wildcat

Listening to the Magnetic Fields. Reading Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist, which opens with a monsoon flooding the desert, a British man locked in a torrid embrace with a disgraced woman of high caste. Recovering from last night's debacle of substances, including a magnum of wine. Written 950 words of "Cat Burglar," a short story. I'd like to squeeze out an extra fifty words to bring it up to an even thousand for the night, so I can write another thousand tomorrow, at least. I borrowed two Far Side collections from the library. Posted a fresh rantbook entry a little while ago, the first in some time. Felt extravagant and fine. Languishing in a Bollywood psychosis. I need to get back to reading City of the Djinns.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Natasha for lunch to discuss the three day novel, a doom which hangs on the horizon and draws ever closer, squeezing daylight out at the sides but offering only despair and netherworlds that I can't quite fathom. I have character names, and a light outline of the chapters.

Yesterday was Joy's birthday, there was a goofy party with drunk carousing at Steph and Heather's apartment, Zabadoo the cat rustling around and around on the hard wood floors. I drank entirely too much and became a frightful bore, but that was only to be expected. It's good to get the frightening bits unrepressed before we head feet first into a new school year, and nothing does that better than some bawdy times at both ends of a magical bottle. Stumbled home with Michael afterward to have a third night in bed together. A pretty boy in his underwear, if there's a better reason to jump for joy, who cares? Talked to Ayla on the phone in England on the walk back, which was entirely too long for my bladder.

And now I have MSN Messenger on my computer and an internet connection in my room. I can blog as I write, read, and listen to music. Life is good. Life is high-octane.

Just as a side note, please ignore the hideous formats for the next few days. Wildcat's getting an overhaul - look up at the lovely new banner - and I'm doing it at the same time as a couple other projects. Anyway, I'll work on it some more when I get home from work tonight.

Well, at least the colours are what I want. I have to fiddle with the justification and see if I can shuffle the entire table over without making everything centered. I wish I had more patience.

Listening to Soma FM's Secret Agent section. Very chill ambient techno slash acid jazz. Seems to stimulate my higher brain functions at this shamelessly early hour.

Debating alternate plotlines for my three-day novel. Yes, I know it starts tonight. Standard methodology. It won't change once I start writing.

Off to work.

Michael maintains that the bull riders on TV are actually riding "horsies." This is an ongoing debate.

Got some sad news yesterday; drank some gin and tonics, tilted in honour. The wheel cycles round again.

So, the three day novel began last night at midnight. I worked for about an hour and then passed out, only to get rid of the page and a half I'd managed to get out.

Michael's been blogging about the three day novel experience. We spent the day with Natasha at the Moka House.

I threw out my outline, and then never looked back. Completely different characters, and they're taking me places; I can't tell them where to go (because they'll tell me where to go). I have written thirty pages; I wrote ten pages in two hours today. All the bitter complaining from fiction workshop seems very far away now. I think I'll look at my fiction courses differently this semester (both of them) - having had just one day's worth of the experience.

Dinner at Daniel's tonight. Baked salmon with tarragon and lemon, asparagus, garlic bread, a greek salad, and steamed white rice. The wine was Mission Hill. The whole meal was full-bodied. Good food is so important to me; I don't know at what point supple meals became such an dominant part of my life.

We listened to my Miles Davis ("Some kind of Blue") for part of the writing. Jazz. I remember something my mother said once about liking jazz more and more the older she got, and I think that's very true. I grew up on it and Miles Davis gets better everytime I hear him. It's -- comfort music, like Joni Mitchell is. It makes me feel safe and relaxed and happy. It also stimulates the creative muscles.

Well, it's finished. It's called The Ghost, The Zombie, and the Sociopath because I gave up trying to think of a better title. I screwed around with the last couple scenes and the whole thing has ended up at 56 pages, just over 16000 words. In three days. It's utter schlock, the kind that drips all over you and hardens into a kind of concrete that stops you from moving. It's been three days and I feel encased in my own crap writing.

But, that said, not everything's going to be brilliant and I really enjoyed the experience. I think next time I'd love to go somewhere else and hide out while I'm doing it, and there's definitely going to be a next time. I'm going to do it on the fly when I have three days and I'm going to come up with a better concept and sketch out the characters a bit more before I write the next one. I'd like to write a bunch of pulp novels like the Teiresias Jones book because it'd be fun. Joy, Matt and I discussed writing pulp novels for the summer project and we never did, and while you could say that this one is "sort of" pulp, it's not quite ready and not quite what I think I'd write if I could do it over again. This time it was an exercize, but the next time I want it to be good.

