Don't think I've ever been so far behind on my laundry. I literally have nothing to wear. Wonder what I'll do . . .

Was in a hurry yesterday because I had to babysit my sister's dog--a half chihuaha, half yorkie named Bella. She's very fiesty and enjoys biting people and things. Reminds me that I'm more of a cat person.

Slept in spurts last night as I set my alarm to wake me at intervals to either stop a tape, start a tape, or switch a tape. When I came to for reals finally, I was a little upset that I'd missed Wuthering Heights at 6:30am. But then I was organising my tapes to-day and discovered that I had already taped Wuthering Heights, at around tape 30 or so. And then I discovered that I'd already taped The Philadelphia Story, which I was recording at the precise moment I discovered this, prompting me to immediately press "stop." I also appear to have two copies of The Lady Eve, two tape 31s, and no tape 65. Yes, it was certainly high time I'd organised the things.

Yesterday I watched Only Angels Have Wings starring Cary Grant, Jean Arther, and Rita Hayworth. It was directed by Howard Hawks, demonstrating that Howard Hughes was a fool to fire him.

Only Angels Have Wings is about pilots in some South American country. Lee (Jean Arther) stops in while coming ashore from her cruise ship. Leather jacket wearing, hot young pilots quickly try and woo her, but the fellow who was supposed to take her to steak dinner ends up having to go up in his plane in bad weather--he gets killed. Lee's astonished when the boss, played by Cary Grant in a ludicrously large panama hat, and the rest of the boys go on having their rowdy night in the bar.

The movie goes on to be about these men who fly, risking death, and the inability of their loved ones to cope with the pilots' precarious lifestyle. And good for that. Arther's character is spunky with her out-of-towner, high pitched voice but not overplayed. Grant is a sympathetically hard-hearted bastard. I only wish Rita Hayworth had had a bigger role. But then again, I suppose it wouldn't have fit, exactly.

Now to find some clothes . . .

Yesterday involved ninjas, Star Trek, a new DNA model, ritual suicide, and the undead.

I can't say much else though, 'cause I'm in a hurry! Perhaps . . . more later!

One of those days when a dip in the bacta tank sounds really good. Got a store throat and feel like there are thistles stored behind my nose. This just had to happen on a Thursday, didn't it?

Last night I watched The Outlaw, directed by Howard Hughes. It was a bad movie. Apparently it's more famous for how it was marketed--advertisements focused mainly on Jane Russell's cleavage. It was only released briefly, then pulled when family associations and the like screamed for its blood. In light of the whole Janet Jackson thing, one's forced to note how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And like Janet Jackson, Howard Hughes appears to have had almost no artistic talent. Originally, Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep) was supposed to direct The Outlaw but was fired because Hughes felt he had better ideas. These ideas seem generally to have consisted of bizarre, oddly-timed close-ups with a massive overuse of cresendoing orchestra for the soundtrack (not to mention an overuse of goofy "wa-wa-waaaa"s). At one point, Jane Russell's character decides to stay home. She says so, then walks out of frame, and we're subjected to several moments of the camera meaninglessly watching the empty wall while the music gets grand.

The story is simple enough. One day, Doc Holiday shows up in town (it's a western, by the way). He's friends with the sheriff, so they're hanging out when they discover that Billy the Kid had stolen Doc's horse--the actor in the role of Billy the kid is a monotonously charmless fellow who was obviously always polite to his elders in real life.

The Battle For the Horse is a running gag throughout the film, one of the many things which provoked me to scream, "Why don't you shoot him!"

Billy sleeps in the stable to protect his horse from Holiday. Billy's attacked here by a young woman named Rio (Jane Russell). She's awful mad about him having killed his brother. But then he rapes her so she can't help but love him. She loves him so much that, later, when he's been injured by a shotgun at point blank range, she patiently nurses him back to health, even pressing her naked body to him to keep him warm (for truly, the warmth of a woman is the cure for having your body scattered into pulpy meat--okay, so the shotgun only gave him a minor leg wound).

From the uncannily lustreless performances by Billy the Kid and Rio, to Rio's ridiculous figure, this movie feels like a porno. There are a number of scenes that fade to black, practically telling you, "And then they had sex." But of course, you never see any of the good stuff.

The moral hijinks--like Rio's rape--would have bothered me except I didn't believe for a single moment in anything that happened in this movie. It was filled with long, dull scenes that we can figure out the ending to long before they reach said end . . .

Why did I watch it? Well, it's Howard Hughes!

I'm gonna get things done to-day. I don't care what happens or how late I have to stay up--Wait, damn, I have to get up early to-morrow. Oh well, so much for that. I'll just ooze through to-day.

I need more Altoids. Cinnamon. Tried the peppermints but all they did was freshen my breath.

And I'm hungry! Food, I need. Do any of you realise just how difficult it is for me to get out of this chair? I'll frequently starve until 5pm.

My hands are cold . . . Getting near the end of Peter Straub's Ghost Story . . . Wonderful book, but actually really taking a toll on me psychologically, I think.

I dreamt last night I met a denim wearing, black haired, mad girl named Peter, sleeping on a tatami mat. I was delighted that her name was Peter--I told her how brilliant I thought it was that she should have that name. She glared at me, but smiled faintly.

The packet of works submitted that were discussed in the Acorn Review class last night was completely comprised of crap. There was not a single, halfway decent item in the dispiriting lot. They were all poems. They were all bad poems.

Particularly the last one--something about learning how to fly and kayaking and rainbows in waterfalls. I gave my most emphatic speech about how the author should die a thousand deaths. But what hurt the most is that this absolute piece of dren was voted in! The majority of the class liked it!

Rarely have I felt so let down by humanity. Rarely have I seen a clearer indicator of shear blandness of the mass-human consciousness. I truly want something absolutely bizarre to happen to all of these people. Something to remind them what true excitement can be, that life is more than eXtreme sports and Skittles commercials (two things that the poem was inferior to but probably influenced by). I want these people to wake up and smell the squid men. I want these people to wake up with a hangover, discovering they'd slept with Minnie Mouse.

I want their worlds to be so rocked that when they try to tell their former friends about their uncanny experiences, they find themselves shunned by souls who are unable to accept anything stranger than reality TV. And then Ebenezer Scrooge shall have learned a thing or two.

Feel like I've got a hairball in my throat . . . Been hanging out with the cats too much.

Went to the Olive Garden with my parents and sister yesterday and ate far too much. Actually felt that stretching pain in the stomach.

To-day's school and I've gotten to thinking about how very much I've assigned myself to do and about how little I've gotten done.

Grr! Must . . . activate . . . energy . . . productivity . . . C'mon you lazy bastard, where's the gusto?! . . . Must . . . do . . . things . . . !

Last night's dream involved a sinister sequence of events involving grotesque, gargantuan sealife, beautiful people, and souls that are at times doomed.

Myself and around fifteen other people were working for a mysterious, shadowy agency at the biggest aquarium in the world. At least, we thought we were working for them. There seems to have been some confusion about that.

Anyway, the trouble began when one morning I was strolling outside one of the larger tanks--about the size of a large town--and saw that it had been emptied of water. Terribly enormous, dark skinned tentacles with ruffled suction cups and the dark, gleaming smooth bulks of dead whales were piled in overbearingly ominous hills for as far as the eye could see.

Well, it turned out the strange time machine that had been activated in one of my previous dreams was still active, and my team and I were forced to replay the mission that ensued upon finding the dead sea creatures, over and over again. I was the only one who remembered anything from previous cycles.

