The Pink Arms of Digestion

A tiny new daddy long legs in my bathroom a few nights ago.

I felt a bit sick last night. Pains in my chest have gradually gone away, though my left arm still feels distinctly weaker than my right arm, but I kind of wonder if this is just how it's always been, since I'm right handed, and I've just never been conscious of it before.

Last night's sickness felt like something very temporary, and definitely in my stomach. It peaked at exactly the same moment I heard a bunch of coyotes howling outside. There were about a million things that could've gotten me sick yesterday--the breakfast I had at Denny's, the pizza I had from a Nepalese restaurant for lunch, the quiche I had at my parents' house, or flecks of the material the dentist used to make moulds of my mouth for my new fake tooth.

It might have been from when I sat amongst the ducks or from some of the stranger things I saw when I walked along the river yesterday.








We've just come out of a period of rainy days, and the green resulting from it is just starting to get itself under control. But here, clouds of algae are thriving in a puddle;









An egg sack at the end of a broken branch.








I looked up at one point to see a big hawk on a branch, looking down at me. I was too slow on the draw to get a good picture--it flew to another branch, facing away from me, and this is the best I got;






Now I'm not sure what the pink stuff is. It looked like shag carpeting or the river of mood slime from Ghostbusters 2--I guess it must be algae or a plant of some kind. It was pretty, though.












Twitter Sonnet #203

Broke cash machines lengthen a night's round walk.
In the sewer river ducks plot at dark.
Foolish drunken youths fall to Peter Falk.
Great kissing scenes are censored in this park.
Weird white cheese stands hummus in weakly stead.
Party coloured pistols compete with blanks.
Loves arms appear in form of warm flat bread.
Fashion needs assortments of empty tanks.
Bowls of bisque line battlements that smell.
Silent puppet chefs form ranks in the night.
Lousy seafood ideas fill books in Hell.
Flounder fondue's vomited with great might.
Sickness inspires the distant coyote.
Humpty Dumpty looks dumb with a goatee.

One Sector at a Time

My hard drive still seems to be surviving. It hasn't given me any trouble since yesterday morning, either. It hasn't even made the grinding noises. But a new hard drive is on its way anyway--I managed to get a good deal on a highly rated, 650 gig drive from New Egg. Considering my two current drives are only around 120 gigs each, I'll be swimming in space. I was tempted to get one of the new terabyte sized drive, but I kind of share Tim's trepidation about the potential stability of these drives.

I've also got dental stuff to take care of this week. I went in for an early appointment to-day to see about getting a new false tooth--One of my front teeth is missing, and I've had the same ridiculously fake looking and uncomfortable tooth on a retainer for something like fifteen years. To-day the dentist held up a whole series of fake teeth next to my remaining front tooth, muttering, "No, that's not right, that's not right . . . too yellow . . . too light . . . too grey . . ." He had around fifty different colours of model teeth, and none of them seemed right. Finally he directed me to drive to the lab down the block where the teeth are crafted.

It took me a few minutes to find the tiny, cluttered office inhabited by only a small, stout old woman with a thick Russian accent. She seemed both like a character from the Dostoevsky book I was reading this morning and somewhat like Chew, the old Chinese man in Blade Runner who alone in his lab just made eyes. This woman just makes teeth.

She held up a few model teeth of her own to mine while I stood in the doorway leading outside, finally saying, "It'll be lighter than other tooth. Your teeth all different colours anyway."

"Anything's an improvement, as far as I'm concerned," I said.

I played a lot of World of Warcraft at Tim's house yesterday, and I've been playing a lot more of it lately since it's the only activity I have now to do while listening to The Howard Stern Show. I still haven't gotten the Burning Crusade expansion, so once I got my Rogue, Galatea, to level 60 a couple weeks ago, I made a paladin, Dormouse, whom I've already gotten to level 32. I seem to get two level ups every time I play--the recent updates to WoW have made the paladins even more overpowered than they already were. I found I needed to go after enemies whose levels appeared in red to me just to get a decent challenge. I even managed to kill a raptor whose level was so much higher than mine that only a little skull showed up where his level normally would. I only had to use one potion. The key is the paladin spell Word of Glory, which, as WoWWiki says, "in tandem with Crusader's Strike, can be used to sustain a Retribution Paladin's health indefinitely, to the point where the paladin can solo a normally 5 person elite mob [monster]."

Aside from Word of Glory, the Retribution Paladin also as a number of other ways to heal, and I've been learning Herbalism, Cooking, and First Aid, so I tend to find myself with an overabundance of means for healing myself. I've been weirdly enjoying Cooking--I hardly ever use any of the food I make, but I like seeing what new recipes I can get. I liked making blood sausage from bear meat, boar intestine, and spider ichor, and I can't wait to see what I can use the "Mystery Meat" for.

