To-day I bought a cocktail shaker and pimento stuffed olives. Yesterday I bought some vodka and dry vermouth. Guess what I'm going to make to-night. I can hardly wait--it's going to be difficult to make myself get some work done first.

It's one of those things that just fell together. I told myself I'd get whatever alcohol was on sale--Absolut vodka was just fifteen dollars, the vermouth was only four, and I got the cocktail shaker with a Target gift card from my birthday. The gods said I shall have vodka martinis, and so I shall. I just now ate one of the olives, which is something else that worked out well; it tasted great! Yes sir, life is good.

Class discussion to-day mainly revolved around John Locke. My fondest John Locke related memory comes from high school, when Ms. Moffet, my history teacher, had the students wear paper masks of seventeenth century British philosophers and debate one another. I wore the Mask of Locke. I had a miserable cold at the time, snivelling constantly, but somehow I argued Locke's points so well that a cute, quiet girl who'd barely spoken to me before was suddenly snuggling my arm. Oh, the mystery of woman. Or girl, in this case. Of course, I'm so dense about these things, I didn't realise this meant she was interested in me until it was too late.

This is a lamentable pattern with me. Girl likes Setsuled, Setsuled doesn't notice, girl moves on, Setsuled notices girl was interested in him, finds he's interested in her, but the opportunity is long gone. I remember as recently as six or seven years ago, a beautiful, wonderfully intelligent French girl gave me her number in a creative writing class. I lost the damn number! But worse than that--I forgot about the number! I mean, a smart, gorgeous girl with a thick French accent! What the hell more could I want? There were other girls like this, too--I could go on. The point is; stay in school.

Things are moving along well with my project. The history will be done on Friday, but don't expect to see it until I upload the comic in June. Although it starts off interesting, if I do say so myself, most of it's actually pretty dry and I'm afraid of turning people off early. Hopefully I'll hook 'em with the comic until they swoon and're wanting to be ravished with the driest volumes of history imaginable. Or maybe I won't upload the history at all. My sense of mischief smiles at that. It's weird when I enjoy being a devil to myself; I worked a third of a year on something no one might read! Ah HAHAHA! Well, it'll be incredibly useful to me at any rate.

Here's something else useful; Wikipedia has an index of articles on the history of western fashion. This, my friends, is a faerie-send, especially as I'll be working on character designs starting Friday.

I decided to eat breakfast at the mall to-day, where I had four breadsticks with marinara sauce from Pat & Oscars and a quadruple shot latte from Starbuck's ("This is the perfect latte!" said the barista. "Wow, thanks!" said me). I absolutely love marinara with espresso beverages. I don't know why it hasn't swept the nation.

I saw a poster for that Intelligent Design Ben Stein propaganda movie and seriously contemplated seeing it just to goof on it. But I simply couldn't justify spending ten dollars for that. I still haven't seen Iron Man, for gods' sakes. I suppose I need to get on that before my geekiness is audited.

Why are we supposed to think Ben Stein is a reliable authority on the beginnings of humanity? Because he was a speechwriter for Nixon? No, it's not even that. We all know it's because he had a small role in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Stein considers this viable capital, and the kicker is that a million nitwits agree.

My fake history is now at 21,957 words, more than twice what it was last time I checked. But, since last time I checked was April 4, that's not hugely impressive. Still, it's officially novella length now. I remember when I used to knock off novellas like crazy. Sure, none of them were very good. But life's a slinky on the staircase.

I finished early last night, which was why Second Life's grid being down was so annoying. So I drove to CVS, bought a chocolate bar, and watched part of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which, in a way, is my favourite Indiana Jones movie. I'm noticing a lot of reviews for the new one say it's either better than the second or the third, depending on which happens to be the reviewer's least favourite. I'm heartened to see that a lot more people than I thought consider The Last Crusade to be the weakest.

Damn, I wish the new one's screenplay was written by someone other than David Koepp. Damn, I'm still looking forward to it.

I downloaded the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom soundtrack yesterday and it suited the section I was working on very well. To-day, I begin the final section.

It's interesting to start the day with wine. Wine and coffee. At my mother's house, my coffee was in one room because my thermos apparently didn't suit the table decor, while my glass of wine was on the table, and my brain felt like a yoyo going from room to room. The flavours were certainly interesting together. Now my head feels like helium screeching out of a balloon.

