Bubbly & Effervescent, yet Curiously Devoid of Sleep

It's official. I am now majoring in English and minoring in Growth & Structure of Cities at college. All the paperwork has been filled out and turned in. Potential classes for the next two years have fallen magically into place - I may never actually have to think about scheduling them again. (Ha, ha ha, says the small part of my brain that is both rational and awake.)

In Less Academic but Still Cool News: Kim Kindya, BMC alum and all-around cool person, has dug up from some musty trunk one of the plays from the first resurrection of the King Arthur play May Day tradition, which was sometime in the 1990's, and is sending it to me. Along, may I add, with another Robin Hood play which I shall give to the Archives, or barring that, to whomever I can find who is involved with the Robin Hood play this year. I have also taken care of Room Draw stuff. Therefore, stress is much less.

Now all I have to do is register for classes, write one short paper, find three maps of Moscow and put them into something resembling a project, do three sets of readings, research and write half of another (much) longer paper, and finish the Websushi website, the Pax Draconis Muck Website, the Unpopular Opinions website, and the Dungeons and Dragons one-shot that will most likely be played during Senior Week.

I am serious when I say that my stress level has gone down, however. Which worries me somewhat in and of itself.

Revelations

My first exposure to Issac Asimov came in the early 1990's, when I was about ten. In Cricket magazine, I read an article entitled "Good Doctor Gone?" about Asimov's death. I thought, "whoever this Asimov guy is, this person really liked him." And wondered why.

I tried to read the Foundation series in junior high school, and got bogged down somewhere in the page turn between the first and second chapter. I told myself that I hadn't really wanted to read that anyway, to make myself feel better. Secretly, I really wanted to figure out what all the fuss was about.

And then...then I discovered his short stories. Someone died, and left Hugo and Nebula Award Winner anthologies and massive amounts of Asimov short-story collections to our high school library.
Bless you, unknown donor.
The final year of high school, I read the Giants anthology, which he edited; Nightfall and Other Stories, I, Robot, Pebble in the Sky, the Magic collection, How to Enjoy Writing and, finally, Bicentennial Man. Over which I cried.

And I found out what Asimov was about. He told Story.

And so, when I found a little article in the new issue of Ansible that stated that Asimov had had AIDS, I went, "wait. That can't be right." And checked the source.

Harlan Ellison.

And checked the other source, a letter to Locus magazine from Janet Asimov.

Then, I believed it.
I still don't want to.

But I must admit that I think it good for the storyteller's own story to be told, at last.