Was going to write a little conclusion to the dude stuck on a shipwreck in space thing but I'm tired for some reason. So I'm going to sleep. Or at least going to try to sleep.

There is someone else out here. I heard it earlier. Morse code. I don't understand Morse code but I know what it sounds like. Someone was tapping it out on metal. There's something going on here and I don't understand it. It's frustrating. Before now I thought paranoia was just something in stories.

Maybe I am alone. I don't know. I spent the day investigating, which is all kinds of difficult. I don't want to waste caloris powering the suit's lights and basically anywhere out of the solar surf is in shadow. Then there's the animals. The roaches are adapted to living out here, little bastards have anti-freeze for blood or something like that. They're the size of rats and colored like Christmas beetles. Imagine ambulant jewelry that'll eat anything, even caloris. Even their wings are adapted to catching the solar surf. They're why I keep all my stuff locked up. A fire caused by one of them cracking a crystal could destroy an entire section of the wreck and all the salvage possibilities with it. Though mainly they feed on the fungi that grow on the sunside bulkheads.
The squids were bred to hunt the cockroaches and whatever other small animals might be lurking around on a tweenship. They're what causes that smell like gunpowder you get on most vessels that ply the 'tween. They're hungry little buggers and eat the roaches as fast as they can breed, sort of friendly too. I've got three that follow me around, and I've named each of them after their scars. Yeah I know it's lazy. One is missing the tip off one of his tentacles so he's named 'Lefty'. 'Bruiser' is slightly larger than the others, about a yard long and covered in scars, probably from fighting other squid. Then there's 'Patch'. He's lost an eye.
Maybe it was roaches that ate the tape. Maybe there's no one else out here. If there is, they're avoiding me for some reason, best not to be worried about. Reckon I'll just be careful and see what happens.

Okay so the new dwarf fortress got released, so no one has to witness me spinning around in a fit of impotent rage while stamping my foot and waving my arms. Well maybe someone wants to see that, but I bet I could keep it up longer than their interest would last. I've got that much frustration built up! Anyway, I might post some incomprehensible screen shots. Just because they don't make any sense.

Nuclear Winter. Remember that? The concept back in the eighties or maybe the seventies that so much dust would be shat up into the atmosphere as a consequence of nuclear war that no matter where you lived you'd be subjected to an ice age of sunshine barely piercing this dark cloud. It's been discounted and reinvented a number of times. It's hard to believe shit like this because so many extremely powerful fucking morons have everything invested in these kill-everyone-bombs. Anyway. Nuclear winter.
If the new Dwarf Fortress ain't out by the time I wake up tomorrow afternoon, we're gonna find out, aren't we?

Oh yeah it's on!
Nik's entering himself into Nanowrimo. Not only that but claiming he's gonna get more words than me. Fat fucking chance, loser! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS?! COME GET IT, FUCKER!
Seriously though, good luck to everyone entering. And the 50,000 words? They don't really have to make sense.

Nobody fucks with the Jesus

March 6th, 2008 it'll be ten years since this movie was released. We're gonna celebrate that, and my goddamn 31st birthday party by watching it and getting very drunk. Goddamn.

What is the Light?

Explored some more of the wreck today. That sentence is a denial. I'm filling in space here to avoid what has to be said. There's... there's someone else here. There's someone else alive. On the wreck. I've been too preoccupied with my own survival to consider that there could be another. There's someone else here.
How? I'm the only survivor. The wreck's large, I haven't explored all of it and I can only guess from leeward shadows of how much there really is. I've been up and down the larger sections calling out for others but no one's answered. Perhaps they're avoiding me. I can't think of why. It's lonely out here. Maybe they didn't hear me over the solar surf. I doubt it.
My indication my solitude was broken, my footprint in the sand, was simple. I've been marking off rotten bulkheads with tape. I've found rolls of tape throughout the wreck. If only caloris was as plentiful. Anyway, unstable bulkheads are dangerous. Breaking them could lead to more debris, which this place doesn't need, or in the worst case I could end up launched into space. Just out of caution I'd marked some areas near the habitat I'm building, an exercise in vigilance. I've traveled by them every day for the past few weeks. And this morning when I went out to forage some had been moved, several where completely gone. If they'd simply come loose they'd be floating nearby. They had to have been removed. I'm not alone. I don't know what I'm going to do.