There was a young Arab man who I remembered as having been killed in a previous cycle. He was a decent fellow, so I decided to wake him up and warn him.

The team had a set of carved, airtight, wooden dorms in the middle of one of the tanks and the only light inside these dorms was given by the spider-webby water reflections coming in from the window, making the place dark, soft, and blueish.

I didn't find the Arab man in his bed. Instead, there was another team member, a beautiful woman who was always topless.

Later, during the course of our mission where we were trying to get past the mazes and traps at an enormous, marble castle, she and I decided to stop at a Subway sandwich and get dinner.

We were having a pleasant, sort of exuberant conversation, when suddenly she realised that her sandwich had been made wrong. A dim, confused waiter approached, asking if he could help, and she began yelling violently at him. The waiter and much of the rest of the staff were soon brought to tears by her ferocity. Myself, I sat quietly thinking about a question I'd asked her that she'd never answered.

When she ran outside in a beserker rage, I decided I'd go back to the castle and see how the rest of the team was doing.

On the way, I spotted another beautiful female member of the team walking under a stone bridge.

I jumped down from the bridge to land next to her and asked if she'd mind if I walked with her. She said that no, she didn't mind.

When we reached the castle, we saw that the Arab man I was worried about had managed to miss the pit that would have claimed his life. I was sort of glad, but it was an empty kind of gladness, because I knew this whole thing would repeat itself again, and he would probably die, if not the next time, at least some other time in another cycle.

We never completed the mission.

Finished the first draft of my novel yesterday. Oy . . . Lots of typing to do still. Lots of editing--I can already think of things I definitely want to fix and who knows what I'll find once I go over it carefully.

But writing The End is probably a significant step.

I'd seen a number of people speaking well of a movie called Drunken Master, including Roger Ebert and Franklin Harris. So last night I at last watched it. It was very good. Jackie Chan's an entertaining, delightful rascal. And just fun to watch. One thing that annoyed me was that the DVD continually switched between Cantonese and English dubbed, all by itself, in the middle of scenes.

To-day . . . I have to go to the laundrymat. I don't want to go. I hate that place. Fuck.

My eyes hurt.

I got up early again to-day. I hope this won't become a habit. Then again, it is kind of fun being up early. It's also fun to stay up late. I just need to stop sleeping.

But sleep is fun too, oh no . . .

I figured out that I've taped around one hundred forty movies in the past month or two. I just made tape sixty yesterday. As the old man say, there be all kinds of wealth in this wide world, yessir.

Yesterday I ate only an Egg McMuffin (without ham) and a burrito. Yet I was not hungry unil I woke up this morning.

I'm feeling weird about to-day.

Oof . . . I feel steamrollered . . .

My cousin, Josh, put my spare tire on my car for me last night, so I got up bright and early (8am!) to go and get my new tire. In twenty minutes, it was done, and I was on my way to getting an oil change--the first oil change I've ever had to get because of time instead of mileage. The incapacitation of my car for tire and insurance added it up that way.

Then I was driving. Not really sure where I was going but I ended up at Plaza Camino Real mall. In their interesting, cosy, coffee place I wrote what is essentially the climax of my novel. It left me with a twist in my gut--in a good way, I suppose. I felt devastated as I walked away from the mall. I suppose I ought to write the denoument but quick.

To-night's the playwriting class. I read the reading assignment in the obscenely expensive book but I'm not sure I've done all the work I'm supposed to. Typical academic me, I guess. Cross your fingers for me.

Oh, hello, I've got that bitter wakeful feeling in my stomach. Was it the tamales with the two different kinds of stale fast-food hot sauce (found Del Taco's Del Scorcho and Taco Bell's Fire in one of my bags)? Was it all the altoids I complusively plunked into my mouth? Was it all the writing I was doing yesterday, the fact that I'm a hair from finishing my novel's first draft? Is it woman trouble? Is it Dr. Pepper? I'll tell you one thing, it's certainly not the taste of originality . . .

Maybe I'm spooked. I fell asleep to the cat snoring only to wake a few hours later to find the cat gone--somehow my door had been opened without waking me. And this bothered me. I obsessively thought over all the possible ways the cat could have gotten out of the room. Maybe I was sleep walking? Wouldn't be the first time.

When I was a kid, I once woke up with all my clothes inside-out. I asked my mother about it and she said I'd been wandering the house naked and that she'd had to dress me.

As I keep going with this novel thing and with other things, I'm finding myself feeling an increasing lack of hope about life.

Maybe it was a ghost cat to begin with? Lucky just came into the room now. He doesn't look like he's afraid he won't get let out if he needs to be.

I'm feeling a big dislike for some things right now. Or disinterest. I have so many movies to watch . . . I think I'd rather sit and watch them than do anything else ever again. I guess I'm excited about where my novel is, but it's making me cry, and I'll probably be the only one it does that to.

Actually my eyes are rather stingingly dry at the moment. Lucky looks startled by the motionless door . . . He and his mother, Victoria, have this way of just looking casually startled. Although he can certainly look restful. I was thinking last night of what a business-like expression is on his face when he sleeps.

To-day I'm gonna make a real effort to get my car up and running. Maybe I'll just drive on the flat to the discount tire place? I once drove from Ocean Beach to Santee on a flat (because I'm that kind of scary-stupid). I should be okay.

Hello, Wednesday.

Was very fortunate to be driven home by a celebrity named Ha last night. Very fortunate--it was raining cats, dogs, and robot locusts. Then Ha and I shared toquitos before she had to leave. Hope she got home okay, come to think of it . . .

To-day . . . I actually slept in later than the cat, which almost never happens. He got up, paced up to my face, said good morning, and then jumped off the bed.

Watched Yojimbo last night. For action sequences, I must say I greatly prefer swords over guns. Sorta makes me sorry that guns ever came into existence.

And now the only fatigue remaining on my brain is the kind that wants only coffee to alleviate it. And coffee I shall have.

I'm a little miffed that I missed taping Julius Ceasar at one o'clock . . .

Right! No connexions, no reason in this world but the need for espresso! Ikimasu yo . . .

AH . . .

Forgot to mention that I finally got the Twin Peaks pilot on DVD on Saturday. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. And neither could the guy at GameStop who asked me, astonishment in his voice, where I'd gotten it. I'd gotten it at Barnes and Noble, where it was slightly expensive. But well worth it.

I could do with some walking now. Which is good because it's precisely what I have to do.

The computer's noisy again . . .

Dream last night was about a cunning system of mirrors arranged around people's bathrooms to allow their private activities to be viewed in secret. I discovered one in my bathroom and felt strangely sure that no one had used it and any who might have noticed it had thought nothing of it.

The past several weeks, I've mainly been doing all my movie-watching in the evening. So it's only fitting that the first movie that I should watch at an unusually early time should be a movie called The Remains of the Day.

I'd seen this movie before a very long time ago. I didn't really remember it very well so it was an essentially new experience. I'd read the book by Kazuo Ishiguro upon which the movie's based . . . not very long ago. I have to say that in several ways, the book was better. The book's told in first person and the movie, rather than have Mr. Stevens narrate, chose to try and incorporate all the information within the action or dialogue. Occasionally there was a voice-over of someone's letter to another person, acting as a kind of narrative. Mostly, the attempts at reforming the narrative felt pretty artificial. And I know some, like perhaps Caitlin R. Kiernan, who would say that first person narrative is distractingly artificial enough. Me, I think I'd rather have the single big artifice--which worked well in The Age of Innocence--than a bunch of little ones. I'd find it less jarring.

