Yester-day, Caitlin uploaded the latest chapter I drew of The Adventures of Nar'eth to Nebari.net (for those of you who're wondering, Leh'agvoi is my Nebari name. Or perhaps Setsuled is the alias, hmmm!).

I also did a sloppy new page of Doll Merchant. But sloppy is sexy, ne?

I also wrote an awful lot yesterday. I hurt my hand. But then, my hand seems to get cramps awful easy lately. Before it was only when I was playing Soul Calibur 2, but now it strikes even when I'm playing Morrowind or, like I said, when I'm writing. I've chosen to call it writer's cramp, while Tim has chosen to call it carpal tunnel syndrome.

My horoscope told me to use to-day for having fun as I'm likely to be good for nothing this day. I think I'll take its advice very seriously. I think I'll buy some glue for my plastic Enterprise -D model . . .

When I first turned the computer on this morning, for some reason the keyboard wasn't working. I posted on a friend's journal by copying and pasting one letter at a time from a txt file. I'm glad everything worked again when I restarted the computer . . .

I walked very quickly last night back from Tim's house. It usually takes me an hour to walk from there to here, but last night I did it in forty minutes. Five minutes before the movie started that I wanted to tape. It was a breathless, exciting victory.

To-day, I definitely vow to get lots of stuff done. After I've eaten waffles.

You know, I'm really filled with a lot of energy to-day. I think I might get a lot of things done. Laundry amongst those things.

I'll probably stop only to watch to-night's Christmas episode of Justice League.

My eyes hurt.

Waffles . . .

FACT: I do not enjoy filling out insurance forms.

But enough of that.

Downtown yester-day, I saw a gorgeous 7-foot tall girl with orange hair, an old woman with a theraputic walking staff, and a Japanese business man who'd contrived a little game wherein he stood in a corner with his head down, pushing two toothpicks around with the tip of his umbrella.

I managed to buy two whole Christmas presents while I was there.

I'm on my way, yeah.

Lucky the cat tried to sleep with me last night but he's huge and did not fit comfortably on the bed. Still, he loves that spot and didn't give up until around 5am, when I awoke to hear him scratching at the door.

But even now, he is happily sprawled on the bed . . .

Okay, okay! Frell this sluggishness! I'm gonna get all sorts of things done to-day, oh, just you watch!

In fact, I already stayed up until the wee hours writing, and now here I am, awakened bright and early at 11:30! Time. To. Get. It. ON! HUAH!

I think I'll also go look for the new issue of 1602 . . .

This computer is starting to annoy me again. It's making some very obtrusive noises, sort of like a lawn mower. I'm betting this is a sign of things worse than annoying noises. But right now my beef is that it got in the way of me watching for the billionth time Francis Ford Coppela's Dracula a few nights ago.

I'm hungry . . . know this.

Pardon me . . .

don't say anything Sets, don't say anything Sets, don't say anything Sets . . . no. Stop--Ah! I--I see what you're doing. I said stop! Stop it! No! Setsuled . . . Just--will you listen to me? Can it! Will ya?

*ahem* Yes. Sorry. What was that about you may ask? Well, fuck you for asking, it happens to be very personal and . . . Yeah.

Once, in High School, in P.E., people wre picking teams for some game or another. I'd been more sociable than usual that day so maybe that's why I felt vaguely sad that no one wanted to play with me. It was one of the very, very few occasions in my life where I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was abnormal.

For some reason, I mentioned this to my mother, and of course her advice was that I try to change and be more like the other kids.

I think this whole story's pretty obvious and I think anyone reading knows exactly what's so fucked up about my mother's advice.

Even so, to this day I still occasionally have to remind myself that being the kind of freak I am doesn't come without it's price. Sometimes I do see a pretty patch of green on the other lawn. I just have to remind myself that from all the angles I've seen, this still looks like the route that's best for me.

Anyway. I'm not sure I have any choice.

don't say anything Sets . . .

Bugger blogger.

Once again, it's not working through Internet Explorer and I'm reduced to Opera . . .

I think I'll buy some blank tapes to-day. Somehow I don't feel forty movies are enough for me . . . I want more.

I'm sluggish again to-day as well. I'm just dissolving into a gelatenous cube, I think.

I think I'll slime my way over to a lunch place . . .

Don't worry, folks! Sets is taking his notebook with him!

Tried to post that last bit earlier but Blogger was having problems. In fact, Blogger's still having problems and the only way I was able to post this was by installing a new web browser (Opera)(so far I liked Internet Explorer better). And I still can't seem to publish anything. So blah.

Awakened by Trisa from a dream wherein I and Gary Oldman starred in a reality television show having to do with us stranded on a cul-de-sac with no roads leading in and out of it. I seem to remember that the show also involved zombies, but mostly it was just us wandering fearfully around.

So Trisa and I went for coffee at Parkway Plaza, which was fun except that the mall does bad things for Trisa's mood. But basically a good experience to wake up to.

One of my poems got accepted by the Acorn Review last night, which was kind of surprising as it was a strange, less-orthodox-than-is-generally-liked sort of poem. And it's also a poem that I have conflicting feelings about but these days I'm starting to think that I have no head for poetry. I can't even tell when I do something right.

I've already spent too much time to-day watching Lucky the Cat cleaning himself. Now he's stretching in his sleep . . . I guess I'd better force myself to start getting things done.

Dreamt I was a vampire and being a vampire involved playing elaborate games of levitating "tag" with other vampires. Once you'd tagged another vampire, you were no longer a vampire.

So after I'd tagged a pretty vampiress in a purple robe, I dropped to a concrete path where I found a microwave and a basket full of pidgeons. It occured to me that if I put a few pidgeons in the microwave and turned the machine on, I would eventually melt the creatures. But it seemed I also dimly remembered that if I heated them in short bursts, then gave them breaks, I could get them to have sex. And this I did.

...

I almost blacked out yester-day. Never happened to me before. It was very interesting . . . I was kneeling in front of some Lovecraft books, noticing how many times the same stories appeared in different collections, and when I stood, the world suddenly started to fade behind reddish blackness. I remember thinking, "Hey, I'm still able to think while this is going on . . . Wow, I can't see anything. I hope I don't bump into anything."

Afterwards, I got to thinking about how peculiarly tired I've been lately and how I've had an even harder time than usual keeping my thoughts in order. I wondered if I was laking vital nutrients. I walked to Tim's work and asked him what he thought, but he had no better advise than, "Eat meat."

I'm sure I'll be fine . . . I think I need fruit.

I hate Cosco. And I really hate Trader Joes. I don't wanna go to that snake-den of horrid, uptight people! Don't make me go back, I don't care if there're some cool things on their shelves.

I suppose I did get an awful lot of orange juice from Trader Joes . . . But goodness if that place isn't filled with what William S. Burroughs might call "decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces."

...

Viewers got to see Hawkgirl's face on Justice League last night. She and Green Lantern finally admitted their feelings for each other and so Lantern reached forward and gently removed that feathery headpiece . . . and damn was it ever sexy. I was turned on. It was almost better than watching him undress her, especially as she's much prettier without her mask. I was beginning to wonder if that thing even was a mask or if it was simply part of her head. She didn't even take it off when she met Cthulhu (I know, I don't know why she would except that Cthulhu really deserved more respect).

Well, this room's a mess and I don't wanna clean it.

I took it apart last night looking for Goodfellas, which Trisa and I decided to watch. She and I hung out for a bit last night, going to City Delicatessan, Off The Record, and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. We took her car, the floor of which was paved in audio tapes.

Did eventually find Goodfellas, which is a great movie of course. Not the sort one gets tired of. And it was nice seeing Trisa again. She's not the sort one gets tired of either.

I'm supposed to go to my parents' to-night for dinner because they've gotten a new dog--don't ask me how that works.

And I am feeling extremely sluggish to-day.

In Lake Arrowhead, in addition to lots of Caitlin R. Kiernan, I also read the last Arthur Conan-Doyle Sherlock Holmes story that I had not read. The Adventure of the Retired Colourman didn't feel like the final Holmes story. Unlike the stories that closely preceded it, such as The Adventure of the Lion's Mane and His Last Bow, which were stories that featured significant nostalgic peculiarities, The Adventure of the Retired Colourman was a resoundingly good return to form, giving one of the more enjoyable tales of Holmes's powerful deductive techniques put to use.

Of course, I want more. So it was with no small amount of excitement that I last night anticipated watching Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes from 1970.

I knew that Billy Wilder was a brilliant film maker. You might remember me glowing about The Apartment, Double Indemnity, and Some Like It Hot. It was only a few weeks ago that I first learned about The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and the idea that such a terrific director had made a Sherlock Holmes movie had me salivating like a waterfall.

The movie is not based on any of Arthur Conan-Doyle's stories. In fact, various descriptions that I read of the film seemed to indicate that the movie was primarily concerned with the idea that Holmes might have been homosexual and in love with Dr. Watson.

I was a little bothered by what this seemed to suggest. I worried (foolishly, as it turned out) that the movie would be a juvenile melodrama about some repressed passion in Holmes. That the movie would postulate that homosexuality was the entire reason for Holmes's distrust of women. This bothered me because, honestly, it seems absolutely boring and boorish. The concept seems to leap at an irksome presumption--oh, he doesn't like women! He must be gay!

I was always far more interested in the idea that Holmes was unlike any other person and that he was compelled by obsessions and passions outside the realm of simplistic, orthodox character studies.

Anyway . . . I decided that I would trust Wilder, who had not let me down in the past, and simply watch the damn movie and even look forward to it.

I was not disappointed, I'm happy to say.

