I saw Lost in Translation with Trisa on Thrusday, and I'm still in afterglow, because it was a very good movie.

In fact, the next day it put me in the mood to do nothing but absorb. Lost in Translation was the kind of movie that makes me want to take the time to appreciate art.

To watched Farscape and Star Trek: The Next Generation, read a Sherlock Holmes story and a Peter Straub story called Mrs. God, which is phenominal (of course).

Those two stories, mind you, are both short stories (actually, I think Mrs. God is a novella)--I haven't started reading a new novel since I finished Age of Innocence a few days ago. And I'm a little frustrated.

I could not begin to give you an idea of the massive quantity of unread books I have that I desperately want to read. And some of those, I'm even under a sort of obligation to read as soon as possible.

I think I've decided on Huxley's Brave New World as it was giving to me around two years ago by my cousin who I but rarely see . . . except for the fact that, starting a few days ago, he now lives in the same house as me. So I must read this book.

And after it, I suspect, I shall read the other book he gave me, and then Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk, which Trisa gave me not long ago with an air of "sponaneously read this now for fun!" I'm afraid I had to schedule that spontinaity for a later date . . .

I also need (and desperately want) to read several Peter Straub and Stephen King novels that Marty loaned to be nearly a year ago. He's been such a good sport about letting me borrow books . . . I really need to impress upon him how very slow a reader I am.

And in the meantime, I shall occasionally gaze sadly at my untouched stacks of Ursula K Leguin, William Gibson, Leo Tokstoy, Charles Dickens, Caitlin R Kiernan, Poppy Z Brite, and who knows what all . . .

You are Mitsurugi -

Both mysterious and attractive, you captivate people with the fact that you seem to be
good at everything! Spending quiet moments with a friend and talking about what life means to you is your ideal situation. You don't like to stand out very much and you seem to be more old-fashioned
than modern, but when you do take the spotlight -- you command the floor!


Which Soul Calibur character are you?


this quiz was made by david park

Bad Words


Saying things off
Truth in our seperate seats
Filled with everything
Sharing nothing

Shaded, dull, fake
Leaves of grey anonymous plants
Empty records reveal
The ordinance of silence

Pretty character of
A different story
Only canons speak
Between our galleys

Dry gunpowder and
Stupid sparks
Kill
Even as they pump blood

Every laugh is a recording
Every thought is a charity
Every moment is spent longing
For a return to sleep

We don't know what we saw
We can't wrap heart around it
Blinking we go
Invisible grocery shopping

The supermarket is a church
Alters are freezers
And in the morning sun
This is no place to be

"Jimmy rapped on and on about his suicide, how he'd kick it in the head when he was twenty five . . . Don't wanna stay alive when you're twenty five." -David Bowie

At twenty four, I basically do wanna stay alive, I guess. I got volume three of 1602 yesterday. It's shaping up to be a good little series.

To'day I'll thing some dos and what some whos.

I just got up to do something . . . and I sat back down again.

About an hour ago, I went to the supermarkert to buy something . . . and when I got there, I forgot what it was I meant to buy.

I was gonna buy something at the mall to-day . . . and then I inexplicably didn't.

I was gonna say something else here . . . but I forgot what it was.

I didn't mean to vote to-day. And I didn't. Hurrah for convictions. Y'know, Jack Kerouac never voted.

(of course, when I keep saying "to-day" what I really mean is Tuesday . . . I haven't gone to bed yet).

I ate dinner at my parents house where they've installed a new fountain in the backyard, so we were constantly treated to what sounded like a twelve foot tall man urinating. I have to go back there early to-morrow for doughnuts. Then, I have to go to school. I need to fill out the take-home "quiz" before class to-morrow . . . It's an infuriatingly simple exercise, and one which that frelling bastard has made us do in class and in groups THREE FUCKING TIMES now. Oh, yes, I had it the first time. But far be it from me to suggest that even the vaguest opportunity to force me to interact with humans should be passed up.

And now I do get to do one on my own. Oh, goody. I'm not sure if I can do it because if I do, I think I may just start to cry.

It's one of those things that you feel ought to make you feel like you're accomplishing something, as it's an important school assignment for the betterment of your grade. But when you look at it, you find that it's very lame, and you realise that upon finishing it, you going to feel very empty.

Gods, is that really what I'm whinning about here? No. Not just that. This little piece of emptiness just kind of carries with it feelings of all sorts of sensitivity of the emptiness. Things like, "Hey, I'm gonna vote for the governater!" or "No, brother, I don't want to watch Farscape, even though I'm sitting and watching nothing on the TV" or "Now, boys and girls, we have to feel all the feelings in the world, okay?"

