To-day I bought the new special edition of 12 Monkeys. Here's a movie I haven't watched in . . . I'd say it's been at least seven years. That seems strange to me because I was absolutely gaga about it when it first came out. Actually, it's an important movie for me for a number of reasons; it's the first Terry Gilliam movie I ever saw. Its soundtrack was the first source from which I heard Tom Waits, and I replayed "Earth Died Screaming" constantly, years before I ever bought my first Tom Waits album.

More importantly, the movie opened up for me a new facet of fiction. I loved Star Trek and Star Wars and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. 12 Monkeys was the first time I understood why sorrow could be a part of great art.

The whole time paradox thing was something I was familiar enough with from Star Trek--12 Monkeys was for me like the same song played at a different tempo, with different aspects emphasised. I knew and understood the lyrics, considered them part of my identity as an observer, so I was pulled like thread by a needle through fabric into a new understanding.

So, yeah, it was a very important movie for me and I haven't watched it in forever. And now I have a different perspective on it. Which is more interesting because the movie contains a scene of the main character, Cole, watching Vertigo, remarking how he'd seen Vertigo as a kid, but that he had a different perspective on it now because he was a different person.

And so, since I've since seen Vertigo, I can spot the references to Vertigo in 12 Monkeys--notably the scene in the theatre lobby where music from Vertigo is playing while Cole first sees Kathryn Raily in her blond wig and grey coat. He's reminded of his dream, and I'm reminded of the scene in Vertigo when Kim Novak's re-made over in blond with grey coat, and she's revealed bathed in neon light, in much the way Madeleine Stowe is. In fact, on IMDb trivia, it's pointed out that in Vertigo, it's an actor named James with a character named Madeleine, while in 12 Monkeys, it's a character named James with an actress named Madeleine.

The whole thing gives me a touch of, well, vertigo. Especially as in recent times, Vertigo as been as important a movie for me as 12 Monkeys was for me as a child. I could go on to make something of the fact that 12 Monkeys is a much newer film, though it impacted me first, in much the way time's twisted for Cole as he sees the end of the movie when he's a child . . .

Oh, but I am too sleepy for this stuff.

Only managed about three hours of sleep for Tuesday night before I was awakened early Wednesday morning by a loud radio somewhere and my stomach reminding me that I hadn't eaten dinner. Before going to sleep, I'd had the thought that I might go to Einstein Bagels for breakfast. Since in the morning my mind hadn't yet reacquired the ability to create new thoughts, I immediately went ahead with that plan.

I decided after my humus and feta on ciabatta that I would go downtown by trolley and then walk up to Hillcrest in order to see Palindromes at the Landmark, the only theatre in San Diego county where that movie was playing.

Before getting on the trolley, I thought it best to use the bathroom, so I stopped in at Target. In the Target men's room, there was a man and a woman, both between fifty and fifty five years old. The man was saying something about his ex-wife and the woman had her pants around her ankles while trying to pee standing up. The first thing I saw when I walked in was her square shaped ass. So I turned around and left.

I was entertained on the trolley ride downtown by a gumball left on the window sill beside me by a mentally impaired gentleman. It stuck at first, but then began to roll from one side of the sill--away from me--to the other--towards me. This gave me something to look at since the games on my phone have stopped working--well, in Spacedudes, I'm still able to move my ship, by the aliens don't move and neither do my missiles. And in Brick Attack, there's simply no ball with which my paddle might attack said bricks. What if Mario woke up to find every koopa, every goomba, every piranha plant, had simply disappeared in the night? It must be a lonely thing.

But the gumball was veiled from me eventually by a young man who wanted to recline and watch me from under his hood after I'd taken a moment to show my ticket to a police officer. I thought about telling the young man about the gumball he was leaning on, but I was too amused by the idea of Little Mister Badass walking around with a shiny pink gumball stuck to his shoulder.

I got to Hillcrest with about an hour to spare, so I went in a bookstore looking for an Ann Sexton book. Sexton's been spoken well of by a variety of people in my world lately and I've never read her--so I thought some poems would be good to read while waiting for a movie to start. But of the three bookstores on that street, not one had an Ann Sexton book of any sort. At the last one, a place called Bluestocking Books and Bindings, there were several feminist posters up so I sort of had high hopes. But the poetry section was very sparse.

As I left, I asked the skinny blond woman behind the counter if Ann Sexton was indeed filed under poetry.

"Yes!" She sounded very pleased, "That's a good question, I'm glad you asked . . . We don't have any."

The place also had an adorable poster of Han Solo in carbonite, decorated with a glittering purple boa. There was something strangely Amazonian about it.

So, Palindromes was a decent movie. The only Todd Solondz movie I'd previously seen was Storytelling, which had a little bit of a clearer agenda.

Palindromes tells the story of a 13 year old girl named Aviva who wants lots of babies more than anything else in the world. She's played throughout the movie by a variety of different actresses of different ages, sizes, and colours--but all are meant to represent 13 year old Aviva. This is perhaps the most overt statement in the movie about Solodz's essentially anti-existential idea; no matter what we look like or where we are, we're always the same, and we'll always do the same things. We're cursed to live without free will.

Or maybe the most overt statement of that idea is when Matthew Faber's character, who somewhat resembles Solodz, comes right out and says it. The above is almost a paraphrase.

Anyway, Aviva's strategy to get pregnant results in one of the movie's funniest sequences. She hangs out in the bedroom of a family friend's son, who is about her age. The walls are covered with cheesy photos of naked women, the boy is wearing a shirt bearing a cartoon man with an erection, and he seems to think nothing of sitting down with Aviva to watch a pornographic movie. Aviva takes it much better and a lot more innocently (probably because she's only 13) than Cybil Shepherd did in Taxi Driver, and she manages, despite the boy's somewhat poor sexual performance, to get herself pregnant.

Aviva's mother, played by Ellen Barkin, is understandably upset, but here Solodz does an interesting thing. Aviva's mother tries in a variety of ways to explain to Aviva why she needs to get an abortion but Aviva stubbornly refuses. Aviva's innocent, childish desire to have a baby to hold and love is somewhat endearing making Barkin's pleas, however rational they might be, begin to sound selfish and ogre-ish. So this film is not a black and white pro-choice, pro-life, but instead uses abortion as a plot device, and not a plot point. Which is really, in my opinion, the best thing to do with it in fiction. The only people who respond well to preaching are people who agree with the preacher. Everyone else is merely annoyed.

So Aviva is guilt-tripped into an abortion, after which she runs away, hitch-hiking, and adventures happen, and things really do feel like a fable, which is how Solodz describes the movie.

One segment of the film, called "Huckleberry" (the film's divided into titled segments), features Aviva sleeping in a little boat floating downriver. While the title would seem to refer to Huckleberry Fin, the scene seemed to me more like a reference to Night of the Hunter, which featured little children on the run sleeping in a similar boat on a similar river. There's even a shot of the floating boat with a lamb in the foreground on the shore, mirroring the various animal-in-the-foreground-kids'-boat-in-background shots in Night of the Hunter.

The kids in Night of the Hunter ended their boat journey by reaching a house where a variety of orphaned children are cared for by the movie's heroine, a religious woman played by Lillian Gish. Aviva ends her boat journey at a house where a number of adopted children with disabilities are cared for by a religious woman named Mamma Sunshine. But the zealous Mamma Sunshine bears more resemblance to the blindly faithful Shelley Winters character. Her husband and his cohorts have a number of things in common with Robert Mitchum's Harry Powell.

Anyway, Palindromes was an interesting movie.

Last week, a fellow named Charles Barker e-mailed me requesting that I make a Mitsumi Nevijen wallpaper. So I did--it's up on the Desktop Wallpaper page. It's Mitsumi enjoying a good book.

I've just finished drinking a Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. I actually quite like it. Well, I barely paid attention to it. I was concentrating on the ramen. I was hungrier than I was thirsty . . .

Yup, it checks out. I really don't have anything interesting I want to talk about. I do want to sleep, though . . .

Well--I've filled out the papers and I'm gonna buy cheques to-morrow. I just might make use of my automobile again soon.

I've gotten so accustomed to walking. I think nothing of walking across half of Santee to get to or from Tim's. It's probably a healthy way of living. Gas prices are unbelievably high. Everything I need, and most of what I want, is within walking distance. So why am I starting to get a slight itch for the motorcar?

Well, although there are three Starbucks within walking distance . . . I'm starting to miss the one by the Vons in La Mesa. There, that's it. And why not? Are there better motives in life? Are you sure?

It's a nice big Starbucks, you see. And there's always a seat there.

Hmm. There seems to be a good amount of old, cold coffee in my mug from this morning. What's it say that I enjoy a sip of it? I'll tell you--it says I have character and dignity. Maybe not the nationally recognised variants of character and dignity, but the ancient brands of character and dignity buried in the secret holy soil of the human frontal lobe.

I've just watched Monsieur Verdoux, a movie I enjoyed a lot more than I was expecting to. A lot of reviews and documentaries on Chaplin, I think, lowered my expectations a bit. There seemed to be an almost universal consensus that Monsieur Verdoux was a great miscalculation of Chaplin's and I think I was a bit influenced.

Based on an idea given to him by Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux: A Comedy of Murders is the story of an unemployed French banker who supports his wife and child during the Depression by seducing wealthy women, murdering them, and taking their money.

Although the plot has a credible logic, it's not a very realistic movie, and seems to be, in part, a slapstick comedy starring a serial killer. Which is just cool. It's also a lot of fascinating, thoughtful dialogue--this movie's a lot more dialogue than any of Chaplin's previous films.

