wildcat

It's rather tragic, the look of expectant horror on my face whenever I flush the upstairs toilet now. I'm always expecting it to overflow and sweep across the floor like Napolean's armies. Seems to be working, though.

As an aside, a rather wonderful present from Daniel means that Michael and I are going to go to Seattle sometime this semester. I've never been and it seems an exciting turn of events. I don't know that I can thank him enough.

Other than that, the snoring roommate has moved out and the goofy German PhD student has moved in. The house's energies are already realigning and metamorphosing into something new and different, but a lot more positive. Even before our massive cleaning binge, the place looks about twice as clean as it did on Thursday. Remarkable. Everything seems so alive with potential.

Especially the story, which I'm working on today because the draft is due for workshop on Wednesday. I'm reworking whole sections of it, and I also have to go line by line and make sure it sparkles. Sparkles.

Final proofreading moves like glaciation. I've eaten half a strawberry-rhubarb pie today and tried to watch a James Bond movie only the disc glitched in the middle -- but not early enough to spare me the Halle Berry, which burnt my retinas and made me scream like the Joker does in the first Batman movie (the Keaton one, not the Adam West fiasco with Bat Shark Repellent). And am I actually editing while I do all this? Probably not, although half the story has been fine-tooth-combed (I'm sure I missed something, though, which is why I have to print the damn thing out and check that way too). I think all the kinks in the characterization are worked out for this version, though. No idea if anyone else will enjoy Sadie Valentino as much as I do, or if it's back to pitchforks and uncomfortable placement of flaming torches.

At least, by my standards, there's a happy ending. But a Ben Happy Ending is pretty much like reading Revelations for most people. I guess you could say it's an ambivalent ending or a "Well, she's not dead" ending. It's nothing like perfection, it's a callous and flawed body like anything else I've written, but I'm hoping people in my workshop find something worthy in it. It gave me a reason to research a Bulgarian diva.

But enough stalling! Into the waters I dive.

The second version of the second draft of Sadie Valentino's story, which is now called "Every Song was Punk," is paper-clipped and on my desk. There was a major rewrite and then Michelle went through the draft and proofread it because, frankly, I miss things everytime. I have this habit of skipping words. Then Christian and I realized we'd been talking about CanLit and gender theory for close to three hours, so I decided to print out the story and go to bed and he decided to go to bed because for some completely irrational reason he's getting up at 7:30 to go sailing or somesuch. I will sleep in until 10 and then call Michael about brunch -- brunch! -- with people like Michelle and Daniel. It's been so very long since I have felt the touch of Brunch's soft-sweet-pastry hands upon my sunnyside-up cheeks.

Tomorrow stalks me with Today's mask over its own face.

Today's been productive! I went to Technical Writing and sat through the class, took a stupid quiz, then went to pick up the workshop comments on "Cat Burglar," got my next story photo-copied, stopped by to say hi to Jo, and headed home. I'm working on the "Cat" revisions, going scene by scene and rewriting it from scratch (with a few grafted in bits from the original, I'm sure, but none yet). I'll be alternating between that and critiquing the three stories we're discussing in class on Wednesday.

Revisions are, I find, enjoyable to do. My writing is never going to be perfect and never going to be as strong as I expect it to be, so with revisions it actually feels like I'm doing something worthwhile and productive, because I get to go through and figure out exactly what needs work. I get to correct a couple of those niggling technical errors that I forget because I never proofread enough (usually because by the time I print I've been staring at the story for too long and miss them). It feels extremely creative.

As an aside, picked up Nick Bantock's Urgent 2nd Class, a book on collage work and "found" art, dubious documents and remastered maps. I'd like to do more graphic design work and visual art in the future, and my weird obsessive love of collage has been coming back again.

Watched City of God last night, a brilliant Brazilian movie, with Michael. We rented it this weekend and finally watched it, a brutal experience overwhelming in its craft (the shifts and distortions of time, the multiple stories woven together and apart). I highly recommend it, but I suggest doing what we did and making sure you have Sex and the City or Family Guy on hand for the aftermath when the violent, aggressive drugged-out vibe gets to you. The use of real news footage was interesting, and I'm encouraged to find out more about the real world events it was based on.

Wrote the first two thousand words of the "Cat Burglar" rewrite yesterday, so I'm probably about half-way done the revision. I have one more story to critique and then I'm going to go full throttle with it until I have to leave for a collective meeting. Plus I'll spend the night rewriting.

Dinner tonight: Linguine with prawns, asparagus, onions, tomatoes, and garlic. Fry it all up for a wicked sauce.

During Bill Gaston's novel techniques class this morning, while Bill talked about Bel Canto and "female fantasy," all the bits that were working or scintillating or the great swelling of melodramatic emotion? I wrote the opening to If Life Gives You Lemons, Make a Meringue, Meringue's once and future autobiography. This is for one of the class's novel-writing journals, and it details the drag queen's remarkable birth in Venice. I have to work on it more, later, when I have finished this last thousand words or so of the "Cat Burglar" story and get that revision completely finished. I also need to start reading the Shipping News.

But anyway, while this going on I also had lunch with Matt and Joy at the grad lounge, ate a salmon burger and we chatted about life, writing, art, women being sold into slavery -- a brilliant meal.