I've been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion a lot lately, and Asuka's line; "Mina daikirai!" ("I hate everyone!") keeps resounding in my head.

I don't want to hate the people I love. I love the people I love. But lately I've been wanting to scream at most of them . . .

My mother was watching Oprah to-day. I stood close by as Oprah interviewed a woman who'd been in solitary confinement.

I could do with being in solitary confinement. How nice if the whole world was contained within four, very close walls . . .

I was surprisingly sociable yesterday. I gave out my URL to two people (If you're one, or somehow both, of these people, welcome). Hopefully I won't all together fall off my anti-human wagon.

Yesterday I also had a brief and depressing visit with Trisa. And I had two brief, but depressing classes.

Time for me to go. I suppose I oughta go vote. But since when have I been a legal citizen of this planet?

Currently wearing headphones with no sound coming out of them . . . yes, let's have some music . . .

Ah. The Rasputina cover of Velvet Underground's "All To-morrow's Parties". Good, good.

It's hot in this room.

I need to go to sleep.

I don't want to sleep at all. I wanna wake up and have Monday happen already. I'll be honest with you, I'm disappointed with myself. I'm completely unprepared for class to-morrow and that bastard'll put us in groups.

Ugh. I feel frantic and lethargic, exhausted and impatient, consumed and empty, and all that usually unusual rot.

I told Trisa a few weeks ago that I was going to cultivate my uselessness. I'm making headway, but I need to go further. Or so the Lovecraft Tarot tells me.

There's a big crack in my windshield. I think it just might be getting steadily larger. Tim told me it could just break on me while I'm on the freeway. I thought this was just more of Tim's paranoid claptrap. That guy slept with a black widow spider last night--he told me he's gonna do something about it to-night.

I'm gonna keep up steam until dawn. Let's list the things I oughta be doing. My horoscope said I should do that on Saturday, but I procrastinated. So here 'tis now.

I need to work on my novel.

I need to kind of rewrite everything I wrote for part 8. Or at least heavily edit it.

I need to read a lot of my text book.

I need to care, damnit. I need heart.

Plus I have another project I started on Friday . . .

And there's a short story I wrote half of a few weeks ago . . .

I have eight dollars. Hurrah! In your face "hurrah"! I can get coffee to-morrow morning.

You know what I want, though? A pretty concubine.

Well, I don't feel like doing a damn thing to-day. Not a damn thing.

Is there anything creepier than people? I mean, really, people are really, really creepy. People are seriously creeping me out to-day.

I do have a good cup of coffee next to me, though . . . Ugh. And you know, there are a lot of things I need to do? I just so don't wanna do 'em.

I stayed up late watching Seven Samurai last night. I'd never cried watching that film before, but I cried last night for some reason. It's a great movie. Blah. Blay blah.

I'm going to give my sister my old DVD player to-day. I have no place for it . . .

I need to pee.

I cannot get to the bathroom.

Should I go to the mall? Should I really go to the mall, just so's I can pee? Has my life really come to that?

If I go to the mall, I'm liable to spend a little money. I'm liable to get a coffee, at least. I have twelve dollars. I wanted to save some for the vague possibility that Trisa might have some free time this weekend, and she and I could go see Bubba Ho-Tep, Lost in Translation, or any other of the many movies that she and I have talked about going to see.

Oh, but I need to pee. What'll I do? What options do I really have? And no, I'm not going to wet myself. I don't care if I have a closet full of pants next to me . . . And by the way, I like pants. Just thought I'd say that while I was thinking it.

...

Got free lunch at a place called Mimi's today. Ate with several of my relatives, spent most of the time keeping my eyes dead and fixed on my coffee, similtanously to discourage conversation, and as a way of using the time to think.

I've been wondering about part 8 of my novel a lot lately. I may do some serious things to it . . . To-day, at Mimi's, I finally thought of something I'd been trying to get at in my brain regarding the overall thrust of part 8, which I rather need, as I am now entering part 8's last couple of chapters.

There's something strange about the deliberate way I've been placing configurations of words in this novel. It's sort of like a very, very long haiku. I'm wondering also if this format shall end up detracting from the novel, or being an enhancement.

Don't know.

I wanna pee.

My water smells like feet. Which is too bad because I'm very thirsty. I've been thirsty a lot lately.