Of course, I'd really like to play Fallout: New Vegas, though I think I'm going to wait for it to come down in price a bit. But apart from the bugs people are complaining about--and which are likely to be fixed with patches, if they haven't been already--I've really been liking what I'm hearing about the Role Playing element. It sounds like the way factions work in it is much more intricate than in Fallout 3, the dialogue is modified more by your characters stats and, best of all, in my eyes, is that there's a "hardcore" RP mode that makes it so your character has to eat, drink, and sleep regularly. I thought I was the only person in the world who wanted a game with something like that.

The Shape of Machinery

I think my hard drive's dying--It made a brief grinding sound last night, but I didn't pay it any mind until I woke up this morning to find a black screen and a message with something like "Master hard disk fail." I restarted and copied all the important, irreplaceable things to my iPod. That was two hours ago, and the computer's been fine so far, but I suspect I'm not out of the woods yet. Fortunately, I happen to have enough money right now for a new hard drive, thanks in no small part to donations from Venia's Travels readers. And it's nice knowing I don't have a comic to worry about getting out on time while I've got computer problems right now.

Yesterday was, I think, the first really laid back day I've had since I finished the comic. It's taking some time for the ever present feeling of urgency to go away, but yesterday I went to Starbucks and sat reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot for a while. Then I went to the restaurant where my sister is working as a bartender now and had some scotch and cognac while reading some more--Glenlivet and Courvoisier, both of which I ordered before finding out my sister was giving me free drinks. It sure is nice to be a bartender's brother.

I started reading The Idiot even though I'm still only about a fourth of the way through The Satanic Verses. I just couldn't stand any more Post Modern bullshit. I wanted something I could sink my teeth into, and The Idiot's already supplying that in spades. Character, people, is what I'm talkin' about, and what I need.

With breakfast to-day, I watched the new Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, the first part of which was a Transformers parody that nearly killed me. I almost died laughing when the parody of Optimus Prime introduced himself as, "Masculimus Surprise."

Siegfried Means Success!

I've just spent some time looking at Arthur Rackham's illustrations for Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen, wondering if he'd drawn Brunhilde bare breasted for the scene at the end of Siegfried. Of course he did.

I'd seen Rackham's illustrations of Wagner's operas before, I'd read the opera librettos translated into English, but somehow none of that comes close to the same impact as actually watching productions of the operas. But after watching them, Rackham's illustrations take on a new life. With breakfast to-day, I watched the third act of Siegfried--I've been watching one act at a time with breakfasts this week. The particular production I was watching of course didn't feature a bare breasted Brunhilde, but instead the sleeping Valkyrie is revealed to be wearing a chemise when Siegfried pulls off her breastplate. It works well enough to demonstrate that the sleeper is not a man as he first suspected though I, like Rackham, personally prefer art that errs on the side of nudity.

The scene of the conquering hero rescuing the maiden and expecting romantic or sexual rewards, either blatantly or subtextually, has been pretty thoroughly discussed.



But I found the scene in Siegfried incredibly fascinating, and it worked for me as symbolising a much longer relationship between two people, or as translated subtext of the psychological reactions of two people falling in love for the first time. Siegfried's never met a woman at this point, and he's established as a youth peculiarly unable to feel fear. Until he meets Brunhilde--and he's afraid of her before she even wakes up. He removed the breastplate and helmet expecting a man, something familiar to him, but when he finds something both strange yet attractive to him on a deep, instinctual level, he can only be afraid at the disorienting psychological experience. The dark woods hadn't frightened him, neither had the dragon Fafner, because these were all external things. But his desire to conquer fear doesn't provoke him to violence, but rather to kiss her.

When she wakes, one of the first things he does is to ask if she's his mother, and she replies, "I'm you." Some pieces of dialogue can only exist in opera, I think.

Siegfried's experience with women is limited totally to stories his adoptive father, the dwarf Mime, told him of his mother Sieglinde. In Die Walkure, the opera previous to Siegfried, Sieglinde and Sigmund's relationship was explicitly incestuous, and the two lovers madly indulged in a relationship of reflection, a relationship where each found his or herself manifested in the other.

So when Brunhilde, responding to Siegfried's frightening ardour, tells him to love himself and, "Let me be," we're not only reminded of Siegfried's parents, but also, as Brunhilde describes previously being worshipped in her virginity, of chaste, chivalric romance. This isn't enough for Siegfried--instead of contenting himself with the beauty of his reflection in a pool without marring it by touching the water, he wishes to "dive into a flood."

I love that Brunhilde got a whole opera defining her character, so it means something when she sings about fearing the loss of her identity with her armour. The fear and delight both she and Siegfried feel at pursuing a strange and new experience is wonderfully conveyed by their song.