Time for bed, children.

Name - Ben
Location - Vancouver Island
Height - 5'9"
Birthday - November 8th.
Screen Name - wildcat
Eye color - blue-grey
Hair Color - auburn
Sex - Male
School - a lefty university on the Island - one year to a BFA
Mascot - Morbo!
Personal quote or saying - "Morbo DEMANDS an answer!"

YOUR FAVE:
Color - Orange, as in the T-shirt I stole from Joy.
Number - 17.
Song - "C'est L'amour," by Magnetic Fields, "Romeo," by Basement Jaxx. "Bitch's Brew," by Miles Davis (the extended version).
Smell - Napalm in the morning!
Sound - The sound of kisses.
Sport - Wrestling! And soccer.
Animal - Wrestlers.
Flower - A spoondazzle.
Store to shop - Munro's Books.
Gum - Trident.
Drink - The Gin.
Thing to argue about - Hockey, literature, Woody Allen and Margaret Atwood are the same person, creationism versus evolution.
Food - sushi
Candy - Gentleman's pocky.
Movie - "Ghost World," "Royal Tennebaums," "Breathless," "Empire Records," "The Best of Mike Myers," "Bottle Rocket," and "Rushmore."
Actor - Laurence Olivier.
Actress - Lauren Ambrose.
Place to go - Hime Sushi!
Fast food service - Glen's Fabulous Sandwiches.
Type of music - Electronica, Cartoon Theme Songs, out of date raver ballads.
Board game - Risk.
Magazine - "Green Tea Magazine - the reader for the discerning tea drinker."
Holiday - All Saints Day.
Best quality in a friend - A bank account.
Some of your good friends - Joy, Michael, Steff, Jess, Matthews, Andrews, Michelle, Boozencrantz, the Gin, the Gin, Sambuca.
Funniest friend - Ditto.
Highest on themselves - Ditto.
Weirdest - And it goes on ...
Craziest - And on ....
Prettiest - Michael.
The one with the shoulder to cry on - I once sobbed on the phone to Joy for an hour.
Your friends online - But... they're all my offline friends! We live together, we blog together.
What you first notice when you first meet a person - Whether or not they're attracted to you.
What you first notice in someone of the opposite sex - Their fashion sense and how "hoochie mama" they are.
Person you would want to meet - Wes Anderson.
Do you have a crush - Yes, he drives the VAN OF DEATH!!
Your first crush - Amy Rowe in Grade Seven. She was British.
Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend - Yes/No.
Have you ever had feelings for a "friend" - Well, Ryan Steele was unattainable. And on a pole.
Most romantic place to go - Venice.
Ideal place to propose - On the Ganges, upstream from the Crematorium.
Who do you want to spend the rest of your life with - Michael.

HAVE YOU EVER:
Been out of state/province - yes - Alberta.
Been out of country - England and France.
Been skinny dipping - When I was six months old.
Streaked - Yes.
Smoked - Only a hookah.
Sang - Until my roommate makes me stop.
Drank - Have you MET the Gin?
Got drunk - Hello?
Been on a train - Yes, to Expo 86. I was 5. And between London and Paris.
Subway - The Underground!
To a concert - Basement Jaxx, Tori Amos.
Disneyland/Disneyworld - no.
Camping - yes
Ditched school - One day in Grade 12. I felt guilty.
Been seasick - no.
Met someone famous - I had a class with Lorna Crozier. She talked a lot about running off with her current lover.
Gotten arrested - no.
Cheated on anything - A grade 12 Geography assignment. We had to interview people and I made IT ALL UP.
Won any special awards - Yearbook Award, Citizenship, Super-cool Cutie Pants award.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:
Love at first sight - No. That's lust. Still love it though.
Magic - Yes.
Fate - I believe in the Wheel of Life.
Destiny - Isn't that a bad band.
God - Depending on the day.
Guardian angels - No.
Aliens - Yes.
Yourself - I think I exist.
Life after love - Cher?

