Good Mornin'

I woke up to this to-day;



That was just one of several times I woke up to-day. The main reason I'm house sitting for Tim's family is this pit-bull, Kaydyn, is afraid of being alone in the house at night. He's a big, tight, perfect machine of muscle with jaws it's not hard to imagine snapping human bones to fragments, but he's one of the sweetest guys in the world. He always has this look in his eyes, as though he's sorry for crimes he's not committed and never will, like Catholic Guilt.

At around 5:30 in the morning, he decided he was going to sleep on top of me, and the mass of furry muscle crushing my ribcage actually wasn't so bad compared to how warm he was in the already pretty warm room. I tried sleeping for about an hour, then gave up and watched the fifth episode (or sixth episode, depending how you count) of Twin Peaks. Apparently I was on a Russ Tamblyn kick, as I'd watched the future Doctor Jacobi in Gun Crazy the night before.



Possibly one of the worst episodes of Twin Peaks. Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, it not only features Shelly's and Norma's fabulous makeovers;



It also features a few really stiff actor blockings, most noticeably this one, used twice, where four actors hit quickly these precise marks for the camera;



I expect to hear The Three Stooges saying, "Hello, hello, hello . . . Hello." I guess the problem was that the other directors working on Twin Peaks felt they had to keep up with David Lynch's natural talent for strangeness and tripped over themselves in the process. Despite this terrible episode, Glatter has gone on to direct episodes of Mad Men, among other shows.

I took the time alone at Tim's house last night as being meant for movie watching somehow, so I watched Singin' in the Rain as well as Gun Crazy. It's pretty common wisdom nowadays that Singin' in the Rain is the greatest musical ever made, and I used to agree, but after watching it last night for the first time in a long time, I think I might actually consider Meet Me in St. Louis and Swing Time to be superior.

One of the great things about Singin' in the Rain is how naturally in flows--the characters trade realistic minor ego bruisings, unlike other musicals from the period like The Band Wagon, which I find I almost unwatchable due to it's portrayal of Fred Astaire's character as sort of a moron who's not meant to be a moron. There's a tricky line between ridiculous and justice to characters when people launch into songs that only barely seem related to what's going on in the plot, but while The Band Wagon accomplishes its first number by having Astaire get guilelessly caught up in arcade games after some odd, embarrassing self-mockery, Singin' in the Rain hits nutty rather than moronic, particularly with the amazing "Make 'em Laugh", where Donald O'Connor accomplishes for a gag what required wires and cgi in The Matrix. Watching it last night, it really made me reflect on how performers just aren't like that anymore. When Buster Keaton did something amazing, it was a component of a larger piece, a lot of the coolness was in how he passed it off as almost nothing. Now the best physical performers can only seem to do things that are all about themselves, and their work is never as good--I guess the closest correlations I can thing of would be Cirque du Soleil and Michael Flatley.

But I found myself not getting quite as caught up in the characters and story of Singin' in the Rain as I was with Meet Me in St. Louis. Singin' in the Rain feels quicker, more like a collection of music videos. But that's not exactly a negative criticism because it's flawlessly executed.



As I said, I also watched Gun Crazy last night, and really enjoyed it. Peggy Cummins I think may have the sexiest voice ever recorded.



Last night's tweets;

Pale yellow sphere burns microwave centre.
Anxious pitbulls watch an aloof kitten.
Ceiling fans melt for upside down winter.
By stepladders are Debbie's shoes smitten.

Monsters Who Can't be Left

Twitter Sonnet #139

Lettuce tangled trains stand awkward outside.
Nervous sunsets question garden transit.
In candles do hermetic bees abide.
Barley bushels gasp into a corset.
Dark beans file into a bright red store.
The Morning Star is there bought for dollars.
Lucifer accidentally declares war.
When a whelp named "Luther" attracts hollers.
Small greys atop tall beds wake up confused.
Beige skies are among the very weakest.
Potato shaped dogs are loudly amused.
Shields that are raised slowly block the hardest.
Monsters attack a Louis Vuitton bag.
Before fast food fire places, tails wag.

One of the advantages of my new computer is that I can watch all of the badly encoded videos released by the fansub group GG normally. Now I, too, can obnoxiously turn my nose up at everyone with an inferior computer.



So I've been watching Maria Holic again, and to-day with breakfast I watched the fifth episode. When I go back to watch Maria Holic, it's mainly because I remember how visually great the show is, but I tend to forget it's exceptionally funny, too. There's a bit in the fifth episode I particularly like where Kanako, who had been given a book bag by Maria filled with some kind of black, earthworm creature as a prank, finally decides to get rid of the bag, but as she does, she suddenly, for absolutely no reason, finds herself emotionally attached to the creature.





Last night, I watched the final episode of Caprica's first season--I was surprised to see that the season was only nine episodes long, but I mostly liked it. The subplot about Joseph Adama seeking his daughter in the virtual world ended very disappointingly; Battlestar Galactica's bad habit of resorting to allegory again reared its head--Joseph is doing everything he can to find his daughter, in the process getting addicted to a virtual drug (which actually wasn't nearly as silly as him blanching at killing virtual people) to heighten his senses, and his daughter wants to find him too, of course, since she's basically a ghost stranded in the virtual world.

But unfortunately, the writers very obviously concluded, "This is really a story about a man unable to come to terms with the death of his daughter, his chasing the ghost a metaphor for being unable to let her go." That might be an interesting theme for another story, but trying to wedge this story into that mould was supremely annoying, resulting in a scene where the girl kicks her father out of the virtual world because of his addiction to the drug thing, never mind that he was only using it to find her in the dangerous sim where the girl was waiting for him to find her. And when he does get kicked out, Joseph dejectedly takes off his holoband saying something like, "She's really gone," the moment apparently meant to be a big emotional "letting go" except I think everyone in the audience was screaming, "SHE'S CLEARLY NOT."

