Twilight Express available as free Word document

I've received a few requests for the entire Twilight Express story in a Word document. If you're tired of trying to read the story backwards, drop me an e-mail and I'll send you a copy at no charge. I have it saved in .rtf format so it shouldn't really matter what sort of computer you have. (Plus, it's the final final, so it's actually better than the version published here on the blog - at least in my opinion it is)

To send me an e-mail, click on VIEW MY COMPLETE FILE and hit E-mail.

The reason I'm not putting the e-mail here is that those nasty bots that are scanning the Net looking for innocent e-mail addresses will "harvest" it - and then I'll begin receiving buckets of spam.

Happy birthday Shinichi Chiba

One of my favorite actors turns 68 today (Jan 23). Although he seems to be most famous for his Street Fighter series of films, I personally liked him best in the Kinji Fukasaku films Yagyu Clan Conspiracy and Deadly Battle in Hiroshima.

Here's a still from the latter, in which he plays the wonderfully dressed psychopath Otomo:

A meaningful haircut?

After letting my hair grow for several months, I finally got sufficiently fed up to go out and get it cut last weekend. It's pretty short - sort of a cross between a pixie cut and a bedhead. Lots of bangs, some height on the top.

I was reading a Japanese newspaper today and noticed a blurb about a recently divorced actress cutting her hair short. Seems that, in Japan, a short haircut can signify a broken heart. Hope I'm not sending mixed signals. I only cut it because it was a mess, especially after an hour of kung fu class.

The story's finished so the blog is changing

When I first began writing Twilight Express, it was my second blog. I was maintaining another which had evolved from an initial search for a missing ex-boyfriend to a more general type of blogging.

Nowadays, I'm not really searching for the ex any more, although I still wonder about the mysterious last letter I got from him (I confess to a some slight OCD tendencies, but they're actually an advantage if you're a proofreader). So I thought what the hell, consolidate into one blog.

So ... any visitors here will have their choice of reading parts of, or the entire Twilight Express, or reading about goings-on with me: a writer, counselor/idealist, lover of convertibles, cats and Japanese cinema. I'm sure everyone has guessed I work as a writer, but I'm not totally boring.

I also am a keen student of Shaolin Kung Fu: a white belt with all of 10 hours' classes so far, so I still look like a retard during about half the class. But my stances are coming along.

My other interests are in my profile.

Any GTA Liberty City Stories experts out there?

As much as I like playing Grand Theft Auto, one thing that annoys me about the Liberty City Stories game is that there doesn't seem to be a Fix Your Car cheat. So every time I bang up my vehicle, I have to find the Pay and Spray or get another vehicle.

Has anyone discovered a way around this? I play the PS2 version.