If someone else was out here, what would I talk to them about?
I'd make something up. I'd tell them about another me trapped somewhere else, not on a wrecked tweenship, but by his own limitations, probably back on Earth somewhere doing some menial job that meant he'd never get trapped out here. His struggles would be very different from mine. I have to pay attention to all details. Before I put together my grapple I had to be extremely careful of momentum. Not enough and I could end up stranded before I reached the next part of the wreck, mere inches from where I needed to go, eventually dying from the cold when the suit's caloris crystals ran out. Too much momentum and I could break through a rotten bulkhead and be propelled forever, another bit of tweenjunk. He'd be in a struggle to avoid details, the amount of them overwhelming. If I had someone to talk to...

Allright. I've found some supplies, some food and enough caloris crystals to power the suit for at least another year. Something like that. The maths get unreliable when you stretch them out like that. They were circling one of the punctured cargo pods, orbiting it like tiny satellites and glittering in the sun during the 'day', like ice at 'night'. I made up a net from a support strut and some construction tape and spent two days catching them. Reminds me of playing lacrosse when I was a kid.
So yeah, I have food and warmth enough to keep me going for at least another year. That's enough time for me to swing back through the trade orbits and get rescued. Yeah. Should be enough time. I'm going to spend the next few months making this place more livable, get some seals up, some decent bedding made, that sort of thing. Just because I plan on making this temporary doesn't mean it has to be uncomfortable.
Another year, eighteen months maybe, watching the sun rise across the arm of wreckage spread across the gravity plane. If I had someone else here, what would I talk about?

Someone asked me at work today who Elliott Smith was. Actually he asked me what I was listening to, then asked who that was. I can't figure him out. He said something about how I like to listen to 'all that Indie stuff' and I wanted to tell him 'nah I just like good music'. Anyway... Elliott Smith:

Last night my mother asked me 'Michael, so what are you going to do with your life now?' My response should have been: 'Well I have about 10 different old rpgs laying around that I haven't played all the way through...'
Very tempted to dig up Planescape: Torment and give that another go as well. Because goddamn was that a good game.

I can measure exactly how drunk I've been on a particular night by the amount of sociopathic posts I made and don't remember. Goddamn.

See my problem is I don't see normal people. I honestly don't see them at all. One of the things we used to have to do at work is get the names of people who order drinks in our store. And that was really frustrating for me because unless a person is exceptional in some manner I don't even fucken notice them. There's this woman, Wendy, who still comes in, one of the legion of short, middle aged women who come in the store and I frighten the living shit out of her because she was the first of her race that I could remember. It's like I'm all 'zomg it's wendy' and she's all 'holy christ keep on that side of the bar you weirdo'.
But she still comes in. I don't know what's up with that. I mentioned it to a customer once, that I can't tell the difference between all of them, sounding as psychotic as I possibly can, and he tells me 'OH! I have the problem too! You must have the same thing wrong with you as I do!' and damn was it hard to not run and hide right then. But it's true. I can't even see normal people. The people I notice are exceptional.

Not before posting this though

The office of the CAV director is investigating the illegal brothel operating opposite its city office. And they call me a pervert.

blah blah blah blah. My window's wide open, there is no drinkable booze in the house I can access without possibly waking Cat or dying from Nik poisoning (ask your doctor about that, not nice) and there's clothes and army boots and now more clothes blocking off my door. Goddamnit. I'm going to bed.