The parallel father/dead daughter plot of Daniel and Zoe Graystone was also pretty annoying by the end, but only because it had been dragged out way past my patience. It at least basically made sense. I think my favourite parts of the latter portion of the season were scenes involving Amanda Graystone and Clarice Willow. The plot spooled out by these scenes was vague and not particularly exciting--something about dead people and religion--but it was such a joy to watch these two actresses work together for some reason. And I kind of got the idea that this is what all the wallowing in pointless Mary McDonnell scenes were meant to be like in Battlestar Galactica. If I hadn't found Mary McDonnell to be a rigorously lousy actress, I might have enjoyed all of her gratuitous business this much. I'm pretty relieved, actually, as Battlestar Galactica left me with a feeling I might have some irrational hatred towards older women.

I guess it was the success of Battlestar Galactica that brought a better crop of actors to Caprica. It was nice seeing James Marsters again, though during his scenes I constantly found myself thinking, "Gods, I miss Spike," and, "What's different about his face? Is it . . . puffier, is that it?" He could still be Spike, I think.

Venia, Pissing Contests, and Vomit

The new Venia's Travels is online. The comic's four hundred pages now, and after a 48 chapter absence, puke makes an appearance. Find out from whom and why!

Feeling really out of it right now. Some guy was attacking my window with a garden hose at around noon to-day. Also seem to be delaying lunch quite a bit to-day.

I dreamt I found a sparrow about one third the size of a normal sparrow, not a baby, just an exact miniature. I also found a scorpion the size of a large man's hand that appeared to be made of transparent wax with strawberry syrup, like wax lips, but it was alive. I wanted to take a picture of both creatures, but there was a big red spider on my camera, which I also wanted to take a picture of but IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE.

I have to go get some food now.

Last night's tweets;

Dark beans file into a bright red store.
The Morning Star is there bought for dollars.
Lucifer accidentally declares war.
When a whelp named "Luther" attracts hollers.

The Building Blocks of Block Buildings

Last night's tweets;

Lettuce tangled trains stand awkward outside.
Nervous sunsets question garden transit.
In candles do hermetic bees abide.
Barley bushels gasp into a corset.

Really caught up in drawing to-day. It's one of those days I really wish I had absolutely no distractions.

I had lunch at my parents' house to-day--dinner for them--and I had some strawberry ice cream over a brownie for dessert. The ice cream was good, but the brownie has been like a rock in my stomach for hours. I'm pretty much consistently getting this reaction from chocolate. It doesn't taste good anymore, either. I'm starting to get really annoyed by how my body appears to be aging.

I read "WORKPRINT" last night, the first of the two stories in the latest Sirenia Digest. It has the best Vince Locke illustration I've seen in a long time, an interesting composition of sharp angles that seems to say something about identity and orgasms. Though the story Caitlin wrote around it went in a different direction, being an interesting meditation on the sorts of horror movies being made in the first half of the 1980s. It put me in the mood to watch a bunch of them.

The protagonist's name is Helen Farrow, though she's accidentally referred to as Sarah at one point. I always wonder how typos in the Sirenia Digest get past Spooky, Sonya, and presumably Vince Locke. But with Roger Ebert's reviews filled with typos, and several typos appearing daily on Huffington Post, I'm getting really used to professional literary media being less than perfectly edited. I just went through and corrected a bunch of typos in Venia's Travels last week--some I haven't spotted for well over a year. I'm starting to wonder if someone's gone back in time and killed a butterfly.

Light Bulbs in Rock Tumblers

Twitter Sonnet #138

The feral boxer rides a unicorn.
Feline footpad's killed resisting arrest.
Tomato sauce in the ring gets just scorn.
Punchy Bandit's pugilism's Pete Best.
A fat, fake singer scales a tall hotel.
Dark depths of base accidents rise to roofs.
Peer into a bottomless coffee well.
Trodden by biscotti steed's crumbling hoofs.
Velvet dice bags can shelter a piglet.
Exactly a cup vanishes outside.
Behold, tiny green tree pumpkin droplet.
Vegetables and immature hams collide.
A catalogue crushes a cheap checkstand.
California has a stinky pink gland.

Feeling a little less stressed to-day about the week, not only because I found out I won't have to be up so early on Friday, but also for no particular reason. There's like a rubber band inside me that gets wound up, and then just slackens.

I've taken to colouring during breakfast instead of during dinner as I seem to be a little more amped just after waking up, and maybe also because there hasn't been as much anime I've wanted to watch lately, and breakfast is anime time for me.

So I watched both an episode of Doctor Who and the sixth episode of Caprica last night. I'm enjoying both series, despite the fact that both have been throwing at me plot points that make absolutely no sense. I just watched the "Edge of Destruction" serial of Doctor Who, the first half was an interesting presentation of a puzzle wherein an invisible force apparently enters the Tardis and causes everyone to pass out for a few minutes, after which everyone wakes up with temporary, partial memory loss, violent tendencies, and a fear of time keeping devices. Which was fascinating, and I was curious to see what was at the bottom of this mystery. However, the second half explains it all away as a mechanical problem with the ship, forgetting to explain the strange behaviour of the characters.

