Hey, remember the part in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when London gets bombed? Yeah, me neither--and I finished re-reading the book a couple days ago. But apparently the makers of the new movie do remember. I have a very bad feeling about this.

So, any guesses on how they're gonna justify this one? I have a few little theories myself.

Fantasy Director commentary #1: "First we had to show how ineffectual the children were in the face of German invasion--as, after all, Narnia is merely a daydream to allow the children to feel empowered."

Fantasy Director commentary #2: "When I read the novel, I realised right away that the real witch was in fact Hitler."

Fantasy Director commentary #3: "I really couldn't figure a better way to incorporate this many explosions. There're only so many times you can show the stone table blowing up in slow motion."

The director is Andrew Anderson of Shrek, so . . . Maybe there's . . . some explanation . . . Oh, who am I kidding, there's no explanation for this.

Maybe it's a hoax?

Uggg . . .

Opening up Windows Media Player I saw the usual smattering of annoying advertisements. But then, much to my astonishment, I saw that there was a video of a live Aimee Mann performance. Nice way to start the day--although it was also nifty procrastination fodder. Oh well . . .

Hey, remember the part in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when London gets bombed? Yeah, me neither--and I finished re-reading the book a couple days ago. But apparently the makers of the new movie do remember. I have a very bad feeling about this.

So, any guesses on how they're gonna justify this one? I have a few little theories myself.

Fantasy Director commentary #1: "First we had to show how ineffectual the children were in the face of German invasion--as, after all, Narnia is merely a daydream to allow the children to feel empowered."

Fantasy Director commentary #2: "When I read the novel, I realised right away that the real witch was in fact Hitler."

Fantasy Director commentary #3: "I really couldn't figure a better way to incorporate this many explosions. There're only so many times you can show the stone table blowing up in slow motion."

The director is Andrew Anderson of Shrek, so . . . Maybe there's . . . some explanation . . . Oh, who am I kidding, there's no explanation for this.

Maybe it's a hoax?

Uggg . . .

Opening up Windows Media Player I saw the usual smattering of annoying advertisements. But then, much to my astonishment, I saw that there was a video of a live Aimee Mann performance. Nice way to start the day--although it was also nifty procrastination fodder. Oh well . . .

Hey, remember the part in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when London gets bombed? Yeah, me neither--and I finished re-reading the book a couple days ago. But apparently the makers of the new movie do remember. I have a very bad feeling about this.

So, any guesses on how they're gonna justify this one? I have a few little theories myself.

Fantasy Director commentary #1: "First we had to show how ineffectual the children were in the face of German invasion--as, after all, Narnia is merely a daydream to allow the children to feel empowered."

Fantasy Director commentary #2: "When I read the novel, I realised right away that the real witch was in fact Hitler."

Fantasy Director commentary #3: "I really couldn't figure a better way to incorporate this many explosions. There're only so many times you can show the stone table blowing up in slow motion."

The director is Andrew Anderson of Shrek, so . . . Maybe there's . . . some explanation . . . Oh, who am I kidding, there's no explanation for this.

Maybe it's a hoax?

Uggg . . .

Opening up Windows Media Player I saw the usual smattering of annoying advertisements. But then, much to my astonishment, I saw that there was a video of a live Aimee Mann performance. Nice way to start the day--although it was also nifty procrastination fodder. Oh well . . .

Hey, remember the part in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when London gets bombed? Yeah, me neither--and I finished re-reading the book a couple days ago. But apparently the makers of the new movie do remember. I have a very bad feeling about this.

So, any guesses on how they're gonna justify this one? I have a few little theories myself.

Fantasy Director commentary #1: "First we had to show how ineffectual the children were in the face of German invasion--as, after all, Narnia is merely a daydream to allow the children to feel empowered."

Fantasy Director commentary #2: "When I read the novel, I realised right away that the real witch was in fact Hitler."

Fantasy Director commentary #3: "I really couldn't figure a better way to incorporate this many explosions. There're only so many times you can show the stone table blowing up in slow motion."

The director is Andrew Anderson of Shrek, so . . . Maybe there's . . . some explanation . . . Oh, who am I kidding, there's no explanation for this.