Of course, the excellent performances by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson made the movie well worth watching. The music was good, too.

And what else have I done to-day? I walked a bit and bought a sandwich.

Urrr, I'm so very hungry. It would make sense to eat, I suppose.

Yesterday I saw Return of the King again. Like its predecessors, it gets better every time I see it. I felt more emotionally involved for some reason.

I'd planned to do a number of things to-day. Definitely too many. I haven't even gotten breakfast-eating done with.

To-day's going to be a bunch of Alfred Hitchcock movies on TCM and I'm going to try to tape all of them.

I made the mistake of putting my contact lenses in my eyes to-day.

So tired . . . Can't sleep. Promised myself I'd sleep in . . . yet here I am . . . can't sleep. Isn't that funny, now?

What a day yesterday. Wrote more in my novel, which really seems to be going into hyperspace or something as I near the end. I wouldn't be surprised if I had draft one finished by next week.

I paid for my classes last night. Even though I'm only taking two, the cost was one hundred twenty dollars. It's really unbelievable. And now it's not just that I'm too busy to be a full-time student . . . I just can't afford it. I can't even conscience spending that much money on school. And I'm not even figuring in the cost of books. I've still gotta buy books for the playwriting class I started last night, and they look to be expensive. But the class seems to be fun so far, and I like Mr. Karl Sherlock. In addition to having one of the best names in the school, he also has the best wardrobe.

Then, of course, I walked home. And I really hated it last night. Not sure why. I was just cold and miserable and I wanted my damn car.

I hope I remember what classroom to go to to-day. I've written it on my hand, but that's not really any guarantee, now is it?

I want to go back to sleep very badly.

Yesterday I taped movies nearly all day . . . And I wrote a bit here and I wrote a bit there (Starbucks). It seems odd that I don't have memories of doing much else yesterday. Huh.

Bass!

I finally signed up for AOL Instant Messenger last night. Doesn't seem like such a bad service.

Watched an interview with the late Ann Miller last night. She seemed very interesting and lively for a woman of her age. She seemed like "a pistol" as Robert Osbourne (interviewer) said.

I wonder if she really did invent pantyhose, though? And I wonder if she really did introduce Lucille Ball to Dezi Arnez? There were an awful lot of things she said that she preceded by saying, "Now, the history books don't give me credit for it but I . . ."

She almost reminded me of the Albert Finney/Ewan McGreagor character from Big Fish. But I think I'll choose to believe her.

I think I'll probably spend most of the day indoors, taping movies, writing, and drawing. There are far worse ways to spend one's time.

I shall make one trip to Starbucks, though, for my health. I mean, I'll be walking, as I have been for about a week now. I have money for a new tire, but I need to find someone who knows how to put my spare on . . .

Lots of doing yesterday. Wrote an awful lot at the Grossmont Trolley Starbucks. Then I went to school, where I met up with Ha, who's taking the Acorn Review class as I am. She gave me some much appreciated food.

There're a number of people in the class, far more than the two previous times I've enrolled in it, but mainly there seems to be a very loud guy named James. I'm hoping I'll have an opportunity to crush his ego some time this semester. Not that I think he's a bad guy, it's that no-one should be that happy.

I did a new page of Doll Merchant last night--long overdue, I know.

And the other day, I found something buried in my car that I thought I might share with you people--very old photos of me. I guess they're from seven or eight years ago. It seems like ages ago--I really can't believe my skin once looked so good. I'm pretty glad there's photographic evidence, actually. Anyway. I've always wanted to post photos on this site, so people know what I look like. No-one ever wants to take pictures of me. But here's what I used to look like:

Just about time for me to leave for school.

There are many things to despise about this world.

But I think to-day should be okay.

There are so many things I wanna get done over the next couple weeks. Maybe too many things. I hope not so many things that I get nothing done.

There was a cat killed by coyotes in the street last night . . . None of the cats living here, but a cat I knew. The poor thing was torn apart so's only pieces of white fluff remained.

Coyotes are strange creatures. One night, a few weeks ago, I saw a coyote in the middle of a very busy street called Friars Road, looking very confused.

I found my copy of Tom Waits' Alice. I'm so glad about it. It was wedged between the driver's seat and cupholder in my car.

I'm supposed to go and watch the Golden Globes with my mother and sister to-day. Since there shall be pizza, I suppose I shall definitely go.

Watched Martin Scorcese's The Age of Innocence last night. I hadn't seen it in many years and I hadn't yet read the book the first time I saw the movie. The movie is surprisingly faithful to a book that I would have thought difficult to translate into a motion picture. Although it does, of course, sidestep the primary difficulty by having a narrator--a woman's voice, presumably the voice of Edith Wharton. Filmmakers generally perfer to avoid narration when they can and the reason is pretty well illustrated in this movie--it slows the action and makes the movie a more passive entity. But it was absolutely necessary in this case and since the movie is so brilliant in every other way, it all works out. I liked the tricks used to make people standing around, saying things vaguely, into a scene that communicates the violent emotions underneath--be it use of colour tinting or unexpected close-ups or clever uses of sound. Daniel Day-Lewis does much for this, too, being able to express a great deal without saying anything.

The movie lacks some of the humour of the book, particularly at the beginning. But it does very well capture the characters and their incredibally subtle, delicate relationships.

It really is a beautiful, terrible story.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 may leave television forever.

I know, they stopped making new episodes years ago. It's just such a sad statement anyway. I've, for the past couple weeks, been taping the episodes Sci-Fi shows in the early mornig on Saturday. But soon there shan't even be that . . .

I last night watched How to Succeed in Business Without Trying. It was a fun, occasionally cheeky musical that seemed to involve lots of colour and several people who seemed quite comfortable casually rubbing their faces on pieces of others' bodies. Especially the star, someone named Robert Morse, who looked something like a slightly bloated, manic Mark Hammil. I got to admit I kinna liked his faintly disturbing, hyber-creepy energy. And then-president Lyndon Johnson has a cameo.

I have to get coffee now.

Last night was kind of spooky.

I sat in bed, reading Peter Straub's Ghost Story to Lucky the cat (he seemed soothed by it) when suddenly Lucky's head jerked up, startled as he was by the sounds of coyotes howling outside. I did my best to calm him but an illusive air of menace seemed to hang about. I said to Lucky, "Something feels . . . evil . . . doesn't it, Lucky?"

I have a lot of things on my plate. I have to figure out what I'm gonna do about my tire and I have to think about school on Monday. I have to think about saving five dollars for the trolley.

There're other, secret things on my mind, too.

I last night dreamt I was in an enormous old mansion where a countess in the upstairs bedroom wanted me to kiss her.

Well. The recommendation from four girls finally added up; last night I watched Donnie Darko with my sister.

It was predicted by two girls that I would not enjoy it as much now that it had been built up by being recommended so often. I can't say for sure anything about that but I know I did enjoy the movie.

In a lot of ways, it felt like an old Steven Spielburg movie. The interaction amongst the Darko family was both weird and realistic in the way the interaction of the family in E.T. was. Since the movie takes place in the late 80s, you even sort of feel that Elliot's family might live a few blocks away.

There was a scene near the climax that was extremely evocative of E.T.--when Donnie, acting funny, tells Gretchen that they must go somewhere now and they automatically take off on bicycles and his two buddies automatically follow on their bikes. And it's Halloween.

Mainly an enjoyable film. It's only flaw is that the whole seems to be less than the sum of its parts. A series of very interesting or weird situations with good characters (mostly)(I didn't like the overweight girl who got booed in the school play. She was too After School Special). But by the end, it just seems to about how cool Donnie Darko is and how sad it was. Which was fine, although the movie doesn't become a masterpiece like some of the David Lynch and Steven Spielburg movies it paid homage to. And I will say homage, and not "ripped off from," because there was genuine respect and creativity.

