Category: health

options

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I know it’s pop or whatever, but I feel Cameron Whitcomb’s Options in my gut. I never think of myself as an alcoholic, though my sister-in-law loves to imply it, though her husband actually drinks harder liquor than I do, more often.

He’s prone to get a right buzz on; I just like a couple of beers at the pool or a glass of wine with dinner.

And that, only two to three times a week, if I’m lucky.

Of course, there’s more of that when we’re on vacation, but fuck, you’re on vacation.

If you can’t let your hair down a little on vacation, what kind of vacation is it?

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2139 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 12 5, Gen 13 v2 31-32, Gen 13 Bootleg 20
Music: 20/20, The Beach Boys

blood pressure

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This new drug is not working. I weened off the other stuff and into this new one and it is not doing the trick.

Things are worse than they’ve been since before I started taking anything.

I think my doctor might be trying to kill me, through negligence, if not actual malice.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2342 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
Comics: Gen 13 Bootleg 2-3, Gen 13 v2 16, -1
Music: December 28, 1991, Pat O'Brien Pavilion, Del Mar, Nirvana

one more street

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Ha! Another lesson learned!

Or rather, the same lesson, two days apart.

We parked on the boardwalk of Ayamonte, Spain, and while it’s a nice boardwalk, it’s not exactly appealing. One street in, gorgeous.

Of course, I wasn’t really feeling that great still, but man, what a beautiful place.

Oh, and it’s flu, because now my wife is sick, and she didn’t have the shrimp yesterday. 

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2036 words, short story: Ultra Mundane

Read: Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Comics: Batman vs. Bigby! A Wolf In Gotham 4-6, Fables 151
Music: 17 Song Demo, Anti-Flag

food poisoning

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Fucking shrimp. Or it could be the flu. Or something in the water?

I’ve shit a bunch, dry heaved once (I don’t actually puke – I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve thrown up since the ninth grade), and slept the rest of the day.

What a shame.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 989 words, short story: Ultra Mundane

Read: Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Comics: Everafter: From The Pages Of Fables 12, Batman vs. Bigby! A Wolf In Gotham 1-3
Music: 16 Biggest Hits: Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash

sick to my stomach

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At first, it was stress for my baby girl, but it turns out, she’s going to be okay. She’ll have to learn balance all over again, and she still walks like a drunk on black ice, but she’s going to live.

It sucks for her, but we were so not ready to lose another one.

What really made me sick was making the mistake of reading some of the Epstein emails.

America, either you’ve got incredible self-control, unbelievable cowardice or unmitigated depravity, but how you haven’t picked up the torches and pitchforks and marched on the homes and offices of every single billionaire or politician named in those files is beyond me.

I suspect it’s a matter of all three, but holy hell. If you haven’t read these things, you should know it’s so much worse than you could ever imagine. Fiction isn’t that inhuman and sadistic.

An anger came up from somewhere absolutely primal reading some of these excerpts. I’m absolutely abhorred. It makes me ill.

These monsters aren’t human.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 898 words, short story: Skeleton Park

Read: The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Comics: Fables: The Wolf Among Us 29-32
Music: 12 Angry Months, Local H (great album)

heartburn, round two

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Weirdly, I ate super light yesterday, but did have a customary glass of red wine, as one does, on Sundays.

We drink red wine on Sundays, or so my father-in-law tells me.

He’s also a man who feeds his other daughter ice cream and Coke for dinner on a regular basis, so he’s not exactly the sommelier we look for.

But still, for some reason we do it (and I do love a good red), but it seems to have triggered a relapse from the night before’s horrid gastrointestinal adventures, and now, I sit, having lost another couple of hours of wondrous sleep.

Plus some weird fuckin’ dreams.

Weird fuckin’ dreams, man.

I liked the ones I had before the acid set in; The Last Showgirl apparently wormed its way into my subconscious in the forms of Song and Ship.

Sorry, honey. It was involuntary. I can’t be held responsible for what my unconscious mind dredges up.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 3315 words, comic: The Stuff 4

Read: Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn (we're livin' the full catastrophe, all right)
Comics: Fables 135-137, Fairest 21
Music: The Big Bang: The Best Of The MC5, The MC5 (who else would it be?)

four hours

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Maybe three. I love a good homemade lasagna, but goddamn.

Heartburn.

Followed by bile creeping up the throat in the fifteen minutes I first fell asleep.

Then a light, persistent cough. No amount of water, milk or Gaviscon would help.

Eventually, I took a sedative and said fuck it.

Two hours later, I’m patted on the face by a cat.

Maybe three.

Maybe two.

Sleep is a fucking bitch.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 321 words, comic: The Stuff 4

Read: Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn
Comics: Fairest: In All The Land 1, Fables 134, Fairest 20, The Unwritten 54
Music: Wrecking Ball, Bruce Springsteen

rage

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I had ideas about what to write today, but things went so far off the rails, from taking a coatrack to the head, being utterly abandoned by anyone and everyone and just the universe, doing its complete fucking of me, again and again.

I need to stay off social media. They’ve gone looney tunes down south and my blood pressure is through the roof.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 4500 words

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier (prophetic and interesting, as a time capsule during a time I would have been a lamer script kiddie)
Comics: Fables 107-109, Jack Of Fables 50
Music: [With_Teeth], Nine Inch Nails

for a writer, i don’t write good

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Or rather, I think I write well, okay at best, but I rarely know what I want to say. I read other books with these incredible telling details or unbelievable insights into the human condition and I think, why not me?

What am I saying that’s not been said before?

I suppose there’s something to be said on saying something that has been said in a different way, and different voices reaching different people in different ways, but yeah.

I always wanted to be original. Unique. At the vanguard of something new.

But I don’t know what. It’s the essence of constrained – having something inside of you building like a new big bang, but being so essentially weak of spirit as to be unable to unleash it into the void.

And that’s what out there – void.

No one reads my shit because I don’t promote my shit. I’m Holden Caulfield, if he lived now and on social media. If he thought he hated phonies before, man, wait until he gets a load of Instagram and Twitter.

He’d be dead before the day was out.

I was eased into it, and despite knowing these are the tools I require to be successful in today’s age, I am increasingly convinced that social media needs to be phased out of my life, and out of existence entirely, if we are to survive.

Otherwise, none of us may last the day.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1476 words, comic: The Stuff #1

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier
Comics: Fables 103-106
Music: With The Lights Out, Nirvana

funny how you can’t remember stuff

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I completely blanked on the concept of a truck bed. What it was called, anything.

I literally had to google it.

Some days, brain no function. Thinkee bad.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1468 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks
Comics: Fables 63-64, Jack Of Fables 13-14
Music: (Who's Afraid Of) The Art Of, The Art Of Noise (not me, it sucked)