Twitter Sonnet #202

Mystery pranks enliven every CostCo.
Sagging bottoms mar the paper cup rep.
Ents have arms bigger than Kevin Sorbo.
Let a baby brain grow in your bicep.
Talking frogs are ominous when giant.
Even powerful fishing rods can suck.
Steam trout are not EPA compliant.
The small tailored business suit makes the duck.
Important ghosts take spectral bullet trains.
Slamming doors play in angry office sync.
Eating with closed jaws yields limited gains.
Communal meals preclude the need to think.
Glass walled racket ball courts reflect white shell.
Runny cream guts wobble out the old bell.

Edward Scissorhands Would Like to Reach Across the Aisle But . . .

That's the parking garage at Fashion Valley mall at sunset yesterday.

I read the newest Sirenia Digest while I was eating breakfast yesterday, which I would've mentioned except I was too busy apparently predicting the themes of Rachel Maddow's excellent interview with Jon Stewart;



The line I really liked from Stewart is (something like), you can't predict another person's crazy. Mainly his responses were a bit unfocused, and he didn't seem to have salient counterarguments for the real issues Maddow brought up. His reply to the Bill Maher quote, about how Democratic leaders don't claim 9/11 was inside job while Republican leaders do claim Obama is a Socialist, despite Stewart's earlier apparent assertion that the hyperbole was equally spread, didn't really get a substantial reply from Stewart, except for him to say that it wasn't his intention to assert the idea of false equivalency. He continually went back to talking about his intentions, and how he wished people had been more interested in taking them to heart.

Speaking as someone whose good or benign intentions have in the past been taken as attacks or insults, I definitely think intentions are important. But I don't think the critics of The Rally to Restore Sanity are necessarily ignoring Stewart's intentions. In his reply on Monday to criticisms from Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow, Stewart failed to include clips like the one where Olbermann suspended his show's Worst Person in the World segment in the spirit of what he felt was right about the Rally to Restore Sanity. Ironically, it's Stewart who's being polarising here by implying that all these people are against him.

Rachel Maddow, meanwhile, comes off extremely well in the interview, as she always does. I don't want to overstate it, but I think SHE'S THE GREATEST NEWSPERSON WHO EVER LIVED. I guess I can't really say that without having seen all of them at work, but in this climate where people are often unable to separate themselves from their arguments, Maddow is able to have a definite opinion, argue with someone of an opposing view, and make it feel like she's working with them, not trying to defeat them. She makes the process feel like getting to the truth, not about devaluing the other person. For that reason I don't think she, in particular, deserves the criticism that Stewart's levelled at her.

Now the Sirenia Digest--I read both stories yesterday, I thought "And the Cloud That Took the Form" was a great portrait of something horrifying just for being large and strange, and it was really helped by a feeling of very credible feeling dialogue between two protagonists. I'm not sure why, but I found the dialogue between the two women in this story somehow more evocative of character than usual for The Sirenia Digest, which seems usually more about mood and arrangement. Like the second story in the new one, "ON THE REEF", which revisits Lovecraft's Innsmouth for some nice, sinister ritual.

I must admit I'm finding it harder to read the Digests each month. It's been almost three years since Caitlin and I stopped talking, and over that time several mutual friends have also stopped talking to me, usually on slim pretexts. The thing is, I still don't hate anyone, not Caitlin, not Sonya--I don't even really have anything against Elizabeth Bear. But I've been getting this feeling of this world doesn't want you so get the fuck out already. But then I think, so where does it stop? Do I also then stop reading Poppy Z. Brite's blog, or Neil Gaiman's? This easily demonstrates the silliness of thinking in terms of cliques, and I like Caitlin's writing. There's some matrix here I still reject.

War Conduct

Quiet, Jagged Dreams

Sometimes I wish there were a reliable, easy standard of sanity at one's fingertips at all times. Where any two people, in the heat of an intractable argument, could finally give up and say, "Okay, let's check the sanity index," flip to the back of the book and solve the problem to the satisfaction of both parties. I suppose a big part of the reason for religion is to have a final word on things.

You get scientific evidence, of course--as Bill Maher indicated in his editorial on the Stewart/Colbert Rally for Sanity, what Right or Left commentators say about climate change shouldn't qualify or disqualify what climate scientists say about climate change. But I think it's becoming increasingly clear nowadays that one can never have indisputable facts when everyone can go back to their corners of crazy at the end of the day.

And when you can't get consensus on big, important issues like climate change, what chance have more localised issues, particularly issues as local as relationships between a few people? How common is it to see one person interpreting the words or actions of another as either threatening because of their own recurrent fear, or positive because the other person is attractive in some way? And then these impressions are given heavier foundations by groups of friends who support dreams with their own preferences and fears.

I've been weirdly worked up about the split between David Arquette and Courtney Cox. I'm not normally very interested in celebrity gossip, but I found the way various news magazines twisted and changed the interview David Arquette gave on The Howard Stern Show as kind of an irritating and frightening indicator of how easily narratives are crafted in society and how the human mind works.