Happy Mother's Day to the mothers out there. I got my mother a candle, which is pretty much what I usually get her as I'm not good at thinking of anything else, and she seems to like them. She, my sister, and I were trying to think of good Mother's Day movies over dinner. My sister thought of Psycho. I thought of Tess of the Storm Country. Afterwards, for some reason my sister wanted to watch a bunch of Disney cartoons on YouTube. We watched the one about Johnny Appleseed, the one about Johnny the lovesick fedora (lots of Johnnys in these), and Willie the Opera Singing Whale. There's something Disney wouldn't have the guts to do nowadays;



I can hardly believe I got caught up with everything last night. The history's moving into an especially savage, extremely strange phase. Having a map for the country with which the comic's primarily concerned has started more wheels spinning in my head, too.

And yet again, I'm extremely short on time to-day. I feel like my life is filled with clutter. But there was mapwork last night and to-day it's back to history writing.

Gods, I want a sandwich. A really good sandwich with great, fresh, soft bread. No, that's not sexual double entendre. I just want a damned sandwich. But a YouTube search for the word "sandwich" yielded this;



I don't know why I bother with oatmeal anymore. I'm always hungry again an hour later and it takes forever to eat. Maybe I have a black hole inside me? That might explain why I'm so impatient to-day. Or maybe it's the new brand of French Roast I tried.

How would a black hole inside me make me impatient? I don't know, except I'm pretty sure it has to do with a matter/antimatter reaction and my dilithium crystals have secretly been replaced by Folger's. Let's watch.

Actually I was drinking Peet's coffee to-day.

A couple days ago, when it was raining slightly and the clouds were overcast, I came out of class not particularly noticing all the people around me in grey hoodies, dark green jackets and mud coloured sweat pants until I spotted a Japanese girl in a bright pink dress with white fur fringe on the hem. Now, I suppose this girl might listen to the worst J-Pop in the world, but I have to love someone who treats every day like cosplay.

Some good map work last night. To-night's mostly about labelling maps and I finally have to settle on a name for a country whose name I've constantly been changing. It's the country where the comic begins, so I guess that's why I've been fusing over the name so much.

As usual these days, I'm short on time. I don't think I've ever posted the first episode of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei before, so I'll leave you with that;

Last night I wrote around 1,500 words on my project, finishing a big section, and now I'm about 90% done with the history. And I'm keeping to my schedule so far. I'll be done with the history on May 16 if I continue to stick to it. The schedule's relieved so much stress and has made me more productive. I was about halfway through what I was supposed to write last night when I started feeling like I wanted to quit, but I looked at how much I had left to do and convinced myself it wasn't too much, really. I couldn't do that before I had the schedule, and I probably would've quit early without it. What's more, when I finished at 1:30, I felt no guilt about pouring myself some absinthe and logging onto Second Life, fully an hour before I usually allow myself to. Sometimes parameters can set you free.

To-night, I work on maps, which I know I said I was done with, but I thought of a couple more things I need to do. I've been doodling the comic's main characters in class, and I can't wait to concentrate on them properly.

At the grocery store to-day, I saw that the cover of Time had half of Clinton's face and half of Obama's face with the caption, "There can only be one." Immediately I imagined a guy originally coming up with, "There can be only one," and thinking to himself, "I heard that somewhere--I can't remember where--but I'm pretty sure it was very solemn and powerful." And just before the thing was going to print some copy editor looked at it and said, "Are we really quoting the fucking Highlander?!"

I've been keeping two pennies balanced vertically on my desk next to me for about a week now. One of them seems to fall over more than the other. I hope this isn't something I'm going to get superstitious about.

Well, there's already been a lot to to-day, and it's only 4:37. I woke up at 1:45 to catch another geisha show in which Leslie, one of the people I play chess with in Second Life, was participating. Three geishas told three Japanese folk tales, one of which was about Yuki-Onna, which was very cool. But I had a hard time concentrating without breakfast and coffee.

Then, I discovered the final episode of Zoku Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei had finally been subtitled by a funsub group called Volans, who'd done the previous five or so episodes as well. Apparently, although the show is extremely popular, few groups want to tackle the especially difficult job of translating it. Aside from the volumes of throwaway information written in the background on blackboards and signs, there's also a lot of idiosyncratically Japanese dialogue.

The episode was pretty good. I'd post it, but of course it's not on YouTube yet. However, its opening and ending themes are, albeit without subtitles, and I want you to dig this ending theme which is an extremely wonderful (if inexplicable) homage to Hellboy done in the style of Mike Mignola's comics--not in the style of the animated movies. Remember how I was pointing out the average anime series looks better than the Hellboy animated movies? Well, behold my correctness. This is how it's done;



The mead was pretty good last night. I drank the entire bottle, heating most of it on the stove and steeping in it the spices it came with (cinnamon and orange fragments among other things). It gave me a bit of a stomach ache, as I find weak alcohol often does (it was only 11% alcohol). But tasted wonderful, a lot like hot apple cider, which, actually, also often gives me a stomach ache.