Another flaw in the movie was Patrick Swayze's character. Well, maybe not a flaw as he did fulfill his function...well, no, yes! I will say flaw because it bothered me that his self-help video was more simplistic than the annoying self-help stuff in real life. It's true that one of the problems with self-help stuff in real life is that it is too simplicistic but Swayze's was lacking the veneer to make us believe people could plausibly become obsessed with it. If he had been Wane Dyer or Anthony Robbins, then Donnie's reaction to him would have been far more satisfying. As it is, it works because you want to cheer for Donnie, but it's strained.

Swayze's character reminded me of Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia and, perhaps unfortunately, it reminded me that Tom Cruise did a much better job with it.

I really liked Gretchen. Am I old enough for it to be sick for me to lust after her? I'm still only twenty-four. Not officially twenty-five until April. I'm still young! ish! Anyway, the actress is probably thirty.

Dreamt that my Dad was giving me a ride to school about a week before class started. He took a strange route and I ended up falling out of the car without his knowing. I found a gas station next to a nearly deserted airfield and I found an old, rusty, non-motored lawn mower (the kind I mowed the lawn with when I lived with my parents).

Between the airfield and the freeway, on a road that looked a bit like Magnolia just before the land changes from Santee into El Cajon, I pushed the reluctant mower. I was going, I realise now, in the direction of Parkway Plaza (mall).

But the rules were a little different in the world. The road and the freeway peeled apart to display different world layers. I lost myself for a time in a layer populated by soft clay people who smooshed and silently screamed when you touched them. Then there was a layer of curiously small, breakable buildings. Finally there were two infinitely large sheets of sticky black paper. Between were stuck people, arranged in groups starting with the most living on the left and the most dead on the right. When I peeled back the top sheet, the people on the left screamed for help and seemed uncomfortable with the air on their red, glossy open wounds. The people, or the shapeless slabs of meat, to the right were twisted into increasingly inhuman expressions of pain. Some people were no more than blackened, crying faces.

I left and found an apartment near Parkway Plaza that was filled with my family's furniture. I stashed the lawn mower in a corner and my Dad showed up to tell me that I'd been missing for nearly a decade.

...

When you drive through a Taco Bell and you hear echoing wobbly rumbles around you, it could mean you have a flat tire. That's what it meant for me last night, anyway. So once again, like clockwork, my car is incapacitated. And class starts next week. Guess it's back to the trolley for me...

For those interested, Caitlin's uploaded my latest four pages of Nar'eth manga to Nebari.net. Have a look.

Oh . . . do I feel like shit . . .

Watched Porco Rosso last night. A Hayao Miyazaki film about an Italian WWI fighter pilot who's become a bounty hunter by the early thirties. He's also become a pig, which, interestingly, does not seem to impede his flying abilities. It was a brilliant film.

Felt zombie-ish yesterday, fully numb and stuff. Then I bought a coffee, went to Tim's and, all of a sudden, in the middle of beating team mode with Mitsurugi, I became very jittery. After that, until I finally went to bed at 5am, I was similtaneously terribly hungry and very energetic.

To-day, so far, I've been lying in bed with Lucky, feeling like I have a harpoon in my gut, wondering if someone's fucking with me.

Trisa and I were going to try watching a bunch of film noir yesterday, but we only ended up getting through Double Indemnity before she fell asleep.

I feel like violent dren to-day. I wanna grab cartoon caterpillers and chomp their heads off. I wanna soak paper bag grounds with rancid water, breaking them when innocent feet set foot . . .

I still haven't gotten around to breakfast. And it's 3:10pm--late even for me.

I currently hope I don't come across very many people to-day. The liklihood of me punching them for the fact that they're conscious is too great.

Perhaps I can dull things with some Soul Calibur 2 or Morrowind . . . Are computer game titles supposed to be italicised?

I . . . can't remember yesterday very clearly. Let's see . . . In the evening I was at Tim's playing Soul Calibur 2 . . . I had brought Taco Bell with me to eat . . .

I received an e-mail from Cryptess who'd taken the time to tell me that my love for Cowboy Bebop was loathsome . . . Oh, gods, now I remember. What a fucking night. I was up until 5 am looking . . . for what, I cannot even remember. I tore the place apart, kicking up so much dust that at one point I simply collapsed in the closet, feeling miserable. I did find an awful lot of CD cases, though. Now my stack of empty cases whose CDs are missing numbers at only about thirty. And I still haven't found Alice, of course. I'm missing a number of CDs, but most prominent in my mind are two Tom Waits albums; Alice and Heart Attack and Vine.

I will find them. Oh, yes, I will find them.

I did laudry last night, too. Something I very sorely needed to do.

Last night I dreamt about Gollum trying to lead a reformed life in Hobbiton. He was, at times, successful.

Watched Real Time with Bill Maher with my mother and my sister last night. I was a big fan of Politically Incorrect, especially in High School, and back in those days I would occasionally try to get my mother to watch it but of course to her, back then, all of my tastes were patently foolish.

Now, she and my sister, who's becoming a bit too distressingly like a younger version of my mother, are quite taken with Bill Maher and I'm kind of sorry. Because while what I liked about Pollitically Incorrect was that it was a collection of interesting, often intelligent people having intelligent arguments, what mother and sister seem to like is Bill Maher. And I like Bill Maher. But I don't take all his words as The Truth as they seem to. And this Real Time show, unfortunately, seems to be more about Maher than the panel.

And I'm busy again to-day.

Yesterday was a good day. Better than my horoscope predicted.

Spent lots of time in the morning looking for a coffee shop Trisa'd recommended to me that I thought was called Zoams, but was in fact called Bassoms. So I didn't find it, but instead ended up writing for a long time in a Starbucks--wrote a scene that made me feel the whole of the novel like--and here's a hackneyed metaphor--reaching a point while climbing a mountain and looking down to see an indeed great big mountain. I hope, anyway. I'm feeling good about it.

Drove, after that, past a lot of aircraft carriers which were really close to shore. In their midst was a big fat cruise ship. And there, my friends, is America.

In the evening, Trisa and I had much fun going first to Olive Garden, and then to see Spike and Mike's Twisted Animation Festival thing. The best shorts were definitely the Happy Tree Friends, which seemed to perfect what most of the other cartoons were trying to do. After Happy Tree Friends, most of the others seemed dull and plain. Little wonder that there were three HTF episodes throughout the proceedings.

Now I'm in a hurry, so bye.

"As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent you asked for the latest party . . ."

Thursday again and I've got quite a mess here.

Finished watching the Cowboy Bebop television series last night. Definately a series with more style than substance but what style. And what damn fine animation for a television series. I frequently wondered how they managed it. And there was a lot more communicated about characters in this series by the way they moved and there was great use, in that capacity, of subtle gestures. And people had more distinctive physical features. Even many of the women looked different from one another for reasons other than hair.

And I felt sad at the end. Especially during Faye Valentine's words with Spike. It was almost as if she was saying, "I like this Cowboy Bebop series. Don't let's end it!"

I'm very glad I waited to see it with its Japanese language track instead of watching it on Cartoon Network. The English voice actors are never up to snuff.

Continued my hopeless search for some of my CDs yesterday. Digging about in my back seat I found, buried at the bottom, Richard's cough drops bag and Cryptess's fruit juice. Which is weird.