I'm takin myself to a dirty part of town

I just stole one of cat's coronas. I don't know why. My urine has a higher alcohol content. True story. Anyway. I'll steal some money from work so I can replace it tomorrow. Honest.

it doesn't matter what fucking colour the fucking pill is

Take the blue pill or the red pill. The bill or the rill. It don't matter. The decision is as arbitrary as the colours. No matter which one you take that fucking metal monster is still seated in your guts and you gotta choose between keeping it there or ejecting it.
In one week I've watched the Fisher King, read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas now I'm reading Transmetropolitan. The results can only be positive. I told my parents that I'm a drop out. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. I'm out of beer.

Fuck. Now I'm gonna have to read Transmetropolitan. All of it. Again. And it's only 11 PM. Fuck.

Oh mother of fuck. I read Transmetropolitan four years ago. It fucked me up something shocken. And when I say that, I mean 'I fucked me up something shocken' because that's how it works. Anyway... some cracker decided to post one of the best bits on scans_daily. And here it is. I especially love that very last fucking narration panel. I've discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the world instead. Oh yeah. Nice.
Edit: and holy shit, Warren replied to that post himself. How can you hate him? How?!

I just told my folks that I'm quitting Uni. Quit Uni. Done. Post education.
Got the standard 'But Michael. You're smarter than that' stuff. And you know, I don't care how smart I am. University is the loneliest thing I've ever done. Everything else, at least I can relate in some small part to the people I'm associating with. At Uni I felt like a complete outsider. I was poor, awkward, smart (yeah it's still a bad thing go figure), awkward and awkward. I figure I'm finally gonna get over my awkward stage come 2050.

Lets pretend I wrote a fragment here about how I wear a living mask out of the house every day, one that lets me deal with the world and pretend to be one of the humans, and that's cool for a while but then one day I get home... and the mask won't come off! Horrific! Extremely horrific.

And that is called 'phoning it in'. Good thing I write for my benefit and no one else's.

Got to think of something silly to write before bed

So the whip is raised and dropped, not a proper lash, just a warning, the leather straps licking my back without breaking the skin. I'm cool with that. I'm trying as bloody hard as I can though. The little display, the tiny pantomime, is probably for the benefit of her boss as much as my motivation. I start keying the typewriter, a heavy old bastard of a thing that needs a lever or metal hands to get each key down, me with most of my weight behind each keypress so I dance like a fool in my seat. It recalls a friend of my mothers as a child saying something about that kid having goddamn worms. So I type for a few minutes. And this is what you get.

Home, tired. I've gotta work tomorrow afternoon and I'm debating between toughing it out for the rest of the evening, or getting a nap then being chirpy later. But the nap's a lie. The nap's always a lie. I'll probably wake up groggy in a few hours or so think fuck it then go back to sleep then wake up at midnight ready to face the 'day'. Because that's what happens.

If anyone's interested, here's a copy of The Fog Horn.
The hell am I doing up still? I need to be up for work in a few hours.

Omnibusesesesess

Okay so that last post owes... well everything to Ray Bradbury's 'The Foghorn'. Read that story when I was a kid, before I knew who Bradbury was. Then I read 'Something Wicked this way Comes' in highschool and decided I had to read everything by the man. Stumbled across that story in one of these awesome old SF omnibuses you can't get anymore and it was like joining two dots between ten years of space.
Anyway. I'd better go to bed before I wander down the beach to see if the plesiads will eat me. Which is JG Ballard's influence. The bastard.

Tired. Can't sleep. Again. So I'm sitting up here with the light off and the window open. The sea breeze bites like teeth but at least it's something. The moon's out, full, and I'm drinking coffee even though it's stupid. That's not going to help.
The plesiads are up on the beach. I guess they're laying their eggs but I don't know. I guess it'd be the right time of year for it, the end of their migration from where-ever to here. I mighta cared about that kind of thing when I was a kid but not now. Now they're just scenery. The thought of those lizards, and yeah I know they're not lizards, mating in the cold, silent water, that's something I don't want to wonder about.
I'm not scared, they're not gonna come this far up to the dunes, they can't lay their eggs too far from the water else none of their kids will survive. Now that's an occasion. Every damned thing that can eat animal protein shows up for the event. The sky is think with gulls with those poor bastard lizards flipping their rudder-arms to try and get to the water where they'll just be eaten by fish anyway. Hard to think those tiny morsels grow into those monsters down there on the shore.
And as I think that, the sound of the waves punctuating the ebb and flow of my thoughts, one of the plesiads lifts its head on that stupid long neck of hers, turns to the ocean and leaves. Yeah. Kill them while they're small. Nothing will tangle with her.