FUTURE:
Son's name - Henry.
Daughter's name - Antimony.
Job or career - writer, director, artist.
Place to live - Vancouver Island
Goals - Short-term? Write pulp novels.

OTHER STUFF:
Color of pants you're wearing - blue.
Last 4 digits of your phone number - I'm not falling for THAT one.
Would you be a purple or silver crayon - Silver.
Where do you want to go on your honeymoon - Everywhere.
Current weather - Sunny but with a nice breeze.
Last person you called - Joy.
Do you like the person who sent this - yes
Book you're currently reading - The Impressionist.
Do you wear contacts or glasses - Glasses!
Your siblings and their ages - None.
Worst feeling in the world - Thinking someone hates me and being proven RIGHT.
First thing you think of when you wake up - Worry about money, then think about Michael. Then crave a shower.
Do you like to dance - Yes!
Your worst sickness - Bronchitis.
Are you too shy to ask someone out - Apparently, but I would argue the point.
Stupidest thing done - Mixing acid and ecstasy.
Do you like scary, happy, or sad movies - All of the above.
The most important thing in life - I don't know. Spandex?
Do you sleep with stuffed animals - Not anymore.
Are storms cool or scary -COOL.
Your first car - A K-Car. I didn't own it.

Less than an hour until my very first class of the new year, Lorna Jackson's fiction workshop. Apparently (heard through the grape vine), it's actually a fourth year workshop that a few lucky third-years (or third-year-in-fictions) are being let into. I thought I'd inaugurate the day with the blog entry before I did anything else.

Drank the Gin last night, had Schzechuan cuisine which was amazing as ever. Then Michael started to feel quite ill, so I took him home to watch Futurama and drift off. Up early to get myself going and out of the house in time to grab some food (biscotti) and generally immerse myself again.

Michelle and I just decided that we're Will and Grace. She's Will, and I'm Grace. We have a potential candiate to move in on October First; I have to call him tomorrow and set up a meeting.

My day's been a bit off-kilter. Michael had a bad bout of food poisoning last night so I stayed over to take care of him only to discover I'd developed a similar case this morning, when I was heading out the door to my first fiction workshop. Which was good, even though I was hungover as hell from my latest flirtation with the Gin. I know several people in the class from other workshops and the vibe is very hands-on cooperative. A nice turn around for last year's unfortunate psychosis-festival. So I left after class and ended up not signing up for yoga for Joy and Steff because the bowels were doing a rumba and I needed very desperately to get home. Then I ended up smacking my head into the ceiling of the bus and my back started hurting while I talked to one of Matt's bandmates on the ride, then got off in the rain and barely made it into the bathroom in time.

But! I got to kiss Michael first thing this morning and I saw Steff. I bought a ton of comics and wandered around looking for an anniversary present but I didn't find what I was looking for yet - I have somewhere else to look tomorrow - and I need to take Michael somewhere for the second half of his present, which we'll do this weekend. Then I had to work and basically sleep-walked through my shift until I got to go home and talked to my mum on the phone. I also had lunch at Hime Sushi and chatted to Gloriee, had some really excellent rolls and miso soup. Found "Penelope's Cafe" on Pandora, which seems like a good place to hang out considering there's a void of cool coffeehouses that are easy to get too; the two Moka Houses are practically outside the known universe.

Boarded a bus at quarter to eight that was full to the brim and zoomed, zoomed, zoomed to campus for the 8:30 class way down in the bowels (there's that word again) of the computer labs in the Clearihue. I feel like writing a book but instead I'll go to my technical writing class, hang out with Samara afterward, and then go to Bill Gaston's novel techniques class.

I feel like a broken doll this morning that's only operating on Neutral Milk Hotel music. Not nearly enough sleep and I went to bed early because of an early class and the fact that I didn't have any energy last night.

Thinking about a rewrite for the three-day novel; I don't know how much time I'll have to work on because I have to get a good draft done for my first fiction workshop and I also have to research Ploughshares literary magazine and report back a string of information next week. Each one of us has to do a different magazine.

"Bang bang," by Hanzo Steel. Hanzo Steel Volume 1. The damnable best song on the Kill Bill soundtrack. So obvious a title. I need to find it. Later. After I get this festering corpse's hand off my back and the ravenous sea monkeys stop nipping at my heels.

That boy ain't right.