It turns out to only be the juvenile individuals at Yahoo! movies and other places who think the movie is all about gay Holmes.

Wilder and co-writer I.A.L Diamond give a more complicated portrait of the sleuth that suggests an inner torment that is very, very quiet behind vigour for brilliantly solving extraordinary crimes. It's an intriguing and endearing view of the man in the midst of a story involving ballet, canaries, and the Loch Ness Monster.

The trademark wittiness of Wilder's dialogue is put to good effect here and I especially liked Watson who, played by Colin Blakely, came across as a sort of a mixture of Jack Lemmon, Colm Meaney, and a very enthusiastic puppy. It was simultaneously novel and, er, true enough to Conan-Doyle's Watson.

Robert Stephens played Holmes in a manner that was a little more laconic and sane than I'm used to Holmes being. But it was not really a departure from Conan-Doyle's Holmes, and worked well for the subject matter of the film. Of course, I still would rather have seen Jeremy Brett.

Christopher Lee's in the film as Sherlock's brother Mycroft and, as usual, the guy has great presence. Although I think Mycroft was written as a slightly more sinister character than Conan-Doyle originally intended. And I also wonder if Queen Victoria was really as simple-minded as she seemed in the movie.

Other than that, my only complaint about the movie is that Sherlock wasn't as smart as he usually is. I've never been able to reach solutions before Holmes in any of the Conan-Doyle stories, but I found myself deducing some things faster than Wilder's Holmes. Such as the straight tracks in the dust which at first confounded Holmes's but which I immediately recognised as wheelchair tracks. But I guess this just illustrates that Wilder's is a different kid of cleverness.

Apparently, Wilder and Diamond worked for twelve years on the screenplay and there really is a sense of respect for the original stories. The movie was originally supposed to be a three hour collection of four Holmes episodes, but unfortunately the studio saw fit to cut it down to only two stories (for a running time of about two hours) when test audiences found the movie to be too "episodic."

So, thanks to those bright folks, about a third of this brilliant film is entirely lost--it seems only some of the footage has survived, and only without its dialogue track and with blurred-out nudity (it was saved for a possible television version).

But, as it is, it is still very worth watching indeed.

...

I exhausted myself at the mall yester-day encountering unprecedented difficulty in Christmas shopping. For most of the people on my list, I could not even begin to conceive of what to buy for them. I did, amazingly enough, find a pair of sunglasses for myself. It's terribly difficult finding sunglasses that don't look revoltingly stupid but, astonishingly, there were several in a store at the mall for only two dollars!

They're large, and blessedly round. I suppose they look like goggles. Maybe a little silly but I'll take just about anything in place of those moronic, elongated gecko-eyed things proliferating the market. Oy. Doesn't anyone look at pictures of John Lennon and say "Hey, that looks great!" anymore?

My lip hurts.

This room's a mess and I gotta get my things picked up before I leave as the maid is coming.

Maybe I'll do my Christmas shopping to-day . . . And shoestrings. I need shoestrings. The string on my right shoe finally broke--this particular pair of sturdy strings has been carried through three pairs of shoes. So I think I shall buy the same kind.

Ikimasu.

It'd be nice if there was toilet paper around here, I really think. I guess I know what my first errand shall be to-day.

I've just been looking over a story I submitted to the Acorn Review that was rejected. Being in the class, on the editorial staff, is supposed to give you a sort of advantage as no one in the class is supposed to know who wrote the pieces they're reviewing. So you're supposed to benefit from unabashed comments. Well, in my case, unfortunately, the reverse seems to be true--for my stories, people tend to unabashedly reserve their comments. I still have no idea why this story was rejected. The only real complaint it got was that there were some spelling errors--which is funny because me and Microsoft Word have as yet to find any spelling errors. Although that part of the mystery could be that no one in the class likes the UK dictionary, which I prefer to use for aesthetic reasons. I bet they probably don't know that "realise" can be spelt with an "s".

I suppose the only explanation I can think of is that the story is just plain bad. Not for any isolatable reason . . . It's just not good. It's a bad idea. Or maybe it's that most of the people in the class have vastly different tastes than I do. I was the only one, after all, who voted "no" on the very revolting story about the mother wanting to fuck her dead son (I doubt the author would agree with me on that synopsis. If he or she did, I might like the story).

...

I met my sister's new boyfriend yester-day. He wants to be a movie director--apparently he's already done his own little film complete with a stunt man and a stand-in hand. But really, this guy--Nathan--seemed more like a producer than a director to me. I'm not sure why.

I met him at my parent's house when he came to pick my sister up for a date. So I listened to him talk to my parents. The ever-chuckling Nathan talked about his car--After saying he wasn't any kind of car-mechanic, he went into discussing how he had just changed the something-gasket and the valve-something. He and my dad then talked car-Greek.

My mother approvingly noted that he and my sister looked like a Gap advertisement standing next to eachother . . . and I listened to my dad speak with pride about buying Matchbox 20 and Nickelback CDs.

And if there's one thing this post is starting to make abundantly clear to me, it's that I think most of the people I interact with regularly have bad taste.

I'm an elf amongst orcs.

Fuck.

So far there're around fifty things I want to do to-day. So I probably won't do any of them because I spit in the face stuffs.

Well, no, I'm actually gonna do stuff.

Yester-day, in case you're wondering, was a lot of walking again. I think I startled a woman when I spontaneously helped her lift her baby's stroller over the trolley steps. It only occured to me after I had sat back down and'd been gazing out the window a bit that me--total young stranger in sinister black hat--rushing wordlessly forward to kneel in front of her infant, grasping the bottom of its stroller and lifting with all my strength, might've been unsettling. So much for the happy fantasy of the world of friendly neighbourhood people all about, ready to help those in need.

Was I complaining about the three cans of coke the other day? Ironic, now that they're gone and I miss them.

I'll have to get more. And video tapes too. Oh yes, and maybe hair gel.

I guess I haven't mentioned this here yet--on Sunday, when I was anxious all day and crazy, I started cutting my hair. I cut it a lot. It's very short now, but not so bad looking. I'm actually kind of proud of myself. But I think I might want hair gel.

Here's something exciting.

I think I've gotten a cold. Um. Yes. I have.

I watched A Streetcar Named Desire yester-day which might partially explain my gloomy perseptions of love and reality at the time. I knew I'd feel better by this morning and I do. Something about just waking up makes you feel like you don't give a fuck, after all . . .

I also watched Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious and I finally got that Cary Grant looks awesome in a suit or a tuxedo. Nearly twenty years before the first James Bond film, Grant was already doing what most people would put down to Bond. Ingrid Bergman was also great . . . Ever since my aunt informed me that Ingrid Bergman is Isabella Rossalini's mother, I haven't been able to stop marvelling at the resemblance between the two women. Which has caused me to think about David Lynch's motivations in casting Rossalini in his movies, especially considering Laura Harring's resemblance to Rita Hayworth, not to mention his casting of the actual Anne Miller.

. . . Well, I guess I'd better start walking towards school.

Naked on a Dead World


Killed dredged gunbearers
Ghosts of the rung out bull belles
Cut down necks solemn
Down the gut street

Grey harsh shades
Creep strike stinklight
Foul runs down, down
Suck up in,
Spit down out
In out
Out in

Fool blink casts, shelled
Empty tired gall
Sag, oldsweet battercake
No good no more

Vacant old wood
Round empty cold home
No-one here lives
Pendulum glum sluice

Junk caked hair
Shadow soiled solitude
Blank shot sentiments
Masturbation melodame

One man soccer game
Skinned knee grass stained
Poor suckling cuspdrunk
Naked on a dead world

Now I'm taping To Kill A Mockingbird and whatever movie it is that comes after it.

Last night I picked up the tapes Tim did for me while I was away. For me he got Age of Innocence, Remains of the Day, and a bundle of Akira Kurosawa movies.

I'm strangely not hungry right now. Maybe it's because I don't feel like there's anything good to eat within reach. I'd eat the waffles if there was orange juice.

That was one great thing about Lake Arrowhead; always there were good beverages at the ready. Be it hot chocolate, coffee, orange juice, or water, it was all right there. All I've got here are three cans of coke. That's it. And don't get me wrong, I do like coke . . . It's just not the time.

I failed to mention that I worked on my novel yesterday. In Lake Arrowhead I began chapter 80, the first chapter of part 9. I finished that chapter yesterday. I think. Actually, I think I'll make it longer . . .

Er . . . Maybe this novel's too big. I'm gonna take a hard look at it when I finish the first draft.

I'm tired.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--I wish I could've gotten more sleep this morning.

But I couldn't--The maid unexpectedly turned up.

So I was unexpectedly turned out and found myself at the beginning of an adventure on the trolley through San Diego! to include a smoothie, a phone call to and a recommendation from Trisa, a new book by Caitlin R. Kiernan, a taking up Trisa on her recommendation, and an inept trolley operator who took me in the direction opposite from which her sign proclaimed.

Now here I go 'gain.

Oh, lazy, fat-cat Americans like me, spoiled yet again by paradise--er, and by paradise, I mean the free post-apocalyptic environment of blackish brown smooth hills dotted with the construction paper black skeletons of trees. From here to Lake Arrowhead (almost a hundred miles), this is the genuinely glorious sight on either side of the 15 freeway, not to mention the crusty black scalps of land hugging the winding road leading up to the mountain that Lake Arrowhead calls home.

Lake Arrowhead--cold. Quite cold. Especially in the hotel room where my mother laughed at our craziness with the heater and sagely turned the device down to a perfectly sane 60 degrees (my mother tends to be too warm).