Had this big blog post about quitting Uni but I'm sitting here playing the melody to joy theme and watching the Fisher King. I'm up to the Tom Waits bit. I'm goin to bed after he's done ranting.

Okay didn't go out tonight. Not gonna say anything bad about Nik because it's my fault anyway. Anyway.
I've been thinking about Nanowrimo. I'm being too conservative, too safe. The point isn't to write something 'good', it's just to write any old damned thing and keep writing, and if I try and do some complex coming-of-middle-age story it's just gonna run out of steam before I get to the end. So! Silly! Everyone has insect names now. One is gonna be called Roach. He's a Savateur but really bad at it. One character, Hopper, owns a gun shop because he won the lotto and thought it would be a good idea to invest in a gun shop. It doesn't sell anything. He just sits around all day and goes out back and blows shit up in his firing range.
That's all I can be bothered thinking of now. But I need to tear the front pages out of note books I've got lying around from Uni and just carry it around and write down whatever random shit occurs to me.

More Cop Rock Who can be mad when crap like this exists?

I woke up feeling like hell. But this made me feel better.

Feeling very sleepy. Spent the evening messing around with the guitar. Hooked it up to the amp and just played around seeing what funny sounds I could make by slapping different parts of it and strumming in different ways. Played until my hand cramped and feeling sleepy. Probably should go to bed.

I've been playing Kingdom of Loathing a little lately, thanks to the efforts of Nik going on about it. It's fun but I run out of adventures too quickly and end up falling-down drunk. In the game.
Between that and the rapidly approaching next release of dwarf fortress I'm getting the urge to play nethack. Again.
Playing nethack is like playing that game where you stab between your fingers with a knife and you try and do it quickly. You always end up stabbing yourself. Sometimes you think 'oh man, this time I'm not going to stab myself' and then you stab yourself. Right as you think that. Sometimes you stab yourself on your first go. And then you look up and it's morning and you've got a hand all stabbed to hell and wondering where all the time went. So I'm not going to play nethack. I'm not going to play nethack.
I wonder if I can find my old version of it with my old high scores.

Blah. Up and down, always the way. I'm not gonna go see the Drones now because they're sold out. Whoda thunk?! That's what I get for wasting time. Still going out tomorrow night to see a guy who Nik knows play some gig or something. I was gonna say no to that, but I've got no reason to stay home that night.

Whee! I'm gonna go see the Drones! At the Corner which is bleh but it's a no smokerin type place now which makes it better. But yeah. The Drones!

Okay more. How does an unmarried guy in his mid thirties have a commission home? They only give those things to families unless you've been on a waiting list for a million years. Okay, so he knows someone who works at the housing commission. It's not actually called 'the housing commission', probably hasn't been called that for twenty years or so, but that's what everyone calls it. He knows someone who works at the local office of the Department of Housing. And they fudged a few things so he could get a commission house.
Plot. I dunno yet. Still digesting.

It's nearly November, I should start at least noting down stuff for Nanowrimo. This all random, writing down what occurs to me.
The setting is going to be a 'commission area' like Hunt's Estate in Portland. I really have no idea if that was the real name for the place or if it was just local irony. I'll have to ask Nik.
But that's part of the point, I've got to get the language of the dialogue as close to the way my parents talk as I can. It's going to be interesting seeing as how I've intentionally spent the last ten or so years training myself to not speak that way.
The main character is going to be called 'Slater', nickname coming from the name for woodlice. He's tall, thin, scruffy. Probably the tallest man in the world. He's got a house in the commission area, works for the council and sells bootleg tobacco to make a little extra cash.
The commission area was built on swamp, land that probably couldn't have been used for anything else. There's a community center just down from Slater's house with a playground that gets used as a hangout by some of the local kids. Slater buys them booze because they're all too young and the guy that runs the bottle shop knows all of them.
Slater's clique includes a womanising mechanic, a quiet guy, another guy that did good in the city but then came back because something bad happened. Slater's got a sort of girlfriend that hangs out with him and he buys toys and lollies for her kids that are a pair of noisy snot machines. Seriously, snot everywhere. These kids are crusted with the stuff and seem to be completely unable to blow their noses.
Her name will be Helen. She's probably a receptionist somewhere, skinny blonde and short. I might change that. Could get me in trouble. Because the womanising mechanic bit will only get me thumped by my brother.
Plot? Plot. Plot. Plot. I need to eat something. More later.

