Nothing Signifying Sound and Fury

Twitter Sonnet #86

Gather spell components after its dark.
Rats are too fast for you to pick flowers.
Wolves stand in the road through the western park.
Making one good bouquet could take hours.
Why's it hard to find glass bowls with glass lids?
They don't want you microwaving spinach.
It's good for you if it's approved by kids.
Their exiled king's Dennis Kucinich.
Sweet potatoes are easy to undress.
Gorgeous white root women live underground.
With nutrient flesh they long to express.
Their ecstatic cry's a thick and strange sound.
Coyotes run past those spuds still seated.
Hard to tell if silence is repeated.

Through Jhonen Vasquez's twitter last night I found this story about a woman who became fused to a toilet seat after she'd locked herself in a bathroom for two years following an argument with her boyfriend. What started as sores on her ass turned into dead flesh and soft tissue that grew around the seat. It's a strange story, but I can't help feeling like it's somehow reflective of modern culture--humans blindly consuming nothingness like a caterpillar in an effort to escape the pain of substance. It's healthy to stop the wheels now and then--you can get perspective with some numbing, repetitive activity, but I think people are getting addicted to never confronting important issues.

Somehow I don't think problems are quite like this in poor, agricultural countries. How much time did a serf really have to lose his shit when he had acres of crops to produce and harvest, not only for himself but his lord? I guess there could be some truth to what they say about idle hands.

Well, I'd say the problem with this culture is that it shows people glamorous realities only to tell them in a million different ways how they can never get what they want, combined with the ability of even the very poor to live in relative comfort--even people with massive debt can get enough of a roof over their heads to shut out their reality. The world's demands for independent courage are getting steeper and steeper. It could turn into population control.

Last night I watched "Habeas Corpses", an episode of Angel after a block of four mostly weak Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. Buffy the Sergeant giving speeches to her potential slayer army is just sort of awkward, particularly as they continue to overlook obvious strategy (why didn't she think of beheading that Neanderthal vampire before?).

So Angel was a breath of fresh air with an episode that started out being about an unkillable beast rampaging through the offices of Wolfram and Hart and became a story of Angel's crew escaping from a zombie infested building. I love almost every part of that show right now--Wesley's unwise relationship with Lyla, Gunn and Fred trying to overcome the guilt of murder between them, and Angel just trying to keep himself together while the world constantly seems to be fucking with him. I'm liking Connor more this time through, though I find Evil Cordelia even more annoying than Saint Cordelia.

Dames, Ducks and the Defiant

At my parents house to-day, I found a lot of ornaments had just been added to the Christmas tree, including artefacts of my youth as a Trekkie;


I love my Enterprise-D ornament, but it always bugged me that it was white instead of the Enterprise-D's actual colour, a pale, greyish blue.



I can't imagine there're many people with a Romulan Warbird ornament.


Nothing says Christmas like the U.S.S. Defiant. Stick it to the Dominion this holiday season.


Guilty, vaguely Norwegian Elvis. I think this one's my mother's.


I think this one's my mother's, too. I'm not sure who it is, but I thought it was very regal.

I was really digging my sister's vintage style Barbie ornaments;







"Oh, how can you talk like that when my husband's dead, Mr. Marlowe!"




My Disney duck obsession that goes back to an even younger age;




This Garfield one was always one of my favourites. My favourites were always the ones that tried to counterfeit reality, in this case using different components to give the impression of an actual cartoon cat in a bag;


Read more War and Peace last night--Pierre's encounter with a prominent freemason. Pierre, established as a serious, intellectual character at this point in the book finds himself immensely troubled after shooting a man who may be his wife's lover in a duel. The man, Dolokhov, doesn't die, and we don't get the impression Dolokhov wasn't making love to Pierre's wife, but I loved how the result of the duel Pierre'd rashly instigated wasn't satisfaction for Pierre, or doubt that Dolokhov was his wife's lover, but rather an overwhelming feeling that life was a sort of aimless and destructive trap. Previously an atheist, we see him very eagerly wooed by the freemason's pitch for Christianity and I was impressed that Tolstoy's narrative itself is neither definitely religious or anti-religious--one can see that the despair of his present circumstances drives Pierre to find something to hold onto. The mason's argument seems to be based on the idea that grace in human's is God, and the utility of this idea seemed rather clear to me--one can feel more secure in attempting to do good things if one can disassociate that motive from past action which one might feel guilty about. Then, there's neatly compartmentalised the dirty parts of a personality and the clean parts. I'm happy Pierre's starting to feel better, but I can see how this philosophy could lead to some problems.

Last night's tweets;

Why's it hard to find glass bowls with glass lids?
They don't want you microwaving spinach.
It's good for you if it's approved by kids.
Their exiled king's Dennis Kucinich.

Cast of the Night Forest

Last night's tweets;

Gather spell components after its dark.
Rats are too fast for you to pick flowers.
Wolves stand in the road through the western park.
Making one good bouquet could take hours.

It'd been eating me since I was last at Tim's that I was having such a hard time playing Oblivion at the hardest level of difficulty, so when I went to his house last night I made a new character designed to be as deadly as possible. Some might go the big sword and big armour route, but actually Oblivion has a fantastic system for making poisons--a high Alchemy skill combined with high numbers in Sneak, Marksman, and Illusion means you can not only kill but even humiliate the hardest monsters without taking a single hit yourself. I once defeated the main plot's boss by dropping my invisibility spell behind him to fire an arrow bearing a poison that permanently damages strength, completely immobilising him. And of course there are poisons that damage any attribute, including poisons that simply suck out health at a rapid rate.

But playing at the hardest level of difficulty makes the game a lot more exciting, as sneaking through the woods at night to gather nightshade, flax seeds, and a variety of other ingredients to level up in Alchemy, there's always a danger of a wolf or giant rat springing out from the brush.

I'd been trying to switch to a schedule that saw me sleeping from 4am to noon, but last night I lay awake until 6am and woke up at 3pm. My damned topsy-turvy circadian rhythm.

I got up at one point and read more of War and Peace--Rostov, the naive young soldier still at home and finding himself losing big money gambling and having to ask his father for the money. Tolstoy's rendering of character through reactions to situations continues to be wonderful--Rostov being more frightened of facing his father than he was of facing enemy troops, feeling a sudden, bitter outsider's perspective on the happiness of his family around him. The book's never bound to any single character's point of view, roaming in one segment around the room to check several characters' reactions to Rostov's poorly concealed discomfort--Sonya picking up immediately on it, and Natasha picking up on it and subconsciously convincing herself she wasn't picking up on it because she'd rather not have the good evening spoiled. If she'd been thinking on a more conscious level, one senses Natasha's too sweet a person to ignore her brother's plight, but her observation remains just below the surface of thought. The roaming POV never manages to feel awkward, and though it does call attention somewhat to the third person narrator, it has the charm of indicating a vague, incidental character a lot of 19th century novels seem to have.

Eyes from the Darkness

Some footage of Saffy the Cat retiring to her tree fortress last night;



Music is a traditional Japanese melody, "Moon Over Desolate Castle."

Twitter Sonnet #85

Melted cheese has outlived its usefulness.
Leaves spread before us like linoleum.
My friends, chlorophyll is ours to harness.
Sweeter and greener than petroleum.
Had a dream about Grey Goose jelly beans.
There was no rum or cream in my eggnog.
Deliver real substance by any means.
The woods were built by a well suited hog.
Lunch settles on the bottom of the day.
Yellow, thin sun sheet across the ceilings.
Hard vegetable charges are dropped into the bay.
Polyester explains sour feelings.
A green balloon sailed into Pac-Man's mouth.
And Superman will not save Brandon Routh.

I think I might finally be seeing the end of this sickness. Still a little sore in the abdomen, but I managed to sleep through the night, and my normal sitting positions aren't too uncomfortable. So I've my fingers crossed.

Listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller while drawing yesterday, I thought about what a curiously unfocused album it is. Although "Baby Be Mine" seems natural next to "The Girl is Mine" at first, the tones of the two songs are a bit wildly different, going from an earnest seduction to typical lightweight 80s Paul McCartney. The lyrics throughout the album seem simplistic and rigid, particularly "Beat It"--"You wanna be tough, better do what you can so beat it, but you wanna be bad." However, "Beat It" shines for its focus on guitar over synthesiser which hugely diminishes "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and several of the other songs. The strongest thing about the album is melody--the progressions on both "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" are wonderful and sort of ominous. The lyrics on "Billie Jean" are strange and mysteriously provocative of emotions enough to easily make it the best song on the album.

I almost said the lyrics were "compelling", but I've promised myself never to use that word in a review of anything from now on. People always say it, but what does it really mean? You're compelled to keep listening, or compelled to think about it, or dwell on it? All at the same time? We can do better than that.