It's easy to kill an hour or two in the cute little "village" (read "mall") within walking distance of the hotel. It was there that I ate at a restaurant that had--judging from autographed photos about the place--previously served David Prowse, William Shatner, and, most incredibally, Lani "Captain Crais" Tupu! Someone at the Casa Coyote had proudly presented Tupu with a Farscape production photo for him to put his John Hancock on! This thrilled me lots. And it's fun to say Lani Tupu.

The drives sucked because I largely had to put up with my mother's insistence on playing a live Eagles CD over and over (I do sort of like "Desperado" and "Hotel California," but if a band's live performance tends to be a collection of their greatest hits, to me that says something). During "The Girl From Yester-day", by mother and sister agreed that it was silly to cry over a lost love and that anyone who did it was a loser. After all, there was always someone else at the party.

With triumphant laughter, my mother informed us that breaking up was a time when one essentially announced, "Next!"

Echoing her laughter, I rejoined with my oft-undetected sarcasm, "Yeah, totally! The idea of someone being irreplacable is preposterous as it is of course predicated upon the idea that people are unique! Ha ha, what a tired fallacy!"

What reply any member of my family may've had to my comment shall never be known because at that time we rounded a corner and saw the aftermath of a rather severe car accident featuring an expensive black sports car with a hood crumpled like a soda can. We were forced to park in another shopping centre so let's shop more, hurrah!

The bulk of my time was spent in the hotel room reading, mostly Caitlin R. Kiernan stuff. I finished the brilliant Threshold which combined interesting, tormented characters who exchanged dialogue that got me in a way somehow similer to the way dialogue got me in Citizen Kane, with a great, slimy dark, dark something underneath it all that was mysterious and mythos-ish. Especially mythos-ish as I spent a lot of time in the hotel room also reading stories from Caitlin's Tales of Pain and Wonder relating to Threshold's characters and something.

Speaking of Caitlin, that lovely woman has put a bunch of my manga and stuff on her Nebari.net in my absence, and oy, was it ever a nice thing to come home to.

I think I'll go out and buy Low Read Moon now . . . Or at least, as soon as I catch up with correspondences and things.

Oh! And happy Thanksgiving (it's occured to me that poultry is the worst smelling thing in the world. Why do people wanna eat something that smells like raw sewage? Maybe my vegetarian olfactory is biased . . .).

Woke up feeling something terrible. Was it the tap water? Was it the Taco Bell burritos I wolfed down on the way home last night? Was it the walk? Was it something else?

It only figures as I now have gotta scramble to get my shit together for departure. Yes, I am gonna be dissapearing for a few days . . . I think I'm getting back on Friday. I'm going with parents and sister to Lake Arrowhead, where I suspect I shall end up eating too much.

What really kills me is that I'm gonna miss taping Only Angels Have Wings on TCM at midnight to-night. You know, if someone out there has a desire to be really, really sweet to me, they might wanna consider nabbing that motion picture for me to-night *puppy dog eyes*.

I shall now try to gather stuff and strength to the soundtrack of Velvet Underground songs. Until days from now, bye!

Oy . . . Not feeling so great this mornin'. Little kids screaming and bumping elsewhere in the house . . . Ug. Can't they just get swallowed by the ground?

I gots some walking for doing to-day. To and from school. It'll be fine. But all I want to do to-day is lay around watching movies.

Blah.

At least I've got money. Maybe I'll stop at Einstein bagels on the way . . .

Right. Off I go.

Taped Touch of Evil, or I think I did, anyway. My cousin was fucking with the TV so, although I think it still worked, I'm not altogether sure.

During lunch, I watched the opening shot and it really was extraordinary. We go from a close-up of a ticking bomb, to the car it was planted in, to lovers strolling casually a few blocks away . . . All it one, single crane shot. Remarkable.

Last night I did four more pages of The Adventures of Nar'eth. Caitlin's requested more, so I think I shall give her more.

This morning I did a new page of Doll Merchant--I think my clear influences for that series are beginning to be less Raymond Chandler and more Arthur Conan Doyle.

So I have been a busy bee. At this rate, I may have to stop insisting to people that I'm not a comic book artist.

No matter what happens to-day . . . I don't think I'm ever gonna get the theme from Pokemon out of my head.

sigh.

I did see a good episode of that series yesterday . . .

"Gotta catch 'em all . . ."

I feel like I'm in a submarine.

But fortune strike in the midst of malaise as I unexpectedly bagged a video of Billie Holiday after taping Johnny Belinda. Nice.

A sort of victory: In a recent answering of reader's questions by Roger Ebert, Ebert said;

"Apparently moviegoers now prefer wide-screen to 'full screen' (i.e., cropped pan-and-scan) by such a wide margin that stores are routinely left with piles of unsold full screens."

I do like the sound of that. And to think, a couple years ago people thought I was crazy for my preference. Huh! Who's crazy now, huh? Huh!? I'm--I'm not craz . . . The door made me do it, I tell you! The door!

...

Six guesses for what I did this morning.

No.

No.

Heh, no.

No.

Well, yes, but everyone does that routinely. Right?

No.

Okay. I did something kind of wrong, I guess . . . I watched the Paris Hilton sex video. Morbid curiosity, I suppose. I'm not really sure why I wanted to watch it but if it was for sexual arousal, my libido was quite disappointed. It's kind of depressing that someone can seem so artificial and superficial in such a situation. Here she is, having sex with her supposed boyfriend, and she can't even sound genuine. Isn't 19 awfully young to be so emotionally jaded? Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Do I feel sorry for her that this video is circulating? Vaguely.

The door! The door made me do it, I tell you!

Turns out a guy can indeed get around without a car.

Yesterday I went to La Mesa, came back, then went to Parkway Plaza. I figured it'd be silly to waste the Trolley Day Tripper I'd gotten for going to La Mesa.

It was at Parkway Plaza that I finally bought The Apartment, and it was shortly thereafter that I finally saw the end of that movie. It's all good, it turns out.

Last night, Lucky the cat made a break for the outdoors well after sundown, a time he's not typically allowed outside. While looking for him in the backyard, I saw in the darkness the small, pale, round face of a opossum, looking about with tiny black eyes from atop the fench.

I was reminded of dream I'd had the night before about Victoria the cat escaping because she'd lain thousands of black and white kittens all over the house. These strange little kittens were of varying sizes, some smaller than a fingernail, lost between carpet fibres. One had to walk very carefully around the house.

...

It occurs to me that some of the decisions we make in life are extremely difficult to deal with, even if it was probably the right decision. You wonder when on earth you'll stop thinking about it, as it keeps popping into the brain.

Good advice.

To bed, for bread.

I must go to sleep early so that I may travel to La Mesa to-morrow and retrieve bread from my Aunt.

I don't wanna. Why did I agree to this? I have plenty of food . . . Oh well . . .

Anyway, I must get up early--Hullo! It's already 3am. So much for that! Then again, 3am is early for me . . . but not early enough to make waking up at 9am very comfortable. Maybe I can do it from 10am?

Halloa, my neglected blog!

Eh, I didn't type anything into you on Tuesday because I gave the whole day over to watching The Two Towers extended edition. And I'm not sorry. Nope.

It's like all better with the characters and what not. Blah. No word things in my brainmouth to-now. I'm tired. Shall I watch more? I haven't even begun on the special features of which there are . . . heh . . . a lot.

Suffice to say, like Fellowship of the Ring before it, The Two Towers is now a far better, less frenetic feeling film.

So it's single-handedly responsible for me being in quite a good mood. Otherwise, I'd be miserable and crazy, maybe, from isolation and lack of a proper desk to draw on which is really starting to get to me. I'm tired of drawing on the floor. It's just not comfortable.

Oh, yes, I used to have desk space for drawing on. But what happened? The big, beautful, frelling desk got cut in half is what happened!

Ah . . . but that's an old wound. No sense pestering it now.

Sean Bean is an excellent Boromir.

Dreamt ants were taking over the world. Not a good feeling, especially as they started with my glass of apple juice.

I'm busy to-day again.

Feeling out of sorts for an altercation with Trisa.

And to-day's the last day of car insurance. I have a feeling that the next couple of weeks are gonna be composed of long, slow days. But that's fine, as I'm in a slow mood these days.

But whatever happens, I do know that the Two Towers extended edition comes out to-morrow. That's the kind of thing that keeps me alive.

Found this on Mel's journal. It's cute . . . if the graphic ever loads, huh?


Sometimes your creative solutions land you in
sticky situations but you remain adventurous
and undaunted by failure. You posess an
infectious confidence and deep thinking comes
naturally to you.
Always on the go with many paws in many pies,
Rabbits can appear slightly manic to others.
But not to worry, you have everything under
control... most of the time.


Which Pooh character are you?
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To-morrow's my last day of car insurance. The Company sent me a form in the mail for me to fill out in order to get my own insurance, but said form has not yet arrived. Fortunately, I won't actually need my car for a while after Monday. And on either Wednesday or Thursday, I'm going to Lake Arrowhead with my parents and sister.

Lake Arrowhead was caught in the fire and I'm looking forward to seeing majesticly burnt trees and shrubs.

To-day . . . There're a couple projects I wanna work on, I wanna do laundry, and . . . Oh yes! Eat breakfast. I think I'll start out by going for coffee.

To-night I plan to tape Cleopatra from 1913. I also want to tape Adult Swim for Marty who, not having cable, has never seen Adult Swim.

So, tapie, tapie.

...