But I have to go to work now.

"Wild Cat Days" has been printed off a proofread and re-printed and stapled. It's ready to hand in. I still feel like the whole thing could do with another workshop, but give it a few days and I'll never want to revise it again.

Started working on the opening scene to If Life Gives You Lemons, Make a Meringue, which is going very well. Christian gave me a few ideas to focus on with regard to the first scene the implied gender-fucking that makes Meringue who she is. I may throw around some rough notes once the exercize is done and I want to actually plan out the arc of the novel, because the only real plan I have for after that first chapter is that Chapter Six is going to be "Moonlight over Mozambique." He mentioned some interesting fact about the nineteenth century British Navy which pretty much is required to go into the novel. Need to do some research into Barcelona.

I got the oddest compliment today, over Joy's cigarette: "I love listening to you talking about TV!" I don't know what this means. I really don't.

Run, Lola, Run last night with mulled wine, marzipan apples, and good friends. It's probably been about a year since I last watched the film and it really holds up well, that brilliant soundtrack over some well-constructed if showy cinematography that shifts back and forth between handheld and dolly shots -- the running sequences are frenetic because you never know what kind of shot you'll get next, and watching it with a pair of Germans added a few angles (for example, the blind woman that lends Manni a phone card and hangs around outside the phone booth is played by the actor's mother). I like the idea of people's lives being jumbled together and shooting off in tangent plot lines that you glimpse for a minute before the main action overtakes you and there's Lola again! Running, always running. Some beautiful overhead shots and I love the idyllic and convoluted apartment building she lives in, with the fountain in the centre of some kind of enclosed Eden.

I've also got Talk to Her for a week, which I have yet to watch but am really looking forward to. I can't think of any Spanish films I've seen and want to take in another country's intepretations. Sounds beautiful, by all rights.

Bought Fellini's Roman orgy flick Satyricon today for six bucks, with Ghost World and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - incidentially, having just watched Priscilla, I have this uncontrollable urge to watch Terrance Stamp in The Limey to compare to his performance as an aging transgendered performer. Brilliant.

Listening to the Neutral Milk Hotel, skanking around my room, and working on the Great Meringue Novel. There's a Damocles in the first chapter--

Stealing a meme from Jason who stole it off someone else, et cetera.

10 years ago today, I..

1. was about 13 years old, a month away from my 14th birthday.
2. was less than five feet tall and a high, high voice. Damn puberty.
3. sported a bowl cut and some really nasty glasses.

5 years ago today, I...

1. was just over a month into my second year at the University of Northern British Columbia, wasting hours in the Doug Little Lounge with too many people to count. Getting addressed as "The Little Red-Headed Homo" loudly by Magdalena from across the beer gardens. Taking classes like Economic Geography for no apparent reason and bored, bored, bored.
2. still lived at home with the both of the 'rents.
3. hung out with a surprising number of models, for some reason.

3 years ago today, I...

1. worked a shitty, shitty job and not was going to school because of my old bad decision-making. But everybody has chapters that don't make much sense.
2. was quite firmly on the rebound and being ridiculous about it.
3. lived at Green Street and rocked out and raged and hung around in Joy's room too much during the Tetris sessions.

1 year ago today, I...

1. was days away from this blog's first post.
2. was in the middle of living in this townhouse with Michelle and at that point Tammy, with Michael's number in my cellphone for less than a month.
3. was trying to juggle a poetry and fiction workshop at the same time.

So far this year, I...

1. have gotten more serious about the writing and other aspects of art in my life.
2. started to worry and think about life after graduation.
3. healed a lot of my issues in time to deal with other ones.

Yesterday, I...

1. watched Run, Lola, Run.
2. got drunk with Michael, Michelle, Christian, Sven, Joy, and Matt on mulled wine, talked parallel universes with Joy, and gave a flying fuck-all about the occasional run-on sentence.
3. tried Amarula Cream.

Today, I...

1. woke up beside a beautiful boy and went out for Brunch with him.
2. emailed my dad.
3. am going to critique a story set in Kenya.

Tomorrow, I...

1. am going to bottle our Pinot Noir with Michael and Daniel.
2. am going to eat Thanksgiving Dinner with Michael's family, sure to be a scene.
3. am going to shave with fresh razor blades and make myself all pretty.

Just watched Talk to Her, a Spanish film which blew my mind with its spare but highly polished style. The narrative is fascinating and tragic but lacked moralizing and judgement of its extremely ambivalent characters. While the characters judge the film itself does not, and I find that fascinating. There are some absolutely beautiful sequences and is exemplified by a faux Twenties silent film sequence, a film-within-a-film about a scientist and her shrinking lover. Odd ballet sequences which mirror the film's story start and conclude the piece. I think my favourite moment is when Lydia, a controversial female matador is being strapped into her costume; the violence of the tightening buckles mimics the violence of the bullfight that follows.

Worked on more of the first chapter of Meringue's novel; it's coming along in smooth spurts of inspiration and I keep getting fresh fuel for it. The most recent inspiration is the adventures of Ralph and Joseph Fiennes' other brother, Sir Ranulph Fiennes. While his brothers are well-known British actors, Ranulph was knighted in 1982 for circumnavigating the planet from South Pole to North Pole. He's an explorer and adventurer practically out of some old pulp novel. The kind of things that Meringue would do with a cocktail in hand aboard a hot air balloon. She'd be accompanied by a small monkey named Beirut.