Maybe it's a hoax?

Uggg . . .

Opening up Windows Media Player I saw the usual smattering of annoying advertisements. But then, much to my astonishment, I saw that there was a video of a live Aimee Mann performance. Nice way to start the day--although it was also nifty procrastination fodder. Oh well . . .

Hey, remember the part in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when London gets bombed? Yeah, me neither--and I finished re-reading the book a couple days ago. But apparently the makers of the new movie do remember. I have a very bad feeling about this.

So, any guesses on how they're gonna justify this one? I have a few little theories myself.

Fantasy Director commentary #1: "First we had to show how ineffectual the children were in the face of German invasion--as, after all, Narnia is merely a daydream to allow the children to feel empowered."

Fantasy Director commentary #2: "When I read the novel, I realised right away that the real witch was in fact Hitler."

Fantasy Director commentary #3: "I really couldn't figure a better way to incorporate this many explosions. There're only so many times you can show the stone table blowing up in slow motion."

The director is Andrew Anderson of Shrek, so . . . Maybe there's . . . some explanation . . . Oh, who am I kidding, there's no explanation for this.

Maybe it's a hoax?

Uggg . . .

Opening up Windows Media Player I saw the usual smattering of annoying advertisements. But then, much to my astonishment, I saw that there was a video of a live Aimee Mann performance. Nice way to start the day--although it was also nifty procrastination fodder. Oh well . . .

Could these be the ugliest toys ever made? They remind me of the scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit when Eddie goes into the Toontown apartment and sees a woman who doesn't look as much like Jessica as he had at first thought. What is with this trend involving lips that look like asses?

Got up at 7am to-day. A little later--perhaps slowly I shall return to my old familiar schedule. More likely I'll be violently dumped into it.

Caught an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends to-day. A truly great show, and I need to actually make a point in catching it, rather than just stumbling on it now and then. I think I've figured the secret to its charmingly smooth animation is a cunning mix of cgi and traditional animation, but I don't actually know. I do know that to-day's episode, about a girl creature named Berry becoming obsessed with Bloo (a boy creature) and putting tension in Bloo's relationship with his best friend, was great and hilarious. And I was a little bemused--the story obviously about an issue one would figure has to do with children was actually one I've seen often enough in people supposedly too old for it. Hurrah for the inner child, eh?

I feel like doing a bunch of stuff to-day . . . I've already done a bunch of stuff but I feel like doing a bunch more stuff.

I saw Steven Spielberg's first feature film a few days ago--a movie called The Sugarland Express. It starred Goldie Hawn as a mother who's not the brightest ticket in the raffle. Based on a true story, the film involves Hawn busting her husband out of prison so that he can help her forcefully reclaim their kid from a foster home. In the process they hijack a police car and take hostage the patrolman inside, forcing scores of police cars to peacefully follow them all the way to Sugarland.

I wasn't terribly interested in the story most of the time, but it was interesting to see how amazingly proficient Spielberg was. Astoundingly slick for a new filmmaker. He seemed already to posses his keen instinct for just the right angles and pans to tell his story. It's no wonder great films resulted when he actually had good stories to tell.

Who names their kid Goldie? I suppose she probably wasn't born with it but someone had to come up with it at some point. Someone said, "Gee, she so pertty and precious, I'm jus' gonna call her Goldie!" Actually, when I think of the name "Goldie" I think of Abel's Gargoyle from Sandman.

Off to stuff . . .

Now, how long ago was it that I said it would be ridiculous to sleep before 6am? And here, to-day, I woke up at 5:30am. I went to bed at frelling 10:30pm. There's just no pinning my sleeping schedule.

First thing on waking I watched Charlie Chaplin's Sunnyside. I think it's one of my favourite Chaplin short films so far. Charlie's really graceful at getting milk for his tea by putting the cup directly under the cow.

So to-day's Thanksgiving. Yesterday I was thinking about the last stanza from William S. Burroughs "Thanksgiving Prayer". I think I always think of that piece on Thanksgiving, but I think a lot of people lately are feeling "the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams."

