Category: personal

the cursing cursor

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It stares at me. Dares me. Five drafts down, and still shit.

Maybe it will never be else.

Just a pile of runny diarrhea, not even kind enough to be cohesive, splattered on the floor.

How long is ten thousand hours?

Can I training myself in the art of creating shit?

The art of defecation on the page?

These are the questions that spit at me in the mornings.

Are you nothing more than a diarrhea factory? Leaky housing for liquid shit?

Ain’t I hot?

Target: 800 words
Written: 374 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, Jules Verne
Comics: The Crow: Wild Justice 1-3, The Crow: Waking Nightmares 1
Music: The Undiscovered Numbers And Colours, Foreign Objects

remember me?

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I’m increasingly beginning to think I’m playing lute for the damned.

The seemingly unstoppable march of fascism, climate change, gun violence, bigotry, overpopulation, war, fucking microplastics…

At this point, I’m thinking I could write humanity’s single greatest work of fiction, and it wouldn’t matter, because humanity itself will be gone before my lifetime is out.

My lifetime might be tomorrow.

Armageddon might be tomorrow.

I have works of staggering genius in me, but I fear that neither I nor anyone else will live to see them.

Nor will I ever get my head far enough out of my ass to complete them.

Is it still fatalism if it’s true?

Target: 800 words
Written: 535 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Adventures Of Captain Hatteras, Jules Verne (it's nice to feel cold in this heat)
Comics: The Crow: Flesh And Blood 3, The Crow: City Of Angels 1-3
Music: Undisclosed Desires, Muse (apropos, I suppropose) <-- that's the staggering genius I'm talking about.

tim armstrong is my spirit animal

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Every time I hear him, whether it’s Operation Ivy, Rancid, Transplants or his own stuff, there’s just something so smooth about it. It hits me hard in the gut, sets up shop in the chambers of my hearts.

That’s the just way things are. That’s just the way it is now.

Tall cans in the air, motherfucker.

Target: 800 words
Written: 387 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Adventures Of Captain Hatteras, Jules Verne
Comics: The Crow: Dead Time 2-3, The Crow: Flesh And Blood 1-2
Music: The Undertones, The Undertones (Teenage Kicks, right through the night)

what’s not to love?

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It’s Deadpool & Wolverine day for me, and I am stoked.

Not only is Ryan Reynolds one of my favourite comedy actors and fellow geeks, he’s also a good Canadian boy, which I appreciate.

Weirdly, I’ve never been particularly nationalist, but I like to support the locals, especially when they’re doing cool things (sorry, Bieber, Nickelback, you ain’t my cup of tea).

Anyway, excited. The first two were great, so I can’t wait.

Also, my second writing was hit this morning, so a mini cigarillo is in order, and it’s nice enough to do it, so yay!

Target: 800 words
Written: 430 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Adventures Of Captain Hatteras, Jules Verne
Comics: The Crow 3-5, The Crow: Dead Time 1 (can I just say that The Crow is a seminal work in Gothic horror/romance?  Every time I've read it, it hits me - fucking angst, anger and love injected straight into my veins.  Absolutely gutting.  Absolutely beautiful.)
Music: Underground V5.0, Linkin Park

coffee

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I think it’s time. As is par for Saturdays anymore, the cats and dog had me up earlier than intended (not the big one, the little dog – the big dog is lazy as hell and sleeps longer than any of us most mornings. She’s wonderful.)

They’re all wonderful, really, but they’re even more wonderful after coffee.

As are most people.

At my best, I mostly want to be left alone; without coffee, I’m full misanthrope.

Is misanthrope a career path? If so, I want to be on that track. Especially before my morning brew.

Aspirations are weird, aren’t they?

Target: 800 words
Written: 435 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Adventures Of Captain Hatteras, Jules Verne
Comics: Caliber Presents 1, The Crow 1-2, A Caliber Christmas 1
Music: Underground V4.0, Linkin Park

sledgehammer

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I don’t know why, but every time Sledgehammer comes on, I want to get angry. It’s not that the song inspires that in me, it’s that, no matter what I do on my shuffle, it somehow manages to come up.

Like, every time.

I’m not that big of a Peter Gabriel fan; in fact, I think that’s the only song in my repertoire, and I think it came as part of a new wave playlist or something.

But the sledgehammer keeps returning, and it’s not cool, like the 80s TV show.

