Black Iris Dancer

When you're feeling down, there's nothing quite like talking to your close friends…

…to make you feel even shitter! Wow! I am distinctly impressed.

Unrelated: If you have a band, and your only page is on MySpace, I will design you a website for free. You can even keep your MySpace page. I just… I just want the hurting to stop.

(Well, the MySpace-related hurting, at least.)

I hereby declare this International Post Lolcats Here day. Because it is Thursday, and if the world is going to end (or we're not going to make it to the weekend), we may as well go out while ceiling cat is watching us masturbate.



The comments are to be completely filled by the time I get back. If not, there will be flayings.

I had a bizarre dream the other night. I think it might make a good short film/short story, despite dreams not generally being good at that.

The main character (who was, in that dream-like way, kinda me and kindof a character in this story) is meeting her friends at the diner. This guy comes along—she doesn't really know him, I think he's a hitchhiker, but his entry into the story is vague and ought to stay that way.

Something about him is very off. From the dream, I can remember nothing more than a vague sense of off-ness, but I think he says things, bizarre and out-of-place things, like he's trying to fit in somewhere he doesn't belong. He's not awkward about it, which might be endearing, but just very certain that his world is right and ours isn't, or isn't any concern of his.

At some point, the friends go to the bathroom. He's staring into space. The people in the booth behind us leave, tsking, and I glance at their table. There's a newspaper lying on it. On the front page is the story of a murder, at this diner, presented with crime scene photos much more gory than you'd expect to find on the front page. The friends are lying there, in pools of blood, lined up gruesomely. She (me/the main character) isn't pictured. The paper has tomorrow's date.

At this point, the friends return, and the man clears his throat.

“I think you should go first,” he says, indicating me/the main character.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“You'll be the worst. You should go first.”

At this point, I don't know if he's talking about raping or just killing. It's unclear, and the conversation resumes, but obviously she's not very much into it. She's brought this man into their lives, and so it's her responsibility, and she doesn't know what to do. She sees a gun that she swore wasn't there before, peeking out from under his coat.

“I think it's time,” he says, and starts shooting.

He doesn't shoot either of her friends first. It's someone else in the diner, maybe behind the desk. There's a moment of total calm, and then total chaos. I don't know what happens, except she ends up staggering into the kitchen.

In the dream, at this point, he comes in, and she stabs him with a stake knife. Except, it's a freaking stake knife , and it's really hard to stab anyone with that. She manages to get a solid cut on his neck, but she doesn't know if he's dead. She pins him down, somehow—it's tenuous, he's much bigger than her; perhaps she briefly forces his head into the grease fryer. And then, she realizes: serrations. She twists his arm wrist-up, and methodically cuts through the skin, and the veins, and then his bone, until his hand is completely severed.

That's what happened in the dream. In the film, I think this scene closes on her hiding in the kitchen.

And then we cut. It's some time later, perhaps a year. She's walking up to a church with a man—not the killing man, although perhaps the resemblance is remarkable.

“How long do you think we'll be?” he asks,

“As long as we need.”

She isn't wearing a wedding dress—actually, she's wearing a long denim-like top, and a black skirt. It's cute, but not formal, and we think maybe they're attending a wedding, but they're not, they're getting married.

And on their vows, I wake up, and we cut.

Just got back from seeing Khadak at IFS. So beautiful. Asa was really, really insistent that I see it, and I totally get why. On the way home, I was having trouble adjusting to a world infused with subtler dreams, fewer blue ribbons, and more genocide on the radio.

I'm really out of it today. Have been all week, truth to say. I think that actually helped, in this case, but overall it's kinda distressing. I was feeling way awesome and creative around Wednesday, but a lot of that energy has ebbed away. I'm still making progress with setting up my place (my car finally, finally has a back seat again!), so something must still be working.