Stern was talking about a tabloid story that had intimate pictures of David Arquette with a woman who was not his wife. This bothered Stern because he's friendly with both Cox and Arquette, and Arquette has sat in for entire five hour Stern Shows in the past couple years. So Arquette called in to explain that he was not cheating on his wife because he and Cox had been separated for some time and that the freedom to see other people was one of the conditions of their separation. He also vented a bit about his unsatisfying sex life, that he and his wife hadn't had sex in some time, which might have been inferred anyway, and that it had become somewhat sadly mundane when they did have sex.

The next day, entertainment shows were running with a narrative about how Arquette was a scumbag putting salacious details out there while Cox suffered at his general douchebaggery. The hypocrisy inherent in a media that thrives on exposing personal details of celebrities condemning one for being open seems obvious, at least to me, but there's a hypocrisy that Stern alluded to when ranting about the narrative later that seems more important to me--that it's okay to discuss personal details in a tell-all book or on Oprah, but not on The Howard Stern Show. It's not so much the nature of the Stern Show, I think, as that this provides the tabloid media with an opportunity to define themselves as morally superior without curbing reporting contrary to their own professed morals.

The influence Lenny Bruce had on Stern is obvious to me, and Bruce in turn was influenced by Jack Kerouac, and the main thread of the beat artistic legacy is that of an unvarnished exposure of human nature in all its beauty, ridiculousness, and hideousness, a reaction to the stiff, falsely happy social conventions imposed after World War II. It's hard to get to that centre of sanity and reality, and it may be a never ending job, but such openness in public discourse is vital if we're to get anywhere.



It sure is nice to see a useful Sarah Jane Smith. I'd read that Elisabeth Sladen had threatened to leave the show after she'd fought a lousy looking prop in the "Revenge of the Cybermen" serial, but I suspect her actual reasons for wanting to leave was how badly her character was being written on the show at that point. She'd been reduced to a whiny fifth wheel, who had a knack for making consistently wrong decisions that necessitated her rescue. Doctor Who has rarely exhibited strong female characters so far, but the treatment of Sarah Jane Smith took it to another level. It felt like the writers outright hated her. Which was why I was pleased when "Terror of the Zygons", the serial following Sladen's threat to leave the show, actually featured the character usefully contributing, though it earned her a couple grating "Good girl"s from the Doctor.

In "The Pyramids of Mars," I'm pleased to find her more of an equal in dialogue with the Doctor, possibly owing to more improvised dialogue between her and Tom Baker. I particularly liked a bit where Sarah noted a door had vanished, the Doctor replied that it'd not vanished, "It's just not visible," and Sarah said, "Same difference."



"The Pyramids of Mars" was also one of the aesthetically nicer episodes--I loved the villain with the white jacket, and pale makeup with red eye shadow. And I loved seeing the Doctor and Sarah wandering through pretty woods.

"Down In the Underground, a Land Serene, a Crystal Moon"

Twitter Sonnet #201

Bull babes break their heads on cowhide wrought gate.
Minotaurs shaved last year are this year's men.
Depth charge mazes decide sea horse's fate.
Amphibious beagles are rarely in.
Soy milk slowly murders regular milk.
The new latte destroys gut memory.
Lizards carry more than footpads can bilk.
Drinkers learn to enjoy a mockery.
Ginger ale stockpiles appear in town.
Fevered runners ricochet though the mall.
New ice in old drinks will always melt down.
Wotan tallied whiskeys along his hall.
Bad dream complexes pull in the attack.
Plant growth glumly conforms to almanac.

I finally had a chance to watch Inception properly last night. I liked it, more than I'd have thought based on the rather slipshod initial viewing of the film. It picks up the same fundamental story Christopher Nolan told in Memento and The Prestige of an obsessed man caught up in a world of illusion and/or delusion, both in terms of something external to his personality--a memory problem, a calculated stage illusion, or a complex world of dreams--and something to do with his personality. Inception may be Nolan's best job at tying the two together.

A lot of people speculate as to whether or not the whole movie is Cobb's dream. This question is almost irrelevant to me, as movies are dreams of a sort anyway, but having that question posed emphasises the idea about reality and human relationships the movie's trying to convey. That is, the extent to which people actually exist for other people. The larger question of the nature of Mal in Cobb's mind is supported by the smaller threads like the manufacturing of motives for Peter in Fischer second layer of dreaming by Eames in the first layer. I saw parallels in the film to Vertigo and the Human Instrumentality project in Neon Genesis Evangelion, but Inception, regardless of whether or not Cobb wakes up, actually releases Cobb from the trap of his own mind in its climactic scene, where he decides the Mal in has mind is not the same as his wife when she lived, and he's content with the decades the two had together when she lived. This is unlike Vertigo where Scottie finds the loss of his half dream woman too painful or Evangelion where Shinji is bound by the impressions he has of people around him, and the secondary reflection of himself he attributes to their perceptions.

