disciplined part of my brain (wherever it is) is currently attempting to come up with a half-hour message to give to a women's Bible study group this Thursday morning: they're doing a series on the Fruit of the Spirit and I picked "Love". Which you'd think would be an easy topic -- lots of material to work with, all kinds of possible angles -- only it isn't. Or at least, I don't feel as though it's coming together very well, either in my mind or on paper. Sigh. Brethren (and sisters), pray for us.

In addition to all that, I had a bit of an unsettling experience today. For the past year I've noticed a little bump on my arm -- I wouldn't call it a mole, as it isn't dark at all, just a smooth, shiny raised nodule on the skin. And it has a blood spot in it that never seems to quite heal. So I made an appointment to have the doctor look at it.

He hummed and hawed over it a bit, and finally said it was unlikely that I'd have a basal cell carcinoma (a kind of skin cancer) at my young age, but that it is unusual to have something like that for a whole year and it not heal. So he decided to do a punch biopsy and send it away for analysis, just in case. While I tried very hard not to watch, he froze my arm and carved a 4mm-diameter circular chunk out of it. It didn't hurt (at least, not after the freezing kicked in) but the whole process made me feel rather queasy. Then he sutured it and stuck a patch over it, and told me to come back in a week to have the stitch taken out and (hopefully) find out the biopsy results.

It's probably nothing. Like the doctor said, I'm young, and I've never been a sun-worshipper. And even if the lesion really did turn out to be cancerous, I understand that skin cancer is the most treatable form of the disease and it's very unlikely to become a serious issue. But an experience like that does tend to make one feel rather wobbly.

I'm also tired, and feeling rather "thin and stretched", to borrow a phrase. Maybe I'm coming down with something. I hope not.

Oh, good...

After seeing this several times on my Friendslist, I was beginning to wonder if Flannery O'Connor was the only possible result on this quiz. But apparently not:

( And I am not displeased )

The horror! The horror!

Sometimes cover versions are as good as the original (i.e. Jesse Cook's lovely, Spanish-guitar version of "Fall At Your Feet", or george's remake of "Under The Milky Way"). Sometimes they are better (Aztec Camera's brilliant acoustic take on Van Halen's "Jump", ). And sometimes they make you want to pound your fists on the floor and cry "No! No! Why did you have to ruin that song?"

I don't have anything against No Doubt, honestly. I mean, I know nothing about them. None of their past singles have succeeded in annoying me (mind you, they didn't thrill me either). And I figure, if they like Talk Talk they must have some sort of musical taste. I wasn't even against the idea of them doing a cover version of "It's My Life". I was quite curious about it, in fact, so I listened to it today.

Unfortunately, all I can say right now is "agggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!" I feel like I need to listen to the original Talk Talk version again, preferably multiple times, to wash Gwen Stefani's screechy voice and that horribly flat instrumentation out of my ears. The best thing about it was the bass line -- and that was basically the same as the original version. Oh, please, please, people who like this song and have not heard the original, go listen to Talk Talk instead, and do yourself a very great favour. The real version has bird cries! And trumpeting elephants! But best of all, it has Mark Hollis, whose voice is by no means conventional, but who knows how to put actual emotion into a song instead of just whining it.

*sticks pinky fingers in ears and twists them around*

*deletes MP3 from playlist*

*feels better*

For those interested in such things...

Thanks to the lovely and talented Jemima, my blog now has its own RSS feed. Hurrah!

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Thanks to the lovely and talented Jemima, this blog now has its own RSS feed. So if you're one of the cool kids on the cyberblock, you'll know what to do with that. Or at least I hope you will, 'cos I sure don't. :)