I feel like there's going to be a really nasty war with North Korea. Yesterday, Tim told me that North Korea had aimed one of its missiles at Hawaii and that the only reason it didn't get there was that it had mechanical failures over the Sea of Japan. I think Tim misread something, because I can't find any information on it online. Still, I can't imagine Kim Jong Il dying without doing something big and stupid. I'll be interested to see how the thinly stretched U.S. resources are managed when it does become an issue. Isn't it wonderful that we're spending billions of dollars a month to accomplish little or nothing? Sometimes I think George W. Bush is a spy sent in to destroy this country through bankruptcy.

I hope Japan doesn't get destroyed.

The past few nights, I've been watching Azumanga Daioh, which may be the most adorable television series ever created. Of all the anime I've seen, this is the series that reminds me most of Peanuts, maybe because the manga it's extremely faithful to is closer to the traditional newspaper comic strip. Well, and the humour's similar, only much dryer. Dry and cute--that's Azumanga Daioh.








Yep, I finally got a video player with a screen capture function. May whatever gods you worship have mercy on your soul.

(In Japan, one brings their own handkerchief to dry their hands in public restrooms).

It's a decent series. And very well apportioned--one episode a night seems to completely satisfy me.

Thursday's not so bad on this strange day schedule. But it still meant I had to be out, and there was really nothing for me to do out in the world, and I really just wanted to be back here, working on storyboards for Boschen and Nesuko. I mainly just drove around, but I also had an enormous spanakopeta for lunch at University Town Centre. A spanakopeta, if you don't know, is a Greek spinach pie.

Eventually I got back, did those storyboards, and watched Sunset Boulevard before going to Tim's and playing Oblivion, in which I had a decidedly Lovecraftian experience.

I was in the town of Chorral when a shopkeeper told me about her daughter, Dar-ma, who had not returned from a town to the south called Hackdirt, where she'd gone to acquire some trade goods. The shopkeeper begged me to go looking for her daughter.

Outside Chorral's south gate, I asked an Altmer about Hackdirt. He told me there was some kind of very bad trouble there many years ago, but he wouldn't say what exactly; maybe he didn't know. The trouble was bad enough that the Legion was called in. He said most people believed the town didn't exist anymore. It exists, he said, but it's not a nice place, certainly not a place you want to be after dark.

The shopkeeper had seemed naïve enough that I believed she didn't know any better when she sent her daughter to Hackdirt. I started going south after feeding off a boy I found sleeping in the stables--my character's a vampire, by the way. A tall Nord woman I named Ilsa. And, yes, I was thinking of Ingrid Bergman.

It was around midnight when I found Hackdirt. It was fairly enshrouded by trees, so I didn't notice it until I was confronted by blackened, burnt out husks of buildings. Only in the centre of town were there buildings that looked as they were in working order, and there weren't many--an inn, a warehouse, a couple houses, and a chapel. I found Dar-ma's horse in one of the ruined buildings behind the warehouse. So I broke into the warehouse but didn't find anything unusual, aside from the fact that it was somewhat disarrayed, with overturned furniture, cupboards, crates, and sacks. I was to find this sort of thing in every building I entered in Hackdirt, including the inn, where I went next, and which I found strangely deserted. In one of the rooms upstairs, I found Dar-ma's diary in which she mentioned a creepy innkeeper who gave her dirty looks.

I was beginning to think the town had been spontaneously abandoned a few hours earlier. But I soon after found the town's entire small population gathered inside the chapel. I learned it was something they did every midnight as part of a ritual they referred to as "the Gathering." Most of the people I talked to angrily told me to leave immediately. The innkeeper was there, a grey-haired woman, who told me in irritated tones that she didn't remember meeting anyone matching Dar-ma's description, and that the horse was her own and she'd had it for years.

Eventually one man was willing to speak to me, first leading me away from the crowd and to his house. He told me the townsfolk worshipped the Deep Ones, and that they gathered each night to summon them. Dar-ma, he told me, was being held in some caverns under the town, which could be reached via trapdoors found in nearly every building.

I found Dar-ma in the caverns, and freed her after killing a few men who came at me with clubs. I never saw any Deep Ones, but it was a pretty damned cool experience anyway. I keep meaning to go back to Hackdirt and really search.

I feel I must point out these nude photos of The Dresden Dolls. They're work safe, if you work someplace that let's you look at porn.

Damn, sleeping at night is hard. I managed it only fitfully. I think I got five hours, broken up quite a bit before I admitted defeat at around 4am.

I didn't end up doing much besides vegetate yesterday. I watched the last five episodes of School Rumble's first season. The last episode was really strange, though I think maybe I'd have preferred it be a smidgeon stranger. It was bizarre, yet made a lot of sense at the same time.

I also read an article Sonya sent me a link to. It explores the similarities between Taxi Driver and Notes from the Underground, and was quite interesting.

I'm glad July 4 is over. Though I think it was the July 4 I was in my life most insensible of. I watched anime in my dark, closed room and fell asleep as the distant thumps of fireworks began their dirge.

To-day I need to work on the new Boschen and Nesuko script, so I'm unhappy at my lack of sleep. I always have a harder time telling if I'm writing well this way.

I suppose I'll just suckle the coffee teat a little harder . . . (that's coffee, not Coffy, though I wouldn't mind the latter either).

I was up and at them at 7:30am this morning. So yesterday apparently accomplished that much (though it rendered "them" warier).

Just as I'd anticipated, I had no real sleep on Sunday night. I kind of relaxed awhile, but it never got serious. At around 4:30am, I decided to soak in the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, a few beautifully shot moments of waiting at a train station, and then I left to wait at the trolley station.

Apparently I was rather fortunate to choose July 3, as trials rarely begin the day before a holiday. So I was able to leave at 11am, and I don't have to go back.

Being out and about on so little sleep and on foot makes the world seem curiously big. I got out at Grossmont Centre on the return trip to eat tofu and eggplant in garlic sauce. There was a creepy business-suit guy sitting across from me on the trolley. He chewed altoids and asked me about La Mesa and El Cajon like he'd just purchased both cities.

In the Juror's lounge, I'd finished reading Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground, which was a good book, but reading so much Dostoyevsky in such a short period had left me feeling somewhat wild and giddy. I find I'm encountering the concept of alien personalities spontaneously forming in a society often these days. Notes from the Underground is told from the perspective of one seemingly at odds with everyone just by virtue of his nature, and he finds it a painful situation. It was interesting because the narrator was a flawed personality whom I couldn't nevertheless fail to recognise as being much smarter than me. But his was definitely an alien's dilemma, and I was reminded of Taxi Driver and of one of the new anime series I've been watching lately, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which is about a teenage girl who's convinced she's an alien because everyone around her is very dull. In what is both the first and second episode (the episodes are arranged peculiarly, seemingly jumbled entirely--the first episode is actually the eleventh, the second the first), Haruhi and the series' male lead, Kyon, discuss the possibility that all significant advancement in our world has been achieved by a few very unusual individuals who are possibly aliens.

Anyway. Sorry, Lou Dobbs--you cannot stop the illegal alien within.

I feel a bit dim to-day. I guess that's to be expected with the abrupt schedule flip. I may just vegetate to-day . . .

Boy, I'm sure not looking forward to to-morrow. I have jury duty, the reporting time for which is 7:45am. I went to bed at 8am this morning, and woke up at 3:30pm. I don't know how this is gonna go. I suppose I'll try to sleep at 11pm to-night, but I don't for a moment think I'm going to be able to pull it off. Likely I'll just be sitting in the jury lounge, staring blankly at a page in my book, probably missing the call for me completely.

I find myself wondering if a brief incarceration would really be worse. At least I can sleep in a cell.

On the other hand, this would be a good time to flip my sleeping schedule for the upcoming Comic-Con. I'm sure looking forward to that thing. I just hope I'm not assigned to the trial of the century to-morrow, thereby being forced to sit in a courtroom just blocks from the convention centre.

The cruelty of the circumstance would be cemented by the fact that my sister is actually getting paid 250 dollars a day to hand out fliers at the Comic-Con. I keep telling her she oughta dress as Black Canary.

Well, I guess I'll go to Tim's now and play Oblivion for a while. My character in that game recently became a vampire, a condition improved from the previous game. Now when you drink someone's blood, your character actually leans over and puts mouth to neck. And sunlight reddens your skin whilst smoke emanates from you.

Unfortunately, sunlight doesn't seem to affect NPC vampires the same way, as the one who made my character a vampire chased me out of his tomb, across mountains and fields, all the way to the town of Chorral, in broad daylight.

One thing I forgot to say about Superman Returns the other day;

Perry White has this line, you've probably seen it in the trailers, about Superman; "Does he still stand for truth, justice--all that stuff?"

Hmm, what's missing from that statement? Personally, I entirely understand where Singer's coming from. I can't wait for someone on Fox News to bitch about it; "What, is Superman too good for the American way, now?" Just so I can then hear the silent but emphatic "yes" coming from the whole world.

YouTube is deadly addictive. I spent hours this morning watching Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, The Dresden Dolls, and Mazzy Star.

I loved this Mazzy Star appearance on Conan O'Brian. Conan looks like he's going to destroy poor little Hope Sandoval with his handshake.

