I feel like my body is about to burst from my skin, and yet, the only thing I want to do is sit and stare blankly.
Being a vegetable seems cool to me, somehow.
I worry I might be a bad person; on the other hand, maybe I don’t give a shit.
Target: 900 words
Written: 328 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 40-41, Die 1-2
Music: Use Your Illusion II, Guns 'n' RosesI’m tired of them.
I can’t take the pushing on my belly anymore. I had lost about a dozen pounds, but then, of course, we went away so I regained seven or eight, and now my belts, my shorts and even those that are just stretchy push in on my stomach and leave me feeling nauseous.
(Not to mention the blood pressure raise.)
Anyway, I hate going to the office; where are my comfy pants? My PJs? My board shorts with the elastics so old that they’ve lost most of their elasticity?
An elastic with no stretch; if that ain’t a metaphor for getting old, then I don’t know what is.
Target: 900 words
Written: 764 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 38-39, The Wicked + The Divine: 1373 AD 1, The Wicked + The Divine: The Funnies 1
Music: Use Your Illusion I, Guns 'n' RosesSometimes, I think I have Parkinsons or some other truly debilitating disease.
I seem to lose track of my fingers, my legs stretch and flex without my volition and I can’t sit still.
It’s not ADHD; it’s uncontrollable muscle spasms or the inability to tell my fingers to hit the right keys, repeating the same mistakes again and again and again (as I did typing this).
I don’t know what’s going on or how to fix it. If I lose the ability to type, I lose the outlet of writing, which is a death knell.
My skin feels like it’s on fire and trying to leave at the same time.
Target: 900 words
Written: 662 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 34-37
Music: Use Your Fingers, Bloodhound GangWe know a guy who runs the morning radio show on the local radio station. He sounds like a nice guy on the radio, sort of, but in reality, he’s kind of an idiot.
First, he’s a Doug Ford guy, so I think one must immediately call his intelligence and integrity into question (as one would anyone who supports these hard right wingers). Secondly, he continues to play the same dozen songs from the late Eighties to early Two Thousands (to the point where I’m fairly certain his life’s dream was to be in a boy band). When he’s not in, more modern music (on the contemporary pop station, surprise!) gets played.
He domineers his cohosts, to the point where when he’s not there, they have difficulty establishing themselves as a primary.
Personally, he’s never been anything but rude and dismissive to us, despite us being friends with his long time girlfriend (that he refused to marry or have kids with, despite that being kind of the whole thing with her). He’s definitely a bit sexist, and possibly, you know, one of those “not that there’s anything wrong with that” homophobes.
So, yeah, his voice annoys the fuck out of me.
See? It’s not only bad pop that irritates me.
Target: 900 words
Written: 848 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Gregor And The Curse Of The Warmbloods, Suzanne Collins
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 32-33, The Wicked + The Divine: Christmas Annual 1, The Wicked + The Divine: 1923 1
Music: Us Against The Crown, State RadioSounds like a cheesy Eighties find yourself adventure or maybe even a horror movie, where the kind of geeky lost soul goes somewhere, has an adventure, realizes it was all bullshit, and then comes back to sweep the girl of his dreams off her feet.
You know, the girl he’s only ever really known in passing, and who, in reality, would never date this guy who comes out of nowhere with his newfound perspective on life, all based around love (love he has for her, but she’s never really thought about him; she’s too busy diddling over the football star).
He’d have had some partying fun, met a girl who was maybe manipulative, but who would have taken him through his first real sexual experiences, but then betrayed him unexpectedly, making him realize he didn’t actually want what he thought he wanted, and so, he comes down the mountain, proposes to the girl, who is (because this is all about him and not her) expected to swoon and drop everything to be with this brand new bodhisattva/reformed bad boy, because love, and we all jump onboard and presume happily ever after, but really, what do these people even know about each other?
There’s likely some gratuitous nudity, because in this world, women are objects, not people, so making lewd jokes at their expense and paying some struggling actress to doff her top (and probably threaten that she’ll never work again if she doesn’t, or promise that the big studios will come running, and other big stars did it, and also, other stuff, behind the scenes, you know how it works, wink wink nudge nudge), and we’re all just fine with it because we love sexual freedom (which we do), but we also love the exploitation of women as a secondary class, and if we can combine the two… Hollywood!