But watching the new Caprica reminds me television series are still perfectly content to play fast and loose with logic, as in the fourth episode of Caprica where Eric Stoltz mentions something his deceased daughter believed in, his wife asks when he talked to the daughter about it, and Stoltz says it was after she died. We know it's because the girl's lived on in a sophisticated avatar she's created, but Stoltz lamely lies and says what he spoke to was just an avatar he created replicating the girl's physical appearance and voice. And everyone's satisfied by this explanation.

These weak links of logic in story are accumulating on Caprica a little more quickly now, and it's resorting to those irritating moments when characters won't reveal important pieces of information to each other for absolutely no sensible reason, though it's still not reached the levels of Battlestar Galactica in either department, I'm guessing because there was so much planning time behind the early Caprica episodes. I don't work in television, so I guess it's not fair for me to judge when I don't know first hand the kind of stress these people are under, but is it really so hard to figure out the basic levels of rational thought people tend to exhibit?

Here are a few photos from yesterday, nothing spectacular. I just liked this tree with buds that looked like green pumpkins;





And here's Saffy the Cat looking regal;

The Speeding Setsuled

Last night's tweets;

A fat, fake singer scales a tall hotel.
Dark depths of base accidents rise to roofs.
Peer into a bottomless coffee well.
Trodden by biscotti steed's crumbling hoofs.

I've a nice, fucking crazy week ahead of me. I'm supposed to house sit for Tim on Friday and Saturday, for which I'm supposed to be up by at least 8am--this comes the day after the last day I'd scheduled to work on my comic, so I'm going to try to get two pages done to-morrow. But to-morrow I also have to shop for someone's birthday, then I also have to shop for Mother's Day. And I have to go to the store every minute for bottles of water and fucking picnic supplies because there's still no dishwasher here and I don't trust the water now, either, for various reasons. Suffice to say, I still don't know how I got a urinary tract infection--guys aren't even supposed to get urinary tract infections--and it's making me a bit paranoid.

I discovered to-day the bank shut down my credit card because of the great Washington Mutual to Chase switchover. I have a new card I need to activate, but I hadn't gotten around to it because I figured, since my current card's expiration is in July, I wouldn't need to. But I guess Chase decided to shut it down now without any warning. So now I have to remember all the things online that automatically charge me and start changing them all to the new card.

Is it any wonder I can't sleep? I wanted to try to get up at 1pm to-day, but I realised I couldn't do it, so I ended up watching another Doctor Who. I also watched the fifth episode of Caprica last night, and it's starting to bug me seeing things like Caprica license plates on cars and characters being referred to as "Caprican". Really? These designations are good for a whole planet? No-one has any ties to specific cities or provinces?

The Price of Reflection

I watched Powell and Pressburger's adaptation of The Tales of Hoffmann again last night. I'm always awed by the beautiful fusion of opera, ballet, and film accomplished by that movie, and last night I was marvelling at the intensity of creative expression that went in every moment. The beauty of Hein Heckroth's designs, and I was also noticing the use of special effects.



George Romero's featured on the DVD talking about what an influence the film was on him, which one might perceive from the scene where Olympia's dismembered, but that's only one moment of fascinating physical trickery. There's the business with the reflections in the second tale, and Robert Helpmann turning candle wax into gems, obviously with a slight of hand artist stand-in, was reminiscent of the Beast turning Belle's tears to diamonds in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete, something Francis Coppola borrowed for his Dracula film. And tricks with the camera, too--my favourite of the physical stunts is in the third tale, when Helpmann, this time as sinister Dr. Miracle, almost inexplicably makes four columns disappear.



The menace implied by just the fact that he's a doctor is something that reminded me of War and Peace, as Tolstoy often times showed characters becoming healthier the moment they were out of reach of doctors. I'm getting the impression of a wide spread hatred for doctors in the nineteenth century. I suppose antiquated methods may have indeed often made things worse, though I'd like to see some statistics.

Anyway, the third tale is wonderfully nightmarish. There's a bit where Antonia, bed ridden by consumption, is seen running panicked across the room and out the door, only to appear again on the opposite side of the room while meanwhile black cloaked Dr. Miracle is leaning over her apparently empty bed. This reflects an earlier bit where Miracle shows up at the house and immediately begins checking the pulse of an invisible Antonia on a settee, and the impression that's conveyed is that these are deliberate affronts to physical laws that nonetheless elicit natural responses--even as the later scene is an impression of someone's frightened spirit while her body is immobile. The sickness and the doctor become two aspects of the same unnatural force.

I was also thinking about Helpmann's role of nemesis to Hoffmann, and it occurred to me that the trouble Hoffmann has with all three women is always directly tied to something about Hoffmann personally. In the first case, it's Hoffmann's delusion that Olympia's even a real person. In the second, Giuletta steals his reflection, and in the third, Hoffmann's love of music is tied to the cause of Antonia's death, as she eventually can't resist singing, thanks to the machinations of Miracle. So the three forms Helpmann takes as Hoffmann's nemesis--the maker of the spectacles that cause Hoffman to perceive Olympia as real, Giuletta's pimp, and Dr. Miracle--are embodiments of the destructive aspects of Hoffmann's essence.

When at the end of the opera, Hoffmann realises these three loves were in fact manifestations of the same woman, to me this is indicative more of the poet's realisation of the nature of himself in respect to women. In the opera, he dedicates himself to his muse at the end--the movie omits this, instead just reprising the drinking song, and one supposes alcohol may be a better lover for this guy. Though Hoffmann's friend, Nicklaus, is still a man played by a woman, suggesting the muse aspect of the plot is still real. I think omitting directly stating the result of the story while still committing to its existence is actually a very elegant idea.

Last night's tweets;

The feral boxer rides a unicorn.
Feline footpad's killed resisting arrest.
Tomato sauce in the ring gets just scorn.
Punchy Bandit's pugilism's Pete Best.