If someone comes to the door and offers you a chair, you take the chair.

I'm going to get contact lenses made up that have a little blue square, the reflection of a teleprompter, in them.

I left out milk for the house spirit tonight, our kobold. That's what the word meant before it was 'easy xp from little doggy men'. It's easier than actually doing the dishes myself. And I know not to leave clothes out for him. That's a quick passage to getting my arse kicked.

Goin out West they'll appreciate me

When I went up to Nik's room before he gave me goggles to wear. I love living with my friends.

It's getting darker. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. The creators of this level didn't include the hints for success, so I guess I'm left with trial and error. I was up in Nik's room before ranting about how we can't be called rebels anymore because that word is so tainted with commercialism, that we have to be monsters, and monsters we are. But I don't know what to do with myself. I just don't know what to do.

When your chances fall in your lap like that...

Mum's latest thing is telling me that I need therapy. Not directly right out like that, not 'you need help'. She tells me about how great her support group is, the one she's in for looking after Dad. She tells me about how she never realised how much Dad's illnesses affected us all, how much she was hurt, but especially how much the children in a situation like that suffer.
And I just want to scream at her. I want to scream that I like being a monster, that this is who I am and I wouldn't change one goddamn thing. Not one! I like how I can't lie because every single goddamn thing I feel is written on my face. I like my shyness and the act I put up to combat it. I like my obsessions and my dismissals. I like the drinking, the hangovers, the comics, the books, the writing, the music, the stress. I ain't never gonna change. Unless I do. But it ain't gonna be facilitated by no paid-for manipulator.

I ran into hounds earlier, a full pack although without a master. They were waiting around outside the supermarket, just sitting there. Going out in the day is always a bit of a gamble. The more people around, the less chance of attack. But if an attack does come then it'll be a big one and there's far less chance of escape.
But hounds are different. They were slouched on the footpath outside the door, talking among themselves. When they saw me, caught my scent their eyes brightened, glowed even, but they didn't move. You can't run in that situation. You've gotta be afraid, if you're not afraid you'll make a stupid mistake, but you can't run either. I kept walking, right by them and into the store, watching all of them watching me. On the way out I didn't look at them at all, kept my back turned and walked as normally as I could. The urge to run itched, but I kept it down. Anything abnormal, anything that would give me away, would have resulted in a chase, their baying echoing through the suburb.

Blah. Another day, another failed adventure. I was going to go out and search through second hand book stores for copies of Michael Moorcock's Cornelius quartet, but I have no second to help me out, no squire to bear my shield until it's needed, no one to watch my back if we're attacked by guerrillas or gorillas. Cat's at work and Nik's working on an essay. Bleh.

Because I loves the youtubes

You can watch the humans trying to run.