Some of the quotes on IMDb; "Henri Verdoux: Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.","Henri Verdoux: Wars, conflict--it's all business. One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify!"

The movie is kind of an impish meditation on humanity's truly terrible nature. It was the melding of two seemingly incompatible artistic modes, giving both a fresh effectiveness. It's a good movie.

The new Boschen and Nesuko is up.

I really oughta make a regular entry here, huh? Hmm . . . maybe later . . .

I noticed the other day that there's a link to Zai'Pi Super Snail on the 24 Hour Comics Day blog. There're a lot fewer online 24 comics listed than I would've thought. I've read through a couple and they're pretty fun reads. There seem to be several, I've noticed, including my own, begining with a character wondering where he or she is.

I've noticed the Desktop Wallpapers section on my site has actually been getting a number of hits so, for those people, I've put up a new wallpaper of Nesuko looking rather feminine here.

To begin with, happy birthday to Owl. I hope you have a good time.

Let's see . . . I've been watching a lot of movies starring Joel McCrea lately. Last night I watched the wonderful Dead End. Made in 1937, it was filmed entirely on an enormous, rather marvellous set representing a street in New York that had rich apartments and homes on one side, and the terrifically poor buildings on the other. McCrea plays a fellow who's worked his way through college to be an architect, yet still has to scrape out a living doing odd jobs in the neighbourhood.

Humphrey Bogart's also in the movie, as Baby Face Martin, formerly one of the little hooligans on the street, now a big time gangster. Bogart's really good in this movie, and it was a delight seeing him teach the street kids how to fight a rival gang--Nuts to the agreed on rules; throw electric light bulbs and bring knives.

My favourite performance in the film, though, was Sylvia Sidney's. I recently got in a ridiculous argument with an LJ user who insisted that "Old American movies are so dumb, the female characters are always psychotic and then the men hit them and it's a love story."

Anyone with a fourth of a brain knows this isn't true, but one of the nice things about this movie was that it so casually provided evidence to the contrary. Sylvia works, Sylvia pickets, Sylvia gets hit by cops and fights back. And she's adorable the whole time. Imagine my surprise when I later discovered that she grew up to be Juno the Caseworker in Beetlejuice. Wow, did her voice ever change! And little wonder, since her imdb profile says she died in 1999 from throat cancer.

And in Beetlejuice she plays a chain-smoking ghost with a smouldering hole in her throat. Eerie, ain't it?

Now, on to something decidedly unpleasant--the episode of South Park I watched last night.

I've written before about South Park irritating me when Matt and Trey decide they've got special knowledge and are gonna teach America a little lesson about themselves and morality or some shit. Last night was, by far, the most foolish and mean-spirited example of that aspect of South Park's decay from clever fun to idiotic wallowing.

I knew things were bad when I saw the commercials for the episode; Mr Garrison gets a sex change and we see him making a scene in a supermarket as he tries to buy tampons.

Sometimes trailers can be misleading, which was why I watched the episode, so I could give a fair trial. It did not redeem itself.

Stupid characters in television shows are often given specific kinds of stupidity in order to suit specific episodes. In this case, Mr. Garrison was made the kind of stupid where he thought getting a sex change would let him have periods and babies and, in a few cringe worthy scenes, appear on Girls Gone Wild. And what was the point of that, Matt and Trey? That all people born female are considered worthy fodder for Girls Gone Wild?

Yeah, the humour is supposed to be dryly stated arguments for their apparent belief that getting a sex change is invariably foolish. The beginning of the episode features live action footage of a vaginoplasty being performed, while the South Park doctor remarks on how natural it is. The juxtaposition of his statement and the footage is, apparently, to make us say, "Wait! Why, you scamps, surgery isn't natural at all!" So, score one for the Amish, I guess. I hope neither Matt nor Trey finds himself with a tumour any time soon.

The episode dissolves into various stories of people getting surgery to alter themselves--Kyle becomes black, and his father tries to become a dolphin. The idea being that wanting to look different from how you are badly enough to get surgery is always wrong. Never mind that in real life, Kyle's dad would probably be informed before surgery that he's never gonna be made much like a dolphin, and that Kyle's interest in being black in order to join the basketball team won't actually make him play better, and that he can listen to rap music and still be white. So what would Matt and Trey say to someone who's deformed or with severe burn scars? That they ought to be able to deal? Or is surgery acceptable when we are socially unacceptable?

The end of the episode had Garrison making a quick statement about learning to accept life as woman, albeit one who can't have babies. Maybe at this point Matt and Trey were making themselves sick and they wanted to go back. Well, guys, you can't go back if you refuse to dwell anywhere but within the stink of your own ignorant opinions.

A couple nights ago, I tuned to BBCAmerica while eating dinner and saw a pretty blond woman with a dim grin sitting next to Graham Chapham, who was wearing a white lab coat. It was a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch about alien blancmanges trying to secure a victory at Wimbledon against earth--and all earth's tennis players had been turned into Scots.

I didn't see the end of the sketch, as I had something to do when I finished eating. The next morning, I felt a little sorry. It's not often I see Monty Python on TV these days. As I ate breakfast, I turned on the television and was confronted again by the same woman and the same Graham Chapham. Earth's battle with the blancmanges had begun again.

That's a sign from the gods to me, it is, and I don't need to tell you what it means.

I'll tell you something else that's unrelated;

A few days ago I was walking home from Tim's and stopped in at a Round Table Pizza I used to eat at a lot when I was a kid. I'd been looking at it now and then, meaning to go in for the nostalgia or something.

The place had changed only a little. It was still a very enclosed restaurant, with only one wall of windows, leaving the rest of the place a somewhat difficult labyrinth of booths. I remember it having dark, reddish wood walls, but now it has white wood walls. Which was disappointing--it was such a dark, warm place with few lights before, which, combined with the name Round Table Pizza, always allowed me the vague fantasy that it was a medieval mead hall.

I was delighted to see that the very, very old Super Mario Brothers machine was still there. I remember it showing up at the restaurant at about the same time as the original, 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System came out. This was not your usual arcade, stand-up setup, but a sort of table thing that allowed you to sit down and play comfortably, albeit with a joystick, which feels pretty unnatural with Super Mario Brothers.

I sat down to it for a while, found that the A button stuck a bit, and proceeded to make a fool of myself on level 1-2. Like a bird continually ramming itself into a window, I could not shut off the confident feeling that I could jump over any of the level's pits. At Parkway Plaza mall, I frequently almost beat the same game on a newer, cheapie system whilst waiting for my latte, and here this machine of my youth, with its cunning, sticky button, was schooling me.

So that didn't last, and I was too slow with quarters to continue. So I looked the place over a bit more while my order was taking an impressively long time. I found that there was a new, separate video game section, where the place had accumulated a few of the standard, stupid side-scrollers of the past twenty years.

Among them was what I trust was a relic of 9/11--a platform shooter called Target: Terror. Its start screen featured photos of Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush floating by in the background, much as one would expect to see a Ninja Turtle or a gun wielding anime girl.

You didn't condemn this sort of thing very harshly in the months following 9/11. Everyone was pretty unnerved and we sensed that maybe this was, for many of the more simple-minded around us, the only way of coping with the events. Now it just looks like the ridiculously crass artefact it is. A toy fashioned by and for people who have only a hazy grasp of mortality and the dangers of this world, and see man-initiated catastrophe as an a excuse for the glorious story they want to be the hero of.

The world needs the Mario Brothers.

I put up a Google ad on my site a few days ago, but I took it down to-day because it looked as though it probably wouldn't pay ten dollars in ten years. Oh well. I will think of a way to make money with this, one day. Mostly I'm thinking of doing a 100 page or so online graphic novel thing, and charging 25 cents per view.

It the meantime, I decided if there's gonna be an ad on my site, it might as well help a friend, so I put this up;



Yesterday I picked up the Citizen Kane soundtrack, which is great to listen to and, for some reason, a lot subtler than I was expecting. It has to be played very loud to be heard at all, most of the time, and creates this really great, murky mood in the room. And then the opera scene comes on and it flattens you.

This isn't the original recording, but one made a couple years ago by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Joel McNeely, as is my copy of the Psycho soundtrack. For the most part, both recordings are rather straight copies of the original orchestrations, except with a better recording quality. But the Opera scene is sung by a woman named Janice Watson, who seems to be the singer Kane wished Susan Alexander to be.

There's a lot of information about Bernard Herrmann and his early career in the CD booklet, including a cable sent to Welles in July 1940. Regarding the Opera scene, Herrmann wrote, "FEEL THAT SUZY SHOULD HAVE A SMALL BUT RATHER GOOD VOICE. THIS IS THE TICKLISH PART OF IT. EVEN G[ANNA] W[ALSKA] HAD SOMETHING OF A VOICE. FEEL SHE MUST AROUSE SENSE OF PITY. MUSIC SHOULD BE INTENSELY DRAMATIC AND SHE NOT UP TO IT."

Which is a nice touch. It would have been terribly over the top to give her a truly horrible voice, and a lesser film would've made Kane seem utterly delusional about her.

Well, that's just one small good thing about a movie full of great things . . .

A man approached me in the Nordstrom bathroom and asked if I had a coconut. He was wearing a bright red jogging suit and baseball cap and I assumed "coconut" was a code for cocaine or a sexual favour. I said no, and it was only after he'd gone that I realised the whole room smelled like coconut . . .

Trisa visited San Diego last week. We had a pleasant time, she has a very nice new haircut, and we watched Napoleon Dynamite.