What a bleak morning that was! The second year technical writing class was more like a Grade Five class in detention. We were warned to "act professional" at all times and avoid things like "off-task chatting," repeatedly. Once, I'd be fine with, but it was six or seven times! We were encouraged only to be positive in our writings, because that's "professional" (what?) - and the whole thing felt like little kids being chastised. Everybody looked too young for me to deal with and the girls looked too made up for an 8:30 class. They probably live on campus and have time to waltz over at the last minute after a delirious hour of firing make-up guns at each other. The assignments won't challenge me per se, but it should be an odd experience.

The novel class looks more exciting! Matt, Andrea, Ally, Kerry, Caroline, and about sixteen other people I know are in it. Rebecca's in it. We're starting with Bel Canto and we have to keep a journal of assignments which will eventually be the beginning of a novel concept, maybe a first few pages.

I bought Donnie Darko and Blade Runner. I must examine why Frank the Dead Boy in a Bunnysuit scares the shit out of me every time I think about him.

The week has wound down and time seems to have grumbled to a disenfranchised stop, jagged bubbles of anxiety cooling in the air all around me. I woke up too early this morning to go to work, only to get kicked out of the bathroom before I could have the life-sustaining shower that makes me remember that I have living bits in the morning, because Michelle was late for work. That pretty much set the tone for the day, which has meandered into discombobulation and "Sketchy Sunday" undertones. On the way downtown after work the bus stopped to pick people up and a three-car pile-up happened in the next lane, right next to me; apparently the ripples of poisonous karma are radiating outward in all directions and lapping over other people.

Maybe we need a karmanaut to come and purify us. I'm listening to Secret Agent and trying to remember who I am. Had sushi and sake with Michael and Jo at Hime for dinner and then slogged through the rain in desperate need of a drink for a while - first Bravo, which was full, then Swans (also full) before we ended up with double gin and tonics in Prism before nine o'clock. Michael maintains they were watered down.

Now I'm home and waterlogged, to do some work on my first short story of the new semester, the wildcats story I've been working on for months. I'm going to sit down and bang out some scenes in a few short minutes before I stumble into bed to read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett before passing out unglamourously.

Glazed over with Soma FM's Indie Pop selection. There was some Belle and Sebastian in the mix somewhere, but there's a ton of other stuff as well. I want to strap on a pair of airplane goggles and cruise around town on a rocket scooter while I'm pursued by badly designed Fifties robots and Harrison Ford doing the Blade Runner thing.

Cleaned the bathroom just now so that we can show off the place to Christian when he gets here. I feel disturbingly on the ball and positive - an upswing from yesterday's miasma of distaste. The partner in crime is on his way over, and the plan for the Post-Christian day is buying him half of his anniversary gift (I've even managed to keep it a secret from him) and buying me a wireless card so that I'm not bound to that damnable router!

Hmm. Invitations to the party should be forthcoming.

So after I cleaned up the explosion of tonic water that made its way over most of the surfaces of the kitchen (which was already messy because Michelle went searching for something while I was out and now everything's everywhere until she cleans it up), I fixed myself a Gin and Tonic and contemplated my bizarre lack of coordination. Naturally, I went with a double to go with my dinner for the evening: sliced up smoked salmon pepperoni, fresh baguette, camembert cheese, and Gouda with spices inside. Nothing planned for dessert but that's no doubt a good thing.

I've had a very good night with Michael, we watched Donnie Darko and ate dinner and then breakfast, with the last half hour of Woody Allen's Love and Death thrown in for good measure. Randomly, Hannah and Her Sisters was on this morning, and the world sang with coincidence and we racked the Pinot Noir Racecar. Winemaking's fun; I had rinse with Scope before sucking on a tube. It felt oddly appropriate.

Tomorrow will be the anniversary party, after an obnoxious class of technical writing and a breath of fresh air class of Novel Techniques.

...but rain has all those cleansing metaphors attached to it. So this, boys and girls, is the beginning of Year Two. And it's 7:30 in the morning and the world is dark and I should run out the door right now to catch a bus because we're still in "the buses are really full at 8 in the morning" time.

But...man. One year down. Wow.

And then when you least expect it, somebody does something interesting with zombies. And I think that Cat and Girl might be my new favourite web-comic.