I've forgotten a lot about my childhood. A lot of it wasn't worth remembering, some of it I just don't know. Apparently I hurt my left leg badly and that's why I get pain from standing up all day, but I can't remember anything about it happening. I don't remember names, faces. I'm sure I remember reading somewhere about how the part of your brain that remembers those things is finite, that you can only remember around a thousand people before things get shunted out to make room. Which is why celebrities are evil, to remember them you have to forget something, they steal your memories, your soul, with their eyes. And how do you remember events without the people in them?
When I was a kid. I remember fishing. I used to fish a lot but I don't anymore. Fish hooks are terrifying. It was a warm day and around dusk. This was before the oil spill in the harbour that killed off most everything, before they sold the port and it got closed off to people fishing.
There was a small landing between where the Habour Trust area ended and the Alcoa Pier began, I don't know what the purpose of the place was but there were a bunch of granite shards beside it. There are granite shards all over the place in Portland, used to keep the sea away, occasionally drilled with holes where explosive charges were laid when they were rock.
Around sunset a school of mullet surrounded us, orange because of the light on the water. They were schooling and larger than the fish I was used to catching but none of them would take bait. They swam out to the deeper water and we watched them until they turned from silver-orange slivers to nothing, and then we saw the sunfish.
It was taller than it was long and it was distorted by the water and when I told one of the kids at school, one who was a 'sport fisherman' I'd seen it, he told me I was lying because sunfish live in the open ocean, but I saw it and so did Dad and Jason. Damned thing was taller than it was long and near the surface. Probably looking for a way out of the harbour it'd wandered into.
We packed up after that. Didn't catch anything at all that afternoon but that didn't matter, it wasn't the point. I saw a sunfish.

I've got a new challenge. The caloris crystals to fuel my heat suit are running out. I have about two weeks worth if I'm active during the day, probably six if I stay in the pod. But yeah, staying in the pod won't get me any more so that's two weeks of living or six weeks of dying. Yet another goddamn thing to worry about. I was thinking the other day of how much I feel like a hunter-gatherer. I'm alone in my wreck as they would be on the steppe, hoping for whatever providence might befall them. Whenever they found something big, like an newly dead elephant or a beached whale they'd send out runners to nearby tribes and invite them to a feast. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean the one that can run fastest, just means the one that can adapt best to whatever shit's falling from the sky. You scratch my back I'll be less likely to steal your daughters in the future.
I need a whale to beach on my wreck. I've got two weeks.

I have an Allen key blu tacked to my desk. I don't know why.

So I'm reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again. I think this is the fourth time. It's not a particularly difficult tome, hell Hunter S. Thompson was a reporter and it shows with his intentionally accessible style, but I noticed a few things last time I read it and it got me thinking.
See, a good way to read it is as a spirit journey. For the very first thing, the subtitle is 'A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream', so it's said there right on the cover they're moving through a dream. Doctor Gonzo is apparently Thompson's spirit guide, instructing him on how to behave, what he should do next, drawing him back when he tries to leave. They're constantly taking mescaline. Their first encounter is with a character that doesn't come with them, but one that Thompson runs into when he tries to leave, a gate-keeper of sorts. Animal similes are used to describe nearly everyone. We get pigs, snakes, a bulldog, the lobby full of lizard people. Thompson and his lawyer never give their real names, which would give anyone power over you in the spirit world, instead using the aliases Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo.
I'm reading it again and I'm noticing more. But the main point of a spirit journey is to do something, to get fire and bring it back or wrest a secret from the dead, and all they do is see where they failed.
Anyway, I really shouldn't read it. Reading it's like having a bucket full of bad ideas on my head while rolling around in a bathtub of chaos: perfect monster medicine. I'm not sure that's what I need right now.

I'm exhausted right now though. Not enough something, too much other things. I spent most of the day scavenging and avoiding notice. Now I need food and sleep and not much of anything else. I'll check the vending machines in the hall, maybe a kick in the right place will get me something to eat, but if that doesn't work I'll try the tabs on some of those self heating ready-to-eat meals I've been hoarding. They're not so reliable either. I'm pretty sure they're inedible before the chemical heating goes through them, and it's only everything fifth or so package that actually works. After that though, sleep. I've got some salvage scoped out for tomorrow and I need a decent rest before I can move it.

Just annoyed all the dogs in our neighbourhood, and there are a lot of them, by walking along shouting snatches of the Tom Waits song I was listening to. Halo, wings, horns and a tail. Shoveling coal inside my dreams. There are no laws, she is the queen, she's such a scream. Bark bark bark bark.