Last night, I managed to watch all of They Drive by Night, a movie I'd taped because it's got Humphrey Bogart in it. As it turned out, this movie was made before Bogart was a big star, and he's forced to play second fiddle to a far inferior actor. And the story was ludicrous mid-century Hollywood shlock, beginning at point A, going to point L, coming back for point G, spinning out to N, taper spiraling round to C, and, at last, ending up at K. Bogart and some other guy are brothers who drive a truck delivering produce, dreaming of one day actually owning their truck or even their own trucking business. But things go awry when Bogart falls asleep at the wheel and looses his right arm. The Other Guy goes to work in the garage of a big trucking company where the boss's wife (Ida Lupino) has a deep crush on him. Lupino kills her dopey husband, makes The Other Guy a partner in owning the company, but goes wacky when she learns that Other Guy is marrying a sweet, plain little redhead played by Ann Sheridan.

It ended up that Ida Lupino was the person who made this film worth watching. She'd killed her husband by allowing an automatic garage door to close on him while the gas was on in his car and, later, which she was on the stand, her mad laughter and cries of, "Yes! That's it! The door made me do it! The door, I tell you!" were just delicious. What a plucky dame. I understand there's another movie she costars with Bogart in. I just might hunt it down . . .

The last two movies I saw at the cinema were Kill Bill and Lost in Translation. Two movies having a lot to do with two different perspective on Tokyo. Kill Bill being the more stylised, Lost in Translation being the more raw. They're both incredibally good movies.

This morning, for some reason, I also remembered that both films have a Charlie Brown gag, wherein a group of people decide that an individual resembles Charlie Brown and so they take to refering to him by that name. Strange, no?

I woke up to-day at around 10:10am, watched a bit of a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode I'd never seen, and then went back to bed. I really must stop doing that.

I think I'm catching a cold . . .

Hoy.

Got up at 2pm to-day. Well, technically I woke up at 11am, read the last chapters of The Valley of Fear, and then went back to bed.

Again, I stayed up looking for Sarah Bernhardt, only this time the hunt yielded my quarry. Here.

If I can find a large enough photo of Benhardt, I might make a Sarah Bernhardt desktop scheme. I don't know where this sudden interest in Sarah Bernhardt comes from. Maybe I just feel nlike I wanna possess her in some voyueristic fashion before I see Nicole Kidman's rendition of the legendary actress in Steven Spielburg's new film.

I got Elvis Costello's new album yesterday and, thanks to a breathtaking traffic jam on 15 north, I managed to listen to it twice in a row. It comes with a smashing good DVD and a PIN code for a bonus track on the website which doesn't work.

. . . Gods it's weird having Sarah Bernhardt yelling at me so passionately . . . This is exactly why I wanted these mp3s . . .

Er, so anyway, the new Costello album is great light, somewhat gloomy jazz. I think I'd enjoy it more if I was more in touch with my emotions.

Hmm. I'm going real creepy . . . The girls in my life are Sarah Bernhardt, Rita Hayworth, and Sophitia.

Help.

Even I think it's obscene that I'm this tired at 1pm.

I was driven last night, though, for no apparent reason, to find mp3s of Sarah Bernhardt. Apparently recordings do exist, some even from before 1900. But alas, my search was in vain.

If any of you know where I can get my hands on some Sarah Bernhardt recordings, let me know. And mind you that's Sarah Bernhardt, not Sandra Bernhardt.

...

Don't know what I'm gonna do to-day. Maybe just read.

Victoria the cat returns!!

After weeks of avoiding me, she suddenly seems very happy to hang out in my room.

Not really any other developments besides that around here . . . Looks like it may be easier to get car insurance than I thought . . .

Victoria seemed overtaken by horrid fascination when I did thirty crunches in front of her. The look on her face told me she'd never seen anything so inexplicable and bizzare.

I wonder if 1602 number 4 is out yet?

(jumping to another topic) I taped Clash By Night with Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, and Marilyn Monroe. It's good--not spectacular, but good. Seeing Stanwyck reminded me of how much I wanna get a copy of Double Indemnity.

I finished part 8 of my novel yesterday--the first draft, anyway. As it looks like the novel shall end up being in nine parts, I guess this means I'm in the home stretch. A home stretch that's likely to take five months, at least.

Dashing all about yesterday, influenced maybe by the dashing about of my main character in my novel (or perhaps the other way around? Naw).

Went to Parkway Plaza first, after pressing record on the VCR to nab A Streetcar Named Desire and Notorious. Spent hours at the mall just writing, and looking for my aunt's birthday present, which I never found. But even if I had found something, I suppose I really dinna have the money . . .

I had eighteen dollars yesterday. Pretty pathetic, really, as I was trying to save money to pay Trisa. But as Trisa was unavailable yesterday I figured, hell, I can just go and spend it, whoo-hoo.

Spend it I did, on coffee, and lots of it. So it was that in the cool of the evening I was sweating through me sweater as I realised that I needed to be at Grossmont Centre to buy groceries from Trader Joe's (this was at 6pm I realised this). I promptly left the Rubio's I was waiting in line at and took off for Grossmont Centre mall.

Now, I know what you're thinking; Sets! Don't you have school at 7pm on Mondays!

Well, at about noon yesterday it came to me that Juliana Cardenas (teacher) had informed ze class that Monday was to be a Veteran's Day and there was thusly no school. I thought it was too bad I had not remembered this Sunday night, when I had stayed up 'til 3am typing up a story for subission to the Acorn Review.

But fuck it! I thought. No one liked my last story, "Gregg's Mermaid"--a fact which has led me to believe there is a prejudice against sci-fi/fantasy around these parts as the complaints for the story were vague and a couple people even said it was well written. Stories have been accepted for less--and yet this story of mine got only two votes; mine, and this cool girl named Sarah (or possibly Sara, or even Sera--I once knew a Sairah) who told me it wasn't the sort of story she liked but that she was voting for it on principle. Hurrah! Someone in the class has ethics.

Right--Monday.

So I get back to my grandmother's house at 7:19 and my grandmother mentions she'd been to the bank to-day.

"I'm surprised the bank was open on Veteran's Day!" says I.

"To-morrow's Veteran's Day, not to-day!" says she.

"Oh fuck," thinks I, outwardly keeping my cool because I got some moves on me, or so I was told by a flying saucer salesman at Parkway Plaza (I was carrying my copy of Caitlin R. Kiernan's Threshold and when he jovially launched his inflatable saucer at me as I rounded a corner, I reflexively batted at the saucer with Threshold, causing the thing to fly off at an angle to where it hit a partition, rebounded, and landed in the salesman's hand. Smooth, yes, I know).

So.

I grabs me story and a card thingie, drive as fast as I dare to Grossmont College, park off campus (because I am too cheap for parking permit) and march up the dark night hill towards school whilst trying to fill out the submission card.

There were no cars in the school parking lot.

There was no one at the school.

I walked across the campus and, apart from a rabbit dashing across the quad, mine was the only soul present.

Sigh!

The day ended as I left Tim's with his extra packets of hot sauce from Del Taco. I took something home last night.

. . . just realised I have no school to-day. Huh.

Well, let's see . . . I've got eighteen dollars. What shall I do with it? I wanna tape A Streetcar Named Desire at 2:45 . . .

Maybe I'll buy food. I spent five dollars on a sandwich yesterday and it seemed like a bad idea at the time. Now it doesn't sound so bad.

Getting dressed would be a good start, true . . .

About the Bush Administration, Al Gore recently said, "They have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, 'big brother'-style government toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book '1984' than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America."

I was thinking the same thing. Lots of people are, I guess.

Yesterday's post was gonna be longer but a carpet cleaner blundered into my room and I had to leave. But now that I think about it, I didn't really have anything else to say . . .

Last night I was quite enjoying The Apartment (Billy Wilder's film with Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine and Fred MacMurray) until I found that the last thirty seconds or so of the movie had been cut off by what I'd taped after it. Grr! The frustration. I'd forgotten that some VCRs have a helpful tendency to rewind the tape slightly when you press record.

It seems the other movies I'd taped are okay since for all of those I'd left them recording for much longer than necessary . . . oh, the pain. Looks like The Apartment isn't available on DVD--Damnit, it won Best Picture, why the frell isn't it on DVD? Gah!

There are two projects I wanna work on to-day, but I think I shall only have time for one. I'll flip a coin . . .

Watched (and taped) Les Diaboliques last night and it was good and even had me a little frightened. Many good qualities about this movie including a glimpse of the starlet's nipples at the end. It's just more exciting to see in a movie made in 1955, for some reason.

Just watched the very short first chapter of Star Wars: Clone Wars. It seemed good but damn was it fucking short. Anakin Skywalker hasn't spoken yet, but already he's a strangely more believable character than he was in the movie.

It's too bad Palpatine isn't played by Ian McDiarmid. I can't tell if Obi-Wan is Ewan MacGreagor.

My cousin's a model and she once told me about a job of hers where pictures of her were taken for a dating service's advertisements. I asked her if she herself actually used this service and she told me that of course she did not.

Common sense had told me this already--I doubt there's anyone who truly thinks the made-up creatures grinning from the meticulous advertisements are actual examples of people using the service. But having this cynical fact definitely proven gave me some kind of cruel glee.

There lies the gaudy, accessorised marketing machine naked and blushing before me. Ha!

So to-day, when I was looking over my hotmail e-mails, I found myself idly gazing at a row of three photographs of different women's faces--a dating service advertisement. I got to thinking about how each face is supposed to look different, implying that there's "a match for simply everyone!" out there. I'm not sure why the photos caused such a meloncholy to fall over me. Something about the way I could sense the photographer saying, "Oh, you've got a snazzy look to ya. Give me a bit if fun . . . Yeah, let's see mischief, like you're up for fun and what not," and to another, "Aw, you're a sweetie aren't you? Let's see a little coy, but let's make sure you still look like you give great blow jobs. Perfect!" and, "Hey, yeah, just give me a reasonable smile . . . yeah . . . your life's together but you're not judgemental and all that . . . Yeah . . . brainy but docile . . . yeah . . ."