I'm supposed to go and see Finding Neverland to-day with family. I actually already saw it with Trisa on Sunday, and fairly enjoyed it. I'm not sure I wasn't biased because the main point of the movie was an issue I hold kind of dear--that is, the relevance of fantasy in our horribly real world. The commonest arguments are "yes, fantasy's escapism but, really, we all need to escape now and then in order to function" and "Through examples illustrated by metaphor we can actually gain a useful perspective on our lives."

Those are both fine ideas, and I think both are good, to a certain degree. There's another point I like to make in face of the current popularity of non-fiction. And that is that, in a work of fiction, the greatest strength is that it has nothing to do with us except what we bring to it. There seems to be an urge in the populace to find books that tell people directly who they are and what they ought to be doing. The good fiction writer has no such intentions. Fiction is an example, the point of which is to be interesting. My feeling is that the escapism involved in fantasy is not an escape from real life but an escape from our delusions of real life. What appeals to most people, I think, about the self-help books is that they present basically logic arguments that can be adapted to fit whatever delusion is raging out of control in a person's psyche. The favourites of such delusions--particularly of the sort of people who might feel they need a self-help book--is self hatred.

It all has to do with the utmost importance of the utterly unimportant. As Oscar Wilde put it, "It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

I really shouldn't have tried addressing this issue when I'm still groggy . . .

Saturday night I went to bed at around 2am, feeling absolutely wiped out after having worked on Boschen and Nesuko almost non-stop from 9am Friday until 1am (I stopped once for lunch, once for coffee, and once to watch half a movie with my aunt). I was doing the last four pages which, because I'd been sick or something and sleeping bad most of the week, I'd been steadily putting off. And look at those last four pages. Hardly anything happens in them. But I guess mountains are made one mole hill at a time . . .

I woke up at around 8am on Saturday, feeling peculiarly happy. For some reason, I got to thinking about Saturday morning cartoons, and trying to remember watching them as a kid. I actually don't remember specific shows very well, but I remember loving the state of being in Saturday morning and having a cartoony vista to dwell in for hours. It was more an environment than a series of shows to watch. Particularly because I remember not liking several of them. But I'd keep it on while building with my Construx--I think that's what they were called. It was a bunch of toy building components, sorta like Leggos, I guess. I remember once trying to build a lemonade stand out of them and ending up with a large, wobbly, useless thing . . .

I can't remember the exact day I decided to stop watching Saturday morning cartoons. I don't remember it as being so much an issue of me being too old for them as it was an issue of me having other things I'd rather be doing--better just to have music going or something while I'm drawing.

So yesterday I found myself in the mood to see what passes for the Saturday morning cartoons experience these days. Most of the shows, like Pokemon and the miserably written Teen Titans, were shows I normally see on Cartoon Network. ABC featured shows that I regularly see on the Disney Channel and Cartoon Disney.

But this was the first opportunity I had to see the new Batman series (called The Batman). Unfortunately, while not being as poorly written as Teen Titans, it was still pretty bad. The episode featured a villain calling himself "The Cluemaster", a large, supposedly brilliant man taking revenge on people who were involved with a trivia game show he lost a long winning streak on when he was a kid.

It's a kids show, yes, so I'm not upset so much that they kept Cluemaster's identity "secret" long after it was perfectly obvious who he was, or that one of his trivia show's supposedly enormously difficult questions was "What is pi?" Some kids are slow. No, what bothered me was that after someone is kidnapped from a sparsely populated centre of an arena while hundreds of people are watching, no police follow the running midget kidnappers into a room where only the Batman dares to show up and fight them. There’s a line between keeping in mind a child’s relatively low intelligence and taking advantage of it, and it was crossed. It also bothered me that Alfred is apparently a big fan of game shows and that, by the end of the episode, Bruce Wayne realises the importance of playing checkers and not being so gloomy all the time. Why fuck with the characters, people?

The show features decent animation and art design that says "Well, sure, the early 90s Batman was good, but it would have been better if it had been more homogenous". Which is to say that The Batman isn't significantly different from Jackie Chan Adventures or Totally Spies.

Well now. It's just after 9am. I woke up at 2am. So now I'll . . . go get a sandwich!