Flowers Steal Nuclear Power

Twitter Sonnet #137

A lobby phone swallowed a girl's hour.
Sydney Greenstreet peeled chocolate birds above.
Black pennies congeal into a tower.
There's a parking space reserved for a dove.
Five fresh water fish paint a plaid mural.
There's Play-Doh stuck in the coffee filter.
To-day, each footstep must become plural.
Twenty steps knock octo-men off kilter.
Tall Technicolour sneers at a balloon.
Inner plastic cups soothe the right kidney.
Wrong organs are exiled to Rangoon.
Australian space baby swallowed Sydney.
A blowfish tops an empty pyramid.
Christmas angel of the dizzy morbid.

Music in the video is by Ennio Morricone from the soundtrack to John Carpenter's The Thing, which makes me exactly like Quentin Tarantino. The lens flare makes me exactly like J.J. Abrams and, like Abrams, my film probably would have been better without the lens flare. Though, I don't know, it creates tension, as in, "There's a big annoying white line through the middle of the image." If I had more time, I'd probably shoot it again.

Speaking of people who have loads of time on their hands, and also money, I got this picture yesterday of people lined up at the mall for the iPad;



It'd be a lot of identical, out of shape rich white kids except one of them, a Mac store employee, has cheetah spots in his hair. Thundercats go, dude.

The line actually extended some ways from the Mac store, and was segmented, so when I first saw it, I didn't know what it was for. So I asked a guy in line, "What are you folks lined up for?" (I said folks I think because I was wearing my park ranger pants again).

"iPad," he said.

"iPad?!" I replied automatically with a probably less than polite dubious tone.

After waking up early yesterday, I ended up sleeping almost to 3pm to-day. I woke up in the early morning and couldn't get back to sleep for a couple hours, which I realised when my alarm woke me at 2pm and I had to adjust it. I have my mp3 alarm clock set to play Jerry Goldsmith's music from Alien when everyone's waking up from hypersleep, which may have been appropriate for how shitty I felt.

Ocean Ducks

Last night's tweets;

Five fresh water fish paint a plaid mural.
There's Play-Doh stuck in the coffee filter.
To-day, each footstep must become plural.
Twenty steps knock octo-men off kilter.

I only managed to get up one hour early to-day, at 1pm, but it seemed to make a big difference. By 5:30, I'd already taken a bunch of pictures at the beach;




This seagull had situated himself where the water came exactly to the tips of his toes.


A couple mountains of seaweed, swarming with flies.


This little alley is by an expensive restaurant called The Marine Room--to-day the tide was coming right up to it.


I think this could almost be a Nine Inch Nails album cover.



I spent a lot of time photographing trees--there are so many strange, twisty trees around here.











A couple of ducks eating Cheerios at the mall, where I went for lunch. The male alternated between eating and staring me down while the female alternated between eating and waddling over to a little puddle to drink.

Dancing Anaesthetised Zombies

Last night's tweets;

A lobby phone swallowed a girl's hour.
Sydney Greenstreet peeled chocolate birds above.
Black pennies congeal into a tower.
There's a parking space reserved for a dove.

Somehow, I can't help finding the recent oil spill due to the explosion of a rig terribly funny. To me, it's close to Lex Luthor moving California, Superman not being there to stop him, and most people ultimately not caring except people in the immediate vicinity. Such is the state of apathy and short sighted self interest I perceive as fast and universal. Just look at Arizona's new immigration law, crafted by a small group of repressed racists. It takes the special sort of candy coated insensitivity of our bulbous modern humanity to push a bunch of people out of a desert because they might, in some ambiguous way, be draining tax dollars. Even if it were truly a significant drain on the economy, and the Hummer I saw by the grocery store the other day suggests to me it's not, who's being saved with this money? It just seems like the whole human race gets sadder every day.

I might try getting up early to-morrow. I've been making decent time with my comic this week, and I think I might try to enjoy daylight on Friday. On Monday's Howard Stern Show I was kind of annoyed by Courtney Love showing up hours late because she had been up all night and, then, when she got to the building where Stern's show is broadcast, she spent another half hour in the lobby listening to her own voice mails she'd recorded for a guy who evidently was being a dick to her. But the interview itself was fascinating. One of the great and unique things about Howard Stern--what other interviewers actively avoid, fearing to let guests embarrass themselves, he actively pursues. So listeners were treated to a picture of Love's life to-day, wherein apparently "people" prevent her from spending more than three hundred dollars at a time and, although she's sure her daughter, Francis, wants to talk to her, "lawyers" stand in the way. It seems like a lot of rock stars, when they talk to Stern, have a long shit list of people that have fucked their lives up in sometimes dubiously complicated ways. I'd actually been listening to Hole's Live Through This earlier in the day, which is an album I still like, though, whoever Courtney Love was, she seems buried now under piles of dizzy self-absorption. She talked about how she didn't want to be a feminist anymore, and wanted to think like a man. Though, I have to admit, the most disappointing thing to hear was that she was currently reading Ayn Rand.

She did say something I agreed with, though--or, at least, she vaguely seemed to allude to something in the middle of incoherent rambling I think I agree with, which is that it's really depressing to see what's happened to Billy Corgan. I mean, just from the fact that he's calling his new band The Smashing Pumpkins when he hasn't got any other members of the original band, and the fact that he dated Jessica Simpson. The guy seems to have epitomised "sell out" at this point. I guess you could say that Courtney Love at least didn't go that route, but Stern was pleading with her not to sell any more Nirvana songs. I really hope he got through to her, I could do without any more unintentionally ironic uses of "In Bloom" or "Breed" in video game commercials.