And then I imagine the guys being pulled in by these ads, whether they know it or not, into using the dating service. These poor lonely bastards with their simple, little mental crayon drawings of woman "types". I've known plenty of guys like that, some of them even smart guys. It's amazing how dumb a smart person can be when they've all but given up hope.

Another example of real life being too complex for itself.

...

Gods, I have a lot to do to-day . . . And I'm having big trouble concentrating. Things just flit helplessly in and out of my brain. I'm forgetting important things way too easily lately.

I think I'll begin by typing things up. Sounds simple enough, yes?

It's Garfield, the movie.

I would prefer that Lorenzo Music, who was Garfield's voice for the old cartoon series, be the voice for the movie, but it seems he died in 1999. Still, the fact that Bill Murray's onboard for Garfield's voice makes me hopeful. The fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt is also onboard is something I'm trying not to think about.

I got me copies of Citizen Kane, The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn), and Holiday (with Kathryn Hepburn and Cary Grant). Oh yeah.

I also took a test yesterday. The school kind. And yet, also, at the same time, it was the moral and spiritual kind. That sort of crossroads where you ask yourself, "Oh, what is the fucking point, anyway?!"

I'd skipped this class on Monday in order to hang out with Trisa (which I do not regret as hanging out with Trisa is more important than school), so I didn't actually know about to-day's test until Mr. Ding (that's his name!) started writing questions on the board.

They were all about Twelfth Night which we would have studied last week if there hadn't been fire all over the place. Instead, I guess he expected us all to have independently done our work, merely because he'd had it all written down in the syllabus . . . Okay, not an unreasonable thing to expect of students. But I was busy smouldering under my own cloud of inner drama so I could hardly concentrate (wish I could say that inner drama was worry for our firefighters but it wasn't. It was Shirley McClaine saying, "Why do people fall in love with people?"). This was pretty much the reason I'd dropped the class the first time and I'd re-taken it now. When I signed up for classes, I didn't think I was gonna have much else to think about (ya'll get what I'm saying, right?).

So, yes, I'd read Twelfth Night once, a very long time ago, which was a fact I wasn't even aware of until I started frantically (while trying to look casual) skimming over the text (thankfully, this test was open book).

In the middle of all this hoopla, though, I couldn't help thinking, "Is this how I wanna read Twelfth Night? 'cause this kinna sucks." But no, it must be this way to placate the gods of acedemia. That glorious realm of their's where one should not learn unless it does not get in the way of memorising. Unfortunately, it often does.

I finally caved in and wrote one of my patently bullshitted essays. Like Trisa says, being things for all people . . .

"We had such wishful beginnings . . ." -David Bowie

Hello, friend. How does this sacred evening find you? You look good. If you come over here, if you sit on my lap, I'll tell you a little secret. If you put your breath on my ear, I'll make known to you things that are hidden beneath the shifting, black silks of the mind and eternity. Draw close to me and I will tell you . . .

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, madmadmadmad, mad world.

No, I've never seen It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but it's gonna be on TCM on Friday and, as seems to be the wonderful norm on TCM, it'll be without commercials and it'll be completely unedited.

I'm not so sure it interests me enough to watch it. I only mention it because it's title speaks the truth. It is a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

I'm troubled. I'm dreading a couple of things right now. I guess top of the list is the fact that I still need to get car insurance. And that just sucks. I never really wanted a car to begin with. All I ever use it for is goofing off. I could do with a lot less of that. Aw, but what am I saying. That's mad talking . . .

What do I want most right now?

As Agent Cooper once said, I wish I was making love to a beautiful woman for whom I had genuine affection.

I'm currently recording a movie starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley McLaine that I've never seen before. I think I'm just recording it because I've suddenly become wildly excited about TCM's generosity with their movies.

Wednesday looks like it'll bring in quite a haul; Citizen Kane, Mark of Zorro, Stagecoach, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. I think I'll probably try to get all of them on tape. And I probably won't have time to watch any of them.

I am becoming an impulsive collector of movies, huh . . .

Hmm. Wait a minute . . . what happened to my apple juice . . . ?

Trisa and I partook of the unknown yesterday in a forray into Mitsuwa. From this place we took popsicles that were green tea ice cream on the outside and some kind of tangy fruit paste on the inside. They were also very good.

Apparently, Trisa and I both really liked Kill Bill. Has does everybody. This is a loved movie.

I will have money soon. I'll probably buy Low Red Moon. But I also want Elvis Costello's new album, and I'm even thinking about the Indiana Jones box set, which I really shouldn't be doing. I'm also thinking about breakfast . . .

...

Oh, and Happy Birthday Trisa!

The mail yesterday was not so bad as I thought, at least it does not seem so thus far. I received a notice from West Hollywood, as I had expected--well, not so much expected--I mean feared. I had feared that there would be some additional charge to what was paid on the night that Trisa and I took back my car from the clutches of Hollywood authorites, even though the receipt seemed to include all conceivably relevant fees. I was nevertheless worried that I'd forgotten about something.

What I received yesterday, I could not exactly make heads or tails of. I'm not certain if it's simply a notice that my vehicle had been stored by them at one point, which is the nearest thing to making sense of it. What it seems to be is a notice that they are still storing my vehicle and why haven't I picked it up? Which would be awfully extraordinary as I seem to recall parking my car and driving it about scores of times since the incident.

I suppose I ought to eat breakfast . . . Gods, I want a latte.

Not sure what I want to do with this day.

Some people are too uptight.

Okay, Existence. Now what?

Oh . . . you don't know? Well, don't expect me to give you a clue because I haven't got one.

No, I ain't mad at ya. Things would be so much easier if I was, huh, because then at least we'd have something to chew on. But for the moment, we're doomed to freedom and the cognisance of the insignifigance of pleasure.

Blasphemy, I know . . .

I mean to say, I have no money. Well, I've got some. But I'm saving it to pay Trisa back for the fiasco in L.A.

It's getting cold around here. Maybe that'll be good for the fire. Maybe Mother Nature shall stop bingeing and sink into a cold, numb aftertaste.

. . . I have places to go to-day. I'm told I have mail at one of my other addresses. And I have a bad feeling about this. I have a bad feeling about a lot of things to-day.

No time, no time. Just a few quick words of warning:

Stay away from apple juice, ants, old makeup, confusing hats, other people's maple syrup, and rulers.

Happy Halloween.

sigh.

The sky is cloudy with clouds to-day. Old fashioned, water oriented clouds. Which generally seems to be regarded as being a good sign.

Yesterday I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with my sister. It's heartening when she enjoys watching a good movie enough to watch it all the way through. I still resent the the experience of having her stop halfway through Bram Stoker's Dracula because the movie was too scary.

To-day, I wrote a few pages of novel in my notebook with a blue pen. This is my first time experimenting with blue ink for my prose and hopefully something horrible won't come of it. Things seem okay so far, but you never know.

Before, I was alternating between red and black ink (this idea of alternating ink colours was one I got from Neil Gaiman's blog--the idea is to keep track of how much one has written in a day). But now that I've run out of red pens, I've decided to try blue out, as blue should be more easily legible, in any light. I'm mainly thinking of a time a very long time ago when Trisa and I were at The Living Room under a red light that suddenly turned mine into invisible ink. But aside from that extreme example, the red is still pretty weak, especially on the thin lines of my current notebook.

I guess I was vaguely attracted to the idea of writing in red more than blue for purely aesthetic reasons--like maybe I wanted to tell people I was writing in blood half the time. Trouble is, it really didn't look like blood. What I'm getting at here is that it was fucking weak.

I also picked up Trisa's birthday present yesterday, but who the hell knows when I'll see her.

It was nice to sleep on a bed again.

I think I'll finally watch Scanners to-day. It's more than a week overdue.

I started reading Caitlin R. Kiernan's Threshold and so far it's pretty good. The Palahniuk book I read a couple of days ago is mostly written in present tense and so's the Kiernan book. It's surprising how something so simple as having the events happen now rather than earlier can sort of charge a work of prose with an intimate electricity.

To-day, I think I'll drop by Grossmont College and see if I'm supposed to go to class. Then my sister and I are probably going to watch a movie . . .

Ugh. I'm just saying, and not for any particular reason.

I finished writing a grusome short story a few days ago . . . It was about spaghetti.

Get your own nudist t-shirt!

Driving on Fletcher Parkway, into the cancer yellow haze, I looked up and saw, in a half constructed tower on the corner, the dark shape of a rotted corpse, silhouetted against the diluted sunlight, hanging from a noose.

Wouldn't it be funny if Armeggeddon happened on Halloween? The thought's crossed my mind more than once over the past couple days.

I've been spending most of my time at my aunt and uncle's house in La Mesa, with my back against a piano, in the corner, reading. I read the enirety of Chuck Palaniuk's Choke on Sunday and Monday morning. It was really very good.

There was a scanner being left off the hook that beeped once every ten minutes. My cousin spent all day walking quickly from one end of the house to the other, answering phones, spreading and infecting her own special brand of disinformation. One of the my many aunts who was staying there was dressed and wearing her hair exactly like my mother. She and my mother haven't been on good terms for about a year.

I still haven't heard from my parents. I knew they'd be gone for the weekend, but it wasn't until after the fire had begun that my cousin had informed me that my parents and sister were at Disneyland. More disinformation? Maybe. They were in Anaheim, anyway. They didn't ask to speak to me. Why should I care?