The new Boschen and Nesuko's up. I had the bright idea of colouring the last three pages to-day. Well, it wasn't so much an idea as an inability to continue working this morning without sleep, due to what was becoming a burning sensation in my eyes and brain.

I just paid eight dollars to walk into a dark room and have Bryan Singer hump my leg for three hours while dressed as Superman. And it was romantic.

Maybe I shouldn't have seen it on just three hours of sleep (thanks, Thursday). It wasn't a bad movie. Every shot looked nice, and there was really nothing wrong with them. Except for the fact that they were nearly all roughly 2.8 seconds too long. Yeah, I could almost measure it precisely. It felt like the couple seconds where, in the editing room, Bryan Singer said, "God, I can't believe I'm directing a Superman movie--okay, cut there."

Or maybe it's just that he's like me, and he's tired of all the spectacle movies these days with hyper-editing that doesn't let you get your bearings. If that's the case, I think he slightly overestimates the poignancy of his silences. But he was clearly in love with making this movie, and that's gotta make you smile. To see somebody so gosh darn in love that way.

I didn't have many significant quibbles;

Every character felt like they had too few lines, and when they had lines, 1/3 of them were clichés. There's actually a hospital scene where someone, at the bedside of a comatose loved one, says, "I don't know if you can hear me." And, you know, I guess it takes a certain amount of guts to put a scene like that in a movie nowadays.

Superman's costume looks abnormally dorky. I couldn't help thinking of Stephen Colbert last night, commenting on how Superman's waistline has gotten progressively lower over the years. This makes for trunks that look like they shrunk in the wash, but maybe I just watch too many old movies.

At one point Lois gets smacked in the head with a metal door with enough force to give Gallagher an erection, but not only does Lois survive, and is merely knocked out, but she comes out of it completely un-bruised. I'm guessing there was a secret clause in Kate Bosworth's contract prohibiting facial disfiguration of any kind.

Speaking of Kate Bosworth, as a performer, no, she's not one tenth the Lois Margot Kidder was. But the kids really go for the glamour of dull these days, so maybe I'm missing out. As a looker, I did kind of dig Bosworth. She has kind of a 40s pinup quality, that's appropriate with the nice, but subtle retro look of the sets and costumes. Personally, I think these things are just put in movies until society remembers that waistcoats are pretty cool, no matter what period you live in. The movie could've used some fedoras, though.

Routh did fine as both Superman and Clark for what few lines he had. It seemed like most of the time he was smiling and nodding. He does a couple things near the end I didn't think Superman would really do, but that's not Routh's fault. He sneaks out of a hospital at one point and I couldn't help thinking, "What a dick!"

Of course Kevin Spacey was great, and I agree with Robyn in that Parker Posey would've made a better Lois.

The best, most important scene in the film, I felt, was when Superman and Lois go flying together. It's at that point that everything about the movie made sense, from the oddly lingering shots, to John Ottman's subdued score in which the John Williams theme sits like the recording of a dead man's voice in the background of a gentle song. Because right there the movie becomes the sensuous romance thing it was straining against its red shorts all movie to become. But where the power in the Richard Donner film lay between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, here it's all between Bryan Singer and his cinematographer.

By 5am this morning, I couldn't believe how much I'd fit into my waking hours. Not only did I pencil two Boschen and Nesuko pages, and ink three, I also fooled around with YouTube, watched an episode of School Rumble, an episode of another anime series called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (which, two episodes in, has been rather impressive), and had gone for a longish walk.

There's this ravine next to the house with a couple lake-like bodies of water, lots of green trees with drooping branches, and a general, almost bog like atmosphere of insects and mud, crazily mixed with dry swathes of dirt, and overrun with rabbits. I take a route through there regularly when I walk to Starbucks or Tacos mi Pueblo or the bank. The area's usually swarming with rabbits--they're almost like a disrupted anthill. But last night there was also a peculiar abundance of alligator lizards and at one point, I saw a crayfish walking across the dirt road. It was a tiny dark shape in the corner of my eye, moving in slow motion on its skinny legs before I realised what it was. I guess he was crossing from one lake to another, or maybe some kid left him there. He froze when he saw me, and I knelt to stare at him awhile.

Come to think of it, is it normal for a crayfish to decide he wants to cross a dry dusty road? It seems damn peculiar to me.

Ever get the feeling there's a little phantom or something working against you? I guess it began a couple days ago when I was eating breakfast and the power went out for maybe ten seconds. I went outside and checked the fuses, to see if some kid had been messing with them. I didn't see anyone.

Later, as I was colouring a Boschen and Nesuko page, Paint Shop Pro, the programme I use to colour, closed. For no apparent reason--it didn't ask me if I wanted to save my work, either, as usually happens when any programme closes. It was just gone. I'd never had that happen to me before.

I was getting this strange fatigue that made it extremely hard to concentrate. I wasn't tired, I was just sort of smooshed. And after that came one of the really bad headaches. Monday it kept me awake for hours after I normally fall asleep. It was like sleep deprivation torture--I was absolutely tired enough to sleep, but my brain wouldn't have it.

So I've begun to wonder if all these problems could possibly be related. Maybe there's some kind of radiation anomaly around here? I don't know. I'm about a page and a half behind on Boschen and Nesuko, partly because of these goings-on. The past couple nights I go until I feel like I can't trust my pen to draw straight, and then I've been watching an anime series Tim gave me twenty-something episodes of called School Rumble.

It's a decent anime. I found the animation and designs in the first couple episodes to be adequate, and the characterisations and writing to be good enough to keep watching. It gets better as it goes. It's extremely cute, though it sometimes makes me look back longingly at Maison Ikkoku, which managed a lot of the same teen-romance humour without having to rely on the characters being unrealistically stupid. In fact, I've noticed School Rumble directly lifting a bit or two from Maison Ikkoku, including a scene where the characters are all sleeping on the floor, and the male characters are fervently trying to "accidentally" fall asleep next to their respective crushes.

I'm starting to think certain kinds of scenes have just become traditional in anime and manga, though. Like the bath house scene where the guys are constantly trying to peek at the girls' side (my favourite's still the Ranma 1/2 where lecherous little old man Happosai engages in full-blown martial arts combat in a bath house with Ranma, a boy who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water, and back into a boy when splashed with warm water), or the girl nervously cooking for a boy scene.

One of the things I've liked most about School Rumble so far is actually the subtitles. It's a fan-sub, in this case by a group called Wannabe Fansubs, which tend to be far superior to the subtitles on DVDs, and in this case the translators go several extra miles by providing footnotes for cultural references and to explain untranslatable jokes. For example, in one scene where the characters are at a beach, Nara, a young man who has a crush on a girl named Tenma, has his back turned when Tenma cries out, "Bathing suit lost!" In English, this sounds like peculiar grammar, but the footnote helpfully explains that it's very common in Japanese for the subject to be omitted altogether--in fact, it would have been grammatically peculiar for Tenma to include it. So it's perfectly natural for Nara to think Tenma's lost her suit, and the resulting punch-line of him finding the bathing suit of Harima, another male student, instead, makes sense.

I think people tend to underestimate the role a translator plays. For commercial anime, where the studios prefer there be little or no footnotes, the task of the translators requires creativity equivalent to writing a whole new script, and then some. That's one of the reasons Princess Mononoke's English dub version is to this day the only anime English dub I can tolerate--because Neil Gaiman wrote a great script for it. It's too bad a screenwriter of similar calibre wasn't brought in for Howl's Moving Castle, the English dub of which I really want to like for the presence of Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, and Jean Simmons. As it is, Jean Simmons' performance is still outstanding.

To-day's Robyn's birthday. We pause on this day to remember the ink demons of the Galapagos Islands, who were torn from their subterranean abodes by the amazing, 70 foot "Spruce Robyn", Howard Hughes' secret machine of war. The tiny demon souls were placed in a simple, rock bowl known as a "mortar" and crushed into a powder with what is known as a "pestle".

Released into the winds on an auspicious day in northern Russia, the resulting dust mingled with transatlantic gales before spontaneously reforming in the White House on one June 27th, at daybreak.

Most minds have been cleansed of those memories relating to the brief reign of America by Casper the Dead Baby King, who was vanquished by Robyn within hours of her birth with the help of Nightcrawler and Henry Fonda.

One of America's greatest heroines, nicknamed "Robyn Ma" after she used her mighty telekinetic powers to overturn the twin 80 exalitre jugs of Massachusetts to irrigate the secret 1980s dustbowl, she nonetheless to-day lives anonymously amongst the people she saved, due to the cruel mass-mind-wiping perpetrated by Robo-Tommy Lee Jones.

But the heroine remains yet a heroine, for while brains may wash clean as Etch A-Sketch in the waves of God's boring shore, the heart is a thing of clogable arteries, wherein the blood and the spirit may remain steadfast. Such a heart is not Robyn's, no. Her heart burns independently with the pure fire of ghosts! The echoing voices of tropical demon souls resound back to us as the song of hope as Robyn handles books that some people turn in way past due, and get angry at her for some reason.

The perplexing riddle of this world is a mug of boiling liquid cellophane, pondered by the smiling Buddhas eternally sitting on Robyn's shoulders. Keep your vigil, Buddha Fairies, and fight on, Robyn Ma! Fight on!

Last night, as I was trying to decide what movie to watch, I saw that Sonya had expressed random approval of Jeremy Brett. So in honour of her, I guess, because she'd mentioned recently enjoying a production of An Ideal Husband, I decided to watch an old BBC production I had on DVD that I hadn't managed to watch yet.