A Study in Nebulae

Twitter Sonnet #136

A coffee cup sticks inside a black car.
There's an extra half hour across town.
Scientists send porn to a distant star.
Alien mollusc frowns turn upside down.
There's a stellar extension cord at home.
Day's red suitcase holds the dawn's noodle hand.
Half of all water's under Epcot's dome.
Hats wear plastic trumpets in backwards land.
Cranberry bullets are clear as copper.
Atomic candies bide their digestion.
Dizzy new stories from Hedda Hopper.
Living readers are weak to suggestion.
Invisible webs tickle a cat nose.
To a sushi place the sombre fish goes.

The sheriff stopped by my parents' house yesterday looking for me. It turns out the guy from last week had indeed gotten stabbed--it wasn't self inflicted or an accident, though apparently the cops still know little else. The guy is alive. So while I was blogging about War and Peace last week, someone was nearly murdered a few yards away from me. I guess there's more going on out there at night than rabbits, snails, and cross-eyed cats.

I'd told the cop I wouldn't likely be at my parents' house, though I am registered at that address. My mother gave the sheriff my cell phone number, despite the fact that I'd already given it to them, and I haven't heard from them. I'm getting an impression of a lack of any feeling of urgency on the part of the police. But my mother said the sheriff seemed like a nice lady, and I think she's probably the little old woman I saw talking to some little kids at the grocery store a few weeks ago.

I guess there's no real need for any serious investigation. I guess the worst that could happen is someone else gets stabbed . . . hmm. But I could be getting the wrong impression. Maybe it's just that they sense I really know nothing helpful, and they'd rather not waste their time pursing this line.

I grew up in this town, and I'm not really used to thinking of it as dangerous. It seems pretty low key to me, but then I think about things like the body found in the dumpster near where my sister works or the shooting at my high school that drew national attention. It almost seems odd that I've never personally witnessed any serious violence here that I can remember. Though there are incidents of serious violence I've witnessed in my life that seem to slip my mind.

Here are some pictures of a spider I found in the garage last night;




Poor Snow walked right into his web three times. Here's a blurry, luminous Snow;

Blue Ladies

Last night's tweets;

There's a stellar extension cord at home.
Day's red suitcase holds the dawn's noodle hand.
Half of all water's under Epcot's dome.
Hats wear plastic trumpets in backwards land.

I'm so tired. I hope there's no errands I need to run to-morrow. I feel like I've been running around for weeks.

I watched the fourth episode of the Daleks serial of Doctor Who last night. I'm wondering how many kids dressed up in cardboard tubes with toilet plungers sticking out the front. I love that we never see what the Daleks actually look like, that they're some poor mysterious mutants in the metal shells. I suspect some later episode shows a Dalek body quite clearly, though. The show's been around for decades, it has to have happened, and I bet everyone regretted it.

I'm so turned on by this Thal dame;



I should be ashamed of myself--the show's gone from casual sexism to outright sexist fantasy. She acts and is treated like a pet.




But I can't help it. The first thing she does when she sees the Tardis is press her body against it as though wondering if it's something she can have sex with. And she looks sort of like Aimee Mann.

I guess these old Doctor Whos aren't really much more sexist than the old Star Trek, though even the first Harry Mudd episode seemed more progressive than this--at least then it was indicated that subjugating women is a bad thing, even if it was only because women ought to be free to run the kitchen and perform maid services.

But this is really early into Doctor Who, I probably shouldn't pass any hasty judgements. And how can I really complain about a sexy girl wearing little more than a big foam Y?

I watched half of the Rifftrax of Avatar last night. So, so wonderful. If there were any justice in this world, theatres showing Avatar would've been outfitted for this Rifftrax rather than 3D. My favourite bit so far; a military guy says to Jake Sully, about the Avatar job; "And the pay is good." Kevin Murphy says, "In Linden dollars, of course." Works on so many levels.

Guns and Metal Boxes

Last night's tweets;

A coffee cup sticks inside a black car.
There's an extra half hour across town.
Scientists send porn to a distant star.
Alien mollusc frowns turn upside down.



Apparently Hewlett Packard likes to play a little game with consumers in which USB cables may or may not be included with their printer/scanners. From the manual; "Purchase a USB cable and photo paper separately if it is not included". Apparently I didn't get one of the lucky boxes, so I'm going to have to go back out again to-night after a long day of running errands.

All I wanted was a scanner, but apparently you just can't get those from a store shelf anymore unless there's a printer fused to it. I suppose I could've ordered one online--I thought about just drawing and inking two pages a day and then scanning them at Tim's house on Friday or Saturday. But the fact is, I really prefer to concentrate on one page a day. While I can eat dinner while colouring, I can't very well ink.

Anyway, I do need a printer, and I guess this'll save me money in the long run. I actually need to print something about three times a year, but that's still some printing. This new little black number takes up about a third of the space my old Hewlett Packard printer/scanner took up--as Tim remarked when he was here the other day, you can always spot old computer hardware when it's pale grey, as my keyboard still is. It was my grandfather's keyboard, and though a few keys have totally lost their paint, I have no intention of replacing it any time soon. As my grandfather said at one time, IBM used to make keyboards like tanks, and sure enough this more than decade old keyboard's still in perfect working order.