Short on time to-day again but this time it's because of class.

I dreamt last night that I lived in a shopping mall that'd been converted into a hotel. It kind of reminded me of the Bradbury in Blade Runner except smaller and with drooping moss. At the beginning of the dream, I was just becoming aware of the other tenants being in a panic and I looked out the window to see that the series of narrow hills beside the mall were on fire. And somehow, the fire led to flooding. The main thoroughfare of the mall was soon filled with ten feet of water. There were a couple women in Victorian clothes having a tea party on a raft; I'm pretty sure Robyn was one of the women, so I'm presuming Owl was the other.

I wanted to get pictures of everything but there was no film in my camera. So I swam down to the floor where I found a completely dry, red and gold hotel lobby. I was going to drive to the desert to get film, but I realised I forgot one of my bags in my room. I woke up while I was on my way back to get it.

I've been so amused by the Miley Cyrus Annie Lebowitz photo controversy (the Onion headline puts it best; "Miley Cyrus Apologises for Breasts") that I actually checked out a Hannah Montana video on YouTube.

So, for those keeping score, this



is sexual while this



is clearly not.

Short on time to-day, but I wrote this sonnet while eating my oatmeal;

Blood for Earth

Gave me your heart in a ticking parcel
Hoped I would take it inland and bury
It deep in a sour sump or rancid well
My inland empire where soil spriggans lie
Laughing like songs slurred on sun melted tape
Black acid dirt holding red pump with waste
And you could be cool as the slow escape
Of the moon to the stars in ink cold space
Or the muffled flight of whale bodies in
Heavy pushed dark blue bottom depth waters
But your dear flesh must scrape yet on earth when
You drift for dreams your hot heart still gathers
Your supposed naturally cool state
Is pointe pose on a roiling magma plate

There sure are getting to be a lot of cats around here. The white one I mentioned several weeks ago finally let me pet him--he turned out to be a neighbour's cat, who told me a bit about him, but I've forgotten his name. Yesterday there was a grey, striped cat in the backyard, chewing on some flowers, and to-day a calico with collar trotted across the porch while I was making coffee. It's the first time I've seen a cat with a collar in a long time.

I watched the new Code Geass episode to-day, which wasn't bad really, but only in the world of anime could you have one episode involving characters fighting against each other in a bitter insurgency war, and in the very next episode feature the same characters in a screwball comedy plot involving a giant pizza. Code Geass really is a Saturday morning cartoon show for adults. This sure is a brave new world.

I want to respond to something in Caitlin's blog, which practically seems like a reply to my own post about "CONCERNING ATTRITION AND SEVERANCE";

And speaking of Sirenia Digest #29, my thanks to scarletboi for the exchange yesterday on "Concerning Attrition and Severance." One of my greatest fears about letting people read the piece was that it would be misinterpreted as mere "torture porn," that they would miss the Cosmicism that is critical to understanding the story's intent. He wrote, "I'm glad you chose to share it. It was graphic and horrific (in the original meaning) and brutal. But it was also beautifully written and deeply involving. To be honest, I probably shouldn't have read it until my current work is finished, because I have a feeling it's going to affect the mood of it...I understand the worry. The narration is indifferent enough to be almost clinical, academic. If it took more glee in the proceedings it might edge toward the torture-porn of Saw or Hostel. But I think it came across more elegantly than that, and I hope other readers pick up on the cues as well." Too which I can only add — me, too.

I confess I did misinterpret the story about the woman mutilating another woman for an audience, with special attention to nipples and vagina, as "torture porn". While I did think the language was beautiful, as usual for Caitlin, I did miss the flashing elegance cues that would elevate the story above the Hostel movies* in some particular way. I made the amateur mistake of appreciating it as a psychological profile of someone who's driven to torture people because of her insecurities, instead of the groovy vision of the cosmos it was apparently meant to be. Maybe I ought to have remembered that the "white woman" was also Jack the Ripper and Elizabeth Bathory, both of whom, I am sure, were perfectly elegant and sophisticated individuals. For my next faux pas, I'll be referring the Corleone family as gangsters.

*I'm a fan of the Hostel movies, remember. Here's my review of Hostel: Part II.

My arms are tired. Why don't the grocery stores open more check stands this time of night? It was like waiting for concert tickets while holding a box of diced onions, a can of pesto, two microwave dinners, a bag of tortillas, a bag of bagels, and a carton of blueberry juice. Except there were no tickets at the end.

