I called this picture "Flower Eater";

I drew it. It's appearing in the new issue of Acorn Review, Grossmont College's litarary magazine. I suppose it's nice having it in the magazine and stuff. It'd been nicer if the other five submissions I'd told had been accepted had also appeared in the magazine. And it would have been really nice if another, really shity drawing of a faerie, appearing elsewhere in the magazine, which I did not draw, were not attributed, in the magazine, to me.

Julie Cardenas, the lady who runs the magazine, seems to feel really bad about it. And she's a really nice lady but . . . I'm still mad. Really mad.

It's not as though it would have been difficult to contact me to verify if a drawing, which they had obviously been confused about, was mine. It's obvious that they guessed. Which is sloppy and unprofessional. Of course, it is only a community college literary magazine . . .

It's stupid to get upset, I guess. No one reads the damned thing anyway . . .

To-day shall be about evenly divided between drawing and writing. I'll do the writing first, since I can do that at Starbucks . . .

Not feeling great. I think it was the breadsticks with Frappacino I had earlier. Perhaps it was the new Wal-Mart next door. In any case, gahk.

Last night I watched the absolutely wonderful Shanghai Express. A few minutes in, I realised I wasn't in the mood for a movie but I still loved it. I finally understand Marlene Dietrich's charm--before this I'd only seen her in Manpower (made in the early 1940s) and Witness for the Prosecution (made in the mid-1950s). Both were good movies. Dietrich was subtle and cool in the former and scarily, hideously thin in the latter. But in Shanghai Express, made in 1932, she was absolutely ravishing. The film, and Dietrich in particular, is beautifully shot.

It also was nice to see a Chinese movie star, Anna May Wong, in the 1930s. And playing a really cool, really deadly character, too. Reading up on her, I discovered she was in a mid-1930s production of A Study in Scarlett. It is a Sherlock Holmes movie, and A Study in Scarlett is the title of the first Sherlock Holmes novel but, of course, similarities end there. It's too bad a faithful adaptation seems destined never to be filmed, what with over-zealous political correctness. So what if it demonises Mormons? The Church of Latter Day Saints actually is kind of scary.

No offense to any Mormons reading. We're all of us kind of scary, after all.

Got my copy of Aladdin Sane back from my sister yesterday. It sure is nice to hear it again, nice and loud. I went out to get coffee earlier and I was originally planning on only going to a Starbucks a few blocks away. But "Watch that Man" convinced me otherwise and I had to drive much further in order to listen to several other songs.

To-day, I draw. I'm gonna try sticking to a regime of at least one page a day. I drew a page last night and I was surprisingly happy with it. Usually I can't draw as well at night, for some reason.

Not much time to-day so I'll just share some screenshots of some of my Morrowind characters;

The first one is Raequeoa, a breton vampire mabrigash weilding Gimli's axe. The second is Rey Inna, a wood elf thief wielding a civic knife.



This is my most powerful character, Grushenka, named after a character in The Brothers Karamazov. She's weilding Narsil and is dressed without thought for aesthetics--with the exception of the pauldrons, she dressed in the best armour in the game. And the pauldrons are second best. Everything she's wearing is available in un-modded Morrowind. This is her with and without the Masque of Clavicus Vile.

I was awoken from a dream about a woman petting a porcupine while talking on the phone by my ringing cell phone. My sister was on the other end of the line but who knows what animals were near?

I got to thinking last night about how I never watch my DVDs. I then proceeded to have a very, very nice viewing of Blue Velvet.

David Lynch movies are best taken all in one gulp. I find if I watch half of one, then wait for even a brief period, the second half loses some of its lustre. I believe this is in some degree true of all movie, but particularly true of Lynch's. The man's tapped into the secret logic at the back of our brains and everything we see and hear must naturally follow something previous to it. It has to unscroll like a dream.