I think the main reason people found Inception confusing may have been that it takes a lot of time establishing rules only to break them, as when we hear that Arthur, in the hotel layer of Fischer's dream, has only a few minutes before the van hits the water in the first layer but yet he has time to tie everyone up and arrange them in an elevator in zero gravity. We're told that the lower the dreaming level, the slower time seems to pass, yet the pacing of the film's last hour makes the opposite seem true. But that's a small quibble I have with an otherwise perfectly fine film.

Drawing Forces

I thought I'd take a moment to again thank everyone who took the time to read Venia's Travels, and I also want to thank everyone who donated money to the site. Thanks, you made a big difference.

I figured I'd share some Venia's Travels "bonus features" to-day. Here's a chart I made for myself to keep track of the Niverikiin troops in chapters 54 through 58;



I needed to know how everyone was positioned so I could determine what kind of damage the Chimera and its humans slaves were going to cause, and where everyone would be at the time. The sizes of the blobs reflect the sizes of each Knight or Paladin's retinue--something I sort of drew inspiration from War and Peace to come up with was the differences is army organisation between Niveriku and Paelywa. Where in Paelywa, fighting forces were pretty medieval with groups of men at arms of varying sizes around individual Knights, Niveriku had something more like modern troop divisions. I basically just substituted the word "retinue" for "regiment", and the retinues were divided into battalions, companies, and platoons. I knew for a long time this was going to be one of the main selling points Venia would use to encourage the invasion of Paelywa, sort of like how Napoleon's more modern professional army compared to Russia's, still commanded by nobility and royalty, though actually Niveriku's army would be much closer to Russia's.

I'd determined in Chapter 43 how big everyone's retinue was, how many Lakguene slaves each noble had, and where everyone was from, which I considered very important in establishing character and the conflicts between the internal factions. This was also, of course, the main reason for the history I wrote for the comic. The Paladins from the northeast are generally more stubborn and unwilling to work with the men, but even they had the subgroup of women from the larger cities like Lady Era who are cagier and more tolerant of people with different world views. Meanwhile, Ladies Pepene and Waneha from the southeast coastal cities, are generally more easy going and have little interest in ancient conflicts. You might notice neither of those last two I mentioned are included in the chart, as they were two among several Paladins and Knights who split off from the main group to find territory elsewhere in Miig'Jaiach. I suppose one day I could conceivably write a sequel or spin-off about some of them and Sir Boyei.

Most of the Knights and Paladins are based on movie stars--Sir Boyei was modelled on Charles Boyer, for example. The naiads introduced in Chapter 30, though, Huelyn, Weyedne, and Eullina, were based on Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Weyedne didn't get much time for dialogue, but Huelyn and Eullina's personalities were modelled on how I've always perceived Huey's and Louie's personalities, with Louie being the ostensive leader and Huey being the wild one.

I played maybe a little too much chess yesterday. I probably ought to be looking for work. Incidentally, if anyone needs a writer, I'm totally available.

Strange Lights

My sister's cat, Saffy, at my parents' house last night next to the Thanksgiving Tree, which was the Halloween Tree until recently. I really can't complain about my mother's tendency to put up Christmas decorations early as time really seems to have been picking up speed over the past couple years for me. A few weeks before Christmas Day feels like thirty minutes.



Saffy's in the chair, you might remember me mentioning several months ago, once owned by Errol Flynn. Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves was on the television when this picture was taken, and my mother was remarking on how cheap the movie looked. It is strikingly dated, filled with dumb anachronisms, and almost totally devoid of personality. It almost looks like a TV movie.

I watched the new Boardwalk Empire last night, which I liked well enough, except the very last scene, which didn't make any sense and kind of dissolved some of the cool subtext about what Margaret knew about Nucky's liquor business.



On Friday night, I watched Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows. I was sort of reminded of the 1995 American film Kids, which also depicted delinquent city kids in a strikingly realistic manner. Kids was focused more on the sexuality of the children, as perhaps American 90s youth culture was more sexually active than 1950s French culture, though the protagonist of the Truffaut film, 15 year old Antoine, talks about his attempt to have sex with a prostitute.

What the two films do have in common is a portrayal of a world of teenagers fundamentally alien to a coexisting world of adults. Antoine's punished repeatedly for what are seen as wrong-doings on his part by adults, when almost none of his actions are done with any intention of harming the adults but are merely borne of a natural desire for exciting and happy experiences. As Antoine says to a counsellor at one point, he usually only lies to his parents because they don't believe him when he tells the truth.