I was expecting to have a much stronger reaction to the film than I did. I expected to hate it or love it. It turned out my feelings were slightly warmer than lukewarm.

There's a sweetness about it--I get the impression that the filmmakers had a genuine affection for these characters, that they were not sadistically exploiting them as many reviews for the movie insist.

Perhaps this misimpression arises from the fact that none of the characters really become more than mild caricatures--you can see the kinds of guys they're trying to be, but they never quite pull it off.

The movie is a very mild comedy. The best jokes make you smile or sort of chuckle. One of the film's problems is an over-reliance on the comedy of tedium--especially in the first two thirds of the movie, there are endless static shots of people standing very still speaking in slow monotone. There were several instances where I got the joke midway through the delivery, but the movie insisted on dragging it right along anyway.

It was, on the whole, a pleasant movie, but I think by the third viewing I'd jump out of a high window. It's a little like Braveheart.

There. Finished.

That was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Still, I don't think I'll ever do anything like it again if I don't have to.

I'll be posting my 24 Hour Comic here. I've decided to make it about a group of cartoon characters I created when I was about nine or ten. I've made references to them in Boschen and Nesuko, but otherwise I remember almost nothing about their personalities or relationships. It ought to be an interesting experience.

I'll try to update with each page as I go, starting at midnight (for me, it's currently 9:23pm).

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter's up. I hope it doesn't make anyone puke.

And now I have to run off again because I'm gonna do the 24 Hour Comics thing and I wanna get supplies . . . Gods, nobody better give me anything to do on Sunday.

I saw Sin City again a few days ago and, afterwards, I dropped by Borders and noticed I'll Sleep When I'm Dead was out on DVD.

I remembered very badly wanting to see this movie when it was in theatres, but I'd never gotten the chance. I was very intrigued by Roger Ebert's review. Maybe because it was a British film noir, maybe because it was a good movie featuring Malcolm McDowell in a good, sinister role. Maybe it was because it stars Clive Owen, for whom I had a mysterious fondness even before I'd seen him in any movies (perhaps this is explained by the bit of trivia off his IMDb profile; "Is a huge David Bowie fan and has called singer 'the biggest musical influence on my life.' He says, 'I don't know why, but no one else has ever had such an effect on me. I didn't have most of his work. I had everything.' In the 1970s, when Bowie was changing his appearance and style with every album, Owen would re-dye his hair whatever color Bowie's was at the time.")

Anyway, I felt it an omen somehow that I should be looking at a Clive Owen film noir after having just come from seeing Sin City, so I bought it.

It's a good movie, and considerably more true to the grim existential spirit of film noir than is Sin City.

It is not remotely what one would call a thriller, in spite of being mistakenly marketed that way. It's the story of Will (Clive) coming back to London after having been living reclusively in the forest for three years, attempting to avoid his past as a fierce crime boss.

But his brother's suicide in London brings Will back and into a quest for revenge, and inevitably amongst his old enemies and friends. It's certainly a noir idea, and is enhanced a bit by the man seeking revenge for what is unquestionably a suicide.

Perhaps the most innovative element director Mike Hodges brings to the table is the tone. When I say it's not a thriller, I ought to stress that it's practically the opposite pole of thriller. It's quiet, ruminating atmosphere of Will walking about London simply dwelling in his hellish endeavour, all the more hellish for how unsentimental and coldly the movie puts things. Really, perfect for the main theme.

Good movie. I'd probably say more except I'm feeling the absence of coffee . . .

Because I'm a productive member of society, I made this:

Caitlin's reactions to a film called What the [Bleep] do We Know?, intrigued me enough that I sought it out and watched it. The movie consists of a series of interviews with physics students, spiritualists, doctors, and, supposedly, the channelled spirit of an Atlantian warrior named Ramtha. At intervals, the movie follows the fictional story of a young woman played by Marlee Matlin. Her life as a divorcee and photographer is used to demonstrate and gloss arguments seemingly made by the interviewees regarding a connexion between quantum mechanics and the idea that we humans are capable of altering physical reality purely by effort of will.

Having read the information Caitlin found showing the film's most important proofs to be false, I knew going in that the film had no real scientific basis for its arguments, despite its pretensions to the contrary. But I was curious, as it seemed a stimulating point of conversation and several very intelligent people seemed to have been taken in by it. What I would have thought of the movie if I'd not known the illegitimacy of its evidences, I can't say. What I did find was a movie that was silly and pathetic.

The first portion is an overwrought justification of the title, What the [Bleep] do We Know?, as it states the old idea that we don't know if our reality is really real, or a sort of dream, or something else. This can be sort of fun to think about, but a surprising lot of people tend to not realise that the concept in itself neither proves nor disproves anything.

Then we segue somehow into quantum mechanics, in which there is a theory that an infinite number of alternate realities exist, one for every alternate possibility. Which is interesting, but hardly is this the first time the concept in art has been explored. I remember it from the seventh season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Parallels", in which Worf was continuously shifting between different quantum realities. Data explained the idea a lot more effectively than What the [Bleep]'s experts ever do.

So from there, the movie reaches its real point, which is to say that somehow we can take control of our lives--have better jobs, relationships, self-esteem--by consciously tapping into alternate realities. "Creating the day", effectively, by visualising what we want and making ourselves believe it until it's true.

What I'd like to know is why it's supposed to be easier to tap into an alternate reality to change things than it is to simply decide to do things differently and doing it. Yeah, we have our habits and they can be hard to break, but is it really harder than shifting to an alternate reality?

You know, these are just the sorts of people that ought to never get their hands on a time machine. "I magicked my ex-wife to death!", "My mental powers got my horse to win!", "I eradicated all pigeons every where, every when!"

But perhaps most heinous of the movie's crimes is that damned wedding scene with those shrill cartoon peptides. Think Son of the Mask, only worse.

And one final, evil thought--did Marlee Matlin ever ask Ramtha to take her to the reality where she's not deaf?

Entries I would have posted if Blogger hadn't been on the fritz;


From 2005-04-11 11:04:00

I went with family to a couple of malls in Orange County yesterday. They gave me some money for my birthday, so I bought some Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes, Jill Thompson's Little Endless Storybook, a Charlie Parker CD, Thelonious Monk's Monks Dream, and I re-purchased The Smiths' Meat is Murder, having lost my previous copy.

I was tipped off about Monks Dream by Peter Straub's wonderful site. Having just begun to cultivate an interest in jazz, it's nice to see what a writer I respect recommends. It's a very sweet album. Many things I've read on Monk seem to describe him as being a sort of creature removed from other pianists, and it's true I've not heard anyone play piano like this. It's restrained, in the good timing way, but very wild, with chords played just out of synch--or the normal conception of in synch, anyway.

We ate at a restaurant called P.F.Chang's yesterday, which I cannot advise against strongly enough. I had spinach and garlic stir-fry, which tasted something like mulched salt licks. Much of my time at the malls was spent in the bathrooms thereafter.


From 2005-04-08 19:13:00

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter is up. With decorated robots.

Has anyone ever noticed that "Migrations" by Jocelyn Pook, off the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack, and "Renholder" by A Perfect Circle, are almost exactly the same song? Does anyone else even have both the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack and the debut A Perfect Circle album? Could I be the only person in the world who's noticed this?

Eyes Wide Shut came out a year before the Perfect Circle album, so if anyone's a crook, it's A Perfect Circle. And now you know.

Lately I've been annoyed by people who seemingly can't relate to anyone of the opposite sex. I've talked to a couple women recently who couldn't get involved with the male characters' story in certain movies. And I watched The Outlaw Josey Wales a few days ago.

I don't think I've seen a movie that is more palpably insensible of its female characters while simultaneously exploiting them. Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood in 1976, the movie takes place at the end of the American civil war, and follows the exploits of a bushwhacker named Josey (Clint). Early in the film, Josey's family is slaughtered by Union officers led by the nefarious Red Legs, so named for his evil red pant legs.

All the Union soldiers in the movie come off as mindless villains while all the Confederate sympathisers are noble, sometimes conflicted men. No one mentions slavery. Why would they?

When it becomes clear the south has no hope, the leader of Josey's bushwhacker gang, Fletcher, is offered a deal by the Union--his group can go free if they give up their arms and swear allegiance to the Union. The whole group grudgingly agrees, except Josey--which is how come he's the outlaw Josey Wales.

The Union ends up going against their word and tries to slaughter everyone but Fletcher who, for some reason, they have a lot of respect for and are going to employ in the hunt for straggler bushwhackers. They succeed in killing all the other bushwhackers, except for one annoying young guy, who Josey rescues by commandeering a gatling gun.

After this, for reasons that are never explained, Fletcher hates Josey fiercely, vowing to hunt him down at all costs.

Thankfully, the annoying young guy dies pretty soon after this, and we're left to bask in Clint's steeliness as he adventures through the country solo. It couldn't last, though, as an old Indian chief caricature joins his party. Another thing about this movie--rife with the Native American stereotypes it is. This particular fellow was a pretty bad actor, too, always conspicuously conscious of being in a movie.

It's soon after that we meet our first female character, who is also Native American, which I suppose makes two strikes against her. She's irritatingly referred to at all times as "the squaw", and is in fact not very different from the squaw bride in The Searchers--a John Wayne movie which I did not find to be racist, despite having a racist main character. In fact, none of the John Wayne movies I've seen are as racist or as sexist as Josey Wales.

Anyway, the Josey squaw, who is at least credited as being named "Little Moonlight", is not given, by the writers, the ability to speak English, despite the fact that when we meet her, she's working at a white man's general store. The man hits and berates her with familiarity, and while Josey ambles about the place, two men proceed to start raping her. Josey seems disinterested until the would-be rapists recognise him and try to capture him for his bounty.