Han Solo said it excellently, and no one has ever said it better, more communicatively of the feeling of the actual state, rather than merely an abstract idea for conversational convenience . . . "I feel terrible."

They never even asked me any questions. Who're they? The invisible goblin bastards who've been pummelling my sleep schedule and, I'm beginning to realise, my stomach, all week. Gagh.

But the new chapter of Boschen and Nesuko is up. And that's about all the energy I have right now, so . . . g'night . . .

Okay, that's it. It's nearly 10am and I seem to be in no danger of falling asleep. I've run through system checks. Is it because it's too hot? Turned on the fan and the answer is no. Not enough water? Drank two bottles and, no, that's not it. Haven't read "Taste" by Roald Dahl? Now I have and, no, it doesn't help.

Wow, I think I might actually post this. Different from the other two posts I deleted, the first being too dispiriting and the second consisting of how I think I'd type if I had enormous fingers (example: "THid eos ids and otwn ebciample"). But I typed those hours ago, when I was just feeling shitty. Now I feel beaten by insomnia so I have the underdog's enthusiasm. Visions of Charlie Chaplin's face floating around me like the spirals in the opening credit sequence for Vertigo.

I have about 40 hours of Charlie Chaplin on tape from when he was star of the month on TCM. I've gotten through two tapes and it's been very enjoyable so far. I watched Modern Times last night and got to see the Tramp have a nervous breakdown in a peculiar factory, go on a rampage twisting with his pair of wrench-like tools anything that resembled a pair of nuts, resulting in him chasing a large chested woman with conspicuously placed coat buttons down the street.

Life would be solved if I could move like Charlie Chaplin. I'd impress all the ladies.

Well. So what now? I'm almost two pages behind on Boschen and Nesuko and, to think, just a couple of days ago I hilariously thought I'd get a couple of other projects done this week as well. Hilariously! But since I'm not sleeping, maybe there's still a chance of that.

Lots of places are open at 10am, huh? The rest of the world functions during the daytime, huh? Methinks I'll go have a look at this brave new world . . .

It's 6am and I wouldn't think about going to bed for at least another hour. I woke up at around 6pm on Saturday to find that a number of people on my LJ friends list had posted confessional or merely introspective entries (you really shouldn't blame yourself, by the way, Arina. I hope things go well with your friend.), which makes it my solemn duty to write about things that have little or nothing to do directly with me, in order to bring some balance to the universe.

But what!? I, write about something that has nothing to do with me? Well, of course I know that's impossible since everything I write has to do with me in that I'm writing it. And more so in this case for it shall be things which I, personally, choose to write about, thereby reflecting the course of my mind, and thereby rendering a sonar image of my personality.

Er, that's not a good way to begin.

I turn my attention now to one Arthur Wontner, the man who was vaguely Sherlock Holmes.

I saw him a couple nights ago in Silver Blaze, a movie made in 1937 in England, and released in America a few years later as Murder at the Baskervilles to capitalise on the recent success of the Basil Rathbone Hound of the Baskervilles. Even under the original title the movie featured Sir Henry Baskerville as host to vacationing Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Baskerville was one of several contrivances added to the original story "Silver Blaze", one of Conan Doyle's short Holmes adventures that appeared in The Strand. The more ludicrous being the presence of Professor Moriarty, who in this movie identifies himself as Robert Moriarty, in spite of the fact that his name had always been James before. The reasons given as to why the great mastermind of crime would concern himself with the theft of a race horse and the murder of one of its servant caretakers are silly, superficial, and paint Moriarty's character somewhat dull-witted.

But one thing that I noticed immediately about the movie was what an uncanny resemblance Wontner bore to the original illustrations by Sydney Paget (viewable here). The costumes for the film also seemed faithful to Paget's drawings. Unfortunately, physical resemblance was about all Wontner had going for him. He hardly seemed to care about the role, and played Holmes as someone who's already read the script, seen the outcome, and is merely enacting the scenes as a formality. A fairly common and sad mistake made with the Holmes character (made in lesser degree also by Rathbone, although at least he seemed like he cared about what he was doing) is to portray him as an omniscient, almost god-like character, who rarely seems perturbed by crime, let alone impassioned. Actors like Jeremy Brett knew that a man who keeps in his mind vast records of historical crime down to the smallest possible detail and has trained himself to not merely see but observe thoroughly is a man obsessed.