It’s just a bludgeon, one more little way for the universe to throw tomatoes at my face.

I am a Shakespearian actor playing poorly on an off-off-Globe stage.

And I’m not even in one of the good ones, or playing the juicy part.

I am the walk-on; the Sir Andrew Aguecheek of middle-class Canada.

Forever pursuing; forever the joke.

Target: 800 words
Written: 262 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Postal: Deliverance 5-8
Music: Underground 6, Linkin Park

dumb ass moves

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Well, we’re fucked. Biden dropped out, which means lawsuits by Republicans against whoever replaces him, endlessly lost and appealed until it gets to the incredibly corrupt Supreme Court, where they’ll rule against the Democrats and hand the election to Trump.

I know guys like Marc Elias and Seth Abramson seem to think there’s no legal basis for the challenges and it won’t be an issue, but when has that stopped them before? Hello? Immunity? Aileen Cannon throwing out the documents case?

These guys still think this system isn’t wholly corrupt, which they, of all people, being lawyers watching this shit happen in real time, they’d fucking KNOW. But, hey, as good a president as Harris would probably be, and I would love to be wrong about this, these lawsuits alone are going to fuck us all.

Big mistake, in my opinion.

Unless they’ve got a plan to remove Thomas and Scalia (and the other corrupt Supreme Court Justices like Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett), then they’ve got nothing, and they’ve just completely fucked themselves (and the rest of us) into a worldwide nightmare.

So, good one, guys. Good choices, idiots.

Target: 800 words
Written: 232 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Think Tank: Animal 3, Romulus 4, Samaritan: Veritas 2, Postal 21
Music: Under The Bridge, Red Hot Chili Peppers

impromptu grandkid

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So, we’ve been invited up to the see the grandbaby, which is always a riot. Unfortunately, she cracked her head on a dresser and had to get a couple of stitches, so things may be more subdued than usual.

Poor baby. She’s such a sweetheart. There’s a purity in children that’s enviable, a pure connection to joy and other big feelings, a present ability to immerse oneself completely, that contrasts so nicely with those of us who have had all the joy so scraped from us that we’re little more than hollowed-out shells.

I pray for that kind of easy innocence, that easy joy.

I will never feel it again.

Target: 800 words
Written: 303 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Regiment, Farley Mowat
Comics: Postal 19-20, Think Tank: Animal 2, Samaritan: Veritas 1
Music: Order In Decline, Sum 41

exhaustion hunting

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I made a note while thinking about the next revision this morning that referred to the book (and ultimately, life) as exhaustion hunting.

It runs us ragged, from one crisis to the next, shortcircuiting our brains with constant fight-or-flight responses, until we’re too weary to fight back.

Our entire system seems designed for that. Corporatism, the constant pushing of the incomplete narrative (in itself a truth, that we are all works in progress, for entirely different reasons, none of which can be solved with externals), the fear that you aren’t enough, and you need to push harder, harder, harder…

Is there any question that our current setup is more akin to exhaustion hunting than the acts of creation and production, with corporations and billionaires as the ones feeding off our carcasses when we finally drop dead?

We are grist for the mill. Worse, we’re effluent.

This world. With climate change and/or fascism about to kill us all, I think the notion of legacy is rapidly running down the drain. What impact when the world is gone? How can a body heal itself, when it’s already got stage 4 cancer, and thinks chemo and surgery are conspiracies?

How do we survive this?

I don’t think we do.

Target: 800 words
Written: 370 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Romulus 3, Postal 17-18, Think Tank: Animal 1
Music: King James Version, Harvey Danger (I was all "a Harvey Danger album I've never heard?  What?"  Then I listened to it and knew every lyric, and started having flashbacks of listening to it after the bar, in headphones, full blast.  The words were the same, but the music was not what I remember.  It's amazing what the mind edits and what it retains.)

sublime lyrics

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I just want to write Sublime lyrics, as I listen to Saw Red while I try and figure out what I want to say today.

Unfortunately, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have nothing to say.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

Target: 700 words
Written: 339 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Elfstones Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Symmetry 8, Postal 16, Eden's Fall 3, Romulus 2
Music: John Coltrane Essentials, John Coltrane (I still don't really get jazz, but man, Equinox and Wise Man sucked me in.  You have to appreciate the man's skill.)