And the first thing on screen--a complete surprise to me--was a very young Jeremy Brett playing Arthur Goring. Life's weird sometimes.

He did a perfect job, too. And the production was nice, being a bare-bones adaptation with very good actors. The only other filmed version of the play I've seen was the extensively monkeyed-with Oliver Parker version. As much as I like most of the actors in that movie, nearly every character was better cast in the production with Jeremy Brett. It was nice to see Lady Chiltern and Mrs. Cheveley being played by women who looked to be in their early fifties. It's so rare now to see women who really look that age to be cast in leading, dramatic roles. It was very refreshing. And the fellow playing Robert Chiltern had the proper self-assurance at the beginning to be plucked down from later. A good production all around.

I haven't too much else to say to-day, so I'll leave you with some videos I've been wanting to share for a long time, and now my recent discover of YouTube has finally afforded me the opportunity:

If there be any part of your soul what can be called geek, your heart will thrill at the sight of the famous Daicon videos.

In the first chapter, our child heroine's goal of legume planting cannot be foiled by U.S.S. Enterprise or Gamera.

And in the second chapter, our heroine, grown up and sexy, must face Darth Vader and snub Spider-Man.

Keep in mind those videos were made by GAINAX before they were even a real studio--they were just a few Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans.

Oh, to be a Japanese geek in the 80s.

Lastly, you ought also to watch the ultimate Azumanga Daio Lord of the Rings parody.

I rather unexpectedly spent forty dollars yesterday. I bought a new pencil sharpener and a copy of Superman: The Movie.

Why don't we have movies called "*: The Movie" anymore? Why not The Da Vinci Code: The Movie, Munich: The Movie, or An Inconvenient Truth: The Movie?

I have to admit to being somewhat under-whelmed by Superman: The Movie. I guess since most articles about Superman Returns go out of their way to mention that the Richard Donner original is the ultimate comic-book movie, not to be besmirched in even a sidelong manner, my expectations were raised. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, so it was practically like seeing it for the first time.

And don't get me wrong; I liked it okay, and all. I liked the John Ford-ish cinematography in the Smallville sequences, though teen Clark Kent bore not the smallest resemblance to Christopher Reeve. I was interested to see that Jackie Cooper as Perry White had grown from being an excruciatingly annoying child actor to a barely noticeable bit player. I guess that's progress.

I enjoyed the crystalline art direction of Krypton, and I was charmed by how extraordinarily dated the movie looked. Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder were good, and I revelled in how uncomfortable I felt during Lois's voice over poem while she's flying with Superman (I'm just that kind of masochist sometimes). The imperilled helicopter sequence was still fairly intense. But I have to admit I'm really looking forward to the better special effects of the new movie.

I guess my only real problem with Superman: The Movie is Superman turning back time by reversing the rotation of Earth. It's not that I mind bad science in a movie. That's fine, if it suits the story. But it too obviously begs the question; why doesn't he go back and save his father? Or simply go back far enough to stop Lex Luthor before he can get started with his plot?

Well, it was a decent evening, anyway. And it was only ten dollars. The big purchase was the thirty dollar pencil sharpener, but damn I needed one. Ever since my last electric pencil sharpener jammed, and I was unable to fix it despite taking it completely apart, I've been having to make do with a pokey little purple thing I must have gotten with a little stationary set in third grade. I couldn't even find another like it at Target; all pencil sharpeners are electric now.

A good pencil sharpener makes me happy. I was getting frustrated with the little one, which didn't so much make a point out of the pencil tip as it made a tiny mallet. It's kind of funny I put so much energy into it when all anyone ever sees is the inked page. We'll, here's the pencil version of a page;



I've been using these Design 3800 pencils. I start with a 2H, and then do details with 6B. I still don't know what those numbers and letters mean, but the 6B is a lot darker, and so I can make the mess you see above. As you can see by comparing the two images above, I often even make last minute dialogue changes between pencilling and inking. I even repositioned a word balloon in this case.

I've noticed a lot of web comics, whose pages are done only in pencil, seem to make a point of allowing the work lines to show through. Some people seem to really like "shown work" in the finished art, which has always sort of perplexed me. I mean, if the drawing wasn't drawn in the first place, how else could it have come into existence? And if you need to see the process of creation as you read, doesn't that mean you're less interested in the story than you ought to be? I don't know. I don't want to cast aspersions on people who dig that sort of thing, really. I'm just saying I don't get it.

Anyway, this entry's gone on long enough, I guess . . .

Buffoons of the news media can't get over the fact that the Dixie Chicks don't like Bush (never mind that their criticisms aren't very remarkable). Bruce Springsteen's talked smack about El Presidente. And Neil Young's released a whole album about this administration's foul policies.

But it wasn't on until to-day. And you know why?

'Cause now Burt Bacharach is pissed.

If I were Bush--a version of Bush who could use a computer, anyway--I'd think this would have to put me over the edge. It'd be like seeing Santa Claus go on television and saying that not only was I a bad boy this year, I was forever irredeemable in his eyes. Certainly Bush deserves that and worse.

My sister's put me in charge of her fish while she's on vacation. It's a beta called Dharma, and I'm not sure I'm taking care of her properly. I give her a pinch of food twice a day, and she seems happy enough. But her tiny life seems so precarious somehow . . .

I haven't much else to say right now, so here's video of Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit".

The new Boschen and Nesuko chapter's online. Early, I guess, since I had to get up at 11am to-day. It's amazing what one can do with merely four hours of sleep, oatmeal, and coffee.

The light bulb in the ceiling fan burned out on Monday. So I put in this new curly one that looks like a bee-stung albino pig's tail that's supposed to last for years. It burned out yesterday.

Light bulbs are constantly burning out here. Maybe I'm putting them in wrong. It doesn't bother me too much. All I really need is the desk lamp. I don't usually have the lights on at all when I colour.

I've been quite on the ball with Boschen and Nesuko this fortnight, which is nice after the last one, where I got a bit behind at one point. Actually, my whole focus is a lot sharper with this chapter, I think, in part, because it's a lot more challenging for me.

But I've been getting done as early as 12:30am or so (I usually get started at around 4:30pm). I'd probably get done even earlier if I didn't have The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on from 11pm to midnight. Mostly I've just been listening to music for this chapter; Kate Bush, Ani DiFranco, Elvis Costello, The Dresden Dolls, Charlie Parker, Nine Inch Nails . . .

Yesterday I had Celebrity Poker on until Jennifer Tilly lost, at which point there wasn't much point, as I didn't care about Fred Savage and Ida What's-Her-Name. Tilly was the draw, being a slightly drink, slightly underdressed talkative lady; "My boobs are hanging out! I'm cute . . . I need another drink." And the poker expert commentator; "Jennifer's using a technique to work the crowd, to get some energy going."

I guess it's Thursday, so I have to go. I really want to go back to sleep; I only got four hours. But drat, I can't . . .

I very much want to see Terry Gilliam's Tideland (check out its extremely impressive website). I can't seem to find U.S. release dates, though. Have the suits found a new way to fuck Gilliam over?

Charting movies I've viewed over the past couple weeks is a decent way of mapping my state of mind. I watched The Hidden Fortress for the second time since I got it on DVD a while ago, and for a while I badly wanted to just watch other movies like it, except I couldn't think of any. That has gotta be one of the most persistently engrossing movies in history.

So I then watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, figuring it was another movie about a ragtag group of adventurers on a dangerous journey through strange lands. But my mind kept wandering. It wasn't quite the same, as much as I do love that movie.

Notorious worked much better. There's something rich about every moment in that movie. Every line a character says has a kind of lush depth that seems to get better every time I watch.

Then, a few nights ago, I caught some footage on MSNBC of men in Central Park stopping female passers-by in broad daylight, tearing off their clothes and fondling them, while a large visible group of bystanders did nothing. These bystanders were made up of ordinary-looking men and women of various ages. The reporter's voice-over had that casual, another-normal-piece-of-news tone to it. But it had quite an effect on me. I kept thinking about how this was a normal sampling of humanity, that most of the people I see walking around downtown, who I have faith in to have a certain underlying degree of concern for their fellow man, have absolutely none, and are merely behaving as they do because it's proscribed by the invisible, omnipresent public eye.

And, yeah, call me naïve, but I do tend to settle into a state of mind that regards these people as wanting nothing more than to be happy without harming others. Maybe I have to think that way so a note of anger doesn't creep into my voice when I interact with them. That MSNBC video really starkly brought home to me that the vast majority of people out there really don't have a mind of their own.

I thought about the characters Tahei and Matakishi in The Hidden Fortress. They're small minded people, their focus entirely on hiding from danger and scraping whatever riches they can from the dirt. It's made clear they wouldn't hesitate to rape Princess Yuki if they had the chance. And yet much of the movie is told from their point of view. I guess Kurosawa knew what "common" really meant, and that nobility really is rare.

Anyway, so then I watched Taxi Driver.

I was finally able to see The Proposition yesterday. I'm glad I did. As Caitlin noted, it's a good movie to see on a big screen, as it's filled with beautiful wide shots of Australian wilderness. Both beautiful and desolate.

