I usually hate musicals (and parts of this I didn’t care for), but this was still pretty good.
I guess maybe I’m okay with musical comedies?
If they star Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff?
Yeah?
Maybe?
Target: 700 words
Written: 1382 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: It Devours!, Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor
Comics: Danger Girl: Mayday 3-4, Danger Girl: Renegade 1-2
Music: OK Computer, Radiohead (been a while, but it never fails to remind me why it's considered one of the best. albums. ever.)You know, you go a while without hearing L7 and you forget they’re one of the hardest rocking bands in existence.
I’ve never seen them live, but I bet it was a fucking trip.
Target: 700 words
Written: 51 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tale (like reading by the Bible and just as tedious)
Comics: American Vampire 1976 3-6
Music: Oceania, Smashing PumpkinsAnd 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.)I am depression. Depression owns my ass. All is hopeless. All is lost.
And yet, I persist.
The drive to live is strong, even when nothing else is.
I’m finding it increasingly difficult to relate.
Yeah. Uh-huh.
That’s what they all say.
Target: 600 words
Written: 118 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: IXth Generation 6-8, Aphrodite V 1
Music: Volcano, Jimmy BuffettListen up, y’all.
There’s not a guy in my generation that doesn’t know every fucking word of this song, and immediately wants to dress up like a Seventies cop with a bad moustache and slide over a car hood.
It’s immediate and visceral. I’m not the biggest Beastie Boys groupie, but hell, who doesn’t love that song?
Of course, followed by Come Alive by Foo Fighters, it’s a poignant, hard moment.
Makes me feel like a fucking teenager again, fucked up and wallowing, twisted about in depression and frustration, longing for something more.
And now, middle-aged and overweight, knowing it’s all a horrid lie.
Target: 600 words
Written: 447 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Artemis IX 1, Apollo IX 1, Poseidon IX 1, IXth Generation 5
Music: Voices Carry, Til TuesdayI ain’t got it.
Beck’s better at it than I. So is Flava Flav, Eminem, Ernest Hemingway, Erica Jong and Jules Verne.
I ain’t got it.
My niece raps better than I do. The other one sings better.
Everyone connects better with one another.
I am a non-valence electron, there but not involved, outside the chemical process, lurking in the outer ring.
I ain’t got it.
Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite IX: Hidden Files, Aphrodite IX v2 8-10
Music: Vivid, Living Colour
Beeefooore you wake up.
Sorry. Bjork phase. I do like to get up early. I like the quiet. The alone time. If I can get that, and get enough things I want to get done before I engage with the world, the world and me are both infinitely better off for it.
I don’t go in rushed and angry, upset and falling behind. Frustrated and distracted.
And, the sense of peace is palpable.
That, of course, is not today.
Target: 600 words
Written: 797 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 31-34
Music: The Very Best Things 1995-2008, FilterIt’s funny how this seminal alternative band from the Nineties has such an influence on modern pop, but no one seems to ever mention them.
I mean, if you can listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts and not hear Veruca Salt channeled through her, I have questions about your hearing and your mental state.
I try to tell my nieces these things, but they’ll, like me, have to figure it out for themselves (although I went through phases growing up that exposed me to a lot more great classic stuff, as filtered through a modern lens, than they seem to. Big band, underground Seventies punk, classic 60s acid rock and the original Fifties jump rock – crooners, The Beatles, The Doors, hell, I even went through a Michael Jackson/New Kids On The Block era – though not after I heard my first alternative – INXS and R.E.M. are forever my gateway drugs, as was The Joshua Tree).
Anyway, great band. Listen to them more, if you can. L7 too – nobody rocks harder, except maybe Lemmy.
Target: 600 words
Written: 556 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 53-56
Music: The Very Best Of Elvis Costello (I mean, it was shaping up to be a hipstery kind of day, anyway)A hundred days into this year and we’ve already had multiple collapses, blood issues and a totality.
Sometimes, I’d like there to be a totality inside me, either to end it all or to burn away all the shit. Blind it with a shining aura, a brilliance unendurable except with the darkest glasses.
But the world keeps turning, a disturbing number of people think a man who thought it was intelligent to stare directly at an eclipse is a genius and hate seems to creep further into our lives each and every day.
We need another revolution. Another love-in.
Where’s our John and Yoko? Our sexual revolution appears to revolve around people making sex tapes, where wearing bikinis on your social media is a viable career path.
Where’s our screaming punk? Where’s our Kurt Cobain, hitting the nerves of a generation so raw that it changes entire cultures?
Where’s logic? Where’s freedom? Where are hearts and connection and compassion and a basic understanding of kindness?
Where’s the less ineffectual left? Where’s the sober right?
Where the fuck is everybody?
Social media is madness. Our world is mad.
This has been your daily agonized howl into the void, unable to stand anymore.
Target: 500 words
Written: 191 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 21-24
Music: The Vegas Years, EverclearSome music just moves you. I just finished writing and while James Brown and Night Train was cool, I definitely funked out more to Modest Mouse and Steam Engenius, because SO. FUCKING. GOOD.
My tastes range, and it’s fine. I don’t mind following up Minor Threat with Rihanna or Dean Martin with Henry Rollins. There’s nothing wrong with an Eminem and Beatles mix, or Pink Floyd and NOFX.
It’s all about being open, and enjoying the moment. Falling into it and letting it happen, letting it be what it is and letting go of whatever else is happening.
Music is the most powerful presence creator; there’s a reason we love it in all its forms. It speaks to something primal within us that just wants to live. Here, now, forever in the groove, connecting and commiserating with our fellow humanity, free from all the rest of the world’s shit.
Target: 500 words
Written: 209 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 5-8
Music: The Vanilla Tapes, The Clash