I’ve seen it once before and enjoyed it thoroughly, even if I ended up looking like Sissy Spacek at the prom.
Splatter zone, baby. Why wouldn’t you?
Are you so stuck up you can’t get a bucket of blood thrown on you?
Huh?
Are you?
Weird, dude.
Target: 900 words
Written: 141 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Lost In The Barrens, Farley Mowat
Comics: 100 Bullets 5-8
Music: Remixed Stuff, Beastie BoysKnock me down.
Or least, that seems to the motto of the universe around me.
Are there actually happy people against whom the universe doesn’t conspire? I should think not.
Target: 900 words
Written: 1610 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Lost In The Barrens, Farley Mowat
Comics: 100 Bullets 1-4
Music: Random Pranks, GnarkillThis world is too expensive, and my wife has expensive taste.
I think it’s time for a restructuring. A little deflation could save everyone.
Target: 900 words
Written: 816 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Lost In The Barrens, Farley Mowat
Comics: Once And Future 27-30
Music: Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division (I'm literally wearing a shirt based on this album cover right now, so you know, I'm good)I’m not talking about the Bible (which, by the way, is bullshit, and anyone who’d actually read it would tell you right away it’s not something to be followed), but about personal revelations.
It occurred to me in the midst of making notes about editing for this ninth draft that I could be one of those people that has a repressed memory that they refuse to acknowledge, but which has subconsciously destroyed their entire life, and sent them so far off track from normal that there’s no real return.
It would explain a lot.
The problem is, I can’t think of any instance of that. I know my downward spiral began at twelve, when I was going through confirmation classes and I decided, because I am a completist weirdo, that I would read the Bible (so I guess I am talking about it).
Keep in mind that I’d really committed myself to being a holy little roller at the time, and I will say it again and again: nothing will turn you atheist more than actually reading the Bible cover to cover. If you’re not out by the end of Leviticus and its pro-slavery, anti-woman stance, then certainly, by the time Saul and David have committed their eighteenth genocide, you’ve got to be asking questions.
Anyway, that threw me sideways, because this was the dominant philosophical framework of the world around me, and if it was not only faulty, but downright evil, well, then, what to believe?
(The burgeoning alternative scene that came along around the same time didn’t help – thanks, Matt, for introducing me to INXS, Dead Kennedys and R.E.M, which led directly to grunge, punk and any manner of anti-social glory. I’m sorry I never got into Cannibal Corpse. Rest in peace, friend. I’m sorry it fucked you up worse than me.)
Anyway, this repressed memory. What if I’m walking around with one of these things dictating how I interface with the world through a lens of trauma I wasn’t even aware I had?
The world is spinning. Please don’t be a revelation. I don’t want it to be.
Target: 900 words
Written: 904 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 23-26
Music: Unknown Pleasures, InterpolI’m back to it – the non-Molly Parker, plus-Marta Kristen version, in which I don’t understand the infatuation with the latter.
I mean, she’s beautiful and all, but she’s window dressing most of the time in the show, like her mother. Nice to look at, but ultimately, boring.
In the Netflix version, Judy and Maureen were anything but (and I would be lying if I didn’t have an unnatural attraction to Molly Parker’s Maureen). Strong women are wonderful.
Flirty and light can be fun, but when the chips are down, I prefer a woman who engages, not one who demures.
Long term, superficial is unsustainable. But the depths of a strong woman?
They can feel so big, you get lost in them.
(In a good way, an endless exploration way, not a strong woman subsumes a weak man, though certainly, in any gender context, strong personalities do have a tendency to swallow the meeker, and that’s something to explore as well, but not in this particular instance. Men who wish their women are weaker are, well, sad and pathetic, and vice versa).
Anyway, so be it. I am married to a strong woman, of that there is no doubt. I’ll be the John to her Maureen any day.
Target: 900 words
Written: 992 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 20-22, Die 20
Music: Oh, Fuck, Even More Bootleg Rolling Stones Live Shit, The Rolling StonesNearly lost it all there. All my ramblings, my misanthropic pith, my lazy way outs.
Damn, Jetpack, why you gotta do me like that?
Target: 900 words
Written: 975 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Die 17-19, Once And Future 19
Music: Live Somewhere Probably, The ClashI’m still alive. I’m not broke (yet). I’m not American (hallelujah) or Russian (even more hallelujah). I’m not some hateful right winger.
I’m not done.
Not yet.
Also, it’s Thanksgiving in Canada.
Target: 900 words
Written: 303 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 16-18, Die 16
Music: Unknown Live Things, Sonic YouthAnd new epilogue. The Mungk rolls on, unperturbed. It slithers out from under the bed, crawling up the walls, pure shadow, indistinguishable from the rest save a restless uncomfortable feeling just beneath the heart and sudden, panicked suspicions of something, something, there’s something there and it’s watching and waiting and hissing in my ear…
And in the end, when we’re drifting off, drifting away, on the verge of nightly annihilation, comes a soft, sick whisper…
Target: 900 words
Written: 1389 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Die 15, Once And Future 13-15
Music: Live Things, Rolling Stones (so much Stones)I’m not sure what was going on with Sofi, but it felt like she woke at least twenty times last night, moving around and cuddling up and pushing away and just generally being a pain in the butt.
Plus, the LEDs on the new mini-splits we got to heat our house (which work great as coolers, less as heaters) seemed very bright. I don’t know what was going on.
Things conspire to rob me of my rightful rest.
Great, now I sound like some long dead hero or evil god in a fantasy novel.
Torak, am I.
Ironic that the guy writing a whole book on the darkness of night should find himself more disturbed by unrelenting blue light.
Target: 900 words
Written: 358 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Die 13-14, Once And Future 11-12
Music: Live Things I Found On My Computer, Red Hot Chili Peppers (I should explain - at one point, I had a shit ton of bootleg stuff laying around. It was all labelled and such, but then, MICROSOFT AND APPLE, and something happened to rename all of them to 4 random letters, stripping them of all metadata. It sucked, and while I've put the names of the songs on them, I have no idea where they came from, just the song and the band names.)I didn’t think they were any good anymore. Like not terribly, but comfortably mediocre, like most teams.
I like baseball, but do people actually care anymore?
It requires a patience and attention that doesn’t really exist in our Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok world.
After all, why have a long-lasting memory when it can just disappear in twenty-four hours. I wonder if this generation’s instances of Alzheimer’s are going to spike because of the lack of long-term memory-making abilities.
Everything has to be a filter; nothing real, nothing dirty.
Unless they want to cancel you, then even the hint of an accusation can destroy a person’s entire world. That’s something I struggle with; where’s the line between believing victims and voiding one’s own ability to determine bullshit?
Because let’s face it, in this era, everyone can make themselves a victim in a heartbeat, by referencing feelings. I hear it all of the time, and while in many cases, there’s legitimacy, in a lot of cases, it’s herd mentality, jumping on a trend to abdicate one’s own responsibility in one’s own life.
Framing is everything, and I think it behooves us to be both harsh in the judgment of those who would exploit others and open-minded to the possibility that maybe not all accusations are legit (intentionally or otherwise – sometimes people just can’t see that their hurt or spite isn’t the whole picture).
Anyway, how we got to me treading the line on cancel culture from baseball, I don’t know.
Target: 900 words
Written: 192 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 8-10, Die 12
Music: Live! The Ramones! Woo!