I was reminded a bit of Ran, as the movie portrayed humanity as doomed to an existence steeped in violent and unjust death. I was also reminded a bit of the War on Terror, and I almost wonder if it was in Nick Cave's mind as he wrote the screenplay. Because the movie's about a brutally violent family, who commit terrible crimes for little or no reason, and set against them is a "civilisation" composed of corruption, innocent viciousness, and idealism, in some cases misguided, in others dashed.

Guy Pierce in the movie reminded me of a quieter, more sombre version of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name from the Sergio Leone trilogy. And by the end, the "outsider" character seems an acute part of a statement about the relevance of justice without society or family. The movie does an excellent job of illuminating this. Anyway, I highly recommend it.

I didn't think I was going to be able to see it in a theatre. A couple weeks ago, it'd been playing only at the Ken, which only has one screen. I got caught up in Boschen and Nesuko and hanging out with Trisa, and by the time I was done, the movie'd gone. But Thursday I was surprised to find it opening Friday at two mainstream cinemas; at Mission Valley Mall and Horton Plaza Mall. Both cinemas normally show safely homogenised fare. The guy I bought my ticket from didn't even understand me at first when I said "One for The Proposition." I was one of only six people in the theatre. Another of us, a large black man with a cane and a timid voice, walked up to me after I'd sat down and asked, "What's this movie about?"

I tried to explain as best I could, "Uh, it's an Australian Western . . . Written by Nick Cave--a talented musician . . ." Because the guy seemed so meek, I felt compelled to add, "It's extremely violent. From what I hear."

"But it's in English?" he asked.

"Er, yeah; it's Australian."

I'm not sure the guy really needed a cane, though, because he literally ran out of the theatre at one point during the movie. He ran back in a few minutes later, though, so I guess he just went to use the restroom and was in fact really digging the movie.

I love Crooks and Liars.

This morning on that site, I saw this clip of Jack Cafferty on CNN's The Situation Room calling Senator Arlen Specter a "gutless Republican worm" for passing the buck on the NSA programme to Dick Cheney of all people instead of exercising the requisite congressional oversight.

Then, later to-day, Crooks and Liars had this clip of Arlen Specter appearing on The Situation Room after to-day writing an angry letter to Cheney in which he--he, Republican chairmen--refers to the NSA programme as having broken the law. At the end, Specter praised The Situation Room.

It's nice to see that Fox News isn't the only influential news channel in D.C. Now if they can just corral Lou Dobbs . . .

It seems Arlen Specter isn't a gutless Republican worm. Just a selfish one, as the impetus here seems to be that Cheney made the deal with Orrin Hatch and not Specter.

The floor of the Senate was a sickening spectacle to-day as the Constitutional Amendment designed to discredit same-sex marriage was discussed. Washington State's Democratic Senator, Patty Murray, railed at the Republicans for concentrating on a divisive issue when most Americans are more concerned with healthcare, security, and the war.

Then Republican Senator John Cornyn got up to say the Democrats were ridiculous for suggesting that the sanctity of marriage was less relevant than healthcare. But the bastard sounded remarkably unsure of himself, sweated like a pig, and did not once mention the war.

Of course, the elephant in the room only we at home can see, that the Republicans were advancing a campaign of bigotry under the sickly guise of championing civil rights, was not mentioned. But, then, I didn't watch the whole thing.

Over at the Boschen and Nesuko listing at Online Comics, the folks behind Yamara wished me a happy Devil Day. I was quite pleased to have Nesuko's name associated with it, especially as I'm quite fond of many things popularly associated with Satan these days.

So happy Devil Day, everyone.

Guy Goma, desperate for work, showed up at a BBC television station, was ushered into the wrong room, and found himself to be employed after all.

Victoria the cat, on my lap now, has been hanging out with me almost constantly the past couple days. Maybe she knows that she, my aunt, and the other cats are all moving out in a couple weeks. Maybe it's just been attractively cheerful in my room, what with all the NPR and crooks and liars playing in here while I draw.

Have you ever seen those town hall meetings Bush does, where all the people asking questions are pre-screened to ensure a pure pro-neocon crowd? The questioner often lists a bunch of things he or she feels Bush did right, and finishes with, "So my question is; what can I do for you?" Like worshipers of a bloodthirsty god, offering him more blood.

I imagine myself sneaking in and saying, "Mr. President, young American men and women are being killed, horrifically dismembered, and are losing their minds for your greed while you vacation on your ranch. American lives are quickly sinking into the ravages of nature and an economy designed to reward a rich few while you go jogging, to pray in lieu of planning, and give us a shit eating grin at the end of the day. You support a culture of bigotry as a political ploy, again to satisfy your own greed. So, my question, Mr. President, is; what can I do for you?"

On the freeway to-day, I saw a handmade sign nailed to a construction sign that read simply, "IMPEACH."

It seems obvious. It's seemed obvious for a long time, for reasons beyond the fact that he's irrefutably committed a felony with the NSA programme. Democratic Congress members are constantly asked by pundits and journalists, "If the Democrats win back Congress, will there be impeachment proceedings?" And the Democrats are always very careful not to say exactly. A sure sign that there will be. If the Democrats win back Congress. If there's no more voter fraud. Or if the large portion of the Heartland who are vicious, cloistered bigots, don't come out in droves again.

How wonderful is it that the optimistic view of the elections is that massive voter fraud secured things for Bush.

In an interview with Al Gore on NPR the other day, the interviewer quoted a scientist who said that, if we do nothing before the global warming tipping point ten years from now, the human populace in a hundred years shall be comprised of a few couples living at the poles. I have a feeling one family will be named Bush, another named Bin Laden, and they'll all believe in the "sanctity of marriage."

Well, those were some interesting weeks.

Trisa came to town to visit and we hung out a bit. We saw Art School Confidential which, as Robyn had promised, turned out to be a very good movie. Pitch perfect art school caricatures. And I even liked the strangler subplot Ebert and Roeper didn't like.

I took to listening to NPR while drawing. I discovered Alix Spiegel has the sexiest voice in radio. NPR also has an interesting interview with Al Gore.

You can watch several Mystery Science Theatre 3000 shorts on Google. Al Gore's a noted MST3K fan and he's a Senior Advisor for Google. Coincidence? You go right on thinking that, Darling.

New Boschen and Nesuko. Aninei fans have something to look forward to. Are there Aninei fans? Anyway, enjoy.

Never underestimate the rejuvenating powers of the spaghetti and orange juice combo.

Here's some sloppy Lord of the Rings (movie version) fan-fiction;

. . .

The beauty of Minas Tirith and its dark clad citizenry had not failed to please Arwen each morning in the first two years after Sauron's defeat and her wedding to Aragorn, king in a new era of Men. Simply observing the city's beauty from her balcony was an urgent undertaking each morning. She had never thought it was because she need prove to herself the wisdom in her youthful decision; to never see the White Shores, to not journey west with her father and her people. To never see them again. To see instead this city. To wake up to it, each morning.

This city, whose white walls reflected unfiltered, implacable sunlight. Fiercely, irritatingly beating her eyes with a bright, strange blankness.

"You're up." Aragorn, behind her, "I didn't hear you. The servants have prepared breakfast for us both. I suggest we eat now, as I have several meetings this morning."

His voice was perfunctory, distracted. Instead of his warm arms around her, his greeting was only followed by the sound of shuffling papers--the pile left on the table from last night. But it may as well have been the same pile for years.

Aragorn is not a bad man, Arwen said to herself. In fact, he's a great man, as kings go. Probably the best king Middle Earth as seen . . .

"I can't stay with you," she said.

The papers stopped and a silence, sour with surprised calculation, filled the room.

"I know this past year our relationship has been . . . distant," he began slowly, "but . . . Arwen . . ."

"I haven't gotten pregnant."

There was a pause, and she let him try to guess the precise purpose the naked statement here served.

"I--know. I'm sorry--I know you wanted a child. The doctors say . . . some women--"

Arwen silenced him by turning around, catching his breath with her motion, and he stood there with his mouth working, fishlike. She wanted to inject words into him surgically, to quickly and finally kill this thing so that she could start moving on.

So she said, "My father had convinced me to take the ship west shortly before the war ended. But I had a vision that turned my step back to you--a vision of our unborn child, Aragorn.

"My father had shown me that, though I love you, I also love him, and my people. It did seem foolish for me to abandon them all forever, for you, whose lifetime would be short compared to the aeons of solitude I was to live following your death."

Her voice had softened as she spoke, as she realised that she did not really want to hurt Aragorn, for whom she did yet feel some love. But all her bitterness returned as she said, "But I saw a damned vision. A damned vision, sent by Sauron for all I know, of a child--our child. I stayed because I saw life. And now I find there is nothing but the inevitable death my father foresaw.

"I see it whenever I look at you. I hate it, and I don't want to see it anymore.

"I can't go to the White Shores, but I can not keep looking at you."

"Hold on!" It was the first time she'd heard Aragorn angry in years and it startled her, "You only stayed with me because you wanted a baby?!"

"Of course! Did you really expect me to abandon my whole family just for you?"

He shook his head, "I never wanted you to. I told you to take the ship."

"Yes, well, you were right. And I should have listened."

"It seems my counsel was wiser than I knew--evidently your love was not so strong as you then imagined."

"That of the ignorant flames of youth is the oldest tale in the tomes, Aragorn." She realised they were shouting now, and she paused to catch her breath and command her tone to cool before she finally said, "I'm going. Now. Farewell."