But damn it, why can't I find my copy of Tom Waits's Alice?

I did find, at Mel's journal:


You are a black cat, stubborn yet friendly, you
stick to your values and preferences, and no
one can convince you otherwise! You are the
legendary cat of mystery.


What color of cat are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

What can I say about yesterday? Hmm . . . Well, I was trying to organise my CDs a bit and discovered that my copy of Annie Lennox's Medusa had broken. Somehow--and this's never happened to me before--the CD itself had gotten split almost in half. Not sure I wanna buy it again. Maybe I'll just download it.

Anyway, now there are two large stacks of empty CD cases for CDs that I simply cannot locate. There must be a huge cache of my CDs that I haven't seen in forever stored in some remote place. Many of the missing CDs are ones I clearly remember having when I came back from Seattle so they must have gotten lost in the little storm that promptly followed my return.

Ugh. I wish I had more places to put things. I'm tired of so many of my possessions just being lost somewhere in the hastily bought trash bags.

To-day, well. Can't make plans while this hungry.

Gods . . . Slept until 2pm again. Not good. I'm gonna melt into sludge one day.

Hung out with Ha at Grossmont Centre yesterday. It was fun.

She showed up while I was writing a bit for my novel and I stopped right after a character asked something of another character. So, naturally, ever since then, my mind has been turning over what the response ought to be to the question. And I wonder if having had this much time to think about it shall help or hinder the bit.

Watched "The Devil's Foot" episode of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes last night, which was entirely more gloomy than I remember the short story being. But that's okay.

Dreamt about Jeremy Brett haunting a little girl.

Dreamt Helen Mirren was playing Sherlock Holmes in a new movie. Not an alternate universe female Sherlock Holmes--but actual Sherlock Holmes. She also played another character in the movie, a woman. All in all, she didn't make a very good Holmes. For some reason, she was always trying to speak with a Brooklin accent.

I also dreamt that Parkway Plaza was being overrun with Aliens and Predators and that I was fleeing for my life in the mall's vast, underground sewer system that was also in space. I came accross a very aged and bearded Han Solo and he and I tried to escape by modifying a lift so that it could go very fast and outside of the place. Only it malfunctioned and I woke up as it was being torn open, exposing us to the void.

At some point, there was also a dream where I was buying stamps at a bicycle shop. There was a woman in line next to me with very pretty, short, bright red hair.

Right now I think I'll go have a salad.

Whoy, I just slept nine hours and boy are my arms tired!

I taped three Fred Astaire movies while sleeping--I would've gotten up at around 9 am except Lucky the cat was lying next to be, showing me how asleep sleep can be.

Now its 2pm and I'm wondering what I'll do first . . .

So many things . . . *yawn* . . .

I dreamt about a Hobbit girl with a bowl haircut and freckles.

I need more blank tapes so that's one thing I'll definitely be doing to-day. So's I can get The Searchers, West Side Story, and Rebel Without a Cause. To-day looks to be all too lucrative.

Went to see Big Fish with Trisa last night and it was a very charming movie, moreso in the Ewan McGreagor flashback scenes than for most of the Billy Crudup scenes though.

Trisa and I also stopped by Tower where I purchased a pack of three Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies. I watched The Woman in Green. It was curious--the filmakers, in their attempt to jazz up and mature Holmes ended up making something that comes off as far more innocent and simple than the Conan-Doyle stories ever were. I liked Basil Rathbone as Holmes but could see why he didn't enjoy the character as much as Jeremy Brett did. Rathbone felt that Holmes's superior intellect made him too super-human while Brett was able to use that very intellect to make a very human Holmes. So Rathbone's performance is a lot plainer but, still, he's convincing, a good actor, and rather resembled Holmes.

I am hungry.

If murdering someone would do something on the road towards allieviating how I feel to-day, I wonder if I'd do it? I suppose I might. Hard to say, as I can't clearly imagine how murdering someone would help. I'd be willing to do something drastic, though. But there are no solutions. And I'm just angry, helpless, and I'm going to spend all day watching movies.

Woke up early yesterday, as I said, and decided to go for a drive. I aimed at a mall near L.A. I overshot it, and ended up at another mall with a two storey Barnes and Noble. It also had a neat looking store called Manga House and the most efficient Rubios I've ever been to. There was also a miniature museum featuring metal sculptures of various sci-fi movie things, including the alien from Alien, the Predator, and R2-D2 and C3PO. Although C3PO's pectoralis plates were a bit overdone into mammery gland-ishness.

I also visited a place there called the Tea Station, which seemed like an excellent place to write. The tea was also phenominal.

After leaving this mall, I finally spotting the one I had been trying to get to originally. This mall had a Tower Records and a Disney store. It also had Soul Calibur II in its arcade. It was for sale for around 3,400 dollars. I have built myself up to expert level in a game that apparently no one else plays. I wonder if I'll ever be able to talk anyone into playing against me?

And no, none of this is why I feel shitty to-day. Don't ask me why, I don't wanna talk about it. I wanna do something about it, there's just nothing I can do.

Hung out with Trisa last night. She has a nice new coat and nice new boots.

Wednesday was a visit to the doctor--at Wal-Mart--to get my eyes checked and a new set of contact lenses ordered. The entire staff of the doctor' office and glasses/contact lenses purchasing area was comprised of young, pretty, and inefficient girls. There was an awkward situation where my mother's credit card number (my mother was buying me new contact lenses as a Christmas present, see) was misplaced and thought not to have existed. It's a little discomforting, particularly as a young man, to have the details of your medical needs and your physical condition being bumblingly handled by gossiping, giggling little angel-faces.

And I think I've said enough about that.

I have to be up at NINE A.M. to-morrow so I better get to bed now so I can be wily enough to defeat my enemies or something.

The sheets of my bed look like a giantess has used them to remove her mascara. The dye in my shirt seems to be rubbing off, see.

I just spent a lot of time trying to find a sketch I did a long time ago, thinking I might now use it as an illustration for one of my short stories. I tore the room apart (while Lucky slept blissfully on) looking for the sketch only to find that it sucks. Oh well, I'll just draw something new.

Also spent a great deal of time making a desktop scheme to go with the Ingrid Bergman wallpaper I just put up.

No time! I'm late! Time waste I! Go now must! More later possible!

Lucky the cat seems to have taken up perminant residence on my bed. He's even learned to move to the side when I get in bed at night.

My aunt comes back to-morrow so I suppose then we'll see where his loyalties lie. He seems to enjoy listening to Hope Sandoval CDs.

I've felt very slugglish the past couple of days. Yet I've been getting stuff done anyway and I'm starting to wonder if that was a mistake. Maybe feeling sluggish is a sign that you're not supposed to do anything.

Yeah, that's it.

I am gonna go and get coffee, though . . .

Last night became something of a Megumi Hayashibara festival for me.

I dropped by Tim's to find the huge order of anime--the order worth around a thousand dollars that I'd bought for one hundred forty--had arrived. So I enjoyed Megumi as Lina Inverse in Slayers, as Faye Valentine in Cowboy Bebop, and as girl-type Ranma in Ranma 1/2. I also acquired the entire Neon Genesis Evangelion television series on DVD--plus the movies--which features Megumi as Rei Ayanami and Pen-pen.

A prolific lady . . . And she's a nurse.

...

Woke up at 2pm. Taped two Greta Garbo movies while sleeping. Do I have enough to watch? Hmmm, I think so.

I probably ought to pick up the class schedule for next semester . . .

Okay. So, yes, some days I do spend ungodly amounts of time poring over photos of Jabba's Slave-Leia.