Last night was an absolute blast, and I'm really glad lots of our favourite people got to come. Quite a few didn't get to stay very long, but it was good to see them out with us; dinner at the Japanese Village was amazing and I nice change from sushi. I had the Teriyaki salmon and mowed away. I can't believe that I've been with someone for a year now, and I'm glad Michael and I got to share it with our friends; we had a night to ourselves on Saturday and it was good to celebrate the occasion with people we love. We ended the night at Christy's with surprisingly low key drinks.

But of course I show up this morning after a romantic night with Michael to find that Michelle has injured herself again. She was running to catch a bus (which, sadly, was also out of service) this morning to get the work, only to fall and skid in front of the big construction site on Hillside. She tried to go to work anyway but then realized her knee was a mess with gravel and sand inside, so she went home and got Lisa's car to drive to the walk-in clinic (despite the pain and the woozy air-headedness), where they gave her a tetanus shot, cleaned the wound, and dressed it. She's now on antibiotics to prevent a bacterial infection for the next ten days. I think she'll be okay, but this is just one more accident...

Last night was far too weird for its own good. Got three phone calls from the same person in under ten minutes, was at work, and called them to find out it was neglible rather than life-threatening. Then the text messages of doom, waiting around for a phone call until about 1:30 when I passed out. Woke up at 3:30 in the morning to see that I had missed the phone call and then there was one explanatory message and a text from someone else that made very little sense and was -- completely off the wall, if not a bit obscene. And sent to me at 2:30 in the morning, not one hour before.

If you're having trouble following this, imagine how I felt.

Then I woke up at 6:30 having barely heard my alarm to sleepwalk out of bed and go to technical writing, which has apparently switched labs and possibly professors as well as textbooks, as in the 63 dollar one I just bought the other day.

(And this is all glossing over the really worrying stuff)

And the world sounds wet on the outside, not to mention the photograph of Venice that hangs over my bed. Cars splash through the water left on the road after this morning's rain. But is that liquid possibility making itself known in my head? Trying to, even when I had to give up the bathroom again before I had my shower because Michelle can't be bothered to get up early when she works early. And trying to work on the rusty taps of my very own Ocean of Notions, O best beloved, is very hard indeed at the moment. I work and work at turning that Story Tap on (like Rushdie described it, invisible to everyone with a little man trying to work out the magical plumbing), and it's about bloody time it starts to hiccup ideas - no, not ideas, I have plenty of those. But I need to get the words running so I can finish this story for next week. While I like the story and when it comes it comes out fine, I'm feeling a little out of practice at writing for a deadline.

But go downstairs, and fill a container of macaroni and cheese with shrimp, onions, and green peppers, put it in a bag to take to work. Acclimatize yourself to the abrupt shift from first person to second person, sit down in front of the computer again, fingers on the keys. Breath is light, shallow, through your nose. Your nose sounds like it could do with a good honk. The house vibrates from road construction outside and slovenly bodies bumbling around inside. An electric saw cuts through metal. Stare at the screen. Decide on a first word.

Bulbous monster children in the food court while I walked through on my way to Shopper's Drug Mart for random necessities (tooth paste, super floss, Vitamin B12, and Oxy), then to HMV to get some new music (Magnetic Fields and Underworld). They're vacant like television test pattern brains at three in the morning, and I walk on by through the suspended grease molecules in the air. Then I saunter home and turn on the Story Tap to work on the short story.

3000 words of my short story written, another six or seven hundred to go tomorrow before I revise and futz with it until the thing takes shape and coughs up a draft I feel like handing in on Wednesday. That said, I'm closing up that homework for the evening and critiquing one of the stories for this week's workshop (I'll do the second one tomorrow), then I'll go wash my face and clean myself up a bit. I feel toxic and a bit ugly, but that's just the day after for you.

Gapping out and staring into space is always risky, so I spent some time numbering pages in my new rantbook, the one Michael gave me for our anniversary; a pleasantly obsessive-compulsive activity that wakes up all the ideas for the rantbook that linger in my head. It's one of those ones with a magnetic cover and a pocket in the back for bits and pieces of paper, postcards, two-dimensional miniature universes, all of that.