I was concerned about Trisa all day yesterday, as her house was one that was mandatorily evacuated. When I finally reached her, she was going out to dinner with a guy who made her feel safe and good.

I just took a shower for the first time in several days, and I still smell ash. Doesn't really bother me though.

My dad, who's a fireman, wasn't able to join the fray, being caught in Anaheim. But from what I hear, my parents are back, so I suppose he's going at it with more than a thousand other good men and women.

There's been eleven deaths and more than five hundred destroyed homes. And I feel a little sick.

There's a fire around here and people're being asked to evacuate. This house hasn't been asked to evacuate, but I guess they'll probably ask soon. I just wanna go back to bed. But I guess I'd better start loading things into the car . . .

Life's been too interesting lately.

So far to-day, I've done this.

Yeah, go ahead and make fun of me.

Last night TCM had a number of good movies on and I watched three of them. Portrait of Jennie, The Haunting(1963), and Vampyr.

Portrait of Jennie was very sweet and had great dream-logic for it's supernatural stuff--the kind of logic that feels like it makes the right sense, even if it doesn't technically add up. The most tantilising kind of logic, really. And perfect for a romance movie.

The Haunting was damned good. I haven't read the Shirley Jackson book it's based on, but the movie's tight point of view from the character of Eleanor put me in the mind of We Have Always Lived in the Castle--a Shirley Jackson book I have read. The strength of both pieces is the narrative of a character who we know is going a sort of crazy and yet it's somehow the sort of crazy that pulls us right along. When Eleanor says fearfully of the noises outside the door, "It knows my name!" we know precisely what she means, and how she's afraid of it, even as we detect the madness in her voice. We recognise that madness in the same way we'd recognise madness in ourselves. It's that kind of intimacy.

Vampyr was very good, and obviously influencial. I see now where Francis Ford Coppella got the idea for the independant shadow he gave to Dracula in his film. My only complaint about Vampyr is that I found the music a little distracting for some reason. Otherwise, the movie has a great mood, and I actually aplaud the directors preference for not using professional actors.

I did end up staying in all day yesterday, and I suspect I shall do the same to-day . . .

. . . water . . . water . . . water . . .

. . . want . . . water . . . there's just . . . no . . . water . . . need . . . water . . . oh . . . oh, gods . . . Sets, no . . . gods, don't . . . don't . . . mustn't . . . drink the . . . tap . . . water . . . not the . . . tap water . . . mucus-like . . . tap water . . . no, Sets . . . stop . . . !

I'm listening to "Stairway to Heaven" and, blog, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I'm reminded of the time I saw a troupe of three musicians dressed as Pirates wandering through Parkway Plaza performing various songs, usually having to do with pirates. But they also played, upon request from a guy at a cell phone kiosk, a surprisingly very good rendition of "Stairway to Heaven."

Well, unless Trisa's up for watching Scanners or something to-night, I'm probably going to spend all day in this house. I suppose I'll get quite a lot done . . .

You know what? I wanna draw something to-day. So I think I shall . . .

Where to begin . . .

There's too much.

Suffice to say, Rasputina was a great show, but I got my car towed in the meantime, and I now owe Trisa around a hundred bucks. We wandered around, frightened that my car'd been stolen before we finally figured out that we'd parked in some silly private parking area that only welcomed giggling young men who ineffectiually kicked at each other (it's true, I saw them).

Paradoxically, I do feel a lot more comfortable driving around L.A. now. Or at least that part of town, which I believe is actually Hollywood. I knew we'd be better off if I didn't bring any directions. Yahoo! maps gave a frilly, over-complicated route when all we needed to do was take 5 to 10 to La Cienega to Santa Monica. And done. No tricky intersections, no nonsense. Well, except that there wasn't apparently any good parking.

Yesterday also marked the first occasion where I sent a short story to a magazine (Azimovs). I confidently expect a rejection, but at least I'm not afraid of the mailbox anymore.

I'm broke 'cause I gave all my money to Trisa who, poor thing, had to be at class at 7am--just two hours after we arrived back in San Diego. She had a big test thing and I wish her luck. And sleep.

"I doused a friendly venture with a hard-faced, three word gesture." -Morrissey

Aeryn: You are Aeryn Sun. Some might call you cold,
or even tight-assed, but it's okay, 'cause you
can take 'em! Cool, calm, and collected you
work well under pressure and aren't afraid to
take on the boys.


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So to-morrow Trisa and I go to L.A.

I must admit, I'm rather nervous, especially after reading this.

Looks like we'll be arriving at night again. All we need is a rainstorm and visibility shall be as bad as last year . . . Oh, I do wish we could arrange to arrive during daylight, but apparently that's out of the question. Driving in L.A. is, for me, in case I have yet to make this clear, kind of intimidating. And certainly nerve-wracking. And it just has to be at night, doesn't it?

sigh.

Well, blog, I hope we see each other again . . . To-morrow's not Sunday, after all.

Eh . . . To-day, I will get an oil change . . . for my car.

I'm surrounded by fascists. Go 'way fascists! I really think I am surrounded by them.

Reason takes a back seat to "feelings" these days. It's cloying and it gives me stomach ache.

Woke up with a bad stomach ache this morning. And a headache. I dreamt I was part of a team of teen vampire hunters. We were all drving about in old Buick--there was me, another guy who had shoulder length black hair and glasses, a chubby blonde guy with a buzz-cut, and a guy and his girlfriend. This guy had glasses and short, oily black hair, and his girlfriend had mousy brown hair and wore big sweaters.

We regularly drove to the graveyard to hunt vampires who were rapidly taking over the world. One night, we were over powered. The guy and his girlfriend were making out in the back seat so they never saw it coming. The other two guys vanished into the crowd of blood-suckers, and I was the last one fighting. I finally lost consciousness, and when I awoke, I was in a regular looking hospital. My friends were there and we were all okay. Only we were all vampires now, of course. As was everyone in the world. But it turned out that it didn't matter at all--everyone was exactly the same as a vampire, only we had pointy teeth.

. . . Just watched the last episode of Evangelion. Am I a sap for feeling terrifically better about reality for having watched it? Maybe. Maybe it helps to be reminded of very simple things now and then. It certainly seemed to help Shinji.

The last episodes of Evangelion are always better than I rememeber them. I almost don't wanna watch the Evangelion movie, afraid it'll spoil the vibe . . . maybe I'll wait on it awhile.

Hideaki Anno was right. How the last episode went was truly better than how a lot of people thought it should have ended. The series really was about being human, and not about big robots. Kudos to Anno.

On a side note, it becomes very apparent in the last episode that the voice of Rei, Megumi Hayashibara, is also the voice of Lina Inverse. And Girl-type Ranma. And . . . well, lots of people . . .

I feel like shit. Like Spangler said at the end of Ghostbusters, I feel like the bottom of a taxi cab.

But I shall press onward . . . I managed to get some laundry done last night, finally. And I drank copious amounts of Cherry Coke.

Talked to Cryptess on ICQ last night. Our first real time conversation since I left Seattle. She has sung in an opera thing.

Also last night, I spent a lot of time plotting the trip Trisa and I are taking to Los Angle-lease on Wednesday. It can't possibly go as bad as last time.
I have class to-day . . . But first I will have coffee.

"Now where am I?"-Ryoga Hibiki

Last night's episode of Justice League was surprisingly enjoyable. It really surpassed any previous episode. Even though there technically wasn't anything wildly original in the plot . . . It rather firmly held my attention. Perhaps because the animation is not only good but also, unlike it's counterpart X-Men: Evolution, it's very sensitive to how people actually move. Unlike most American animations, this one seems close to that typically exclusively Japanese knack of knowing what to animate and, when you don't have a massive budget, what not to animate.

X-Men: Evolution is a good example of this widespread folly as it is a show with good animation. The problem is that, the characters, when in conversation, or casually walking about, give one the sense--from the unnatural, overwrought gesticulations, and at times, outright bizarre walking frames (witness the Sirens episode and you'll starkly see what I mean)--that the people working on these animations have never actually witnessed a human being in motion.

And it's also true that the writing is a little better on Justice League. The premise of X-Men: Evolution, which attempts to pander to the Britney Spears-ish teen crowd, makes several miscalculations, most notably the absence of the Wolverine/Cyclops/Jean Grey love triangle.

So now I'm hungry . . .

It's definitely blue beach-ball time around here.

I bet you all know what I'm talking about and I bet you all have had the experience of bemusedly shaking your head, sighing with nigh frustrated affection, at the antics of those around you who bring home the blue beach ball that they naturally coinsider tyo be the best thing ever and always (I left my typos in because I liked them).

And what's not to like, really? It's round with a rubbery skin and filled with air. It's bouncible and playful.

Things can get scary though. I once heard of a woman drowning her own children rather than let them be tortured by blue-beach ball Death Collectors.

Of course, that was back in the forties, and to-day blue beach balls are generally deemed something like soma that's okay for kids. Kids even.

Sure, you get the popping accidents now and then. But it's kind of inhuman to deny anyone their basic right to blue beach balls, so whatta you gonna do?

. . . okay.

I'm gonna go for broke.

I'll just say it . . . I DON'T GET IT. WHAT IS SO FRELLING GREAT ABOUT THE BLUE BEACH BALL??!!

Oh! I almost forgot to mention . . . The Pumpkin Smash smoothies at Jamba Juice taste exactly like the vanilla milkshakes at Jack-In-the-Box.