And on some days, I even end up doing things like this.

But I'm an economic guy. I'm still working on the same can of soda I opened last night. And it's hmmm good.

I've given myself a lot of assignments for to-day, too. I suppose I should get to a few more of them . . .

Saw Paycheck with my mother yesterday. It wasn't so great. It was marginally entertaining, but an overall sad waste of a good premise.

Dreamt last night that Trisa and an older man wearing a rug were in bed and I was sitting at the foot of the bed playing with their dog. They were discussing Subway Sandwich and bread folding.

Watched Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky last night, and it made me feel good for its shear Miyazaki-ishness; the sweet, Alice in Wonderland with physical comedy and genuinely menacing villains added in. Wasn't as good as Princess Mononoke but still great.

After this, I watched the 1946 version of The Big Sleep. And in spite of the '46 version having more Lauren Bacall in it, I think I prefer the '45 version. It makes more sense, or something.

Apparently, no one working on the film was able to figure out who killed Carmen Sternwood's chauffuer. So puzzled were they by it that they ended up contacting Raymond Chandler, and even he was puzzled. Personally, I think Joe Brody did it. Or at least, he's the only one who really could have, unless the driver was killed by a random passerby.

Yesterday I bought The Big Sleep--no, I didn't die. I mean the movie based on the Raymond Chandler book.

I also got The Cure Trilogy DVD. And with that, I think I'm nearly out of Christmas money. I sure got a lot of good purchases . . .

I wanna go back to bed so badly right now but I promised my mother and sister I'd see a movie with them. So here goes . . .

I hate Thursdays. To-day's Wednesday but it's acting like Thursday so I have little time.

Last night, Tim gave me a Christmas present which he'd ordered for me a while ago but just not came in the mail. It's a collection of Studio Ghibli movies. Cool guy, that Tim. While I was at his house, I took advantage of some of his connexions in Utah and purchased over a thousand dollars worth of DVDs for merely one hundred forty dollars. And that was very nice. So in about a week I shall have the entire Evangelion TV series and movies on DVD, the entire Cowboy Bebop series and movie, plus soundtrack CD, all of the Ranma 1/2 OVAs, and the enitre Slayers television series. All on DVD.

Yes, it's been a good Christmas.

The Last Place

Gull slipping cry over
Grey stain stumble daytime glitch
No fortune talking, no betting
No song to swirl down the sweet

Straining the sheet, casually
Nothing past the shreds of sheet
Pulling back, naturally, from
Nothing on the coated heart

Full and slick with black fluid
Fast, falling through lifeless tubes
System messing to grim
Cold hands for years

Of no-one in particular
Fading window image gone and
Closing shades are irrelevant
Eyes fall through

False matter, no matter
Nothing, no-one to be seen
Cathlish frogging of shock
Electricity of the dead

Power of the stationary
Of the illusory and story
Diverting fancy vista—
Surrounding Fake

A coat so cold, now
A place so bereft
Unravel all your coats and shirts and stay
There’s nowhere else to go

...

Morning in the Remains of the Orchard

Leaves the colour of blank
Trees the full of gone
Woke up at noon
To blow dry the well

Ugly absence of something
Uncertain feel of lacking
Chill frame of stolen picture
Fascinate—fascinate

It’s the thing
The only one
And the road will break

In our town, we’ll go
And we’ll be as nice
As penguins who live
Together in town

A thousand of us
Means less than one
A cough and we’re all
Sick

Spill now our regular
Whisper songs for me
That mean commercials
And the thought of noise

...

Girl Sleep Killer

She falls that way
Where no-one points
Her eyes have escaped
The reflected sky

They’re busy
Turning amongst the things
When there’s a fire
Over her head

It’s okay when
All the wood is gone she’ll
Have fire instead
And weave her chain mail of heat

Chasing heat, smelling heat
Licking and choosing heat
Wet shoulders
And no more rest

The sky is invisible
The air dances, silly unconscious
No grip no question
But shells so frail and dry

Dark edge like fire
The plain dream of sweet
Girl animal at home
Is heavier than rooms

And boxes and boys
And yes, she is the truth
Answer simple as talk
She is always alive

Fully over the sustenance
Enveloping and not needing
Having and not going elsewhere
The new and old days are hers

Locked inside the outer space
Warm room for her
No more stopping, frustrating
Winning hand perhaps

All chips and dresses
In the safest place
The perfect figure
The most rational thing

In the life of only feeling
The fast of feeding
The walk of the dead
And the burning of sleep

I think I could beat Garfield in the sleeping marathon.

I didn't want to wake up to-day. I suppose if I got to work on one of my many projects I'd feel better . . .

Watched The Two Towers extended edition with my sister last night. For a while, I feared she might not connect with the last hour of it for being in a snit about this long movie keeping her up to 11pm. But, thankfully, by the end she seemed to feel it'd been worth it.

Still, I noticed she missed some of the best moments to play with her dog. She missed Gandalf's charge with the Rohirrum and Legolas's famous horse mounting procedure.

And she does not believe she'll be able to sit through Return of the King. I hope I'll be able to convince her otherwise. She believes she has ADD and I'd like to show her she's capable of getting involved in something of such long duration.

Got the Mullholland Drive soundtrack yesterday. Picked it up at Tower Records where I had gone to buy a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode, but got this instead. I was surprised to see it, for some reason. I didn't think there'd been a sountrack released for the movie.

There's a snippet taken from a track on the Lost Hightway soundtrack, although it's not credited as such in the CD jacket. I'd noticed it when watching the movie.

Most of the music is very, very subtle. Listening to it on the way back from Tower Records, I could hardly hear it, even though I'd turned up the volume very high. Then, there's sudden spikes of loud. Which I kind of like--it makes me smile that people are being forced to listen to music loud.

There's also the Spanish version of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and a track written by David Lynch and John Neff called "Mountains Falling."

It's a good soundtrack. Mostly filled with the stuff of Angelo Badalamenti, the kind of stuff that makes soundtracks to David Lynch movies great to listen to.

Now I have things to do . . .

Watched the other half of the Sherlock Holmes DVD with Ha last night and was happy to find that she liked Jeremy Brett a lot, too.

Bought the new Cruxshadows album, Ethernaut, yesterday and it's pretty good.

Can you tell I'm spending Christmas money here?

At 2am, I found myself watching Darkwing Duck on Toon Disney. I like Darkwing Dark. I like the character. The writing in the episode I saw was . . . palatable. I like how characters in that show used guns. Hard to imagine, but just seven or eight years ago, that was okay in a kids cartoon.

At 4am, I watched DuckTales, which was an even greater stride down memory lane. Those were the days when the people making kids shows didn't usually figure the kids wanted some annoying, super-zany character. Well, there are a few shows not like that nowadays--Pokemon's fine, for example. I think the problem is that adults are annoyed by these shows, so they assume that kids like annoying things, and write for them accordingly. That's why Freakazoid didn't work and it's why everyone hates Jar-Jar Binks. It's not that I think the creators are conscious themselves of the annoying quotient of their creations, merely that they have gorged themselves on annoyance-vaccines.

This morning--or, really, this afternoon, for people who keep sane sleeping schedules--I found that the television was still on Toon Disney, and so I watched some of the brand new Mickey, Donald, and Goofy cartoons. These aren't very good cartoons. They're quite bad, in fact. They have much the same problem as the new Looney Tunes cartoons; the writers don't understand the sensibility with which the old cartoons were written.