"Yes, I think you'd better."


And they lived happily ever after!

Just last night, I saw Caitlin's link to a site about Peter S. Beagle's battle with Granada Media. Beagle, the author of The Last Unicorn and screenwriter for the animated film, has been screwed for decades by Granada, who won't give him money for the work he's done for them.

And, as I've already griped, they won't release The Last Unicorn in widescreen. Fucking Granada, I thought. We'll just see if they'll get any of my business from now on.

So to-day, the mail brought a soundtrack I ordered off Amazon a couple days ago. It's from the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series, possibly the best Holmes adaptation ever. And produced by Granada Media.

Damnit. So much for my scruples.

Also arrived from Amazon to-day, and not produced by Granada, was Sonya Taaffe's Singing Innocence and Experience. It may be the next thing I read, which it really oughtn't to be, since I've got Ursula LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven (no, I've never read it!)(which I've been borrowing from Marty for about two years now), William S. Burroughs' Exterminator!, two books Trisa gave me, and who knows what else. But Sonya Taaffe's book is so new and pretty, with Waterhouse's The Siren on the cover.

Add to this the serendipity of it arriving the day after I finished reading Gene Wolfe's The Knight, which was a marvellous book. Unrestrained, unapologetic fantasy on so many levels. There's an exhilarating quality to the narrative as it cheerfully ploughs in whatever direction it likes without regard for conventions about how plots are supposed to go.

There'll be a scene where Able, the protagonist and narrator, meets some people, vows to help them in their troubles, and then . . . gets sidetracked by different people, vows to help them with their troubles, goes at it and then . . . a different, unrelated beastie shows up, he fights it, and then . . . he's in another dimension . . . It goes on like that and it's great. In this soup also floats excellent characterisations and bits.

Able's a teenager at the beginning, but is transformed into an adult very quickly and by the magic of a fairy queen with some very obvious and amusing subtext. He roams the world, intent on living as a knight, whether or not anyone recognises him as such. And like all good fantasies, there's copious sex and violence.

That the story is told through first person, and the teller is a teenage boy, makes it slightly curious that all the beautiful women he encounters seem attracted to him and get naked at some point. Wolfe pulls off a nice trick as, even while you're not sure you can trust Able's perceptions, the world described nonetheless feels complex and fully realised. Wonderful book.

Hahahaha! Oh shit!

That really brightened my day. It just goes to show--selfish caterpillar greed and poor caterpillar eyesight go hand and hand.

I've been feeling extremely sluggish the past couple of days. I usually turn into something of a pet rock after a Boschen and Nesuko update, but I was really bad this weekend. I played a lot of Baldur's Gate.

I figured out that you can go up in level fairly quickly by killing sirines on the Sword Coast. Each sirine gives 2000 XP, and when I try to sleep, I'm usually woken by a pair. I usually manage to kill three pairs before one of my characters gets killed and I have to retreat. So that's 10,000 XP for each go, and now my characters are at levels 5 and 6 in a game where the maximum level is 8. And I've hardly done any of the quests.

The sirines can be tough, sure. They cast Dire Charm which instantly turns one of my characters against me. And they usually cast it three times. And after that, they start firing poison arrows and Confuse spells.

My technique? Immediately upon waking, my mage, Dynaheir, casts Stinking Cloud. The sirines don't move very much--it'd cramp their style, I guess--so they just stand there letting the noxious gas affect them. It periodically knocks them unconscious, and they have to routinely Save vs. Death. Meanwhile, I have three characters with bows (Imoen, Safana, and my custom paladin character), firing at them from outside the cloud, usually using the poison arrows from previously defeated sirines.

Of course, the sirines still usually manage to shoot off a couple Dire Charms, so I have my cleric stocked with Dispel Magic. If my cleric's charmed, I have my bruiser, Shar-teel, use her fists to knock her out. I use the same method on anyone else if I run out of Dispel Magics, and everyone's carrying antidotes for the poison arrows.

Otherwise, there's not much to say about the past couple of days. I read a lot. I've been following Huffington Post's ongoing story about John McCain getting roasted at a college graduation ceremony, at a school far less safe for his 2008 Republican presidential ploy than Jerry Falwell's school.

And I came very, very close last night to going to see The Proposition, the new film written and scored by Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave). I'll probably see it later this week . . .

The new Boschen and Nesuko's up. It's a little late to-day because I spent more time on the last page that I really probably needed to . . .

I'm feeling much better to-day. I got completely caught up on Boschen and Nesuko yesterday, despite nearly losing consciousness every time I stopped moving. And I slept in to-day.

It used to be that when I was watching the Senate or the House of Representatives on C-SPAN, I'd have to wait until the Senator's or Representative's name appeared on the screen with an "R" or "D" before I could tell party affiliation. Now I'm getting really good at calling them as soon as they appear onscreen. Republicans usually seem more relaxed, a little detached, charming, and their hair is usually meticulously groomed, the men with hard, smooth caps and the women with buns or plain, careful blobs. The Democrats, meanwhile, usually seem slightly anxious, frustrated, have messier hair and less interesting speaking voices.

A few weeks ago, Bill Maher was asking George Clooney why the Left usually has the talented actors and filmmakers, while the Right usually has politicians who are more charming and with more effective rhetoric. I think it's because the Left respects the fact that real life is ugly. Filmmakers know that the audience wants beauty and fun, but filmmakers know they're making an illusion that doesn't necessarily resemble reality. The Right meanwhile, have no qualms about putting that same mentality into their speeches and legislation relating to real life, because they don't think life is ugly when people they don't know or care about are suffering.

It's fascinating to see Trent Lott siding with Democrats on legislation regarding Katrina reconstruction. Lott being a perfect example of one of the sleazy Republicans I'm referring to--a couple months ago, I watched him at a hearing regarding the influence of lobbyists on government officials. He made a joke about how he was quite able to afford his own meals and neckties, and it's ridiculous to think his policies would be swayed by such gifts. Everyone laughed. I laughed. By then a Democrat explained dryly to Lott--obviously aware that Lott's joke was misdirection--that the "gifts" under discussion are more significant than neckties and meals. That's just a minor example of the oily callousness exhibited by the likes of Lott or Lindsey Graham. To them, the houses of government are theatre and nothing more. Important, perhaps, for propaganda purposes. But not for the actual running of the government.

So then it bites Lott in the ass when his home's destroyed by Katrina. And when I saw him on the floor of the senate, trying to push a bill with Louisiana's Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, it was fascinating to see the vague bewilderment and depression in Lott's demeanour as he found himself lanced by his own Republican fuck machine, as another Republican Senator explained how the bill was a bad idea because it might inhibit the profits of rich people. All part of the traditional Republican economic policy that I heard a Democratic Representative refer to to-day as "4-2=3".

Sometimes, theatre is just a natural by-product of inherent artifice.

I'm just not one of those people who can deal with lack of sleep. Not for any practical purposes, anyway. I mean, if I were spending the day playing Nintendo and drinking coffee, it'd be fine. But it's a major nuisance when I'm trying to work on Boschen and Nesuko. I can feel it making me stupid.

I was working on the comic until my eyes hurt and my head felt like it was on fire, before I stopped, realising that I wasn't making good decisions any more. So I packed it up, hoping I'd somehow be in a state to-day where an adequate store of sleep would make it simply a matter of me rolling up my sleeves to catch up, big time. No such luck. Fuck, I hate these workers coming over doing stupid, useless things. And the neighbour with his power tools, probably doing something equally stupid and useless. It's depressing to see other people spending large amounts of time and money to get nothing. It's irritating when it affects me.

Victoria the cat's on my lap right now. I keep trying to tell her she oughta go up stairs, use the litter box and eat some breakfast, before the next round of workmen show up. She's been in my room since last night.

I'm not sure she hasn't eaten in that time, though. Last night, I saw a three inch long lizard in the hall. When I tried to pick it up, it ran into my room. I don't know what became of it--it's probably dying in my clutter somewhere. I only hope it decides to leave or Victoria gets it before the ants do.

Now I guess I'm going to have to muscle through drawings, hoping my raw instincts can make up for my deficient reasoning skills. Fuck.

Trouble on the path to sleep last night. Another bad headache. Though not as bad as the one I woke up with Sunday morning, which felt like my skull had shrunk overnight, from top to mandible.

For Mother's Day, I went with family to the Prado restaurant at Balboa Park, and I had something called Wild Mushroom Risotto, which contained, in addition to several other varieties of mushrooms, truffles. I'd not had truffles before--it was tasty, but the best part was imagining the pig whose nose found it.

I didn't return until around 7:30pm, at which time I drew a single Boschen and Nesuko panel before I decided, since I wasn't behind yet, I'd convalesce for my headache, which had shored up its forces in my right parietal lobe again. I noticed the side of Nesuko's head that got beaten up recently was the right side. Probably a coincidence . . .

I started playing Baldur's Gate. I played a few hours, my headache growing worse, and my attitude worser still. I grew irrationally angry at the existence of video games, but it was probably good I did, because I then turned from the game to lie down and read with a ziplock bag I'd filled with ice against the nape my neck. That felt glorious. When it was time to sleep, I tried lying on it awhile, but, knowing it was bound to melt and spill eventually while I slept, had to cast it aside.