And last night was able to watch Blue Velvet straight through with no interruptions and almost no intrusive sounds from my environment. You see, because I have this belief that David Lynch movies ought to be viewed in something like a vacuum sealed environment, there's some kind of Murphy's Law thing goin' where I'm almost never actually allowed to. There was one point last night where I could hear my grandmother upstairs using the bathroom, and it kind of broke up the very delicate flow of Sandy describing her dream about the robins. And later, Lucky the cat started freaking out when he noticed that my attention was absolutely focused on the screen (and away from him). But for the most part, it was pretty pure.

When I was younger, there was a lot more I didn't understand about Blue Velvet. I loved it, but I enjoyed it for some slightly different reasons. The primary difference being my understanding of Frank and Frank's relationship with Jeffrey.

Frank was impressively frightening to me in high school as a very ingenious sort of monster. Everything he did was unpredictable and had something to do with hurting people in ways and at times I wasn't expecting.

By now, of course, Frank can't help being less predictable to someone who's seen the movie several times. I respect the fact that he's frightening, even though he doesn't frighten me as much now, but I'm also now able to see him as pathetic and, in this way, I'm able to see his connexion to Jeffrey.

The scene where Frank says to Jeffrey, "You're like me!" was one I've always loved and always felt had a deeper resonance, but for a long time I never understood the specific dynamics.

But now I can see it--Jeffrey's huddled there all vulnerable and larva-like in front of Frank. And Frank sees a chomping caterpillar like himself. The same soft, greedy little baby Frank behaves like when he's raping Dorothy.

Perhaps it's a fault in the movie that I never really feel like Jeffrey could be a bad guy. But then again, I love Jeffrey's innocent voyeur detective thing so I don't think I could call it a fault.

Anyway, however you slice it, it's a great movie.

So my site's gotten a number of hits. Many of which are probably due to Caitlin very kindly mentioning it in her blog. I hope people've enjoyed it. I'm gonna try to keep it updating once a month, hopefully even more frequently than that. Thanks for looking at it. Tell your friends, enemies, and appliances.

I want to go back to bed. I probably will, too. Last night was the first night of Fiction Writing Class, which is a class that I think shall be useful because I think the teacher's . . . er, what's the most diplomatic way of saying this . . . got some decidedly unwise opinions and prejudices regarding the nature of fiction. I find I work well, or at least interestingly, with an adversary. So there's a use for a fiction writing class; battle!

To-day's been good so far, particularly for a Thursday.

Yes! Finally! The fucking thing is up. My web site, I mean. Drop in, please.

I was originally gonna charge money for some of the content, but I started to feel like a bastard. It's just not enough to charge money for, I think. I'll probably try to sell stuff on it eventually, though, because I'm sort of poor.

But, please, enjoy. Now!

A couple days ago, I finished reading the advance uncorrected proof of The Dry Salvages.

Written by Caitlin R. Kiernan, a lady whose work is invariably good to read, this thing is an absorbing shade, a terrifically fascinating story that successfully demonstrates the awesome potential for fear inherent in the literally strange. Performing the deliciously ingenious trick of taking us beyond what we hate or fear or know, and reminding us that the darkness always waiting under the trap door is absolutely alien. She reminds us how little we know of the truly alien--of what the word "alien" really means, after all--and brings us to the logical conclusion inside ourselves, which is fright.

The story is of a team of scientists who're sent to a distant moon called Piros, where they are to rendezvous with another ship, one which has already met with some interesting misfortunes. The story is told in first person narrative, a form which Caitlin has expressed some displeasure with as she feels it's inherently artificial. No one could possibly remember everything everyone said, or all of the small minutiae that are typically revealed in fictional first person stories. I don't agree that this weakens the form, but Kiernan's dislike of it has fostered some fascinating techniques that very cleverly become part of the story, almost subverting the readers' conscious mind.

So the story is not only that of the scientists' strange and terrible encounter, but also of a whole human world where some of the more quietly terrible faults of the species have risen to the fore.

What's wonderful about this book is the elusive definability of what is frightening, even at the same time that the threat makes a fierce impression. It's even fiercer, in fact, because of this. There are no psychological safety barriers the mind can construct against something more mysterious than wind, or currents, or light.