"But answer there came none--And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one." -Tweedledee

Okay, so come 7am I did actually sleep, I think. Ha, eat that, gods. Or whoever you are.

Empty coke can still next to my mouse . . . I ended up watching more Star Trek and not being at all productive. It really is amazing how soothing it was to watch Star Trek. I never realised before what a tonic it is.

I'd made these Star Trek tapes a very long time ago . . . High School, childhood. I wonder if this is why Randolph Carter was so interested in pursing his childhood. Maybe if I keep watching my old Star Trek tapes . . . I'll slip out to where the Old Ones are?

I promised Tim I'd help him get a bookshelf to-day. I also need to buy shaving cream and deordant . . . I'm just so exciting, ain't I?

You may have noticed I added a bunch of links to this page. Go visit all of them repeatedly until you're reduced to a feverishly sweating, meaninglessly giggling little baby with bulging, senseless eyes.

I wanna get coffee . . . but first, I will do some crunches.


"Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief, knowledge comes with death's release." -David Bowie

Halloa. I know this feeling. It's the feeling that says, "Hey, guess what? Yer not gonna get a wink of sleep to-night. And what's more, you probably won't be very productive."

What I need is a sedative (he says as he sips his coke).

As sedatives go, Star Trek is amazingly effective. But it's not enough.

Damn it, I swear to the gods that if I can't sleep I shall, damnit shall be productive.

Your soul is bound to the Fifth Totem, Homid:
The Monkey.

Homid appears as a viridian monkey. He embodies
intelligence, potential, understanding, and
skill. He is associated with the color
viridian, the season of spring, and the element
of fire. His downfall is pretentiousness.

You are most compatible with Owls and Tortoises.


Which Animal Spirit Totem Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yesterday I encountered a man praying before his meal at the mall food court, a woman calling her boyfriend a retard in cloying, false anger, and a young woman who yelled vaguely near me at no one in particular about lesbian-haters, lazy communists, and fucking tits.

I also, because I was writing a scene in my novel that I was very happy with, felt more at peace with myself, and stronger, than I have felt in many days.

But right now, I'm angry because apparently I've just narrowly missed Trisa. It's the kind of cursed miss that gets thoroughly under my skin . . . So fucking angry . . . Maybe I'll try calling her from the mall. Maybe somehow the gods will allow me to reach her from there.

Old gum is bad gum. Don't try it.

I found some old Bazooka Joe bubble gum in my coin basket, leftover from when Trisa and I went to a nice 50s restaurant a long time ago. I was gonna throw them away but . . . I had to see the Bazooka Joe comics. And once I'd opened them, naturally I had to chew them. It's something I regret.

Oh, but . . .

Iichiwawa!!

I've been flat broke for the past couple of days but now, thanks to my enormous store of pennies, dimes, and nickels, and my patient coin-rolling, I have thirty-four dollars!! Yes, it is all from loose change.

The biggest yield was the dimes, which alone gave me twenty dollars. I was only able to roll two dollars of pennies as I had only four penny roll sleaves, and four dollars of nickels, as nickels seem to be by far the most scarce coin. I wonder why?

Then I found lots and lotsa quarters, and a single coin dollar. I also found British money, Thai money, and Star Wars action figure collectable coins. Not to mention all the movie stubs I found (Divine Intervention, Russian Ark, Wild At Heart). And oh, yes, the gum . . .

Sometimes I wish I had been born an eye. Just an eye . . . A big, annonymous, sensor. I feel that disinclined to generate output. Well, most output. I did do some writing to-day . . .

I have class on Wednesday and I wish I didn't as I'm currently broke. I don't have money for any gas except what's already in the tank.

Hmm . . . Most of the things on my mind right now are things I don't wanna write about here . . .

Life would be better without plastic. I think.

I think I'll just read right now . . .

??

Yup. I want another coke. But it feels like a bad idea . . . Actually, what I really want is orange juice.

To-morrow I'd like to use for getting lots of things done. But I doubt I shall. I have two appointments (hehe) to-morrow. Well, social calls. But social calls are impoitant, very impoitant (that's how Chiana's brother Nerri says "important").

Okay . . . I'll have another coke. I meant to do so much to-night . . . but a single new page of Doll Merchant was all that I managed.

Can't . . . stop . . . drinking . . . cokes! Can't stop! Huah! I'm on my third can in the last three hours . . . Oh, that's bad.

Maybe I'm just trying to get the taste of the Pepsi Vanilla out of my mouth.

Weeks ago, Tim recomended that I try the Pepsi Vanilla, saying that it had a stronger vanilla taste than the Vanilla Coke. My attempts to purchase the Pepsi Vanilla were thwarted by machines lacking the item and by machines bearing erroneous labels.

But finally; a stroke of luck. I got one.

So intense had my expectations become by this point that I could do nothing but feverishly scream/think "eureka!" as that, indeed, indelibly vanilla-ie stuff dribbled down my gullet, impregnating my eye with madness.

To-day, bearing my bottle of Pepsi Vanilla proudly to the home of my mother, I, in an aloof and mischievious tone, asked of my sister, "Have you tried the Pepsi Vanilla, hmmm?"

"Yes," she said. "It tastes like medicine."

Lightning flashed through my synapses(sp?) and I gasped, very like Inu-Yasha, foiled by Naraku. "It is true!" gasped I. For verily did it taste of cough syrup, and mine eyes and throat and the odd eyes in my throat and those things which feel things in things all viciously did attest to mine brain squegee; YES! IT IS BAD! IT IS PEPSI BLUE ALL OVER AGAIN! BUT WITH BLACK MAGIC!

Just when I thought words could not be emphasised in any other way, things got underlined, and I sunk into the despair of Knowing . . .

Later, I had myself beaten senseless by Lizard Man. Or the Lizard Men, I should say, as there were at least five of the bastards. This was at Tim's house, inside a Game Cube and a television, and I made Tim uncomfortable, and he had to leave the room. It was team battle (this was Soul Calibur 2, by the way, in case you hadn't picked up on it) and I was using Charade, Talim, and Taki against Lizard Man after Lizard Man, and not passing that stage for, as the game clock noted 90 frelling minutes. I had used the randomiser option to choose my characters (one of the challenges I set for myself. That, and the fact that I refuse to play on any level other than extremely hard), but it was still what I considered to be a good crew. Not to mention a sexy crew, as Talim and Taki are young, scantily clad women (Charade is a sexless construct/golem. But I bet there're some people who go for that). But having my--their--pretty little asses kicked repeatedly, so very many, many . . . many times began to make me feel I was being subjected to a brutal cruelty towards women. Lizard Man can not afford the ticket back from Suffragette City. Er, does that make sense?

The point is, folks . . . I went farbots in that little battle cage. Yes I did.

So . . . I've decided that I shall get more work done without the air coditioner, and with less light.

AH! I found my copy of Tori Amos's Little Earthquakes! It was in one of my Farscape DVD cases. Of all places! I don't remember why I put it in there . . . If I hadn't decided to watch A Clockwork Nebari to-day, who knows how long it would have been before I found it?

Gods . . . I hear children's voices elsewhere in the house . . .

I'm behind on a lot of things. I've taken the last couple of days for "research into the the arts" *koff, koff*

In the shower this morning, I started thinking about the entirety of my novel . . .

I saw Lost in Translation with Trisa on Thrusday, and I'm still in afterglow, because it was a very good movie.

In fact, the next day it put me in the mood to do nothing but absorb. Lost in Translation was the kind of movie that makes me want to take the time to appreciate art.

To watched Farscape and Star Trek: The Next Generation, read a Sherlock Holmes story and a Peter Straub story called Mrs. God, which is phenominal (of course).

Those two stories, mind you, are both short stories (actually, I think Mrs. God is a novella)--I haven't started reading a new novel since I finished Age of Innocence a few days ago. And I'm a little frustrated.

I could not begin to give you an idea of the massive quantity of unread books I have that I desperately want to read. And some of those, I'm even under a sort of obligation to read as soon as possible.

I think I've decided on Huxley's Brave New World as it was giving to me around two years ago by my cousin who I but rarely see . . . except for the fact that, starting a few days ago, he now lives in the same house as me. So I must read this book.

And after it, I suspect, I shall read the other book he gave me, and then Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk, which Trisa gave me not long ago with an air of "sponaneously read this now for fun!" I'm afraid I had to schedule that spontinaity for a later date . . .

I also need (and desperately want) to read several Peter Straub and Stephen King novels that Marty loaned to be nearly a year ago. He's been such a good sport about letting me borrow books . . . I really need to impress upon him how very slow a reader I am.

And in the meantime, I shall occasionally gaze sadly at my untouched stacks of Ursula K Leguin, William Gibson, Leo Tokstoy, Charles Dickens, Caitlin R Kiernan, Poppy Z Brite, and who knows what all . . .

You are Mitsurugi -

Both mysterious and attractive, you captivate people with the fact that you seem to be
good at everything! Spending quiet moments with a friend and talking about what life means to you is your ideal situation. You don't like to stand out very much and you seem to be more old-fashioned
than modern, but when you do take the spotlight -- you command the floor!


Which Soul Calibur character are you?


this quiz was made by david park

Bad Words


Saying things off
Truth in our seperate seats
Filled with everything
Sharing nothing

Shaded, dull, fake
Leaves of grey anonymous plants
Empty records reveal
The ordinance of silence

Pretty character of
A different story
Only canons speak
Between our galleys

Dry gunpowder and
Stupid sparks
Kill
Even as they pump blood

Every laugh is a recording
Every thought is a charity
Every moment is spent longing
For a return to sleep

We don't know what we saw
We can't wrap heart around it
Blinking we go
Invisible grocery shopping

The supermarket is a church
Alters are freezers
And in the morning sun
This is no place to be

"Jimmy rapped on and on about his suicide, how he'd kick it in the head when he was twenty five . . . Don't wanna stay alive when you're twenty five." -David Bowie

At twenty four, I basically do wanna stay alive, I guess. I got volume three of 1602 yesterday. It's shaping up to be a good little series.

