Quick’ems.
Fun weekend, too much food, too many snacks. My blood pressure and my waistline have suffered.
My soul has not.
Children are good for the heart.
Grandchildren even more so.
Target: 300 words
Written: 239 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: Sex Criminals 1-4 (I wish I was Fraction)
Music: You've Come A Long Way, Baby, Fatboy SlimUntil the daddy puts the T-Bird away, I think. Or, in this case, the granddaughter.
Man, that kid is something else. Total ham, smart as a whip. Freakin’ adorable.
Starting to go through that “big feelings” stage, where she’s trying to learn how to deal with things beyond the absolute basics.
Really didn’t like the idea of being a “pre-schooler” soon. I hope one day I’ll be successful enough as an author, so she can say, “My Bop-Bop wrote THIS” and then be ashamed by all its darkness.
Wait. Was this a good plan?
Target: 300 words
Written: 689 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Face It, Debbie Harry
Comics: The Necromancer 5-6, The Necromancer: Pilot Season 1
Music: Your New Favourite Band, The Hives (most appropriately named album title ever, possibly)We are off to see the wizard tomorrow. And by wizard, I mean granddaughter.
And by off, I mean, I’m having massive anxiety about leaving our new rat terrier for the first time. She’s a nervous girl, and absurdly attached to me, so I think she’s going to have a meltdown or panic attack when we go.
Luckily, it’s just two days, but man, poor girl. Her pain (or my assumption of her pending pain) is breaking my heart. Naturally, she’ll probably just super-attach herself to my brother, after a short period of being a real fraidy cat.
Best case scenario really, but man, is she going to be stoked to see us on Sunday. Or not.
Maybe she’ll be pissed.
Target: 300 words
Written: 1832 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Is Your Genius At Work?, Dick Richards (Dick Dicks is the man, great book)
Comics: The Necromancer 1-4
Music: Your Genius Hands, EverclearHallelujah!
I was worried I tore a muscle or had one of those fucking impingements like I had in my twenties, born blocking a spike in a beach volleyball and lasted roughly eight years, before I decided to do physio.
(Also, benefits – I didn’t have benefits for a while, and booze was a more effective use of my money than physio. Numbs the pain and/or makes it irrelevant, plus, you know, fun!)
The pain is still there, but way less than it was yesterday, so wherever it was pinched, it’s better now.
Hallelujah. Back to work then, without the pain, and hopefully, with better focus (although, it’s not looking good).
Maybe booze would help.
Target: 300 words
Written: 812 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Is Your Genius At Work?, Dick Richards (Dick Dicks!)
Comics: Fight Club 3 10-12
Music: Young Modern, Silverchair (such an underrated album)You know how sometimes, the most ridiculous injuries don’t come from extreme sports or epic falls or massive collisions?
You know how sometimes, everything’s going along just peachy, minus the high blood pressure, and then, you grab a towel, to dry your dog off, after she goes out to pee?
You know how you not particularly vigorously towel her off, and then somehow, pull or pinch something in your shoulder so there’s acute, stabbing pain every time you reach for or pull something, anything, like a drawer or a cat dish off the floor?
You know, that stuff. Happens every day.
Use a towel, fuck your shoulder.
I am in terrible shape, apparently.
Target: 300 words
Written: 973 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Robert Maurer (fave?)
Comics: Fight Club 3 6-9
Music: Young Americans, David BowieSometimes, days just get away from you. Technical difficulties, focus problems, the urge to take a nap in the middle of the day for no apparent reason.
Such is life, but it is frustrating. The sooner I’m a full-time, self-sustaining writer and don’t have to work the extra eight hours a day, the better.
This work thing is really cutting into my shit.
Target: 300 words
Written: 1237 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Robert Maurer
Comics: Fight Club 3 2-5
Music: You Only Live Once, The Strokes (The Strokes with Eddie Vedder doing Marvin Gaye? Fuck me sideways, does it get better than that?)Listen, I get it. This is a 2006 blog in a 2024 world.
People don’t want to hear about your whining, or your ideas on hope and achievement.