Josey kills them and now, of course, Little Moonlight considers herself his slave. She doesn't do anything else for the rest of the picture except follow him and have sex with the old guy.

Josey, outlaw loner, or not, starts to collect people. He comes across a wagon being raided by bandits--the wagon carries an old woman and a young pretty blond woman, who they begin to rape while Josey watches in consternation from a hiding spot on a nearby hill. The bandits show the audience the woman's breasts and ass and Josey sorta/maybe starts to go for his gun, before the bandits come up with a vague excuse suddenly about needing the woman unspoiled.

Later, Josey defeats the bandits and seemingly acquires another slave girl, this one blond and English-speaking, even if it's only, most of the time, to say things like "Josey!" and "Wait!"

She eventually makes a watch chain for him out of her hair and they fall madly in love. Or something.

The movie has one or two good moments, most of them involving Clint gunfighting--although the final confrontation with Red Legs is rather lame.

Sin City is an excellent movie.

Film noir dialogue of the sort pioneered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler is something between tough talking and poetry. It has a unique sound and has been mocked and tossed about over the years until it's almost been made to seem phoney and silly. It's a style, and a beautiful one. And in Sin City, it's made relevant again.

An unprepared viewer may go in and find the 40s-ish street talk between Michael Madsen and Bruce Willis to be more off-puttingly artificial than the computer generated backgrounds. But it's when the hard, human reality of ghastly situations set in that we find ourselves clutching desperately at those beautiful words, the pulse that has the brain walk right on through the razor wire and severed limbs and still look up, grin, and say we like this place.

Yes, I liked just about everything about Sin City. Except Jessica Alba. Otherwise, it was great.

What was wrong with Jessica Alba? She's not a very good actress, and she didn't get naked.

Pervert, you cry! Well, look. One thing that was refreshing about the movie was how uncompromising and comfortable it was about nudity. And then we get to Nancy Callahan's story, and we have a stripper who doesn't get naked, not on stage, and not in another, even more unlikely situation. So, Alba, why all the clothes? Why did we have a scene where you said, "Let me put some clothes on" when you were already wearing more clothes than half the other girls in the movie? Alba recently had this to say;

"You know, nudity was an option . . . We could have done it if we wanted to. Obviously, it would have been more authentic. But I felt dancing around with a lasso and chaps was going to be sexy enough. I think being nude would have been distracting and I really couldn't be bottomless. My dad! He would freak out."

Which I translate as, "Initially, I told Rodriguez that I'd be willing and then, after I'd signed the contract, I 'changed my mind', and there was not a damn thing they could do, as it wouldn't exactly look good to fire a girl 'cause she wouldn't get naked."

Although I'm willing to believe Jessica Alba's clueless enough about sexuality to think that a girl with lasso and chaps is as sexy as a girl without clothes.

I don't mean to sell the movie short. Just about everything else is tops. The Marv story, starring Mickey Rourke, being, by far, the best. In fact, if I'd been editing the film, I'd have suggested closing with it. It's the most pure expression of the underlying ideas in all of the stories.

Oh . . . I promised to talk about the Star Wars Holiday Special.

In the mid-1980s, George Lucas vainly attempted to destroy all master copies of this 1978 CBS special. So of course, Tim was quickly able to find a copy on one of his file-sharing programmes.

It stars Mark Hammill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels--everyone but Obi-Wan, really. And it has Art Carney and Bea Arthur. Why not? And, hey, why not have a five minute segment of a Wookiee family having common, domestic discourse, made up of unintelligible growls, in what appears to be a contemporary Earth home (poor matte paintings assure us it's in a tree)? Oh, and throw in Jefferson Starship, only make them tiny.

It was incredible.

In a set that must have been comprised of, at best, pieces of the one used in the first movie, we see Han Solo (indeed, Harrison Ford!) and Chewbacca in the cockpit of the Millienium Falcon, en route to the Wookiee homeworld so that Chewie can celebrate Life Day with his family. Scores of awkward, commercial-like close-ups ensue (this was not directed by George Lucas). Han Solo blushingly tells the ridiculous ball of fur passing as Chewie's wife that the Wookiees feel like family to him. Princess Leia appears to be working as a bank teller when we see her furiously typing at a keyboard behind a plain, plastic desk while C3PO stands awkwardly by.

In the end, all the Wookiees wear red robes and carry glass orbs through space to wind up at a foam cave set where Luke, Han, and Leia await wearing too much makeup. And then Leia sings about the Tree of Life--to the tune of the Star Wars main theme.

And it's all the original actors. You know you want to see this.

Actually, there was one bit of quality stuff--a brief animated segment involving the heroes' first encounter with Boba Fett. A good, decently written story, with intriguing dialogue--Boba Fett, posing at first as a friend, has a disconcerting way of ending sentences in an eerie neutral tone with the word "friend." The alien designs are great and the whole short is enriched by a coherent style and good, expressive animation.

It felt like ambrosia compared to the rest of the special.

The Nar'eth Winter Special is now up. Written by Caitlin and illustrated by yours truly, it's a bit of Farscape fan-fiction, and was a lot of fun to make. I tried a lot of new things, and learned a lot of new things just through the process of working with Caitlin.

In any case, I hope it goes over better than the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which I watched earlier this evening. I'll post thoughts on it later. I have complicated, astounded, horrified, bemused, outright betwirtled thoughts about it.

Oh, my tongue, my tongue.

A few days ago, I noticed Tim eating a burrito from Tacos Mi Pueblo, a Mexican restaurant near here. My family used to eat there all the time when I was a kid, and I was sort of pleased to find, when I went in two days ago, that it had changed not at all. So much in Santee has transformed, you see.

To-day, I ordered a bean and cheese burrito and tried the very hot sauce. "Would you like something to drink with that, Sir?" asked the fellow. "No," says I. Why douse the flames of heaven?

Soon, the world was eclipsed by scorching hot refried beans mixed with blood red sauce. Sauce you peered closely at to see ingenuity; all the slices of jalapeño, chips of pepper, that you could think of to make soft human tissue shrivel to threat level; ghastly.

It was the taste of a particularly jubilant Dizzy Gillespie. It changed my day.

The Mexican polka on the radio sounded violently spirited in a way I'd never noticed before, and I dwelt in that beautiful pulverizing until I'd dipped my last appetiser tortilla chip in the sauce. I wandered out into the street, savouring the giggling devils circling my tongue with their pitchforks.

Here's another fun thing to try;

Go to a Subway and order a Veggie Delight. Ask for lots of jalapeños, get the meal so you can have some jalapeño chips as well. First bite of the sandwich, half the jalapeños fall out. Open yer chips, dip and enjoy. That's warp zone jalapeño level, folks, and I mean 1+(97x1)=!.

Nothing like this ever happens at my school.

Technically, I have nothing to do to-day. But I'm starting to think I might do some research for the next Boschen and Nesuko chapter. What, you say? Research for a galaxy I completely made up? It's been kind of surprising how often I end up needing to look up something or other. Last time I called Trisa to ask how one would cut off someone's arms without killing the person.

But maybe I'll do something else because it's not very comfortable around here at the moment. The toilet in my bathroom's been removed, so I've kind of been living out of the Barnes and Noble. Sort of reminds me of when my mother kicked me out and the mall felt like the closest thing to home for me. If only every place was open twenty four hours.

You know, now that I think about it, there are all sorts of things I can do out there . . . See a movie, read a book, or simply wander . . .

Accidental Coup.

Cripes, if someone'd told be yesterday that civilian protesters would take down an armed government practically by accident, I'd have said they were crazy. Kind of makes me wonder if the old president didn't simply decide to get while the getting’s good.

Bush should take note--this is what happens when you don't control the news networks and the churches.

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter is up to-day, a day early, again. I've gotta quit doing that. Anyway, I think a lot happens in this one by anyone's standards.

In the bathroom at Barnes and Noble to-day, I noticed someone had written "SATANIC BIBLE" on the side of the baby changing station.

Oh, what hideous truths are so casually revealed! The terrific drama now shows plain in my minds eye--honest, Goodman father making as proper, cleansing his helpless babe, only thinking to bestow bonny health and virtue--but nay! For, as he tasks, the serpent injects with spirit shadows, his unwholesome invisible dictates!

We clearly must needs drown everyone.

Anyway, I had many adventures in La Mesa to-day. Here're a few things I don't like about people;

Why do boys have to spit so much? I was waiting at the trolley station, leaning against the fence, reading Plato. To my left, two fellows were sitting, wearing hoods in the popular Jawa fashion. To my right, another person who, upon coughing, revealed herself to be a girl. Immediately, the boys' conversation ceased, they glanced repeatedly at her and then, at intervals, fired doses of saliva and snot at the concrete. Why? And why does it make me want to kill them?

Another thing--waiting at a stoplight with a number of pedestrians, a woman in front of me decided she could predict the "walk" sign. She boldly stepped out into the street when the left turn light came on in front of us. Of course, she was caught in front of a stream of cars turning left, while someone trying to turn right honked from behind her. She proceeded to lamely wave her hands, as if she'd suddenly been inspired to act as a crossing guard. What do we really lose by waiting for the light to actually change, people? It's not a significant amount of time, I'll tell you that. People seem to feel they'll lose self-respect or something if they can't out-badass the little glowing blue man.

And that's not to mention how many cars have to run the light just after--just after just after--a tinse after just, just after--hell, long after the light’s changed. In the words of Hellboy, "Red means stop!"