Does it bother anyone else that I'm procrastinating from homework by looking up pictures of Kylie Minogue that show her looking particularly transgendered? Looking for inspiration for Meringue? I should be doing something else but I hate everything else. And Michelle is helping Christian mark some atroctious graduate paper about Victorian class systems and a Susannah Moodie book.

Today has, as the Belgians say, been productive. This morning I had my fiction workshop with a weird fire drill in the middle that proved how easy it would be to kill cynical writing students by arson, because we sauntered outdoors making sure to save Amanda's home-baked chocolate chip cookies, and refused to stand where we were told because the pavement looked so inviting. In other words, one lit match and we'd all be dead. Got my story workshopped and can now begin revisions, which as I have said before is where the real writing happens for me. There's the potential for a major overhaul on Sadie Valentino's story.

After that, I took the #14-A bus downtown to get the week's comics from Hot Legends Guy (a particularly existential Tom Strong episode, the second issue of the new Warlock series which could go either way, an issue of She-Hulk [what?], and an old 100-page Justice League Spectacular from 1974). I need to cut down my comic book habits again to just the bare essentials -- Tom Strong, Terra Obscura, Promethea, Planetary, and apparently this new She-Hulk series which is really fucking hilarious. Most of those series are coming to an end anyway; Promethea's last issue comes out in December.

Anyway, after the comic book geekery I lunched at Hime as usual and went in search of Ranulph Fiennes's books, then ended up at Wells' Books to pick out bits of cheap and dirty ephemera and documents to be altered, collaged, and generally abused. I found a weird Walter Raleigh stamp from somewhen for next to nothing and have every intention of using it for something bizarre and evil. Art is fabulous.

Then work, scribbles of time doing nothing but automatic robotic functions that deny one's sense of self and certainly do nothing for the desperate, crawling sensation in my forebrain demanding that I drop everything and work on my rewrite or the novel. Also, I wanted to kiss, but Michael was nowhere around. Strangely managed to avoid the existential dread vortex. A wandering, replenishing phone call to Matthew in V----- and I arrived home to finish up some homework for technical writing and then to begin the rewrite.

I'm listening to Underworld and I'm very shortly going to be only in my underwear.

It's 7:24 in the morning, I'm about to head out to the bus stop to go to school for the Technical Writing class, and I've got that creeping terror up the back of my neck. I want to watch something by David Lynch, even though I don't like David Lynch's films usually - had to stop Mulhollend Drive halfway through because I didn't care about any of the characters. But now I want to find some place to rent Twin Peaks, even though it'll terrify me--

The process of rewriting Sadie Valentino's story is a convoluted beast as usual; I'm starting to the story at a different moment, before the original beginning. Suddenly a lot of things alluded to or told through dips into the past must be made solid and real and all of that jazz. This is an entertaining process, partly because the scene existed before the story did, as a postcard story. The scene is mapped out for me, with all the details and characters involved ready to come forth out of the abyss and fill themselves in. This part is going well, even as I struggle to ramp the tone up to the level I want it at. And try to avoid unneeded words, I'm trying to be more ruthless with my line edits as I go. Once I have the prototype for the first scene done I can go back through it and add descriptions of the setting and the characters to flesh them out a bit. A few of them won't be back for the rest of the story, except through allusion and memory; I want to build them more fully into the narrative, because I like all of them a lot.

Like the fact that Irma Gordon plays the saxophone to smooth over the chaos, having worked her way up through the local music scene to become the best drag king in town, which begs the question of why I always have to have characters in drag. And the saxophone is there to deflect the "piano bar" cliche. Bruno, the bouncer, needs some development beyond the muscular kind and the fact that he's in love with the bartender.

After I get all that worked out I can get started on the second scene, which used to be the first scene and is being rewritten from scratch with everything else. At this point I have to deal with the whole "murder the little darlings" head space and get rid of overly showy language - beyond the stuff that's absolutely necessary for tone - and really work through this story. It's one of my favourite things that I've written and it's a story that's intensely important to me, so I want to revise it until it's utter gold. For some reason, I feel a lot riding on this one. The point of view is limited third person but now it's more omniscient, dipping down into people's heads at times. I want to smooth that out and make the transitions work so that the narrative persona doesn't overwhelm or underwhelm.

Unfortunately, the story dipped into second person out of nowhere a few times, which is a stylistic quirk of mine that's needs to be held in check; I have this tendency to have my narrators ask rhetorical questions of the characters that come across a bit like they're asking the audience - which they are, because I love to include my audience in the act, murderous or otherwise - but in this story because I want to keep the dipping point of view, the questions have to go or else they might confuse people. Clarity is always an issue with me. That and I have to get rid of the italics, which is mostly because of a comment made in Eats, Shoots, and Leaves about how italics are often used to give emphasis to weak writing. Naturally, I got defensive and now I'm trying to avoid them like the plague, and learn how to make my prose a bit stronger and emphatic based on context.

But enough of this nattering! Back to work.