I watched The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly last night, which I liked a lot more than the first time I watched it. As years go by, I find myself more satisfied by a movie's visuals alone, and I found myself just soaking in things like shadowed foreground broken walls with sun bleached hills in the background, and glistening, lined faces in extreme foreground with action occurring in the background. But I also found myself digging the story a lot more--I'm enjoying coolness a lot more than I used to, and these three guys almost casually going on about their own violent adventures in the middle of the American Civil War was both funny and exciting. The bridge destruction scene, which I found tedious and pointless the first time through, was a lot of fun this time. The fantasy seeming to be that these guys, who aren't bound by war as a social mechanism, are in a position to bestow a boon. They're almost godlike, which is I guess a lot of the romance of westerns--outsiders who are extraordinarily free, with the added pathos of being lonely for being so cut off, which is what the scene with Tuco's brother bears out. It's why it makes sense Blondie and Tuco are still friends after they've tortured each other. I still wish the movie had a female character.

Ways of Capturing Sound and Vision

Twitter Sonnet #135

Metal stars scrape inside the space stomach.
The table by the fast kitchen's burning.
Atlas as bee sags through a wax hammock.
For hares at night there's no learning.
Tall cat ghosts smell like rotten, peeled onion.
Lasers replaced floss security beams.
Phantom toenails make purses malfunction.
No hula hoop's exactly what it seems.
Juice you smell is the fallen orange soldier.
Springsteen pleads with cosmic John Huston ghost.
Money's caffeine for the cash register.
Squeeze out your citrus or insult the host.
Leaf shadows are caterpillar evil.
Green mice are far deadlier than Fievel.

I've known exactly what's going to happen in the next Venia's Travels script for almost a month but I'm still having trouble getting started. It's apparently an inevitability.

I need to get a new scanner as my old one uses some kind of cable computers don't take seriously anymore. Looks like I can get a decent one for fifty bucks, but I also need to get an oil change for my car and it's the end of the month, when I'm automatically charged for a lot of things. I went to get an oil change yesterday but when I walked up to the place, a guy working there said something to me like, "Ethigolly outside a minute inside. Boggy ental just a minute, only tack wish." I have no idea what he said, and he didn't even have an accent. I'm wondering if I'm losing my hearing. I'm constantly asking people to repeat themselves nowadays. Actually, it's not so much that I can't hear them as that I'm having more trouble resolving voices into words. Accents don't seem to make any difference.

I was watching BBC America a couple days ago and saw a promo for Star Trek: The Next Generation that featured a tagline that was something like, "All beings are created equal!" BBC seems to take a really strange tact in pursuing American viewers, apparently feeling that Americans can only be interested in American programming. And with the reference to the Declaration of Independence, it's almost a step away from the BBC saying, "We like you blokes, really, we don't want to go to war again!"

I saw Christina Ricci on Graham Norton a couple days ago. Holy shit, she's impossibly hot now. It's as though she's gotten more attractive in exact, inverse proportion to her dwindling fame. I hear she's naked in a large percentage of a new, otherwise crappy movie, but it's not playing anywhere near here. But the new movie absent from San Diego cinemas I'd really like to see is My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done a Werner Herzog movie produced by David Lynch. The movie even takes place and was shot in San Diego--how is it not playing here? It's fucking killing me. Moviefone.com, when I put in the San Diego zip code, gives the closest location as being a theatre in Chicago. Very funny, Dr. Jones.

It's Foolish to Wear Pants

Last night's tweets;

Tall cat ghosts smell like rotten, peeled onion.
Lasers replaced floss security beams.
Phantom toenails make purses malfunction.
No hula hoop's exactly what it seems.

I'm wearing my new green pants to-day. It was only when I stepped out into the sunlight that I realised they look like park ranger pants. I couldn't stop giggling at myself as I drove to the store in them, imagining this douchebag stepping out of his car in his faux ranger gear. If only they were skin tight.

And, yes, I'll continue to wear them. Now I love them. It's weird how much glee I can get at my own expense. I'm often reminded of a bit from Stephen King's Eyes of the Dragon, which I read around fifteen years ago, where the villain, Flagg, took some sort of mischievous action not because it actually served any of his schemes but because, and I forget King's exact words, he just had an instinct for mischief that told him to do certain things.

Maybe it's just that I'm afraid of taking myself seriously. Looking at Jim Carrey's twitter has been rather painful as it's obvious he thinks a lot of the things he says are interesting just because he's Jim Carrey. I'd hate to end up like that but, then again, which of us is the multi-millionaire? Though I'd point out it wasn't this vain bullshit that got Carrey where he is now.

I installed Oblivion on my new computer last night and was so pleased just being able to play Oblivion at home that four hours instantly shot by. It's amazing a game I've beaten so many times in so many different ways can have that effect on me, but I found myself just idling in grassy fields or reading little notes left by NPCs in dungeons, just generally drinking in the atmosphere. That's why I can't get into World of Warcraft--at every moment in WoW, verisimilitude is frustrated by some noisy, cartoonish reminder that this is all just fiction. That's why there's no real RPG in WoW. Oblivion, meanwhile, is just breathtaking in its attention to consistency in all conceivable forms of detail, and really its only flaw is Bethesda's typically bad ear for how people talk and think. And it needs plots that more directly involve your character and are influenced by your character's stats, which is something BioWare games have going for them, despite the fact that they also have generally bad dialogue. Really, only Fallout 2 has come close to satisfying me in that regard, though even then I couldn't help feeling someone could do better.



So I didn't watch much last night, only the first, twenty four minute episode in Doctor Who's second story, apparently about the Daleks, though they hadn't been mentioned yet in the episode I watched. It was just the party exploring a petrified forest and deserted alien city, both of which I found fascinating, even with the dated effects.

The Doctor's still travelling with his granddaughter, Susan, and Susan's teachers from England, Ian and Barbara, the two of whom seem to have some kind of starchy, vague sexual tension. I was rather amused by this bit of dialogue when they were alone together in the woods;

Barbara: "Ian, where are we?"