Anyway. An excellent book.

...

Gods, writing in this thing always feels more serious at night . . .

Yesterday, I was sure it was gonna happen. But, of course, it didn't.

You can't blame me for thinking it. It seemed full proof, and with contingencies.

Sunday, Tim's sister informed that banks will take birth certificates and California IDs as secondary IDs. And on Monday morning, I finally got my registration for Grossmont college.

So that's three possible IDs. The odds of this thing not happening, I thought, were too fucking slim.

Turns out, the only appropriate part of that expectation was the "fucking."

I paid for my classes okay (230 dollars for two classes, sheesh!), and then wandered over to the ASGC office, where one gets one's school ID . . . to find that it was closed until August 16.

"Okay," thinks me, "'tis time for plan B. And, if that doesn't work, there's plan C."

I decided to try the birth certificate first, as that would be the easiest to acquire--the California ID required a trip and probably a long wait at the DMV.

So to Washington Mutual I went with my certificate that said I been born . . . I stepped up and shook hands with a pretty young woman named Erica and said to her, "Now, I've tried this twice already so before we talk about anything else, I have to ask you . . . is a birth certificate an acceptable form of ID?"

She gave me a wincing smile that was a very clear "no." Talking further with her revealed that a California ID would also be useless.

Ah . . . ah . . . ah . . . well . . . I guess I'll just . . . wait for . . . August 16th . . . and see what goes wrong then.

Still no fucking checking account!

I got up early on Tuesday, all ready to go ahead with the whole she-bang. But no, I did not have the fall registration thingy for my school, I could not get a student ID, I did not have two IDs, I could not get an account, could not get my web site going, and I will not make a tired Monopoly joke here.

Arrgh! This . . . is . . . really . . . getting . . . under . . . my . . . fucking . . . skin!!! I wanted this site up a week ago. Everything's done. Graphics. Content. Voodoo. Crap. But this lousy speed bump is too big!

Two forms of ID. It kills me. I've got a government issued driver's license. Ought to be enough. I mean, if they think I'm forging that, then how the hell would they trust a student ID for fuck's sake?!

Oy. GLLLAAAAGH!!!

Not gonna get my checking account to-day. I'm gonna wait until Monday or Tuesday. I'm gonna wait until I feel good about depositing ten dollars. What's all this for anyway, you may wonder? Why, for my new web site!

Yes, it's truly pathetic but I've gone all this time in cyberspace without having any means for paying for things online. And, yes, it's really pathetic but, at twenty five years old, I have never had a checking account in my life. I've never written a single check. I've always cashed paychecks and have spent cash . . . Well, I guess all that's finally gonna change.

I heard a great story at Fashion Valley to-day.

Fashion Valley is a slightly concentrated example of San Diego's strange fushion of snobbish decadence, beauty, and truly pathetic creatures. As malls go, it's really very nice looking, with earth-tones and green trellises on the upstairs and . . . Well, a thousand times easier on the eyes than nearby Mission Valley Centre with its bold, mismatched Crayola paint job.

I was at Fashion Valley with my family this morning--they'd invited me yesterday to go with them and eat at a restaurant called The Cheescake Factory. Yes, they make great cheesecake, but all I had were avacado egg rolls and a portabelo mushroom burger. The avacado egg rolls were definitely the best part.

Anyway, another feast for the eyes at Fashion Valley lately is the legion of terrifically tiny skirts being worn by seventy-five percent of the girls. It's amazing what goes for respectable wear these days.

In Charlotte Russe with my sister, watching her buy one of the denim variants of these, I remarked that I'd seen more of these skirts to-day than I'd seen in any one place in my life.

"What?" she said, looking up at me uncomprehendingly.

"Yeah, NASA," I said.

"Oh . . ." she replied and went on with what she was doing. I suppose it's uncharitable of me to share that anecdote, as my sister is pretty smart. Really, I think it was more an issue of her knowing I was being weird and not caring.