So I couldn't recommend the Wontner movie, although, being the Holmes fan I am, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to see the other Holmes films he starred in. On a side note, the man playing "Robert" Moriarty looked exactly like Trisa's father.

I have other things to say. I finished reading Murder of Angels, but I'll wait 'til it's finished gestating in my skull before hatching my thoughts on it. It was a really good book, though, I'll say that.

Last night I watched Tillie's Punctured Romance, the cinema's first full length comedy. It was made in 1914, directed by Mack Sennett, and starred Charlie Chaplin, Marie Dressler, and Mabel Normand. It wasn't very great.

It was the first Chaplin movie I'd seen that wasn't directed by Chaplin himself, and I think I've learned that Chaplin knew best how to film Chaplin. Where in other films he gives fluid, coherent narratives of brilliant physical routines, here he's reduced to only an occasional getting-hit-by-a-swinging-door. But those brief nemi-bits do come off pretty well for Chaplin's already uncannily keen ability to express cool awkwardness with his body. And I don't care that he liked girls twenty years younger than him.

Marie Dressler, on the other hand, came off thoroughly unappealing. I read that she did not attain any real success in film until talkies, and looking at this movie, that makes a lot of sense to me. Perhaps some people might dig her brand of physical comedy--and those people are probably also Chris Farley fans. In this film, Dressler seemed to rely on the same small repertoire of gestures to proclaim, "Look! I'm fat! Isn't it funny?" I guess I don't really look down on people for finding fat funny, but it's just completely lost on me. I find it tedious. Perhaps not for any good reason. Also, Dressler had an annoying habit of sticking her tongue out at odd moments, rendering her a somewhat horrific vision of a drowned corpse.

I've seen one other movie with Marie Dressler, 1930's Anna Christie, and it was a pretty small role. Her acting ability did impress me, though, so I look forward to seeing the films that made her hugely popular shortly before her death in 1934.

Mabel Normand, on the other hand, was adorable and a perfect silent film star. And boy, does she make for an interesting biography. She became a huge star before she started a rapid downfall in the 20s due to partying, scandal, and a cocaine addiction which often prompted her to write rambling, incoherent notes to people. She may have killed William Desmond Taylor in 1922. She was committed to an asylum before having a chance to appear in a talkie, and died in 1930 of tuberculosis at the age of 37.

What's wrong with a little love, my people? What's wrong with the warm, house insulation-like arms clasping you to amorphous bosom before suction cup-shaped, spongy wetness is slathered over your brow? Don't answer that.

What I meant to say is--doesn't it go without saying that we all want to do things that make us happy? And doesn't it also therefore go without saying that a person--such as myself--would be happy to see others happy as well, so long as that happiness does not infringe upon the happiness of others?

Why wouldn't that go without saying? Why would you or anyone else think there are nefarious or cruel motives attached to my actions, especially my most passive and neutral? I don't like to give advice, but here's a tip--if you can't figure out my angle, why don't you simply assume I don't have one?

There. I'm really not talking to anyone in particular and I don't think this applies to most of you but I had to get that off my chest.

What a wasted day was Wednesday. It's the sort of do-nothing day where I'm constantly thinking about all the different projects I want to work on but never actually get to work on that day. I blame it, really, on being forced to wake up at 2:30pm and a peculiarly troubled sleep before that. There was a jack-hammer or machine gun or something loud and fart-like going on outside at one point and at the same time the phone rang--really loud. The sounds together were like the language of some kind of disgusting and malevolent robot. I was so deeply asleep that I didn't truly wake but rather digested the noise in my dream stomach. So then I had cement-block head all day.

Gotta be outta here at 11am, like most Thursdays. So I guess I'd better get some sleep, huh?

Let's see . . . I think, after I wake up, I'll go settle down at a Starbucks and finish reading Murder of Angels. And then I'll write. And yes, I will do both. And Morrowind can be damned to hell. Hell, I say! Heeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllll!!!