Ian: "I don't know."

Barbara: "Why doesn't he take us back?"

Ian: "I'm not sure that he can."

Barbara's earnestly asking questions of Ian she's as well equipped to answer as he is, yet neither of them seems to feel self-conscious in this dialogue, and I realised it was just Barbara's Weak Woman's Mind automatically subordinating to Ian's Manly Position of Authority. The two characters are so steeped in the dynamic that when Barbara says anything Ian agrees with he laughs this richly smug laugh that seems to marvel at the fact that sometimes a woman can say something clever. I'm glad at least the Doctor generally seems to be outside this behaviour.



All the characters fail to notice a dial indicating that the planet is irradiated, and the radiation sickness seems to manifest itself as just a general weariness. I had some fun imagining Barbara and Ian with real radiation sickness.

Barbara: "Ian, why is our hair falling out? Why am I puking and shitting blood?"

Ian: "I don't know."

In War and Peace, Tolstoy seemed to have a definite opinion about the roles of the sexes, particularly in bits like this, where Pierre is telling Natasha about his adventures;

Now that he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that rare pleasure men know when women are listening to them--not clever women who when they listen either try to remember what they hear for the sake of enriching their minds and, when the opportunity offers, repeat it, or adapt it to some idea of their own, or who promptly contribute their own clever comments elaborated in their own little mental workshops; but the pleasure real women give who are gifted with the faculty of selecting and absorbing all that is best in what a man shows of himself. Natasha, without knowing it, was all attention; she missed not a single word, not an inflection of his voice, a glance, the twitch of a facial muscle, or a gesture. She caught the unfinished word on a wing and took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret import of all Pierre's spiritual travail.

I was taken a little aback by this which, especially in contrast to the evident disdain with which Tolstoy described the cleverness of Pierre's first wife, seems to indicate a feeling that intellectual discourse is not a place for women. But then I realised the above description was very reminiscent of this one, from early in the French invasion of Russia, of Kutuzov, commander in chief of the Russian army;

Prince Andrei could not have explained how or why it was, but after this interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment reassured as to the general course of affairs, and as to the man to whom they had been entrusted. The more clearly he saw the absence of any personal motive in that old man--in whom there appeared to remain only the habit of passions, and in place of intellect (grouping events and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to contemplate the course of events--the more assured he was that all would be as it should be. "He will put forward nothing of his own, he will devise nothing, undertake nothing," thought Prince Andrei, "but he will listen to everything, remember everything, put everything in its proper place, and will neither stand in the way of anything beneficial nor accede to anything detrimental. He understands that there is something stronger and more important than his own will--the inevitable course of events; he can see them and grasp their significance, and perceiving that significance, can refrain from taking a hand in them or from pursuing a personal wish directed to something else . . ."

And it's clear that it's cleverness Tolstoy has sort of a low view of. Which got me thinking, "Would sexism be in the idea that women can't be valuably clever, or in the idea that men can be?" In the Doctor Who episode, Barbara's feigned feebleness and Ian's sense of superiority are both, if oddly endearingly, obnoxious, but I will say Ian's slightly more obnoxious.

Of course, War and Peace is an exceptionally clever book, and I'm hardly about to say intellectualism is without merit. But I really do dig what Tolstoy's saying about the rare pleasure in finding people who can truly listen to what you're saying, and who can truly absorb experiences without a need for personal gain. And when such people happen to be beautiful women or leaders of countries, so much the better.

Venia and System Status

Okay--now the new Venia's Travels is online. I finally finished about half an hour ago. I still had one page to colour at 5am when I finally went to bed, and figured I ought to do it when I was fully awake. I also wanted to be as awake as possible when I did my final pass over the chapter. I hope no-one minds the delay too much.

It's amazing how long just one day without a computer can seem. Which is not to say it was a lazy sort of day--I was constantly running around on Wednesday trying to get things done. I pencilled and inked a bit while Tim was here, but I didn't really have enough time at my desk to get much done. I ended up finishing with inking the last two pages yesterday. My iPod has acted as a sort of surrogate computer for me--I hooked it to my computer speakers and Tim and I were able to listen to some old Howard Stern Show recordings I had on there, including a particularly great one where Artie Lange wore one of Robin Quivers' old double D bras while guys tried to see how many potatoes they could fit in the cups. Unfortunately, hearing the Stern Show with Artie made the new shows pale in comparison, so last night I ended up just listening to an audiobook of Wuthering Heights while I coloured. Listening to Mr. Lockwood telling Heathcliff about Catherine's ghost in a storm outside at 3am while I was colouring at 3am during a storm had a nice effect.

It's been raining yet again for the past couple days, and without a computer running and my ceiling fan on low, I was actually able to hear the rain outside at night, which helped considerably to get me to sleep. It's not as great as hearing the ocean outside at night, though, as I did when I lived on the beach. Even in the exceptionally gloomy state of mind I was in those days, I still appreciated it. I lived without regular Internet access, too. I just had a computer with a 486 processor on which I'd play Warcraft II from time to time. Mostly in those days, when I wasn't at work, I was watching movies I got from video stores, which are disappearing now, too.

Now, of course, I have a computer with four 2.5 GHz processors. And two hard drives--I was really happy it was the old motherboard that had died. It really is an amazing coincidence that mine would die just as I happened to have a brand new one in a box that's several generations better.

I'm also using Windows 7 now. This is the first time since, I think, Windows 98 that I feel like Microsoft has substantially improved the interface. Having file manager/Windows explorer permanently locked to the task bar instead of various phantom organisation systems of quicklinks is by itself excellent. If nothing else, it'll be easier to explain to people where their files actually are when they download them.