Submitted Without Comment

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

There used to be this guy on youtube called Johnny Courageous, a Melbourne dude that had a bunch of Rage clips and posted them. Of course Universal got shitty about it and he got shut down. And I just stumbled across his alter ego, Courageous Johnny. Honestly I just love watching these old Rage clips. Rage was such a big part of my early twenties it's great to see these again. Now I just need someone to post the original clip of Horses. Fucken Will Oldham.

There ain't no sunshine way way down

And then you look up and oh fuck it's three in the morning and you look down at your toxin meter and the batteries have run out on the fucking thing so you have no idea how close you are to dying and the sluggish feelings could be death's approach but they could also be the six pack of beer you downed like a baby bird eating its mother's regurgitant all hopeful for growth and flight but you can't tell the difference because you're drunk and tired and dying so you gather all your energy, stand up and stagger back to to stasis bed before the sickness overtakes you, punch in your code and the alarm and pass out.
I bought soap today. We didn't have soap. Part of me kind of likes smelling like an animal because I am an animal but part of me feels sorry for everyone else. Also part is worried that the pheromones will give me away to humans. Got to keep clean. Got to stay alive.
Tonight I've programmed the pod to play me the Drones while I'm passed out. They're back in the country again, aren't they? I need to either find someone to come with me or bully Nik into following me there.

Nanowrimo's coming up again. I'm not going to do it this year, even though I am going to do it. But I'm not going to do it. Because I am. If that doesn't make sense just be thankful you don't live in my head.
I'm probably going to write something in goddamn MAGICAL fucking REALISM. I honestly hate it as a genre because of the way it's regarded as 'colonial'. We're a colonial people and dorks prancing around in armor with swords doesn't appeal to us so lets have hard-boiled eggs talking and turning into babies while the sky turns red to just one person and the birds all suddenly become omens.
But yeah, I watched A Scanner Darkly again the other night and the scenes where they're all sitting around in the house talking shit with nothing happening just gelled with me. I'm not going to try again. Maybe this time I won't make it.

Speaking of comics, found a bunch of Invincible back issues at Minotaur the other day. Bought them all, and got a copy of The Walking Dead's first trade. After reading it I'm really disappointed Kirkman's got an exclusive contract with Marvel. Alan Moore's totally the master of the comic panel, but nobody does pacing better than Kirkman. That's one thing I'm loving the most about Invincible: each issue stands on its own, but each issue also fits together into a bigger arc which then fit together into the year-long storylines, and then there's the overall story about Mark's development and the development of the Invincible Universe. It's just so much fun.
But yeah, The Walking Dead is really cool. It's more like Night of the Living Dead, which is incidentally available free online in the public domain so there's no excuses for not having seen it, than say, any of the Evil Deads. It's about what the characters do to each other while the zombies force them together. There's scenes where people talk about things like how nice it is to be using a laundry detergent.
And the art is just black inked lines, and works really well. One thing that's different from zombie movies are the flies and the maggots. All the zombies are covered in both. There's lots of gaping eyesockets covered with flies. That's something that's gross as hell to look at but makes sense when you think about it.

Woke up this morning with 'Grandpa Fucken Spaceshuttle' written on my guitar in sharpie. Apparently I'd tried to color the pick-guard black with the damned thing and got bored after, well, a tiny bit in the top left hand corner. I'll probably scratch it all off at some point but at least the thing looks like it belongs to me now. I'd go get a new pick-guard put on the damned thing because the faux-mother-of-pearl just looks stupid, but that's dollars I wouldn't be able to spend on beer and comics.

Fuck. Okay. Let me try that again. Less emo pleeease?! No. Shit.

Oh man the emo is gettin kinda thick again. Quick! Let me try something! Ooops. No that didn't work.

We can't stop here, it's bat country

Today I learnt what the fear is. I stood in an airport full of psychopaths and realised that every single goddamned one of them would fall on me, rip my limbs off and suck out my eyeballs if they knew what a monster I was. As future reference I've gotta avoid airports. And casinos. Fuck casinos. That's where they breed them.