The headache came back full force, maybe triple because of the pillow's pressure. I didn't sleep well, and was forced to wake up four hours later by the granite guys in the kitchen. Damn, I was tired. I just sat, staring into space, listening to an entire Blonde Redhead album to blot out the noise before I convinced myself I needed to move. I went to Starbucks and bought an iced Americano, which seems to've killed the headache for now. So now I draw.

I haven't wanted to be very active the past couple days. That nasty headache came back, and moreover, I just felt generally useless for any activity involving much thought. But I did manage to finish the new Boschen and Nesuko script yesterday and, looking at it this morning, I still basically like it.

I did end up seeing Hard Candy on Tuesday night. It was decent. But the highlight of the evening was just being at the Landmark in Hillcrest. There's something wonderful about just standing in a cinema where the movies aren't all essentially exactly the same fake-nacho cheese-tasting blockbuster. Even the cappuccino I bought from the concession stand was good.

I drank it in the theatre while waiting for the movie to start and reading. If I could afford to spend every night like that, my life would be perfect. Well, add in showings of old movies, and courtesans, and it'd be perfect. I like that idea--cinema courtesans. I hope someone powerful in the movie theatre industry is reading this.

But Hard Candy--really more of an illustrated essay than a work of art. What I say next is going to give away the surprise ending, so I recommend you stop reading now if that matters to you;

The movie sort of reminded me of a play I read in playwriting class a while ago. I liked the teacher, a guy named Karl Sherlock, but he had a couple of biases I considered to be silly and which were easy to deduce from how he reacted to things. The play in question was about a child molester who's lured to a remote location by what appeared to be an underage girl. Only by the end, the girl was able to overpower him and handcuff him. It was suggested that she might not be a cop, but a sort of vigilante.

When Mr. Sherlock asked for impressions from the class, I said, "I think she's Batgirl."

Sherlock laughed and said, "Yeah? A sort of modern-day superhero? Maybe . . ."

I didn't say anything, but I was annoyed for two reasons;

For one thing; are superheroes really so old a concept or rare nowadays that we have to distinguish a new example as being a modern variant?

And the other thing; I wasn't saying she was like Batgirl. I was saying she was Batgirl. Barbara Gordon. It makes sense--a vigilante girl who can overpower a grown man, who possibly has access to files on known sex offenders? May as well be Batgirl. I felt there was an attitude that the idea of her wearing a mask and cape sometimes to fight crime somehow cheapened it, or made it quaint. As if the story was otherwise plausible.

Anyway, the movie brought that to mind . . .

I think I might see Hard Candy to-night. Mind you, that's Hard Candy, not Strangers With Candy, which is being released next month, and which I'm looking forward to. I haven't seen much of the series but a movie starring Stephen Colbert, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Ian Holm is terribly tempting.

There was a mysterious, fractious devil in the air yesterday. A little mystery I never got to the bottom of. But it sponsored an interesting merry-go-round at the bank:

After waiting in line for fifteen minutes, the lady behind the counter, speaking in an almost inaudible tone, told me my expired driver's license wasn't adequate identification for her to be able to cash my cheque, and that I'd have to go to my car and retrieve my non-photo, interim driver's license.

"Er, okay..." I said, waiting a moment for her to hand back my cheque and expired license.

But instead of doing that, she said simply, "Go ahead. I'll wait."

So I went to my car, fished out the piece of paper that would somehow, mysteriously identify me as me, and returned to find the lady was now serving an old man. Being the easy-going lad I am, I got back in line and decided to simply wait for another teller.

Ten minutes later, I explained the situation to another lady behind the counter, assuming she would simply have the cheque passed down to her from the first lady.

But instead; "Yeah, you can wait for her to finish [with the old man]."

"I may? Cool, thanks!"

I don't know if my sarcasm registered, but everyone seemed uncomfortable when I stayed at the front of the line, starring calmly at the tellers for another five minutes. Finally, the old man finished his dissertation on his own savings account, and the original teller wordlessly cashed my cheque. And why don't banks have air-conditioning? I ask you.

The evening was unproductive. Deciding to save money on gas at all costs (twenty dollars gave me only half a tank), I walked to Target and almost bought several movies, but ended up not buying any. I'm sorely tempted to buy Match Point which, if I may remind those who haven't yet seen it, is a brilliant work of cinema.

Mostly, yesterday was spent at Starbucks working on a new comic project. I'm hoping this will be one I can get published. I've been scheming about it for months, but until yesterday, the only solid work I'd done was character sketches. Yesterday I started laying down mythology and history for the world because, naturally, this couldn't be a piece set on contemporary earth. For some reason, the idea of writing in such a setting makes me feel a little depressed. Partly, I think, because I'm reluctant to presume any knowledge of the "real" world, and partly because as I'll inevitably be fantasising I figure; why not go all the way?

I paid for the new Green Tea Latte entirely with quarters. It was disgusting, and I wrote several pages of timeline filled with details I intend to elaborate on in various directions. When I write fiction, I find I need a lot of information, not necessarily within the scope of the story I'm telling. I have this theory about information existing but not being exposed in the story--that it is sensed by the reader, as I do things in writing while knowing that're subconscious, giving an automatic depth to the field. In fact, I find if I don't hash out these details beforehand, the story feels insubstantial to me, and I have trouble taking it seriously.

At the same time, I think stories are far more interesting than encyclopaedias, as interesting as encyclopaedias can certainly be. So I'm always wary of losing my appendage under the sand, so to speak...

I know, if I want any shot at getting this published, it'll have to be in black and white. But, damnit, I wish I could use colour...

So there was no Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom for me last night. Tim and I drove to La Jolla, and approached the cinema ten minutes before showtime, to behold an enormous crowd, half of whom were dressed as Indiana Jones.

"Take off your fedora," said Tim. "You look like a tool."

"No," said I.

But we decided to turn around and leave, and thus $3.45/gallon gas was wasted. Probably just as well, as I didn't want a crowd of rabid Indiana Jones fans around me as I paid for my ticket with quarters (money's been tight for me lately). Though I did have the pleasure of purchasing a bottle of thick, green, Naked Super Food from the nearby Ralph's.

The cashier, impatient to finally finish his shift at that late hour, was treated to the spectacle of me fishing around a ziplock baggie for quarters to pay for the $3.85 bottle of juice.

Now I've conflicting plans for to-day, so I'd best choose one...

I just might manage to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at the Landmark theatre to-night. I did stay up until 3am last night. In any case, I'm sick of being a day person. Daytime sucks, unless I'm working on Boschen and Nesuko. But once that 8 to 12 hour period's over, I have to put up with all the people moving around and the personalised noises they make. Give me night, where people are few and go about their business quickly through shame or the desire to get home and go to bed.

For Easter, my mother gave me a DVD collection of BBC Oscar Wilde play productions. Last night I watched The Importance of Being Earnest from 1986. It'd been a while since I'd read the play, though it's not a work that fades in the memory at all. But I believe this was actually the first film production I'd seen of it. I know I skipped the Rupert Everett/Reese Witherspoon thing from a couple years ago. After I heard it contained a scene of Cecily getting "Earnest" tattooed on her ass, I knew the movie had roamed far off into a grandiosely atrophied frontier. Like a break dancing zombie.

But the 1986 production was good. I love it when an adaptation isn't a case of a director deciding a century-old work is about him. This was just fine actors and nice sets playing the scenes as written. Accommodations for the medium were sensible--unobtrusive camera movements and cuts where they were needed, and nothing too fancy. And I actually got the joy of seeing actors digest the words, adding the sharpness of human delivery to what was before, for me, words on a page.

I couldn't help thinking about Stephen Colbert again. The Importance of Being Earnest is a mockery of shallow Victorian society and their hollow scruples, and constantly turns Victorian notions of truth and nobility on their heads, only to reveal the plain philosophies as the absurdities they really are. The play is filled with casual assertions that sentiment ought to take precedence over reason. It seems perfectly natural to Algernon and Cecily that they should be engaged for months, even though they'd never met, simply because Cecily has created Algernon's "Earnest" in her diary. The story's "tension", if it can be called that, hinges on absurd particulars of heritage and name that nonetheless would ring true for the Victorian aristocratic audience.

So I thought of the wonderful rancour Stephen Colbert's performance has drawn from the Right. People on Fox news, and in Right-wing writings, have been insisting that Colbert went too far in front of the president but could not cite specific quotes from Colbert to demonstrate this. Scott Thill covers it well on Huffington Post. No matter how Right wing pundits squirm or try desperately to defuse it, they can't overcome the fact that when Colbert said, in his idiot guise, that he and the president go from "the gut" instead of the brain--it is the sort of thing Bush and his supporters say all the time, and it is self-evidently ridiculous. It's a bitter pill to swallow, when you realise that your central philosophy is utterly preposterous, and you've sacrificed human lives in its name.

I guess there's an ongoing battle between artistic wit and the ruling witless. The strain of keeping oneself stupid while maintaining a facade of intelligence must be a particularly humiliating kind of hell.

The new Boschen and Nesuko's online and it's rife with decency, maybe.

It's been a mildly tumultuous several days. On Saturday, the computer Tim'd given me a week earlier started freezing up at intervals. I finally left it, though, because I'd been looking forward to Saturday like some people look forward to the Super Bowl. I stopped at Taco Bell to bring food with me to Tim's house where he and I watched the entire White House Correspondents dinner on C-SPAN. So we caught not only Colbert's delicious smack down of Bush and the complaisant press, but even Colbert's entrance with his wife and his mugging for cameras.