Yes, perfection, or a conception of it, is visible everywhere at Fashion Valley. These skirts make you think about how nice it would be for these girls to sit on your lap but they're in terrible colours. And yes, there's probably an annoyingly unconscious sluttiness that goes along with them.

I saw a dress I sort of liked at Charlotte Russe, on a rack. It was black and its hem looked sort of like it was shredded. I pointed it out to my sister and all she had to say about it was, "Ew!"

Three inch skirt--good. Big black dress--just poor taste.

So on the way out, near Cheescake Factory again, we ran into my parents' friend Denise and her daughter, my sister's friend, Rachel.

Plain, pleasant conversation insued between them all as I stood silently among them, slowly feeling heat from the cloudless sky cement all my insides into a single melted organ mass.

Then Rachel told a great story. It seems that for one reason or another, a few days ago, she needed to have a urine sample for something at school. So she got the sample ready and put it in her backpack. Upside down. With the lid on not so tight.

When she stood up to leave class, there was an embarrassing mess.

Now, the best thing about this story was hearing it being told by one of the pretty-perfect denizens of Fashion Valley, giggling about it as a quaint little misadventure.

Rage! Anger stuff! Growl, spit, etcetera!

I was trying to open a checking account . . . But it turns out I need two forms of ID. Arrrrrrrrgh! This upsets me more than I would have thought. Mainly because it means I have to put an indefinite hold on a project I've been working on for a while . . . Damnit. I have a driver's liscence. There has to be something else I've got that says I'm me . . . The lady at the bank ran through ideas. Passport? No. Military ID? No. School ID? Yes, but it's incredibly old, which caused me to wonder why I haven't been getting new school IDs. If I have to wait 'til fall, when I start classes, in order to open a checking account . . . Well. I'll be annoyed.

And last night I watched Oklahoma!. The songs were good, some of the performances were decent, and I was oddly turned on by the ladies doing ballet in their knickers. But even though a number of the reviews I read praised the film for its bold, rich colours, the colours were actually a weak point, in my opinion. I didn't catch it in the credits, but I'm betting it was probably Eastman or something, and not Technicolor. Either that or it was a bad copy of the movie or it was done intentionally and it's just my wonky taste at fault. In any case, everything look faded and yellow, like it'd been soaked in butter. It made me uncomfortable to watch, and oddly reminded me of being left out in the hot sun for a very long period.

Following the studios' tendency in the fifties of placing a slightly irrelevant dance sequence into the centre of all their musicals, Oklahoma! had an almost good dream sequence detour that temporarily substituted the lead actors with actors who could dance. Which I don't think ever quite wins over the viewer--at least, it certainly didn't work on me. There's also a substitution of mood and style in this sequence, making it feel like a scene from an almost completely different movie. Which would have been okay if it had been extremely good. But it wasn't good at all. It was almost good.

Good, hot, fresh drip coffee often reminds me of penguin beaks. That's what I'm drinking right now--coffee.

Er, I didn't go to the Comic-Con yesterday. In one way, I'm glad because I only have five dollars left to-day. On the other hand, I'm angry for missing out on Claudia Black, Ben Browder, David Kemper, and a number of other things . . .

So how did I get from forty to five since yesterday? Let's see . . . Well, fifteen dollars was spent on gas. Three dollars was spent on a venti Americano with an extra shot. I think I spent three dollars earlier on Saturday on a latte . . . In the evening I spent seven dollars on burritos for Trisa and I after a confusing coffee attempt in Hillcrest. On the way home, realising I had no cold drinks with which to wash down the burrito, I spent two dollars on a bottle of Arizona's green tea with honey. Then there're the coffee, scone, and ginger ale I got this morning.

So. I've spent thirty-four dollars out of forty . . . and to-day, I have five dollars . . . Damnit, I ought to have six, grr . . . I'll never be a responsible adult.