When instructed to write an essay about a personal experience for class, Antoine unconsciously plagiarises Balzac--using words that seemed to perfectly describe the experience to him, he doesn't understand yet that he's required to find his own phrasing, the teacher doesn't understand his lack of understanding, and has no real desire to learn. Adults in the film constantly become angry when they find Antoine or one of the other kids isn't already on the same page as them, so it's little wonder Antoine feels any attempt to communicate with them is pointless.



Truffaut creates an isolated world of children onscreen with incredible power. One scene of a group of children watching a Punch and Judy show focuses on the faces of kids apparently actually enjoying such a show, not acting. In the context of Antoine's story, the faces convey the impression of a sort of underground world of the human animal.

Leading a Horse to Fish

Twitter Sonnet #200

A shag carpet covered droid distracts men.
Crotch brains stampede to the genital stage.
Fast clocks surpass the stamen of Big Ben.
Time lubricates the labial gear page.
Hammers appear from rows of dark brown dirt.
Frenzied power gags synthetically quack.
Green radio gum revives aural hurt.
Miner action figures trapped in a sack.
Child eyes lead small soldiers to a club.
Ain't Nobody's Business is someone's song.
Nameless adults trespass from a brown pub.
Green and yellow strobe light show no-one wrong.
Army ideas stand in a polished row.
Endless ammo needs an always drawn bow.

So to-day's my first real day without the comic. Friday and Saturday were days I usually took off anyway. This is the first Sunday since I was sick for one week last November where I'm not working on a script or drawing, inking and colouring a page--well, except when I doubled up on days to accommodate Comic-Con or some other thing. The point is, I haven't had a whole week off since I started the comic more than two years ago. It's almost scary--I do feel like I've got a lot of primed energy still.

The first thing I did to-day after breakfast (during which I watched the great, Paul Dini scripted, new episode of Sym-Bionic Titan) was to go onto Second Life and play chess. I somehow never noticed the giant boards in the Chess Beach sim, and after I'd beaten a guy I'd never played before, Tou posed for some pictures;







Afterwards, I took some stale hamburger buns to the river, but found few ducks and a bunch of garbage, plastic bags and beverage containers mainly, from Saturday night's teenage assholes. I found some ducks in a reedy, crowded area near the bridge and was starting to toss them bits of bread when I heard loud clomping behind me. The ducks fled at the noise and I turned to see a man in a straw hat riding a brown horse across the bridge and leading a grey horse along beside him. He was looking at me, but didn't stop.

"Hi," I said.

"They're taking it over," he said.

"You mean the garbage? Yeah, it's disgusting."

"The water," he said simply. And he rode away.

I think he might have meant the big dead fish under the bridge which still aren't totally decomposed, but who knows. Anything vague a guy says is going to have a lot of mystery when the story concludes with "and he rode away."

Last night I went to a restaurant called The Butcher Shop with my family for my aunt's birthday. It was an interesting, creepy 1950s-ish place.



There was a DJ, playing mainly modern club music, Frank Sinatra, and old big band. I requested Billie Holiday's "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do" and two Marlene Dietrich songs but we left before I found out if they got played.

Queens and Devils

I'm so in love with Bill Maher to-day;



Yes, yes, and yes.

Yesterday I went downtown and played two games of chess at Horton Plaza. The first one was against a guy who looked to be around my age, wearing sunglasses, and I got off to a bad start when I lost my Queen to a rather obvious threat from his knight. But then I made up for it by taking his Queen and following it up by forking his King and rook. After this, the game became a route. The guy didn't lose gracefully, saying it was because he was "distracted."

Then I played against a guy I almost always see hanging around the chess boards but who I haven't seen actually play in a couple years--he's an old man, and he explained that moving the giant chess pieces hurts him, so another guy who'd been watching the previous game helped out by moving the old guy's pieces for him. The old man was wearing, as he has every time I've seen him, a blue sport coat and a beret--the beret was raspberry coloured, but I don't think he's what Prince had in mind when writing the song. We played a long, very close game which he ultimately won. It was an even game, as far as pieces went, most of the time but his pawns were better developed than mine, and before he made the decisive move, we both had one bishop and one rook, but he had two more pawns than me and two of my pawns were isolated. But it was a very satisfying game anyway.



With breakfast to-day, I watched Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, both the new episode and the last half of the previous week's episode, which I'd skipped when I saw it had to do with vomit (titled "Vomiting Point"). I'm glad I finally watched it, because it was a fascinatingly little vignette animated in a style reminiscent of Production I.G. (I don't know if they were actually involved) where people are given long torsos and kind of short, stubby legs. The faces were drawn with a fascinating, almost grotesque Expressionistic version of mundane reality interestingly contrasted by Panty and Stocking still drawn in their usual, plain, angular way.