As an example of the above: I'm trying to describe this really simple game, but the words are just. not. coming. Part of it's that I don't entirely know how it goes, but partially I'm just having trouble putting concepts to paper. Trust me when I say this is not usually a problem. Perhaps sleep will help.

Random insight: The Con isn't just an album you can listen to in a loop; it makes you want to listen to it in a loop. Call it off is so fucking raw and sad, and I was married is so fundamentally full of light that hopping from the end to the beginning is like getting a little jolt of happy, anti-Pavlov style.

Sia's playing in Boulder tomorrow! Yay! Everyone should come. Everyone.

Your writing exercise for today (I provide writing exercises? I think… yes). Include the following in a story: “After a month, it became completely clear to me that David was not an integral part of this arrangement. Lia was.” Mangle names as desired.

So, I apparently decided to take a break from LJ.

I didn't make that decision in that way that people do, where they're like, “god! I'm just so sick of LJ!” And then they're back next week. Because I wasn't actually sick of LJ, and I wasn't back the next week.

Or for the next two years.

I've recently started posting over here, because I like the notion of Trackbacks and the blogosphere, and I really like having a creative space that was in some way mine and did not belong to (* waves hands vaguely *) the ether.

But I woke up this morning, and realized I wanted to write something to my journal. Not a private journal, because I'm from the Internet and we don't really understand those here. But to somewhere that is mine in a different way.

Which is a nice long way of explaining that this space should be less dead soon.

The last several days have been long threads of extreme coolness punctuated by bouts of middling to severe depression, centered on, approximately, nothing.

This is weird, but not the subject of this post.

I have lots to say about Serenity. It's brilliant, and wonderful, and there's a whole bunch more text that could go here, but I think that this sums it up quite nicely:

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hurricane, n. ('hʌrɪkeɪn, -kən)

1. A name given primarily to the violent wind-storms of the West Indies, which are cyclones of diameter of from 50 to 1000 miles, wherein the air moves with a velocity of from 80 to 130 miles an hour round a central calm space, which with the whole system advances in a straight or curved track; hence, any storm or tempest in which the wind blows with terrific violence.

Chill settles softly over the beaches. Wind streams in over the ocean, cooling the swamps and the earthen mounds that hold them in, and the sky begins to fold over itself, the shade of a new bruise. Animals and people scurry as hard rain pelts down as fog rolls in over the ocean.

It was all exciting, once. Danger, possibility. Some tiny voice saying, maybe we'll get some real excitement aruond here. Maybe everything will change. Standing on the edge, looking her nearly in the eye, it isn't that, anymore.

Everyone knows her by now. Every weather station, every satellite, every sounding balloon droped into the sky; they're all trying to learn her secrets. Slowly and quickly, people have been leaving, climbing out of the bathtub-waiting-for-the-ocean in which their city is built. Nobody's flying into the Big Easy except for CNN, so of course there aren't any planes to leave on. Busses stopped a while ago. If you have a car, friends, connections, you go. If you don't, you pray. Because ain't nobody coming to rescue you, child. You want help, get out now, even if you can't. Stay, and you're on your goddamn (and we do mean that: God. damned.) own.

2. transf. and fig. a. A violent rush or commotion bringing with it destruction or confusion; a storm or tempest of words, noise, cheers, etc.

She misses very slightly, hitting Triumph. Everyone's holding their breath, and as they slowly begin to exhale, they find they have to hold it again, because there's water, everywhere.

But we are ready.

There are helicopters, patching the shattered levees from the sky. And hospital ships, already standing by. The National Guard is there, giving everyone food and water, medicine and shelter. Those who didn't make it to the shelters are still helped. People pull together. Other nations offer assistance and, humbled, the most powerful nation on earth accepts it gladly. For a time, everyone's in it together, differences simply cast aside.

John Burnett: There are 2,000 people living outside the convention center. There is no food. There is absolutely no water. There is no medical treatment. There are no police. There are two dead bodies on the ground and in a wheel chair around the convention center, both elderly people. We understand two more died earlier.

We understand that a 10 year old girl was raped in the convention center in the last two nights. People are absolutely desperate there.

I have never seen anything like this.

…Host: Is there someone in charge?

John Burnett: No. There is no one. There is no one in charge of this effort. They seem to be throwing it back between national guard, city police and state police. The plan seems to be changing by the hour. These people were told to go to the Superdome, then to the convention center, then they were told buses would pick them up, but nothing is happening…

b. A large and crowded assembly of fashionable people at a private house, of a kind common during part of the 18th century. (Cf. DRUM n. 10, ROUT.) Obs.

“Katrina” is a variant of “Catriona,” the Gaelic name derived from the Greek “Αικατερινη.” The lineage, they say, is somewhat unclear. It could derive from “Hecate.” It could come from αικια, “torture,” in the Greek. It was the name, also, of a martyred saint from Alexandria, tortured on the the wheel bearing her holy name.

“Officer Lawrence, could you please enlighten the board as to the happenings that Friday night, the 19th of August?…”

I pulled them over just west of the 20th street entrance to interstate 25. It was a silver Honda, going 62 in the 55. Nothing too remarkable about the car, save for its peculiar bumper sticker. “RO,” was the only text, written over a flag I couldn't recognize. Probably, in light of the events that followed, Russian.

The driver rolled down the window and looked up at me, and the first thing that struck me as, perhaps, somewhat peculiar, was the manner of coming from the car's stereo. It was utterly triumphant and yet unshakably depressing—a Soviet march, if I am not mistaken. The driver was wearing black everywhere. His cap and long coat were black leather, his undershirt coarse black cotton. His face was dark—though I couldn't say how dark—his features, unreadable. The passenger beside him, one of three in the car, is hunched slightly, muttering to himself. Something about baskets. Or perhaps gaskets.

The first words out of the drivers mouth, before I even got to speak, were,

“Is moose-and-squirrel?”

It took me a moment to register the question, spoken as it was with a heavy slavic accent. I don't know what to do at this point, so I go through the motions. He hands me his papers, and as I'm walking back to my car I could have sworn I heard him say to one of the passengers in the back, “Eat key, so cannot open filing cabinet.” But, again, his accent was heavy.

It's at this point, I notice the two passengers in the back seat. That is, I noticed them before, but I can see more clearly now what they're doing. One of them is wearing a pentacle. He's sitting, looking vaguely annoyed and perhaps slightly amused at everything that's happening. I know how he feels. The other passenger is…hugging a black metal filing cabinet. It's propped in the middle seat, and she's clutching it like it's her new best friend.

His license and registration check out, and I think for a moment about writing him a citation, but there was just something about his eyes… I thought my night had gotten a bit too interesting by that point, so I handed back his papers, told him to watch his speed, and let them go. The driver seemed confused, his eyes flickering to the black metal box in the back seat nervously. Then, quickly, he muttered something under his breath, rolled up the window, and drove off.

I stood there, in front of my car, deeply confused for not the first time that night. I got back in my car, started it up, and drove on down the highway, making sure not to pass the car, in case I should happen to notice something I can't ignore.

I think the driver said something about going back to Boulder, and that's just fine with me.

Sitting in a computer lab, it can at times be a touch disconcerting to consider what random strangers notice on your terminal's screen.

Take the cute girl who just walked into this lab not five minutes ago. She walked to a computer behind me, passing by my desk.

At the time, it contained this, in very large letters, at the top of the screen:

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Can Walt Disney just… not be in the record business? At all? Please? I'm willing to provide sexual favors.

I was reminded of this particular train of thought upon seeing Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway video (no, no—the song is called “Breakaway”) in my downloads folder. Someone (would that I could now find the link) had ranted about it, and I had to see if it was as bad as they claimed.

Note to self: It always is. Worse, even.

I expected bad. I didn't expect the oddly putrescent sacchrine-drenched syrup that is currently flowing out of my screen and filling my living room.

The song is bad enough. Total content: “I'm going to pray that I grow up and become rich and famous. But when I do, I won't forget all the little people. Because that would be wrong.” So before video even comes into it, the song is already trying to rot your teeth.

But the video could be great! Consider the video for No Doubt's “It's My Life.” Granted, the song is written with some degree of that irony thing, but it doesn't exactly instantly suggest the video,

Well it's my life

Don't you forget

It's my life

It never ends

In the video, she's on death row.

Perversity is a weird phenomena. The pleasure of experiencing something banal twisted into something good is very different from the pleasure of experiencing something that's just good to begin with. (You can basically fill in whatever definition of “good” you like, here.) Perversity is interesting because of the twist, not because of any of its constituent components. Happy Tree Friends works because of the jarring juxtaposition of Disney-cute forest creatures and their equally-cute bloody, gruesome demises; neither component would work as well on its own.

So, back to what is laughingly being called “the issue at hand,” if you're called on to make a video for Breakaway, what do you do?

If you're me, you notice that the song is primarily in the future tense. “I'll do all this awesome stuff, really, I will…” So you start by assuming that she doesn't get everything she wants. Or perhaps she does, but it isn't everything she wants (Everybody's Fool). This can and should involve track marks. Religion's big in the song, so tattered crosses and stuff should probably come into it. The chorus starts with “I'll spread my wings and I'll learn how to fly / I'll do what it takes til' I touch the sky” which can only really be saved from solid-iron level banality if she gets to fly because she's all dead and angelic and such.

If you're Disney? You decide to up the sugar content. Girl wants to grow up to be a rich pop star. Does. Gets to sing on The Princess Bride 2 soundtrack. And then, having rotted everyone's teeth away and thus neatly exposed a direct line to their nervous system, you pile on product placement like it's going out of style (which, tragically, it isn't).

Ugh. Can Grokster or Napwire or whatever just get a crit on all the major studios, already? They need to die.

So, I was at Adam's house last night. He demonstrated, primarily in wide gestures and exuberant plans, some of his hopes and dreams for his new basement abode.

(Lyrical side note: i feel like i wouldn't like me if i met me…. Aprops of nothing, really. It's just a cool line.)

After shuffling through our respective stocks of pipe dreams, we played Silent Hill 2. Or rather, I played Silent Hill 2, and Adam acted as my human map, as he has a good sense of video game direction and I do not. It was creepy and sorta-cool, as I vaguely remembered the game being.

I'd actually made my first mistake earlier that evening. Adam offered a choice: he could drive me home from his place, or I could walk back. The former meant less time at his place, the latter more. Of course, I chose the latter. This seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time.

Walking home after spending the better part of an hour wandering through a crumbling virtual town—grey with fog and soot, riddled with zombies—was a marginally less pleasurable experience. Initially, I wasn't scared. I demonstrated this to myself by whispering, “I'm not scared. I'm not.”

Behind me (possibly some distance, possibly inches from my neck), it became evident that something was emitting a sound. Not the comforting sort of sound, like one a bunny might make. It was the other kind. A gurgling, growling, gnashing sound. “Oh,” one part of my mind said, “It's probably nothing.” At least, I think it said that. It was somewhat drowned out by the other part of my brain, which was saying something more along the lines of, “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

And then the jogger spit out the phlegm he'd cleared from his throat, and passed me silently.

Note to self: In the future, walk home with a wooden board. Or possibly a chainsaw. Or not at all.

(Another lyrical note: “i ain't nothing but tired / i'm just tired and bored with myself” Cool line.)

Yes, this post does mean I'm “back.” Whatever that means. In common usage, it implies updates with something approaching regularity. (Right.)

sweet the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth… Music fucking rocks.

Countering the prevailing opinion of Constantine, I would like to offer my impressions of the film.

* ahem *

Demons! Heavenly magicks! Mirrors! Smoke! Angelic symbols! A beautiful, androgynous angel! Water is the conduit. Cats! Lucifer!

* pants *

I'm going to go smoke a clove.

Bush's inaugaral party. Parties all around. Cheney takes a moment to deficate on the Constitution, getting big laughs.

( elsewhere )

I looked up today, which is something I apparently don't do often enough. It was twilight, possibly my favorite time of day (a fact which is probably a commentary on me in some fashion). The sky was lovely. In the west, sunlight just barely spilling over the mountain tops in the west, and all above, this evocative shade of bruise, a deep blue-purple, colored by patches of dark clouds. I lay smoking on Norlin's lawn, staring at the expanse.

I'm presently cooking carrots and tofu with the intention of doing something with them with regards to pasta. We'll see how it goes.

My schedule this semester is, remarkably, fairly sane. I'm engaging with my classes, some more quickly than others. I think I'm going to regret taking numerical computation again. I say this having been to only one class. All the others were either cancelled, or—cough—I was not in attendance. Cognitive science is so-so. Screenwriting, on the other hand, is fun as always, and symbolic logic is surprisingly paletable, mostly because of the instructor (Devon Belcher, an unfortunate name). Simon's Nietzsche is brilliant, of course, but the university doesn't know I'm in it, so… shhh.

I actually came to a realization during one of Simon's lectures: this is why my philosophy with regards to “the problem of free will” is so weird. If you think of yourself as this entity in the world, as distinct from other entities in the world, then there's a problem of free will—do I have choice? Only, I don't believe in “I”. I don't believe in objects as distinct entities, or even the existence of something apart from something else, or existence of anything apart from the world. It is, come to think of it, the ultimate breakdown of the whole Self/Other distinction that's been on some people's minds of late. There is no self, and there is no other. There merely is, and it is worthy of love.

It seems my sister may be soon getting a car. This will hopefully allow me to become even more a part of the world, in the sense of seeing people more often. It's a nice dream, anyway.

In largely unrelated news, I'm having fun playing with Illustrator and InDesign, getting the hang of this whole “vector art” thing. I want to try doing some vector traces of photographs and seeing what comes of it. So far, I've gotten some pretty damn cool-looking results, so I'm hopeful.

This ramble brought to you by a desire for carrots, and the color bruise.

Still not dead. Am presently a bit worried about the hut-tripping people, as it is very cold, and were I voluntarily freeze-drying my ass in the mountains, previous sentence would likely be false.

Not feeling overly grammatical at the moment. Quick sentences. Short breaths.

Okay—done, now.

New Year's was eventfully uneventful, in a way that will probably make sense to anyone who has already heard a description of the evening's events. I might post something about it, but it's rapidly becoming dated (because the purpose of this journal is to keep people updated. right. naturally. purely functional, i.)

InDesign is just cool. On which more, later.

I just dropped off the last form I need to declare creative writing, so it is, apparently, done. Or will be once the paperwork clears. They seem intent on sending me a welcome letter or somesuch, which makes me think that perhaps I should check the mail. I think a good first step would be getting a mail key.

Also, realized that after this semester, I have one class and my thesis before the whole CS experience is behind me. I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole thing, but with two classes to go, I'm going to finish the damn major and see what happens.

(I did not have that kind of resolve after the tequila wore off. Probably for the best.)

I don't want to. I really don't. It's just that my body is shutting down around me, like a machine with one too many broken parts. I'm sitting at my desk and all I want to do is dip my head into my arms and breathe. Sleep, maybe, for a very, very long time.

What the hell happened?

It's not that I have to watch a monkey lead the single most powerful nation on earth. It's not just that Kerry lost, although that certainly didn't help. It's that Kerry deserved to lose. Bush deserved to lose. Nader deserved to lose. Every single last fucker on the goddamn ballot has no business being there. “It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another.” It's as if the entire miserable human race from start to its inevitable finish has had a masochistic streak a mile wide.

We hurt each other. And we enjoy it. And the ones we choose to lead us enjoy it most of all. We build systems—great, churning machines—to control ourselves, to give us “security” and all that other meaningless bullshit. And they grind us down, inch by inch, bone by bone, until there's nothing left but blood-soaked dust. And everybody buys it. Everybody. The evangelical Christians who think they're going to save us all when the rapture comes God help you, Jesus is coming and He's going to sort the good and evil and they're going to watch it all burn on 777-channel satellite HDTV in Heaven. The punks, the folk singers, the activists, the anarchists—everyone who thinks that there's a difference to be made, somewhere, that if people just realized what was going on then it would change. That if The State or The Patriarchy or any of those other things were gone that things would be better… we serve the system, too. We're a release valve, a systemization of the expression of helplessness. Smash windows, please. Get arrested when you get the chance. It wants you to. Because the shock, the discomfort, the sense of something significant crumbling—it helps it. It helps the machine trundle on, helps it hurt people, helps it exist.

The people most hurt by it all buy into it the most. Because they need to feel loved, they need to feel like they belong. It's an abusive relationship, and we keep going back to get beat and bloodied so we can show up to work the next day and say, no, he really loves me, it's just that sometimes these things happen.

It's enough to make you want to throw a brick through a store window, cut everyone to pieces with the glass. Take all the shit and throw it at the fan, smash the state, burn all bridges, watch the blood flow like a river through the streets, gut the patriarchy and wear their intestines like great feather boas slick with blood-red feathers. If it hurts enough, people will remember; if it hurts enough, they'll beg to be saved, they'll beg to be free.

And in the end, we'll build it all back up again. Millions, billions of beautiful, wonderful people will lie dead at day's end, and we'll wash the blood off the streets and burn the dead and replace the windows and re-build the big, imposing buildings, and we'll hang "Open for Business" signs in every store front and everything will be just as it was, and everyone will be glad the insanity is over.

There is no single person on whom I have given up. There is nobody I don't believe is beautiful somehow, even if I cannot and see it now or ever. But people—I feel like I should have given up on people long ago. I should have seen this.

And I didn't.

Fuck the world.

Or so it's said. I don't really understand the words, or if I do, I understand them differently, and in either case, their obviousness eludes me. Leaves fall. Leaves crack. Leaves burn. Leaves seem more real to me because they are so close in their lives to smoke and air. They blow and sweep and tumble into little tiny flakes of leaves, and then into nothing but the smell of smoke on the wind. They exist and they do not exist—a true contradiction, inherent to this, inherent to existence.

It's October now. October is pretty, because of the leaves. And the air. Also the dimples in earth, where leaves and water collect and drown in tiny reflecting pools, and the pyres, on which people burn piles and piles of red flakes, or used to, before they said you can't do that because it chokes the sky.

The essence and existence of a thing, of things—the nature of things, the pieces of us they hold, their form and substance and touch and taste. Things exist and do not exist all at once. They are born, and they die, and live, and die, and exist for moments, like the reflection of tumbling leaves or rising smoke or waddling penguins. Those pockets, that never exist without existing, they hold everything else. Beauty and trust and all the rest, neither alive nor deceased nor anywhere in-between, somewhere else, with the square root of two and pi, perfect spheres and eternal, fractal leaves.

(Back until I go away again.)

(And yes, I did post this because you gave me crap about it. And because you asked about it, even without knowing.)

I know some of you don't like them, but everyone must download Evanescence's Everybody's Fool video. Right. Now.

I don't think I can overstate the degree to which I am in love with it. Well, I probably could. But it's still awesome.

(And, yes. That's her.)

There's a loveliness about when the right person says the right thing at the right moment, and a little knot of Q'i unfurls right under your sternum, and it's just like a little packet of warmth and contentment.