My current problem is the fact that I now have to give a stupid presentation on Monday morning using two transparencies, presenting a problem to the audience. I have completely blanked on ideas for this presentation. I hate my brain. It's so stupid and I want to kill it with booze. Unfortunately, there's no booze in the house and raspberry juice while being tasty and the juice equivalent of sexy, is not alcoholic enough to destroy precious brain cells.

What? Overreacting? I know I'm overreacting, that's what I do. I also make disgusting generalizations.

This blog entry brought to you by the letter "twitch" and the number "aneursym."

I think perhaps that it is time to remove another layer of skin and let it drop down away from me before I have time to snap my fingers. I should stand under the shower for ten minutes and try to remember my name. Things haven't been happy inside my head today, or last night, and I have one objective: to write the presentation outline and the text for the transparencies. I have hours to go before I sleep (miles?) and I know that I can indeed do it. It's not an issue of not wanting to, because I don't have time for that. I'm going to stand under that shower in the empty house and then I'm going to put some loud music on and bang it out. I'm going to bang it out and then when I'm all done and my head feels that initial sag (before it fills up with anxiety fluids again because I will then have to actually present the stuff), I shall spend half an hour working on my revision so I can remember what the hell I'm doing with my life.

Spliced in: selections from the Run, Lola, Run soundtrack, fragmented paragraphs to insert like genitalia into the new opening scene for the Sadie Valentino short story, the completed outline of my Hime Sushi presentation for Technical Writing, Proulx's The Shipping News on the toilet with my underwear pulled down to my ankles, an assignment from Lorna to write a sequence from two different time/space angles, an episode of Sex in the City that I've seen too many times. Sarah Jessica Parker walking away from Chris Noth with a ridiculous "some women are untamed horses" metaphor going on the background while other people gabble away about a Robert Redford / Barbara Streisand film which should probably be avoided. Thinking about how Morrison's Doom Patrol is about the misfit teenagers of adolescence essentially facing and dealing with, dispatching the little terrors of childhood, how all the villains sound like and often are nursery rhymes. Cleveland Lounge's "Drowning," a drum and bass song that made the circuit around the raves in Prince George my last summer there, especially on that one night in July with me freshly single and off my tree with Matthew and the Scooby Gang, David Quast telling me how weird it was to rehearse a play with my dad at my house with the photograph of me at four years old on display, a light summer rain rushing over me while we went up. Matthew and I having the most cinematic conversation of our lives (shouting at each other from parallel stairs up to different buildings, to be shot in profile).

I'm going to type out two page's worth of bulleted points for the transparencies, and then I'm going to do some writing. Because that's far more interesting.

Read a Raymond Carver story, yesterday - "Careful," about a seperated husband and wife. Crisp prose. I think it works because it carefully balances deep emotional intimacy with all the problems in the marriage, so simultaneously you can see why they're together and why they aren't together. The husband has moved into a little apartment by himself, and has cut down his drinking habit to only champagne (he thought this would encourage him to drink less). The central event in the story is that the husband's ear has filled with wax and now he can't hear anything, and his wife comes over to discuss things and she ends up trying to help him get the wax out. It's really beautiful. There's just this idea of the communication gap expressed in a relatively unexpected way with the fact that they have to deal with this first, before they can talk to each other and understand each other. It encouraged me, because stories always encourage me.

The short story revisions are finally back on track, I think. I'm still working on that opening scene, the new one. I don't know. The event is, to me, a compelling image and I want to play with it more. I like the drag king and am almost sad that this moment is all we really get of her, but she has to just be part of that one scene, she has to part of that sequence at the beginning that starts everything. I'm still very much living inside the story.

Michael and I ran into Debbie on the bus home last night, after the Oktoberfest party at Jake's house. She talked about why she had to drop the fiction workshop and all of the stress she was going through, and then she got off the bus and I made sure to say that I wanted to hang out with her more. Michael observed that she's a very genuine person, and that's very true. Anyway, we were drunk on beer and on a bus with a lot of stupid Residence Kids and then we got off and stumbled home to watch ten minutes of Leela, Fry, Bender, and Zoidberg fighting an army of replicant Lucy Liu drones.

Actually, Edward Gorey's "The Admonitory Hippopotamus: or, Angelica and Sneezby" is a bit of a disappointment all put together. I think it was the lack of illustrations to go along with the short bursts of text. The story only has one illustration, and I think Gorey's work is a prime example of the balance between text and image; it needs both working together to produce his usual high quality. Cut one away and the whole thing loses some meaning. But bully to the Paris Review people for bothering to use a different font and size for Gorey's piece.

I've reached the point in the rewrite where one of the characters diverges a lot from his original conception; I stopped myself from writing any further because I'd like to have a clear head (no public speaking anxiety) before I tackle that particular monster. I am quite pleased with how the rewrite goes, even though it still needs a lot of work and fleshing out. I think one of the important steps forward I've made this year is more about maturity when dealing with writing and revisions. It's comfortable and exciting to really think of this as your "career" and how you view it a bit differently, even responsibly. I think that even if I ultimately fail in my goals as far as writing as an industry is concerned, I'm at a point where the act itself is solid enough and important to me enough that I think I could still enjoy and derive a lot of pleasure out of it.