I came back here to screw around with computer bowels and eventually realised I was going to have to go back to my old computer. This unfortunately also meant I was going to have to re-colour the first two pages of the new Boschen and Nesuko, as well as retype and partially rewrite the script. It's fortunate that I'd decided to write it in my notebook and edit as I typed. I don't always do it that way; I find writing on paper first can remove anxieties over sloppiness and what people might think of it. On the downside, it can come out reading like I was unconcerned with sloppiness or the effect it'd have on anyone. But as it happened, I was basically pleased with the pen script. The only trouble is it was only seven and a half pages long--the last bit'd been written totally on computer. Instead of trying to remember exactly what I wrote, I decided to write something completely different. I can't say for sure which version I think superior. Though, generally, occasions where I've rewritten scripts have been to the advantage of those chapters...

I also played hide-and-seek with a nasty headache Moi tentatively diagnosed as a migraine, but which I'm compelled to call a "Baby Migraine." Meanwhile, my grandmother's idea of replacing the kitchen counters with granite has condemned us to three weeks without a kitchen sink and dishwasher, so mostly we've been using my bathroom to clean dishes. And my grandmother seems to want to treat it as a kitchen satellite, so there's now a jar of peanut butter next to the toilet. I have the honour of being the only person here who's sickened by this fact. But being a Liberal in a Republican household has accustomed me to the sensation.

The Owl's birthday's to-day. On this day, video game disks and controllers are said to resonate, singing together a mysterious tone whose meaning is unclear to us, and yet unmistakably serene.

On this day, and on this day only, it's said that certain camera angles that ought to show Kagome's underwear in fact do so.

And so, to-day I'll not pester Owl with my questions regarding Tootsie Roll Pops and lick counts. Happy birthday, Owl.

President Bush meets Stephen Colbert's balls. I knew it'd be interesting, and I was right.

Crooks and Liars has partial video. It really has to be seen to be appreciated as a lot of it was in Colbert's pitch-perfect delivery.

Some commentaters at Huffington Post are pointing out that C-SPAN's pulled rebroadcasts of the event. Colbert, apparently, was a little too merciless regarding the news corps' complacency.

One gets the definite impression that those who booked Colbert for the event didn't have a clear understanding of his humour...

Well! That was an interesting headache yesterday! Moi says migraines, "feel like steel bolts are being driven thru your skull." What I had yesterday only felt like an icicle had spontaneously formed in my right parietal lobe. But it remained a constant companion throughout the day, and at one point I realised my cognisance was being truncated by it in such a way as to render my perceptions and comprehension simpler than normal. I felt like a child. Especially when I was driving, and I accidentally careened off some trash cans.

My attempts at lunch kept being thwarted by invisible forces. I'd made a comment on Spooky's journal mentioning In and Out Burger's grilled cheese sandwiches, so naturally I wanted one. But halfway there, I realised I'd left Olivia the cat's medicinal food outside the refrigerator it was supposed to be in. So I turned around and the bad traffic made the short journey nearly an hour long. Then I visited Marty, who made an offhand remark about Mexican food, so I suddenly needed Taco Bell. Traffic was strange, and the effort to dodge, Frogger-like, the multitude of slow, enormous vehicles, almost had me missing Taco Bell entirely. It was only when I was forced to park a distance away, and had walked across the enormous parking lot, that I realised I ought to've simply walked to the authentic Tacos mi Pueblo. But it'd been four hours since I'd gotten hungry, and it needed tending.

I didn't get In and Out until around 10:30pm. This was after watching Eraserhead for the first time in years, and maybe it was the best thing I could have done in my headache. See, the pain was sort of like an egg yoke sloshing 'round, and I was only really aware of it when it hit the sides of my head. So keeping still during the quiet, fascinating strangeness of Eraserhead worked well.

I watched the great special "Stories" feature, which is simply David Lynch smoking a cigarette and rambling about film school and his old friends. This put me, somehow, back in the mood for In and Out Burger, so I went, and marvelled at how the french fries were so warm, and the Coke was so cold.

This whole silly zen-child state finally broke when I said something to Robyn about Baby Sasquatch. I could feel the icicle crack and abruptly melt, the cold water trickling down through my grey matter.

To-day, I simply feel muffled, like I'm wearing a stocking cap five sizes too small.

Oh;

To-morrow, on C-SPAN:

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner
Apr 29 05:00pm

President George W. Bush and Stephen Colbert speak.

This could be interesting.

Head...hurts...Friends maybe reading...who get migraines...I shouldn't complain...but...ow.

There was this story on CNN a few days ago about a guy who tried to commit suicide by firing twelve nails into his head with a nail gun (impressive X-Rays at the link). He survived. See, Venkman? It would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.

I've been listening to the new Dresden Dolls album a lot lately. I think it's the best new album by any artist that I've heard in years. Here's a bit from "First Orgasm" I can relate to in an uncanny way;

it is a thursday
i get up early
it is a challenge
i'm usually lazy

I find myself wanting to argue with Amanda Palmer--

Look, it's not because I'm lazy. It's because I normally go to bed at 7am. That would make 10am a ridiculous wakeup for anyone.

Though, interestingly, it was shortly after buying the album that my sleeping schedule went through a massive, inexplicable shift. Lately I've been going to sleep at around 1:30am and waking up at 9am. However, since my grandmother decided to get the kitchen counters changed for polished granite, I'm soon going to have to wake even earlier. I can't win.

So, yes. Thursday, and I have to be out of the house. I'll probably just go to a nearby Starbucks and read. I haven't got a lot of money to-day. I blew too much a couple days ago on The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton and a collection of Alan Moore's writings for DC.

I watched a movie called Nightmare Alley the other day. It's a film noir involving carnies and it lives up to that concept. Tyrone Power as a hustler mentalist finds himself trapped in the bad existential web, his troubles exacerbated by a very wicked psychologist played by Helen Walker. Yes, the movie has everything, and I highly recommend it.

Okay, I'd better start cleaning my room...

I'm not feeling very talkative to-day, so here's a bunch of old pictures of Nesuko;


This is my original design I came up with when I was fourteen or fifteen. Back then, Nesuko (or "Nes" as her name was at that point) was a bounty hunter.


Here she is contending with the Raithuras' overcomplicated computer systems. These two pictures were coloured with an old shareware programme called NeoPaint, by the way.


Leaping forward a bit in time, here--I actually went through several redesigns of Nesuko before I got to this somewhat manga-esque one.


Another drawing of that particular Nesuko design. It was starting to look too much like Lina Inverse to me.


The first of what is essentially the current Nesuko design. There's her name in hiragana on the right, cementing the Japanese influence I guess (I was probably taking Japanese 1 at the time).


I was trying to think a little more about how Nesuko would move and fight. I decided to go the "ballet-fighter" route, though I find myself edging away from it as it's what Joss Whedon appears to being doing with River Tam.


Young Nesuko on her way to school. I was getting quite handy with the colour pencils a few years ago. It's kind of a shame I haven't had time or reason to use them lately.


A slightly overdramatic pose, yes? I copied the pose from a photo of a ballerina.


When Nesuko took ballet class, this is the outfit her mother bought for her.


Sit, Nesuko, sit! Good girl.

The world is full of sick cats. Even Victoria, sitting on my lap at this moment, who never gets sick, threw up a few minutes ago while I was eating oatmeal. That the juxtaposition didn't disturb my appetite at all probably confirms that I'm a cat lover.

Victoria's been hanging out with me a lot lately. Even when Tim was here on Saturday, she stayed in the room, playing with my black leather whip. Tim was meanwhile busy putting my old hard drive into my new computer, which Tim had given me for my birthday. That's right--he gave me a whole new computer, and a very nice one, too. I can now play Jedi Academy at the proper resolution, programmes generally work better, and I don't randomly lose internet connexion. It's quite nice, really.

The computer itself even looks nicer, in its little jet black tower. I'd tried at first putting everything together myself--my intention was to put all essential stuff from the old hard drive onto disk, and merely use the new hard drive. When the CD burner on the old computer opted to finally and completely crap out, I hatched the scheme of simply putting the old hard drive in with the new, which proved a good idea in any case, as the old has 60 gigabytes, and the new 40. The only trouble was that I had only the vaguest idea of what I was doing.

Opening the old case, I found wall to wall carpeting of dust, layered on like muscle on a human skeleton. It was quite disgraceful. Removing the hard drive was easy enough, but figuring what little red, and flat grey tapeworm cables were to hook into it on the other computer, was more puzzling. So I brought over Tim, who put it all to rights. I had some trouble getting Microsoft Word to work yesterday, but everything seems in the pink now.

I've started reading Gene Wolfe's The Knight. I've never read a Wolfe book before, though I remembered enjoying the short story he wrote for the prose Sandman collection. And I'd been very much in the mood for a medieval fantasy novel, which is the sort of thing I grew up on, but which I haven't read in a while. So far, The Knight's been a wonderful read. Though I suppose I technically oughtn't to be reading it, as I only bought it six months ago, and I have books I've been borrowing from people for longer than that. Sometimes I wish I wasn't such a slow reader...

A new Boschen and Nesuko is arrived. More questions are posed. Few are answered. Ain't I a stinker?

