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.

Aoh, fuck. It's only just now hitting me real hard that I'm missing Halloween this year.

I just can't do holidays. Not even my favourite ones. I prefer things to be on my schedule and holidays always have to be on their schedule.

Halloween's a social holiday (wait, I guess all of them are) and the fact that I mostly don't care to know the corporeal people I see, I, in Halloweens past, have had the task of making Halloween a one man thing. Sort of.

The best one so far was several years ago when I dressed as a witch and frightened people in the Super Market.

See, I'm all spirit and no revelry. I am damned committed to reminding people that Halloween's here for us to know we oughta be scared once and a while. I'm not here to join in your merrymaking. I'm here to play with you.

Well. There'll be none of that this year. I'm too fucking tired and I can't spend money on that.

My one act of Halloween--here's an old drawing of mine called "Awkletes";

Are you an alien scientist in need of a human being to use as a battery? I might just be your man.

Forced out of the house at 11am by the maids, and into the pouring rain, I might add, I went to Denny's. I there had eggs, potatoes, and several cups of black coffee. Afterwards, I went to the mall where I had a large cup of tea. Upon returning here, I immediately fell asleep again and slept for several hours, quite peacefully. Yeah, caffeine'll do that to ya.

Oh, and I dreamt of Wendy's. I dreamt of baked potatoes and a scandal that can be summed up with one word; pyjamas.

Anyway, it's beginning to feel like for all intents and purposes I'm "skipping" Thursday. I don't want to do this. I had grand big lofty hugemass plans. Surely I can do one of them.

The Iranian women in this photo are so cuuuuuute!

I'm not gonna play Morrowind any time soon, damn it.

Eh.

Vote Kerry.

I had a dream last night wherein I befriended a squirrel who'd been hiding in the house. No one wants a squirrel in the house, of course, so I was his political protector and so long as I was around, he couldn't be kicked out.

He was basically very happy that he didn't have to hide any more, that he could roam with relative freedom about the house. Towards the end of the dream, though, he started to get in trouble when the ceiling fan frightened him and he'd run all over the house, knocking a few things over. The cats had been surprisingly pleasant with him, but they had not, unfortunately, managed convey to him the harmlessness of the ceiling fan when one does not venture too close.

If you follow my link in the previous entry to where you can watch The Super Mario Super Show, you might also notice that there're a number of other shows you can watch. Looking over them earlier to-day, I spotted Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century. Now, I am always up for anything done in the name of Sherlock Holmes and I'd been wanting to check this series out ever since I noticed it on Yahoo!'s TV listing. Unfortunately, it was on at a very awkward time of night/day so I never had opportunity to see it . . . until now!

For the most part, it's not very good. Holmes comes off as somewhat blinded by arrogance and ill temper. In fact, he doesn't seem especially smart at all. Lestrade seems more level-headed--in the series, Lestrade's now an attractive young woman in form-fitting cybernetic armour. I didn't really mind that idea, since it was the 22nd century. If only everything else'd been updated!

The show bases its stories loosely on Arthur Conan Doyle's originals, for which I would give it props if not for the fact that it doesn't bother to update these stories to account for futuristic crime-solving techniques. The show writers do bother, though, to dumb down the material and rearrange the plot so that there's no mystery at all.

The sad thing is that the animation, while far from good, looks like it probably cost some money. Why can't production companies spend their money properly? Don't they want to make a profit?

A few days ago I heard that the writer director of Alien vs. Predator has been hired to write the new Alien movie, presumably because of the success of AvP. Yes. Someone at 20th Century Fox looked at AvP's success and said to himself, "Well it must be the writer/director that made this the marginal success it is! It couldn't possibly be attributed to the fan build-up of more than a decade, or the rock-em-sock-em spectacular nature of the advertisements, no no!"

You know you have insomnia when, at 8am, you find yourself excitedly downloading an episode of the Super Mario Super Show.

It's amazing how bad cartoons were just ten or fifteen years ago. Looking through TV Tome, I was amazed how many of the "goofs" for episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had to do with the wrong voices coming from characters or the characters being coloured wrong. And Ninja Turtles was popular.

I watched The Treasure of Sierra Madre earlier in the evening. Not as good as I'd hoped, but still very good. Certainly not my favourite John Houston movie, but it was neat seeing his cameo so I don't have to always picture him as the ghoulish old man from Chinatown.

Ugh. I haven't seen the sun in a couple days. I oughta go out and do something before class . . .

Last night I watched William Wyler's The Big Country. It was about Gregory Peck in the old west, having travelled there from the east to marry the daughter of a wealthy major. But he finds himself the only gentleman in the middle of a small, vicious war between two communities. I gotta admit, I like stories like that. A guy with very good principles sticking to them in the middle of a snake's nest, and who better for that than Gregory Peck?

It was a three hour movie I watched until 6am, and I slept in especially late to-day. In fact, it's now just after 6pm and I still haven't had breakfast. Or coffee. Things to do . . .

I also caught some of Read or Die, an anime movie being shown on Adult Swim. At first I thought it was a television series and I began considering it on that basis--I thought, "Hmm. Good character design. Relatively interesting concepts, good animation, but generally bland direction. Still, for a television series, not bad." But then I realised it was going for movie length. At which point I realised it'd probably been a far superior manga that was hastily purchased by some lame movie production company. Or maybe it's just another of what seems to be an endless supply of anime series with good character design and bad almost-everything-else (see Big O, Witchhunter Robin).

But I was, of course, watching the dubbed version of Read or Die. The Japanese version may make a far better impression as the English voice cast of Read or Die seemed to be the usual cadre seen on Adult Swim anime series with their heavily affected, peculiarly self conscious deliveries.

Now I shall get coffee and read . . . or die. One of those.

"That was the year I first met [John Kerry], at a riot on that elegant little street in front of the White House. He was yelling into a bullhorn and I was trying to throw a dead, bleeding rat over a black-spike fence and onto the president's lawn." -Hunter S. Thompson

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter is up. Not a whole lot happens in it, but I made a special effort to make Nesuko sexy. So go see!

I just watched a very wonderful movie called Johnny Eager. Robert Taylor and Lana Turner . . . two actors whose abilities I've not yet been impressed by, impressed me very much in this movie. Perfectly cast bad actors, which I do believe can happen. In this case Taylor's shallow straightness was perfect. And Lana Turner just . . . happened to be rather good in this. Of course, the only other movie I'd seen her in was Cass Timberlane, so maybe she was just turned on by the material. Gods, I like thinking about Lana Turner turned on. Er, I've been awake too long.

But lest ye miss it--Johnny Eager is awesome. A crime, film noir movie from 1942 directed by Mervyn LeRoy, it had a kinna story I really respond to with great dialogue and a drunk, perfect Van Heflin . . .