It's all probably tied to the spitting instinct, I suppose.

A couple days ago, I got back from my sister my copy of Caitlin R. Kiernan's In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers. What a pretty book--a little green hardcover with illustrations by Dame Darcy. I like just having it sit here next to me.

I watched the 1951 version of Show Boat last night. It's the first version I've seen and I gather it's not as good as the 1936 version. Still, I kind of enjoyed it. It starred Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, and Ava Gardner. I'm actually starting to like how Keel always seemed like he was doing a Superman impression, with an affected sounding deep voice and eerily good-natured veneer. He's simply impossible to take seriously, which somehow kind of makes me take him seriously.

Kathryn Grayson was a pretty lady with a decent voice and acting ability. And that was good enough. She looks a bit like a huskier version of Claudette Colbert, and I enjoy admiring her rather perfectly shaped nose.

Ava Gardner had a supporting role and didn't appear in 70% of the movie, but she was in practically all the best scenes. The movie shines when it digresses into meditation on the relations between black and white people in 1894. Not to mention 1951--The Breen Censorship office tried to get a scene removed where it's discovered that Ava's character had a black parent and a white parent. This fascinating little scene, where the lady is fired because of her heritage, segues into the song "Old Man River", performed beautifully by a large black workman on the boat, who seems to have almost no interaction with the main characters for the rest of the movie. The scene is easily the most emotionally effective in the movie and you wonder if Oscar Hammerstein wanted badly to take the film in a direction utterly impossible at the time.

I oughta get moving as I need to be out of here pretty soon. I'll probably go eat at Einstein Bagels, although I hope that doesn't turn out like yesterday, where the Veg-Out on Sesame Bagel mysteriously came with bacon and turkey on, a fact I didn't discover until I'd taken a bite. I've been a vegetarian since I was thirteen or fourteen years old, so maybe that's why a single bite of bacon gave me such a monstrous stomach ache that I had to find a bench and just sit down for about an hour.

Or maybe I'll eat somewhere else.

Yesterday I bought a copy of Jedi Knight II: Outcast. Easily the best Star Wars game I've played in a decade.

I'd been playing it at Tim's for some time, so I knew already how lucky I was to find it for just ten dollars. I also knew where to get all the good mods.

The game is basically a Doom style shooter. But its big asset is lightsabre fighting, which is done through third person. You reprise your role as Jedi mercenary (sure it makes sense!) Kyle Katarn, involved once again in a complicated story of . . . running around killing bad guys.

The lightsabre leaves scorch marks in the walls. It burns anyone and anything that touches it, even when you're not swinging it. Add Force powers like pull, push, and grip and the game because one of the most satisfying exercises in slaughter that you could imagine. And then add the extra violence code and you will become a better person.

An illustration:

One of my favourite things to do these days is to grab a Storm Trooper's throat from a distance, raise him high into the air above me, and then simply let him drop on my idle lightsabre blade, whereupon his body falls into pieces that rain down around me.

You can push people of high catwalks; you can cut off their hands, and then execute them while they're kneeling before you, begging for mercy. You can throw your spinning lightsabre and guide it with the Force through the necks of a whole row of foes.

It's really hard to get tired of.

Kyle Katarn gets boring, though, so I downloaded some mods to play as other characters. The Darth Maul mod was decent, but I think I've settled on using Indiana Jones. It's too wonderfully strange. You can change your lightsabre colour with a code, so I've given Indy an orange sabre. Seems to go best with his outfit.

It's a great model too, actually resembling Harrison Ford. The hat's slightly wrong, though--the model maker gave him a stetson instead of a fedora. I don't really blame him, though. There are about twenty different kinds of hats at Disneyland that all claim to be official Indiana Jones hats, and not a one of them, from what I've seen, is an exact replica.

Has anyone else around here carried a bad Indiana Jones fixation since childhood? I didn't think so . . .

I bid farewell to Trisa this morning. She's moved to San Fransisco. She and I have been good friends for about four years, I think. I don't keep a lot of real live friends, so I was pretty sorry to see her go.

We had breakfast this morning at Einstein Bagels. I recommended the Hummas and Feta on Ciabatta, which she found to be quite messy, which I suppose it is. She's moving into a segment of an old Victorian house, temporarily, until the place closes down later this year. Then she'll get herself another place in Ol'Frisco. She's a success, and a great dresser. I loosely based the design of Nesuko's latest outfit on the one Trisa was wearing last week.

So now I guess I'll be going back to seeing all the strange movies by myself. And the Rasputina concerts, if I can ever manage to get into the gear of the concert scene. Trisa's good for music. My tableau's gonna be very different without her around.

Hmm.

So what else for the blog to-night . . .

This house is being painted. My room isn't. My room, being shut up against paint fumes, is becoming a terrarium, smelling of a boy who spends days curled over the desk drawing things. It doesn't smell good.

The painters seem like white trash, and they listen to a radio station populated by derivative rock and lacklustre talk radio. But they sure get drowned out easily by my Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie CDs. And I think it annoys them--you know, I heard somewhere that the trumpet is the most audible musical instrument. I believe it.

I slept poorly last night. I had a series of nightmares--in one, I dreamt Robyn dropped by carrying a zombie movie DVD. She was telling me how good it is, and I, trying to engage in the conversation, said, "Oh, so is it like Night of the Living Dead?"

Her eyes glazed over and she dryly replied, "Yes. It's like Night of the Living Dead." I felt embarrassed and awkward, which is interesting, as I don't think I would have felt that way awake.

Anyway, I was sleepy to-day. I worked on a Nar'eth page, but didn't finish it. Mostly, to-day, after the concentrated efforts of Thursday and Friday, I just felt like vegetating.

And on that note, I shall now make like a carrot and sleep.

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter is up a day early, because I'm probably going to be busy to-night. I put way too much work into this one.

It's weird being so sleepy at just after 10pm.

One thing I enjoy doing is going into computer stores and putting weird things on their display computers. I went to Tim's RadioShack a while back and quickly made a web page which simply said, in large red letters;

RadioShack(tm) will eat your baby.

Tim complains about the silly job lately, and he seemed to get a good kick out of my gag, until I brought it back up the other day and he overheard a lady customer, upon seeing it, saying, "Oh, my!"

In terror, Tim restarted the computer and locked it from any other miscreant's tampering.

In other news, I've set up for myself several somewhat difficult challenges with the new Boschen and Nesuko chapter. Hopefully they work out. I'm about halfway through it and already it has a slightly different flavour than I thought it would when scripting it.

And this evening I made myself a mozzarella quesadilla. With very hot sauce. Now that's a pizza pie.

At long last, I finally picked up Notorious on DVD last night. I am very happy. I've watched it already and it's gorgeous. I love Criterion DVDs.

I also recently picked up a collection of Cocteau Twins songs that Spooky recommended to me. I'd been looking for a while but any Cocteau Twins album seems to be almost impossible to find around here. I finally spotted this one filed with John Cocker at Borders.

I'm enjoying Stars and Topsoil, but I wished I'd gotten Treasure. However, Trisa picked up a copy and said she'd copy it for me, so it all works out . . . This is the blog of happy endings, you know. Welcome.

Or maybe not all endings are happy. For example, the new Tori Amos album has ended up being a significant disappointment. It pains me to say that because I've been an enormous Tori Amos fan for a long time. But this LP has strayed into vain, banal territory.

Well. I got nothing against pretty, I suppose. Even pretty for pretty's sake--I was able to enjoy Gigi and American in Paris, after all (both of which, incidentally, I got on DVD in a pack for just twenty bucks). But this is Tori Amos! There used to be more to her than that. And--actually, the problems with the album go beyond vanity. It also seems to bespeak a lack of self-awareness on her part.

This point is epitomised in my least favourite track on the album, a song called "Hootchie Woman." Whether or not that title is cheesy, you may decide for yourself. But regardless, Tori sings from the perspective of a financially successful woman who catches her husband cheating on her with what she refers to as a "Hootchie Woman." She goes on to revel in the fact that she is the breadwinner, and the powerful person, in the end. Basically; "Victory!"

Now, compare this with one of her earlier works, a song off Under the Pink called "The Waitress." This was a song about rivalry between waitresses having to do with male attentions. The song was far more effective in conveying the viciousness of the emotions involved, and it also had a thoughtful quality to it. A feeling of regret that these conflicts seem to result from a persistent tragic flaw in the characters of so many people.

And this went with the general premise of Under the Pink--the idea being to cut through the sort of sweet pretence she perceived in women, and show the effects of this emotional atrophy.

So with that in mind, her new album, The Beekeeper, could justifiably be called On the Pink. "Hootchie Woman" is the celebration of one woman's victory over another. It's as though she has effectively become one of the characters in "The Waitress."

All in all, I'd say Tori's basically ended up in the same place, artistically, as she was in the days of Why Kant Tori Read. But . . . Hell, she did have a good run in between. Most artists don't get that much. And we'll always have the recordings.

I hate feeling this way about Tori.

Watching the third season episode of Star Trek: TNG called "Ménage A Troi", the subplot about Wesley Crusher receiving a field promotion to Ensign struck a funny chord in me.

Seeing his gelatinous face warming with boyish blush in response to Picard's fondling gaze, I couldn't help but wonder at the state of Picard/Wesley Crusher slash fic on the net.