Did you know I'm perhaps a Nebari? I'm perhaps named Leh'agvoi. To perhaps prove this, Mella drew this picture of me (which is certainly very flattering);

So. The second day of the Comic-Con--or, as it's familiarly known, the San Diego International Comic-Con--is over. Actually, for me, it's day one, as I opted not to go on Thursday.

There's something unnerving about a place where people who write or draw really cool, widely loved things are just milling randomly about in a crowd of several thousand cosplayers and variously odoured boys and girls. This struck me as I turned a corner on the main floor and found myself a few steps from Neil Gaiman, who immediately begun speaking to a little girl he called Zoey.

I hung around a little with some vague idea of telling him he kicks ass, but, as he continued talking to Zoey, I walked away as I had begun to feel like a filthy stalker. I went upstairs thinking about how such an encounter first stuns, then depresses me with its fleeting, insubstantial quality. That's really why, I think, I don't have very much interest in waiting in line for autographs.

So I was thinking this, walking along in corridors between the rooms upstairs, when I turned another corner to find four or five people having a conversation with Stan Lee. Or someone I was dead sure was Stan Lee, though I couldn't find his name in the programme. In any case, it was enough to make me start feeling a little faint, so I took myself to the deadest hallway I could find and just stood around for a while.

One of the most extraordinary and wonderful things about the Comic-Con is that, even though there're thousands of people there, there're still plenty of cool, air-conditioned quiet spots. And none of the security people seem to mind if you just set yourself down on the floor, anywhere.

I suppose air-conditioning is important when you insist on wearing as much black leather as some of the people (including Neil Gaiman) insist on wearing. I saw voluminous and heavy leather being put to use in a large assortment of nice costumes; a very perfect Jack Sparrow costume that I saw posing in front of a life size X-Wing with Boba Fett, a very decent Vampire Hunter D costume worn by a young woman, and of course any other shape or configuration of leather you could imagine (okay, maybe not every). There were also a large number of people dressed as members of the Crazy 88s, two Links from Legend of Zelda, and a female Sephiroth.

This time out, the only person who came with me to the Con is my friend Tim. When I met up with him after my persistent, accidental celebrity encounters, we made our way to one of the anime screening rooms and watched a decent episode of Ranma 1/2 from its seventh season (a better episode than many of the ones I remember from the fourth season), and a classic episode of Urusei Yatsura. And then from there we went to the Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean panel devoted to discussion of Mirrormask. Clips were shown and it looks like an incredibly beautiful movie. And Gaiman revealed that the Death and the High Cost of Living movie is now under the jurisdiction of New Line, which provoked an awful lot of applause. And I felt almost inexplicably happy about it, too.

And now I'm debating whether or not it's a good idea to go back to-morrow, with only around forty dollars left . . .

Last night I dreamt something about purchasable personal wings or something . . .

I watched The Magnificent Ambersons, an Orson Welles film that is also, as just about every write up about it I've found on the internet has said, a terrible tragedy. I knew from the beginning of the movie that, after Citizen Kane, Welles was never again granted full control over any of his movies. I knew there would be wonky edits and maybe even blunderingly inserted scenes. Oh, and it was so . . .

Partial scenes of vicious cinematic genius are followed by standard, plain-Jane 1940s swill. The ending, in particular, feels horribly wrong, and even worse after having read about the original ending. The excised scenes were apparently destroyed by fire, which some claim was without malice towards Welles and simply a matter of spring-cleaning RKO Studio's storage. Others say differently.

Somewhere in this footage is a frightening, big, alien story about the world changing into something where wires and noisy, steaming machines are commonplace, slowly, innocently propagating over old, beautiful homes and families. There're terrifyingly ingenious shots of an early automoble trundling over a snow coverd hill under an enormous, skeletal tree . . . Agnes Moorehead in a black dress screaming as she fumbles through shadowy halls . . . An old, dying man with oddly poetical, senseless words . . .

Looks like I'll be spending lots of time at Starbucks to-day. I have to drive my aunt (who works there) to and from.
 