Last night's tweets;

Metal stars scrape inside the space stomach.
The table by the fast kitchen's burning.
Atlas as bee sags through a wax hammock.
For hares at night there's no learning.

The Party is Back (I'm the Party)

Twitter Sonnet #134

Glowing red and blue dust spear the wood.
Cold reigns as police forget a blanket.
Howling men by dogs are misunderstood.
A park at night is sound's concrete pocket.
Three tiny quail egg shots are a small meal.
Cheddar battlements encase able bread.
With fermentation cold grapes cannot deal.
Science regrows your hair inside your head.
Round happy grey babies suckle red string.
Orthanc holds dizzy velociraptors.
All dead fish need is a blue song to sing.
Sake and mead for fluid adaptors.
Many forms are taken by potato.
Same ruffly shirt in different bolero.

It's looking like I probably won't have the new Venia's Travels online until late to-morrow, but at least I've got a computer again. And I won't have to re-colour the first four pages of the new chapter because it turns out it wasn't the hard drive that died on me but the motherboard.

All day to-day and yesterday Tim was over here putting together this new computer for me. I'm really lucky I know someone who knows how to do this stuff. I had little time to work on my comic, though, and I still have a lot of software to setup/restore. So, obviously I have a lot to do . . .

I got lunch at a nearby Japanese place two days in a row and got quail eggs both times. Boy, those are good, and I love how the place serves them on little mountains of wasabi with the tops of the shells broken open, so you can drink the yolk like a shot. They look like miniature versions of the eggs from the Alien films, and the round yolk inside can easily be imagined to be a tiny face-hugger.

I think I just got great product idea for Cadbury . . .

The Breaking of the Computer

My hard drive died last night. This wouldn't be such a big deal, what with me putting together a new computer right now, except the hard drive was one of the parts I was planning on reusing. It's also bad because I lost all the pages I'd already coloured for the next Venia's Travels, which means, if I can even somehow acquire a new hard drived to-night, to-morrow's going to be at least twelve hours spent on colouring. I still need to pencil and ink the last two pages, too. So I think everyone should expect the new chapter to be at least a day late.

I'm using my sister's computer right now and I don't know how much computer access I'll have to-day, so don't expect any quick replies to anything. Anyone wishing to see the new Venia's Travels soon, cast whatever spells or prayers you think best.

Before a Spring Rain

Last night's tweets;

Glowing red and blue dust spear the wood.
Cold reigns as police forget a blanket.
Howling men by dogs are misunderstood.
A park at night is sound's concrete pocket.

What I at first thought was a dog or coyote howling outside at around midnight turned out to be a man crying for help. I called 911 and was told by the sheriff, "We're already there."

I went outside to see if I could see anything and sure enough, behind the house there were two police cars. The man was still calling for help, but I became aware of the female voice of the sheriff talking to him like a mother, "Okay, we're going to help you, honey . . ." and so on. But he almost seemed unaware of her, the way he continued calling for help in the same way, but then he started crying, "Cold! I'm cold!"

"We're gonna get you a blanket," the sheriff said. "Get a blanket!" she called to the deputy back at their cars. "I don't have a blanket!" he said and I remembered the old blanket I keep in my car, which was a few feet away. I've had it in there for eleven years, have never used it, and I don't remember where it came from. I got it, and went back to the scene, which was in a small park behind the house, totally dark except for the red, blue, and white lights of the now three police cars. "Excuse me," I said to another woman, a deputy. "Do you need a blanket?"

I had glanced over and had seen someone draping something over a flesh coloured shape isolated in flashlight illumination in the darkness, and I thought maybe my blanket was now unnecessary, but the deputy said, "Yes, thank you," taking it.

I was told by one of the new cops who'd shown up to wait around and I eventually gave him my information, but before that I spent around fifteen minutes waiting by a tree as more and more police cars accumulated around me. I heard one of the men who'd just shown up ask another what was going on and the reply he received was, "I just got here and I got an uncooperative victim in a pile of blood." After a few minutes, I stepped out of the way for paramedics bringing a totally covered body past me on a stretcher.

When one of the cops had taken my information he told me, "Thanks for calling, you may have saved a life." He didn't appear to know there had already been someone there when I called. I asked him if he could tell me anything and he replied that they knew very little themselves. The man who hadn't wanted to tell them anything had a bad chest wound. The cop told me to stay on the trail as this was now a crime scene, and several of them were walking slowly about the area, passing their flashlights over the ground. However, when I went back to-day to have a look, I found no police, police tape, or any of the pylons I'd seen one of them setting up. I'm guessing they learned that the wound was either self-inflicted or the man had fallen and accidentally injured himself. The area is a somewhat treacherous little riverbank with a runoff ditch, and I often hear more than see the young guys getting drunk or high down there at night. I took some pictures of the spot to-day;




It was such a pretty day to-day, always just about to rain, but not quite getting to it. I wound up taking a few more pictures of flowers;






After I came back inside last night, I made myself some dinner and watched the first two episodes of Doctor Who while eating. I'd never seen any Doctor Who before and figured the best place to start was with the 1963 premiere episode. It was good, the Doctor's an intriguing character with a great theme song. The actress playing his granddaughter had a fascinating way of delivering every line as though it were a plea--she somehow begged her teachers to understand how she came up with the Tardis acronym. William Hartnell as the Doctor was an interesting, callous and focused character.

So I think I'll stick with this show. It certainly seems to have enough episodes to keep me from having to decide on another show for a good long time.