I keep getting these really bad headaches at around 5am. Don't know why.

My Vertigo soundtrack has gone missing. It's getting to me. I wanna know where it is right now.

I guess I'll talk about a movie. I've watched a lot of movies lately that I haven't mentioned here. But I'll only talk about one of them. Which one? Let's see . . . I watched Some Like it Hot, Four Daughters, I Heart Huckabees, and Morocco. Hmm. Can't decide. I know! I'll try the connexion thing . . .

It was the second time I'd seen Some Like it Hot and I appreciated it far more this time. I was able to catch a lot more of the 20s references (like when Joe says something's as unlikely as Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks breaking up). And I recognised George Raft. Jeez, George Raft. I've seen two movies he starred in, both directed by Raoul Walsh, and both were films I wished someone else were cast in his place--specifically, the supporting actors of both movies (Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson). I'd read that the reason so many filmmakers found him so appealing in the 30s and early 40s was that he actually was a gangster in real life. But damnit, he couldn't act. They say nothing beats authenticity, well, George Raft had it licked pretty good. That notion, I mean.

Anyway, for some reason I really liked seeing him in Some Like it Hot. Maybe it was because he'd become a better actor by 1958, maybe it was because he worked better in the small dose of a supporting role, or maybe it was simply Billy Wilder's direction. Thank the gods Raft turned down the part of Walter Neff in Double Indemnity.

But, of course, there's a lot more to Some Like it Hot than George Raft. But what could I tell ya? Marilyn Monroe's hot and I like it? You know that. You're on that page, too, odds are. One thing that's interesting--Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon made better women than the Wayens brothers, even with only 1950s makeup to work with. A testament to how much White Chicks sucks.

And Jack Lemmon was funnier than those guys, too. What energy!

Tony Curtis' Cary Grant impression is still hilarious . . . Cary Grant was in Notorious with Claude Rains . . . and Claude Rains was in Four Daughters.

Claude Rains and John Garfield were the only good actors in that predictable, wishy-washy piece of crap that was somehow nominated for best picture. The setup; four lovely daughters, played by the Lane sisters, are living with their grumpy father (Rains) when men start showing up, slowly marrying them off. The story focuses mainly on the youngest, played by Lola Lane, and her choice between marrying the smarmy, sleazy--but we're meant to think he's a swell guy--Deets, or marrying hard luck, piano playing, chain smoking Mickey. Mickey was played perfectly by John Garfield and was the only good part of the movie. Rains was a good actor but he hadn't any chance to shine at all in this movie.

Oh, and the end was also pretty funny--Lola marries one of the guys, and he dies so she can marry the other one too. Ain't that convenient?

Four Daughters was directed by Michael Curtiz, who also directed Mildred Pierce, starring Joan Crawford. Crawford appeared in an episode of Night Gallery directed by a young Steven Spielberg, who later directed Jude Law in A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Jude Law played a shallow American corporate executive in I Heart Huckabees.

There was a lot to enjoy about I Heart Huckabees. A lot of talented actors playing truly interesting and funny characters. Unfortunately, the movie wanted to be more than a screwball comedy and fancied it could teach us all a lesson in existentialism, a concept the screenwriters apparently had only a rudimentary grasp of. They were obviously having much more fun bouncing the characters around, and they ought to have dedicated the movie to that.

Okay--had to look for this next one--Dustin Hoffman, who played one of the so-called existential detectives in I Heart Huckabees, also, in 1976, starred with Laurence Olivier in The Marathon Man. In 1931, Olivier starred in Friends and Lovers with Adolphe Menjou. A year earlier--1930--Menjou had starred in Morocco.

One of the beautiful films directed by Joseph von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich, Morocco is incredibly cool. And when I say cool, I mean beauty that ain't chilly but, brother, you ain't earned its warmth yet. You ain't earned the warmth of cool cat Marlene Dietrich who, in top hat and tails, kisses a woman on the lips in a non-comedic way early in this movie. And Madonna and Britney Spears thought they were doing something shocking! It ain't no childish little bit of fun for Dietrich, it's more of a "Hello, prudish world of 1930. I like to fuck girls. And I personally don't care if that bothers you."