I’ve some interest in that stuff, but once you’ve read the basics of things intended to inspire you, and you’ve moved beyond it, because you realize it actually sets unrealistic, non-real world expectations (requiring riches and bitches, as I like to say), for most of us, it makes you feel bad.
Unworthy.
So, it becomes about finding the softer voice, the one that speaks to you without imposing its own views of success. Success isn’t a requirement of happiness. Neither is money or love or great sex with girthy members or gravity-defying breasts, or whatever you’re into.
(Both? Simultaneously? On the same person?)
These are nice to haves.
Right now, I’m writing about the crushing weight of the world, or the way trauma knocks us off our axis and fucks up our magnetic fields, so we’re forever pushed away from the thing we want most.
And it sucks. That sucks.
(Not the writing part – the crushing weight/trauma part).
It sucks that people, like us, like me, like many of you, have to go through this. And sometimes, it doesn’t get better.
I’m not sure what hope I could offer. There will be some good times, but it might not go away. It doesn’t, for a lot of people. Some eighty-year olds still bitch about how their parents messed them up.
A lifetime has passed to get over it. Why are these things still dictating behaviour?
But they do. They still do.
They fuck you up, your mom and dad.
Not my mom and dad – I fucked myself up. I’ll take credit for that.
Target: 300 words
Written: 1143 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Yours, Cruelly, Elvira (way better than you'd expect, given, but then, I've always been fond of Elvira - even as a child, she gave me tingles in parts that maybe shouldn't tingle at that age, but then, I was always girl crazy - see above note about gravity and defiance - her humour was equally sexy though - like a dad joke with boobs. Anyway, it turns out, she's pretty cool, and she's lived a hell of a life.)
Comics: Fight Club 2 8-10, Fight Club 3 1
Music: You Forgot It In People, Broken Social SceneMaybe it’s because I’m reading Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club 2 or because I’m turning a twin sister into half a yin-yang symbol, but I’m thinking about metaphors.
They are useful, for certain, but sometimes, isn’t it better to go the direct route? Like, all the metaphors in a book may make for a good study group or dissertation for your literature class, but is it flagrant enough for the masses?
Does it steal all the momentum, all the discovery, to just say it outright?
I think, to be done in the best manner possible, it has to be metaphor to a point, and when it’s done, when its usefulness has run out, it’s time to rip away the mask, and say, here, see, this is the frightening thing that lies beneath.
The unknown creates tension. The known can either relieve it, or make it a thousand times worse (a la Seven, finding the head in the box).
Sometimes, it’s better not to know.
Target: 300 words
Written: 847 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Yours, Cruelly, Elvira
Comics: Fight Club 2 4-7
Music: You Don't Come Close, The RamonesI’m kind of excited. I mean, I’m writing about ruining a kid’s life, but also!
Published! In a real book of poetry. It’s a physical copy. You can touch and feel it. It can’t be deleted in a moment when the website goes out of business.
That’s pretty cool.
But anyway, back to destroying a young boy’s entire family, so he can be eaten and/or consumed by a monster.
You know, same old, same old.
Target: 300 words
Written: 1439 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Yours, Cruelly, Elvira
Comics: Fight Club 2 0-3
Music: You Could Have It So Much Better, Franz FerdinandIt’s actually weird for me to working on setting this early. I mean, rough ideas, sure, but usually, it’s brainstorming on plot or exploring character motivations and tendencies.
(Or off freestyling something that’s completely irrelevant, because sometimes, that’s what you have to do, y’all).
But here we are. Thinking about small, crumbling ranch houses in the country, about locked sheds and cornfields that can swallow you whole.
You can almost see the sunrise cresting the tassels, can’t you?
I can.
Muddy, musty, moldy. Water marks in the ceiling. Linoleum that’s been ripped up in places.
Rickety round kitchen tables. Single beds. Creaking floors.
Shadows, reaching again the fall of the light. The onset of darkness.
And something under the bed…
Target: 300 words
Written: 409 words, novella: The Mungk
Read: Yours, Cruelly, Elvira
Comics: Southern Bastards 17-20 (come on, Jasons, give us more!)
Music: You Broke Me First (Single) - Tate McRae (it's been a weirdly musical kind of day)