I'm popping in to say hello to everyone and to officially announce that I'm going AWOL, taking an official leave of absence from dA until next month.

All the hell that I went through with my little machine is now thankfully and happily OVER. Everything is back up to snuff, running the way it should, I can be productive again after my absence here.

A big FUCK YOU is in order to all you asshole virus, adware and spyware developers. You ain't gonna get the best of me, you motherfuckers. Don't quit your day job.

As you know, I'm moving at the end of this month. Packing and cleaning up is taking up all of my time. I will be popping in here and there to poke around, look at deviations, respond to a few messages, and maybe even post a couple photographs from a recent recon trip in the name of that also doubled (as I knew it somehow would) as the best medicine to help me get over this fucking cold/flu/sinus infection/whatever this is that is so fucking PERSISTENT. My ribs have been bruised up pretty damn good from all the coughing thanks to this fucking thing. Aside from that and the cough lingering as well as some head congestion, I can finally say that yes, I AM on the road to recovery.

Until the next jerk shows up to work sick and I catch it.

If you're a fan of Information Society, the DVD of the Philadelphia show that took place back in January 2008 is going to finally be released on October 20th! [link] and I were at this show; in the front row, and maybe, just maybe you'll be able to catch a glimpse or two of us.

I can't wait to order mine. Gonna wait till after the move, though.

I will see you all in my office for your meds, lobotomies and bloodshed next month!

Much love, nightmares and tons of entrails,

Doc D

I'm holding it up high and waving it loud. I surrender. This afternoon was the cherry on the icing on the cake of all of this. I seriously can't take any more right now.

PC-wise things are going good. , I seriously cannot thank you enough for staying up late with me last night hooking me up. I love you, woman. I know you know how much this means to me and I want you to know I've got it safe and sound on a CD. And once I get an external hard drive, you bet it's going STRAIGHT on there and I am keeping my promise.

Now for the clincher. I may have escaped every artist, every computer user's worst nightmare. I'm still not 100% certain yet.

I was going to go into The Asylum today and to start getting my life back on track. I needed a couple Asylum goodness things from one of the CDs I burned before I wiped my drive and putting that back on here got me sidetracked into thinking, 'While I'm at it, lemme get my art and my photos back on here as well.'

EVERY disc I put in the drive refused to copy and said the files were corrupted. I struggled, I tried, I fought with it, I don't even want to go into it. I sat here for two hours literally, LITERALLY crying REAL fucking tears, my heart ripped out of my chest, panicking, CRYING, tears streaming down my face, because nearly every single solitary work from the last two years that never got backed up was being recognized as corrupted.

My mother, like me if the tables were turned, REFUSED to accept that this was so and suggested I try one of the discs in her computer.

IT WORKED. NOTHING (so far) is corrupted.

If I get away from this unscathed without any loss of any of my work or my photos, not only will I be thanking God above a million times over but I'm heeding the warning BIG TIME. I cannot take this kind of heartbreak, even though I may walk away from this okay; I cannot take going through this again. It's TOO much.

I still can't settle down. I still can't relax. I'm over-tired, still sick with this cold and a sinus infection that refuses to respond to the antibiotics I was prescribed last week, still stuck with fucking laryngitis, still coughing my fucking lungs out. I've had ENOUGH. I mean it. Fucking ENOUGH.

I'm taking a temporary absence from my account here. Everything is so fucked up right now and I need to get it straightened out before I can come back to play. I need to rest so I can get over this fucking illness. I need to sleep. I need the time to get all my stuff back on here. I need to start packing cuz I'm moving in a month. I need to rest, relax, recoup and get better so I can hopefully break up the workload monotony with a little fun time in a Happy place soon. I need to make things normal again.

I'll be at The Asylum regularly. But until I've got things back in order around here, I'm going to be away from this account and my absence from is going to be extended even longer. I'm so not happy about this but I've no other choice right now.

Hopefully I won't be gone too long.

Tons of entrails,

Doc D

Not only am I still sick, but now my computer is sick.

It's my fault it happened; I was searching around for something (no, not porn! ) that had the potential to make this happen, and it did. My main machine got bogged down with viruses that Norton 360 FAILED to detect. I tried several other virus programs and they were able to detect and remove many of the threats, but after fighting with it for a full day I finally said fuck it and just wiped the hard drive clean and reinstalled Windows.