Banshees in the Pipes

You know what the weirdest thing is about the fire alarm that randomly goes off at least once every hour while I'm trying to sleep? There is no fire alarm. It'd been giving us trouble a couple years ago, going off whenever anyone cooked anything and other random times as well, not changing its behaviour with fresh batteries, which is usually what's indicated by frequent, short, spontaneous alarms. So we'd taken it down, and thought that was the end of it.

Now, years later . . . something has returned. Is it some vestige of the old alarm yet remaining in the ceiling or . . . something stranger? All I know for sure is its terrible wail wakes me in the night . . .

Technology's just fucking with me to-day. My computer crashed again (still need to put in that power supply) and the light bulb in my ceiling fan burnt out suddenly, as it seems to be doing more and more often.

Yesterday's tweets;

Had a dream about Grey Goose jelly beans.
There was no rum or cream in my eggnog.
Deliver real substance by any means.
The woods were built by a well suited hog.

I don't think eggnog agrees with me. I'm starting to think milk doesn't agree with me. I'm going through quite the metamorphosis. The last latte I had was over a month ago, and I remember it happened to be a really good latte, as though the drink was bidding me farewell. I have to think drinking coffee two to three times a day for ten years and suddenly stopping now has affected in me in more ways than I cannot yet identify. I don't know what's illness and what's just the new state of things. Aside from the phantom fire alarm, an occasional sharp pain in my lower left abdomen kept waking me up, too. Things have to go back to normal at some point, right?

I watched "Sleeper" last night, a seventh season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer guest starring Aimee Mann. I liked it better than I did the first time I watched it, but I still don't think it's one of the better episodes--Spike's problem with killing people in a trance in the end just seems to be re-treading territory of Spike's guilt that needed to be built on and explored further, not repeated. But I love how Mann's "Pavlov's Bell" fit the subject matter so well.

Cruel Innocence

Tackling Marshmallows

Woke up early to-day to go to the movies with my family for Thanksgiving (father's working to-morrow). We saw Blind Side, which my mother, being a big Sandra Bullock fan, was keen on seeing. It wasn't exactly a bad movie--it delivers exactly what I think most people bought their tickets to see; an "uplifting" tale of a good guy born in bad circumstances getting a break from a kind hearted woman. It's the true story of a football player named Michael Oher who was taken in by an upper middle class family when he was a teenager and, thanks to the opportunities they were able to provide for him, eventually found success in college football and the NFL.

If you dislike seeing movies that ask you to care about people with any perceivable personality defect, you love football and the particular radioactive variety of blonde hair dye seen on Fox News anchorwomen, this movie's for you. The most interesting aspect for me was that it appears to be propaganda for the idea that college football players always earn the grades they receive to get into prestigious universities. In one scene, Sandra Bullock, without the slightest bit of shame, confronts Michael's history teacher for not giving him better grades, asking him why he's not "on the programme" like the rest of the teachers. When Michael eventually does turn in an essay we see the teacher grudgingly giving a respectful grade too, it's a handwritten, single-spaced on notebook paper piece on "Charge of the Light Brigade" that features bits like, "I think this story is about . . ."

But I thought to myself, is this so wrong? Why should anyone really need a well-rounded education if they know all they want is to play football? Sure it might make him a more well-rounded person, enrich his life and make him more tolerant of others, but maybe that's a bit much to expect of humanity. I'm pretty sure that's not how the filmmakers would put it, but I'm pretty sure it's how they feel, judging from the neatly sanitised world they present, with happy, psychologically flawless white families in their huge houses contrasted with a black community concerned with drugs and ball busting 24/7. Not since Terrance Howard in Glitter have I seen a crew of such conspicuously phoney thugs, their dialogue running the gamut of ten year old, stereotypical gangsta dialect, everything from "In the house" to "bust a cap in yo ass."

Actually, what got me through the movie was imagining Michael having hardcore, rough, animalistic sex with Bullock's movie daughter, played by Lily Collins, who conspicuously refers to Michael as "bro" several times to make it absolutely crystal clear to the god fearing audience there's no possibility of hanky panky. But, man, she's so fucking hot.



She's got those big, Audrey Hepburn eyebrows I go for. And she's half the size of the stock gentle giant character Michael Oher, played by Quinton Aaron stiffly but with a twitchy vulnerability. It's mentioned a couple times in the movie Michael scored somewhere a "98% in protective instincts," which ends up being his trump card as a defensive lineman. I had a whole scenario running in my head of her wanting to rebel against her friends and society, but not too much, so she figures Michael's a good compromise. A scene in the movie mentions how football coaches hoping to recruit Michael took him to strip joints, which only caused him to have nightmares, so I saw Collins luring him into her room when everyone else is out, coming up with some innocent game that ends in one or both of them stripped, and him being afraid of hurting her while she makes him her plaything. Then he gets flustered as he finds himself enjoying how easily he can manipulate her sweet little body. And enjoying how flushed and excited he can make her when he touches her . . .

Ah, why couldn't that have been the movie?

Last night's tweets;

Melted cheese has outlived its usefulness.
Leaves spread before us like linoleum.
My friends, chlorophyll is ours to harness.
Sweeter and greener than petroleum.

Into the Forest of Bugs

Twitter Sonnet #84

Hard foes are for people with time to kill.
Good water now comes in tiny bottles.
All life's crucial fluids constantly spill.
Partly useful are projected models.
Province borders arrange around the text.
Such are the first prizes on World's Top Thane.
Salt's handy against shapes that are convex.
When in Rome remember to conquer Spain.
The holiest churches have pancake walls.
A white motte is topped by a whole egg yolk.
Spanish words bounce like Tigger in the halls.
One gulp takes all the normal diner folk.
Dust drives like a drunk about the city.
Cold Tetris blocks are no calamity.

This is my first day off antibiotics--my normal time for a dose was two hours ago. Already I feel different. Really hoping illness doesn't bounce right back into me. Please, body, Let the Right Bacteria In.

Couldn't find anyone to play chess with last night, which is just as well. I spent almost all day yesterday writing the next script for my comic, coming up with rough drawings, and grocery shopping. I'm hoping a permanent change to a more varied diet will help me out--trying to permanently include more fresh, raw vegetables. I think I'll wait at least a week before I try having coffee.

I watched "Conversations with Dead People" last night, a seventh season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I liked. Apparently it's the work of four writers spliced into a single episode--Buffy being psych evaluated by a vampire she just met, Willow confronting a dead girl claiming to have messages from Willow's dead lover, two of the previous season's "nerd trio" coming back to Sunnydale, and, my favourite, Dawn caught in her home with a malevolent, invisible spirit. I loved how threatening the episode felt--each plot had some undercurrent of Very Wrong that the characters either ignore or simply never discover. Dawn's plot worked like a perfectly decent horror film, with some nicely timed haunted house scares. Buffy's conversation with the new vampire was perhaps the least effective, though perhaps most ambitious segment, attempting to walk a delicate line between intentional self-parody and genuine character exploration. It doesn't quite work, and Buffy's revelation that she has a "superiority complex and an inferiority complex about it" came off as kind of a clumsy thrusting of Buffy's obvious and rarely very interesting character non-arc into literal form. I suppose that's the danger of having to write about the same group of characters over the course of seven years--while everyone else might still have depths to explore, Buffy herself was kind of done in season five. But otherwise, a very nicely menacing episode.

Digital Manoeuvres

Last night's tweets;

Province borders arrange around the text.
Such are the first prizes on World's Top Thane.
Salt's handy against shapes that are convex.
When in Rome remember to conquer Spain.

I won a game of chess for the first time in a while last night. It was against someone I'd never played before, so I can't say for sure if it's much of an achievement, but she seemed like a competent player. Maybe a little too reliant on her Queen--I got lucky a couple times, first in pulling the dastardly "bishop killing a not reinforced rook from across the board" move (that probably has a more official name), and later I almost stumbled on a very tight defensive formation around my King--after castling, I had a knight on a square just above the pawn closer to the middle of the board, and I'd moved the rook out one space, so it was backed up by the knight. The knight was backed up by the pawn above the King, so it was a foolproof defence against a lone Queen. A Queen with a rook could've gotten a checkmate pretty easily, but she had her remaining rook tied up defending against my Queen and one of my rooks. Actually, it sounds like we were pretty evenly matched, and I could've as easily lost if I hadn't gotten that rook early on.

I haven't played World of Warcraft in over a week, though not because of anything I have against it. Mainly it's been because my sickness in the abdomen has made me want to avoid things that might make me lean forward and tense my muscles, and also I haven't gotten around to making a Battlenet account, as per Blizzard's annoying merging of things.

I ate breakfast to-day at Denny's. I asked for "fruit" and was given a tall, skinny glass goblet filled with slices of strawberry, grapes, honeydew, cantaloupe, and bananas. Difficult to eat.

To-day, I'm working on the next Venia's Travels script. I still haven't gotten the bill for my hospital visit, but I'm proceeding because this comic is what I am, after all. Even if I do need to pick up a job at some point for this, I'll continue working on the comic, only updates will be much slower. But for this chapter, at least, I'm sure I can make the December 5 deadline.

