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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to go back to sleep very badly.

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

Bass!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just about time for me to leave for school.

There are many things to despise about this world.

But I think to-day should be okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It really is a beautiful, terrible story.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 may leave television forever.

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

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

I have to get coffee now.

Last night was kind of spooky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I'm busy again to-day.

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

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

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

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

Now I'm in a hurry, so bye.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did find, at Mel's journal:


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dreamt about Jeremy Brett haunting a little girl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am hungry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I think I've said enough about that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, that's it.

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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