Joy's watching Talk to Her! I'm so excited at the prospect of sitting down and discussing this film with her. Michael and I got quite a lot out of it and I'm curious to hear more of what she thought. Has anyone else - besides Matthew - seen this film out there? Please say yes. Joy had watched half and expressed concern and frustration with the violence done on the bulls during the bullfighting scenes, which she attributed more to the world than the movie, and we discussed the how the scene where Lydia is strapped into her matador's outfit expresses a lot of the violence in the sport through the understated violence of strapping someone into a costume - the cinematography and movements, the way the strapping and buckling is portrayed implies so much destructive power even as it is a "creative" act. I don't know.

Tomorrow, I plan on having a drink in the Grad Lounge after class, regardless of whether or not anyone joins me. Then I want to work on my rewrite, do the homework for fiction workshop, and probably watch Ghost World - which case, expect some ruminations on that film when I post next.

The presentation was negligible as to be expected and I got to see Michael on his way to class (he'd slept through his alarm), Jo in her office (she was exhausted and horny) and Joy on her break (she wasn't being appreciated by people), which made my morning brighter. Then I drank a Blackberry smoothie and went to my Novel Techniques class where Bill Gaston inspired me to work on my story with new vigour. I convinced Caroline to come for lunch with Samara and I, we went over story beginnings and gossiped and I looked through a poetry assignment for Samara because she needed to be reminded that she's, you know, incredibly brilliant and insightful (I think I might have to write it on her forehead for her so she remembers everytime she looks in the mirror).

Now I'm home and I'm going to work on my short story for a bit, and try to write that assignment for my fiction workshop.

Daniel S. Libman's "In the Belly of the Cat" is an interesting story which I think dodges some of the cliches it was prone to; the story of an old man who prepares an elaborate dinner with this sense of foreboding over him, a peculiar awareness of imminent death. He hires a prostitute to come up and eat with him. It deftly avoids the repetitive idea of the "whore with a heart of gold," because Monique is a more complicated creature than that, and also avoids the simple cliche of having a character hire a prostitute for something other than sex because the old man gets that from her as well, even if the whole tryst is only a small segment - perhaps a few paragraphs - of the whole story. Libman's attention to detail and character building is commendable, and I find that he did a good job making the sex inconsequential without making it a story about bad sex with a prostitute. The dinner is the unfufilling event, it almost replaces the sex and you get a strong sense that the whole event reflects most of the main character's life at this point. The ending felt a bit telegraphed, it felt a little too obvious, but there's that fine line between surprise and something coming out of nowhere without any build-up.

That build-up is one of the things I'm working on with the Valentino story, and I find the rewrite is giving me more freedom to build a route to the ending. The character in question gets the right kind of development, I hope, from the beginning. I'm also enjoying the opportunity to play around with point of view more, something which has interested me because a roving point of view and omniscient narrator are evident in both Bel Canto and the Shipping News. It some ways it works with my style of writing, although I don't want to overuse it or push it to far. I deleted the story's tendency to dip into a weird second person because that seemed to be something people couldn't quite grip onto. Although-- maybe I'll try it again during another rewrite. Who knows.

Going through all my burned CDs. Veruca Salt right now, one of those weird little gems of my childhood. Oh, no, wait. A rabbit in the moon remix of Sarah McLachlan's "Possession." This is from back when I was a raver.

The project for the day is to write from two different points of view around the same character; it's a chronological shift rather than a full perspective shift. This is for the fiction workshop. We've each been given our own assignment it seems, and mine involves finding out what exactly a thirteen-year-old boy in London, England would have been listening to. And, you know, looking up British slang and using it without making the thing sound like a bad Coronation Street redux.

So I just consigned my three day novel, The Zombie, the Ghost, and the Sociopath to oblivion. I deleted it. I did it with nary an issue or even a moment of regret. Everything feels a lot better. I wasn't happy with it and wasn't interested enough after the fact to want to save the cursed thing, which I feel in many ways was a step in the wrong direction. Story-wise, anyway; I still relish the productivity of the thing, and the fact that I know I can do it again. November is novel writing month but I'll be too busy. Maybe next year.

I am a man caught betwixt three stories - Sadie Valentino, the short assignment piece which I have to revise, and my third story of the semester, which began to unsettle itself in my brain and prepare for download. I'll spend most of tomorrow working on Sadie, getting her story finished and revised and looking beautiful. Then I'm going to do the revisions on the little short piece. It was well received and I think there's going to be a gender swap for the narrator. Could be fascinating.

Less than one thousand words left to write tonight on Sadie Valentino, which doesn't have a new title but something will inevitably occur to me. Enjoying the omniscient dipping point of view. Reading The Shipping News on breaks from the long haul. After that, if it's not too late, I'm going to look at the short-short and see about rewriting that. I just want to get this one story done, finished, and off to Lorna. Give me some space from it for a while, start the next story, try to work my way through the rest of the homework.

Decided to pick up some cash doing copy writing for a local web development company, just a one-off job with potential for more in the future. It'll make my schedule a bit harsher for the next little while but that's not saying much and it's a work situation that's actually in my chosen field! I feel really charged up about this.

Technical Writing - the class, not the actual writing - makes no sense. Even more so. This prof has no concept of how to run a class, it seems. This is all going to be reflected in my course evaluation in a few weeks.

You're Brigitte Bardot!


What Classic Pin-Up Are You?
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You know, I was kind of expecting Audrey or Catherine Deneuve. But, Brigitte's cool.

I become angry when I proofread. I'm in the middle of proofreading "The Mushroom Cloud Called Sadie Valentino," which is an odd title but I find myself drawn to it like sex to Marilyn Monroe. I'm immersed in remixed versions of Nina Simone.

Michelle spent five bucks on a translation of some Tibetan poetry. There was a Sufi edition as well, but she couldn't remember who the poet was. I suspect it was Rumi, and I'm inclined to check it out. Except that I can not, must not, because I have too much to read and I need to learn a little thing called self-control. I believe I had it once, but that was the womb.

Anyway, only a few more pages to perform in a dramatic reading to the mirror while I scour the lines for awkward bits or blatant typos. Then I'm going to print it out again for the final time with all the adjustments made and more importantly - I'm going to delete it off the to do list. I have two more things to add to the to do list anyway.

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Thank god. I thought I was going to be trapped as whiny-ass A.J. again, pining forever after Liv freaking Tyler. Instead I get to thrash around and wig out on the dance floor. Or the middle of any floor, really. Especially if the customers are getting all crazy-like--

Just in my underwear and a soft hemp T-shirt (Redstar-emblazoned! Fidel! O, Fidel!), buzzed from the two martinis I had at Bravo's with Jo and Daniel. I had a Burnt Bombay, which is basically the gin poured into a scotch-swirled glass. Then I had a Nutty Club, which is gin with amaretto and something else, with pineapple juice. I buzzed on to Nouveau Branden's house with those two; we smoked off of Branden's hookah (mint-flavoured!) before I swaggered home. Michael's deathly ill so I amused myself on the walk back with a phone conversation checking up on him. I had a mild panic attack about Frank last night so I think I wanted to stave that off from happening again. Damn me and my enthralling and highly functional imagination!

Tomorrow shall be exciting! I'm going to get up at an ungodly hour to an empty house because Christian's in Vancouver and Michelle is going to Vancouver, I'm going to work on getting at least one or two stories critiqued, and then I'm going to speak to Dan and Hudson about this writing gig they want me to do. I'm very excited about the prospect, which will allow me to increase my repetoire and begin something like a professional portfolio for the future.

I'll pick up some wine on the way home and mull it to drink while I do Technical Writing homework and finish critiques. Then I'll go pick up lovely things to take to Michael's house to make him feel better. It'll be very nice to have a night with him, even if he's sick as a dog; he develops this adorable pouty thing when he's ill and in need of nursing.

I'm going to dance around the room now, and then I'm going to fight my way through The Shipping News, which seems to have lost any discernable plot.

In my bathrobe, waiting for laundry to finish so that I'll have something professional looking for my interview, which has moved back to 5pm this afternoon because one of the investors will be there or something or rather. In the meantime I'm workshopping stories, one more left to go and then I'll take a crack at the Technical Writing homework; ideally, that won't take me heaps of time. My to do list is down to nine items for the moment, but more will be added later after the interview. No wine will be mulled because that wouldn't be professional.

I slept in until 9:30 and made pancakes while I watched cartoons. A pleasant morning by myself with laundry rotating and a clear sense of purpose.

So, with regard to the writing gig, it's with a web development company in town, writing copy for a media packet concerning an online magazine called "Elite IA." There's a UK version, to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about. They want me to write the copy for a media packet which they can give out to potential customers wanting to be featured in the magazine. It's for young, upwardly mobile type people with a lot of disposable income. They want, you know - trendy, edgy writing with a young, hip voice. I'll be making a decent amount of money off this job, but more importantly I'll be establishing a portfolio for a different kind of writing and potentially leading to more marketable writing jobs in the future. You know. Establishing a reputation.

And now I'm at Michael's house, watching Gremlins movies and freshly washed. We had a bath and now we're going to go to bed so that he'll be - you know - healthy enough to have brunch tomorrow.

A refreshing phone call to Matthew to discuss the myriad art projects and wild adventures. I feel energized and more than capable. I have two projects for the day: begin the Elitia copy, and start my third short story for my fiction workshop. I purchased some design/fashion magazines from Munro's after a nutritious omelette at Floyd's Diner, some gristle for my brain to process. I have a rough idea for a format I want to use to present the information, and I have a character in my head for the short story. I actually have two characters, but one of them isn't very well-developed yet. It's based on one of my old postcard stories.

Michael sounded a bit better when he dropped me off, I think he was happy just to get out of the house for an hour before he went completely batty. We watched Priscilla last night and I swear I've developed a crush on Terrence Stamp. He's just so...manly...even when he's playing a trans drag queen.

Well, I've started the new story and not much else. It's going well, although I need to squeeze another couple hundred words out before I let myself turn off the computer and slide into between the sheets, the pillow a mountain against my cheek. I need to shave. I need a haircut. I'm going to have lunch with Samara tomorrow after my two classes and then I'm going home to be productive. I like being productive.

The voice I'm writing is a bit uneven. It's been a while since I've bothered with first person, and while I've got a good sense of how Tedford sounds it hasn't quite geled with me yet. I'm avoiding the italics and the questions like the plague, and keeping it firmly retrospective because I like the idea of writing a retrospective piece. His mother's about to enter the scene and she's going to have a bob haircut. I think it's going to be fabulous. I envision her looking like Twiggy, but slightly older. I haven't quite firmed up what Tedford looks like yet. And his father is out of the picture.

Can it be that I've dragged myself from my warm bed into the misery of early morning, missed one bus by about thirty seconds and am now about to sit through my Technical Writing class without breakfast? No, no. This must be a dream, or a hoax -- an imaginary story!

I feel like this is New Orleans and I've been zombified by some crazy lady in the swamp. Mama Cass should be playing on the soundtrack but all I've got is Tori Amos. I feel like a prole.

Here we are again. The blank white page, electric as an eye and trained on me. Blasphemous and oversexed, HAL 9000's square cousin. Almost unmarked; there's an underlined title but nothing underneath. The onboard spell checker doesn't believe I've spelled two words the proper way. Heat in the fore brain.

So the obvious solution is WILDCAT. Wildcat. Bwow. The deep well I can toss whatever I want into. Get the words to pump out. I'm going to walk over to my bed and I'm going to look into one of the magazines. I'm going to flinch from the mascara and glitter spread - close up of eyes - and find some small scrap of text. I'm going to start this thing.

Yes, I know it's fucking hilarious that Tori Amos is singing "Why do I crucify myself," on media player right now. Hilarious.

The first segment of the media packet has been sent to Dan for thoughts. I inquired about the length, the point of view in the postcard-like first paragraph, and if there was enough information in the second paragraph. A surprising amount of work went into it, but I suspect once I have a better idea about whether my ideas are what they're actually looking for, I can adjust and correct my conception to fit the company view.

I'm tempted to scrap the initial draft of the opening to the new short story and start over from scratch. I like the first paragraph, after a bit of tweaking, but I need to restart to see if I can get the voice to flow correctly. I have a better idea of what Tedford looks like and acts like, so I think we're one step closer. His mother is pretty much a bag of cement in my head. June is a bit of a cypher, but she's mostly built out of Tedford's reactions to her - at least at first - so I think once I get Tedford's voice, she'll come out of it and be a little more filled in.

Tomorrow I'm going desk shopping. And possibly clothes shopping, because the unfortunate truth of the matter is that I don't have enough long-sleeved T-shirts and sweaters to languish in during the winter months. I'm inclined to buy a new hoodie and there's also the issue of getting a haircut; I wore my toque today while Christian and I bopped off to Hillside Mall to drop off a phone bill payment and get groceries, and afterward I had the most ridiculous hat hair I've ever seen. It must be cut off! Don't think I'm going for quite the Neo-Fascist look this time, more interested in an "Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting" sketchy artist look for the next little while.

New issue of Planetary out on Wednesday! Wicked. I've been waiting for a while for Warren Ellis to produce one.

Today, I've been on the go. Woke up about two hours later than I planned, at 10:30, so I jumped out of bed and showered myself. The hair looked awful. I took a bus downtown to go in search of long-sleeved shirts and found one after trying on six or seven at the Patch. After that I got my haircut at Jimmy the Greek's, by one of the younger guy who always gives me funny looks. Weird. The bus to Oak Bay took forever but once it came I hopped on that and head out to the crossroad of Foul Bay and Oak Bay.

Once I was there, I went desk shopping. First one place, found a four hundred dollar table which looked far too big, so I shopped around for a bit and ended up picking out this beautiful, dark wooden desk with a single, shallow drawer and built in bookshelves. Beautiful. Three hundred dollars, which is two hundred less than the other one I found which fit my needs. I bought it on impulse, and told the shop keeper that I'd arrange it get it picked up in the next few days.

After that I ended up on the phone with Michael, after a bit of tell-tale confusion (and a small bottle of Bombay from the liquor store with which to celebrate this evening), and he offered to help get the desk to my house after his class. Today. Fabulous. That was a bit of a show - when we met up, Michael smacked his forehead into a long stick of wood in the back of a pick-up and I had to kiss it better, then there was comical running around while I removed the back seats from the van and then went to pick up the desk.

So my old desk is in pieces in the garage, having been taken apart during a flurry of manly behaviour on my part. I also stuck the drawers in there once I'd picked out the bits that I might need; they're in the garage as storage boxes for papers that I'm not yet sure about. I spent half an hour wiping furniture oil off the wood to degrease it a bit. Then I set things up. Finally.

I finally have a nice, solid desk. The other one was around since, oh, Grade 5. It was falling apart, and had been altered and added onto so many times that only half the wood was the original stuff. This new desk has a sense of history to it and it also has space, even if the shape's a bit different and I've had to rearrange how I keep things. Fewer spaces to fill with crap. The bookshelves are storage space for empty paper and magazines at the moment, until I figure out a better system. It's weird to that much money on something.

Plus I have that amazing boyfriend who helped me transport it and survived through obstacles with me. I don't think he was having a very good day, and has a midterm tomorrow. It made me a bit sad for him.

So there were no new comics today. Apparently nobody in B.C. got the weekly comics order in as expected. Weird. Told to come back tomorrow. Looking forward to that Planetary.

Otherwise, eating yogurt and about to do some homework before a shift at the library. Need to get two things done in the next two hours, and then if there's time I'd like to work on the story. Want to work on that more than anything.