Aw, I'm too tired to talk about it. But it was cool crimes perpetrated by characters in dark clothes and one sweet, innocent dame with the most perfect physical features imaginable. Gods, I love seeing a good movie.

I need to go back to blogging at a time of day when I'm more articulate.

Missed me? Well, I missed me, whatever you did of me.

Hmm. So yesterday was another Thursday, another Thursday now blessedly dead. The maids came early, at 11 am. I, of course, hadn't managed to sleep until 6am . . . So, about four hours of sleep there. For some people, that would be good enough. Oh, not for me. Because when what I wanna get done by the end of the day is drawings, it means I'll be sitting prone for long periods, trying to bring full concentration to bear. Look, I know my drawings aren't perfect, and I know I'm not a perfectionist. And I know I'm not getting paid for this and that I'm devoting my time in a manner many would advise against. But I'm obsessed and that's that.

So at eleven, because I'd dreamed of it during the brief repose, I went to University Town Centre. Finding no breakfast there and peculiarly annoying crowds, I drove across many miles of San Diego, down the great Genesee avenue, turning through a good sized Korean community, through the impressively sprawling College Whose Name I Can't Remember, plummeting at the speed limit (35mph) down a hill towards the raging sea . . . and then turning left, driving up a ways, and parking in a crowded little shopping centre, I finally decided to breakfast at a new Greek place.

Wish I hadn't. The Spanakopeda tasted like tire. As did the salad. And the rice.

Wandering strangely had more than eaten up the three hours I'd needed gobbled and I came back here to sleep. Victoria the cat hopped into bed with me and I proceeded to have a dream wherein she was a superhero. At the conclusion of this episode of astounding feline heroism, Victoria woke me up, apparently confident her story had at last been passed on, and jumped out of the bed.

Then I pretty much worked on Boschen and Nesuko the rest of the day. I finished page 39 and got a good start on page 40. So the new chapter oughta be up on time.

Oh, and Wednesday night I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound. Not as good as Notorious, which he made pretty close to the same time (also with Ingrid Bergmen), but very good anyway. A baby-faced Gregory Peck, a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali, and neat 40s quasi-authentic psychology came together in a real nifty package. And that Hitchcock guy? I'm beginning to notice that he has something of a talent for suspense!

I'm currently on track. I'm not behind on anything. But I've been behind twice in the past week, mostly from feeling like-a the crap (as Chico Marx might say).

And yet, in spite of that, I've been watching lots and lots of movies. Farscape: Peackeeper Wars was great . . .

SPOILERS AHEAD:

This mini-series might've been called Farscape: Bigger and Shorter. In a lot less time, a lot more happened. But it was always fun--bracing. A great ride. What Star Wars has lost.

And isn't that amazing? With lower budget and with less time, Peacekeeper Wars managed a better impact than the prequel films.

I had some favourite moments, although I'm not sure the writers meant for them to be my favourite moments. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed everything well enough. But I loved the moment Scorpius pushed Sikozu to the ground, revealing her as spy, and their subsequent brief, mysterious exchange. And I loved everything Rygel said. Especially when Chiana asked him if he thought she gave a frell about him and he said, "Yes."

And the climax was great, the big red death storm. I knew all along that the Eidolons weren't gonna fix everything, because that would have sucked. And Farscape doesn't, as a rule, suck. Really, I wanted all the Eidolons to die, but I guess they were a good distraction, a avenue for the heroes to dally with before they finally admitted to themselves there wasn't gonna be a clean way to do this. Anyway, I liked seeing Jool in her sexy cavegirl outfit pounce on Crichton. For some reason, it really turned me on that she resembled Red Fraggle from Fraggle Rock.

The ending-ending was all right. It feels wrong somehow that Farscape should have such a happy ending, but saying that makes me wonder if I oughtn't to be a happier sort of person.

Two things about the end reminded me of ends of other shows, and I'm wondering of it was done on puprose. First, Harvey's farewell in the remarkable reconstruction of a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey reminded me of the last Comedy Central episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which had Dr. Forrester in the bed, reaching, instead of towards the monolith, towards a giant video cassete labelled "The Worst Movie Ever" or something.

The second thing was the camera pulling away from Crichton, Aeryn, and their baby to pull back, out of Moya, turning into an exterior shot, being the very last of the show. The same thing was done in the very last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, after Picard sits down to poker with his crewmates.

Probably just coincidences. It's reading Moi's journal that makes me think this way (not necessarily a bad thing).

And now I'll sleep.

It rained for almost twenty seconds last night--it was exciting! Anyway, my car is bizarrely clean this morning. Er, this afternoon, I mean.

I've got a lot to do! But I'm not behind like I was yesterday so I'll have time to watch Farscape on the Sci-Fi Channel at 9pm. Why don't you watch it too?

Nice to see William Gibson is blogging again. And it's nice to see he's angry.

I know some of you don't like Jon Stewert, but this shit is just beautiful.

I dreamt there were two Linuses and one of them was going to kill Charlie Brown.

Charlie Brown didn't actually show up in my dream but the Linuses were uncommunicative, dangerous black-cloaked (black blanketed?) characters who could run faster than cars and for some reason they enjoyed running north. They were kind of scary, especially as I was sure one wanted to kill me, too.

Last night was kind of interesting. I went to see a movie called Maria Full of Grace. Not the sort of movie that would usually capture my interest by its advertisements, but I periodically like to stave off stagnation of my appreciation for diverse art.

It's very easy for a drug movie to become boring and/or preachy but I was pleased to find this wasn't the case for Maria. On the whole, I found the movie oddly relaxing in the way I may've found a good movie from the thirties or forties. The reason I draw that comparison is that Hollywood movies from the mid 20th century had a tendency to want to be decently pretty and stress-relieving no matter how dark the story, in essence, was.

Maria Full of Grace is about a seventeen year-old Columbian girl who, finding herself without work, pregnant, and without the baby's father, decides to become a mule, carrying cocaine in her stomach for delivery in New York.

It's not that the movie sugar-coats anything (although Maria is improbably pretty and everyone has perfect hair and skin) so much as it avoids overdramatic gloom and doom. Maria shows herself capable of keeping a cool head in a tight situation, which I found engaging. And, as Ebert and Roeper pointed out, all the characters behave realistically and the people involved in accepting Maria's drug delivery are shown as being realistically stupid and macho instead of villainous. And there was a basically happy ending, which is just fine.