"...and, yes, Virginia, all because the truth won't save you now..."

In the wake of White House press secretary Scott McClellan's resignation, the Setsuled Mint is proud to present this commemorative likeness.



Farewell, Scott Baby.

Here's some scary shit for you this morning;

Kevin Ray Underwood, the guy in Oklahoma who kidnapped, raped, and ate the flesh of a 10 year-old girl, has a blog.

What's especially scary is how similar the guy's blog is to some blogs I read regularly. He even has a link to Wil Weaton's site, which I don't read, but which is a site I sort of like.

And he seems to've been a news junkie. I'm glad there's no link to Boschen and Nesuko on there or something. I'm already feeling like James Stewart's character in Rope, realising how horribly individuals can't misinterpret ideas I often espouse.

I hope Blogger doesn't take the site down, though. This really, I think, shows how blogs can function as anthropological artefacts. Imagine if Jack the Ripper had a blog. Eerie stuff...

Wearing my contact lenses for the first time in a long time this morning. It makes the monitor look huge for some reason.

So now it looks like I'm a day person, at least for now. The nice thing is that I finish Boschen and Nesuko pages early in the day. The bad thing is that I ended up not being able to see Terminator 2 last night. I only hope I'll be back to normal by the time Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is showing on May 6.

I really wish there were more theatres showing old movies. I got incredibly jealous when Caitlin mentioned having seen Citizen Kane in a theatre. Cinemas like that need to exist around here.

Not much else to say. I watched Gun Crazy on Friday, which was a delightful movie. I liked it more than Natural Born Killers. Which I watched last week, and was interesting to watch next to A History of Violence, as they're both meditations on the role of violence in our culture, only A Hitory of Violence is far subtler and carries a therefore much greater impact. Natural Born Killers is cartoonish in its best moments, too broad and confused in its worst. But I do think the cartoonishness is a lot of fun, especially when it comes to Robert Downey Jr.'s wonderful Australian, depravophiliac (is that a word?) journalist. Or Tommy Lee Jones' Sheriff of Nottingham-esque warden.

The movie is a cartoon, really. That's why it doesn't bother me that skinny little Juliet Lewis can win fistfights with big guys and is placed in a men's prison so that she and Mickey can be easily reunited.

But Gun Crazy, another tale of married bandits, has slightly more realistically drawn characters, and is strangely more delightful in its wickedness. Maybe it's gentle John Dall's hapless love for the naively bloodthirsty Peggy Cummins. Or maybe it's just that doll, who halfway through the movie ends up not being the simple femme fetale I thought the movie was setting her up to be. It's a good movie.

And check out this suggestive autograph;

I ate breakfast at Submarina yesterday. There was no-one behind the counter when I entered, but after a few moments, eight pretty girls appeared, all of them looking to be around nineteen years old, and all of them the same height (around five feet). Two helped me with my sandwich while the rest gabbed amongst themselves.

I glanced behind me and saw that the wall mounted television was tuned to Fox News with closed captioning. I immediately had a mental image of some meaty, middle-aged Republican manager surrounding himself with young girls. I pictured the rapport they must have;

Harold opened the register drawer and his face seemingly became stone. Bebe's face turned beet red as she wondered if she'd come up short again.

"Yer a good, American girl, Bebe," said Harold. He shoved the drawer shut with one paw and patted her cheek with the other. "Now, I want you, Tiffany, Bambi, and Coral to get yerselves cleaned up real good. And then I want you to show me yer hands before you handle fresh bread."

Not exactly the best breakfast thoughts. Maybe I should've had eggs. I opened the refrigerator this morning and an egg popped out, splattering over the floor. It was almost like a prank. I wonder how it could have gotten in such a precarious position.

And, yes, it is morning, and it is breakfast time for me. I slept from 10pm to 5am. I finally put my foot down and decided I wouldn't take the small sleep bits I'd gotten the past week--I'd been sleeping three to five hours in the morning, then for about four hours from 3 or 4pm until 7 or 8pm. On Friday, I took the morning five hours, and stayed awake all the way 'til 10pm. I'd meant to go later, especially as at midnight to-night I plan to go with Tim to see Terminator 2 at the Landmark Cinema.

Woo-hoo! My sleeping schedule is off the hook!

I woke up to-day and lay in bed thinking, "Damn, I think I just got the first full night's, unbroken sleep in a week! I feel great, totally rested, ready to go, and altogether fresher than I felt before I went to sleep!"

Then I looked at the clock and saw that it was only 11:30am, and that I'd only been asleep for five hours, at best. Oh well. I won't fight it this time. To-day's the first Boschen and Nesuko page, anyway.

Yesterthursday's requisite stumbling about in the garish waking world saw me buying movies. I got Rope, Gun Crazy, To Catch a Thief, Charade, and Kagemusha. That's two Hitchcocks, two Cary Grants, and two John Dalls, for whatever that's worth.

I also picked up a copy of The Wedding Banquet, which caused me to observe Fry's curious system of movie sections. I'd already checked the Foreign section and had determined that they didn't have The Wedding Banquet. Then when I noticed Kurosawa's Dreams in the Drama section, I decided to check Comedy for The Wedding Banquet. And there it was. I guess they said "Foreign" when they meant "Fringe." Sheesh. At least Fry's has a section for Criterion movies, which is nice.

On what I'm pretty sure was Wednesday night, I finished reading Caitlín R. Kiernan's The Five of Cups. Well, now, I guess that was Thursday morning. In any case, it was a good book.

It was Caitlín's first novel, its publication long delayed for various reasons. It feels very much like her first novel. It less prominently features the lingering love of textural language that shapes her subsequent works, though it does display her tendency to dwell on a series of interesting moments, rather than forcing the thread and needle of plot through them. It's a vampire story, maybe better described as a series of isolated vampire perspectives that are interwoven. I guess it reads as a fascinating series of testimonials.

As a vampire novel, I must say I was very happy about what one agent referred to--apparently as a negative quality--as the "uniform brutality." This isn't a story that wimps out like the Anne Rice books eventually do. None of the night predators eventually cop out and become secret defenders of justice, like Lestat. They stay creatures who feed off human death--man, woman, and child--from beginning to end. And it works.

I had a pretty good birthday. I went with family to see Friends with Money, the new Nicole Holofcener movie starring Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, and Joan Cusack. It was a decent movie. It's hard to go wrong with a cast like that. Though, you'll have to bear in mind that I had a huge crush on Jennifer Aniston in High School.

The movie had good dialogue and character studies which were at turns mildly amusing and genuinely interesting. I really liked how it acknowledged that the idea that working for a living was somehow inherently noble is a sham. Too many movies are quick to enforce puritan work ethics by showing hard-working waitresses rewarded with great homes and picturesque lifestyles.

We afterwards had cake at my mother's house, where my sister had set up a Darth Vader themed table setting with Vader napkins, balloons, and little cardboard Vader masks which made us look more like bugs.

To-day's been good too. I've slept for most of it, and dreamt I was at some extravagant 1920s ball, and having a really nice time.

This was after this morning having an excellent omelette at The Living Room, where I also wrote a draft of the new Boschen and Nesuko's first six pages. I'm pretty clear on what changes I'm going to make, and on what the last two pages are going to be. So life's good at the moment.

Driver's licence renewal was a somewhat harrowing endeavour to-day. A few blocks from the DMV, I found traffic ahead of me suddenly slowing, and a moment later I saw it was because a man in a burgundy van was pointing a gun at us from the opposing lane.

He seemed to be providing cover for another fellow who stood outside his four door car, his arms across its roof, pointing his gun at a white SUV that'd stopped nearby.

I paid as little overt notice to the gun pointed my way as I could, and called 911 when I stopped at the next intersection, just outside the gunman's range of vision.

The DMV had no parking, of course, and I drove in figure eights, waiting for a spot to open as I talked to the 911 operator.

"Was the gentleman Hispanic or black?" was the first thing the operator asked.

"Er, I couldn't tell." I'd only seen the arm of the guy in the burgundy van, and the other guy had his back to me and was wearing a pale t-shirt. His arm was dark, but I couldn't tell if it was tan or brown. I didn't go into that much detail with the operator as he made it clear time was of the essence. I didn't explain the situation nearly as clear as I did above, but I was trying to be brief and I'd had only two hours of sleep, so I was a little foggy. The operator seemed intent on drawing conclusions; I had to correct him several times when he seemed intent on hearing that the gunmen were pointing guns at each other.

Finally he hung up and a moment later I heard sirens in the distance. I ended up parking in a nearby Target lot, and I saw a paramedic rushing down the street. So I guess something went down, but I still have no idea what--none of the local news sites I've looked at seem to have anything on it. Though most of them have stories of five or six other gunfights in the county, so maybe it wasn't such as extraordinary occurrence...

After finishing at the DMV, I went to the Target and bought copies of Natural Born Killers and A History of Violence. They were cheap. I might've gotten Brokeback Mountain except this first release lacks all the goodies of the upcoming Special Edition. I find myself looking forward to the next instalment of the Ang Lee/James Schamus commentaries. They have an interesting banter, as Schamus tends to be into the gentle ribbing and self deprecating jokes while Lee is always respectful and patient.

For Poetry Month, and the poetry meme begun by Poppy Z. Brite, I post;

The Human Abstract

by William Blake

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain