Author: admin

final stretch

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I’m aiming for a Christmas deadline (preferably before, because Christmas and Christmas Eve are fucking no gos for any amount of editing), but man, how many different way can one describe a mangled dog corpse?

It feels like one’s too many.

Doesn’t it?

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1585 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Complete Poetical Works, Edgar Allan Poe (Raven and Conqueror Worm are still great, but man, I wanted the rest to be so much better)
Comics: Fables 32-35
Music: January 20, 1990 - Tacoma, USA, Nirvana

and then dinner

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Quite a weekend. Chili, the most basic kind (well, one step above, a return to roots, sort of, though neither of those recipes are my mother’s, which is the base for all my major chilis).

Breadsticks.

Green bean casserole.

Weird combo, but hey, gotta eat something, am I right?

Target: 1400 words
Written: 456 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Complete Poetical Works, Edgar Allan Poe
Comics: Fables 28-31
Music: The Big Bang, The Best Of The MC5, MC5

night market

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A thoroughly enjoyable evening, after last night’s thoroughly enjoyable oyster bar.

Followed tomorrow, probably by thoroughly enjoyable heartburn.

My scale is crying.

Why would a man eat an entire buffalo chicken and blue cheese pizza to himself?

What could possess him?

Devil’s work, if you ask me.

But don’t. The shame won’t allow me to answer.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 3020 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Complete Poetical Works, Edgar Allan Poe
Comics: Fables 24-27
Music: Wrecking Ball, Bruce Springsteen

the rundown

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Multiple meanings for that these days, as you’ll eventually see.

If there’s ever a movie written of my life, it’s going to be a lot of stuttering and masturbation, followed by a slow, tortuous breakdown in front of a computer.

I know it was a shittier time, but past generations had such grand adventures; our life is so regimented now.

You must do this. You must do that.

There’s no time for peace. No time for quiet.

Where’s my goddamned quiet at?

No, I run, and run, and run, it all just runs me down.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1823 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel (I was excited to read this, thinking I might comiserate, but this is far less a description of depression, but rather narcissism using depression as its party mask.  There's a point where she reaches true depression, I think, and there's a perfect description of it, which made me think, okay, finally, she understands, but then she does it all away with a drug, then spends the rest of the book bemoaning the fact that she did it before it was cool, like some pretentious alt-rock kid pissed off the little indie band they liked signed a deal with a major label.  This book?  Five percent depression, the rest about a real as the proverbial cut my wrist width-wise instead of lengthwise cry for attention.  Disappointing.)
Comics: Fables 20-23
Music: World Container, The Tragically Hip

still crashing out

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I know this is because I’ve got myself under a ton of pressure to finish this book before Christmas.

Literally. I’ve set the date as December 23rd.

Finished by that date, so I can sit back with a cigar and a whiskey and fucking kick some goddamned ass.

Then to lighten things up for a bit with some poetry, more short stories and comics, maybe a hip little ditty or three.

Then, maybe, by the time March rolls around, I’ll be ready for canon project #3.

And maybe I’ll head back to historical.

Paranormal.

Lovecraft country, baby. I am the man of a thousand ideas; and a thousand more I will never have time to complete.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1483 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
Comics: Fables 16-19
Music: Working Undercover For The Man, They Might Be Giants

i’m about to have a nervous breakdown

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Sung in the key of Keith Morris.

That’s where I’m at. I kill myself, all day, starting at 4:50AM (yes, IN THE GODDAMN MORNING), bust ass getting ready, taking care of dogs and cats, work my ass off for 8 hours, come home, walk dogs, make dinner, and by the time I’m all done, it’s 6:30, 7 o’clock at night.

Fourteen straight hours of hard go, every day, and what do I get for it? Slippery tongs that send the roast I made halfway across the fucking kitchen to land in a pile of dog fur.

Grilled cheese sandwiches it fucking is.

Fuck today, all the way off.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1357 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
Comics: Fables 13-15, Fables: The Last Castle 1
Music: Working On A Dream, Bruce Springsteen (more like nightmare, today)

hoping for better depression

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So, I suffer from depression. I don’t take drugs for it. I don’t go to therapy. I’m sure that would probably help, but the drugs I’ve tried have always made me feel worse, rather than better, and well, who the fuck has the time and money for therapy?