So I came back and decided to interact with the internet community a little more and made a lot of replies and posts on different Live Journals. One topic of conversation I was keen to engage upon was one taken up on both Poppy Z. Brite's journal and Caitlin R. Kiernan's, this idea of whether or not the artist's suffering is a requisite for good art. I finally found a forum where people were talking about it, and posting was possible, at prime_liquor. But this morning I found my post to it was inexplicably deleted, in spite of the fact that I didn't say anything mean or rude. Methinks I have a secret enemy.

But basically my take was that it's not necessary for an artist to suffer. The idea seems to me based on the idea that suffering is regarded as a kind of field research but, as I've already argued, experience with a subject is not necessary for creating good art about that subject. Experience is a tool, not a component, of good art. There're lots of tools and methods for putting those components together.

Yes, you have to know emotions and the only way to know human emotions is to have them. But there’s no reason to go overboard. To look for suffering is silly as, unless you’re a cartoon character, you’re bound to’ve suffered at some point in your life.

Finally punched through a muthafuckin' barrier last night.

I'd been roaming the desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape for months, occasionally getting my ass handed to me by mutant geckos, aliens, or bandits. And why? Well, in New Reno I'd decided to do jobs for the Mordino family. Things were goin' well until I was ordered to take out old man Salvatore, owner of Salvatore's bar. What Senor Mordino didn't tell me was that Salvatore's men were armed to the fucking colon. Many times I died in that bar, listening to Ron Perlman wish me peace in the afterlife. I was weak, see. I needed to be fucking badass, badass enough to slaughter a whole room full of well armed men.

So I roamed the wastes, looking for my break, and finally the clouds started to part.

I stumbled on a little foray between some bootleggers and some bandits. I helped the bootleggers, then helped myself to the bloody corpses of bandits, obtaining for myself some hunting rifles, some grease guns, and plenty of ammo. Took these to New California Republic, got myself well outfitted. Well enough to come back to New Reno, walk into New Reno arms, and kill not just the bastard who owns the place but his dogs too. That got me real well outfitted. Grenades, combat shotguns, the works. But sometimes it's the simple shit that makes life good. My favourite thing? The sledgehammer. Just a big, sweet fucking hammer.

Salvatore's boys were real impressive in their shiny metal armour, firing their laser pistols. They're less impressive after an SMG has made 'em into Chef Boyardee.

I did that to the first guard. After I realised their silly little lasers weren't doing shit to my armour, I started a little system; first, sledgehammer meets groin. Man falls over. Then sledgehammer meets skull. Man is dead.

Yeah, they started to run. But I'm faster.

And what ever happened to old man Salvatore? He was already a cripple but he was eight times the cripple before I turned him into stain. Then all that was left was his sad little oxygen tank.

Needless to say, Senor Mordino and I're good pals now.

(I love Fallout 2)

Hola, mes tomodachi. And what a wonderful morning this is, here at 4pm. The only way to sleep, I tell ya folks.

I think the house guests are leaving to-day for which I'm glad. I don't hate the guy for having autism, but I miss having time alone in the evenings. I think this has illuminated for me the true, primary reason for my sleeping schedule; as Miss Garbo put it, I want to be alone.

So last night, with the guy, who's name is Justin, who wanted to sit close to me, I watched Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Justin was quiet for the whole movie which makes me wonder how much he understood. Hell, I don't know that autism inhibits comprehension that way. Honestly, I didn't know anything about autism until a few days ago.

When I first met Justin he didn't talk very much so I was compelled to fill the uncomfortable silence with my babbling. Somehow the subject of obsession came up at which point I delivered my standard line, "Obsession's a good thing. I think it's very healthy," said with utter sincerity.

Justin got a vaguely incredulous look on his face and said something about how he had a kind of obsession. "Good!" I said, "That's very good. Very healthy."

Yesterday, I was making myself some lunch when I overheard my grandmother talking on the phone about my aunt, Rumi, "Justin's obsessed with her! He can't go to bed without a hug from her--well it's part of his autism." And I smiled to myself wondering what malignity I may spread in this world. But then again I wondered where this philosophy could go when applied to an actual mental impairment.

So what did I think of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? I think Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier are great actors. I particularly enjoyed Poitier's edgily unpredictable gesticulations. His conversation with his dad, which Roger Ebert is rightfully uncomfortable with, was barely audible for me, fixated as I was on simply watching Poitier move. This is only the second movie I've seen him in and I'm hoping one day I'll actually see him with good material.

For 'twas the three actors that made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner any good. The supporting cast were almost thoroughly awful, especially the gratingly perky Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's real life niece. How Poitier's character could possibly have fallen in love with her is truly mysterious. Then there's the stereotypical catholic clergyman and the stereotypical black woman maid.

Stanley Kramer again shows himself to me merely to be a basically competent, uninteresting director. The best thing you could say about him is that most of the time he's not doing something stupid.

Before the movie, I watched MGM's 1939 cartoon "Peace on Earth", a movie that cheerfully points out that after mankind destroys itself, there shall indeed be plenty of peace on earth. Really lovely, I thought. And great animation, from the cheerful grandfather squirrel to the dying human soldier sinking into the mud.

I drew it a few minutes ago. Don't know why. He's my mood, I guess. Not so pretty is he? I wonder if anyone can see the necktie growing out of the asshole on his shoulder?

I wonder why the clock next to computer keeps giving me random, inaccurate times?

Installed some old computer games this evening, including Quake, which I can't remember how to get working with Windows XP. I also installed Fallout 2 but what I ended up playing was TIE Fighter. Dear, sweet TIE Fighter. I played the first training mission and was able to hold my own against several waves of hostile Z-95 Headhunters before they got me with the three or four shots necessary to take out the plain, unshielded TIE Fighter.

Sheesh, I remember the days when my piloting skills were such that I could survive a mission in a TIE Fighter that had me up against TIE Advanceds and Imperial Star Destroyers. Gods, I love that game.

The primary theme of the past twenty hours or so has been waiting.

I waited for several things after discovering late last night that there was a house guest wandering the house that I wasn't expecting. A quiet, mildly autistic guy, a friend of my aunt's, who seemed nice. His mother was (or maybe is) staying here as well, but she, like everyone except me, the guy, and the cats, was asleep. I don't mean to belittle someone with a condition he obviously can't help and I feel for him but there was a lot of waiting involved in talking to him. Not that I minded, mind you. It's a theme, is all.

He got sick, which my aunt and I only discovered at 4am, a time which I had waited (you see, waited) for to go to sleep because I was a little jittery with the strange situation. My aunt knocked on the door, saying she needed a ride to work because the guy's mother needed my aunt's car to get the guy to the hospital.

I got dressed, and drove my aunt at 4:30am to work, through fog that made going slightly slow. One could say I was forced to wait (you see, wait!) longer before arriving at the destination. My aunt works at Starbucks, so we waited for thirty or so minutes outside in my car for her co-worker to show and unlock the doors. I had the wonderful Vertigo soundtrack playing and felt slightly like Jimmy Stewart waiting for Kim Novak to come out of her apartment.