And it's a shame. These new cartoons have good animation, although not the lush, more unpredictable animation of the old cartoons. It's mainly the writing--old gags and fall sound effects are used Because They Must Be and not because they come from real comedy-logic. Donald's been made impotent, prevented from using some of his old violent tricks when dealing with his foes. Yes, true, he always was impotent. But his impotence had a kind of meaning back then. You could look at what he was doing and say, "Jeez, this guys pullin' out all the stops and still nothing." Now his actions are sanitised and empty.

This unconscious campaign for the destruction of all things biological is kind of doomed, I think.

Got lots of DVDs yesterday. Went to Best Buy to get another Farscape DVD and ended up buying two Farscape DVDs, a Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes DVD, and, while I was waiting in the checkout line, I spotted The Big Lebowsky for ten dollars and nabbed it too.

There're two episodes on the Sherlock Holmes DVD and I've watched one--The Priory School. One of the most atmospheric of the Jeremy Brett Holmes series I've seen. And it's wonderfully dreary.

One of the Farscape DVDs I got is the first of the fourth season, and I was happy to find that it was formatted for widescreen televisions. So I watched it on the widescreen television upstairs, and the whole thing felt more cinematic.

Now I ought to do something to-day on the road to getting things done . . .

Another step on the road to a New Empire.

The gift I received the most for Christmas (I think four times) was the whimsically unlabelled Starbucks gift card. I have no idea how much money is on most of them, making each coffee purchase an enlivening game of Russian roulette.

All in all, it was a good Christmas, better than I've had in a while. I'd say the high point was reading Caitlin's journal entry.

I woke up to-day at 1pm--a big difference from yesterday's 6am. And I feel better. I stayed up until 3am, first talking to Cryptess, then playing Pictionary with Ha, then watching Eddie Izzard--I really did manage to stay up far later than my body felt like it wanted to. I call that--Victory!

I'm wondering if I'm something of a schmuck.

I'm gonna tell you this story and I want you to tell me if I'm justified in feeling kind of burned:

Okay. Everyone asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Mostly I couldn't answer--I was having enough trouble trying to figure out what to get everyone else. But once, when I was at Lake Arrowhead and my mother asked me, it hit me; I wanted the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD. I mentioned it, and my mother said, "Okay."

Now, I'd almost forgotten about it by Christmas. If I'd never seen it on Christmas day, I don't think I would have been bothered. But Christmas morning, at around 9am, when I'm opening presents with my parents and sister, suddenly my mother brings up a package to "the family" from Bella, the new dog (a tiny, adorable, half Chihuahua, half Yorkie thing). It was the Indiana Jones trilogy--"In widescreen!" my mother points out to me because, most of the time, I'm the only one who cares about that.

So basically, it's like I received it for Christmas. Only I can't watch it most of the time. I can't watch it on my own. I can't lend it to someone if I wanted to. I can't take it with me. Hurrah.

Well, okay, maybe I am schmuck. I'm certainly not gonna bring this up with them. Why sow animosity? And after all, they are buying me new contact lenses and they gave me two Nightmare Before Christmas shirts--that I genuinely like--from when they went to Disneyland without me a few months ago.

I went with them to see Cold Mountain and I fear I may have unintentionally soured the experience when, after the movie, I talked about how I didn't think it was Anthony Minghella's best movie by any means, that while it had some nice components, the whole wasn't so great. I talked about how, in some movies, I find over-prettification to be insulting and disturbing. I didn't like the juxtaposition of very realistic, bloody Civil War battles against the idea that in this reality, Nicole Kidman and Rene Zellweger will always look as perfect as magazine perfume advertisements, no matter how rugged their situation and setting, and Kidman's love scene with Jude Law shall look like an advertisement for Godiva chocolates, even though they're making love in an abandoned wood shed in the snow covered forest.

Returning here last night, I received a new journal book from my aunt. I mean, three journal books with a very nice, interchangeable sleeve cover for all of them. I mean, it's really nice. I'm happy to have it.

I sat down to watch the rest of the Farscape DVD I'd gotten on the 24th only to find, halfway through an episode, that the DVD had a warp in it that prevented the DVD-ROM from reading it further. Annoying.

I suppose I'm the only fellow for many a mile who can have a relaxing day at the mall on Christmas Eve. This I did, yesterday. Bought myself a Farscape DVD.

Went to bed at 6pm last night--no, I can't believe it either--thinking it would make getting up at 6am a little easier this morning.

It didn't. Not really.

Anyway, I have requisite hoops to leap through.

Happy Christmas, all o' yas.

Having done all of my laundry a couple days ago, I now have all my favourite outfits again at my disposal--ah! It's been a long time since I last saw many of these. To-day I'm wearing my "uniform"--one of several pairs of black button shirts and black slacks. I feel like "me" in these clothes.

Watched Johnny Belinda last night. It was basically a great movie, particularly for Jane Wyman's terribly brilliant performance. I had two issues with it, though;

1) The title still doesn't make sense to me. The movie's primarily about Belinda, played by Jane Wyman. So where does the Johnny come from? Halfway through the movie, I was starting to become convinced that it was the Nova Scotia (where the story takes place) version of "Bonny", thereby making the title something like "Pretty Belinda." But then we learn that "Johnny" is what Belinda decides to name her baby. Since the baby never becomes more than a prop in the movie--something for everyone to react to, and mostly as an element in Belinda's life--and never becomes a character, his name being in the title is confusing. And its coupling with Belinda even moreso as Belinda does have a last name.

2) I'm not sure the tidy Hollywood movie of the 40s is really the best place for a story about rape. In a way, it's rather cruel suggesting that everything'll come up roses by the end. But then again, maybe there is some value in saying that sometimes things do work out--although the movie almost seems to suggest that they do so in a way that effectively erases the hurts of that awful experience. Yet, on another hand, it did feel good seeing the guy getting shot.

Went to see The Return of the King again last night, this time with Tim, and this time with a better sound system. Afterwards, he and I talked about how they simply do not make movies like that anymore. Or maybe a movie like that has never been made. But judging from the agonisingly giggly reaction of the audience, modern American audiences are not equiped to deal with the sight of men crying and expressing love for each other. In addition to basking in the glow of a great movie, I was also feeling pretty sad about humanity as we left the theatre.

When Tim said, "They're not worth worrying about," I thought to myself, "Yeah, but we're surrounded by them."

But back to whether or not there's ever been movies like this: I thought there was something very Errol Flynn-ish about Legolas taking down the Oliphant. The sight of Aragorn in kingly attire also reminded me of something from an old Lawrence Olivier movie.

To-day . . . I shall finish my Christmas shopping.

Yesterday I wrote lots and lots. I was on quite a roll. I stopped only when Trisa came by wearing a great coat. She and I went for dinner at an Olive Garden in Carmel Mountain. Wish I could say it was a pleasant evening but in fact I came home feeling like someone had taken my hat and had begun stomping and pissing on it before stomping and pissing on me. So let's not dwell on that . . .

Later last night, I watched Possessed, with Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. It was a very simple, very cute movie. Its chief virtue being its dwelling on the existence of Joan Crawford, which it did rather well.

I didn't get to sleep until 5am--not for any particular reason. I kept getting up, thinking there was something I was going to do. But mostly all I ended up doing was urinating.

Lucky the cat, who seems to want a lot of attention these days, tried sleeping next to me again. Much more successful this time as he found a more strategic spot, one where I didn't have to scrunch up my legs uncomfortably. But at around 8am, he woke me up to let him out.

I then woke up at around noon. Lots of people came to the door and I had no answers or money for them.