Moving things around the other day, I realised I hadn't paid attention to the size of the stack of papers accumulating next to me. This is around 250 pages of the comic, including pencils, inks, and rough versions;

The Inner Turkish Bath

Last night's tweets;

Hard foes are for people with time to kill.
Good water now comes in tiny bottles.
All life's crucial fluids constantly spill.
Partly useful are projected models.

I almost feel normal to-day. Just a bit sore and very tired, probably from antibiotics. I went to Tim's last night and played some Oblivion, finding out the game's almost unplayable on the hardest level of difficulty with a new, very nice weapons pack Tim recently found. Which, of course, makes me want to try. If only I had a lot more time on my hands. This new weapons mod has a lot of what I love--well made models of authentic looking weapons, not the curvy pen caps gone mad look of most fantasy weapons. In Bruma, one finds authentic Norse-looking arms, with curved guards on the sword hilts, while a shop by Skingrad has excellent looking stilettos and broad swords.

I'm so tired I can barely think. I stayed up a little late watching the first hour of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp again. That's a very tight film--I admired how you can't quite see Deborah Kerr's face at the beginning, and it's not clear that it's being hidden from you. The events of the beginning of the film take on quite different light, knowing the end of the movie, where it's told more from the perspective of Candy's camp. But having a better view of the details helped me see the young officer's perspective, and I realised how he was probably meant to be a complimentary portrait of the modern English officer, confronting the parody of tradition that Candy represented.

I also played a bit of chess last night, coming closer to winning a game than I have in a while. It's hard to think of right now, I'm so tired. I think I really need coffee. It's been weeks since I had caffeine, I know I'm past the withdrawals, but . . . I clearly need coffee. Or maybe I just spent too much time running around early to-day--the grocery store and my mother's house. The worse part about sleeping during the day is I feel like a stop watch starts the moment I wake up and I've got maybe three hours to have dealings with all the people and places that're just getting ready to close and go to bed.

Wait a minute. I don't feel normal at all, I feel really tired, and sort of dizzy. Life's just full of surprises lately. Anyway, I can't put together any more thoughts right now.

"You Must Learn How to Smile as You Kill if You Want to be Like the Folks on the Hill"

Twitter Sonnet #83

Radishes hold a lot of good substance.
I'm exhausted from maintaining stasis.
Lobster suits might get you into the dance.
Perhaps every boat must have its Eustace.
Walnuts are more intricate than cashews.
The public demands vinegar on leaves.
Holy book pages vary by issues.
Red targets are attractive arrow thieves.
The bacteria empire sells guns.
Secret countries walking across tundra.
Ice sheaves blanket lobotomised new suns.
Fading ellipses precede Cassandra.
A lord's obnoxious in a peasant mask.
Frightened, lazy hearts have nothing to ask.

I think I'm feeling better than yesterday. I don't even know anymore. Part of me's starting to think the antibiotics are having no effect on whatever's wrong with me, that symptoms are coming and going on their own and the antibiotics are adding a garnish of soreness and fatigue.

Watching Double Indemnity last night, I thought about what a beautiful statement it is on human nature. In Roger Ebert's review of the new Werner Herzog Bad Lieutenant, the critic compares the directors of the two Bad Lieutenant movies by saying, "It's not what a movie is about but how it's about it. Ferrara regards his lieutenant without mercy. Herzog can be as forgiving as God." Similarly, Double Indemnity is a movie told from the point of view of a guy would be a villain in pre-film noir crime films. Here, he has all our sympathy. There' no-one we really hate in the film, yet we don't think for a moment that what Walter and Phyllis do is excusable. Phyllis is a cynical survivalist, and Walter is too weak to resist his own ingenuity.

It occurs to me this is one of the greatest things about art, that it lets us see ourselves in people we might reflexively regard as worthless when reduced to a headline or a bump in the night.

I'm going to try taking it as easy as possible to-day. I might go to Tim's, mainly because I'm tired of being stuck here by myself. I'll probably stop and get some hot apple cider (the soft, American kind, Brian). I need to find more hot drinks to fill the void left by coffee and tea this time of year. I'm tempted to try eggnog, except I remember it being pretty disgusting every other time I've tried it.

All Risk

Last night's tweets;

Walnuts are more intricate than cashews.
The public demands vinegar on leaves.
Holy book pages vary by issues.
Red targets are attractive arrow thieves.

Back to feeling crappy to-day. I think it was the salad dressing yesterday on the salad accompanying the spanakopita I had at the mall. There's no blood, at least, just constant trips to the bathroom. What is this, five weeks on? Is this ever going to end? Sunday's the last day of antibiotics, and if it's not over then, I don't know. I'm just going to go out and start random fistfights with people until my capacity for feeling has been pulverised.

I probably shouldn't have gone to the mall yesterday, however well I felt, but I felt like I needed new pyjamas. I only have one pair, and it seems like a bad idea to keep wearing the same clothes when I'm sick.

Not too much sleep to-day, but I've done worse. I seem to have finally found a thriving chess club in Second Life, but everyone there seems to be much better players than me. I still enjoy playing. Maybe I'd be smarter without the antibiotics, and maybe I'd care more about losing. Who knows?

I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed "Selfless", the seventh season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that finally confronts the problems inherent with a member of the "scooby gang" being a violent vengeance demon. Every point of conflict technically comes a bit late--it made little or no sense, for example, for Anya to aid the others against Willow, who was basically displaying acceptable vengeance demon behaviour. But the flashback to Anya's original incarnation as a human with her husband, Olaf, was great, and their (probably bad) Swedish was cool. The episode really helped solidify Anya as a character.

This is my Edward and Bella;



I wonder if All Risk covers healthcare. I wouldn't mind a nurse like Phyllis even if I ended up substantially less healthy for her care.

The Trail of Blank

Looks like I forgot to cap another sonnet. I'll save one quatrain for later, then. For now;

Twitter Sonnet #82

Buzzy beetles have headaches in their backs.
Endoskeletons sleep in flesh solder.
Walter Neff's trolley is on iron tracks.
Atlantis is found under tap water.
Real beauty lines the walls of a wormhole.
Torn windows living regardless of health.
Bloody nets bind a flesh engine and soul.
There's always an excuse to blame yourself.
Colour filters alter film impressions.
Nosferatu's cast from greens to ambers.
New data's made from broken transmissions.
Static is tyranny of wrong numbers.
Some stale IEDs explode with wet clay.
Muddy missile shields block the light of day.

Feeling better to-day than I expected to, though I've still got some mild cramps. You know, with the cramping, bloating, and bleeding, this may be the closest I ever get to having a period. It's not outside the realm of possibility that a witch cursed me to make me more sensitive to women.

I went to the mall to-day and saw a massive line of people stretched the length of half the mall and snaking around some shops. At first, I thought these were people waiting to sit on Santa's lap, and then I noticed they were almost all hot young women, many with fuzzy blankets and books. Say what you will about Twilight, it brings in the pussy. I wondered if I could figure out how to glower just right and make the women melt like dominos. Of course, they're mostly abstinent dominos, so there's not much point.

I wonder what these girls would make of all the silly old romantic comedies I like, The Lady Eve, His Girl Friday, movies with all that talking. There's a lot less to suspect about pure, blank faces.

I can be snide all I want, but I still found myself watching the sixth episode of Kimi ni Todoke to-day, which is another work of fiction that indulges young female audiences with simple, vain fantasies about being a sort of misunderstood outsider with a heart of gold. What can I say, I'm still digging the design and animation. And I found myself pulled in a little by a story arc in the past couple episodes, about Sawako and two of her friends not speaking to each other, as the two friends are confused by nasty rumours about them spread supposedly by Sawako (but actually by Sawako's nemesis, to make her look bad), and Sawako's not speaking to them for some vague fear about damaging their popularity.

Even after everyone's figured out that the smartest thing to do is to talk directly to one another, the show still spends a lot of time on the characters speculating by themselves, coming up with explanations for the other party's behaviour based on half statements and bits of things overheard that they eventually reason indicate dislike and a desire for distance.

Most of the circumstances surrounding the situation were silly, but I couldn't help thinking about when Sonya stopped talking to me. Sometimes, people really are that silly--I was that silly, chewing through all kinds of different possibilities until I came to the conclusion that this is exactly the response Sonya wanted from me, to drive me crazy. Either that, or she was totally indifferent.

I came across some of her old e-mails to me when I was looking for someone else's e-mail address last week. It still seems unreal to me that she could hate me as much as she does now. It really felt like we had a rapport like I've had with few other people I've known. It still looks to me like she likes me in those e-mails, and though I tried to underplay it later, in part in some attempt to make her more comfortable, I loved her. I still love her, even though I haven't looked at her journal in at least a month, and haven't spoken to her in two years, and I saw that she was happy to join in with the torch and pitchfork crowd against me on Elizabeth Bear's journal earlier this year. Which was the first, solid indication, outside my speculations, of how she felt about me since she'd stopped speaking to me more than a year previous. I still looked at her online journal, and kidded myself things could be better one day, but I realised about a month ago that I had to go cold turkey, because what I was doing was intrusive, even if it is a public journal. The fact that I don't read anything new from her, and I still feel for her, feels me with reflexive shame, too. I suppose since it's obviously something can't help, I shouldn't let it bother me so much.

Soul Stomach

I seem to be feeling a lot better to-day. Sorry if I freaked anyone out, but I was pretty freaked out myself and I kind of needed to talk about it.

Apparently I got better eating a lot more and watching things to get my mind off what was going on. In Japan, the stomach is traditionally regarded as a shorthand for a person's essence in much the way the heart is in the west. This has always made more sense to me since the stomach usually has more influence over emotions and vice versa. So I've always suspected that watching certain movies, reading certain books, viewing certain works of art, that have bits that give you a good feeling in your gut, can be actively conducive to good health. I watched Thief of Bagdad before I went to sleep last night, which I think did a lot for me. I barely need to follow the story, just the beauty of that movie's design does a lot for me. The close-ups on Jaffar's eyes, the draped, translucent costumes the Princess wears, and Sabu's oddly sincere yet light performance. It's all great.

Earlier, also helping to get my mind off things, I watched the pilot episode of Caprica. I liked it, though I guess it felt a bit thin. Maybe that's just in comparison to the original Battlestar Galactica miniseries, which introduced so many elements simultaneously. But I enjoyed Caprica's more languid atmosphere. It was certainly better than BSG's series finale--none of the characters felt forced, and I'd thankfully forgotten a lot of the Cylon lore. I found myself trying to remember, "Okay, this is when they develop the final five. No, wait, these people were made by the final five and they're secretly Cylons. Or don't the Cylons make the final five?" So I could enjoy the story of teenage Zoe and her sort of Second Life cult without that baggage. The virtual reality system portrayed on the show is actually a lot more crowded than SL, though it is filled with lots of naked female avatars one suspects are controlled by boys. If they wanted something a little closer to life, it needed to be a lot goofier.

But as with BSG, culture is always very modestly established, and often avoided except for plot points, as one character apparently belongs to some rough approximation of the Italian mafia and worshipers of Athena are established as being somewhat more feminist nuns. Meanwhile, hair and clothing styles seem to have changed very little in the 58 years between Caprica and BSG except the men are seen wearing thin brimmed wool fedoras with feathers, one of the few types of fedoras relatively easy to find in department stores nowadays.

The purpose of downplaying culture and fashion distinctions, I think, is to highlight the ideas presented in the dialogue, in this case dealing with the idea of whether concepts of good and evil exist independently of humans, and there's some minor attention paid to the question of whether or not souls exist. This latter point is explored ineffectively in respect to useful contemplation, but rather effectively in respect to spookiness when Eric Stolz' character summons Joseph Adama's daughter back from the dead in the form of an avatar and she suffers severe emotional trauma at the materialisation and the absence of her heartbeat. Confusingly, Joseph takes her distress and lack of heartbeat as a positive sign that she's not real. This after he'd committed to the project in a "selling ones soul to the devil" style plot that brings together the vague mafia-esque organisation with the vague attempt to explore the validity of morality in a muddled and impressively empty way. Basically, Joseph agrees to deliver a message that amounts to a threat to a public official in exchange for the mafia organisation stealing an important piece of equipment for Eric Stoltz' AI project. Joe hopes to resurrect his daughter, but is wracked with the guilt of . . . having to deliver a message that may or may not be related to someone killing the corrupt official for turning his back on debts he owes a criminal underworld. It's not hard to see that if Joseph hadn't delivered the message, it would've been delivered anyway--in fact, his participation seems hardly equal to the cost in terms of risk the group's taking in procuring the item.

I guess the most interesting point the show makes is in showing the potential for destruction belief in one's superior knowledge of morality can create. Mainly, I think I just appreciated the pretty people talking and usually not sounding stupid. And I liked the character Eric Stoltz played. I guess that about sums up the state I was in yesterday.

I did get some drawing done. I might get more done to-day, except my head really hurts from lack of sleep. Though, for once, I lost sleep merely because it was extremely noisy in the house to-day.

Last night's tweets.

Real beauty lines the walls of a wormhole.
Torn windows living regardless of health.
Bloody nets bind a flesh engine and soul.
There's always an excuse to blame yourself.

Tiny Spider

Last night's tweets;

Buzzy beetles have headaches in their backs.
Endoskeletons sleep in flesh solder.
Walter Neff's trolley is on iron tracks.
Atlantis is found under tap water.

Potentially gross medical stuff ahead, so be warned.

This afternoon I woke up almost feeling like I might vomit and unable to get down oatmeal. I also discovered I seem to be both pissing and shitting blood. I called my parents about it and they seem to feel it may be a result of me taking the antibiotics with too little food on my stomach--I'd been taking doses before I started eating and last night I had a yam, spinach, walnuts, and prunes for dinner. They also seem to feel I've had too much iron. So my parents gave me some sunny side up eggs, vegetarian (soy) sausage, and a biscuit, all of which went down easily enough. They seem confident it's my eating habits and the amount of cranberry juice I've been drinking that's causing the bleeding, so I'm going to avoid seeking more potentially very expensive emergency assistance right now. I thought I might be having an allergic reaction to the ciprofloxacin since my throat was swelling up a little bit, but I'm told this is too mild for an allergic reaction. I'm stressing out a lot, and I could be imagining things, so I'm just going to try riding this out a little bit. I do seem to be urinating normally now. I guess, considering they tested my blood and gave me a CAT scan, it's unlikely I had something else that the doctor missed.

Ciprofloxacin seems to have an amazingly long list of potential negative side effects, which I kind of wish the doctor had warned me about. If he did, I missed it, but I also failed to read the bit in the paperwork the hospital gave about how I was supposed to call a local clinic for a follow-up three days after the ER visit. This is why I sucked at school so much, I have a hard time retaining a lot of information. I guess it doesn't help that I'm worrying a lot and am having trouble thinking straight. Hopefully, I won't end up blind, psychotic, and paralysed.

I did manage to get some drawing done yesterday. To-day I might just try watching a movie or two. Another day of little sleep.

Here's a tiny spider from my bathroom a few days ago;

Bailing Water

My tweets last night;

Radishes hold a lot of good substance.
I'm exhausted from maintaining stasis.
Lobster suits might get you into the dance.
Perhaps every boat must have its Eustace.

Feeling really shitty to-day. Yesterday, too. The worst thing's been the breaking of my concentration--mostly the world and my body aren't giving me time to focus on anything for more than five to fifteen minutes before sending me off into some new errand. And to-day the fire alarm in the house started going off every twenty minutes or so for no reason, which is part of the reason I got almost no sleep. Meanwhile, my car insurance is calling me and it looks like the other guy's insurance will cover the damage. I just so don't feel up to handling it. I wish I had an assistant.

I watched the Rifftrax of Titanic last night because it was something I could enjoy without watching it in sustained segments. I think my favourite line, when Jack and Rose were wandering through the flooded corridors, came from Kevin Murphy, who said something like, "You know, if they were wearing, I don't know, lobster costumes, this would make a pretty good Japanese game show." But the whole thing was good. I noticed again what an oddly cheap looking movie Titanic is, particular considering how much it supposedly cost. There are only two parts that really feel alive to me--the implausible action suspense bits, and I feel bad for all those people dying. I don't think I can really give Cameron credit for the latter. The effectiveness of the former mainly just highlights Cameron's identity crisis evident in the rest of the film.

There is a notoriously long list of historical inaccuracies in the movie, some made knowingly for the purpose of dramatic licence. But frequently the script uncomfortably displays it's modern and, well, dim perspective. I should say, it too often reveals Cameron's perspective, as the modern commentary style of young Rose making a reference to Freud's idea of male preoccupation with size and the awkward, TV movie dialogue Bill Paxton and his crew mates have are united mainly in the sense of a writer who can't really imagine perspectives of different characters without making them limp caricatures. Mike Nelson really nicely mocked Molly Brown's artificial and over the top colloquial dialect, and Billy Zane and David Warner are villains created by someone who doesn't understand villains anymore. Roger Ebert says in his review of The Thief of Bagdad, "The most compelling character, as he should be, is the villain Jaffar, played by the German emigre Conrad Veidt with hypnotic eyes and a cruel laugh." In Titanic, Billy Zane is just a mindless asshole. In eyeliner, for some reason.

It's interesting because the villains in Aliens and the Terminator films are actually very effective, though mostly they lack apparently human personality and seem almost anthropomorphised natural catastrophes, with the exception of Paul Reiser. Maybe a lot of Cameron's problem now simply stems from the fact that fear doesn't seem real to him anymore.

I also watched the last hour and ten minutes of the extended Fellowship of the Ring, a movie I'd managed to hold off watching for a couple years. I started watching it Friday to calm my nerves and have been nursing it through the weekend, but ultimately I think I've watched it too many times. I may need to wait ten years before I try it again, but I was still able to appreciate what a rare movie it is, and see the fundamental components its imitators lack, chief of which is character perspective, real, often tactile impressions of their environments and situations. The Golden Compass movie and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe movie both at their beginnings gave us characters in crisis without providing other dimensions to them. Considering the large number of characters in Lord of the Rings, it is impressive Jackson managed to render them so effectively.

Well, I'd like to get something done to-day. I don't know what, but just fighting to stay in a normal state isn't cutting it for me anymore. I'll probably work on the project for the winner of Moira's auction.

My thanks again to those who've donated to me--I called San Diego County Medical Services to-day for financial aid and wasn't able to get an appointment until December 15. I haven't gotten my bill yet, and I've been advised to inform the hospital that I'm seeking financial aid. If the donations prove to be unnecessary, I will refund them. As it is, I think I'll try to have faith things will work out and start working again on Venia's Travels once I've finished with this cycle of antibiotics--I've got more story to tell.

Witches and Warp

Twitter Sonnet #81

Wooden eggs think numbly of Orson Welles.
Some dry substances greatly fear water.
The melted world slug beside Kraken gels.
A fountain pen gestates the big blotter.
Warn me if you're going to CAT scan me.
They move chairs and lasers while I'm insane.
Sorry about flashing anatomy.
Somehow, hospital yoghurt is not plain.
Cashews are concrete clouds when they are raw.
Carrots and spinach are produced by elves.
There's reason for what starship sensors saw.
Dogs have determined a lot by themselves.
Perspective rules the world of each redhead.
The universe shrinks from things left unsaid.

I ended up, by coincidence, watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation last night very similar to the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched with dinner--both had to do with a character finding people in her life were inexplicably vanishing, only to discover by the end of the episode that she had subconsciously created the crisis herself.

The Star Trek episode, "Remember Me", is a fourth season episode wherein Doctor Crusher, due to a warp bubble experiment, finds people are disappearing one by one, while everyone else who remains has no memory of the people who've vanished. Eventually, Crusher's alone on the Enterprise, and planets start to disappear as the universe eventually becomes a small grey bubble surrounding the ship.

The Buffy episode. "Same Time, Same Place", deals with Willow coming back from England after "rehabbing" from being Evil only to find her friends have vanished. The reality turns out to be that she unconsciously cast a spell that made her friends invisible to her and herself invisible to her friends. As in the Star Trek episode, the spell or warp bubble was created based on the character's preoccupation at the time--in the Star Trek episode, Crusher had been with an elderly friend earlier in the episode who talked about the death of his wife and how the people in his life seemed to be disappearing, at which point he often realised how little appreciated them at the time.

The entire universe becoming smaller as friends vanished is actually a pretty nice bit of Science Fiction as poetry. I see from the Wikipedia entry that, "this episode was heavily influenced by several chapters at the end of the classic science fiction novel The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester."

Just finished a lunch consisting of two radishes, half a cucumber, carrots, and a pile of spinach. Actually not too bad.

Thank you, to anyone who has donated so far.

The Continuing Story of Medicine and Lasers

Looks like I have another urinary tract infection--it cost me a trip to the ER and a CAT scan to find this out. Yesterday I was pretty alarmed to notice I was pissing blood, and my first instinct was to go straight to a hospital. But my second instinct was, "I'll be in a massive financial hole." So I asked my grandmother for advice, describing my symptoms, and she immediately told me with complete confidence that I had a urinary tract infection and that I need to take Ciprofloxacin. So I went to the grocery store to buy cranberry juice, but while I was there my mother called and talked me into going to the ER as she felt there was a good possibility that I had a kidney stone or some other kind of kidney infection. Indeed, every site I googled strongly urges you to see a doctor immediately for signs of blood in the urine. All the same, this is one of those times I wish I'd been less responsible, because not only was my grandmother right about me having UTI, she even knew precisely the antibiotic I needed.

From what I see online, it looks like my bill's likely going to be at least 5,000 dollars, possibly as much as 9,000. I don't actually know, and I intend to apply for aid from the San Diego County Medical Service. But their eligibility requirements are a little vague, most notably in regards to people without a real income. So I'm bracing myself for the worst case scenario.

If nothing else works out, I'll need to get a job to pay this off, which means I'm not going to be able to work on my comic nearly as much. So, if you're a fan of my work, or you just want to help me out, now is a very good time to donate;

Any amount you can spare would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

I was in the ER waiting room for almost six hours, mostly just staring into space, since I neglected to bring my book. An oddly prescient episode of Family Guy was on the television, where the Griffin family were in a Veterinarian's waiting room while Brian was seeing the doctor about something wrong with his stomach. Peter was complaining about the bill, and I sort of wondered if the hospital would censor that bit, if they could.

I had to ride around in a wheel chair, and I was wheeled into the CAT scan room without even being told what was going to happen. It wasn't until I was under the laser that it occurred to me, "I think I'm getting a CAT scan." And then I thought, "Shit. These things are really expensive." Am I crazy, or shouldn't they tell you first if they're going to use one of those things?

I also had the wonderful experience of stripping down and wearing a hospital gown in the coldest examination room in San Diego. Of all things, Borat was on the television, the scene where Borat and his manager have a long naked brawl in a hotel. I overheard a nurse outside complaining to one of her co-workers about a sexual harassment memo; "If I can't touch the patients, and I can't touch my co-workers, who can I touch?" All this somehow conspired to make me feel more comfortable than I had in days.

I guess if there's a silver lining to all this, it's that I probably will be able to drink coffee again eventually. And that's not bad. Right?

Last night's tweets;

Warn me if you're going to CAT scan me.
They move chairs and lasers while I'm insane.
Sorry about flashing anatomy.
Somehow, hospital yoghurt is not plain.

Bad Guts

Last night's tweets;

Wooden eggs think numbly of Orson Welles.
Some dry substances greatly fear water.
The melted world slug beside Kraken gels.
A fountain pen gestates the big blotter.

Feeling exceptionally awful to-day. Some sites say depression and anxiety are symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, so maybe the fact that I'm so depressed and anxious is a good sign. I think I only got around five hours of sleep thanks to the nausea and worry.

I actually managed to buy some health insurance online through Blue Shield of California, but my coverage doesn't start until the first of December. I don't know if I can last until then. What'll happen if I can't? I guess maybe I'll go to the emergency room or something. That's a healthcare system failure, U.S. government.

Not having the easiest time concentrating right now. I think maybe I'll see if a movie can raise my spirits, though this thing has mainly put me in a mood for Cronenberg movies.

Be kind to each other, people.

Here are a couple new videos--the first is from a couple nights ago, the second was last night. A spider for the first time in a long time. The music's from the Neon Genesis Evangelion soundtrack, one of the many versions of "Fly Me to the Moon", this one called "Losing the Object of One's Affection."

Venia and the Hugs

The new Venia's Travels is online. I wrote the script while on antibiotics and in the middle of caffeine withdrawals. The first half came to me in a dream.

It looks like I'm totally giving up coffee and tea and probably alcohol. I haven't had caffeine in days, and it'd been pretty minimal amounts for weeks. I haven't had alcohol in almost a month. But it's going to be weird--I've only been drinking alcohol for around three years, but I've been a coffee lover since high school. This sucks. I guess I'll be getting apple cider at Starbucks now, at least until my body decides it doesn't want that, either.

I think I'm past the withdrawals now, but I'm pretty sure I'm less of an alert person this way. Maybe man was not meant to aspire to coffee, and like Icarus, my wings have been burnt. No wonder Apollo always seems so jittery.

Just a Wonderful Basket of Sickness

At least I got around eight hours sleep to-day. But this whimsical sickness of mine has taken a new form, now just constant nausea. I don't throw up, I just have a sour feeling in my gut, along with an occasional pinching sensation in my side. My current theory is that I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is the closest thing to matching all my symptoms, but I really don't know. I'm mainly just crossing my fingers and knocking on wood and so on. I'm still trying to figure out what to eat--I had a craving for sunnyside up eggs and yoghurt last night, so I went to Denny's and had some. I listened to some old veterans talking in the next booth about Westerns. And I thought to myself, they're okay, right? They're much older than me and they pulled through. Surely I can do it too. Maybe I worry too much, I don't know. But my imagination tends make broad leaps when I don't have information--I mean, I don't convince myself of things I don't know, but if there's a possibility of something really bad, I can't stop gnawing on it. I guess the fact that I usually feel like karma should be kicking my ass at any moment doesn't help, either.

I've drawn and inked a page to-day, and I should have the new Venia's Travels chapter done on time. But I think, after this, I'm going to have to put the comic on a brief hiatus until things settle down or I find out they're not going to. I still need to deal with my car, too.

Since I've been going by the original broadcast order of Buffy and Angel, I'm currently watching the middle of a four episode block of Buffy. I watched the season premiere of season seven last night. Obviously lots of echoes of the first seasons, with the return to high school and the cameos by all the previous season villains. Sort of reminds me of Return of the Jedi going back to Tatooine, though the music and camera work are starting to take on a decided Lord of the Rings influence more than anything else.

Twitter Sonnet #80

Black liquorice should ever avail us.
My stomach is confused by an apple.
Digestion is watched by a backwards bust.
There are always marble men to grapple.
Excessively damp wounds cry out for salt.
Summer ghosts steal many different dishes.
Repetition makes useless an assault.
Review the sad normalcy of wishes.
A man lived to a hundred at Denny's.
As did a dim ash nomad in a yurt.
Messages come through century pennies.
Society broadly accepts yoghurt.
The green air is warm with ghoulish trouble.
Dice hail pelt the foggy plastic bubble.

Still Ill

Last night's tweets;

Excessively damp wounds cry out for salt.
Summer ghosts steal many different dishes.
Repetition makes useless an assault.
Review the sad normalcy of wishes.

So far, to-day's the least sick I've felt in days. Instead of a globe in my stomach, I just feel a bit nauseous. I don't know what's going on inside me exactly, or what the right things to eat are. I thought I was safe with unsalted split pea soup, but it was bad.

I'm out of it to-day because I didn't get enough sleep, this time because I woke up hungry. I'm so tired of this guessing game, I have too much shit on my plate.

Lately, my nightly Buffy/Angel viewing has been the only thing to get my mind off my various worries. I watched the season finale of Buffy's season sixth last night. I really liked the route of character development Willow took in turning "evil"--it's the point of despair where you say, "fuck everything." It was drawn out a bit much, though. Anya was weirdly misused--it's established she can teleport, but she doesn't do so when she can see Willow's about to hit her. And why didn't anyone think to make a wish to the vengeance demon?

I was sorry to see Dollhouse was cancelled to-day. I guess everyone saw it coming. If I were Joss Whedon, I'd concentrate on making cheap web or cable series, or go to writing comics full time. He's obviously no longer in a place to write about righteous heroes vanquishing clear evil and having teenage romances, and anything other than that clearly won't sell to network television audiences. Battlestar Galactica was a cheap cable series, but some might say that's still an exception, being a popular and sometimes morally ambiguous Sci-Fi series. But one has to remember that things were pretty clear cut in the beginning, with good Adama versus evil Cylons.

I think most people suspect, deep down, that things aren't as black and white as they seem to like to think, but I think most people need those stories to sneak up on them.

Sinking or Swimming in Colour

I would so play this game;


Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

One of the things I liked about Daggerfall*, the predecessor of Morrowind and Oblivion, was that it was actually feasible to be just a boring merchant, getting by buying and trading. Of course, I never actually wanted to play the game that way but it was nice somehow to know I could. And I've always been a proponent of having to handle basic needs like food or sleep in RPGs. It seems we're getting further and further from that.

I watched Tim play the new BioWare game, Dragon Age: Origins last week. It seems to have blended a lot of the best qualities of Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic, with convenient party options, interesting spells, and dialogue that reacts to a lot of user customisations of character. But, once again, the dialogue is so awful it gave me douche chills. I heard poor Claudia Black, a talented actress, deliver the line, "Chaos is nature's fundamental nature." I can't speak to the overall plot, but Tim did mention that there's practically no explanation for the main villain's turn as traitor.

Even worse is the intensely ugly wardrobe. The haphazard attempt to makes things look medieval at least limits their colour palette somewhat as it buys into the current idea that no-one liked using dyes in the Middle Ages, but that doesn't stop Dragon Age from including ordinary bikinis, dowdy sports bras, and unflattering, physics defying halter tops.



The men's clothes aren't any better, all the patterns and textures being too complicated or lacking in contrast so as to reduce everyone's outfits to variations of almost skin-tight jumpsuits, with big spiky pauldrons (shoulder pads) to indicate plate mail.

For all that, though, I do remember Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic as having stories and characters that did engage me and make me care about them. I think the format is more responsible for that than anything else, which makes me think about what an amazing game could be made if they got some decent writers.

Had trouble getting to sleep again last night, feeling like I was pregnant again. I wonder if it could be like Cronenberg's The Brood, and there are a bunch of demon children made of my repressed anger. If that's the case, apparently they hate Alka-Seltzer--I had a glass of that while watching another part of The Godfather and I very soon felt better. It may have been in part because of Michael Corleone--the guy's so cool, so collected, it's very reassuring.

I was admiring Coppola's strategic use of light and colour, going from the beautiful amber and black images of Sicily suddenly to a bright yellow and red taxi outside the muted tones of the Corleone home. Really nice.

Last nights tweets;

Black liquorice should ever avail us.
My stomach is confused by an apple.
Digestion is watched by a backwards bust.
There are always marble men to grapple.


*Daggerfall can be downloaded for free now from the official Elder Scrolls website, here.

Bad Hair, Nice Rack

I'm calling it now--this is the worst haircut in the history of the Buffyverse;



It's like Charisma Carpenter asked for, "Something that says 'I'm no younger than 58 and I love slot machines.'" This is even worse than Willow's mushroom hair and accompanying Mork wardrobe from Buffy's season 4. I suppose it fights stereotypes a bit, though--boy crazy Cordelia has what's normally considered lesbian hair while the actual lesbian was dressing like Gallagher for a while.

What makes this a real tragedy is that Carpenter has the best rack of anyone on either show;



And Cordelia's supposed to be the fashion conscious one. I'd argue a haircut like that is almost as bad as accidentally getting a mirror reflecting David Boreanez in a shot.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the season finale of Angel's third season a lot more than I did the first time. Connor's not annoying me nearly as much this time around. I love the ongoing exploration of the meaning of vengeance on both shows.

I watched the final episode of Zan Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei to-day. It lacks a lot of the embellishments of the previous seasons' final episodes, possibly reflecting a lower budget, something which seems to be affecting anime across the board. The episode even sort of alludes to the phenomenon. The later portion of the episode also features a plot about Kiri Komori losing her security blanket--revealing that she has a "Linus Complex"--to a gush of wind, and the story ends up being about the effects of consumer spending in a bad economy. But I liked the first part of the episode even more, which dealt with people who are prone to noticing, and making a big deal over, typos and small errors while totally ignoring larger issues.





Not unlike noticing a bad haircut while ignoring the story about Cordelia and Angel failing to consummate their love because he's at the bottom of the ocean and she becomes a goddess of some kind, I suppose. In my defence, I did appreciate her breasts.

I tried eating some pizza yesterday and it felt like I swallowed a basketball. Otherwise, I feel okay, though. I almost got eight hours of sleep last night.

Twitter Sonnet #79

Bad paint looks normal on dented plastic.
Grey continents in a sea of black glaze.
Air is the baby in mankind's basket.
Going now into a dull opaque phase.
Wooden cups can last longer than glasses.
Alka-Seltzer strengthens collection plates.
Normal water's the rice of the masses.
Cereal grains determine all men's fates.
I've managed to be hungry on schedule.
A moon photograph shows the right timing.
Now I'm driving the Jean Genie's module.
Through tired streets of souls mutely pining.
Rainy season, Moon River overflows.
Fake jewellery goes with garish old clothes.

Taste for Blood

Last night's tweets;

Wooden cups can last longer than glasses.
Alka-Seltzer strengthens collection plates.
Normal water's the rice of the masses.
Cereal grains determine all men's fates.

I guess yesterday wasn't so bad. Tim finally got Oblivion running properly, and I watched part of a new copy of The Godfather I got last week. It's the new "Coppola Restoration"--I didn't finish watching it because the headache I'd gotten from all the sleep deprivation was preventing me from really enjoying it, especially since it's one of those movies that I've watched so many times I feel as though I've sucked it dry. In high school, it was one of those dependable things I could always put into the VCR and expect a nice time. But the picture on this new edition is hugely better than the previous DVD release. I noticed again how curiously high contrast a lot of the photography looks, especially in the wedding scene and the exteriors for Woltz' mansion. The sky's usually turned into a white void.



The difference between the movie blood and the real blood of the real horse's head in Woltz' bed came off very strongly for me. A lot of people don't know that's a real horse head, so I bet audiences found the scene disturbing in a way they couldn't quite explain in the original theatrical run.

"Villains", the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched last night, put a big smile on my face. Willow torturing Warren was so fun and satisfying--the show just completely fails to make any argument as to why Willow shouldn't kill him, so it ends up having some of the glee of a Tarantino or grindhouse revenge film.