I took the long route back, was diverted by a major car accident, and stopped at a gas station to wait for an especially slow pump to fill my car. Then I came back and tried to sleep until 9am (but mostly waited) at which point I had to call my parents and tell them I couldn't go with them to L.A. to-day (as planned) because I needed to wait until noon to pick up my aunt.

I managed some sleep before my alarm went off at 11am, got dressed and all, and found a note saying my aunt wasn't to be off work until 1pm. As I didn't particularly feel like trying to sleep for one hour, I decided to go to Starbucks and wait. I read a lot of Murder of Angels there, which is getting a lot better--and I was enjoying it before. The second half so far seems to be absolutely wonderful.

I was feeling numb and was having difficulty concentrating, though, as I eventually had to wait until 2pm before my aunt was released.

Then there were some other things I had to wait for but I'm sure I've bored you enough (it gets a lot more boring). But needless to say, I'm really glad I uploaded the Boschen and Nesuko chapter early or I'd have been in really bad straits right now. As it is, I feel flattened.

I've put up the new chapter a day early (blogger's being a shit about perfectly simple html tags right now so you'll have to click the link to the right). While others may talk of getting naked, Boschen and Nesuko are wrapping it up.

Interesting presidential debate. It was good seeing the two guys not anchored by podiums, roaming about like vicious dogs (or as close to vicious dogs as two fairly stiff guys in suits can be). Kerry has content on his side but Bush has cleaned up some of the embarrassing facial tics from last time (although not all of them). says he seemed shrill, but maybe that didn't stand out to me because I'm accustomed to all of Bush's mannerisms being repellant.

In the world of critical viewers, Kerry won. But as to who actually will end up benefiting . . . There are, of course, factors of which we are all aware and which I find too depressing to mention right now.

I am a hybrid of: Indie Girl Academic Girl Click on the pictures below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Are You?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com

Tired. That's the kind of girl I might be in the other reality. A tired one. Colour me faded pink. Salmon. Actually, though, I hate that colour.

So what've I been up to? Not too much. I decided to tackle two pages of web comic yesterday so that I'll have more time to-day to go over things I wanna change before uploading. I also saw The Year of Living Dangerously, which I thought was pretty good. Mel Gibson before he was crazy or American (redundant?), Sygorney Weaver's wonderful odd accent covered by a fascinating false British one, and Linda Hunt playing a male. And all of it in tumultuous Indonesia. Not to mention directed by Peter Weir. You know, I'd really like to get Picnic at Hanging Rock on DVD.

Tired . . .

Yesterday was basically pretty good. I got to work early on my web comic, and was rather happy with how the page turned out. Then I went to Submarina for a sandwich. As I was sitting there eating, a very small girl with glasses walked up to me and asked, "Are you a wish?"

I starred at her dumbly a moment, trying to figure out what she was asking. "I'm sorry," said her mother as she led her away.

"It's quite all right," I said, smiling. But it was only after they'd left that I realised the girl was asking me if I was a witch--she saw me wearing all black with a black hat. She'd probably just been Halloween shopping with her mother and had been told that the black hats on the shelves were what witches wore.

So then I was in a very good mood. I took it to class where I proceeded to get pissed off as a few of the more vocal students praised a badly written poem about Hitler being chosen by God to be a martyr of evil. A couple of the students seemed very enthusiastic regarding the idea about all the social reforms that came about as a reaction to the existence of Hitler.

I tried, sadly, not in my best words, to explain to them what juvenile idiots they were being. What I wish I'd said is, "Sure, good things've happened. Bad things've happened, too. But more good things than bad things? Probably not but we can't really say. All we really can say is that things happened because things happened . . . in which case, no shit. It's common sense, not a revelation. And if you think you can pass off Hitler as some kind of divine lightning rod for good social change, well, you may as well say the same for all the ills you would have it that his example was a remedy for; racism and cruelty. In which case, you're basically saying, 'when we get rid of bad things, we can have good things in their place.' Your argument is based entirely on your teenage desire to shock people with 'logic' and you're unwittingly setting back the standing of real logic in this world."

What I actually said was a more confusing and shorter version than the above before the teacher told me to desist when another student and I began discussing whether or not the idea was fundamentally Judeo-Christian (I don't think it necessarily is).

And last night I dreamt I was made to wait in a doctors office several hours with Hayden Christensen, who was also there for an appointment. Awkward small talk consisted of me trying to say nice things about his performance in Episode II.

Anyway, I needs coffee.

My interest in the presidential race has prompted me to watch a bit of the 24-hour news networks. Damned scary stuff. I mean, I'd heard there was a right wing bias on most of these channels but it was nevertheless astonishing to see it at work. From so-called "fact-checkers" who wilfully misinterpreted or brazenly misquoted Kerry in order to make him wrong, to panels of political journalists who argue the most absurd and irrelevant points.

The other day I watched a show on MSNBC called Scarborough Country consisting of host Scarborough debating with a number of people, most of whom were right-wingers. The two representatives of the left wing were young women whom I suspected may've been either plants or were simply chosen because they were cute and not very bright. Every single one of the right wingers harped on Kerry's display of flip-flopping in the debate and not one of the left wingers thought to point out that Kerry did not display any flip-flopping during the debate. The item Scarborough was primarily alluding to, the fact that Kerry called Hussein a threat while also calling the war a mistake, was never even suggested as not being a contradiction. It was telling that when Al Franken came on for a one on one with Scarborough, Scarborough carefully avoided the issue; Franken was too high profile to be owned by the network.

Ugh.

I watched Anthony Adverse last night, a late 1700s melodrama made in 1936. Every time I see Olivia De Havilland in a movie I like her just a little more. Which is, I guess, the way with great movie stars. It's hard to believe that she's not only still alive, but is currently teaching Sunday school at a church in Paris. A woman born in Japan to British parents, who became an American movie star, and now lives happily in France.

Anthony Adverse was itself a strange mishmash of nationalities and I had trouble figuring out where it took place half the time. The confusion culminated in one scene where Claude Rains, a British actor, said to Edmund Gwenn, who was speaking with a Scottish accent, "Au revoir, senor!"

Last night I dreamt I met a Japanese girl at Parkway Plaza who insisted she was Indian. I flirted with her until her hyperactive older brother showed up and insisted I go for a ride with them. In the back seat of their small car I listened to them tell me about a movie made in the 1930s about some Korean immigrants living alone in the Rocky Mountains.