My searches first yielded this result. I particularly liked the haiku;

Pert arse through jump-suit
Commander badge of red gold
Long nimble man legs

Or perhaps;

Fuck me senseless, Wes
Beam me with your Star Trek sperm
Kling on to me, boy

I never liked Wesley when I was a kid watching TNG. But now that I'm older, although I do not share in it, I can at last understand somewhat the forbidden man/boy-pupil love that inspired Wesley's character. For truly, the only people who could possibly have an interest in Wesley Crusher are people who are sexually aroused, whether they're aware of it or not, by stupid pretty children. His vague technical genius only conveniently serves to stave off full self-awareness of an attraction to his impenetrable naïveté. The only level on which his character can function is as a player in a wet dream. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, it just makes him boring to any of us who aren't attracted to that.

Well, I suppose that's hardly a revelation.

I'm gonna have a lot more time to-day than I was expecting, so I think I shall work on the Nar'eth winter special. And perhaps I'll watch a movie.

A few days ago I watched 1942's Somewhere I'll Find You. In spite of the fact that I could not find a single positive review for it on the internet, I rather enjoyed it. Sure, it was war propaganda, but in the middle of it Clark Gable and Lana Turner were captivating and the dialogue was decently witty. Not exceptional dialogue for back then, but if it were written to-day I bet it'd be hailed as startlingly ingenious. Certainly it's as good as anything Kevin Smith's ever written.

I woke up two hours ago, after having fallen asleep at around 10:30pm. You see, Sunday began for me 10pm Saturday. So now I find myself suddenly cast into another strange new schedule. Let me explore this wondrous plane.

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter is up. Little happens in it. Or maybe a lot happens. Depends on how you look at it.

I say, have I ever expressed a dislike for Thursdays? Well! What a horrid day is Thursday, I mean, really!

Broad ambitions did I have yesterday. I planned to draw from dusk 'til dawn. But in all, I only managed to draw and ink two comic pages and colour three. That's because at about 2am I was feeling wretched and antsy, and generally in need of inspiration.

So I watched 1931's Inspiration, starring Greta Garbo. I was foolishly pleased by this standard, MGM melodrama vehicle. I could go for some quality time with Garbo.

Anyway, that and eating were the only things I stopped for until 6:30am, when I decided it was time to go to bed. And in bed, I read The Amazing Spider-Man Annual number 1, with the Sinister Six. And at around 8am, I decided I wasn't going to get any worthwhile sleep before the maids arrived at 11am. Oh, well. I just hope I'm not too wrecked to-morrow to do the last two pages of the new Boschen and Nesuko chapter.

And when I say "to-morrow", don't worry. I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, either.

I've been rather clumsy to-day. I keep bumping into things, tripping on the various bags, CDs, and books stacked about the room. It's becoming distracting.

Looking over hits I've gotten at Boschen Nesuko lately, I saw that yesterday someone submitted it to a web comic site called The Web Comic List. Apparently someone called "zonarius", and I can't find any information about him or her.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I suppose it's a good thing; I've already gotten some hits from it. But I kind of would like to've been told beforehand, so I could attach a graphic to the profile.

I didn't even know about this list page until this incident. Maybe I would've found it eventually . . . The gods know I could go a significant ways further in promoting my site than I have been. I keep meaning to, but I forget. Honestly, my brain is too, too cluttered.

I hope I'm more energetic after I've slept. To-morrow I don't just want to do a Boschen and Nesuko page. I want to do Nar'eth pages. And maybe some of the other projects I've had bouncing around my head lately.

And I want to pick up the new Tori Amos album. It’s true that I haven't been as enthusiastic about her newer stuff. I still haven't finished watching the Welcome to Sunny Florida DVD, and I wasn't very fond of the new mixes on the Tales of a Librarian collection. But I'm a Tori fan, and one can't be a Tori fan without being at least a little zealous.

Well, it's 6am. I think I'll have some cereal and then see if I can actually get to sleep early.

A few days ago I read this article by Hunter S. Thompson. And to-day he's dead, reportedly having shot himself.

Maybe I'm naive, but this didn't seem like him. Of course, I didn't really know him, but great writers live in your brain, and are real there. This feels a damn nasty trap door.

This is simply, plainly awful. That man deserved better. He, after all, was great.

Last night I saw a commercial where a little girl, obviously reading off a cue card, informed the world that smoking killed her dad, who was her best friend. And then a snappy "act-now-wait-there's-more" man's voice talked about a wondrous and affordable new method for breaking a cigarette habit. From admonishment to enticement in ten seconds. Now that is wondrous.

A couple days ago I saw three cars stop in the middle of the street to form a blockade against a fire truck with its sirens blaring.

That same day I also came across a young man with a Jamaican accent who asked me where he'd get if he kept walking north of Santee. I told him "Nowhere. There's nothing north of here." Which is perfectly true, but he didn't seem satisfied.

My point is no one knows what they're doing. I think that's my point, anyway.

Em, I seem to be quite back to my old schedule. It's about 6:30am and I haven't gone to bed yet. I did make a quesadilla with a crumbled up hard boiled egg in, and hot sauce.

And then I put in a tape.

The RKO logo came up and I thought, "I bet this'll be a Fred and Ginger picture! Please be Fred and Ginger, please be Fred and Ginger, please be Fred and Ginger . . ."

It was Fred and Ginger. Two people who definitely knew what they were doing. The movie was Swing Time, the plot was simultaneously slightly silly, slightly witty, and thoroughly sweet. Fred follows his lucky quarter to a dancing studio, leading to a really great moment where he saves Ginger her job by--what else?--dancing with her. Ginger Rogers looked particularly cute in this movie, with soap suds in her hair or dressed in a translucent cape. When Fred sang he loved her just the way she looks to-night, I agreed with him.

Fred had an amazing solo dance with three shadows of himself projected in the background. His ability was so keen that at first it appeared to be three copies of the same footage--but then slight alterations reveal otherwise. The whole sequence was startlingly good.

The final big dance number is delicate, and lovely. Performed to a song involving Astaire singing about how he won't dance without Rogers, the whole thing travels among just the perfect magnitudes of hints. Oh, it was too sweet. So, yeah, Swing Time's a good movie.

You know, these days I'm noticing what a profound effect great art can have on my entire disposition. Well, I've always been that way, but lately I've been thinking about it. So now I think I'll go read some Spider-Man.

Hiya.

So, let's see . . . I've been working on the Nar'eth winter special, I've been watching movies, I've been reading, and I've been walking. I keep saying, "Oh, it's bloody well time I looked into getting car insurance again," and then I keep not doing it. One thing leads to another, you know . . . I don't even like thinking about the car and what sort of little grand breakdowns I'm likely to experience once I do have it up and running again. But, hey, that's what being part of civilised mutant art farms is all about.

Last night I watched Bela Legosi and Boris Karloff in the 1935 film The Raven. Having little to do with the Poe poem for which it's named, the story involves a mad doctor (Legosi) torturing people with a pit and pendulum, and a room with crushing walls. Yes, it was a perfect movie. Quite unpredictable, really, moving from cool mood moments with an interpretive dance based on the poem while Legosi recites part of it in voice-over, to Karloff having half his face disfigured so he's forced to act as Legosi's henchman, carrying people off in the night to be tortured. It doesn’t get better than that.

Looking at the manga section at Barnes and Noble yesterday, I released that most manga provokes a tingling sensation in my sinuses, making me feel like I might sneeze. There's just such a sweet uniformity to it all, adorable large-eyed androgynous creatures drawn precisely the same way, over and over, with the passion of a mechanic. Don't get me wrong, there's good manga. But looking at that enormous section, I can't help feeling like I'm looking at an army of howitzers in lingerie.

Chevrolet reaches out to a new market:

I've updated Boschen and Nesuko a day early. Boy, this thing goes much better when I'm not sick, and I have a whole day to concentrate on each page.

You know, now that I think about it, it's kind of an anti-Valentine's Day chapter.

Hey, I hate Thursday. And yes, it's because the maids are here. Spoiled brat, am I? Well let's see . . .

Advantages of having maids here; floor gets vacuumed, the little table next to the bed gets dusted, and the sheets might get washed.

Disadvantages; I only get four hours of sleep, I have to somehow get everything off the floor and stuff it into my closet, I have to hide my coffee thermos so it doesn't get washed and all coffee put in it taste like soap for days . . . Okay, the worst part is the sleep thing, not merely for the lack of sleep. But because it bisects my day; I'll spend the time wandering listlessly, until I come back and fall asleep again, often times getting nothing done all day, never actually feeling rested. But, hurrah, the floor's vacuumed.

In better news, I picked up the 1938 Robin Hood DVD a few days ago. Just gorgeous; impressive, lush Technicolor. And Errol Flynn is such a wonderful bastard--I believe he really could waltz in and have a smug little dinner conversation with President Bush--I mean, Prince John--before handily escaping his guards (Marion; "You speak treason!" Robin; "Fluently!").

To think Jimmy Cagney was originally up for the role! I'd have been waiting the whole movie for Sir Guy to get murdered while Robin cackles away into the night. Still, Cagney, who at least was a good actor, would've been better casting than, oh, say, Kevin Costner.

The DVD came with a lot of bonus features, including a wonderful 1938 Movie Experience thing that had a bunch of the shorts and news reels that were typically shown before a movie in 1938. A lot of really sweat swing stuff.

Anyway, I oughtn't even to be pretending wakefulness right now . . . Better start walking . . .

Last night I finally had a dream that didn't end in misfortune somehow--which has been the trend for some time, now. Last night I simply dreamt that Warner Brothers, in the 1930s, was trying to come up with an efficient method of manufacturing magma and using it in movies. I woke up feeling gloriously neutral.