My wild cherry pepsi, which I bought on accident last night as I attempted to buy the new vanilla pepsi, just to try it out, smells like laundry deturgent. It smelt that way last night, though, so I guess it's okay.

. . . It' weird, the sorts of things that can captivate me. Yesterday I went to the mall, and going to one of my usual parking spaces, I had to come to a stop because some morons had decided to rope off the road just around a very tight corner--I think so's they could paint it. There was barely room enough for me to do the old Scoot Forward A Little, Back Up A Little, Scoot Forward A Little manoevre until I'd somehow edged my way out. But when I finally did, and drove to another parking space, I left my car to immediately go to a spot inside the mall where I could watch other cars abruptly finding themselves in the same predicament. I was treated to seeing two cars going down the street at once, and saw the car in the rear had to back up first for the lead car before going into the same edging manoevres himself. Meanwhile, I could see the painter foreman, or whatever, frantically yelling at his people to remove the tape blocking the little road. Good fun, good fun.

Oh, and it was another hot day, of course.

First of all . . . I got me a copy of Shadows Over Baker Street!

I am irrationally happy about this.

I read the Neil Gaiman story, A Study in Emerald, last night. It was brilliantly creepy. And bless Gaiman for turning the tables just as I was starting to get a sick feeling near the end.

Then I read part of Elizabeth Bear's Tiger! Tiger!, which is all right so far, even though it doesn't actually have Sherlock Holmes in it . . . Although I would very like to skip to the Caitlin Kiernan story and the Poppy Z Brite/David Ferguson story, I have decided to strictly adhere to reading each and every story in order . . . not for any particular reason, except that, perhaps I don't wanna end up saving the best for first (which, I know, I might already have done by reading the Neil Gaiman story first, but then again I honestly find some of Kiernan's stuff to be much stronger than Gaiman's).

So for that, I'm down to only 36 dollars, but it was worth it. It was worth even having the sales clerk root around in the back room for it. It was worth it.

You know, there're just too many good things coming out lately for me to be keeping a responsible budget. Supposedly the new Elvis Costello album's coming out soon, although I don't know exactly when. And last week, I bought the new David Bowie album, Reality.

The review in Entertainment Weekly accused Reality of being the latest example of a very misguided ethic that Bowie's been employing in his music making lately, saying that the music is so studio slick, and overly tampered with by Bowie, that any good melody is lost under the sort of cacophony. The first time I listened to Reality, I might have agreed, but by the third listen, I was very much under the album's spell. There's a kind of wonderful, vicious insanity about it (underlined by the presence of Aladdin Sane pianist Mike Garson), especially evoked after I had sat down and read all the lyrics. I especially liked "Fall Dog Bombs the Moon" and "Bring Me the Disco King". The title track, "Reality," is kind of nightmare-ish and sort of makes me wish that Bowie would do an entire album of nightmares.

I also obtained a copy of Radiohead's Hail to the Thief from Marty as well as a copy of a Cranes album from Trisa. Both are very good, and still percolating between my ears.

...

Yesterday felt very frantic for no apparent reason. It just seemed like I had no time to sit still. I meant to do some writing, but it didn't happen. Well, unless you count the new page of Doll Merchant I did (just now realised I should've been italicising Doll Merchant all this time. At least, I think so . . .).

Cats are like sock puppets that no hand controls.

Currently drinking a bottle of Aquafina water and noticing that the bottle is very phallic shaped. It's an exceptionally slender bottle at 16.9 fluid ounces with a domed, sort of mushroom shaped top. This top also bears faint ridges, which further indicates the thing was designed for her pleasure.

I don't wanna think about the fact that I got this bottle at my mother's house.

...

My sister works at a restaurant called Claim Jumper and it seems she had to call 911 Sunday night because one of the customers was having a ceisure.

My dad is a fireman, so of course he showed up in his paramedic, fire-truck thingy. And so it seems that I have people in my family who do service to the human race.

What a misguided endeavour.

Didn't talk Tim into watching Pulp Fiction. Instead, I went to Target with him where he bought some storage containers. Apparently, his parents have finally put their feet down and have ordered him to clean his room. Which is too bad, because his room was such a wonderful colage of random junk. I love messy rooms. Maybe because I haven't got a messy room. True, I don't have a room . . .

After Tim's, I stayed up rather late drawing this.

Aside from wanting to flatter Nar'eth, I think I drew it mainly because I hadn't drawn anything but Doll Merchant in quite a while. It's been a very long time since I used my colour pencils. And this was the first time I ever in my life attempted to colour in leather garments, which was difficult, but not as difficult as I'd thought it would be.

