I am stuck like a dim drop of blood hung in mid-air in Nightwatch's Gloom. Nothing changes. There's this great bit that I keep going back to from Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix: they found an immortality serum and administered it to test mice. Three hundred years later, one of the mice is still alive scurrying around his cage. The protagonist lifts the cage away from the mouse and it keeps tracing out the confines of the cage, pulling itself up imaginary bars. It is so used to the cage, so locked into its patterns that it cannot deviate: the bars are hardwired into its brain. We've been stuck in our transitional house for seven years-- the shit hole between rental and a real house. I am tired of pretending that will change; so I've picked up a Judo master's skill of taking a fall, so that when I trip over piles of crap or cables or toys, I don't break anything. Really, I shouldn't bother: that would be something new. For that reason alone, I should be cava...