The Comic-Con looms closer. I wish I had a boatload of money.
 
Discovered my copy of Nosferatu is missing the last four minutes . . . I need more tapes . . .
 
Time to go . . .

I had a dream involving clones, television, people with wings, and sky cities. There was some kind of double cross going on, and some of the clones had no brains and consequently wanted to eat brains they found. But otherwise, these clones seemed pretty nice.
 
Well, my sister read Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts" and said "it wasn't that gross." Which I suppose was inevitable. Teenagers . . .
 
I had bitter suspicans confirmed a few days ago when I finally found time to watch the subtitled version of Spirited Away and found that the screenwriter(s) for the dubbed script indeed took some incredibally stupid liberties. In a couple places, they even put in lines where there were none before.
 
The first time I noticed this, was when Chihiro first sees the bath house. In the English dubbed version, when the camera's not on her face, Chihiro exclaims, "A bath house!" When I saw the movie dubbed, I immediately suspected this line hadn't been there originally. And, indeed, it was not. The reason for its inclusion was obvious; the screenwriter felt us Americans would become confused and therefore angry and growly because we were looking at a building whose function we could not instantly ascertain.
 
Perhaps there're even reasonable people who agree with this argument. As for me, I say poppycock. Later dialogue does, after all, reveal it to be a bath house. And anyway, in America, the very concept of a bath house is foreign to your average youngster, so the line very likely would become the cause of confusion, rather than a deflection of it. After all, by this point, the kids have already been forced to just be cool with a lot of foreign things and imagery. The line would probably make them feel like they're supposed to know with the place is right now.
 
A worse instance came later when Sen and Haku part at the bridge after having visited Sen's parents. After crossing the bridge, Sen turns back and sees a distant white snaky shape in the sky. In the dubbed version, when the camera's off Sen's face, we hear her say, "Haku?" In the original language version, she says nothing.
 
Okay, now this is one hell of a liberty. At this point in the film, we're clearly not meant to be certain that the thing is Haku. It certainly seems to come as a revelation to Sen when she discovers it again later. And anyway, it seems ludicrous for someone, when seeing a dragon in the sky, to instantly assume it's another manifestation of the guy she was just talking to.
 
Oy . . . Well, I'm glad I have the subtitled version. The actors are all much better, too, and Yubaba looks like she's actually saying her lines.

Not much to say. Been drawing things. Drew better yesterday than I drew to-day. But I drew more to-day, perhaps unfortunately. Maybe it'll look better once it's inked . . .
 
Yesterday I had an iced venti vallencia Americano. It was pretty good, and pretty cheap. I think I have enough for another to-day, although maybe I'll get it without the vallencia . . .

Trisa and I went to Borders yesterday, where we and about three hundred other people listened to Chuck Palahniuk read "Guts".
 
If you've ever read "Guts," then right now you're likely raising your eyebrow at the idea of this piece being read aloud in a public bookstore where there were in fact five year old children wandering around. Yes, it was glorious.
 
This story, which made even Poppy Z. Brite uncomfortable, has, according to Mr. Palahniuk, made more than twenty people black out, six of which occured last night at the selfsame Borders' reading. One elderly man, in another city, was even found in a pool of blood after having passed out, hitting his head against a shelf. I assume he didn't die, but Palahniuk didn't say.
 
It even made me uncomfortable, and has had some lingering effects as occasionally I catch myself to-day wondering about things that might be shoved up my ass for various effects.
 
The story has to do with guys experimenting with different ways of masturbating. Palahniuk's stated intention with this story, as well as with a number of others that shall be included with it in a forthcoming collection, was to attempt something like what Edgar Allen Poe was most famously concerned with in his tales--to make us uncomfortable by using subject matter that we all deal with in some way or another in our lives but never, ever talk about. Honestly, when Palahniuk said this, I don't think it was seriously possible for him to carry it off. But, well. He did.
 
If you want to read it, it's online in a number of places, including here. I don't know if it's with proper permissions anything but, then, I don't know if it isn't . . .