To'day I'll thing some dos and what some whos.

I just got up to do something . . . and I sat back down again.

About an hour ago, I went to the supermarkert to buy something . . . and when I got there, I forgot what it was I meant to buy.

I was gonna buy something at the mall to-day . . . and then I inexplicably didn't.

I was gonna say something else here . . . but I forgot what it was.

I didn't mean to vote to-day. And I didn't. Hurrah for convictions. Y'know, Jack Kerouac never voted.

(of course, when I keep saying "to-day" what I really mean is Tuesday . . . I haven't gone to bed yet).

I ate dinner at my parents house where they've installed a new fountain in the backyard, so we were constantly treated to what sounded like a twelve foot tall man urinating. I have to go back there early to-morrow for doughnuts. Then, I have to go to school. I need to fill out the take-home "quiz" before class to-morrow . . . It's an infuriatingly simple exercise, and one which that frelling bastard has made us do in class and in groups THREE FUCKING TIMES now. Oh, yes, I had it the first time. But far be it from me to suggest that even the vaguest opportunity to force me to interact with humans should be passed up.

And now I do get to do one on my own. Oh, goody. I'm not sure if I can do it because if I do, I think I may just start to cry.

It's one of those things that you feel ought to make you feel like you're accomplishing something, as it's an important school assignment for the betterment of your grade. But when you look at it, you find that it's very lame, and you realise that upon finishing it, you going to feel very empty.

Gods, is that really what I'm whinning about here? No. Not just that. This little piece of emptiness just kind of carries with it feelings of all sorts of sensitivity of the emptiness. Things like, "Hey, I'm gonna vote for the governater!" or "No, brother, I don't want to watch Farscape, even though I'm sitting and watching nothing on the TV" or "Now, boys and girls, we have to feel all the feelings in the world, okay?"

I've been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion a lot lately, and Asuka's line; "Mina daikirai!" ("I hate everyone!") keeps resounding in my head.

I don't want to hate the people I love. I love the people I love. But lately I've been wanting to scream at most of them . . .

My mother was watching Oprah to-day. I stood close by as Oprah interviewed a woman who'd been in solitary confinement.

I could do with being in solitary confinement. How nice if the whole world was contained within four, very close walls . . .

I was surprisingly sociable yesterday. I gave out my URL to two people (If you're one, or somehow both, of these people, welcome). Hopefully I won't all together fall off my anti-human wagon.

Yesterday I also had a brief and depressing visit with Trisa. And I had two brief, but depressing classes.

Time for me to go. I suppose I oughta go vote. But since when have I been a legal citizen of this planet?

Currently wearing headphones with no sound coming out of them . . . yes, let's have some music . . .

Ah. The Rasputina cover of Velvet Underground's "All To-morrow's Parties". Good, good.

It's hot in this room.

I need to go to sleep.

I don't want to sleep at all. I wanna wake up and have Monday happen already. I'll be honest with you, I'm disappointed with myself. I'm completely unprepared for class to-morrow and that bastard'll put us in groups.

Ugh. I feel frantic and lethargic, exhausted and impatient, consumed and empty, and all that usually unusual rot.

I told Trisa a few weeks ago that I was going to cultivate my uselessness. I'm making headway, but I need to go further. Or so the Lovecraft Tarot tells me.

There's a big crack in my windshield. I think it just might be getting steadily larger. Tim told me it could just break on me while I'm on the freeway. I thought this was just more of Tim's paranoid claptrap. That guy slept with a black widow spider last night--he told me he's gonna do something about it to-night.

I'm gonna keep up steam until dawn. Let's list the things I oughta be doing. My horoscope said I should do that on Saturday, but I procrastinated. So here 'tis now.

I need to work on my novel.

I need to kind of rewrite everything I wrote for part 8. Or at least heavily edit it.

I need to read a lot of my text book.

I need to care, damnit. I need heart.

Plus I have another project I started on Friday . . .

And there's a short story I wrote half of a few weeks ago . . .

I have eight dollars. Hurrah! In your face "hurrah"! I can get coffee to-morrow morning.

You know what I want, though? A pretty concubine.

Well, I don't feel like doing a damn thing to-day. Not a damn thing.

Is there anything creepier than people? I mean, really, people are really, really creepy. People are seriously creeping me out to-day.

I do have a good cup of coffee next to me, though . . . Ugh. And you know, there are a lot of things I need to do? I just so don't wanna do 'em.

I stayed up late watching Seven Samurai last night. I'd never cried watching that film before, but I cried last night for some reason. It's a great movie. Blah. Blay blah.

I'm going to give my sister my old DVD player to-day. I have no place for it . . .

I need to pee.

I cannot get to the bathroom.

Should I go to the mall? Should I really go to the mall, just so's I can pee? Has my life really come to that?

If I go to the mall, I'm liable to spend a little money. I'm liable to get a coffee, at least. I have twelve dollars. I wanted to save some for the vague possibility that Trisa might have some free time this weekend, and she and I could go see Bubba Ho-Tep, Lost in Translation, or any other of the many movies that she and I have talked about going to see.

Oh, but I need to pee. What'll I do? What options do I really have? And no, I'm not going to wet myself. I don't care if I have a closet full of pants next to me . . . And by the way, I like pants. Just thought I'd say that while I was thinking it.

...

Got free lunch at a place called Mimi's today. Ate with several of my relatives, spent most of the time keeping my eyes dead and fixed on my coffee, similtanously to discourage conversation, and as a way of using the time to think.

I've been wondering about part 8 of my novel a lot lately. I may do some serious things to it . . . To-day, at Mimi's, I finally thought of something I'd been trying to get at in my brain regarding the overall thrust of part 8, which I rather need, as I am now entering part 8's last couple of chapters.

There's something strange about the deliberate way I've been placing configurations of words in this novel. It's sort of like a very, very long haiku. I'm wondering also if this format shall end up detracting from the novel, or being an enhancement.

Don't know.

I wanna pee.

My water smells like feet. Which is too bad because I'm very thirsty. I've been thirsty a lot lately.

My wild cherry pepsi, which I bought on accident last night as I attempted to buy the new vanilla pepsi, just to try it out, smells like laundry deturgent. It smelt that way last night, though, so I guess it's okay.

. . . It' weird, the sorts of things that can captivate me. Yesterday I went to the mall, and going to one of my usual parking spaces, I had to come to a stop because some morons had decided to rope off the road just around a very tight corner--I think so's they could paint it. There was barely room enough for me to do the old Scoot Forward A Little, Back Up A Little, Scoot Forward A Little manoevre until I'd somehow edged my way out. But when I finally did, and drove to another parking space, I left my car to immediately go to a spot inside the mall where I could watch other cars abruptly finding themselves in the same predicament. I was treated to seeing two cars going down the street at once, and saw the car in the rear had to back up first for the lead car before going into the same edging manoevres himself. Meanwhile, I could see the painter foreman, or whatever, frantically yelling at his people to remove the tape blocking the little road. Good fun, good fun.

Oh, and it was another hot day, of course.

First of all . . . I got me a copy of Shadows Over Baker Street!

I am irrationally happy about this.

I read the Neil Gaiman story, A Study in Emerald, last night. It was brilliantly creepy. And bless Gaiman for turning the tables just as I was starting to get a sick feeling near the end.

Then I read part of Elizabeth Bear's Tiger! Tiger!, which is all right so far, even though it doesn't actually have Sherlock Holmes in it . . . Although I would very like to skip to the Caitlin Kiernan story and the Poppy Z Brite/David Ferguson story, I have decided to strictly adhere to reading each and every story in order . . . not for any particular reason, except that, perhaps I don't wanna end up saving the best for first (which, I know, I might already have done by reading the Neil Gaiman story first, but then again I honestly find some of Kiernan's stuff to be much stronger than Gaiman's).

So for that, I'm down to only 36 dollars, but it was worth it. It was worth even having the sales clerk root around in the back room for it. It was worth it.

You know, there're just too many good things coming out lately for me to be keeping a responsible budget. Supposedly the new Elvis Costello album's coming out soon, although I don't know exactly when. And last week, I bought the new David Bowie album, Reality.

The review in Entertainment Weekly accused Reality of being the latest example of a very misguided ethic that Bowie's been employing in his music making lately, saying that the music is so studio slick, and overly tampered with by Bowie, that any good melody is lost under the sort of cacophony. The first time I listened to Reality, I might have agreed, but by the third listen, I was very much under the album's spell. There's a kind of wonderful, vicious insanity about it (underlined by the presence of Aladdin Sane pianist Mike Garson), especially evoked after I had sat down and read all the lyrics. I especially liked "Fall Dog Bombs the Moon" and "Bring Me the Disco King". The title track, "Reality," is kind of nightmare-ish and sort of makes me wish that Bowie would do an entire album of nightmares.

I also obtained a copy of Radiohead's Hail to the Thief from Marty as well as a copy of a Cranes album from Trisa. Both are very good, and still percolating between my ears.

...

Yesterday felt very frantic for no apparent reason. It just seemed like I had no time to sit still. I meant to do some writing, but it didn't happen. Well, unless you count the new page of Doll Merchant I did (just now realised I should've been italicising Doll Merchant all this time. At least, I think so . . .).