I think to-day, I'll catch up with all the school work that's due to-morrow . . .

Not much to say to-day. I spent my time last night organising stuff on the computer (as you can see, I changed my blog a bit. Made it more streamlined, I hope. And, of course, I replaced the bird gentleman with a naked alien pretty lady).

To-day I think I'll go to Tim's house and try to talk him into watching Pulp Fiction. It's just a crime that he hasn't seen that movie yet. A crime.

After Tim's, I'm going to do some Other Things . . .

I am so uncute.


Rate Your Cuteness!
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Found the test on Mel's journal.

It's nearly 5pm, and I've just finished breakfast, how pathetic am I?

Not the first time . . . although, this time I have a somewhat reasonable excuse. I got to sleep at around 4am and had to get up at 8am while some realtor showed the house to some people . . . Yes, looks like I'm going to have have to pack up all my stuff again pretty soon and move to someplace else. Looks like it'll be Tierrasanta, which I always thought of as being a nice part of town. Of course, it'll cement my dependency on the motor vehicle, which ought to make me worried that I still need to get some new car insurance before November . . . I want it to be November so's I can see the Two Towers extended edition! It's not fair that I should want that month to come both soon and late.

Anyway, the realtor didn't leave until 10am, and it wasn't until then that I was able to go back to sleep. I did type up a lot of writing in the interrum, so at least I was productive . . .

I'd intended to stay in all day, but I'm starting to rather want to get out . . .

I read Caitlin R. Kiernan's Postcards from the King of Tides last night and got all intimidated, like I got reading Age of Innocence. You know, some brilliant works, for some reason, don't remind me of my short-comings as a writer, yet these somehow do. So I also read through bits of my novel last night, which is dangerous, because no matter how tired I am, reading over stuff I've written always has me compulsively editing it.

sigh.

As I was walking along in the mall to-day, a young woman asked me who was on my shirt.

"Robert Smith," I said. It's a black t-shirt with Robert Smith's big pale face with a dash of red lipstick. Under his chin, in red letters, it says, "The Cure."

"And what's the cure for?" she asked.

"The Cure's actually a band," said I.

"Oh . . . so it's the cure for entertainment?" she deduced cheerfully.

"No, no. The band's name is 'The Cure'." No one understands me.

"Oh! . . . I went to a Misfits concert once. Are they anything like The Misfits? Like, rock n' roll?" Yes, this individual was not attended by a parent, and in fact looked to be around thirty years in age.

"I haven't heard much of The Misfits' stuff, but I don't think so."

She said, "Oh, neat! How's your cell phone?" which I should have seen coming. Only some goofy Verizon salesperson would feel perfectly natural in the bizarrely pathetic-little-neighbour-kid-trying-to-fit-in tactic of "You like music? Me too! Let's be buddies!"

...

I started writing a new short story at my aunt's Starbucks. Looks like the first non Sci-Fi/Fantasy fiction I've ever written in my life. It's a little noir-ish.

And just before going to my blog here, I finished watching a Stephen Frears film noir that Marty lended me called The Grifters. It was terribly good and surprisingly disturbing.

For some reason, to-day my grandmother was trying to peddle Bill O'Reilly's book off on my aunt as my aunt was trying to walk out the door. My grandmother said something about O'Reilly's relationship with Cardinal Law and I piped in "Wouldn't it be funny if there was a Marshal Law?"

My aunt said, "The Marshal Law? There is a Marshal Law, it's called the Marshal Plan."

My grandmother said, "No, Cardinal Law is a person."

I said, "Yeah, I know. I'm saying what if he were in the military--like, Marshal's a rank in the military. And there's also m-a-r-t-i-a-l for Martial Law. Like when there's a police state."

"The Marshal Plan," said my aunt, nodding.

My grandmother said, "No, he means martial arts."

I gave up at that point.

Found this quiz on Mel's journal . . .


You are Mary Bell. At the ripe old age of 10 you
strangled a neighbor boy, afterwhich you carved
your initals into his skin. At his funreal you
laughed. Your next victim was a 3 year old. You
pushed him off the roof, resulting in a broken
skull. After he was found you went to his
mothers house and asked to see him, she replied
tha t he was dead. You smiled brightly and said
'Oh, I know he's dead. I wanted to see him in
his coffin."
You horrid little girl you.
-smacks your hand-


Which Imfamous criminal are you?
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It's pretty accurate, I think.

...

I had a really good day yesterday. I skipped class and Trisa and I hung out all day. She gave me things . . .