It's weird how I get these flirt dreams. Must be my Victorian soul (although I do dig this immensely. Anyone who says there’s nothing erotic about ballet is sadly deluded) . . . Last night I watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, a pretty good movie starring Gene Tierney as a young widow living in a house haunted by a dead sea captain played by Rex Harrison. George Sanders shows up as The Man the Lady Falls For Instead of the Lead and We're Therefore Supposed to Hate (though I thought he was quite charming). The cinematography's really good with some beautiful darks and lights in clean, high contrast. And of course Bernard Herrmann's score is absolutely great.

Gene Tierney's good and quite pretty although you wouldn't know it from the DVD cover. For some reason, the image pads her normally strong cheekbones until her features are floating aimlessly in a strange peach void. Another funny thing about the DVD cover is that it refers to the movie as an Academy Award nominee of 1942--even though the movie was made in 1947. Some memo-writer has bad handwriting.

Looks like everyone agrees Kerry won the debates. Even the Republicans are saying that Kerry won "on style," which essentially translates to solid victory. Bush seemed like a kid who got called into the principal's office for breaking a window.

I'll be interested in seeing the Vice President debates next week. With the level of control Cheney's purported to have in the White House, it seems almost like the presidental candidate debated the sitting vice president while the vice presidental candidate now has to debate the sitting president.

Anyway, I've got a lot to do this evening . . .

I liked Sky Captain and the World of To-morrow. I walked out of the theatre feeling like a kid.

Its main virtue is its full body slam effect. If that doesn't hit you, I can see plenty of reasons why you wouldn't like it. One of Franklin's main gripes was that the movie stole actual robot and ship designs from other things. This didn't bother me too much because, for one thing, I'm easy-going to a fault, and also because I knew these designs'd never been like this before. Max Fleischer's robots never felt so actually huge and the nostalgic look not only served in its own right, but also as an edifice of alienness. It ain't just designs that are reviewed in the film, there's also Lawrence Olivier. And I think if you can appreciate the reasons for which Olivier is resurrected, you can also appreciate why the designs were. It has to do with ghosts whose meaning has become pure atmosphere.

That's the key to this movie halfway between colour and sepia. It's not about how great movies were back then. It's about hitting the right chords for the audience by any means possible. Alfred Hitchcock said, "I enjoy playing the audience like a piano." And I think that's the foremost rule of storytelling. And, as it turns out, employing these designs simultaneously creates freshness while creating a wonderful atmosphere of ghosts. That they're sometimes employed enormously out of context is even more appropriate, emphasising the feelings of these antiquated goggles, if you will, rather than the statement.

I did have some problems with the film. Although I liked all the actors, I didn't think they were appropriately cast. Part of me thinks Gwyneth Paltrow would've been better as Sky Captain and Jude Law better as Perkins. Law's gorgeous, but I really wanted to see Clark Gable in his place. There's something too vulnerable about Law for the role. Paltrow looked great, too, but I wished she'd been more forceful. But I think that may be an issue of personal taste.

There were a number of problems of plot, such as characters referring to World War I in 1939, when they ought to've been referring to it as the Great War. It kind of bothered me, though at the same time I wondered if it had to do with the innocent mindset of the story's vision--that it infected the writer.

Anyway, though. Good movie.

To-day I've eaten a doughnut and purchased a coffee, which I'm currently drinking. Good morning, world of 7:30pm. I have an appointment to-morrow at 2:30pm--which, in any case, is Thursday so . . . damn, damn.

Something really shocking happened last night but I won't talk about it for a few days. Not until all my notes are together.

I really ought to get some things done. There's nothing I particularly need to do but getting things done seems appropriate . . .

Actually, maybe I oughta go to a movie. I oughta see that Sky Captain people are either worshiping or condemning. I oughta see it so's I can worship or condemn it, too. Or maybe I'll do both! Crossfire, with Setsuled! By Himself, Even!

I've been reading web comics a lot lately. Figured since I'm making web comics I oughta have a look at my contemporaries. I like Scott McCloud, of course. And everyone seems to like Something Positive, which I find decently funny, and suspect I've not been reading it long enough to appreciate its chief virtue, which is that it's updated a lot.

Beyond that, I've been checking out things McCloud links to in his blog, which I won't bother linking to here as anyone reading may as well go and see McCloud's blog themselves . . .

Now I'll go do my thing, whatever that is.

Slept strangely. At around 9:30am I finally had to admit defeat when I was having a half-dream about a strange face. It seemed an old woman with leathery, puckered skin and a mouth on her right temple. This mouth had no lips and thin, needle-like grey teeth. The scary thing about her was that she seemed to know all about me; she knew I was lying there trying to get to sleep and that she was a half dream I was having. And the more I thought about her, the more she cackled at me. She seemed pleased with each new detail I noticed--first the second mouth, then the wiry hair, the bulging eyes, and the long, limb of a nose.

So I woke up, drew something for about four hours, and went back to bed at 2pm. This time I had a dream about living in a very cold valley with big dark trees. I lived in a poorly lit wooden cabin on a pile of rocks and there was a pretty girl sleeping in my bed. She seemed worried and continually wondered why the lights weren't working very well. She told me her boyfriends were looking for her and she didn't want to be found--she wasn't very enthusiastic about that. I looked out the window which, since the house was on the hill of rocks, gave me a good view of the tree tops. There was a heavy mist on them and cartoon witches occasionally bobbed up out of it as they flew by on their brooms.

What've I been up to? Let's see . . . Last night was the Acorn Review class. A week earlier I'd voted "no" on a piece most of the other students had voted "yes" on and the passage of time had made me sorrier that I hadn't put up a stronger argument. It was a poem about white people being told they can't "dress black" or listen to rap. Before, I disliked it because it seemed silly but, after having seen how important most of the students seemed to feel the issue was, I'd been wanting to scream at them, "This isn't a social problem! It's a social quibble! If your worst problem is that people are telling you [as the poem says they are] that if you listen to a song with drum and bass it must have electric guitar . . . Well, count yourself lucky! And while you're at it, laugh in the person's face! How the hell can someone think this is a big deal in a country where some people aren't even allowed to marry who they love because of a prevalent bigotry?! This poem is the voice of the spoiled teenager!"

That's what I wished I'd said. Probably better I didn't as having put up the meagre argument last week, that "the emotion is disproportionate to the subject matter," I could tell I'd already made enemies. Not a good class for making friends, although some of the old campaigners (people who've taken the class multiple times) are starting to seem like okay people to me.

Ugh. I feel like I'm missing something . . . Oh, yeah, food . . .

The newest Boschen and Nesuko chapter is up on my site. Have a look.

It was a pain in the eema this week. I was working on it until at least 4am every night. Hope it doesn't suck. I don't think it sucks but, then, I'm the daddy.

And so I've finished early to-night and I think I'll go watch a movie . . .

A few days ago, someone was making the case that a writer can never be very good if he or she suffers from an almost complete absence of human society and a lack of interest in procuring any. This idea is demonstrably wrong when one thinks of the likes of H.P. Lovecraft or Kafka--or, well, any number of writers. Just last night I was watching the special features on the Naked Lunch DVD and William S. Burroughs mentioned in an interview that writing requires a commitment to solitude. In fact, it seems to me that a sociable writer is more of an exception to the rule than anything else.

But this is probably almost obvious to most of you and I am indeed a little surprised that anyone would attempt to argue to the contrary. The only reason I bring it up is because I got to thinking last night about the relationship between sociable people and fiction. Someone who spends most of their leisure time interacting with groups of other human beings will obviously spend less time with art. And for one for whom art is a lower priority, it's not unreasonable to suspect that their exposure to art is governed by a narrow set of prejudices; if they're going to waste valuable time on art, they will obviously want the piece most likely to yield pleasurable results and, without having taken the time to study art in general or to exercise intellect to reason that one can benefit from an open mind, they're likely only to seek out those pieces that, to their untrained eye, have similarities to those pieces they either enjoyed in the past or, more likely, were instructed to enjoy by their society.

That's also pretty obvious, but I think it pays to think about it in this detail. And by the way, I don't mean to suggest that someone who spends more time with a social group necessarily places art at a low priority. There're a myriad of reasons as to why someone might feel the need to be surrounded by people often. But as this becomes a comfortable situation, one falls in danger of becoming someone whose poor attention to art taints their perception of it.

So the question on my mind last night was . . . what is therefore the value of art to someone who is afraid of solitude? How could I explain the benefit of art to the poor students obnoxiously gabbing their way through movies?

My suspicion is that there is no answer and that we're all mad here. The person who is alone writes for the person who is alone. Perhaps the writer exists as the emissary of fixation, whose job it is to fill the strange aquarium which the average person now and then has need to look in on, to gain a perspective?

Well, I've got a page to draw . . .

Finally got a decent amount of time to-day! I feel oddly giddy and unsure of how I want to spend this time. A thousand different things are occurring to me. I picked up the Criterion edition of Naked Lunch a few days ago so I'll probably watch that. It's got all kinds of features, included commentary from David Cronenberg and Peter Weller as well as a piece written by William S. Burroughs about the film. And more than that even.

It's weird to think back to the days when I thought of Howard Shore primarily as the composer for Cronenberg movies. Maybe Cronenberg will do a fantasy adventure movie?

A lot of my time's been taken spending time with my grandmother, who's still in town. I watched North by Northwest with her--a movie I haven't seen since high school. And of course, I can appreciate a lot more of it now than I did then. Watched it on a huge, widescreen television on DVD--looked absolutely beautiful.

Speaking of movies I first saw as a youth that I can better appreciate now, I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit last weekend. I can appreciate a lot of the dialogue a lot more now (I now know what a drunken reprobate is, for example). But the more interesting thing is how the animation looks now, after time has passed. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was made years before cgi was commonplace, and absolutely no cgi was used in the movie. And much is done in the movie that to-day no one would even think of doing by any means other than cgi.

I remember as a child marvelling at how extraordinarily fluid much of the animation looked--remember the cartoon at the beginning where we see the jar slowly tipping off the broken shelf? No cgi there--meaning animators had to go through the trouble of mathematically figuring out the appearance of the jar based on the changing perspective as it moved--and with a subtle distortion because it was close to the "camera". It must have taken forever to draw each of those frames--and that was just the jar. How many other virtuoso examples of animation were seen in the film?

You might remember that the older Disney film Oliver and Company actually employed some crude cgi--so it was available. But the director of animation for Roger Rabbit felt that cgi would not have been in the spirit of the movie they were making. We're fortunate he felt this way because now the movie stands as an artefact of a kind of motion picture that we may never see again. It does have a different look from cgi--sometimes it's very subtle but it's definitely there. It's fascinating and almost unnerving, feeling more unpredictable and less cold than cgi. I suppose because somewhere in all our brains, we can see the true, natural three dimensions and are acquainted with them. But the three dimensions in Roger Rabbit are subtly different--in fact, no matter how perfectly calculated, we're inevitably looking at an artist's impression of the three dimensions. As a consequence, the movie seems more like a voice communicating with us.

I feel kind of sad thinking that no animation studio large enough to carry off something like this would now consider it cost-effective to make a movie this way. Even Trail Mix-Up, the newest Roger Rabbit short, employed a bit of cgi. Just not right at all.

Oh yeah . . . And what's the deal with Kathleen Turner not being credited as the voice of Jessica Rabbit? It sounds like her. IMDb says it's her. Very strange. I'm noticing all kinds of uncredited performances these days. Y'know Teri Garr wasn't credited for her role in Ghost World?

"A sea monster ate my ice cream?! A sea monster ate my ice cream!"

So said Scrooge McDuck on Duck Tales this morning.

Where is all my time? I want so much more. I've a lot to talk about . . .

Euh . . . Bloody gods in formaldehyde . . . I feel like . . . complete shit . . .

Grandmother from out of town, in town. Told yesterday to meet relatives for brunch. At 10am. I'm used to going to bed at 6am. I tried my damnedest but couldn't do otherwise. Slept for one hour.

Managed anyway to be human-like for b-runch. It was a buffet at a hotel called Hanalei--Hawaiian themed and stuff. I hate croissants and muffins. Then I noticed all the tiny flies on the croissants. I sat there wondering how many flies I'd eaten. I was managing my brain in my skull like an egg-yolk in a teacup. I had the feeling if I stopped concentrating I'd start screaming meaningless obscenities at people who didn't deserve it. Got back here at noon. Slept 'til five, awakened feeling, as Spangler said, like the bottom of a taxi cab.

By the way, the Amazing Caitlin, who's probably felt worse than this due to sickness in recent weeks, has uploaded the latest Nar'eth manga chapter I did to Nebari.Net. And now, although I can scarcely believe it myself, I'm gonna draw a page of comic . . .

Reading Murder of Angels this morning at Starbucks, I was startled to notice a sticky, black fissure opening up through the centre of the world. And then I realised it was the book's binding giving out. Yes, I love the book well, but actually I think the San Diego sun is at fault in this case.

Last night I watched the truly beautiful 1945 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The film won an Oscar for best cinematography and was nominated for best art direction. In this instance, the Academy was spot on. These were definitely the strongest aspects of the film, and in precisely that order. Fascinating shadows, textured edges of ancient walls, exquisitely framed shots of staircases seen through drawing rooms, and even the titular painting was great, holding up to the praise of the narrative. Much narrative in this movie, taken, of course, from Wilde's book. Generally a cop out for a filmmaker, but I didn't mind in the slightest because it's always nice hearing Wilde read. The movie would have been appreciable as an abridged version of the book accompanied by images, but the gorgeous look of the thing elevates it.