I dunno what sparked the trend. Some of the dreams were fairly innocuous, like the one where I went back in time to try to save Jack Kerouac, and failed. The night before last's was pretty interesting, though. I dreamt I could levitate, which made me safe from the queen alien (from Aliens), who was living in a cave just west of my old neighbourhood. While she was making ready to attack, I visited her to waylay her with a philosophical discussion about the usefulness of having living, happy people around you. I was somewhat dismayed that I couldn't even provide an argument that satisfied myself. So the queen alien, with an army of wolves, managed to devastate the world. I hovered through the empty cities, finding the occasional furtive survivors.

My sister had managed to survive--I noticed her with a group of five other people in front of a church. In fact, I noticed groups of about five people in front of nearly all churches. And all of these people had very tan skin and pale blonde hair. The wolves completely ignored them, and they moved in these odd, meaningless gesticulations, speaking gibberish like Sims characters.

I got a lot done yesterday. And now I want a bagel . . .

I walked from downtown to Hillcrest (that's a long way, up a hill) a couple days ago just to get a Dresden Dolls CD I already had (but my old copy was disintegrating). I'm very glad I got it, but I have to say I think, in some ways, their "A" is for Accident is a better album.

And is the "Girl Anachronism" the very model of a modern Major General? I don't think it's a bad thing, really, if she is.

I seem to be entirely on schedule with Boschen and Nesuko this week. But I'm also working on the Nar'eth winter special, which I was delayed on a bit for one reason, and am now delayed because I'm puzzling out a technique to use on a certain thing . . . Jeez, but I'm sure I'm boring everyone with all the details.

I thinking I'm getting back to my old sleeping schedule, which makes me happy. And I've been looking everywhere for a copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious on DVD, and am about to concede defeat and admit I'll have to order it online.

Have I got anything else to say? Not at the moment but, then, I am very sleepy . . .

This really is good coffee.

Forgot to mention that, a few days ago, Tim simply gave me a set of Japanese weapons; a katana, wakizashi, and tanto. Just gave 'em to me. I mean, they're not Hatori Hanzo blades or anything, but he spent good money on them long ago and the fact that he gave them to me simply because he wanted more room in his closet was just plain extraordinary.

Then again, that boy has built himself quite an arsenal for some reason. He still has another katana with a beautiful snakeskin scabbard and ornate tsuba, a gladius, a used machete from India, an antique kukri, a modern military grade kukri, a modern military grade tanto (yes, they actually make those. Apparently some Navy Seals carry them), a crossbow, and, of course, the perfectly crafted reproduction of Glamdring. And I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

I'm certainly happy with what he gave me. He even gave me the display stand that goes with them. They're quite nifty looking. Next time I need to get the cellophane off something, or break down boxes, or fend off a rabid opossum, I know I can now do so in style.

There's a special election around here for a proposition called "X." I'm not sure what it's about, but by the bank to-day I noticed a sign that read, "Deputy Sheriff's Advise No on X." I wish I could possess a verb that way.

Drinking "aged Sumatra" coffee from Starbucks at the moment. It's something like five dollars an ounce. And it is pretty good. Everything's coming up roses the past coupla days. I got Boschen and Nesuko listed on Online Comics and got three hundred hits in one day. That's the most I've gotten in a day by about two hundred hits. It gives me a strange sweet feeling, overshadowed only slightly by my viewing of the beautiful Citizen Kane DVD Saturday night. I can't help but wonder if there's an omen here about how to receive love.

Anyway, I'm so damn happy I bought that DVD. It's gorgeous. I haven't even looked at the copious special features, among which there is the sordid story of Welles' fight with Hearst and a commentary by Roger Ebert.

I was at Barnes and Noble this morning where I almost bought several DVDs and ended up buying none. The amount of DVDs I've purchased lately weighed too heavily on my infrequently money-conscious conscience. I have the Hellboy Director's Cut, whose two disks of bonus features I have yet to view. I've still not had a chance to finish watching Wild at Heart. And there's still the Fritz Lang movie in the Film Noir collection. What a sweet vista.

And just why've I had so much money lately? Three reasons; Christmas, Boschen and Nesuko, and no car.

Everyone wonders why I'm putting off getting car insurance and getting the break lights fixed. Well, maybe it's not having to spend twenty dollars a week on gas and who knows how much money on the crap that the car takes me to. When I've a web comic to do here and am only able to get anywhere on foot, the money tends not to get spent.

But to-day I felt guilty. Almost bought the Errol Flynn Robin Hood. Almost bought the Criterion edition of The Lady Eve. Almost bought the cheepass seven dollar edition of His Girl Friday and Beat the Devil. But didn't.

Am I making anyone sick? I'm truly sorry . . .

Looking at some of the best comics on Online Comics is making me feel competitive. I was particularly impressed by this Reman Mythology. It's cosy pretty manga fun. I don't think I'd ever wanna make something that cosy, but it's nice to read and quite lovely.

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter is up. I worked on the damn thing from 10am Friday until . . . Looks like around 12:30am Saturday. I only stopped to eat twice, and I let nothing else distract me. And I had to do this because I was sick earlier in the week and I couldn't work on it. I don't think I'll get sick ever again, I just don't think it's my thing.

Maybe to-day I can finally get to work on the Nar'eth winter manga. Caitlin seems really excited about it and I feel guilty for neglecting it for so long. But I hereby blame all ills on illness.

I think I'd better go eat now.

This explains it.
Ug. I'm sick, in an irritating way. I can't concentrate to do anything and I can't sleep. I can't even seem to watch television. I couldn't even finish reading the article I linked to. I don't even think I can finish this post.

The five-shot grande Americano, Earl Gray tea, and smoothie with energy boost did not prevent me from falling asleep dreadfully early on Friday, thereby fucking up my sleeping schedule for days to come.

I'm having some Earl Gray tea right now and I have to say there's something decidedly rockin' about Earl Gray. In some inexplicable but unmistakable way it definitely rocks.

I've watched three of the four movies on the film noir collection I bought a while back. One movie was decent, one was quite wonderful, and one was wonderfully bad.

Strange Illusion, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer in 1945, was wonderfully bad. Some good visuals from a director more than competent with the camera couldn't save the picture from a laughably written story about a young man named Paul (Jimmy Lydon) who interacts stiffly and inexpressively with his world, occasionally wearing a stupid grin, while trying to convince everyone the man who's wooing his mother and every girl in the neighbourhood is in fact a dangerous serial killer.

My favourite scene was Paul discussing his worries with his girlfriend next to the pool one evening. He complains about how all the girls seem to like the evil man, but Paul's girlfriend casually says she's not as crazy about him as she was earlier. When Paul asks why, she explains that when she and the man were swimming earlier that day, he "swam underwater, got a stranglehold on me and started kissing me. I know it doesn't sound like very much but . . ."

No, no, not much at all. Why're you wasting our time, girl? We all know it's Man's god-given right. Sheesh.

However, the same director was in charge of the astonishing Detour. I learned from Roger Ebert's review that it was filmed in only six days, very, very cheap. It looks it. But there's never a moment not to like. And I don't even mean it was "fun bad". It was plain good. Real good. The story uncoils like a flaming rope from the ceiling. Or like ambrosia Pez from a dispenser. Events occur, each one fascinating, not merely for the fact that they're credible and inventive, but also because the underlying threads of the characters' have that pulse of genuine human souls.

Ugh, I want to feel wakeful. I have so much to do . . . I went to visit Marty on Friday, walked all the way to my old high school, but he wasn't there. I waited in his classroom long enough to write the whole script for the new Boschen and Nesuko chapter, which I really ought to've written two days earlier. And because I dropped off so early on Friday, and Saturday, I was plenty behind by the time I woke at 4am to-day. Yet before I was truly awake, I somehow drew one page and inked two (I drew page 89 on Saturday). I glanced at the clock and saw it'd only taken me three hours. I drew page 91, then broke for lunch to celebrate before coming back to ink it. I got back here at around 11 and not only inked the page but got a good start at colouring the three pages. So I'm just about caught up, meaning I can give languorous attention to page 92 to-morrow. Which is good. It'll be that much more perverted, I think.

Oh, shit man, I just like, totally fucking watched the sweet muthafuckin' Herbie trailer and . . . Holy shit man, what do I say, what I say but, oh hell Yeah!

Yeah! And that's the kinda lowdown muthafucker jammy kickin' "yeah!" that healthily affirms positivity in this kickass world of speed man, speed!

Hey, ya'll, lookie here . . . I done see this Herbie behind the corner, Jack. Past the red bricks built over the slippery fucking sewers of the eyeless assholes who say "no" man, "no"!

'Cause, Baby, they're out there, just ready to say fuckin' "no" to fuckin "yeah!" Speed yeah! But Herbie told us things, man . . . Herbie's got the Lyndsay Lohan now, and he's all right and all yeah!

The new chapter of Boschen and Nesuko is up. Some might call it mildly violent . . .

I'm incredibly sleepy. But it's been too long since I last posted . . .

A couple days ago, I broke with a very decent working pace on Boschen and Nesuko, went to the mall with Tim, and bought a lot of DVDs. Well, five. But two of them have two movies on--'twas a value pack of four film noirs, none of which I've seen, for only eight dollars. Of the four, one's directed by Fritz Lang and stars Edward G. Robinson, which I figured was worth the eight dollars in itself.

I also got another Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes DVD, and Jonathan Miller's 1966 version of Alice in Wonderland.

In spite of numerous flaws, I'd have to say that this is definitely my favourite film adaptation of Alice and Wonderland so far.

Looking at IMDb's page for it, you'll see that there's no shortage of information on the film so there's little I can add.