In the midst of writing this entry, I received a package from an aunt and uncle in Tennessee. It's a cake of some kind, I think. It smells nice, anyway.

Spent a lot of time on ICQ yesterday talking to Cryptess, Richard, and Ha. Unlike many people who use ICQ regularly, I guess I consider it more of an event than a casual interchange because I just very much don't have a head for multitasking. Kind of pathetic, I know, but when I do multitask, I get kind of an adrenaline rush. I felt proud that I was simultaneously talking to all three people, playing Defend Your Castle, writing yesterday's blog entry, and then watching some Brian Mung flash movies Richard'd recommended to me. When I finally signed off, I felt like I'd been on a spirited gallop through the countryside while I'm sure all other participants were just idly killing time and chewing the fat.

Of course, this means that in the process of accomplishing very little I felt like I'd done a lot. I'm gonna need to make up for that to-day.

Last night I went to my parents' house for dinner and we played a somewhat annoying game called "Seen-It!" that was supposedly a game about testing one's movie knowledge but which often times tended to be more about piecing images together to make words or other things that required a mind quicker than my very slow one.

I guess the generally thrust of this post is . . . I'm too slow for most of the other reindeers' games. But I seem to enjoy myself most of the time, merrily skipping along a mile behind the herd.

After my parents', I went to Tim's where I beat his score in Soul Calibur 2 team battle. That is, the score he set while playing on medium difficulty mode. I was playing on ultra-hard. So there are some things I can do!

This morning I've taped Harvey and Treasure Island(1934). I've never seen either but am looking forward to watching them . . . Of course, I did put them on tape 23 and I've only through to watching tape 6, which was Lawrence of Arabia.

One of the things that particularly impressed me about Lawrence was how real it all was . . . In those days long before cgi and a number of other fancy modern tricks, they had to do actual armies of camels and horses through actual cities . . . Blow up actual trains . . . It all feels great.

Next I have Ossessione to watch, which should be a good chaser for Double Indemnity . . .

I . . . am . . . insured! With the car I am, anyway. No health insurance. No accident insurance with double indemnity clause that Barbara Stanwyck might be able to take advantage of.

Just got the call this morning so now it looks like I shall again be able to enlist my automobile in my regular campaigns of goofing off--which is actually the only thing I've found the car to be useful for, but there's something to be said for goofing off, to be sure.

And last night, I at long last received my copy of Double Indemnity in the mail. For new, the movie costs around eighty dollars but luckily Tim was able to find a Taiwanese bootleg version for only ten dollars. It has a few little quirks, like default cantonese subtitles (but they can be turned off), a little white line at the top of the screen, no end credits, and the omission of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck from the DVD case cover--The cover would have you believe that the movie primarily stars Porter Hall and Jean Heather.

But all in all, I'm very happy to have this movie. I suppose I oughtn't to have been watching it whilst waiting for a call from my insurance company . . .

And yesterday, Ha and I watched Head, starring the Monkees, screenplay by a young Jack Nicholson. It was strange, and it wanted to mean something--that much I can deduce from its somewhat tasteless use of actual footage of a guy getting shot in the head. But it all adds up to no more than a goofy romp, which was kinna fun, at times.

And, yay, I can post again!

So Return of the King was fabulous. I had this moment of extreme, genuine dread when Eowyn confronted the Witch King. Probably just me though--I dunno. Something about that moment filled me with the utter certainty that this thing was all too powerful for little Eowyn with her plain steel sword. And this is in spite of the fact that I've read the book. I literally trembled and my eyes teared up. It was the most extreme reaction I have had to anything in these movies . . .

I'm almost finished Caitlin R Kiernan's Low Red Moon, which is a terrific book, even better than Threshold.

I wish blogger would start working again.

Okay . . . Still nothing's getting posted. This is really starting to piss me off.

Forgot to take out the trash cans last night . . . I saw Return of the King . . . But what's the point of discussing it?

Posts . . . still . . . not . . . working . . . gagh . . .

Well . . . Wednesday's posts don't seem to be going up. Will this one . . . ?

I get the impression that Roger Ebert didn't want to like Return of the King. He just can't help it.

Didn't get as much stuff done yester-day as I would have liked.

Hmm. I wanna go and see Return of the King . . .

I am not at all hungry. I've had three waffles and they're doing quite more than enough for me at the moment.

I'm gonna get a second chance to tape Only Angels Have Wings to-night at 1am.

I don't think I have much else to say . . . It's been getting indecently cold at night. And I have decided that I shall not catch the flu. I won't. You hear me? Won't.

Last night was the last night of the Acorn Review class. Last night, something kind of cool happened.

A girl showed up to class in her pyjamas. For many, this would be a bad fashion choice, but it certainly was a good one for Ha (the name of the girl we're talking about) whose pyjamas consisted of what looked like a thick, blue silk kimono (yes, this really was her pyjamas).

As folks were clearing out of the room, and I approached the exit, I couldn't help feeling sorry I hadn't gotten to know Ha better.

It was then that I heard that young lady's voice calling for halt, saying, "I want to talk to you."

I turned around to see her extraordinarily tiny finger pointed in my direction but I, nontheless, said, "Me?"

"Yes."

So Ha and I went for a walk and we decided that we had similer tastes and stuff and that we were going to be friends. Also, it was decided that she was going to give me a ride home, which was very nice indeed as I was dreading the typical hour+ walk home through the very chill air.

But first, we stopped by her very fascinating house where she showed me Bjork videos I'd never seen and I introduced her to Samurai Jack.

So last night went very well.

A very brief phone conversation with Trisa this morning brought very strongly to me the realisation that I've been closely associating her with the American Super Mario Brothers 2 (or the Japanese Doiki Doiki Panic!) for some time. After hanging up the phone, I was unable to remove the musics of Mario 2 from my mind.

I don't know exactly why this is. I think maybe there's something of her temperment in the atmosphere of that game.

I managed to frighten children yester-day. Jolly good fun, that.

I was at Tim's workplace (RadioShack). It was about five minutes before the store closed and he and I were both itching to leave and do fun stuffs. Then, in walks two twelve year-old-ish wouldbe thugs who begin walking around the store with their backs to us, opening the battery cases of various display items, looking for batteries to steal.

Now, it's not that I have anything particularly against shoplifting, especially as Tim says the store itself makes quite a steal on batteries, charging very much more than is paid for the batteries originally. But, again, he and I wanted to go and, anyway, I couldn't resist the "plausible" oportunity to spook kids.

So I started following them around the store.

When they passed from handheld digital sound recorders to heavy headphones, I said to them, "You two must be into sound. I bet that's what it is."

"No," says the taller one, trying to discourage conversation with his lacklustre response.

Undetered, I continued; "See, I've been standing here, bored I guess, trying to figure out what you kids were looking for--Ah! I bet you're in a band!"

"We're just looking around," said the tall one. I figured that, by this point, anyone not up to something shady would have been more confrontational towards me. So I kept following them. I talked them about the keyboard they played with, asking if they were piano enthusiasts and were they sure they weren't in a band?

When they started playing with the megaphones (which of course had no batteries), I said, "Now there's some bad motherfuckers. I bet you can make sound with that." They proceeded to just start clicking and pressing the various buttons on the things, so I said, "Yeah, yeah! Isn't that great? Buttons are so fucking great. You know--when I was a kid, I had one of those big panel things with buttons all over it and, boy, I sure never got tired of pressing them and clicking them. And you know what's cool? There's so many devices for adults now that have buttons on them! So fucking adictive. I could just click, click, click all day!"

They walked quickly out of the store, then.

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