Seven hundred words to-day on the project, plus research on walruses and taiga. One of the most interesting things I've stumbled across in research for this thing is Yde Girl. Tell me this image doesn't put the awful distance of centuries under you like an alien glacier;



Last night I came up with a detailed schedule for the month of May. I know what I'm going to be doing every single day of this month, and if I stick to the plan, I'll have finished the first chapter of comic on June 1st. I may wait a week or two before uploading it, though. After Boschen and Nesuko, it seems to me that being one chapter ahead at all times would probably be wise.

I'm debating whether or not to have mithril in my universe. A lot of other fantasy worlds have it since the Tolkien Estate didn't trademark it.

I'm finding this morning afternoon that YouTube has quite a wealth of animals killing animals videos. Here are two of the best I saw while eating my oatmeal;

Giant octopus versus shark;


Lions versus hippo at night, under the sinister spell of Jeremy Irons' voice;

There was a dead rabbit next to my car last night. He didn't look like he'd been run over--his body was perfectly intact, as though he'd just decided to die next to my car. My grandmother says when she went out to-day, it'd been moved to under my car. When I went out later, it was gone. I hope this isn't some kind of omen.

I only wrote just over 600 words on my project last night, but I came to the end of a big section. It won't be long before all is in readiness. Afterwards, I read Caitlin's new Sirenia Digest. The second story, "CONCERNING ATTRITION AND SEVERANCE", was maybe the better of the two, but they were both pretty good. "CONCERNING ATTRITION AND SEVERANCE" was apparently based on some Second Life rp, which is perhaps why its carefree bloodlust reminded me so distinctly of Doom and Quake. It occurs to me that people who were never particularly into the classic first person shooters are just now getting into the kind of rampage that a lot of us have enjoyed for so long. The vignette also reminded me that I want to buy a copy of Hostel part II, with which it has some things in common. In addition to the fact that both works could quite obviously be referred to as "torture porn", the most interesting aspect of both pieces is in the exploration of torturer psychology. "CONCERNING ATTRITION AND SEVERANCE" conveys a pathetically egotistical woman, who apparently commits acts of violence entirely because it's the only way she feels she can be taken seriously.

The first story, "Flotsam" was very pretty, with a very beautifully described siren, the kind that lives underwater. I tend to picture them as bird women on islands, but six of one, half dozen of the other, as they say. Her hair was especially beautifully rendered.

Some time spent in Second Life last night. I finally met one of Natalie's sculptures in New Babbage;


"Listen. Do you want to know a secret?"


He was a very gentle ride for Ms. Tairov.

I met up with Dragoness later and she showed me a sim called, I think, Far Away that a friend of hers discovered. I took lots of pictures; the place was wonderfully eerie;


Something about this train made either Toubanua, God, Satan, the Train God, or the Train Satan, very happy.


Table of mysterious knickknacks. The hat gives away headphones and sticks.


Dragoness sitting across from Toubanua at another table.


. . . and Toubanua sitting across from Dragoness.


I think these were glasses of absinthe in the cupboard. Toubanua wants one, I can tell.



A dragonfly's perspective on Dragoness.



Comparing findings.


A dragonfly on Dragoness.

Short on time now. More after class . . .

I didn't actually get a whole lot of work done last night. Being ahead of schedule made me feel like knocking off early and having some fun! So I, er, signed onto Second Life and sorted my inventory. Here's Toubanua as a Japanese school girl;



Then I talked to Dragoness on the phone and she analysed my Marilyn Monroe on a cruise ship dream from Sunday. Let's see what she makes of to-day's;

On a ship again, this time a tanker that'd been converted into a cruise ship. It was night, but the sky was cloudless and the sea was calm. All of the passengers were beautiful teenage girls in white bedclothes who were soon running and screaming through the ship's passageways as some mysterious terror began killing them off, one by one, and also somehow flooded deck after deck. I got up on deck with some girls who were fleeing, and we looked desperately about for some crewmen who could help. There was no illumination on deck; all the lights were off, and I was a little worried about tripping over equipment or running afoul of the beast. But we seemed to be in New York Harbour, and the lights of the buildings surrounded us.

We saw Robert Englund at a vending machine, in a well lit area just under the deck, looking pretty much as he did in the clips from Zombie Strippers I saw on Roeper and Phillips*. He was no help; he just laughed at us. But while we were trying to talk to him, the monster had apparently shown up on deck and was already being restrained by the captain and his men. I had this impression of the captain being a really great man. He looked a little like Joel Hodgson in a thick white turtleneck sweater. The monster turned out to be a giant tarantula and he shot it dead.


*Yes, I'm calling it that already. I must say, though, Michael Phillips is easily the best of all the guest critics and I'm glad they seem to've settled on him.