Filmed in beautiful, gloomy black and white, the film, as Jonathan Miller notes in the commentary, was definitely made more for adults than children (which led to a rather hilarious confusion with the BBC that resulted in Miller being labelled a paedophile). And yet many agree it's also the most faithful adaptation of Lewis Carroll's book--in fact, the cast and crew worked without a script; Miller simply typed up relevant pages from the novel the night before each scene was shot.

Aside from a general reverence for Carroll's words, thereby conveying their meaning significantly better than other adaptations, there are several other very striking features . . .

The movie feels very, very much like a dream. Miller speaks in the commentary with disdain for the standard Hollywood dream sequence with glossy sets and smoke machines. His dream movie goes with the idea that the strange things one experiences in a dream don't necessarily seem strange while you're experiencing them. Several reviewers disliked the way Alice often seemed entirely disengaged with her scenes, often speaking through telepathy, but I found it to be a very cool technique. And, on the subject of the girl herself, Miller made the inspired choice of searching for the antithesis of the usually cast perky, bright Alice, instead finding a serious, almost sullen, perpetually sombre child. Which was, in his view, more evocative of a Victorian little girl.

The rest of the cast is amazing, not only for their ability, but also for their names; John Gielgud as the Mock Turtle, Michael Gough as the March Hare, Michael Redgrave as the Caterpillar, Peter Sellers as the King of Hearts, and several other brilliant British actors. All of whom worked for scale, a mere five hundred pounds.

This leads to an aspect of the film that I simultaneously liked and disliked; there are no animal costumes. In the end, I think that's the best choice, but I very much rebel against the idea of Alice in Wonderland entirely (with the exception of the Cheshire Cat, who speaks with Alice's voice) without talking animals. I didn't like it at all until I thought about it a moment--in 1966, what would the best in make-up and special effects provide in that department? Awkward prosthetics that would partially obscure an actor's performance while inevitably looking like nothing more than effects.

My main problem with the movie is that it's too short, barely over an hour. One senses all the film Miller was forced by the BBC to cut. But it is more than worth checking out for its great delivery of Carroll's dialogue, dreamy sombre atmosphere, and shear stunning visual beauty.

As a side note, I was made again to reflect on how American McGee, in his attempt to make Alice "darker" for his video game, in fact made the story far more innocent. I have nothing against it, but I'm always bemused by the fans who think that Alice running around with a knife is some seriously fucked up shit. That violence which is the dominate feature of the pastiche is always safely fiction, while the logic and ideas of Carroll's original work are always quite real.

Mainly been full, tired, or drawing the past couple of days. I've been going over to my parents' house to eat, and it always seems like I eat way too much, especially with my sister's chocolate cake. And I come back here feeling like something difficult to roll up a hill. And there's almost nothing I can seriously contemplate doing and yet, somehow, I've managed to stay perfectly on schedule with my comic. Not a bad life at all, I guess.

And I'm glad I've been walking so much lately. That way I don't feel like a complete slug.

I failed to note Sherlock Holmes' birthday last week, but Neil Gaiman didn't. Fail to, that is. He linked to this article, which is basically good, except for the bit, ". . . for the idiot who won and lost the love of Irene Adler, 'the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet' and the only woman Holmes ever loved, referred to ever after as 'the woman.'" Which draws the boorishly simplistic yet sadly typical conclusion that Irene Adler was a sort of love interest for Holmes. Gods, Watson says right at the beginning of the story;

It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer–excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results.

Which is far more interesting! Don't we have enough romantic liaisons in the world of fiction? I mean, this is one of those things that reflect what's really interesting and great about Sherlock Holmes to me--his whole-hearted devotion to something that it is not instinctive for a human being to devote himself to.

Anyway, I should be drawing . . .

The cat named Victoria (to begin differently than last time), was persistently, furtively, leaping up onto various high places she could find. Including the kitchen counter, where she drank from my plate that I'd partially filled with water to help dislodge the melted cheese. From this I deduced that she was looking for a high place to drink water.

So I filled a small bowl and put it on the bathroom counter. Even I thought I may've been mistaken about this some time later--but then I saw her, twice, hopping up to drink from that very bowl. You know what I am? Insightful! Wull, I bet I sure am!

I used to be so innocent. No, that doesn't quite describe it. Whatever word is appropriate need also to include a sense of adventurousness. Yes, adventurousness! An openness to the great broad field of things! Open minded to all potential sources of grand stimuli, I was as a naive doe, bounding through the verdant fields of dreamy afternoons!

But something changed me, made me hard inside, and forget the simpler things, relegating my pursuits to seedy, cynical, dimly lit venues populated by bounty hunters, pimps, and the most disreputable of smugglers. All the while looking over my glass of Romulan ale and scoffing at the pretension, the papier-mache, if you will, of vice. While falling deeper and deeper into spirally nonsense.

Actually, it wasn't so dramatic as that. I merely watched a bad movie. Well, first I taped it, then I sat down with my coffee, got comfortable and watched. Watched all of it, even. In spite of the fact that it was sucking already a few minutes into it, I stayed open-minded. On many occasions, the first few minutes of a film gave me a completely false impression of the movie entire. So what if this one opened with a song performed by Barry Mannilow? Angel liked Barry Mannilow. Maybe things would still be okay.

But they weren't.

The movie was called Foul Play, and it starred Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, and Dudley Moore. It was made in 1978, a year before I was born, and made me decide that the period between 1975 and 1992 was a terrible period for comedy. Or maybe it's still ongoing, I dunno. But I detect an infatuation with a lazy-ass, Blake Edwards-ish, not-funny-comedy. Comedy that aims for only one level and is content to hit it only 20% of the time. Caddyshack was like that. And so was Foul Play.

But why go on? I never sleep comfortably without some food first, so I think I'll do that instead.

Victoria the Cat's in a rather tight ball of sleep on my bed at the moment. Nothing seems to be getting through to her.

I decided I'd spend to-day goofing off. I sense somehow that I need to do that now and then; set aside a day where I do nothing constructive, and merely have fun or something like it. I have a vague idea that it'll help me stay focused on other days.

So I walked to Starbucks and finished reading the astonishingly long translator's introduction for the Penguin edition of Plato's The Republic. The fellow felt it important for the reader to understand the environment in which Plato wrote this work. An idea I can readily appreciate, and I enjoyed the information about Greece from around 500 to 400 BC. It's rather terrible that Socrates was executed for heresy, and the fact that he was so killed in a society more purely democratic than our own reminded me of the rancorous religious folks in the United States. No wonder Plato had such a low view of democracy.

The coffee I got at Starbucks was terrible, so I walked to Barnes and Noble and got there a slightly better mocha. Lotta walking. The one thing my car was definitely useful for was for goofing off. In that respect I sorta regretted not having the use of it. It also sucks that I wasn't able to go to the Dresden Dolls concert on New Years Eve. That makes three Dresden Dolls concerts I've missed now for unforeseeable circumstances.

After I came back, I tried playing video games, but somehow my heart just wasn't in it. There wasn't much to do in Fallout 2 and I'm hideously sick of Morrowind. I tried to get back into Neverwinter Nights but that didn't even slightly work out.

I watched a bit of Return of the King, and just kind of gazed at it like it was in a museum, thinking about how, really, it's just perfectly beautiful. I wanna live in Minas Tirith.

I went over Boschen and Nesuko a bit, as I sometimes do, trying fruitlessly to read it as someone who didn't write it, and figure out which elements are working and which aren't. All I can really say is that I think I'm happy with some of the concepts and characterisations, but that I'm rather disappointed in my dialogue.

Let's see . . . I also watched bit of the Tori Amos DVD Welcome to Sunny Florida and read some of V for Vendetta. Alan Moore just never disappoints. It's like a hybrid of the Joker and Batman in 1984, only better.

I'm gonna go read some more of it now . . .

Get a load of this.

It's like Cass Timberlane incarnate. Ug.

Tried to watch my new copy of Wild At Heart this evening, but it turns out to be one of those DVDs that I have to watch with the volume up very high, or I can't hear any of the dialogue. Unfortunately, this meant Lula's screams were loud enough to probably wake all the neighbours.

SO I watched another episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation instead. I was pleasantly surprised the night before to find that the episode "The Enemy" was co-written by Farscape's David Kemper. And it felt David Kemper-ish, too. One of his lucid, complex, satisfyingly clockwork-like pieces.

I hope you enjoyed the new Boschen and Nesuko. I put three times as much work into it as the previous chapter, although it doesn't really show. I spent far too long on little details of the buildings in the first panel of page 73. I started that on Tuesday when the cat fell asleep on my lap. I didn't wanna wake her so I just kept working on it and working on it . . .

The weapon Nesuko's using, by the way, is a very deadly thing called a kukri. Tim has a couple of them, an antique one and a modern military one. Apparently the antique one is actually better weighted, but in any case, it's a very well weighted weapon so that it's possible for a child to wield it effectively. Tim collects a lot of swords and bladed weapons, but none of them give me a more hazardous feeling than the kukri when I hold, as its balance just seems to want to pull it straight into whatever object is nearby. Nesuko chopping off the fellow's arm isn't such a great a accomplishment. There's info on it here.

My nose is very cold. I was at my mother's house to-day and she keeps that place like a refrigerator . . .

Gods, this was a really bad time of day for me to post. There’re probably typos here I’m flatly blind to.

The new chapter of Boschen and Nesuko is up and it's only 12:30! Hah! That's so much better than I thought I'd do.

And that's what I did for New Years Eve.

Now I think I'll do some crazy shiznit like . . . watch a movie.