Oh, gods, is it a beautifully photographed movie. Dietrich is a beautifully photographed woman here, and she'd never again look as good as she did through von Sternberg's eyes.

Okay . . . now my head is absolutely killing me. Maybe I ought to drink more water . . .

The new, slightly muddy chapter of Boschen and Nesuko is up. Somehow I did that, in spite of a wide variety of things over the week making me feel like crap and eating up my time.

I went to bed at midnight on Thursday. I couldn't believe it either. I guess it was because I'd only managed a total of four hours of sleep previously in the day, and not all at once.

But I got revenge on all the gods, sleeping from midnight 'til noon. Solid 12. Twelve is twelve is twelve. Twelve.

I somehow did all of the last three pages yesterday. Oy. I'm beat, too. Headache. But at the same time, there're a couple of other projects bouncing around my head wanting to be done.

But here's a meme from Mella;

"1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal...along with these instructions."

(nearest book has no fifth sentence on page 23. It's a collection of HP Lovecraft stories and page 23 is a long paragraph with four wonderfully, illegally long sentences. Lovecraft never woulda gotten into Acorn Review)(so I grabs another book . . .)

"Besides, she's she, and I'm I, and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is!" -from The Annotated Alice

But since it's the Annotated, maybe I oughta get my sentence from the annotation? Let's see . . .

"Four times 6 is 13 in a system with a base of 21."

And we've all learned something, now haven't we?

As I'm in a memeable mood, here's one from Moi;

Sometimes late at night...I play with the ghosts only the cats can see.
If only I could go back...and save The Magnificent Ambersons.
Someone told me once that...I have no sense of reality.
I have no willpower when...I'm unconscious.
I can't stand...the popular obsession with self-help books and faux-Christianity.
When I think of love...I feel tired.
I always question...people who're way too sure of themselves.
The last time I cried...was when I saw Raging Bull.
My reccuring dream...involves three shopping malls that I've only seen in my dreams yet I know them distinctly.
Routinely, I...watch movies.
Cell phones...aren't as good as telepathy.

You are about to expire. You can say two words to the world before you go. What two words would you choose to carry on in the life you left behind? "Guess what."

. . . hello Thursday . . .

"I'll give you television, I'll give you eyes of blue, I'll give you a man who wants to rule the world." -Bowie

The voices of art echoing back are the only comfort in the blind, little metal room. Well, that and the voices of the other despairing.

But where is my optimism? Yeah, yeah. There. Two synonyms for "yes" next to each other. That's all my optimism.

Something else. Gods know I've been holding out, I do have other things to talk about.

On Saturday I went with my family to see a production of Les Miserables at the civic theatre downtown. A pretty place, which a big, red walled reception area with an enormous, dangerous looking chandelier. The show itself wasn't so bad. I like the story of a bunch of people miserable in a bunch of different ways. I didn't like the fact that the thing was entirely singing and I didn't like that the singers had such bland, conventional voices. I really didn't like that the fine audience in their expensive clothes couldn't refrain from making noise throughout the performance, nor could a few of them refrain from coming in several minutes late. Where's the respect, huh?

The show was early in the day, noon, so I had to be up relatively early. I couldn't sleep, though, because I was lying awake being pissed off at the South Park episode I'd seen the night before. A little allegory about how the election was between a douche and a turd sandwich so it really didn't matter who you voted for. I suppose good Stone and Parker were merely trying to remind us all that it's important to be apathetic now and then. But I still enjoyed the Wall-Mart episode last night. These guys just need to learn to stop preaching "edgy".

Ugh, I'm tired right now. I only managed two hours of sleep.

Three friends with birthdays yesterday. So here's a belated happy birthday to Trisa, Moi, and Franklin.

I had a better, more Halloweenish Halloween than I was expecting to have. I ended up watching the 1958 The House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. It was okay. More fun for the cheese value and Vincent Price's performance. But quite suitably Halloweenish. The best part of Halloween, though, is that so many of the ladies on my lj friends list posted lovely pictures of themselves in costumes and/or festivities. Who needs to participate in life when he's got all this to look at?

I'd better go and get my slightly overdue oil change, now . . .