I also played a bit of World of Warcraft, playing some really annoying quest in Western Plaguelands that had me trying to find a specific book among a bunch of "musty tomes" that summoned a pair of difficult ghouls whenever I picked up the wrong one, who usually managed to kill me whenever my Retaliate ability was in its five minute cool down. They kept putting some kind of curse on me that reduced my strength and stamina by 100.

My headache was pretty amazing last night. I had some Alka-Seltzers, but I might as well have just been drinking water for all the effect it had on me. It wasn't a migraine or anything, it was just constant and reduced my ability to engage with the world by about 100, I guess much like the ghouls. I really was getting mixed up last night--when my undead warrior sat down to eat some bananas or corpses to regain health, part of me really did think, "Maybe this'll help my headache."

What did eventually help was going to bed. It was extraordinary--my headache instantly disappeared when my head hit the pillow. When I sat up, it came back, and went away again when I lay back down. It was like a light switch.

But to-day's one of those lately rare days when I actually feel like myself, which is very good because I'm drawing the 300th page of Venia's Travels to-day. I made a commitment to myself to do this comic for around two years, and I do feel like it's around three fifths done. I'm excited.

Cars are Bad Infants

Last night's tweets;

Bad paint looks normal on dented plastic.
Grey continents in a sea of black glaze.
Air is the baby in mankind's basket.
Going now into a dull opaque phase.

Ugh. I slept badly yesterday because I tried eating some spaghetti with vodka sauce and I ended up feeling bloated as a days old corpse. I googled a bit and found a bunch of sites that told me, "You're in the first stages of pregnancy!" I was so tired, a part of me seriously started to contemplate that possibility.

So I'd started my next chapter a day early so I'd have Friday and Saturday to unwind after my mind and spirit being in a pickle jar for about a week. I went to Tim's last night, and a few hours in, while I was trying to enjoy Oblivion through the haze of sleep deprivation, Tim's doorbell rang and I met outside a teenager who'd just backed his obnoxiously large truck into my car.



The little Chevrolet symbol's broken, too. The corroded paint job was already there--I've been putting off getting it repainted.

I felt like I was barely present while we exchanged insurance information and he tried to convince me to let him fix my car himself at the local high school. I felt bad for him, I know insurance is expensive for teenagers and this was likely going to hurt. But I ended up calling my insurance when I woke up to-day. I still have a bad feeling I'm just going to be stuck with this somehow.

This is the second time a car's hit mine when it was parked outside Tim's. Last time, the car wasn't drivable. At least I can still get around this time.

Of course, I once again missed a full day's sleep, as I always have a hard time getting to sleep when I have to get up early, in this case to get photos of my car and make phone calls. I kept getting up to pee, I think, psyching myself into thinking the urinary tract infection was back. I propped up a bunch of pillows to try to sleep like Joseph Merrick because my stomach actually felt a bit better like that. It actually kind of worked for a while.

But, please, Oden, Belldandy, Apollo, whoever's listening. Let me have to-night off. Please.

Saving the World from Creatures of Wrong Geometry

Twitter Sonnet #78

In life there are infinite sandwiches.
Delivery schedule's always changing.
New plan from a hen randomly hatches.
While the provolone continues aging.
You cannot touch the Baker's tomatoes.
The bad vision has stark hue gradients.
Madness expels the cheese from burritos.
Zip codes are unwise droid ingredients.
The warheads were in the cranberry juice.
Smart goblets are heralded by trumpet.
Olives seek the vaginas of Grey Geese.
Electricity destroyed the carpet.
Plagues make many Bokuzen Hidaris.
Preserve your flesh between slices of cheese.

But "goose" rhymes with "juice", not "geese"! Slant rhyme, motherfuckers. Pretty much. If you still have a problem, face me in combat.

Last night I watched "Seeing Red", a sixth season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that's a bit controversial. I actually saw it when it was first run, though I'd mostly stopped watching the show at that point. There were things I'd totally forgotten about, like Spike's attempted rape of Buffy, but I think I mainly forgot about that part because it didn't make any sense to me, and I had a tendency to omit such things from my viewing experience now and then.

Logically, it still doesn't make sense that Spike could overpower Buffy for that long, or that so many people would come barging into Buffy's bathroom without knocking. This time, though, I tried to meet the writers halfway and see if I could at least appreciate what they were trying to do. From the Wikipedia entry;

Writer Rebecca Rand Kirshner agrees that the viewer "could feel how [Spike's] very innards were twisted into this perversion of what he wanted," and she found that experiencing the scene from his perspective was additionally disturbing.

And there are two motives I can appreciate--creating a rapist character the audience can identify with, and being intentionally disturbing. The first because I do believe it's inherently destructive to see people who do such things as inhuman, the second because I like being scared. I'm still coming down on the side of the scene not being appropriate, though. Not just because it doesn't make sense from a logistical standpoint, though that's significant because I think a viewer will latch onto the evident artificiality of a scene if they can instead of going with a concept that might be unpleasant. This isn't a moment for hoping the audience will just go with you on something. But, it also, as is often the case with Buffy's worst moments, relies on concepts that were too weakly established earlier on, mainly the differences the absence of a soul creates in a person.

The main reason I think Spike comes across, especially early in his neutered phase, as especially sympathetic is that not having a soul generally seems just to mean he cares only about the characters we care about, while the other characters are burdened with showing a phoney compassion for poorly established minor characters.

Suggesting at the end of the episode, apparently, that Spike's going off to find himself a soul because he's ashamed of himself for trying to rape Buffy makes us wonder if it is the absence of a soul that made him try to rape her. He obviously cared about her--taking care of her sister after she died is hardly the actions of someone interesting in just sex, and his desire to take her by force was evidently a confused effort born of frustration over the fact that she didn't appear to love him. So would the message here then be, "This is the behaviour of someone without a soul"? This would make it completely pointless to convey Spike's POV, which is of course the point of having soulless characters to begin with--people you can kill without feeling guilty about it. So it's too muddled to really be a useful statement.

Also, it doesn't make sense in terms of the characters and the relationship they have--they had sex for the first time when they were in the middle of trying to kill each other. Buffy'd beaten Spike to a pulp a few episodes earlier. Their relationship was already established to be based on the two of them fulfilling selfish needs with violence being the only definitive way of saying "yes" or "no". Buffy certainly sounded like she didn't want Spike on her in the episode, and he looked like he knew on some level he was taking advantage of her, but knowing what the two are physically capable of makes the scene feel conspicuously like a pantomime--borrowing rules from another universe for a moment to shock and make a vague point. The other controversial moment in the episode, Warren coming in and shooting Buffy and Tara, has exactly the same problem. We've had an implicit understanding with the writers since season one that we'll just ignore the fact that the villains almost never exploit this very obvious weakness the Slayer has, that she can be killed by ordinary firearms. Introducing guns to kill off a character we care about, we automatically go through the shock stage of "How could this have happened?" And we're forced to conclude, "Gee, when Buffy lives surrounded by extremely powerful mortal enemies, it's kind of foolish of her to ever be outside of a bunker unless it's necessary." Of course, Buffy in a Bunker isn't as much fun as Buffy Facing Teen/Young Adult Problems While Fighting Monsters.

Now, if Warren had shown up with a death ray and played out the scene exactly the same way, I think I'd actually dig it.

The "nerd trio" is actually, in my opinion, collectively the best season villain since The Mayor/Faith duo. Precisely because they're a bit haphazard about their commitment to being villains--they largely lack the capacity for self-reflection, or examining a situation beyond their own superficial needs, so much so that Jonathon honestly didn't think hypnotising a woman to sleep with them was rape until she actually used the word, at which point he was mortified. After years of conspicuously campy villains, here we have a few guys who are too lost in the aesthetics of what they're doing to really understand what they're doing on a fundamental level.

But I was sorry to see Tara go. Especially since Amber Benson and Alyson Hannigan had really gotten to enjoy making out, which is great to watch, even if they are both straight in real life.

Cat Decisions and Steady Caterpillars

I feel like myself to-day for the first time in a week. I had a cup of coffee with breakfast, the first caffeine I'd had in three days. I feel like I almost kicked my caffeine addiction, but my head still had this weird triangular feeling, like there was a big empty compartment on the top with two lower compartments filled with condensed brains. I had a rice and bean burrito for lunch that seemed to help--on a diet of oatmeal, cous cous, and bread, I don't think I'd had much protein for days.

Let's see, how can I relate to-day's entry to cats? Someone in Russia finally finished subtitling in English the high quality videos of the original, 1985 Dirty Pair television series, and I watched the twelfth episode to-day, about a government manufactured, super intelligent security mouse gone rogue. Kei and Yuri briefly enlist the aid of an army of cats, who prove to be no match.

I also got some footage of Snow last night walking away from me. Nothing I can really post, though. He's just so anxious nowadays whenever he drops by, coming to the door for attention, then pacing indecisively before leaving.