Dorian was played by a guy named Hurd Hatfield, who was definitely not a good actor but, astonishingly, was absolutely perfect in the role. In fact, I almost think this was a job for a bad actor, and that a good actor would have made for a lesser movie.

His pretty, androgynous face barely moves throughout the whole movie. Which is, of course, perfect. His look was fabulous--not merely pretty and androgynous, but also slightly gaunt and a bit creepy. He looked like someone an artist would want to do a study of, and also like someone who may have sold his soul. His mask-like face, conveying little, never positively communicated a person who'd sold his soul for vanity or was just an innocent kid. The only problem I really had with him was that he couldn't do a British accent.

The supporting cast, meanwhile, was generally solid, including a very young Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane. Gods, it's weird thinking Angela Lansbury is hot.

George Sanders played Wilde's avatar, Henry Wotton, very well. It's with a kind of fascinated chill that I read on IMDb that he committed suicide in 1972, leaving a note that read, "Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored."

Nesuko's ship, the Raithuras, will make an appearance in the next Boschen and Nesuko chapter, so I've been tearing apart my closet looking for the schematics of the thing I made in high school at some point. I considered drawing up some new ones but, the truth is, I don't have as much of a taste for such almost mindless mathematical endeavours as I used to. High-school-me liked putting together plastic models of spaceships and drawing endless maps and schematics. I haven't been in that mindset for so long that I look back at these old things and I marvel that I actually devoted such time to getting precise measurements and adding all kinds of little details. Actually, I think I didn't so much fall out of that mindset as I did transfer it--to writing, especially to the writing of characters. But now I'm hoping me-of-the-past and me-of-the-present can forge a fruitful partnership.

I've found the starboard, dorsal, and cutaway drawings, but I'd very much like to find the one where I detailed the Raithuras's strange, somewhat silly, atmospheric flight system . . .

I had this very vivid dream the other night. In it, Tim and I were at a music store in El Cajon. There was a skinny girl with bright, dyed red hair who was giving me nervous looks. Finally she asked me to draw something on her chest, which I did. I asked her out, she said yes, but still seemed like she had something else on her mind. Tim and I went outside and discovered my car'd been stolen. A large man with a messy pony tail, a Van Dyke, and a pointy scalp, nervously approached and asked me not to go out with the girl because he was in love with her. I shrugged and said, "Okay."

After dreaming of a zombie infested office building where only Indiana Jones could save us all if only I could bring him his whip and hat, I drove to Grossmont Centre to buy Bjork's new album and some liquorice flavoured Altoids. Because both items have black and white packaging, the sounds of Bjork's Medulla shall forever be tied for me with the flavour of liquorice.

It's a good album, although nowhere near as good as Post. It shares the same virtue as her previous album, Vespertine, which is atmosphere. A very different atmosphere, though, and more striking than Vespertine's weather-like busy ambience. Medulla is an experiment to see if she can rely almost exclusively on voice for all of the music. Results are interesting and, while I certainly like it, many of the results are more fascinating and enjoyable than truly good. Meaning, much like Vespertine, Selma Songs, and, to an extent, Homogenic, this is an album not to be listened to twice within a short period.

After Grossmont Centre, the plan was to drive to Mission Valley Centre, buy a sketchbook at Michael's, and settle down at Starbucks with Murder of Angels. Only Michael's was totally out of sketchbooks--or, at least the kind I wanted. So I drove off to UTC, ate lunch, and went to Tim's.

Tim installed Doom 3 and I watched. It is, really, a . . . decent game, I suppose. I found myself unable to get as excited about it as was Tim.

Like most games of its ilk, it is, essentially, what a bunch of guys came up with after wondering what they'd make if they were licensed to make an Aliens game. Aside from a variety of perfectly fine nods to the original Doom, the game clearly takes some pages from the books of Half Life and System Shock 2. Unlike Doom, or Quake, or so on, Doom 3 begins without action, instead establishing your characterless character, the story (heh), the environment, and, most usefully, the controls. It does this in a manner reminiscent of System Shock 2 by having you stroll through the marine base talking to people.

There are some very impressive things going on in this game, and many of its strengths are sadly neglected. I liked how you were able to naturally overhear a conversation between some workers. I only wish there was more to the dialogue than obvious exposition. The great realism hinted at by the impressive engine with its awesomely sophisticated dynamic lighting is harmed significantly by the fact that all of the people talk like animatronic characters on a Disneyland ride. And so, a lot of the potentially frightening action is dampened by the feeling that you're on Splash Mountain. There's a particularly laughable moment just before the exposition sequence ends where your character encounters a scientist who's hurriedly trying to get out word about the escaping monsters. He takes a moment to slow down and ham, "The devil is real! I know. I built his cage," gazing wistfully around the room while, supposedly, things'll go to hell if he doesn't do something fast.

I had a chance to play it myself and, once past the exposition sequence, the game's another shooter. Decently fun, and it was nice having the Doom/Quake shotgun dynamics back, where it's beneficial to get as close as possible to the enemy before firing.

Many of the people you talked to earlier are now zombies, which actually makes them seem more lively.

And then I went home and watched Murder by Death. Great performances, but a bit too hell-bent on being silly. The plot involves spoofs of famous detectives (Dick and Dora instead of Nick and Nora, Sam Diamond instead of Sam Spade, Perrier instead of Parrot, etc.) being summoned to a mansion by someone who wants them to solve the ultimate crime. Or something like that. A lot of it didn't make any sense but I suppose it wasn't meant to. I suppose Neil Simon (the writer) thought that would be a good idea.

Personally, I would have kept the humour that worked (I really liked the scene with the blind butler and the deaf mute woman he thought was the cook) and not tried so hard to make humorous the things that didn't work as such. I think it would have been cool to have the actual detectives try to actually work their way through a similar situation. But then, I suppose I'm missing the point, the boorish point about Simon pointing out all of the nagging, characteristic flaws of the various mystery fictions. This point is, after all, jabbed home at the end by their host who literally ceases to address them as people but instead as characters in stories he's been reading for a long time . . .

Oh, what could have been. The movie had David Niven, Maggie Smith, Alec Guinness (playing the butler brilliantly), Peter Sellers (surprisingly unfunny), Peter Falk, and Truman Capote.