Anyway, we’re back from Collingwood, and let’s hope that movie never gets made.
It sounds positively horrid.
Target: 900 words
Written: 247 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Gregor And The Curse Of The Warmbloods
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine: 455 AD 1, The Wicked + The Divine 29-31
Music: Urban Hymns, The Verve (one of my all-time favourite albums... simply one of the best)Decided to go to Collingwood for the weekend. Seemed like a good place to get away and finish that eighth draft.
So far, so good, in that the eighth draft is complete.
Target: 900 words
Written: 531 words
Read: The Happiness Of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 22-24, The Wicked + The Divine: 1831 1
Music: Uptown Avondale, The Afghan WhigsYesterday, I saw my shadow stretch across the yard, a giant apparition that stared back at me with thoughts of monstrous consumption.
We stared at each other for a while; it’s said one should not stare into the abyss.
Surely, it looks back.
Target: 900 words
Written: 1736 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Happiness Of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 18-21
Music: Upstair's At Eric's, YazSo, our new beds were a no show. I took the day off to completely dismantle and remove two beds, and the fuckers didn’t even have the courtesy to show the fuck up.
How the fuck does a company, where one of the absolutely key components is delivery, not have any kind of contingency plan if one of their movers calls in sick?
That’s bad fucking management right there, made worse by the asshole who called and said, “well, what do you want me to do about it?”, as though this were somehow our fault. What a fucking asshole.
Of course, we asked for some kind of compensation, for time taken off and aggravation. Her response: “It’s not my fault someone called in sick.”
Like… really? She offered to have the manager call back, but like a coward, he did not.
If we didn’t want to have to go back out mattress shopping again, I’d demand all my money back right now. That’s some poor goddamned management right there.
We were thinking of getting a new kitchen table and TV there, but fuck that shit now. Assholes.
Fuck the muthafuckin’ Brick. You wish there was some way to tell someone up higher, but their website doesn’t even allow for proper feedback, so you know this company doesn’t actually give a shit.
Man, I’m tired of exploitive, incompetent, uncaring assholes.
Target: 900 words
Written: 870 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Happiness Of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl 4-6, The Wicked + The Divine 17
Music: Uprising, MuseWe’ve got new beds coming today, and I’m praying it does for my sleep what a remote mountain lake does for my peace.
I’m praying to sink into oblivion and forget everything that exists.
Until, of course, the next time it does.
Target: 900 words
Written: 1276 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Happiness Of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 14-16, Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl 3
Music: The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, Red Hot Chili PeppersI’m okay. I’m probably okay.
I mean, nobody’s really okay, but I’m okay-ish. All my idols are being destroyed one by one, which probably means one shouldn’t have idols. The lovely men and women of the world never seem to be the ones at the forefront, the darlings; it’s always the guy nobody really realized until they were gone.
Also, again, no correlation between talent and being a good person.
(See Spacey, Kevin)
It’s easy to go off the rails, and I think we underestimate how much fame can affect a person. How when people start throwing themselves at you and it’s no longer an effort to earn things, one can become entitled to the point of criminality.
For the most part, we let them get away with it, which is why it’s such a goddamned shame when the public image is ripped away.
Fuck ’em, for the most part.
But still. The Usual Suspects, Neverwhere, The Belgeriad… still good, or even great, even if the ones that created them are monsters.
It’s a conflict that never ends; is great art made less great by bad behaviour, or is bad behaviour just one facet of an artist, to be divorced or overlooked when evaluating the content of the work?
No one is perfect; some men are far less so.
There is no answer here, only acknowledgement.
Perhaps we’re just fooling ourselves, because we want to believe. We want to enjoy. We want to love.
But humanity is complex; there are ever demons with which to be dealt.
Target: 900 words
Written: 949 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, Wil Wheaton
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 12-13, Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl 1-2
Music: Up To Here, The Tragically Hip (fucking seminal, man - if Gord Downie is ever outed as a rapist or racist or whatever, I will lose all faith in humanity.)