This day has been a cafuffle of awkward moments, standing in line, and bad pieces of mail. I wrote up a To-Do List with eleven things that need to get done before Wednesday; the Student Loan Bureaus (B.C. and Canada) didn't seem to get any information about the fact that I was indeed still a full-time student, which means I have to go to Financial Aid and get them to go step by step over what I have to do to stop them debiting my account starting in November; apparently the bank dropped the ball when I handed in the forms as I was told to do. I've heard three different stories about what you're supposed to do and none of them seem to be true. I want to scream and shoot something and I hate all life in existence.

I also have to finish the story, which at this point means revising and filling out a few sections and bit and establishing some more internal logic before I hand it in on Wednesday.

In about an hour and a half I'm going to help Michael pick out a coat as a break from homework, and then get groceries before I come home and work steadily on homework as long as I can make it happen - I'm thinking I'll be done by midnight if I ignore certain things (i.e. readings).

A list of things to keep in my head so that I know that the world isn't entirely a sack of fetid shit that drips everywhere from some leak I can't find:

1. Michael bought me an chocolate-dipped ice cream cone with nuts on it while we wandered around Hillside Mall looking for a winter coat for him. We ended up at the Body Shop and found nothing like a coat, but he was hella cute and sweet.
2. Soma FM's Indie-Pop stream is playing Neutral Milk Hotel's "King of Carrot Flowers Part 2."
3. There's a new JT Leroy story in the latest issue of Coppola's Zoetrope All-Story Magazine.
4. I've got a draft of the story done and it makes me want to vomit, but people seem to like my stories when they make me want to vomit, so that's promising.
5. I have a great roommate.
6. Jo, Joy, Matt, and Steff - seeing good friends in the morning when everything else is miserable and my throat is sore? Somehow it takes the edge off things.
7. Dinner plans on Friday with an old friend.
8. That Casey is doing a reading at Mocambopo soon! While I generally dislike the space, I'm pretty proud of Casey for being a featured reader; he's always been so terrified of reading his stuff out.

Why am I ever sad, kids?

Meandering around campus on my day off getting things done. Story photocopied, bills paid, et cetera. I also went and saw about the student loan issues, which is now half-completed, although the process continues to baffle me.

Feeling increasingly ill, I may have to take a day or two off from work to balance my body out a bit. I'm taking a lot of pills in the mornings.

But I'm having lunch with Samara shortly and it's a nice day out! I'm going to be productive and do homework all afternoon and evening.

Sick, took time off work to convalesce, had a decent lunch with Samara and then rushed home. About to start homework any second now, and I've updated rantbook for once. I almost feel productive again.

The updates keep coming today, as I waver in and out of something called a homework miasma with my head full to the brim with paperweights made out of expensive glasses but really, they're still just paperweights making my brain feel heavy and my eyes twitch. I've booked the week off work because I'm steadily on the track to mucky mucus-land with its capacity to induce delirious screams of terror in Joy, but pretty much everyone I've talked to is getting sick with something. Except Michelle because she's on antibiotics for that nasty cut, enough to seal her hermetically from the woes of the Bacterial Culture. Truly, she's a member of the Germ Free Generation. Shrieking. I don't want to go into to work for fear of pushing myself into getting even worse or spreading the infection to all those older ladies that work there and seem terrified of getting sick in any context.

Where was I going?

Bill Gaston's Novel Techniques class, hip-deep in Patchett's Bel Canto and the crowds of adoring men scraping at Roxanne Cross the amazing opera diva and professing their love and blah-blah-blah. The rest of the book is nice but what the hell? Shut the hell up, willis. I have to do the journal assignments before I collapse into dust clouds of Ben-particles later. Ben as particulate matter, a viper mist seeping into your pores and orifices and settling at the base of your lungs, piling up into heaps of dust.

Ended up on the bus with my cousin Sheena, whose father is dying in the hospital up in Prince George. He's her estranged father, and he went up to see him again, she hadn't been to P.G. in nine years and he's gaunt and jaundiced and all the rest. Now she's in pieces, broken up and incapable of dealing whenever she's alone. She's going to see a counsellor soon, if she can get scheduling conflicts ironed out. It feels like everybody's in distress of some kind. We're going to meet up for lunch next weekend.

