FUCK THIS SHIT (in a dull, weary, and defeated tone)
I have been advised on the comments board to be more in touch with my feminine side. Well hell. How many sides are required on this rolling penny of damnation? Mark the to-do list and the task agenda. My feminine side, my feline side, my avian side, my canine side, my paranoia, extreme narcissism, megalomania, masochism, and sundry phobias, and then at least ninety minutes in the lizard brain, unless that’s covered by watching TV. Damn it all, the entire drift of my fiction for at least the last decade should have clearly demonstrated my growing disgust at my human side. Or maybe it’s time to just shut the fuck up. Or retreat into my study with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol.

(If you don’t hear a gunshot in the first hour, though, don’t come a knocking. After more than a half a century, I may actually be happy, or quiet. Also I’m fairly sure an antique .38 cap and ball, double load, Navy Colt can pump a ball through the kind of glue and sawdust doors they have round here. And if that doesn’t work I’ll go for the .45 1911 standard auto.)

The secret word is Death

NOW SHALL WE CONSIDER HEDY LAMARR?
From HCBeck...
"Any girl can be glamorous," Hedy Lamarr once said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid." The film star belied her own apothegm by hiding a brilliant, inventive mind beneath her photogenic exterior. In 1942, at the height of her Hollywood career, she patented a frequency-switching system for torpedo guidance that was two decades ahead of its time. Read more...
http://www.inventions.org/culture/female/lamarr.html

CRYPTIQUE -- The crow is slow. Where is the end of this tether?