All was going fine and dandy until I started to put all my programs back on the computer to find that a lot of my programs and some of my TV shows are corrupted on the discs I backed them up on. The TV shows I can replace. What got under my skin is that I lost my copy of Photoshop CS3.

So I got this brilliant idea to try to get it again. Now I'm right back to square one with viruses on my system AGAIN and now I have to go through all this mess to repair my machine AGAIN.

Thankfully I DO still have Photoshop 7.

I don't know if the discs my art and ALLLLLL my photographs are on are corrupted as well or not. I don't think I could take it too well if they are.

I know there's nothing anyone can do to help. I'm just literally on the verge of tears in a sense here. I just want this mess straightened out, my computer safe, sound and healthy again, and my butt back on dA where it belongs.

See you when this is hopefully nothing but a bad memory,

Dumbass Doctor Daemon

Infection Control has cleared me to return to work today. Thank God. I don't think I could take another day staying home.

My H1N1 test from the State still hasn't come back yet, but I guess it's result doesn't matter now. I'm down to just a pesky sinus infection that's under control with antibiotics and my neti pot. Neti pot = . In about another week, I should be relatively good as new.

A couple good things came out of me being sick and for that I'm grateful. It allowed me the time to slow down, sleep, eat, put myself first and distorted my dreams in my naps. Distorted dreams can be a very good thing. I usually have strange dreams anyway and I usually dismiss them because they're soon forgotten once I've reached full coherence.

I was already started to feel inspiration and the desire to rekindle writing after not having done it for 20 years through my illness once I read ~Phosphoratus's most recent story. I took a nap right after reading his story and something in my mind must never have gone to rest like my body did. I shot up out of my nap from the stunningly realistic macabre dream I had and knew that had to be my starting point. Fuck the flu, fuck the aches, fuck being tired- Determination: 1 Flu: 0 I HAD to write.

I like to think I did a pretty good job at it for the the first time in all these years. I'm also wildly excited that this now brings a new weapon to Dr. Daemon's arsenal of psychotic medical madness. I feel like I can bring the character more to life now, in new, deeper ways when the ways of photomanipulation fail me.

So I've done it, and I'd like to edit a bit more, but for the meantime- The first entry into the experiments, autopsies and medical records of Dr. Daemon is complete. You can read what happens when Dr. Daemon gives you The Pill here. I've enabled critiques on the piece because I really would like to get as much input as possible on my strengths and weaknesses in writing. It'll help me tons to get feedback from others not only for the continuation of this series, but also for when I take up the task of writing of the non-fiction book about Happyland next year.

September is coming to a close, and so is =Dark-Arts-Asylum's Psychotic September Challenge! You have only 5 more days to complete your entries and get them in! The details of the contest can be found in The Asylum's journal here.

A new nurse has come on the staffing board and will be taking up residency in the soon to be opened Counseling Center at The Asylum. Nurse Rosalie ( ) has brought her expertise and her stickahs to The Asylum and is getting herself situated in her new center. All hell is going to break loose once the Counseling Center is open, I just know it.

Tons of entrails,

Dr. Daemon

As promised, I got the results from the lab about my H1N1 test super fast. The results came back negative.

My second test now gets sent to the State for further testing just in case it might be a false negative.

The test for H1N1 SUCKS. It's certainly not for the squeamish.

Two cultures were taken with a long, hard swab at the end of a eerily bent wire that gets inserted into your nostril and down into your throat. Each nostril got the torture treatment, and you're not done until you start gagging.

My negative result still doesn't clear me to return to work right away. Because I'm still very symptomatic, Infection Control doesn't foresee me being cleared to return to work until Friday.

is going to be unattended until I'm feeling well enough. I need to lay down again soon cuz the aching with this damn cold/flu/whatever is HORRIBLE. I'll update the journal there to reflect this later on if *MichelleLynn725 doesn't get to it first.

I saw 's newest deviation drawn from one of my Norwich photos in my devwatch.

Thank you for this, Phossi. You made me forget how crappy I feel right now.

Go show this man some love! His works are amazing!!!

Signing off.