Time seems to be moving faster, but they tell me that's a byproduct of getting older--

Commiserated at Hime Sushi with Glory today because the end is coming, the restaurant's been bought like some extravagant farm upstate by someone and the place will be closing down and disappearing to be replaced - not by a body snatcher, but by a restaurant snatcher. I ate a tempura bowl, crab sunomono and miso soup with a hot green tea to sooth my troubled internals. And I was reading comics - a nowhere issue of Teen Titans and a lovely issue of Tom Strong. But, more importantly, the newly released second volume of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol (titled, o best beloved, "The Painting that Ate Paris"), wherein amongst other things the nefarious Brain once placed inside a robot body primed to self-destruct, admitted his feelings for the hyper-intelligent Monseiur Mallah, a French ape. They kissed - this robot and this ape - and the robot body exploded and all that was left was Mallah's beret. A rather sour end.

I've begun the next story for the fiction workshop, which picks up a character I've written only briefly in the past and runs with her. It's something. It's something terrible, like an ulcer or a half-completed diatribe on Apartheid - too many years too late. The story is unfocused and a bulging mass of ideas and lines that extracted themselves from my head, but it hasn't got much in the way of structure yet; not in my head and certainly not on the page. But I have time to write and see where this goes. The story gives me free rein with my love of bizarre of peculiarly melodramatic names.

Going to spend some time working on the unfortunate and disturbing case of Miss Sadie Valentino and then I'm going to do my Technical writing homework. We had to write these ridiculous "bad news" memos and print them out, then swap them with someone to go through and evaluate. I got partnered up with some guy named Kyle Somethingorother. The sun's out, a brilliant blue, there's Underworld in the speakers and my head's doped up with tylenol and mucus.

I want to write nonsense poems and fill up the life of Sadie Valentino! I want to write stories and more stories about people who don't exist and probably shouldn't because it would just be too hard on the rest of us.

I'm going to go stare at Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera until my invisible pineal gland bleeds---

Doubt the homework's going to get done tonight, and Michelle's got a monster headache, and Lisa's locked in her room and here I am. Here I am, said the man in the sun, working on my tan. But the Sadie Valentino Story moves forward on an even keel, which probably means it's going to be derailed at any minute by a passing motorcar on this cross-country highway called my brain. "You may experience a moment of ego loss." That doesn't matter, because even the shitty rancid diversions and tangents and long-forgotten side projects mean something, even when they've been deleted or stomped on or stuck in some drawer somewhere never to be seen again (until they return, festering corpses bent on making themselves known, fully capable of revising themselves at will).

I have Michelle's copy of My Big Fat Greek Wedding up here in my room. I have not seen this, but since I've given myself over to the idea of doing that homework tomorrow? Might as well watch a film after I write some more.

I slept last night! A first solid sleep in a while, and completely induced by medication. Two tablets of night-time tylenol and I was out like a light. I woke up this morning and all this time had past, and I hadn't experienced any of it! There was a dream where I was creating MacGyver-like machines using compact discs and bits of string, but I don't remember the context at all.

I will be productive today. I will be productive today.

You know, the most absolutely irritating thing about my technical writing class, the class which I hate so much right now? I'll probably end up learning things I can apply to the real world later in the life. The professor's Grade-5 condescension is all the more frustrating and rage-inducing because of that.

Dude!

Dude!

Dude!

Just saw Shawn of the Dead. Oh. My. Gods! So funny! So horrifying...so romantic! A romantic comedy about working class Brits fighting the reanimated dead! There will be more in the morning, but mother of pearl! See it now. Bring a cricket bat!

So, yesterday was a day with Michael where we didn't get any homework done and Michael racked a batch of wine. Bought chocolates, took some treats over to Michelle who seems to have caught the cold (I refuse to say my because I don't want to feel guilty and anyway, everyone else is sick too), went over to Dan's new place in Cook Street Village - a gorgeous little bachelor suite which is very small in some ways but would probably be a good place to live by yourself. Perfect for the struggling writer type, perhaps. Went to Moka House for a bit and then we met with with Daniel for sushi. We got Gloriee's phone number and found out the last day that Hime Sushi will be open, had a huge meal, and then went to the Patch to look at pea coats. In the end Daniel and Michael bought sweaters and I bought a nice long-sleeve shirt that looks like it'll be warm.