Then, the new episode contained some of the show's best action scenes so far along with the introduction of Scanty and Kneesocks, demonic rivals of Panty and Stocking who look a bit like something by Coop

A Hunt Slips Through

My first reaction to the news to-day that MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay for financially contributing to the campaigns of three Democrats was that The Rally to Restore Sanity was at least indirectly responsible.

Relationships between MSNBC anchors and its brass have long been notoriously fractious, particularly in Olbermann's case, and I've heard the people in charge are hardly the liberals that the network's MO would lead you to think. MSNBC's identity as the Left alternative to Fox News was largely crystallised by Olbermann's spearhead. The people in charge saw the savvy of throwing in their lots with the Left, particularly in light of an increasingly Democratically controlled government.

But now, where CNN took the words of Jon Stewart to fire people and restructure with little effective contemplation as to the reasoning behind Stewart's criticism, MSNBC president Phil Griffin probably felt secure in punishing Olbermann on such an insubstantial pretext because the widely beloved and recently very popular Jon Stewart really doesn't seem to like Keith Olbermann. Although Jon Stewart appears on Bill O'Reilly's show with some frequency and has O'Reilly as a guest on his show, Stewart has not done the same for Olbermann, who's often seen as O'Reilly's direct rival. Like all of MSNBC's programming, Olbermann's ratings are significantly lower than those attracted by Fox News, which also makes Olbermann more vulnerable.

I can sympathise with Stewart's position--Olbermann does often go over the top with his inferences and rhetoric. But for all the wrong things Olbermann does, there are a hundred things he does right.



The speech Jon Stewart gave at his rally was essentially a Special Comment, and not nearly as effective as Olbermann's tend to be, because Stewart's productions are fundamentally about illuminating the really self-evidently ridiculous but sacrosanct--it's funny when Stewart points out the obviously ridiculous lines of reasoning Fox and the Bush administration presented because we could already tell these things were absurd, but we still have enough of an imbedded willingness to believe a government administration or a news organisation to be relatively reluctant to take their duplicity as plain fact.

Stewart fails when he writes from the premise of equivalency. He's always had this problem--I've watched The Daily Show since its first episode, when it was still hosted by Craig Kilborn. I remember during the election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, after making fun of Bush's obvious lack of qualification, Stewart felt compelled to show a montage of clips of Al Gore using his "locked box" metaphor. The pattern rears its head even now--as Stewart was mocking the news networks' election coverage a couple days ago, he concluded with clips of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann grinning a little smugly about the caveats of the Republican victory.

Sometimes I think it's Stewart's friendship with Colin Quinn. One can't listen to The Howard Stern Show for long without becoming aware of the fact that Colin Quinn seems to be really good friends with nearly every prominent New York comedian, and he's also right wing. Perhaps its loyalty to Quinn and other right wing comedians that drive Stewart to the equivalency penance. Mostly it reminds me of priests who speak out against homosexuality violently and turn out to be carrying out secret affairs with members of the same sex--there's a lot of self loathing involved.

Which reminds me of this;



Which, except for the song at the end, I thought was really great. This is what spending five hours a day on The Howard Stern Show does to a guy, I think, and I should point out that's not exactly an environment of cool, considerate men.

Venia and the Last Gratuitous Shot of Wircelia's Vagina

The last chapter of Venia's Travels is now online. Well, that only took two years and four months. Please enjoy. Now time for me to chill the fuck out.

Twitter Sonnet #199

Battleship foreheads grow red and white pins.
The game's chute is female to ladder's male.
Quarries count four leafed nuggets lucky wins.
Plain ore's becoming fast beyond the pale.
Transformer changes to a different wreck.
Shiny rust gives new life to old crock pots.
Smiling giraffe doll has a broken neck.
Bending yard sticks measure space with dark spots.
Dark pools void of reflection eat long scarves.
Stencilled muppets walk the bad mustard street.
Cartoon babies decide which athlete starves.
Bald hand monsters eat only jaundiced feet.
Cheap burritos except lines of blank fish.
Seafood strips shine the coat of a bean dish.

Life and Death through a Small Window

To-day I awoke to a California with a new Governor elect. So ends the era of Governor Schwarzenegger, an era both troubling and yet also with a certain, undeniable, cartoonish charm. The wildfires in southern California may have been traumatising upheavals for many citizens, but at least any one at the time could've turned on a television to see their plight in the context of a cheap 90s action movie. Somehow I doubt Jerry Brown will have the same effect, though he was governor of California twenty eight years ago.

I watched the newest Boardwalk Empire a couple days ago--a Halloween episode, and I really warmed to it. Nucky and Margaret's relationship isn't an example of really impressive writing, but it's credible enough and the two actors are so good they take subtle, somewhat insubstantial moments to rather endearing heights.