The thing is, I refuse to let it define me. It can run me, and it’s a struggle and fight every single day. Some days are worse than others. But I will not be labelled as the guy with depression.

I see it a lot now, and perhaps it’s a generational thing, where people label themselves with whatever damage they’ve got, physical or otherwise, and then that becomes their identity. It’s not a bone that needs to heal; it’s a bone that needs to stay broken, because it’s who they are.

It defines them.

But we’re so much more than that. Melancholy (aka depression) was just a piece of Abraham Lincoln. One could hardly say it was the primary fact of this life.

It was only part of it.

The generations behind me (and I blame my own shoegazing generation for starting this shit) seem to think it’s the only definition of themselves that matters.

I have anxiety, therefore, I am anxiety.

I have ADHD, therefore all I am is a lack of focus.

Man, fuck that. Treat yourself, do the things you have to do to get better or at least, function better within the restrictions you’ve got, but shit – it ain’t you.

Depression is not an identity; it’s just a thing that happens.

Depression is not the core of your self; it’s a chemical imbalance, or the sum total of some disparate thoughts or shitty life events.

It is NOT you.

That’s important. Remember that. You are not your depression; you are you.

And you have control over that.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1102 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
Comics: Fables 9-12
Music: Working Class Hero: A Tribute To John Lennon, Screaming Tress (and others, presumably, but that's all I got)

truth telling

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I mean, I know we all think we know the truth, but the reality is that the truth is what it is and we are not always aware of all of the aspects of it. Multiple things can be true at any given time.

I have not lived an exemplary life. I’ve lied, I’ve cheated (my family and all my friends banned me from playing Monopoly) and probably worse, if I’m honest about it.

I am still not entirely honest with myself and the people around me, because I feel rejection. I have issues with insecurity and depression.

None of these things means I’m a horrible person by necessity, but neither do they make me an exemplary one.

Truth and perspective are the two things I chase most in my life, and as I get older and open myself up to that more, instead of living in safely comfortable fictions and denial, I find the truest thing I know is that truth and perspective are often not in accordance, but more of one inevitably creates more of the other.

Enough perspective and truth is revealed; how could it not be?

Truth knocks us out of our fictions, our blind spots; it provides perspective where none may have existed.

More truth. More perspectives. These are the only things that matter.

There is truth. There is perspective.

These things are not mutually exclusive. But one perspective, held without truth…

Well, there’s the rub, isn’t it?

Target: 1400 words
Written: 791 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
Comics: Fables 5-8
Music: Working Class Hero, Green Day (by way of John Lennon)

well how about that

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I’m still writing about feces and doormats.

Steinbeck wrote about the Great Depression. Fitzgerald about the vapidity of the rich.

Shakespeare wrote of love and loss and tragedy, of empire and family.

And I’m writing about feces on a doormat.

Perhaps I’m not really cut out for this whole literary genius thing. I’m the Meatballs of the Great Canadian Novel. This generation’s A Clockwork Orange is actually a rendition of Porky’s, by way of American Pie.

Porky’s did bring us Kim Cattrall, however, and that’s a fucking gift.

Screw Sarah Jessica Parker. I never liked her anyway.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 2321 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay (and now I'm crying, damn it)
Comics: Fables 1-4 (finally, something good)
Music: Workbook, Bob Mould

icons i won’t be

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I used to want to be William Gibson or George Orwell or J.R.R. Tolkien. Even in my modern days, I idolize Doris Lessing, Andrzej Sapkowski and Thomas Wolfe.

I doubt any of them ever had to write a scene where a fat boor took a messy dump on someone’s front stoop.

Perhaps I should set my sights lower.

Like, MAD magazine or National Lampoon lower.

I’d love to be e.e. cummings or Gord Downie. I’d love to write with the sensitivity of Alan Moore or the abstraction of Kelly Sue Deconnick. Kafka, Chekhov, Palahniuk.

And I’m writing about a fat guy’s feces.

Maybe someday, I could reach even Second City.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1488 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Youngblood v7 #1 (oh dear god, another reboot, with a storytelling style that's no better than it was in the first Youngblood miniseries.  Give up, man.  This shit ain't working.)
Music: Woody Guthrie Essentials, Woody Guthrie (how apropos is Lindbergh?)