Then, Shaun of the Dead. Wow. Any of the malaise or ennui or mild depression that's been sitting on top of my head like a diabetic antelope has apparently dissolved with this movie, which successfully combines the British "loser" flick with the zombie movie and the romantic comedy. It oscillates between buddy comedy and romantic comedy and it's always at the right moments! They had some brilliant ideas that flashed up and out as quickly as they came, nothing overpowering the main narrative; it was hilarious but at the same time the zombies were truly creepy and nightmarish. I think one of the film's strong points was that, well, whenever you were getting over powered by something (say, how lost and braindead the "buddies" were), it would randomly switch to something else (the zombies, or from the zombies to the ridiculous romantic woes of Shaun and Liz). At one point the movie reached an "end" which made me think that I liked the movie but would never watch it again, only to take it another ten minutes further and suddenly I would most assuredly want to own the movie, because the switch in genre and energy was so well-timed. The film works in part because it has the main narrative and you also get moments of other narratives - it's Shaun of the Dead, but you also have a parallel story which is only hinted at about Vaughn, a friend of Shaun's, and her band of last survivors. And there were also moments with actual emotional depth that transcended all the other genres working in the film.

Critiquing other people's stories makes me want to do nothing more than write my own. I'm in the middle of Sadie Valentino's story, and I feel like sinking back into her skin and cellulite and that preposterous voice instead of writing up comments on classmates' stories. Critiquing is a valuable experience, both getting and giving, but occasionally it can border on frustrating beyond belief. And the blatant realism I'm expected to wade through just makes me want to open up the closet and release the Dogs of Surrealism! I want to unpack the poetry gun and start shooting people with it. Of course everybody has their own style and own peculiar obsessions, perversions, and themes of interest. It pays to remember that, even while you're drowning in the river with concrete shoes on and you're wearing a box--

Zing Boom, to the moon! Today is going to be a productive day. I'm going to critique one more story, do the slightly nonsensical homework for Technical Writing class, and then spend the rest of the day trying to squeeze out at least two thousand words for the short story due next week. It's five pages in and Sadie Valentino has finally hit a scene break. What happens next? I'll let you know when it finally hits my brain like a bullet from a revolver (a bullet from a gun), a bullet through the atmosphere...

Cold's going away, despite the margaritas last night and the walk home. Wrote a little rantbook post to get those wheels turning, drugged out on Magnetic Fields songs and in the mood to read weird short stories to burn my cortex for a while until it spits up vast and impromptu ideas. September smells like Tuscany on a spit, Children of the Atom!

All the homework is done except for about two thousands words of Sadie Valentino. While I wait for news from the front about what happens next, I've been fleshing out a lot of what I've got so far to get back into the voice and remind myself about the energy of the piece. I'd like to get at least the word count up to two thousand already written before I go over to Michael's tonight, where we'll have dinner and do homework.

It's rather distressing when your ego randomly evaporates at around five o'clock in the afternoon after something that was only a moderate concern at one o'clock has suddenly turned your day sour and destroyed your hopes. It's even worse when you're at work and you want to cry. Guess it's another day down without having to be the manly one. Traditional masculinity be damned!

A list of things that make those shitty days better, to the point where you can walk off and write that short story and make it the most radiant light in your little and exhausted head:

1. Michael, being hyper and bouncing up and down.
2. Lunch with Joanna at the Grad Lounge, and sure I didn't get the salmon steak I wanted but the tuna steak cost me less than it should have.
3. Mike Mignola's Hellboy story, "The Troll-Witch," in The Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft.
4. Joy dropping everything to go on her break and remind me that it could happen to anyone.
5. Michael burning me a disc with Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang" on it.

Now let's see if I can make it an entire day without being a sissy.

An assortment of snackies from the grocery store to help me while I divide my time between the most decadent of pursuits, the Sadie Valentino story, and some Technical Writing "polish your assignments" crud. Naturally, I fixed myself a drink to finish off the Tanqueray and sat down in front of the laptop to cleanse myself of the real world and accept the language guns' fiction bullets into the deep, red albatross of my heart. Oh, the discounts! Oh, the painful extravagance of having a character with no name! Oh, the bad news format! I fear I shall have to saddle up, as the uncouth cowpokes say.

Home on the range indeed.

What's the conflict? What's the conflict? I will conquer this damned story before I go to bed tonight, I will collapse its infinite crystalline facets and figure out how to make it go, I will figure out the thrust of it, 3000 words in, before the end overtakes me I fall, fall, fall--