Author: admin

seriously, sorry

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I don’t know what came over me yesterday.

I think maybe I’d had enough of the bleak, and needed something light and stupid to take my mind off of it.

And so, you get a bad, probably old and tired, fart joke.

It was no Ryan Gosling/Mikey Day as Beavis & Butthead, but we can’t all be geniuses by just sitting there and looking confused.

Although, I’m getting pretty good at being confused. Sitting there takes some work.

Target: 600 words
Written: 314 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales
Comics: American Vampire: Lord Of Nightmares 5, American Vampire 32-34
Music: Oasis Essentials, Oasis

mediterranean

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In an effort to dispel a little doom and gloom, or flagrant ego, we note that we try, several times a year, to have themed dinners with the whole family. And we picked Mediterranean.

And it was good, but apparently, a trail of gas is following me around like a trail of death, according to my wife.

And I woke up in the night, thinking, I don’t usually get that from Greek food.

And my butt answered.

This is not Greek food.

This. IS. FARTA!!!!!!

I am so terribly sorry.

Target: 600 words
Written: 866 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales
Comics: American Vampire 30-31, American Vampire: Lord Of Nightmares 3-4
Music: O Tannenbaum, They Might Be Giants

relaxation?

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Yeah, no.

About ten minutes’ worth of quietude on the front porch, until a person walked by and the dogs started barking, thunder came up and the little dog lost her shit, and, and, and.

It’s a poem, in bleak deconstruction.

Stillness, peace.

Ripped open by the rabid sound of protection,

And the heightened screams of fear.

Target: 600 words
Written: 631 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tale
Comics: American Vampire 28-29, American Vampire: Lord Of Nightmares 1-2
Music: Vulnicura, Bjork

trauma

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I’ve been thinking a lot about trauma. I know, in most cases, it’s some dramatic event – a car crash, the loss of the loved one, or something more insidious – sexual abuse, the threat of violence, an addicted partner.

But part of me wonders, what if it’s just the day to day of life? Almost worse. It seems so petty and absurd to suggest that it’s an equivalent trauma to being raped or shot, though no less effective at ruining a life?

How do you even complain about that?

I know, that’s kind of the point, but a million pricks of the needle will surely bleed you to death.

I don’t know.

I was disemboweled as a child, and I still find the ins and outs of daily life more traumatic.

Target: 600 words
Written: 689 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales
Comics: American Vampire 24-27
Music: VU, The Velvet Underground

blank space

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And not the good kind, where there’s peace filling the void, but rather the kind where you just kind of stare blankly and the implications of your entire life’s arc stare you in the face and you struggle to see how it was a good thing, or a way out.

It’s definitely not the Taylor Swift kind, no matter how much my niece insists I should love her.

Target: 600 words
Words: 269 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 5, American Vampire 21-23
Music: Vs., Pearl Jam (one of my all time favourites, I cannot believe it's been so long since I listened to it. Indifference is my spirit animal.)

weight

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Oh, God, it sounds so horrible, like some kind of Tolle/Robbins platitude, meant to sound deep and meaningful, but actually being somewhat of a scam.

I mean, I don’t want to go too deep into it, because I’ve got a whole idea percolating that I don’t want to spoil the punchline on, but you know how we often try to teach the things we most need to learn?

Next to the dictionary entry beside ego, I suspect there’s a picture of Eckhart Tolle. The Power Of Now and A New Earth practically drip with his ego, his unhinged desire to be a messiah, don’t they?

I’m not sure stealing a bunch of ideas that have been around for thousands of years, or basic common sense ideas, and drenching them in an insipid slurry of rancid toss to pretend you’ve found some special knowledge, is messiah material.

Honestly, it sounds exactly like the kind of bullshit I was writing in my late teens and early twenties, when I was also trying to be a messiah, but was actually a schmuck who didn’t live any of the platitudes he was spouting.

I guess I was too busy with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to make the millions he did.

Anyway, my point is: The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner is the better option if you want to learn about presence. If you strip all of the bullshit and pomp from The Power Of Now, and replaced it with humility and practicality, there you go. And Mr. Sterner isn’t trying to sell you on being Jesus.

Or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, whom Tolle seems to only mention in passing, despite having ripped off the Tao Te Ching extensively (though not anywhere near as well, and with added layers of unnecessary drivel). I guess he doesn’t want anyone to realize he hasn’t actually generated an original understanding, but rather, stole everything he purports to have discovered from luminaries long dead?

Anyway, my thought was: I’m such an insignificant, microscopic piece of the universe, why am I carrying its weight?

I know, right?

Target: 600 words
Written: 576 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 3-4, American Vampire 19-20
Music: Voodoo People, The Prodigy (pretty much the only electronic music I consistently enjoy; the rest is mostly bullshit)

long, fast, weekend

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Another whirlwind weekend.

My life is ending so quickly. I have a thousand lifetimes of things I want to do, to make, to experience and find connection with, and it’s going so fast.

I’ve wasted so much time.

It’s all too much. Other people are too much.

One minute, you’re running and laughing; the next, disemboweled on a tree stump caught at too sharp an angle.

Strangely, that doesn’t begin the downfall. That would happen four years later, when preparing for confirmation, I made the mistake of reading the Bible, and the realization that I was being lied to, that the philosophy I’d been presented, that was supposed to represent good and true in the world, was a steaming pile of bullshit.

I’ve been spiraling ever since.

Target: 600 words
Written: 224 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire: Survival Of The Fittest 1-2, American Vampire 17-18
Music: Voodoo Lounge, The Rolling Stones

three

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Man, I cannot believe she’s three already. A picture popped on the screensaver of her parents’ television and it was her, at a very young age, in her high chair, bib and face covered in white icing.

It seems like yesterday.

It’s all moving so damn fast.

So damn fast.

Target: 600 words
Written: 995 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire 13-16
Music: Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane

not quite three

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Man, this kid.

Also, I’m simultaneously way out of shape and still surprised that I can scamper up a giant play zone to help lift her up to higher heights or rip down slides as much as I did.

I did realize my claustrophobia is starting to get worse.

Some of those tunnels were way too tight.

Also, I couldn’t help but think about Wytches and kid farts and matches blowing the Jones family onto the wall.

Birthdays are weird.

Target: 600 words
Written: 185 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire 9-12
Music: Volumen 1993-2003, Bjork (I don't know what it is about her, but there is no female artist on the planet I connect with more; something about it - there's an innate empathy, an honesty, an innocence that's somehow all mixed up with sex and love, but in the sweetest way... Maybe it's youthful memory, but there's love in them there words)

off to see the baby

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Well, she’s about three now, so not really a baby, but I’m due for more childish glee and less adult drama.

Hell, nobody really wants drama, unless they’re enjoying fiction or missing something in their lives.

Peace is much more fulfilling.

Highest filling, next to a nice garlic cream sauce.

Target: 600 words
Written: 436 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Comics: American Vampire 5-8
Music: Volume 2, CKY