And I spent much of the evening compulsively researching details of the various film adaptations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, lamenting that nearly all of the remotely worthwhile versions are unavailable. I would very much like to see the 1948 French marionette version that Disney tried to suppress. Even the 1933 version with W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty and Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle doesn't seem to be available. Nor does the Jim Henson produced Dreamchild, starring Ian Holm as Lewis Carroll. Well, that one at least has old VHS copies available, but I know they're pan and scan (get this; Gates McFadden, Star Trek TNG's Dr. Crusher, is a puppeteer on that movie). There is currently available an intriguing 1966 BBC TV-movie available. It's got John Gielgud and Peter Sellers. In fact, as far as I can tell, Peter Sellers is the only person to be involved in two Alice productions.

Well. I think that's enough fun and games for me . . .

Meme taken from Poppy Z. Brite's journal;

Five Things You May Not Know About My Time in School Are:

1) My teachers usually liked me.

2) My sixth grade teacher found an excuse to dress one of the more mature looking female students in a slinky gold gown. He also had a kissing booth in the back of the room one day, where he had two female students practise kissing one male student.

3) In fifth grade, I was once sent to the back of the room for coughing. The teacher was angry at me for not covering my mouth with a fully open palm.

4) In first grade, I had a crush on Sarah Visces (unsure of the spelling) because she had short hair.

5) I once saved a paper lunch bag for weeks because it had a picture of Tweety Bird on it. And I didn't even especially like Tweety bird.

Five Things You May Not Know About the Job(s) I Have (or Had) Are:

1) I got paid more than ten dollars an hour for my first job, which was also an extremely easy job.

2) For the job I held the longest, four or five years, my boss was the father of Roman Dirge. It was a job straightening merchandise in the aisles of a value store now called Big!Lots.

3) I used to be an ice cream scooper at Rite Aid, and was frequently told by customers that I was the only Rite Aid ice cream scooper that wasn't rude. I even got called into the office once to be commended by the manager for this.

4) I've applied for work at Victoria's Secret several times. I'm a pervert.

5) I've applied for work at The Disney Store several times. I'm a pervert.

Five Things You May Not Know About My Online Life Are:

1) I used to be on aol.

2) Up until a couple weeks ago, I never had any means to pay for things online.

3) I have a couple web sites up that I can't take down or modify any longer because I don't remember my passwords for the various web services.

4) My friend is a hentai guru.

5) I once had David Bowie comment on something I said on the BowieNet message board. It was a long time ago, and I have a suspicion he doesn't pay attention to his boards any more.

Five Things You May Not Know About Where I Live Are:

1) Tom Waits grew up near here.

2) It's getting almost as expensive to live here as in L.A.

3) Never try to drive to the San Diego Comic-Con. Always take the trolley.

4) We have a Mormon Palace--at least, that's what I call it. They probably call it a church or something. But the place is twice as large, and twice as decadent, as Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland.

5) Horton Plaza has two Starbucks.

Five Things You May Not Know About My Core Personality Are:

1) I'm easily amused.

2) I'm not at all arrogant.

3) I firmly believe that most of the idiocy I see--in a distressingly large amount of the people I see in the world--is not innate.

4) I live by the "art for art's sake" idea, even when I vaguely suspect it's not very wise.

5) I don't understand the appeal of most social gatherings.

Five Things You May Not Know About My Home Life Are:

1) I live at my grandmother's.

2) I often see opossums in the back yard.

3) I often shave before going to bed.

4) I use a desk my grandfather built that was later, unwisely, chopped in half by my grandmother.

5) I don't know any of my neighbours and I try to ignore them.

Five Things You May Not Know I Would Really Like to Have Are:

1) A space station.

2) My own movie theatre.

3) Shape-shifting abilities.

4) A better laundry detergent.

5) Sovereignty.

Five Embarrassing Fannish Admissions I Have That You May Not Know Are:

Not that I am embarrassed by doing anything fannish, but . . .
1) I make fan-fic manga for Nebari.Net

2) I know everything about how the Enterprise-D works.

3) I have more than a hundred Star Trek tapes.

4) I have Deanna Troy's autograph.

5) I used to want to be Donald Duck. In elementary school, I even used to angrily sing an alternate version of the Mickey Mouse Club theme--"D-O-N-A-L-D! D-U-C-K!!"

Five Things You May Not Know About What I Do On A Typical Day Are:

1) I read a lot of blog entries and posts in the morning, hours before I reply to anything.

2) I walk aimlessly around the mall, thinking.

3) I don't usually get to bed before 5am.

4) I bring the newspaper up.

5) Hmm . . . er . . . I don't watch much television.

Five Things You May Not Know That are Really Important to My Character Are:

1) I'm a slow reader.

2) I have, what many people seem to consider to be, an irresponsible absence of concern for what strangers think of me.

3) I think too many people enjoy being told what to do.

4) I hate salad dressing.

5) I don't lie to people because it really pisses me off when I sense people are lying to me.

I watched Mrs. Parkington last night. A pretty good movie. Greer Garson did a remarkably good job of portraying someone several decades older than herself. But she was absolutely gorgeous as the girl in the mining town.

Last night's episode of Venture Brothers was particularly good. How could I not like a show with gratuitous David Bowie references? And the Major Tom zombie was plain awesome. It's on again to-night at 12:30 if any of ya'll would like to catch it . . .

Now I'll go meet my parents for dinner. Having been awake now for more than an hour, now seems like a good time for dinner . . .

There. The new chapter of Boschen and Nesuko is up on my site. Have a look, I beg you.

I guess it took me, what, two and a half weeks to update? That's bad. I promise it shall be no more than two weeks from now on.

And it's September 11, so . . . hmm. The September 11 is a day I, like everyone, still remember well. Memories of it for me are somehow appropriately tied to William S. Burroughs. I went to the mall that morning and I sat there reading Burroughs' Last Words before everyone at the mall realised that they were closing. Somehow Burroughs' voice seemed perfect for the strange, fearful atmosphere that reached all the way to San Diego.

Yesterday, I was driving between two large hills listening to Tom Waits' Mule: Variations. The sky seemed perfectly clear until I looked in my rear view window and saw a strange, enormous mass of clouds. It occurred to me that if the clouds were coinciding with a terrible noise, I probably wouldn't hear it from that distance and with the Waits music.

Which brought my attention back to Waits, who was singing, "Why wasn't God watching? Why wasn't God listening? Why wasn't God there . . ."

My mind played a movie of San Diego devastated by a strange attack of clouds; a montage while the Waits song played. The usual apocalyptic imagery--burnt, empty stores and mangled street signs teetering in the wind.

I guess I was thinking about those moments when it's irrefutable that there is no benevolent, omnipotent deity out there. Why wasn't God watching? I remember the old Iraqi woman in Fahrenheit 9/11 who was crying in the rubble of her destroyed home where several of her family members died, asking where God was. Maybe it's because I believed in God when I was a kid that this sort of thing gets to me . . .