The episode also introduced a new character I absolutely loved, a one eyed, masked sharp-shooter played by Jack Huston, apparently the grandson of John Huston. His character suggested a fantastic line the show might take, one I've been feeling is desperately needed. A former soldier, he's established as a victim, mentally and physically, of the effects of World War I, and his story is somewhat pitiable. Mopey modern television would usually be inclined to stop there, but Boardwalk Empire allowed itself to use that effective back-story as a foundation for his new identity as a monster. Making it a very good Halloween episode indeed.



There was also a pretty lesbian love scene kind of abruptly shoved into both the episode and the series narrative, but I really can't complain.

Happy birthday, Trisa.

Free Green Monster

A little grasshopper I saw to-day.




So I saw a doctor to-day, and he thinks what I'm experiencing is due to anxiety. Which I found to be a huge relief, ironically enough. My blood pressure was good (which always surprises me somehow) and he told me a sharp pain in exactly the same spot on the chest is rarely an indicator of heart problems. Also the fact that when he pressed the spot, the pain didn't come back and the fact that I'd started grinding my teeth in my sleep before the chest pains started indicated anxiety. Now, this is pretty much what I thought the situation was, based on what I'd read online, from which I learned a number of the same things my doctor told me along with a few other things, like the fact that exercise seems to make me feel better rather than worse makes a heart problem unlikely. So on the one hand, I feel like I'm not crazy for clearly identifying the problem this time, and on the other hand I feel like I'm crazy because my mind is having such a powerful effect on my body. It's pretty annoying.

I'll probably wait a while before drinking alcohol again, though. Though I hadn't been drinking much lately anyway, for some reason I hadn't really been in the mood.

I went to vote after leaving the doctor. I had to go to some little garage of a private residence in a part of the neighbourhood I'd never been to. It's weird how just a few blocks away can feel like another city. I didn't take an "I voted!" sticker when I was done, which seemed to inspire quiet and genuine shock from two of the poll workers.

I almost said "pole workers." If only.

I voted for a bunch of Democratic candidates, including Gavin Newsom for Lieutenant Governor, who you might remember as the mayor who was able to briefly legalise gay marriage in San Francisco. It's always nice to see a candidate I feel like I have genuine reason to like. I also voted to legalise pot. I guess that could be a solution for my anxiety.

Does a House Want to Talk to Me or Is It In My Head?

Twitter Sonnet #198

Extra Os give rare names a wrong spelling.
Ginger intrudes on a stomach's new peace.
Shrieking bat skull omens are too telling.
Fool's gold shows the wrong one hundred two geese.
Ham looks burnt when viewed through a thick black veil.
Lint collects on overused and moist gum.
Blank coins fall best into an endless well.
Grown extra ears limits the chance of dumb.
Two hills battle over a single house.
An arm heavy with bloodlessness soon sleeps.
Shadows explode a still dramatic mouse.
Chalky flutters are what a moth heart keeps.
Blurry blonde hair shocks the black ink background.
Swiss cheese shadows under trees stifle sound.

I saw another one of the moths go down, this one right outside the front door;



Music in the video is "Above Chiangmai" by Brian Eno and Harold Budd.



I went to my parents' house for Halloween last night and my sister and I watched movies on TCM since the DVD player's broken. We watched the end of House on Haunted Hill and the whole of The Haunting (1963), which, while not a perfect film, isn't a bad one, and in the somewhat antiquated position of having little control over what appears on the television, kind of a very good movie. We Have Always Lived In the Castle remains the only Shirley Jackson book I've read, but It's easy to see how The Haunting of Hill House, the Shirley Jackson book upon which The Haunting is based, is probably much superior to the film. Jackson had an exceptional talent for transcribing a character's train of neurotic thoughts and using it to tell a story, not unlike Dostoevsky, in my opinion. While the voice over narration in the film transmits this to the audience, it's a bit cumbersome and sometimes redundant married with images and Julie Harris' often broad performance doesn't help. But I do love Claire Bloom as Theodora. I'd sort of love a whole movie about the movie Theo.

In any case, the idea of connecting the haunting of a house with the main character's internal psychological issues is great.

The nausea went away almost completely yesterday, but the chest pains came back, along with a soreness in my left arm. It was my arm more than my chest that kept me up a lot of the night and I was tempted a few times to go to the urgent care clinic the secretary at my normal clinic gave me the address for. But I knew that would entail extra expense, not to mention the fact that the urgent care clinic is around ten miles away, so I figured if I had anything serious enough to require an urgent care clinic, I likely wouldn't have been able to reach the clinic. So I took some alka-seltzer and deciding to ride it out. I do seem to feel better to-day, though my arm's still sore.

I felt a lot better while I was drawing, and, in fact, I realised it's while I'm drawing that I feel best, and I remember a big part of the reason I started Venia's Travels was to give me something to get my mind off of anxieties in my life. So whatever I end up doing after the comic, I think I'll need some kind of outlet for my creativity.