I've been reading more War and Peace. Rostov, the young soldier, has come home to Moscow to find Sonya, his childhood crush, waiting for him. Only now he doesn't have time for her because he's too busy socialising with older society, who accept him now that he's seen action. Poor Sonya, this after Rostov basically told her through his sister that he still liked her.

She was very pretty, charming, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was at that stage of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no time for that sort of thing, and when a young man dreads being bound and prizes his freedom, which he needs for so many other things.

I can kind of remember thinking that way when I was in high school. Now I think back with some regret about girls who were interested in me.

Last night's caterpillar in my bathroom;



Music is "Kinder, Heute abend da such ich mir was aus" by Marlene Dietrich.

Last night's tweets;

You cannot touch the Baker's tomatoes.
The bad vision has stark hue gradients.
Madness expels the cheese from burritos.
Zip codes are unwise droid ingredients.

The Continuing Cat Saga

It's weird how time seems to get away from me even faster now that the clocks tell me I have an extra hour. Maybe it's because I can't set one of the clocks in my room--the VCR clock can only be set by a remote control in which I have found what appear to be two exploded double A batteries.

To-day I dreamt Laura Palmer and Aquaman were imprisoned on a converted cruise liner in the future. One night, they manage to escape by diving together into the ocean. Aquaman helps Laura Palmer breathe in the depths with glowing purple breath flowing from his mouth to hers. The two start to have a really nice time, and I dreamed slow moving, shadowy imagery of the two swimming nude thousands of leagues below the surface. Then some device strapped to Aquaman's chest prevented Palmer from breathing, and I woke up when the two were in a mad rush for the distant surface. I suppose the bends would've killed her first, but I think Aquaman's magic was still protecting her from that.

With breakfast, I watched the online only, thirteenth episode of Bakemonogatari. After the big resolution with Senjogahara, it looks like they're concentrating on subplots, now a continuation of Hanekawa's problem with getting possessed by a cat demon. It seems to possess the very straight laced girl whenever she loses a grip, in this case it apparently might be due to some jealousy she feels for Araragi's relationship with Senjogahara. I don't know why, but somehow I find her to be one of the best looking cat girls I've seen in anime;



I was reminded a bit of the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched last night, "Entropy", which seemed to continue the season long theme of retribution nicely. I'm in trouble--I find I'm actually mostly enjoying the notorious sixth season.

Last night's tweets

In life there are infinite sandwiches.
Delivery schedule's always changing.
New plan from a hen randomly hatches.
While the provolone continues aging.

Tyrants in Elevators

Twitter Sonnet #77

Nordic disguises dwarf Roman costumes.
Somewhere there is a viral Robin Hood.
The wasting wax blight idea was Brit Hume's.
It was to know where candle elves stood.
Hardened sugar shapes pummel the stomach.
Bottle missiles wage war with sucking void.
The berserker Pop Rocks tear through tonic.
Organic train stations have been destroyed.
The friendly vampire's tongue is hot pink.
Energy finds him just moments from dawn.
Heedless fun flows freely from the bad sink.
In the morning, Errol Flynn's on the lawn.
Radios broadcast from underground pools.
A tall building houses much better schools.

One of the things I like about the Middle Ages is that, no matter how bad someone was, there was no possibility of them destroying the world. Mass murder, rape, pillage, sure. But nothing really that could send the planet into an irreversible downward spiral that would cause pain to billions of people for generations. It sucks bigger toys got in the hands of the same petty warlords. Or maybe the worse thing is that less courageous assholes can wreak more havoc without having the guts to show their faces, as with the pustule of the pharmaceutical companies blocking the universal healthcare the country overwhelmingly wants.

For days now, I've had the urge to watch the Errol Flynn Robin Hood, and I kind of avoided it because I always get indecisive when it comes to watching a movie I've already seen before. I talk myself out of my first instincts, asking myself, "Am I really in the mood?"

I finally watched about half of Robin Hood last night before I had to eat dinner and, yes, it turned out, I was in the mood. I still love how the first group of scenes manages to throw in a lot of details in an interesting way. They're not totally historically accurate, though they're a lot more accurate than I think a lot of people would suspect. But in any case, it helps establish a world around Robin Hood--Saxons oppressed by Normans, headed by the cruel Prince John (Claude Rains), who in the middle of one of his movie villain speeches still cautions that they not hang every Saxon, lest there be no-one to tax or to till the land. You can sense how things function, and how John wresting the regency from Longchamp threw things out of wack.

With lunch yesterday, I watched the first episode of Mad Men, which I found to be extraordinarily well written for a cable series, for the most part going just over the line of realism with its blatantly sexist and greedy characters to be a nicely funny commentary.

One of the guys on the show, Vincent Kartheiser (whose name I always seem to pronounce as "Karthesiser") seemed incredibly familiar to me, but I didn't remember from where until he showed up as Conner on the episode of Angel I watched last night. He seems to have made niche for himself playing baby faced pricks.

In spite of all I watched, and in spite of the caffeine deprivation, I actually got a lot done yesterday, finishing the next Venia's Travels script, doing rough drawings for the pages, and I pencilled and inked a page for the winner of Moira's auction.

And speaking of whom--Happy birthday, Moira. And happy birthday, Trisa.

It's also Kevin Murphy's birthday to-day. I'm dying to hear the new Rifftrax of Titanic. I'm going to have to see if I can borrow a copy of the movie from someone . . .

Cat Questions

Last night I watched Inazuma, or Lightning, a 1952 Mikio Naruse film. The caffeine deprivation has made it hard to concentrate on anything, and the English subtitles were slipshod, but the little Japanese I understand, Naruse's skill at telling a story, and Hideko Takamine's beauty pulled me through.

It's a deceptively "small" feeling movie, almost like half a movie, but it's actually a very cunningly constructed film about the difference between affection given out of a sense of duty and circumstance and affection naturally given, independent of family or social prescriptions.

Hideko Takamine plays Kiyoko, who has three half-siblings--their mother married four different men and had one child for each. When the husband of one of the half-siblings dies, the subtle net of obligation becomes apparent as family members ask for portions of the life insurance for their own ventures and the man's mistress shows up demanding money for the child he had with her. Kiyoko, meanwhile, is pursued by a baker with whom the family has a close relationship. At first, I wondered if I'd missed some important bit of dialogue when I saw Kiyoko would often become totally silent and beat a hasty retreat whenever the baker appeared, though the rest of the family were friendly to him.

The scene that nicely brings out the dynamics of Kiyoko's relationship with the man and furthers the discussion on types of love features Kiyoko upstairs, listening to a record with her friend. The friend proudly tells Kiyoko how her mother had gone without eating at times for the sake of her music collection. Kiyoko asks her friend if she ever thought of marriage, and when the friend says yes, Kiyoko can't believe it, not able to believe someone who places such importance on their individual passions would be interested in such a confining arrangement. When the baker drops by in the middle of their discussion, Kiyoko has her friend lie to the man, telling him she's not home. When the friend asks Kiyoko who he is, Kiyoko jokingly replies, "My lover."

The music from her friend's record reappears later in the film from the piano of a guy Kiyoko actually likes. Kiyoko describes the affection of her family as being like the affection given to a cat seen in the film, lacking the actual chemistry possible between two people. The film ends with Kiyoko happily buying a kimono for her mother, never actually presenting one form of love as "the winner".



And the movie had a really adorable cat.

But speaking of affection without chemistry, I watched what may be the single most awkward episode of Angel last night, a third season episode called "Double or Nothing". I like Fred, and I like Gunn, but Fred and Gunn together, blegh. I know Amy Acker's adorable, but that doesn't mean she can't have self respect--I could have done very well without the scene of her wearing a glittery paper crown while she and Gunn first talk like a seven year old's idea of people in love before breaking up in a fight like two five year olds. The problem is that pretty much no time is spent on how or why these two got together, and loads of "You're cute," "No, you're cute!" style dialogue dominates their screen time together. They seem to be a couple more because they've been commanded to be than for any natural reason.

I also read the first story in the new Sirenia Digest last night, and the second one to-day with breakfast. Both with Alice in Wonderland references, "THE DISSEVERED HEART" featuring a sort of Cheshire Cat character and "A REDRESS FOR ANDROMEDA" featuring "The Lobster Quadrille", which I knew Caitlin likes to quote often.

The first story was a nice, dreamlike werewolf tale, something about innocence and predators. The second featured pumpkins and sea life imagery, a Lovecraftian ritual for sea monsters with Halloween bits. It was good.

Gods, I need caffeine.

To-day I watched the second episode of Nyan Koi, a new anime series about a guy who's cursed to understand what cats are saying and to eventually become a cat himself if he doesn't do 100 favours for 100 cats. It's by far the funniest new series I've seen in a long time, though the new episode of Natsu no Arashi was even funnier.

Last night's tweets;

Hardened sugar shapes pummel the stomach.
Bottle missiles wage war with sucking void.
The berserker Pop Rocks tear through tonic.
Organic train stations have been destroyed.