Still haven't heard back about the media packet sample I sent in. Would like a hint of feedback in order to go ahead with the rest and know that the tone sounds right.

Miss my man. Seeing him tonight, hope his head has stopped hurting.

Cherry yogurt.

Sat on my bed and ate mushroom caps stuffed with crabmeat while I drank a weak gin and tonic. I read Planetary #21 and Adam Strange #2 - after a lot of crap comics lately, I enjoyed both of them a lot.

The world is rainy and the house is quiet. I'm unshaven and grungy from a lack of showering because I woke up and Michael was warm and soft and better than a shower and then we had to get up and go to school. Which was pointless. It felt like nothing more than a waste of time with extra assignments being added on. I hung out with Joy in front of SUBtext for a while and we read this book about being a Galactic Human, which raised my spirits and made me feel a bit more composed.

So, I'm at home now and I'm going to take that shower before my head explodes. Then I'm going to work on the Tedford story for an hour, read some Life of PI, and workshop stories. I'm also going to do two more Elitia segments because I figure I can do that in increments and not go insane.

I'm very whiny. Time for more gin!

On my second gin and tonic, about to read one of the stories for workshop. I worked on the Tedford story for a bit and I suspect I'll probably do that some more tonight. Don't know if I'll end up doing the Elitia stuff or if I'll just put it off to the weekend. I've dipped into the Belle and Sebastian albums again, probably throw on some Neutral Milk Hotel to relieve some fine, fine tensions.

Tensions like the fact that apparently my grandparents saw Michael and I kiss or something back in the summer and that was why Granny pointedly forbade my aunt Susan from inviting me for Thanksgiving. Apparently I've been disowned for my faggotry. And Michelle found out last night that someone she knew years ago committed suicide following a battle with heroin addiction and paranoia.

Well, at least I have my new desk and Michelle has Halloween candy that she said we weren't going to open but what the hell!

Adding some people to the Friends of Wildcat - Sara and Amanda, who are both workshop kids.

I'm trying to think of a character name. For the Elitia media packet, each section includes a fancy layout design with some upwardly-mobile young person as the focal point. I decided to centre the copy in each section around a brief scenario or a postcard story that used the model in question. Anyway, he looks Greek or from somewhere in the Mediterranean area and has the dark goatee thing happening. I was thinking perhaps "Matthew." Other ideas were Gerald (too upper class British old person), or Craig (too frat boy for the model). Maybe "Daniel." I'll see what works best when I write this section. It's the Fine Dining section, so I get to wax poetic about fusion food and Southwestern dining. I get to use the word "tapas."

Went to Hime Sushi with Michael, Michelle, Christian, John, and Ashley last night. Gloriee says that there's a lease problem with the new owner and so they can't close down for another month - although her dad wants to. They won't get to have their month off before they go on a Japan vacation to see family. It's very unfortunate, but we're going to try and take advantage of them being open longer. Gloriee will have to be at the party next weekend. I'm going to chill a bottle of the Gin for her.

Alternately between homework and season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So far, Buffy's winning. But things aren't too bad, mellow, collapsed and quiet. I need to focus my mind on tasks and achieve zen-like concentration on a single task at hand. I wish it wasn't so easy to get distracted by multi-tasking. Really. Maybe I should try ritalin.

Upside, I feel like I'm starting to make a dent in my collection of unread books. About halfway through Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. The slow pacing of the ocean sequence isn't nearly as painful as it was the first time, which tends to make me suspect that I wasn't mature enough or something when I read it the first time. Ugh. Realizing your own personal growth is irritating. I want to have always been perfect. But change is good or something.

I didn't go anywhere last night for wild parties because I didn't have any ideas for a costume beyond - say - my own lack of self-respect (go as trashy as possible). And because of the homework, which piles on up. And sometimes I just don't feel like going out into the world. I wish I could not go out into the world and sit at home and meditate or read weird short stories, but not write now. At least one of the option is to write weird short stories. I remember remarking that Joy was going to be one of those masters of the short story form, but I suspect I'm just going to end up toiling away at them and maybe having a small following of readers who shrink away from the light. You know, I'll be an interesting writer and people won't say it's terrible but people will comment that those stories are kind of weird - you know, in that tone of voice. Weird.

I'm sorry, I seem to have swayed into Wuthering Heights. I'm trapped on the moors! Heathcliff? Oh, Heathcliff - are you there?

(and why am I always Catherine?)

What? What? Right, right, there are other people in the world. My head is not spinning, I've just had too much candy. We didn't have any trick or treaters, and I've gotten nothing done since that formal reports thing I did this afternoon.

Michelle is off celebrating Samhain with a Dinner for the Dead, Christian just got home from German home cooking, and the house is pretty dead. I've thrown on some Portishead for tragic flair. I should probably go read Life of Pi but instead I'm going to try and crank on some text for Elitia and then shuffle off into nothingville. You know, sleep. Time for a little dream archeology. I've been having spiders of lucid dreams, or at least highly vivid ones - not necessarily full sensory, but full emotion. Full heat of the battle.

Peaches, "Fuck the Pain Away." From the scene in Lost in Translation with the strippers. You know, you'd think as you get older the stupid naughty lyrics thing will stop working, but this is not true.