"and did they get you to trade
your heros for ghosts?
hot ashes for trees?
hot air for a cool breeze?
cold comfort for change?
and did you exchange
a walk on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?"
-Pink Floyd

Okay . . . What the fuck happened? And I don't just mean the election. I mean; what happened to such a large segment of humanity to make them into complete, sloshy brain, mutherfucking morons!?

What? What is the excuse here? He's gnomish? His achingly obvious lies and his wasting of human lives--is that somehow cute?!

What organ are people thinking with these days? Even genitals make better decisions.

Hey--reality TV folks; get out your copies of the Mad Max movies because that's gonna be the fucking scenario pretty soon.

This can only be seen as the defeat of intellect in the arena of human traits. Pure and simple. Bush was definitively proven to be a complete, dangerous fuck-up, and people voted for him anyway. Lots of people. Wheelbarrows full of people. People who wouldn't otherwise have normally voted made it a point to put this man--who always looks like he's sitting on a toilet--back on the throne.

Ever seen the Nine Inch Nails music video "Pinion"? That's what the toilet's hooked to. Fraggle-fuck, I'm getting graphic now.

Just what is the explanation for the Republican groundswell? What happened to all the "slackers" that Michael Moore registered? Wasn't anyone afraid of P. Diddy's ridiculous "Vote or Die" campaign? Didn't anyone see the Eliza Dushku bubble gum commercial?

Ah, hell, maybe that was the problem. My sister goes to a film school, Chapman University, and she says nearly everyone there is Republican.

Isaac Asimov wrote an essay called "The Army of the Night" about the threat of creationism being given time in schools equal to the amount given to evolutionary theory. This is a different subject, but it seems like I can see an army of the night that is very like the same that gave Asimov a feeling sufficiently ominous to go with that title. Or maybe it'd be more appropriate to reference Elvis Costello's "Night Rally".

In any case, you get the idea. Orcs . . .

My hands are slightly cold.

I'm gonna try to vote to-day. I know; do or do not, there is no try. But I'm gonna try anyway.
Twenty five years old and it's my first time voting. Hopefully there're a lot of people like me.
I talked to a few people in class last night about the election and none of them are voting for Bush, nor do they know anyone who is. Vaguely heartening.

They did reject a short story of mine last night, though. It's all anonymous so I got to listen to them talk about it without restraint. One fellow, named Zebb, who submits a lot of poetry that other people in the class usually insist is good, seemed particularly passionate about what a poor writer I am. Another student was a little more charitable, calling it bad, but not very bad.

There were only eleven people voting last night, but it still sucks that only I and one other student voted in favour of my story. The other student was a middle aged woman named Teresa whose first language is Spanish. She didn't speak up to explain why she liked the story but she doesn't usually speak in class.

Zebb sort of liked the concept and a couple of people said it had unfulfilled potential. That didn't really bother me. I'd expected it. I myself felt that concepts introduced in the story were not explored to their fullest potential. Although I don't feel that's a bad thing. I was unhappy with the almost abrupt ending but I thought the story might still be enjoyable.

I have to admit that what really bothered me was how strongly my writing style was hated. In retrospect, I can take comfort in the fact that most of them have spoken approvingly of pieces I've felt were terribly written. But it's never a nice feeling when you've put something out there that's utterly passive, primarily in the hopes of giving something to the reader, only to find it utterly hated.

I wrote the story two years ago so I thought I was seeing it with a reasonably fresh eye. Even so, I guess there are parts of the narrative that I feel are flawed. But my less secure part of my personality wonders if, since I was so taken aback by the extreme reaction, there is a mediocrity in my writing which I'm completely blind to. Which, of course, is an utterly useless way of thinking. After all, I already look at it as hard as I can.

I was talking to Trisa the other day and I was telling her that I don't think I really like writing short stories. I can appreciate what's strong about the medium but I don't think it's something I can do. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Mainly, the thing is, I never feel like I have a short story to write. So I usually just end up bullshitting for a few pages. I can feel like I have a novel or a serial to write. But I no more feel "short story" than I do "DA's closing argument".

Even so, I feel a little defeated. I really need to not look at it that way. I need to go to sleep.